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 women' is such an easy sound bite.

Ooh let's not be prejudiced against the trans community.
Let's be inclusive.

But it's so bloody trite.

Being a woman is not a choice, any more than being black or being disabled is a choice.

Sandor yeah that's an interesting study. I wonder why FtM are more likely to be criminal than cis women? Possibly the effects of testosterone? Or it could be because of unemployment due to discrimination => acquisitive crime

Definitely more research should be done, but it's a very sensitive topic so not many academics leaping at the chance!

Someone please tell all politicians people are people?! It'll save them all these headaches!

Time for this pic again.

It's not surprising children aged 6 don't express concern. A lot of boys that age still think their penis might fall off or children think they might grow up to be a pony.

Of the two girls DCs went to school with who said they were boys (the DCs refused to believe they were girls at the time) one is now a very glamourous teen and the other a seemingly happy young lesbian. Both sets of parents took a laid back "wear what you like" attitude without any visible nashing of teeth or interventions from the school (other than to permit the girls to wear the boys' uniform). There was another boy at school with very long hair who my then 6 y.o. described as a "boy camoflagued as a girl" (no gender ID issues). When my DD complained about the girl's uniform I said she could wear the boys' if she wanted but she recoiled in horror.

Kids' views of sex roles and gender IDs are not like ours. My DD embraced pink at that age because she wanted to be on "team girl". IMO when kids see girls and boys are split into two groups by society, I think it's natural to want to be in one team and shitty when they realise the things they like to do are not allowed because those are for the other team.

I think "Transwomen are women" is difficult to get your head around because it's not true. It would also be difficult to get your head around the statements "the sky is green", or "two and two equals five".

However many times it's repeated, I will continue to not believe it because it's patently bullshit.

I have no problem with anyone living as they like to live and I will address anyone by any name or pronoun they choose, but because I do not believe that transwomen are women, I am transphobic and a bigot in a lot of trans activists and their allies eyes.

So be it. I think they're bigoted for denigrating my lived experience as a biological woman. I might even go so far as to call them biophobes if I were pushed.

I used to get called a tomboy a lot as a child. I didn't like it because I knew I wasn't trying to be a boy, I was just a girl who had short hair and liked climbing trees etc which I knew weren't 'boys things' they were just the things I liked.

A child who feels transgendered is very different from a girl who is a tomboy or a boy who prefers playing with girls. I don't know what I would do if I were the parent of such a child but I know that no parent actually wants their child to transgender and if they do accommodate it is part of a very serious and difficult decision that is felt to be in the best interests of their child's mental health. Can't do links properly but below is a recent article from our local newspaper (this is not the child I know) which gives the parents perspective of a very young child who feels a different gender.

www.boston.com/life/moms/2015/02/26/letter-son-jacob-his-birthday/a2Jynr9Jhc3W8VQ9lVFx8N/story.html

This is an interesting discussion. There is a man in prison here in boston for killing his wife. While in prison he started transgendering (and at one point had a ruling which forced the state to pay for his treatment including final operations) and is now referred to as a woman. I have difficulty referring to him as a woman in the context of his crime because it seems to change the facts of the case to refer to a woman killing her wife rather than a man killing his wife.

What does it mean to 'feel' a 'different' gender? That's what I don't get? What things can one feel that are boy things or girl things?

FFS, I can't take seriously an account from a parent who greets her daughter at birth with 'Hello princess' and mourns the loss of matching dresses for her three daughters, and recounts thinking her newborn daughter was 'different' because she had a hearty solid body in contrast to her 'dainty' sister. No fucking wonder her daughter got distressed when she didn't fit her parents' ideas of what a girl should be.

Yeah those things stood out for me too. I feel really sad for that little girl.

That seems to be a mother with a very strict, oppressive view of gender and a complete inability to allow her child to express herself other than by letting her shift gender boxes completely. Poor kid. I rolled my eyes at, 'Your wardrobe was by this time mostly boy clothes. I say mostly, because I snuck in girl clothes in dark colors…they had tiny embellishments, embroidered hearts and bows that reminded me that one day, you could be my little girl again.'

So it's the parent's fault nikkinack? That's a fairly epic parenting fail then (crap, I said the wrong thing to my newborn girl and now she's a boy!). I'm feeling a bit better about the bits I got wrong myself. Didn't people think mothers were responsible for turning boys gay through their parenting too?

I don't know what it means to feel a different gender - there are several books describing it though. Jennifer Boylan is one author who has written extensively on what it feels like.

Before we got to a stage where people seem to think it's a good think to give kids hormones and lead them to thought of having surgery on healthy bodies, 80% of kids who express feelings of being transgender grow up to by healthy homosexual adults. Unfortunately the childhood transgender narrative has been co-opted by late transitioning mainly white heterosexual men.

I blame the parents for colluding with society in telling their daughter that a girl is one thing and one thing only, and if you are not that then you are a boy.

And she didn't 'turn' her daughter into anything, she failed to accept her as she is.

So if you don't know what it feels like to be a different gender canyouforgiveher what is it that makes you feel like the gender that you are? Assuming your female, what is it that being a woman means for you? How do you know you're a woman? How does that feel?

I think it's terrifying that people are giving hormone blockers/hormones/surgery to children based on some stereotyped idea of gender. I think people will look back on this in the future and think it is barbaric and insane.

The parents and teachers are so far from what I think of as reasonable in that article that I can't articulate it!

But it makes me uncomfortable due to my own lived experience - it's all painted as so cut and dried!

but as far as I could see, boys were allowed to do all the things I wanted to do, like climb trees.

This keeps popping up. I am just a little sceptical about the number of tree-climbing banning going on. I'm assuming most posters were not born pre 1914. I honestly have never come across this or for that matter any one child, parent or toy shop assistant telling a girl she can't be a pirate or anything else
And wearing a dress is no bar to climbing trees.

Yes, I can't help but feel that if the society that little girl grew up in wasn't so heavily stereotyped and segregated, she might not have had so many problems.

When I was small, I wore 'boy clothes' (I never did do pink and glittery) and did 'boy things' (climbing trees, playing in mud), but I was also allowed to play with 'the boys' (my two brothers and male cousins) and no one ever thought it was strange that we would all play 'Beat Up Whoever Has the Ball' together and would all come home equally bruised and dirty.

If i wasn't allowed to do those things and was forced into impractical clothes I hated, I might have been questioning my 'gender identity' too.

How do you know you're a woman? How does that feel?

I know I'm a woman because I experienced female puberty including menstruation and growing breasts. Eventually this became your average woman's body. Now I'm pregnant which is also an indication that I'm a woman.

How does it feel? Who can really say? How would feeling happy feel if you hadn't experienced other emotional states? Never having been anything other than female, how would I know how it feels?

I climbed trees, wore the same clothes as my brothers and got dirty and was never stopped from doing it by my parents, who couldn't have cared less, but I most certainly did get comments from other people's parents and from passers by.
I also remember being told by a boy I couldn't be a fireman and at one party I went to, the boys wouldn't let me play with the Scalextric because I was a girl, and when I complained to the boy's mum she took his side.
And I wasn't born pre 1914 - I'm 43, and since then kids' clothes and toys have got more gender-differentiated rather than less, so I'm rather boggled that you don't think it happens, StillLost.

I liked lots of traditional girls things, and still got told off by a passer by for playing cowboys and indians. Not something apparently a girl should have been doing. And these comments really affect kids.

'someone who chooses to identify by the term woman, in reference to the societal norms placed upon that gender identity''

This whole debate gets me somewhat confused, but I just want to say that I have a massive issue with any reference to 'societal norms placed upon that gender identity' being involved in any definition of "women" or "men". A) because societal norms are fluid and changing; B) because there will always be people who operate well outside of "societal norms" who still identify with their biological sex; and C) what happens if you visit another society that has different "norms"?

Also - I did indeed climb trees in dresses, but my dd was complaining the other week about how hopeless for it her school shoes are compared to her brothers'. Theirs are basically trainers in black with nice thick soles and lots of grip, and hers are mary janes with completely smooth soles. I pointed out that she chose her shoes herself, and she pointed out that all the girls' shoes were like hers, so I said she could have boys' shoes next time if she wanted, and she looked appalled and said she would be teased.

People spend a lot of money on girl's clothing. It is often not incredibly practical, and I have seen in 2015 young girls being told not to do certain things at the play ground as they will "ruin their clothes".

I don't think the parents are worried their daughter will fall out of a tree they are worried they ruin their fucking dress though.