I can't get my head around the phrase "Transwomen are women".

[nikkinack]

Sorry for another thread on the topic, but I was looking at my local candidates and the only female candidate is for the Green party, and she has retweeted that phrase (with the addition "Transmen are men) a couple of times today.

It seems like doublethink to me, every time I try to unpick the statement I get all messed up in the process.

So, if transwomen are women, why call them transwomen? Surely just by defining them as transwomen you are saying they are different to women? Transwomen can't insist on women using the label cis and then lay claim to the standalone word 'woman'.

So transwomen are women, ciswomen are women. The word woman applies to people of either category, but they are still separate categories within the single word, which we can't describe. We are not the same, but to state 'Transwomen are women' is to insist that we are.

I don't know how anyone who makes this statement can square all of this. It hurts my head just trying to work out what they mean.

I think transwomen are a subset of 'trans' alongside transmen.

Is that transphobic?

There are lots of situations in which we don't have words to describe women who aren't something. There is no word for women who are not mothers, not menopausal. I think that the phrase trans woman, where trans is used as adjective like tall, fat, infertile, married, single, has very different connotations to transwoman as a noun, which implies that every other grouping should have their own specific nouns.

I wonder what would happen if you surveyed every woman and asked 'what makes you a woman?'. Tbh, my first answer would probably be 'my vagina'. Would that make me transphobic?

That's the problem isn't it? What does always 'felt' female actually mean? What feelings or thoughts are female or male? Does it mean my personality fitted better into the gender stereotype more commonly assigned to people of the other biological sex? The answer to that is that that's entirely possible because gender stereotypes are culturally/socially constructed, arbitrary bollocks. It doesn't mean you are the other biological sex it just demonstrates that 'gender' as it is constructed, is bollocks.

bollocks perhaps an unfortunate choice in this context

TheFallenMadonna Absolutely and it could be seen as a set theory question.

The problem is that accepting that assumption seems (in the circles I move in) to be the de facto position, whereas the position that Ubik1 describes is often seen as transphobic.

As a not-terribly-feminine woman (although I look the part a lot of the time) I struggle with the concept of 'feeling female'. Maybe I would be more understanding (I would already say that in practice I am accepting) of transition if I could 'get' that more readily.

I am occasionally reminded on my sex / gender through sexism but I don't wake up in the morning and think 'gosh I feel like a woman'. I tend to wake up in the morning and think 'gosh I feel like a BuggersMuddle' that works on both levels btw, especially if the previous evening was a Wine Night

Jessica, there was a thread recently asking exactly that question and if I recall, the majority referenced biological features - mainly boobs and vag.

It's problematic.

I strongly object to being called a 'cis' woman. I'm a woman!
In real life, the trans women I know are just quietly getting on with their lives. I'm happy to use whatever pronoun they feel comfortable with and they don't even suggest that I refer to myself as anything other than a woman. Online however, I've had TERF levied at me for daring to question the nature of gender and for saying that I wouldn't want to be in a changing room with a biological man.
Women fought for our own spaces. They are for US. They are not for people in possession of a cock and balls, though the liberal leftie menz who are trying to be so right on, are using this as an excuse to shout at women for not doing as we're told.

Is it possible to 'feel female', in the same way you feel sad? Or does 'feel female' mean identifying with feelings, interests, or whatever, which have been traditional designated to (biological) women? I probably identify with traditionally masculine feelings and interests, but I've never felt male.

What seems to be forgotten is that women actually have really legitimate reasons for not wanting men/people with penises in those spaces.

Yes, sandor, exactly. It can be threatening.
Also, being female / a woman is biological. You wouldn't think 'I feel like I'm in the body of someone of a different race' would you?!

If biology is unimportant in defining who is a woman, what do trans woman transition from and to?

*Jessica, there was a thread recently asking exactly that question and if I recall, the majority referenced biological features - mainly boobs and vag.

It's problematic*

What's problematic about it ? Women have vaginas.

"What's problematic about it ? Women have vaginas."

Succinctly put. Pretty sure you'd be called a TERF if you tweeted that, though.

personally, while being a 'biological woman' i have witnessed a good friend go through mtf transition.

i have to say, i think some people are trying too hard to hold onto gender identity and creating a 'thing' where there doesn't need to be one.

the 'fear' of some biowomen towards/about Transwomen is, in my eyes, akin to male homophobia, for whatever reason they feel threatened by them.

its bigotry.

i cannot and will never understand people who indulge in bigotry, i am what i am, a person, everyone is just a person, and they ought to be taken as they're found, whatever their x/y mixture.

I don't tweet. Twitter is high on the list of things I have no interest in along with Facebook.

It wouldn't bother me if I were called that. I commented on the NAMALT thread on the inefficacy of lazy acronyms.

It's just like saying "political correctness gone mad" . Really means "I don't actually have an argument or the vocabulary to respond to what you're saying so I'm resorting to this"

No obsidian, because straight men are not oppressed by gay men. If 1/5 straight men in Britain had been raped by another man, then you might have a point, but in this case it is women who are legitimately frightened of people who they perceive to be make (however that person identifies). To deny and belittle those fears is deeply antifeminist.

It's not bigotry to know that transwomen are male.

Tweets like 'transwomen are women' are aimed at educating people who haven't considered, let alone accepted, that gender and sexuality are fluid and mutable. Imo.

That made me laugh. It's not education, it's inculcating a dogma that can't be satisfactorily explained.

Ok Still,... you don't like acronyms. So, to suit you better, you would be called a transphobe. Which is the vocabulary which to them describes what you're saying. Hope that's clearer for you.

And Obsidian, the only people who are trying to hold on to a gender identity are trans people. RFs want to get rid of gender identity and all the socialisation, bigotry, violence and hatred that goes along with that. I don't get people who indulge in bigotry either, which is why I'm slightly perplexed that I am being told that I fit into a specific box, even when I don't. If RFs have their way, everyone would be free to be what they want to be, without the rigid gender structure which is held in place most strictly by trans people.

If Trans people are actually concerned with the undoubtedly heavy burden of violence perpetrated toward them, then surely it would make sense to turn on the people who are doing that? Because, let me make this really clear, those people who are being violent to trans people aren't RFs, or even feminists of any stripe. They are men. Men socialised to violence. Men socialised to be violent toward things and people they don't understand. The same type of men who are violent toward women.

RFs want to name the problem, it seems that a certain section of the trans* community wants to blame women. But then, women have always been an easy target, feminists even more so.

i have to say, i think some people are trying too hard to hold onto gender identity and creating a 'thing' where there doesn't need to be one

But isn't that what those who say transwomen are women doing except in reverse? Like others I am unsure about what "feeling like a woman " means.

Feeding into the questions about what it means to 'feel like a woman' or 'feel female', OP asked back on page 1 about how we define 'woman' if transwomen are women.

Does anyone have an answer? Or at least know of an alternative (non biological) definition proposed somewhere? I've looked, but couldn't find anything that didn't include the terms 'female' or 'woman', and wasn't based on biology. The best I could come up with was 'not a man.' But then you need to define 'man'... You can't say a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman/feels female, because then you still haven't actually defined 'woman' or 'female.'

I find the whole thing very difficult to get my head around. I'm much more comfortable with sticking to the old definitions and creating additional 'categories' of people, like trans and intersex. Apparently that makes me a bigot though

My daughter goes to a high school which is pretty progressive and liberal. Thus when I asked her who were the females in her spanish class (relevant for different reasons) she told me there were 2 and also one person who identified as "they".

In this high school, they can accommodate that identification (my dd and all her classmates are very comfortable with engaging with people with whatever (or neither) gender they identify with. It actually hasn't caused any problems.

While I am sympathetic to the posters who talk about dearly won and held female spaces I don't think male violence on women is really going to be solved by keeping transgendered men out of female bathrooms. I don't think that is the problem with male on female violence.

I know a few transgendering teens - in both directions. In our fairly mainstream primary school a child aged 6 recently decided to re-orientate from male to female - with the support of his parents. the school was amazingly supportive in communications etc. and there wasn't one child who expressed concern. I also met a few transgendering teens when my child spent some time in a psychiatric unit. It is not an easy hand to have been dealt in life -to feel your insides don't match your outsides. Especially if you don't have support from family and friends.

So I am all for supporting people identifying exactly how they want. I think it is easier to change public toilets etc than to change people. And surely public spaces should serve us - not the other way around.

But ...I am a woman. not a cis woman. I am a woman. I have a vagina, I have had periods, children, lactation, treated crap at work and otherwise because of my gender - oh and here comes menopause. I also have the history of women to look back to and absorb and realise this is my history. In the race to be better to trans than we were to every other marginalized group, we should not dilute the term "woman" because god knows we've served our time and taken our crap. I am proud to be a woman and would never identify as any little modifier on that word.

canuouforgiveher In our fairly mainstream primary school a child aged 6 recently decided to re-orientate from male to female - with the support of his parents. the school was amazingly supportive in communications etc. and there wasn't one child who expressed concern.

As a parent I would express concern, and as a woman who was once a little girl I would express concern. Why?

When I was a child, I liked to pretend I was a boy sometimes. I was too young to understand all the nuances of sexism, but as far as I could see, boys were allowed to do all the things I wanted to do, like climb trees. I hated wearing dresses. I didn't fit into the stereotype of a pretty frilly little girl.

I started using a more masculine version of my nickname and wore my hair short.

Thank goodness no one thought of making me permanently into a boy. Thank goodness no one thought I had better be medicalised, no one took me to see psychiatrists, no one booked me in for surgery.

Fortunately, my parents just treated it as a phase. One that many children go through. I find the idea of transgender children ludicrous. They are just children.

>>i have to say, i think some people are trying too hard to hold onto gender identity and creating a 'thing' where there doesn't need to be one

>But isn't that what those who say transwomen are women doing except in reverse?

Well, quite. If it is TERFish to hold to a view that biology is a legitimate aspect of the definition of "woman" then surely it is BFETA (biologically female excluding trans activist) to insist that gender is wholly a mental construct?

Transgender men (transwomen) commit crime at the same rate as non transgender men
"Criminal activity, particularly violent crime, is much more common among men than women in the general population. A previous study of all applications for sex reassignment in Sweden up to 1992 found that 9.7% of male-to-female and 6.1% of female-to-male applicants had been prosecuted for a crime.[33] Crime after sex reassignment, however, has not previously been studied. In this study, male-to-female individuals had a higher risk for criminal convictions compared to female controls but not compared to male controls. This suggests that the sex reassignment procedure neither increased nor decreased the risk for criminal offending in male-to-females. By contrast, female-to-males were at a higher risk for criminal convictions compared to female controls and did not differ from male controls, which suggests increased crime proneness in female-to-males after sex reassignment."

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885