to think no one can define living as a woman

[funtimess]

if you are a biological man.

Or indeed define living as a man if they are a biological woman.

What is the definition, how do you define a person ‘living" as the opposite sex?

AIBU to think that nobody is going to be able to define this unless they resort to regressive stereotypes.

YABU - I can define this for you without using regressive stereotypes.
YANBU - You are right, you can’t define this without using regressive stereotypes.

Is this person living as a woman? They are wearing a skirt, and enjoying it, apparently:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5400132-glp-are-going-after-sarah-philmore-and-are-going-to-lose?reply=146748806&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

True, due to the binary nature of the whole subject it can’t be dined. Anymore than I can define what it’s like to live as a dog or a parrot or a bicycle.

It’s not been done to death, and it needs to be discussed openly and clearly until it’s universally accepted as the meaningless nonsense that it is. Men cannot ‘live as a woman’ because they are not one, and no amount of demanding and foot stamping will ever make them one.

I worked in a department store as a student in 1996. A man dressed as a stereotypical woman came in to buy a bra. He had clearly had no hormonal treatment and was, very clearly, a large man dressed as a woman - skirt, heels, wig, makeup. He looked like he was in drag. Anyway, back then, the NHS would not give any medical gender-changing treatment to any man who had not spent two years living as a woman. I believe we all know what this means, even though some pretend they don't in order to make a point. It means presenting in a feminine way, which means skirts, dresses, heels etc.

This does NOT mean:

That women who don't present as stereotypically feminine aren't women.
That women who don't wear makeup and skirts/dresses/heels are living as men.
That men can be women just by changing to a stereotypical presentation.
That these stereotypes reduce all women to stereotypes. It is simply a fact that many women wear skirts, dresses, and/or heels while men don't.

The phrase "living as a woman" is used in a very specific context: That is, that men who want to transition need to change from a male presentation to one that the world recognises as specifically feminine. This is to help ensure that they do actually want to be more feminine than they are currently before doing something irrevocable like surgery and hormones. It means living as a woman IN COMPARISON TO how they normally live.

I believe everyone knows this but that some split hairs in order to make a point about female stereotypes. It's very tedious. No one thinks that women who don't present in a typically feminine fashion aren't women or that all women conform to the stereotypical feminine presentation.

The above is all just common sense.

Nobody's "foot stamping" but nice example of using emotive language to convey whole groups of people as angry, aggressive, dangers.
Straight out of the bigotry handbook and you see it all the time on here.

I find it interesting that on threads to do with gender, trans etc atm there are lots of comments of “oh not this again, have a week off, it’s Christmas!”
It’s got me pondering… are we only allowed to discuss such things in certain months? And when it’s been discussed a few times we aren’t allowed to discuss it again?
Even though it’s still a problem.
My eyes momentarily paused today on a postcard I have on my study wall that says “women won’t weesht”. I’ll say it louder for those at the back…. No, women will not shut up about this until common sense prevails. Women WONT weesht.
Have another biscuit and let those of us who want to talk about it, talk about it.

I don't agree that a woman can't be defined. I think the two sexes have much in common with other members of their sex. For example, virtually all women have periods and breasts when young (before meno and perhaps breast cancer, in some unlucky cases), experience sexual harassment, have XX chromosomes, a pelvis shape that's specific to women, etc. While all women are individuals, of course, the things that make us specifically female are the same.

Have a look on the Feminist board - lots of extremely fantastic women on there who will discuss this with you endlessly!

And no, “living as a woman” cannot be defined - it is simply a cliched line dredged up by men who wanted to try and justify why they should be allowed to invade women’s spaces.

It’s utterly meaningless.

Come visit Scotland you'll see many men in a type of skirt called a kilt.
Claiming that living as a woman involves preforming and conforming to female stereotypes is living as a woman is saying that anyone not adhering to these regressive stereotypes is not and ergo not a woman which is offensive bs.
I will.say it again the only way to live as a woman is to be an adult human female!

I'm going to quote the parts of my post that you conveniently ignored in order to make your point!

The phrase "living as a woman" is used in a very specific context: That is, that men who want to transition need to change from a male presentation to one that the world recognises as specifically feminine. This is to help ensure that they do actually want to be more feminine than they are currently before doing something irrevocable like surgery and hormones. It means living as a woman IN COMPARISON TO how they normally live.

This does NOT mean:
That women who don't present as stereotypically feminine aren't women.
That women who don't wear makeup and skirts/dresses/heels are living as men.
That men can be women just by changing to a stereotypical presentation.
That these stereotypes reduce all women to stereotypes. It is simply a fact that many women wear skirts, dresses, and/or heels while men don't.

Hope the underlining helps!!

Not really as if you spend anytime around gender idealogs you will hear them saying that any woman who doesn't conform to female stereotypes is not a woman but a man whos egg hasn't cracked yet. Also saying that a man can become a woman or live as one and then pointing to regressive stereotypes as proof is mearly reinforcing those harmful stereotypes which harms all women (the biological kind) and allows the erreasur of women and the language we need to describe ourselves and to defend our rights.
Men cannot be women and a legal fiction created by a grc doesn't make them one either the supreme court has made that clear

If a man 'lives as a woman' by donning a skirt and make up and growing his hair, then a woman 'lives as a man' by donning trousers, cutting her hair and not putting on makeup. That means my mother is living as a man - which will come as rather a surprise to her.

And if wearing a skirt is 'living as a woman' because women wear skirts, that all falls apart once some men start wearing skirts. Because wearing a skirt is now something men do, so men in skirts are living as men. It's a constantly shifting target, like the education secretary a few years back (Gove?) insisting that all schools should be above average. Doesn't work

The live-as-a-woman thing is merely a period of requirement for men wanting to transition. It's supposed to make sure that he can psychologically cope with being perceived as female before he does anything irrevocable. I don't think it says anything about real women. For the patient beginning his transition journey, adopting a stereotypically feminine presentation is a test of how he will feel and cope. I mean, it wouldn't be much of a test if he just went out wearing his normal garb, would it!

I also don't think that dresses, skirts, makeup, and heels are stereotypes, because it's a fact that it's women who wear those things and not men. Not all women, of course not. But they are female clothes and presentation, not male, and more women than not wear at least one of those things, at least sometimes. Who do you think keeps the fashion and beauty industries going? It's not men! These are simple facts.

I agree that men can never become biological women, or the same as women, and I don't think that anyone thinks they can. No one with any common sense, anyway.

OK, well if a man who wants to transition is required to live as a woman for a period, but he can't use a feminine presentation, because there is no such thing as living as a woman, how do you propose he satisfies the requirement? How does he test that he's psychologically comfortable to appear as a woman if skirts, dresses, heels, makeup are off the table? Does he just have to take hormones and have surgery and hope that it was the right move?

This hair-splitting over what it means to live as a woman in the context of a transition is very tedious. Everyone knows what it means - to look feminine instead of masculine - except people who are pretending not to in order to make a point.

And men don’t and never will, so how do they live as women ?

Please explain your logic because you make no sense.

How do men who wear stereotypical women’s clothing and make up live as women but women who wear stereotypically men’s clothing, shirt back and sides hair cut and no make up not live as men?

you can’t have it only one way.

you are making no sense and then claiming we are splitting hairs. It’s so odd.

And women don’t wear their hair in short back and sides do they? Stereotypically that is a man’s hair cut.

my good friend who is an adult human female and is a mother of two just had this ‘man’s’ hair cut, died this mean she’s presenting as a man?

you really aren’t listening

So if a man wears a nice top and makeup he’s a woman? Really? I thought we were trying to do it without using regressive stereotypes?

So you want to protect and help women? How can you do that if you can’t define what a woman is? If women in rape crisis centres are expected to share facilities with males claiming they are women, how is that helping women? If an abuser can access the “single sex” DV centre his female victim is in because he claims he’s a woman, how do you keep her safe?

He can never satisfy the requirements because he’s not a woman. He can’t “live as a woman” any more than he can live as a chicken.

He can live somewhat closer to a woman by presenting in a feminine way than he would be by remaining in his masculine presentation.

The purpose is to prepare him psychologically for transition. No one thinks he can actually live in the exact same way as a biological woman.

If I lived in a chicken coop and wore a chicken costume and sat on eggs until they hatched, of course I would not be a real chicken. But my life would more closely resemble a chicken's compared to if I did not do those things.

Everyone knows what living as a woman means. People just pretend not to in order to make a tedious point.

I’m a doctor - I don’t use my title outside of work but even if I did, my drivers licence and other documents record that my name is one of the most common girls names in the western world. I have multiple pieces
of ID that refer to me as female. I can certainly see how someone could make a case that I ‘live as a woman’ in that this is how I present myself to the outside world - not by wearing a dress, but by the name I use, the documents I carry, the titles I choose from etc.

It interests me when people say there’s no such thing as presenting as female but in the same breath say they can ‘always tell’ if someone is trans. The thread about a trans actor in which the OP refers to a trans actors ‘booming voice’ as a giveaway was very interesting as it bought into some very misogynistic tropes about how women speak - women with loud or deep voices are often criticised for them.

I’m gender critical and consider gender
to be a social construct that damages both men and women. I have no problems understanding biological sex. But I do find some of these arguments disingenuous or blatantly misogynistic. There’s no need to resort to that sort of wilful obtuseness to discuss this - there are plenty of clear, logical points to be made.

I live in a very cosmopolitan city and I often pass one or two trans identifying men wearing dresses, wigs and heels walking around in the day time. To put this into context, I may walk in the centre of the city and pass by thousands of people during the day. The interesting thing is these trans identifying men stand out, for a number of reasons not least, because there are normally hundreds of women also walking around and literally none of them are in heels or skirts.

It’s day time, it’s a tourist area and women are all in flats, trainers, jeans etc. So the men in heels and a lot of make up really stand out. Obviously their gait and other male structures make it very obvious they are a man in a dress but mostly it’s because women do not go shopping or go on long walks around tourist areas in the day time in heels and dresses.

So even though I fundamentally disagree that wearing a dress means a man is living as a women, your argument doesn’t even hold true for the men I see wearing women’s clothing during the day because generally women are not dressed in stereotypical women’s clothing.

No we can tell they are trans because they have all the biological traits of being male.

No, I think it's you who's not listening. To repeat myself for about the fifth time, the live-as-a-woman phrase is specific to a particular situation. It's where a man is starting his transition journey, and it's to gauge his psychological comfort level with presenting as a woman. Usually, he does this by adopting a feminine presentation, since if he stuck to his usual garb, it wouldn't be much of a test.

This is a two-year NHS requirement along the transition pathway. Nobody thinks he can live as a real woman and it says nothing about stereotypes or that women who aren't feminine-presenting aren't women or anything else. The fact is, the NHS wants to see evidence that the patient has been comfortable living as a woman for two years before doing anything irrevocable, and one of the best ways to show that is by having evidence of wearing traditionally female garb.

I also don't think that saying dresses, skirts, makeup, heels etc are a feminine presentation is a stereotype. They are facts. Women wear them, not men, and who do you think is keeping the fashion and beauty industries afloat, if not women? The fact that there are also many women who don't wear that stuff does not take away from the fact that most wear at least one of those items, at least sometimes. I have said all this a number of times on this thread, but I'm not going to again, because people just want to ignore common sense to make a point.

Your friend's haircut has absolutely nothing to do with anything. The fact that men who want to transition often wear long wigs does not mean that your friend's short hair means she's living as a man. I mean, what? That's just illogical.