Anti-Transgendered thread in Chat

[countessmarkyabitch]

Started off as a vague question about what makes you feel like a woman, lots of people started mentioning transwomen, naturally. Has now turned into some posters stating that transwomen are just men and shouldn't be allowed use female things like toilets and rape crisis, pretty much anything.

I find this really offensive and have stopped engaging. My personal feminism encompasses women who were born in male bodies, and supports their struggle to be recognised as women. I also think they need the protection and help of feminists as a particularly at risk group.

Is this an unusual stance? Does anyone agree with me?

Pilchard- I think they are gender queer? Is that right?

Also, I don't want anyone to be punished for their sex.
Just because women are punished doesn't mean it's OK to punish penises.

Pilchard, your question doesn't make sense in relation to my post.

House regarding the TA- I can't identify with, nor do I have time for anyone that thinks they have a say in who, what, or how a woman accepts people into their vagina.

I don't think exclusion from a job is punishment, I think in that instance it is an unfortunate necessity. I'm sure there are other woman for whom it would be inappropriate to perform an internal examination on a rape victim.

Ah OK misread your post.

try again.

"We can't tell a trans woman that she's not an actual woman, because she isn't a biogical woman."

OK, so people who were born male, if they feel like a woman, they are a woman.

So what do you want to call all the people who were born female, who don't "feel like women"?

We have established that "feeling like a woman" is not to do with physiology, nor with the experience of growing up female. It's something else, an innate sense of gender, or something.

Sorry House, I met someone not long ago who didn't identify with either gender and called themselves gender queer.
Do you refer to yourself as something else?

I think you must be either gender queer, or cis, House.

Them's your options.

Totally agree, boxes are meaningless, genders are arbitrary.
If only everyone felt the same way. We could all identify as human.

I have to say I hate the term cis. If it were simply used to describe a person whose gender and sex match the social norms, I'd be OK with it. But it's used to infer a privilege that I just don't identify with.

Well I'd agree with you there on the boxes thing.

I have had terrible trouble with the boxes because my looks are such that people think I fit very firmly indeed into a lovely tiny box with a bow on the top and then my personality is so terribly unexpected because girls aren't interested in those things especially not ones who look like you you're a bit strange aren't you.

What is genderqueer meant to mean?

Someone who does a mixture of both 'masculine' and 'feminine' things?

My interpretation od genderqueer is it's not both, it's neither. Someone who rejects both male and female labels and pronouns.

I can only describe personal experience, so not gospel, but people I've met who are gender queer identify with neither gender, in terms of stereotypes.

OR we could just not have all these labels and classifications and additional boxes and just get on with being people with a range of interests and ways of presenting ourselves. And try to destroy all the boxes.

And also fuck who we want if they want to fuck us to.

That's another requirement for my list.

So what do you want to call all the people who were born female, who don't "feel like women"?

However they'd each prefer to be referred to but my first choice would be by their name!

Gender identity, along with sexuality is a wide spectrum with many variations, as far as I'm concerned. I'm genuinely unperturbed by how or why people identify with a certain point (or various points) on that spectrum. It has no bearing on me, my feelings towards them, my view of them or my own identity.

One of my dc has a new and particularly androgynous friend. Discussing them recently (about how lovely they are!), we realised we don't actually know whether they are female or male (purely because we weren't sure how to refer to them i.e. she/he) and that it doesn't actually matter! So, we referred to them by name. The person comes first.

Massive cross post!

I think our language has a lot to answer for. I recently has to write some copy for a gender queer/ neutral person and it was really difficult! Only using they/their/they're instead of he and she sounds odd. It shouldn't sound so odd.

I agree, Hubert.

Trans isn't about stereotypes though. It isn't about being stereotypically feminine, and rejected being stereotypically masculine. Effeminate men are not necessarily trans, and male-to-female transwomen are not necessarily feminine. So to use these stereotypes of what the genders are expected to be as an argument against there being trans/cis people is ridiculous.

Genderqueer isn't about rejecting gender roles (although I imagine most genderqueer people would, as a matter of course). It's about not solely identifying with your birth sex.

The majority of transactivists aren't trying to force people into boxes. We don't live in a post-gender society so we need to operate within the society we are in (while obviously doing our best to smash as many restricting boxes as possible). And within this gendered society, sex and gender don't necessarily align.

Well said Cigar