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.

My favourite book as a child was about a girl who lives as a boy for years so she can become a knight. She doesn't ever want to be a boy she just wants to be able to do the things that boys are allowed to do. I never wanted to be a boy, I just wanted people to stop telling me that there were things I couldn't do because I wasn't one. I didn't want to be a different gender I just knew gender was nonsense. Luckily I had parents who also knew that and who told me that the idea that girls are like this and boys are like that was sexist and allowed me to be myself. I can't help feeling all this trans stuff is a step backwards, we don't need to redefine gender, we need to dismantle it.

19th century biological determination: you are a girl / woman therefore you must do / like X

21th century biological determinaion: you do / like X therefore you must be a girl / woman.

This is a huge step backwards.

Not that I'm admitting to reading the DM... but did anyone see the article today about the transman who successfully sued a club after being denied access to the mens toilets?

Sandor, agree with your post.

Not on the DM but somewhere else. £1500 compensation for being told to use the disabled loo rather than the men's.

The toilet issue is about validation, not safety IMO.

I've just read this and it really brings all the threads of different thought together for me, it's pretty long but pretty marvellous.

thenewbacklash.blogspot.co.uk/?m=0

Exactly, Sandor and Flora.

I grew up in the 1970's (I'm 48 now) and I had a short haircut (for practicality) and wore my brother's hand me downs (we were poor). Most people thought I was a boy until I told them differently.

I actually think my feminism dates back to an incident in a wooden fort in a park when I must have been about 6. My brother and I were playing 'war' with some other boys and an off-hand remark from my brother indicated to the others that I was a girl. An argument ensued as to whether I really was a girl, and when I confirmed that I was, I was told I couldn't play with them anymore (having spent the last hour or so happily doing so) because the fort was for boys and war was a boys' game. My bloody brother agreed with them and despite me protesting I was made to leave. The sheer injustice of it infuriated me... but I didn't want to be a boy. I knew I was a girl, being a girl wasn't problematic (or hadn't been until that moment). I just wanted to whack other kids with sticks play.

This is what I don't get about this 'stolen girlhood' that I've seen some trans women talk about - they seem to think that they've missed out on something and wax lyrical about dolly's tea parties, frilly party dresses and the like. It makes me think they haven't really changed their mindset at all, by assuming that 'all girls' had this kind of childhood, when really we were as individual and diverse as their 'wrong' childhoods were.

So is it okay to say "women have vaginas", or is that transphobic?

I've been racking my brain as how to define it any other way really. If I'm being told by someone with a penis how I have to define the word "woman" that make me quite annoyed.

I got less than halfway through that article and thought my head would explode if I continued. I've never seen such nonsense.

To be clear by nonsense I mean the ridiculous arguments she was eloquently trashing, not her article.

Yes that would make you a TERF Jessica. Like saying abortion and pregnancy are women's issues.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-terf

it’s exclusionary to talk about vaginas when some women do not have one.

Eh?

If girlhood is all about dolly's tea parties and frilly party dresses then someone stole mine too. I blame my mother, who saw short hair and dungarees as practical and never bought me dolls

There are a fuck lot more infertile women in this world than there are transwomen. But if I said "women give birth and get pregnant" how many infertility activists would jump up and call me phobic? Who cared about biological women and their feelings prior to transwomen demanding we accept they are real women?

Well I might accept the term TERF then, and choose to not see it as an insult. I don't think I want to have to come up with a new word which means "person with a vagina" when I already have a word which seems to fit pretty much perfectly. Especially if the person telling me I need a new word doesn't have a vagina (and doesn't want one).

All of this TERF stuff is news to me.I am fairly certain I am not a radical feminist.

I started off being shocked and taken aback but isn't a lot of it just the same few people endlessly wittering on and backing each other up to the interest of probably almost no-one else?

Ubik there are so many quotable bits aren't there? Some astonishing Humpty Dumpty speak.

It's probably of interest to the parents of these girls.
www.sportsgrid.com/ncaa-football/this-transgender-basketball-player-plays-on-a-womens-college-team/

It's probably also of interest to the opponents of this person.
gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/fallon-fox-why-hormones-dont-make-a-woman/

The public at large may be unaware of the fact that Fallon Fox devotes his ample free time to the posting of anti-gay screeds online which center on the “unfairness” of lesbian women declining relations with males like himself who are transgender. Those unexposed to transgender politics may be shocked to learn that Fallon Fox publicly promotes the creation of an online “registry” of women, modeled on one operated by the “Men’s Rights” group affiliated with Elliot Rodger, that would list the names of every lesbian, feminist, and woman who recognizes that biological sex exists (!) so that men like Fallon Fox can target them for god knows what.

This has actually given me shivers. And possibly goes some way to explaining a problem I was musing on this morning.

In theory, the feminist belief that gender is a social construct should be enormously appreciated by transexuals. Because if gender as a social construct is accepted, then that paves the way for everything being open to everybody. Little boys can wear frilly dresses and have tea parties, little girls can play war and climb trees. Men and women can wear whatever they fancy and live how they choose without being mocked or abused for their choices. No one has to go through the pain of transitioning, no one has to mourn their "lost girlhoods", no one risks violence for wearing make-up or a dress. In theory, deconstructing gender is a win-win situation for both feminists and transexuals.

So why don't (some) transexuals want this? Why are they, in fact, so strongly opposed to this and react with extreme anger and violence to this proposition?

Just living as a woman and doing 'womanly things' (whatever the fuck they are) are obviously not enough for them. No, the world at large must acknowledge that they are women and bow down to their vision of themselves. Which is often that they are better 'women' than biological women. They are superior to biological women.

They actually hate biological women.

whatlifestylechoice you have written exactly how I feel about this. I find it very confusing that this is how this (apparently small) group want to change the world around them. The only conclusion I can reach is that it's coming from a place of anger, but it still baffles me.

Hey Still we will convert you yet

They converted me. . Give in to your feelings, Stil...

I don't use twitter and facebook either and it seems the vocal trans community get vitriolic on there. Unfortunately there's evidence (greens and lib dems) that the lawmakers and politicians are listening to them, not us. Sandor, Flora and Lovecat, I agree with every word (now).

' FloraFox Tue 10-Mar-15 21:09:58

The toilet issue is about validation, not safety IMO.'

I don't actually think that's true for a lot of transwomen. I have a trans friend who gets very stressed by the whole toilet thing. If you're living as a woman but you know you don't 100% pass, what do you do - disappear into the men's and give your trans status away to anyone who knows you, or risk going into the ladies' and make women uncomfortable and potentially even get reported?
It's even worse for swimming pool changing rooms as without the armour of feminine clothes the male body is far more exposed, so she simply doesn't go swimming despite really wanting to.

I find it quite challenging with all the anti-feminist transactivist stuff going on, to remember the ordinary trans people who have dysmorphia, are not interested in politics and who are just trying to get through the day, but they are out there.

Sandor - I only got about half way down (she starts off simple, then really stops pulling her punches!) - but that really is a good primer for anyone asking about the issues isn't it!

I followed her link to a gender neutral parenting blog, where there was a girl who wanted a mohawk, and her mum thought about it, consulted with her partner, and then got out the clippers, and life has gone (probably couldn't do it here, she'd be sent home from school for an inappropriate haircut - as would a boy).

It seems a stark contrast to the mother in the other link who took that to mean her daughter was trans.

Thank you, Onetwothreeoops. I don't like it as an explanation, but it's the only one I can come up with. Getting rid of "gender" seems like so much the obvious solution to this problem for everybody (except those who genuinely have dysmorphia, obviously), that there must be something else going on here.

Countess individual lockable cubicles seem like the obvious answer to the toilet/changing room problem.