Conciliatory Conversation On gender

[FairAdvocate]

Hello!

In the last few months I have been reflecting on the transgender and feminism debate and I feel I've got a few things to share with you on it from a perspective perhaps you wont maybe often hear.

To preface and explain, I am a transgender woman/female and I'm writing here today not to create any kind of argument or discord but because I am here to say that I think there are things that my side of the floor has gotten wrong.

I want to start from a position of saying that I can understand why some of you feel erased or afraid. I dont say that in a patronising way; I say that from a position of being fully periceved as female in society and I often to feel quite vunerable because of that in certain situations just like I imagine many of you do aswell.

I started down this road from hearing about how a 'A woman is person who says they are a woman'. I must admit I never quite got it. It makes no sense but yet, there are many transgender people and allies who say this like it has any kind of meaning. Just like when they also say that 'woman' is defined by a certain set of catagories etc. Its always bothered me and I didnt know why. For me, the more I have medically tranisitioned to female, the more Ive began to understand the word and defintion of female cannot be just removed from the term woman.

Now, I suspect this is where most of you reading this will be in decent agreement of. However I suspect what I say next will cause more issues. I believe myself to be female not just because of my physical aspect having been changed through medical transition (albeit its not a perfect process) but also because I believe my brain structure to have formed female in the sex differences between male and female likely at birth. There are quite numerous studies that do back this up to an okay but emerging degree and I am also aware that there also a few that dont say that exactly but say my brain formed in a kind of third way. Either way, I think it is clear from these studies that my brain developed differently to that of a male and it has manifested itself so I am quite closely alligned with being female.

To me, I feel like this makes a me kind of intersex person but perhaps in a different kind of way than we usually think of the term intersex. Though, through my medical transition obviously estrogen has, at least for me, solidified my mind to that much more towards female.

With this in mind, I find myself looking at the world as a woman but a woman who came with unique challenges and hurdles that are difficult to explain. For example, often I have been accused of saying its wrong that GRS gives me a vagina and have often been shouted at and saying im just sexualising it. However for me, the vagina isnt and wasnt the main source of my distress. The main source of my distress is that I will never have ovaries and will never have children and be a biological mother. I have never been interested in having a child as a male in anyway.

For me, it reminds me that I am not just a straight forward female and many will not accept me. After some deep reflection I think that I have also accepted that I will have to go through hurdles and I will have to remove my male form in such a succfient manner that I can be accepted by other women in certain areas. With that in mind I have also come to accept that self indentifcation shouldnlt be accepted. That tears at me because I wish I lived in that ideal world. But, as a woman who is only attracted to men, I understand frankly just how dangerous some of them can be. But ive come to the conclusion that if we keep pushing for this we are only making it harder for everyone and it will only lead to further division, more toxicity and we will just tear oursevles apart.

I do look at my rights from five years ago and I look at them now and see how they have reduced from prisons putting people such as as me in mens prisions, to the recent SC ruling, sports associations banning us. I do truly think that most women do and have historically accepted women like me but I also understand that came with agreements and understandings. Understandings which I think have been overstepped in the last ten years.

While I dont and will never accept calling me a man; I can understand why some of you that are reading this may have gotten fed up and stopped caring. I suppose what I am really trying to say is, can we all start again? If I can accept that women (including myself) need protections in some areas and I can accept the need for medicalising, the dropping of self identification, the need for due process in changing your sex legally can you accept that Im not a man? Can you accept that calling me certain things and the misgendering, using terms such as Trans identified Male is actually causing more harm than it is good?

Can we not as women actually just get our heads together and work out a decent solution? I do believe we might remain with some differences. For example I do believe a woman is a person who was born with a female gender identity by which I mean the overall average structure of the brain and therefore mind. And I do understand you will use a defintion to be defined by your anatomy. But I do believe that actually both of these can be true. While I cant be 100 percent true to your defintion I have tried to be because of where my defintion has led me and I understand how difficult that may be for someone who has all the correct anatomy to understand. But I have tried to understand how you feel so I am trying to ask for the same.

Finally, thank you for reading my long message. I am very nervous to be leaving it. Please can I ask you from refraining to calling me names and refering to me as a man, this is a request and not a demand. I have very much put myself out there with this and I hope that what is reflected back to me is the same spirit in which I wrote this.

Thank you

P.s I hovered over the 'Post' button for about five minutes before clicking it.

Great post.

op?

That would make an amazing campaign actually, @MissScarletInTheBallroom- if we all wrote down a list of what we are. It’s only ever the first three things which make us women, as you say.

That’s because I think it’s possible to have a preference, and not be a dick about it.

I don’t think anyone, trans women included, has the right to be intentionally unkind.

I don’t share the view that I needed SSS, or the debate around it. But that’s my view, and we’re all entitled to them. I can, like I assume all of you can, say that without resorting to as above, being a dick.

I haven’t told a single person here that they’re naïve, or talking nonsense, or even wrong to want what they want. What I said was that I didn’t agree and found the debate of the last few years overly heated, not representative of what I recognise my experience as a woman to be, and socially draining.

But you are quite unkind yourself. You’re not some paragon of kindness.

Ouch. It can only be 'rude and offensive' to call someone gay if you are homophobic. If your boyfriend is in a relationship with someone who has a penis and balls how can you possibly have a problem with him being called gay unless you are homophonic? Gay is neither a rude nor offensive term but a descriptive one. It chills me that you consider it a slur. Do you think being hetero is superior to being gay?

I’m not going to debate that, if you think it’s unkind to not agree with your points and preferences then that’s how you feel.

I don’t believe that makes it right to imply stupidity as if someone not being on the “right side” must just be ignorant or thick.

It’s not that you don’t agree, it’s the way you’ve spoken to others. I don’t have an issue, I’m not tone policing. I like robust debate and snappy, pithy wording. I don’t like it when people try to manipulate me or tell me I’m not “kind” when they’re not particularly “kind” themselves.

And I also think that choosing to believe everything people say until proved otherwise isn’t always a sensible strategy in life, but that’s just my opinion. I think instincts are important, and women, particularly should feel they are able to speak out when someone makes them feel uncomfortable.

Do you think you’re kind, or intentionally not so because of the passion you clearly have for the subject?

Might be neither, just genuinely curious.

I don’t really think “kindness” is something I take much account of. People of both sexes are so unkind to women it’s basically the wallpaper of our lives. The reason many of us feel so passionately, including JKR, is that this issue more than any other has highlighted just how misogynistic society is. You have your own views, but with all due respect you’re not interested in this debate, and don’t come across as particularly well informed about certain aspects of it. Nothing wrong with that, but others have plenty of experience of being treated badly because of it.

I think fairness is more important than “kindness” with its hint of self sacrifice. Some of the people who preach “be kind”, (not meaning you!) are some of the most unpleasant, callous bullies I’ve ever encountered. So I tend to take it with a pinch of salt tbh.

'Middle ground ' is not needed: no means no.

No, I wouldn’t disagree that I’m not informed on the subject, particularly from a GC perspective.

Upfront, that’s because I don’t agree with the core of it so haven’t looked at it in any further detail.

I had for example the same response to Brexit. Do I think we should leave the EU - no. Case closed. I don’t need to research something I already know I don’t agree with. Others disagreed, it then became democratically voted for - win some, lose some.

It’s also because I’ve seen so much debate, argument, heated and angry rhetoric about it - and no I don’t just mean from “your side” that some of the disengagement is intentional. I look at JKR, for example and think “give it a rest.”

I’m aware that’s not kind, but I also don’t tell anyone to give it a rest. I keep, generally, my negative view on the whole thing to myself and leave those who do have a strong view on it to do the arguing.

Where I’ve felt the need to say things the last few days, is because the response to some has felt quite targeted. OP is one person, who for whatever reason put her head above the parapet, and I think it’s unjust for upwards of probably 100 women to attack her for that.

OP was fully expecting that response, IMO and there was nothing remotely conciliatory about the post or any of the subsequent ones. Again, if you were more familiar with the debate, you might have recognised that it was obviously going to inflame many of the women on a feminist board. We’ll have to agree to differ on the idea that the OP just stuck their head above the parapet.

Also, and don’t take this as telling you not to participate, but I am curious, if you find this debate so “draining” why you are spending so much time on it? You say you don’t actually believe that TWAW, but you would be happy for them to be in female spaces, but you understand that many other women are not and you’re not “forcing males into female spaces.” What really is there left to say on it? Seems counterintuitive that you would spend so long debating it.

Oh the arrogance - I know it’s ( Brexit , GC) wrong so I don’t need to think or research because I just know because o am so great and wonderful

In other words, if you find the debate so toxic why are you contributing to it?

It’s not arrogant to have conviction in your basic beliefs without the need to get validation for them.

Honestly, with the intention of it being less toxic.

The last few threads we’ve encountered each other on have all (I believe) been where I’ve felt that I’ve seen one person, received an inflamed response as you put it, by many.

That is because they’re all on this specific subsection, and obviously that means there’s a wider shared view, but my initial engagements could pretty much all be reduced back to “there’s no need in that.”

Constipated men = women on the inside

It's obvious.

I think posters like SleeplessInWherever will only 'get it' when they face a built like a brick shithouse male in the ladies. Same thing happened to another poster on this site. They were anti 'terf' until they came across a huge obvious male in the toilets with her daughter. She said she had a 'visceral response' to it, and immediately "knew" then. That was the moment she finally "got it". But yet still was so programmed by the socialisation to 'BeKind' to the male sex and prioritise them that she said she felt guilty for her instincts. It's really sad how browbeaten and programmed women and girls are that we even try to ignore our instincts. Instincts that we have for a good reason and that have been hardwired in us since the dawn of time for our survival.

And as people have said, these discussions are often quite loaded with expectations and implications you might not be aware of or recognise. I fully disagree with you on the dynamics of this thread, for instance. That’s fine, I understand that you don’t see it in the same way as me.

If you were actually even handed and didn’t handwave away women’s feelings and concerns @SleeplessInWherevermaybe you’d have a claim to detoxifying the debate, but that isn’t the case.

And yes, this is the feminist board, so it does centre on that type of perspective through a sex and gender lens.