Really? Is it just me who doesn't get the Daniel Craig drag thing?

[Adair]

James Bond. Hardly most enlightened character.

Dressing up as 'a woman' which as we all know involves long hair, lipstick, high heels and a dress .

So an ad for International Womens Day that doesn't actually feature any women (well, the voiceover - but no-one is mentioning that).

I was thinking about it, but then I realised a much better question would be: what does being a woman feel like I just feel like a human

yes, that's true. our female body is part of who we are.It's definitely not an abstract feeling in the way that trans claim.

even our energy is different. you can feel a man in the room a mile away, even if he's dressed as a woman.

On the trans rights thing...

I'll declare a interest - born a boy, now a girl (if that label is right in your 40s...).

Thing is this, if you saw me walking down the street, the chances are you wouldn't see anything different about me to any other middle aged woman. To that end, why should I be treated differently in any way?

I can't speak for others, although I would say the militant trans / gender queer folk often scare me, but for me the only use of "rights" is to get functional equality - banking, legal ID and so on. Apart from that I'll fend for my self like any other woman in the workplace, home and society as a whole? I certainly don't want any extra rights or privilege, just occasionally I need something thats slightly different to reflect circumstance.

This morning I read a piece in the Telegraph, I think it was yesterdays, about a woman confronting the man who raped her in a car park. It got me thinking again about personal safety. It was ironically about the time rape cropped up on this thread. Sorry if this offends, its not meant to, but the thing is this: I'm "pre op" (ugh horrid term), so suppose I'm am attacked by someone with a knife, the attacker discovers my pre op status, what happens next? I suspect theres a high chance of my being stabbed? I'm not going to say that makes me more vulnerable than any other woman, or gives me special status, God no, I'm just pointing out the twist that can go unmissed. Its a worry I live with.

To that end, why should I be treated differently in any way?

The point you're missing Chipped, is that middle aged women don't want to be "treated like middle aged women" which for a born woman equates to being "treated like they're invisible and inconsequential" It would be nice for middle aged women if they were treated with the same amount of respect that people reserve for men.

Chipped, I would say that an angry male is likely to stab you if he finds out you have a penis. Again, the point you're missing though is that he would be even more likely to stab a woman. Two women a week are murdered by their spouse. Two women a week by their spouse alone! That's aside from the random stranger killings.

more random attacks on mtf trans in comparison though - and more attacks on natal women by familiar attackers. so if you're an mtf trans, you are infinitely safer indoors. if you're a natal woman, you're safer (in comparison) in public.

being a woman is a lot more socially acceptable than being an mtf trans in most places. you don't get randomly beaten up in bars for having the temerity to exist.

but it's not a feminist context, tbh. a lot of men take more exception to blokes who want to be women than to women as a whole. just because.

I agree with Madwoman. My transwoman friend gets harassed on a depressingly regular basis, whereas for most women I know it happens occasionally.
There are some areas where transwomen and ciswomen have different interests but I would really like it if we could work together on street harassment.

women are killed on a regular basis for having the temerity to exist.

Do you want to know why men attack trans women? Because it reminds them that the sexual hierarchy is fake , that they too, can be fucked/raped by another heterosexual man, and this angers them because that subordinate, debased (in their eyes), status is reserved for women. So when they see a man play acting the female role it reminds them how precarious the whole set-up is. This angers the hell out of them. BUt it doesn't anger them as much as an actual woman does.

It's starting to boil down to whether people truly understand what woman-hatred is. "Raping a woman before killing her made you a double veteran" said a Vietnam con. You have to get really knee-deep into the sheer depths if women-loathng that goes on everywhere, before you can make a proper analysis here.

Steth, you have submitted to the trans demand that women be labelled, yet again, as other . It's not original. Cis-woman, by definition is women in relation to trans women. Just like women have always been viewed in relation to men.
From Aristotle to Freud men have always viewed women as a negative, a defect, the other, in relation to them, and you are merely continuing this happy patriarchal fallacy by using the term "cis"

Trans women exist all over Asia and Brasil. they don't even try to usurp women, because who would want to be a woman there, and besides, they know they're not women. Why the hell should European, Australian and American trans women click their fingers and get laws changed over the heads of women?

Sakura - your cis women point - very good - I need to go away and think about that. Thought-provoking.

I know where you're coming from on your point about the term 'ciswoman', Sakura, but I don't see what's wrong with using it in the context of talking about transwomen to make it absolutely clear what I'm talking about.
If someone went around using it all the time I would agree with you but in this context I think it is perfectly reasonable. I don't want to say 'transwomen and women' because while I am not happy with a definition that says 'transwomen are by definition women' I am also not happy with one that says that they all definitely aren't.

btw - this isn't really the moment to say this, but it's Seth not Steth

OMFG! how many years have I been calling you Steth . PMSL! well you could have waited until the nuclear threat was over before bursting my bubble. pffft

the thing is, you are doing nothing to convince me that you aren't looking at the world from a patriarchal viewpoint. If you are not happy with excluding trans women from womanhood it can only be because you have accepted the view that women, being the negative, hologram-type "other", can take on all the males who don't fit the patriarchal masculine stereotype.

And yet, men are not willing, or expected to, accept their own kind ? They beat up and kill their own kind and the solution is to get women to absorb them?

But they (the patriarchy plus trans women)
still expect women to submit and accept males members of their kind.

THis is what I'm having problems with here. It's one rule for women and another for men.

A radical feminist can't accept that "woman" has got anything to do with a man who does femininity well (often better than actual women do it), despite how painful it is for said man to live in a world that men have created.

accept males as members of their own kin

not accept male members

two quite different meanings
!

my point was 'in bars' sakura. i know women get killed by men. but in context, vastly more trans women get beaten up in bars or walking down the street because they are trans.

a group of blokes might catcall a natal woman walking down the street at night, but if the same group of men happen to notice the 'woman' is an mtf trans, there is a far greater likelihood of actual attack. neither are acceptable, but it is infinitely more dangerous on a personal level to be a trans at that point.

i'm not really talking about the small percentage of men that have the personality required to rape or kill, i'm talking about average joes who are quite likely to take a swing at another bloke for looking at them wrong/ elbowing them in the queue for the bar, (in the name of 'being a real man') but if they happen to notice it's another bloke in a dress, they appear to think they have the moral right to destroy them. just for wearing a dress. without any other provocation ('he was looking at my bird').

of course, both actions (eyeing up another man's property/ a man wearing a dress) are challenges to masculinity on a personal level... (for those whose concepts of masculinity run to strength, power, and, oh... not being a woman. back to the other again.)

i'm sure that a man wanting to be a woman runs counter to the fibre of every power-happy chap's very being. but it's really interesting (to me), that you get the same level of repulsion to mtf trans from natal women (who identify as feminists). it's a very base response. but it appears to me to stem from the same ideology that upholds the binary. which i find really odd in a feminist context. in my little world, any challenge to the status quo of a society organised along gendered lines should at the very least be looked at sympathetically, particularly when it is made at such a personal level, rather than for political gain.

I agree with madwomanintheattic that most men do not think that transwomen are women. I think madwoman is right that it is to do with upholding the binary. Unlike madwoman, I believe that the binary does exist and it is nature and that is why both men and women uphold the binary. I don't think eliminating the binary is a good thing, because I think it is a denial of nature and is doomed to fail.

madwomanintheattic,
you have entirely misunderstood the feminist viewpoint, and you have misunderstood the reason why I'm angry.
If you'd like me to explain, then I will.

Trans is a very conservative viewpoint. It is opposite of everything that feminists have been fighting for since the year dot.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that men can do femininity better than women. It was, after all, the patriarchy that invented femininity and masculinity. Neither have anything to do with women and neither are natural. Femininity is merely the requirements placed upon women in a patriarchy. IN CHina footbinding was the height of femininity. IN the U.S plastic breasts are the height of femininity. In other cultures having your clitoris hacked off represents a "highly feminine" woman. Men and the patriarchy dictate femininity.

claig, I know you are a conservative and that is obviously why the concept of trans makes sense in your worldview.

YOu have to step outside the patriarchal box in order to realise how bizzare it is to suggest that a feminine man is. a. woman.
You have to step outside the brainwashing to realise that to say that a man who behaves in a feminine way is a woman is supremely misogynistic

I don't feel repulsion to trans women. I feel a repulsion towards the need of some of them to dominate women and a strong repulsion against the ease with which they are able to get the patriarchy to change laws in their favour. It is very difficult for women to get anything from the patriarchy. Not so for trans. Now trans women can scratch the M to and F on their birth certificate

the erasure of women begins here.

Is it really the patriarchy that thinks that transwomen are women? Isn't it more the F-word and IBlameThePatriarchy etc. that think more in that way? Isn't it more a leftwing view, based on things like discrimination etc.? Isn't it politically correct law etc., based on justice and equality, that is more responsible for this view? What does teh patriarchal church think about it?

I disagree with IBlamethepatrirachy's view on this because I believe that view does eventually lead to the erasure of women as being distinctly different. I think it is a false view that stems from a leftwing communist type view of equality, where everyone is the same, where there are no distinctions between people and sexes.

I believe that there are distinctions between the sexes. I don't believe that women and men are the same. I believe that there are large biological differences. I don't agree with Cordelia Fine's view. That's why I don't think that transwomen are women.

How about this madwomanintheattic.
Indulge me.
Everyone knows what trans woman think/do/feel. They've got the patriarchal institutions of medicine and law on their side and, the entire interweb (it seems). OTOH there are only about 19 radical feminists in the whole world.

So if I give you some links will you read the rad feminist POV, try to understand it, and ask me some questions if you don't get something. put it this way, as a radfem, have a severe case of gender dysphoria

Do no harm

the difference between transphobia and transactivistphobia

the phallacy of cis privilege

Iblamethepatriarchy is not quite radical feminism

the patriarchy has uses for trans women; it has always used eunuchs to enter women's spaces and control them. Again, nothing new. What is new here is the British government allowing men who think they're women (who still have a penis) to change the M to an F on their birth certificate and obligate women to accept them. For example trans tend to like working in rape crisis centres and other women-only spaces. ONe sued a rape crisis centre in Australia for not allowing him to work there. and of course the patriarchy likes the idea that anyone feminine= woman.
Also the patriarchy believes that a mutilated "woman" is better than a "queer" man which is why they refuse to accept trans women as the males that they are.

I don't think that patriarchy makes all the laws. What about all the civil rights lawyers? What about women like Harriet Harman, Shami Chakrabarti etc.? Are they part of the patriarchy?

I think the church is patriarchal and I doubt that they think that transwomen are women.

I think a lot of these views come from people who want to eliminate the binary and restructure society into some type of utopia where there is no gender and everyone is exactly the same. I think it is a leftwing revolutionary type thinking which seeks to destroy the existing order.

I think the person who sued applied the law, which has been based on politically correct principles, the same type of principles that recently said it was unfair to discriminate against men where car insurance is concerned, so that we end up with the ridiculous situation where men as a whole cannot be charged more than women, even though they as a whole do have more accidents. I think this type of thinking is an inevitable result of thinking that is based solely on equality, without taking into account difference. It is mainly an outcome of leftwing thinking that can sometimes go as far as denying difference in an attempt to enforce equality.