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.

This.

Using the prefix "cis" before the word "woman" implies that there is more than one type of woman.

Of course, there is more than one type of woman in many other ways.

We can talk about Black women when we need to differentiate between them and Caucasian women. But if everyone had the same racial characteristics then these words would be redundant.

We can talk about French women when comparing them to British or American women. But these descriptors are only necessary because there are different nationalities. If the concept of nationality did not exist then none of these descriptors would be meaningful or necessary.

It's the same with any adjective you might put in front of "women". Short women only exist relative to tall women. If we were all 5'6 then these descriptors would be redundant.

So when you talk about "cis" women, you are naturally implying that another type of woman exists. It doesn't. There is no such thing as a male woman.

It makes me feel vindicated and relieved. I don’t need to feel validated in the same way a man gets “gender euphoria” when someone calls him by a female pronoun. We were never not right. Men aren’t women, the belief that they are is pure special pleading nonsense, and unsustainable.

I didn't say that you not needing it makes you sexist.

But I do think that taking the side of a man who wants to be in a women only space over that of a woman who needs him not to be in it is sexist.

That’s fair enough. I wasn’t fighting the fight so it’s not for me to decide how you’d feel once you’d had that judgment.

I was referring to validation in the sense of confirmation of being right. Which I had thought that institutionally - that’s what the judgement did.

I once attended a transgender conference for work purposes. It was a large conference lasting all day and hearing from many in the transgender community. What I found most noticeable was that the vast majority of trans women, in particular, was that they wanted to be recognised as trans women, not women. If they passed as women and weren’t identified as trans, they were unhappy. One took a grievance to HR because of it. I hate to say it, they were largely nice people, but it smacked of attention seeking!

I think it is validating in the sense that we've spent the last ten years being told that our needs are bigoted, and now the Supreme Court has confirmed that our needs are both reasonable and supported by the law.

That's not the same as feeling validated as women by being in a women only space, which is what you seemed to be suggesting earlier.

Okay.

Say for example my views are my own, and I didn’t ask a man for them, does it make me sexist to back my own corner? Since I am a legit certified adult human feeling.

I think that relies on the assumption that women who don’t agree are all under some sort of male spell. Which undermines their ability to make their own mind up.

What @MissScarletInTheBallroomsaid.

Okay. Well to be clear, as I’ve said, women have sought and gained validation from the SC judgement.

Others are seeking cultural and societal validation - from women.

The same word, two different contexts.

Interesting. I would hazard a guess that the ones who passed as women didn't get as much special treatment as the ones who were obviously trans.

I do often get the impression that they don't actually want to be treated like women, they want everyone to say they are women whilst continuing to treat them with the same respect and consideration that society reserves for men.

So it makes sense that if someone transitions successfully enough to pass as a woman and starts actually being treated like a woman, they're not necessarily going to enjoy it.

Yeah.

So I guess the trans women are seeking validation in the "you are women" sense, and FWS were seeking validation in the "your rights matter" sense.

"Cis" is not "just" a word for biological. It's the language of a belief system that assumes women can be other than biologically female and that biologically female people can be other than women and girls. If you don't believe that you don't need the word "cis", so in using it at all you are framing people according to your own prejudices.

So "Ciswoman" is not a "biological woman" in the gender critical sense of simply an adult human with a female body, it is a female person who shares some undefinable sense of unbodied, non-biological inner femaleness with male bodied "transwomen".

You may self define as a "ciswoman" who does indeed share that inner sense and that is absolutely your right.

However many, probably most, female bodied people do not recognise this feeling of having inner "female thinking" that isn't just the result of the cumulation of the experiences of living a female-embodied life. In fact, we consider that to be a regressive belief that grew out of outdated sexist stereotypes and disordered projections that people believe constrains what is "ok" for each sex to be and feel. To call women who understand themselves in this way "ciswomen" is reductive and offensive to them.

Redefining people in ways they do not recognise, enforcing your own framing of their lives and experiences over their own, telling them you know better than they do what it is to be them so they have no right to decide for themselves who they are absolutely is discrimination and oppression. HTH.

Exactly! Also interesting was that trans men weren’t the same, the ones I met and heard speak not only passed as men easily (albeit small men!) but were happy to quietly get on with it.

I never suggested you are under a male spell.

I just can't imagine what would make you prioritise men's wants over women's needs.

In my opinion that is profoundly anti-feminist, which seems at odds with the rest of your posting.

Yes.

So my original point, was that saying it’s wrong for trans women to seek validation could be countered by saying “well, you are?”

It is a different validation, but it remains.. validation.

I don’t think I need to say validation any more times for now 😂

Again, the case wasn’t brought because women were “seeking validation”. Women would rather not have to bring the case at all.

Clearly "cis" doesn't mean biological, because if it did, trans men would be cis women.

It can only mean "gender essence" or the absence of dysphoria/autogynephilia.

IMO this “you just want validation like men who identify as women” attempt at a DARVO was like so many genderist ones, batted straight back in lieu of an argument even though it makes very little sense reversed. It’s a feature of the “trans rights” mentality for me.

I see it as prioritising my own views and beliefs over those of others, of any sex.

Which isn’t anti-feminist. I don’t believe it to be, anyway.

I prioritise them in the sense that they’re not changing because someone else says they should. But I don’t prioritise them in the sense that I am both incapable and not interested in making your life harder by dragging men into it.

The only time I admit to doing that, is when someone suggested my heavily disabled, completely unaware, stepson was classified by sex because he’s 8 years old, so shouldn’t go to swimming pools with sex specific bathrooms. That’s a common sense judgment in my view, and it’s an exception that I do make and a hill I am happy to die on.

In all honesty, I think that you would be better off trying to explain your view point to the more polarised/entitled trans groups. You are correct in saying that women have had enough of the more radicalised self identifying transgender brigade that have pitted themselves against us. They have caused a lot of distress to women and a backlash against what I consider to be 'genuine' (post operative trans women). Unfortunately the more moderate voices such as yours have been totally lost (although arguably the media has only wanted to hear the more polarising stories) . If you want to change this though, you and other more reasonable trans women have to organise yourselves and fight to be heard. During the recent match in London, where thousands of trans were present, a few held up truly appalling placards encouraging violence against women and of course desecrated the suffragette statute. These were only a handful of individuals. However, given how many were there, why did people not try to stop them. Why did other trans women not speak out or try to remove the graffiti? That's what's going to have to happen.

But as several of us have said, FWS didn't go to the Supreme Court seeking validation. They went there to enforce women's rights.

The fact that they won might give them validation (which I think is richly deserved after all the shit they've had to put up with) but that wasn't the reason they went to court.

Whereas when a trans woman uses women's single sex spaces or services, or, for example, sues a small business woman for the right to use a female only app (which currently doesn't exist due to this legal action), the primary goal is validation.

Which I don't think is a very legitimate goal. Other people aren't here to validate you.

It can’t though. It’s just “no u”. It shows you don’t have a better argument.

Honestly it's just power. Most members of oppressed groups adopt and align with the dominant social power structures even though these disadvantage the group as a whole, because they still have more relative safety/power within them than outside.

Remember the people who wield the FGM razors are women doing what they honestly believe needs to be done for the best.

"Woke" is the original sense, "consciousness raising" - they are all at heart about the process and importance of marginalised groups realising the social narratives that are shaping their lives and recognising "the way it is" is not set in stone and is not something they have to fit into.

No it’s not the same - you do like a false equivalence don’t you?

Women are telling you we need something - spaces, words etc. You have told us we shouldn’t even be arguing about it because you think it’s unfair on the men that identify as women. You have argued for language that undermines everything we need.

We haven’t told you that you can’t have your mixed sex spaces although we have understandably told you that your views on language are based on a false premise.

Re women's toilets, other women know that women frequently DON'T want to chat in there. Particularly to work colleagues - we'll share a quick glance/hi but that's it.

cf women on here who've had transwomen "sharing" the ladies toilet at their workplace, trying to engage the woman in a chat about lipstick etc.

Women are pretty good at letting other women have boundaries.