What makes a Woman a Woman? (Or a Man a Man)

[Hullygully]

Spin off from TAATAAT.

Beyond the focus of mtf trans and "born-women" only spaces.

I would love to be a man for say a week to see what it feels like and understand the whole "feeling" thing

A hypothetical question for you elephant - if one of your children had been born with ambiguous genitals how would you have decided if they were a boy or a girl? I'm genuinely interested to know.

I read an in-depth interview with an intersex person who had found it very traumatic to be forced to live as a girl when they actually felt like neither a girl or a boy.

Most intersex people are brought up as girls, purely because lopping off their genitals is surgically easier than building them up. That makes me feel very uneasy, it instinctively feels wrong.

But how would you know Hully? How would you know that men feel differently to women? You would merely be comparing yourself as one woman to yourself as one man.

yy, but it would be interesting to see what those differences made to me by the possession of a penis and associated chemicals and hormones were.

So that I could understand "feeling" - not then apply it to all regardless.

I'm sorry. I must be not following your argument and be getting confused.

I thought, at the beginning of the thread, you were agreeing with a poster who said gender should be based on what somebody feels their gender is.

So why, if you were a man for a day, would you have a penis and male hormones?

Some men have a penis and some men have a vulva, if gender is based on what people say, not their bodies.

Alexander - From what I have read about intersex and forgive me I am hardly an expert, there is a strong argument for not doing surgery on genitals at least until the child is old enough to consent. Much of the surgery has left intersex people with low sexual feelings for example. So I would probably not allow any surgery at a young age.

In terms of feeling like neither a boy or a girl, it is hard to know how much of that is because of the biology of intersex and how much is the fact that a child doesn't want to identify with any of teh acceptable gender roles presented to them.

There are plenty of girls who don't feel like girls growing up, but as women they will say thsi is not because they were Transgender, but because they didn't fot into acceptable gender roles.

Worryingly I have read of young women and men complaining of pressure to see themselves as transgender as teenagers because they so clearly did not fit into acceptable gender roles for their sex, even though they say they never felt that they were the other sex. There is also a growing minority of Transgender peoplw who regret surgery and some actually have surgery to return their body back to the sex they were born in.

Hullygully - Yes it would be interesting to know the differences hormones made to how we feel as individuals. Chastity bono reports for example that taking hormones for her sex chnage made her feel more aggressive.

But of course transexuals do have to take hormones as part of their sex change. Transgender is not a hormonal imbalance disorder.

Fair point!

I meander about all over the place. I don't really have set views, I always engage in these threads more as exploration than with an agenda.

Ok.

In an effort to be clear: Right now in the time we inhabit and given the conventions that exist, I tend to favour self-definition of gender.

Aside from that, I am a woman who feels like a person, ie not strongly gender-identified.

And as another aside I wonder what difference biology makes to "feeling", hence the desire to see.

Ultimately I think there should be as many definitions as necessary and none should be discriminated against.

And there should be love and peace on earth.

The last post was to Sea btw

I agree that there should be more definitions. It would really resolve a lot of issues if there were more than two genders.

I don't think there can ever be a definitive answer to this one. On another forum I used to frequent, from time to time someone would start a thread asking for definitions of Britishness. This rather reminds me of that - there just can't be a cast iron, copper bottomed, universally agreed definition. There are definitions laid out in law for both concepts, so far as this can be done, but that's it really.

elephant, but how would you decide which sex your child was in the hypothetical scenario I laid out above? Or are you saying you'd wait until the child was old enough and let them decide?

elephantscantski - "unless someone is intersex ... If you have a child, how did you decide they were a girl or a boy as a baby?"

I suppose it is usually done by adults looking at the baby's genitals for few seconds and saying penis for a boy, vulva for a girl. From that moment onwards social influences reinforce that decision. It's possibly the biggest decision of a person's life, and one in which the baby had absolutely no say.

That method of deciding "boy or girl" upsets and annoys the people who, in later life, do not accept being defined by their genitals, as well as the people who say they refuse to judge other people in that way.

Perhaps it could be definitive by doing what is done in the DSM with various psychological conditions.

Do you have at least 5 of the following? List range of female characteristics.
Do you have the absence of all of the following definitely listed male characteristics.
If so, you are female.

You could never group anybody if you said they all had to be identical. It doesn't mean that groups have no definition whatsover.

vesuvia - I think sex is a biological reality, not a feeling. I could feel for example I was a cat, but I would be wrong.

Alexander - I really don't know what I would do to be honest. I would probably read the research and talk to intersex feminists before doing anything.

Just 1 point, psychological research has shown that although most TRansgender people who have surgery (and lots don't) are glad they had it (and some do sadly regret it), there is no over all increase in happiness or psychological well being and that the suicide rate is still massively high.

In fact I have seen it argued on this basis that surgery for Transgender people is a medieval medical tool and that medicine should be doing more to research treatment that will actually make Transgender people happier.

Agree seahouses. Words have meaning and we know they do.

Maybe SeaHouses. The DSM is a socially constructed document though and has a history of being shaped by society's prejudices.

Hullygully wrote "I am a woman who feels like a person"

Please could you

Define I.
Define am.
Define a.
Define woman.
Define who.
Define feels.
Define like.
Define a. (again, because it might have changed since last time)
Define person.

It reminds me of that quote
"Define the meaning of life. A better question is define the meaning of meaning."

elephant, maybe establishing a baby's sex isn't so easy after all then.

I'm bowing out of this discussion now coz all the trans and queer phobia has made me feel somewhat nauseous.

Everything has a history that involves society's prejudices. It doesn't mean that it is impossible to define anything.

Otherwise everything just because meaningless. The term society and the term prejudice become meaningless if you refuse to define them because their meanings change over time.

But people are prepared to define them and say what their characteristics are. People are certainly prepared to define transgender.

But people are no longer prepared to define what a women is. So the new dictionary definition of woman would be:

Woman (noun): Human who says they are a woman.

I wonder whose purposes that serves.

Alexander - What queer phobia has there been, because I haven't seen any?

Yes I know some see any objection to the idea that Trans people should be accepted as the gender they say they are as transphobia. I don't agree, but yes by that definition, I am transphobic.

And you do know lots of intersex people hate the Trns community appropriating their experience to justify Transgender arguments? Many, although not all, will have nothing to do with the Transgender community.

vesuvia

I'll try!

I = the consciousness that lives in my physical shell
am = currently extant
a = unit of
woman = biological: womb
gender: soft and gentle etc
who= what or which person or persons
feels = experiences by a complicated interaction of chemicals, hormones and psychological processes

like= similar to

a = see above

person = non-specific gendered human

Sea - men's? Because if you can't define what a woman is, you can't have any woman only space.

Define a man then, elephants?