"He found acting like a woman 'exhausting,' and feels more free as a man" <Daily Mail Link>

[Moghedien]

Anyone else see this and want to scream?

"tired of putting on make-up and wearing heels"
I'm tired of it too. So I don't. Still a woman.

"he finds dressing and acting as a girl 'exhausting'"

"So being male again, it's quite freeing actually" I'm sure it is.

Obviously I'm not a woman in this person's eyes. Binary gender bullshit. Argh, just venting, no doubt once I've recovered from reading this dross I'll sit and digest but I wanted to share and have your opinion. I tend to be able to order my thoughts better after reading a thread on here regarding subjects like gender and feminism.

I feel like he's stating the obvious and get missing the point completely at the same time.

BustiKate that's not a silly question. Yes it is the special news section for women. The Guardian and other newspapers also do this, it's highly annoying.

If you click the "Femail" link at the top, it takes you to the main page of the Femail section. You can see there an article with Teresa May, the country's most powerful female politician, talking about women in the workplace. If you look on the Mail's front page, it's well down the page, after stories about some people buying the wrong train ticket, a boxer selling his house, someone on X Factor dating someone, ugly family photos, hilarious foreign signs and JK Rowling sending some tweet. It just scrapes in above a story about a bar fight in Vegas. Priorities, eh?

I suppose if I'm trying very hard to be charitable I can see that perhaps he feels obliged to wear heels and heavy make up in order to pass as a woman (whether that's actually true or not). Maybe he fears lack of make up = someone thinking he's a bloke. Which he's now chosen to become, again.

But yes, v irritating all this 'gosh, I'd never realised it's tiring to wear heels and putting on make up takes time and women face restrictions that men do not'. Good grief.

Wonder if was every one of those extremists who spouts bile about how privileged women are and tries to block the Women's Aid phonelines and so on?

*he was one

Most of the time it's just a lot of nonsense BustiKate but sometimes there's stuff that should be general interest but we can't have the men reading any stuff that's not about them by accident, can we?

I must also be a man Puffins. I'm currently wearing a check shirt, jeans and flat boots. I work in overalls and work boots. I use tools. If only it were that easy.

I'm also wearing flat shoes, jeans and a jumper. I'm a man who's also manpregnant in male womb.

Wee-eel, I like a bit of 'performing femininity'. Suit-y job, I do the heels and skirt thing. I like make-up and jewellery, too.

But that's all it is, performing femininity. A series of aesthetic choices does not a woman make.

FloraFox Good point, I don't dress like this because of any gender identity issues, just because they are practical.

But I guess I mean, if I did feel a need to identify as more male than female, it would be easy for me to do so without comment, and therefore without it becoming a big deal for me or people around me. Whereas the reverse would be trickier, and would maybe be more ikely to lead to a man questioning whether his sense of gender identity was something that he had to express by going in for reassignment surgery. Because nobody just assumes it's for practical reasons and therefore unremarkable, so he couldn't just 'get away with' it the way a woman might.

I'm a man who's also manpregnant in male womb.

100% chance that your baby will be a man like all other babies - they don't wear make-up and heels, after all!

Abbie agree with you there.

"A series of aesthetic choices does not a woman make" well quite.

Whereas the reverse would be trickier, and would maybe be more likely to lead to a man questioning whether his sense of gender identity was something that he had to express by going in for reassignment surgery.

Yes. In Western culture, men wearing skirts is something to be remarked upon, news stories written. However, this is patriarchal norms working against men, masculinity defining non conforming men as 'other' who must be medicalised and 'treated'.

Because nobody just assumes it's for practical reasons and therefore unremarkable, so he couldn't just 'get away with' it the way a woman might.

Agree with this too. 'Women's' clothes aren't practical for anything other than looking nice. Therefore women in men's clothes must be wearing them to feel comfortable, or because they have something to do, but a man in women's clothes is jarring, because men are supposed to be doers and not decorative.

If that makes any sense at all.

"I've often wondered - hope I don't get flamed to death - just how much of the modern transgender issue is simply down to too much gender stereotyping in youth. There will be the odd exception of course who has deeper troubles, but the number of times I've read about transgender people saying 'It all started in childhood, I was more comfortable playing with girls' toys'.... if they weren't called girls toys and limited to girls would it have developed to such an extent? Just wondering."

Idealist - This is exactly what I've always said about the whole transgender issue. Cases like this, IMO, illustrate something I've always believed - that feeling that you are transgendered comes from pinning your feelings of unease and perhaps hatred towards yourself onto gender and then believing that becoming the other gender will somehow resolve these issues. It's similar to self harm in my mind (though on a much more significant scale) - the feeling that by changing yourself physically you will somehow ease emotional pain. IMO it's disordered thinking and the fact that the NHS allows surgery based on this disordered thinking is absolutely mad and monstrous. The idea that by looking "like a woman" (whatever the actual factual fuck that means) or having female-esque genitals will make you into a woman is so utterly bonkers that I can't believe so-called medical experts entertain it for a second. It shows just how much there is the belief exists that women wear skirts and makeup because they are women rather than because that's what society tells them they should wear. Wearing a skirt does not make you a woman, and believing that dressing up "as a woman" can make you feel like and be accepted as a woman shows and complete and utter misunderstanding of what being a woman actually means. In fact, I would go so far as to say it shows a base and idiotic level of misogyny.

cailin I agree. I think the treatment of gender non-conforming children is a disgrace and we are witnessing the beginning of a new child abuse scandal. I feel so sorry for gender non-conforming children who are being told just because they like the "wrong" things, they are in fact the opposite sex.

What I don't understand is that there's another type of body dysmorphia which causes the sufferer to believe a limb or other part of their body isn't part of them and that they'll be better off without it. It's an unshakeable belief and a number of sufferers have gone so far as to saw off their own arm or sit on train track in order to remove a leg. Despite how strongly sufferers of this dysmorphia believe that they need to remove whatever body part it is, doctors will not remove it, on the basis that they will not do bodily harm to a patient, even if the patient requests it. Yet when it comes to people who are transgendered, they are quite willing to lop off penises etc without any basis to believe that the feeling of "wanting to be a man/woman" is any more "real" or valid than wanting to get rid of an arm or a leg.

I think part of it is based in misogyny. Why would a man want to lower himself to be a woman unless there was something fundamentally different about him?

Well I started that thought and I stick with what I said, but that does seem a little strong callindana. I still think there are some with deeper troubles. Perhaps it is akin to that other body dysmorphia. Bit difficult to really empathise isn't it as it is something millions of us will never feel ourselves.

I do wonder if there's been any research looking to see if transgender people had a more gender-stereotyped upbringing, but perhaps it's too difficult. Transgendering isn't one of the (sadly few things) I can claim to know much about...

Gender conforming in children is really getting on my nerves at the moment. My boy has lovely curly locks so I'm loathe to cut them off, why can't I put his sister's hairband on him - which he frequently chooses to do himself - and go out in public without remarks. Minor example there, but it annoys me.