Caitlyn Jenner is 'too good looking'...

[FeijoaSundae]

Is there already a thread on this? I've looked and don't see one, so apologies if I'm repeating.

I've just opened our Saturday paper down here at the bottom of the planet, and there's yet another article where a transgender woman is bemoaning the unfairness of Caitlyn's good looks versus her own less than amazing looks.

A couple of quotes from the article: "...the discussion has quickly zeroed in on her elegant femininity - a look far out of reach or most transgender women".

"Caitlyn's beauty makes it problematic for a fat old queen like myself who ... could never emulate Raquel Welsh or Michelle Pfieffer".

And ... "The discussion remained traumatically offending to transgender people whose own 'accident of birth' will never allow them to be a Caitlyn".

Um ... welcome to womanhood...? The looks of pretty much all women who feature of the cover of Vanity Fair are out of the reach of most regular women.

Is this genuinely surprising ... ? It's akin to Dustin Hoffman expressing dissatisfaction with his Tootsy make-over, and saying no, he wants to be a beautiful women. Not a plain one (to be fair, his subsequent epiphany was rather lovely). Well, don't we all, mate, don't we all.

I apologise in advance to any transgender people who think I'm making light of an issues facing their community. But this is an issue that has faced our community since, well, forever. It's part and parcel of being a woman. We are judged, first and foremost, in our looks. Not our ability, or intelligence, or kindness. We are judged on our looks. Welcome to our world!

I believe the thread on whether you "feel like a woman" has gone as it was in Chat.

I'm another one who decided that looking back over my life I didn't have a gender identity that feels important to my sense of self. Being a woman is a biological reality that I felt compelled to accept. It would be a shock to wake up in any another body now as I've long since grown out of liking too much change at once!

"I am a man" Nope.

whirlpool to try to answer your question. As I said I don't even have to think that my gender is female. The quote below is actually from The Scout Association but puts it well.

Most young people grow up thinking of themselves as either a boy or a girl, and they don’t question which they are (their gender). But for some people, gender is more complicated.” (NHS)

Gender identity is our innermost understanding of our self as ‘male’ or ‘female’. Gender is a spectrum and people vary as to where they identify on that spectrum. Most people develop a gender identity that matches their biological sex (their body), however for some people, who may identify as transgender, this does not match

I have said on here before that I find the expression "performing femininity" patronising, condescending and inaccurate. I am not putting on a performance; being comfortable with being feminine is who I am in exactly the same way as rejecting femininity is just being who others are.

I depart from the view of many on here (apart from sausage and prepperpig) that being a women means being told "girls can't /don't do...".

I appreciate I started from a position of privilege (being born into a white, middle-class but socially eccentric family which valued being clever and generally was not being keen on being told what its members could or couldn't do for no good reason always going to help)

I then went to a school which if it can be critcised for discriminating against anyone it was for ignoring the less bright boys and girls in favour of the clever boys and girls. I have not therefore found any clash with being feminine and achieving what I want . I am happy being a woman biologically and gendered.

The quote below from funnyossity puzzles me. Is it so terrible to be a woman that one is compelled to accept it?

Being a woman is a biological reality that I felt compelled to accept.

I think funnyossity doesn't mean that being a woman is terrible, more that she was bulldozed into it, rather than chose it.

I think rejecting is a strong word - I think not attracted to is a better description for me.

Throughout life there are loads of things I've been compelled to do rather than chose (sometimes with strong feelings the other way, sometimes with no strong feelings at all) - netball rather than football, school summer dress rather than shorts, guides rather than scouts, sweeping rather than stacking chairs etc. loads, and loads of little things that were pointlessly gendered - as if a 10 year old boy is programmed to be better at stacking chairs than girls!

I think funnyossity doesn't mean that being a woman is terrible, more that she was bulldozed into it, rather than chose it

I'm not sure that is any better; and the poster was referring to being a woman biologically, not a social construct.

The comment would make sense from an unhappy ftm transperson.

And that's why I'd hate to be a young girl nowadays where if you say you are not so chuffed at having to put up with the adolescent changes then you are told you were perhaps "born in the wrong body"!

So this I suspect is where a lot of the difficulty lies.

Clearly there are a quite large group of people who have an internal feeling of gender and a similarly large group of people who don't.

To the first group, trans is going to make a lot of sense. To the second group, it is harder to understand.

I think that on threads before it has come up, and is probably fairly likely, that many feminists do not have much of an internal gender going on. For me, I don't "feel" female at all. However my appearance includes attributes deemed desirable in Western females, and so I have always felt jarred between how I feel on the inside (me) and how I have been treated by others based on my appearance (pretty little girl / attractive teen etc). This is why I have always been a feminist from before I knew the word, because I noticed the difference in gender roles and understood that I was supposed to meet one very specific one.

Like you I have a lot of privilege, and I went to a girls school where we could do anything, I think it was when I moved to mixed at 16, and also started mixing with a wider range of people (going to the pub) that this all really came into sharp focus.

With a lot of the things feminists talk about - for women who are happy in the role society gives them, and men who are too, it all seems like a total load of rubbish. Because men and women are different but equal and there's nothing wrong with women doing X and men doing Y and that is all just fine. And I can understand why they feel that way. The trouble comes when they aren't open to the idea that actually a lot of people don't feel that way at all.

Anyway.

I perform femininity, for sure. I know exactly what it means and what it entails. It's acting / dress up. Fun sometimes, and some people say useful sometimes (not my style really) but it's all window-dressing, for me.

Not just biological changes but the gendered expectations too of course, from why aren't you wearing make-up today to why are you studying science and maths.

You may not understand Lass but my comments make sense to me as a (relatively) happy person who is a woman or should I start saying female human now?

That's a really helpful summing up galaxy for me personally and as to why the transgender issue generally can be so divisive. I don't agree with all your points but it's a very clear statement.

I accept that there are people for whom an internal gender identity is a "thing" Lass, and if you accept that there are people who are flummoxed by the concept then yes that will help.

I suppose a key thing for me is, if I have no internal gender identity, which I don't, (although when I do the "what sex is your brain" test on the BBC (conclusive!) I come out as male), and then gender is all there is, then what am I? I do not understand what I am called in this new order.

Similarly, what do we call children, before they are at an age where they can self-identify (assuming that in their society it is even an option for them to understand this is something they can do)?

And given that, how can we tackle violence and discrimination, which is based on the pronouncement "it's a boy" or "it's a girl" when a baby is born? Changing the language so that we cannot identify groups of people who are being oppressed due to the look of the genitalia they are born with, will cause massive problems for anyone who wants to fight or help.

Bruce jenner had a fullface lift so thats a good start i suppose id imagine there was more facial surgery involved in the transition I just think THAT photo is all smoke and mirrors isnt it ? I dont think caitlyn is a spokesperson for trans community so she can look as glam as she likes she doesnt have to be a role model or whatever

If there is language that can still be used to refer to the group of people who used to be called girls, and women, then that will help.

Cis is no good as there is no way of knowing what their internal gender identity is, if they even have one.

We could go for Clefts, Whirlpool?

I'm not sure that anything that references the look / type of genitals is any good, actually.

FAAB meets all the criteria but I seem to remember there was a problem with that as well though I can't for the life of me remember what it was!

What was that? Female ?? Born?

FAAB ??

female assigned at birth

do you know what, I don't even care. If I'm not to be called a woman, or female, or whatever, then that's fine, I don't mind, they're not words I am particularly invested in.

what we do need though are words to describe babies and children and teens and adults who when they are born people say "it's a girl" so that we can name the group that certain things happen to which don't happen at all or as much to the group who people say "it's a boy".

The other difficulty is that we in some parts of some societies can change names until the cows come home but most people in most societies won't get all this. So if say an initiative to get more girls educated / educated safely in SWAT for eg is renamed something like "Initiative to get more FAAB youngsters educated in SWAT" or whatever, how many people are even going to know what that means?

I'm honestly not trying to wind anyone up but -SWAT?

What would that stand for?

Oh god sorry that was dim, I thought you were proposing another acronym!

Swat Valley is an area in Pakistan where religious fundamentalism mean that sharia stuff is being imposed on a (largely reluctant) population, so girls and supposed to be educated and they have burnt down girls schools and stuff.

google results plenty to read about

It's awful

I'm not sure why I put Swat in capitals! So that probably caused confusion.

Sorry you had capitalised it in your post (or more likely your phone did ) and googling that produces entirely different results.

at SWAT.
Re performativity, there's an interesting book out by Bulgarian photographer Pepa Hristova about the "Sworn Virgins" of Albania - women who choose or are forced to live as men within an extremely patriarchal society. They pledge to give up all sexual activity and, in return, they are apparently accorded all the rights that men enjoy. This is of course an extreme case of a person choosing to perform a gender that does not fit with their biological sex. But socially, politically, and economically, they are men, because that is the gender they perform, and they cannot be grouped along with women in Albanian society.