"What makes a women" NY Times article

[iisme]

Nothing very new here but it expresses most of my feelings around the trans debates very clearly and well. I want to put it on Facebook but I know it will kick off a shit-storm and I'm not sure I have the strength ...

mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html?referrer=&_r=0

By segregating on identified gender rather than biological sex you are opening us to the same risk that you are trying to prevent for yourself - unknown, predatory males in what should be a safe space

Well put.

Selective Discrimination, So much for equality.

I'm out, this as usual has gotten back to the same arguments over and over.

My ID says female, by law I use the female bathrooms etc, good luck arguing otherwise.

Selective Discrimination, So much for equality.

Nymia, you seem to be all for discrimination as long as you get to bunk in with the women, so perhaps I could say the same thing about you.

I'd prefer gender was ignored altogether personally. I don't identify with any gender. I am a woman though, and if we're going to discriminate on something to keep people safe I'll plump for discriminating on biology - since that's what makes men bigger and stronger, women at risk of pregnancy which are enormous areas of inequality we can do nothing about.

nym you'll find that when women don't fall for the smoke and mirrors of queer theory passive aggressive bullshit, there's nothing more you can say. You got off to a bad start with your crap about there being no instances of MTTs attacking women. You make it clear you haven't read any of the trans threads on here or listened to what women have to say. Ho hum.

and if we're going to discriminate on something to keep people safe I'll plump for discriminating on biology - since that's what makes men bigger and stronger, women at risk of pregnancy which are enormous areas of inequality we can do nothing about.

Then by your argument you are all for trans women using the same facilities as 'biological' woman. The effects of HRT on the musculature and size of the body are well documented.

HRT doesn't cause the ability to get pregnant.

It does however remove the ability to make someone pregnant ;)

Nym, that's a bit silly - no amount of hormones would make my 6'1" partner the same height and weight as the average woman.

No amount of hormones is going to put him at risk of pregnancy.

@Chunky
No it would put them on the same level as a 6'1" woman, come on ladies these are well documented, the IOC have done studies on it to allow transgender athletes to compete at the highest level because there is no difference between your supposed 'biological' woman and a transwoman after 2 years of HRT...

Also you can hardly base your argument on the ability to get pregnant, how many ladies out there are infertile, do they not count as women any more?

Yes, I've seen the studies - and I've seen pictures of trans athletes against female athletes which don't leave me convinced, I've also read some of the horrific things that some intersex women have been through in order to be allowed to compete as women, which suggest that the IOC may not be paragons of impartial virtue when it comes to this sort of thing.

Nothing is going to negate the fact that men are on average bigger than women, and transwomen are therefore on average bigger than women.

Your tone is absolutely indistinguishable from the bog standard MRAs that come on here telling us how we're all evil nasty wimmenz. The use of 'ladies', the patronising tone...

Sigh... your statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of transgenderism, an FtM person is not a woman.

No. You're the one misunderstanding. There are four types of people being discussed. Men. Women. FtM transgender. MtF transgender. Not two different types.

Just because you feel like a woman IN YOUR HEAD does not give you the right to appropriate MY (non-niche, shared by billions of others) identity and definition of a woman. I am a woman. I am not a cis woman. As others have said, I want you to be happy, I really do. I also want you to stop trying to be something you're not, because that impinges on me in ways I find invasive and upsetting.

"Also how do you identify 'Biological woman', I have breasts, the same muscle structure as any other woman, I have a slightly bigger shoulder frame, but small than my mothers."

Got any ovaries? Womb? Vagina which is not an inverted penis, or a "hole" as many men and transwomen seem to think, but an actual organ of the body, got any fallopian tubes, XX chromosomes? You know, all those things which female mammals have, but which you can't put a bit of lipstick on to mark them as female because they're too far into your body?

Who cares what you look like? I'm sure most men in our society could look like women if they chose to - all they have to do is shave a lot of body hair off, put on some make up, put on clothes we've decided are for females only and adopt feminised mannerisms. Doing any of that, won't make them women, because being a woman isn't about what you look like or what mannerisms you adopt or internalise. It's just about being a female human and you can be a hairy arsed slouching sensible-shoe-wearing, huntin, shootin & fishin loudmouth, if you've got XX chromosomes and female sex organs and you've been brought up as a girl, then you're a woman, even if you identify as Ernest Hemingway. And however much misogynist transwomen tell you they're better women than you, because they perform patriarchally constructed femininity better than you do.

How many people have lost a leg, humans are bipedal, does that mean they're not human anymore?

Please don't use an infertile woman's pain to try to make your point - it's very distasteful. Just as intersex also don't fall into one of the handy boxes, but have no relation to trans, and using their issues as your own is rather dishonest.

transgender athletes to compete at the highest level because there is no difference between your supposed 'biological' woman and a transwoman after 2 years of HRT...

"you can hardly base your argument on the ability to get pregnant, how many ladies out there are infertile, do they not count as women any more?"

It's a bit sad that you want people to see you as a woman but you are so far from understanding women.

It is irrelevant that a woman's reproductive system might not work as expected. What causes a woman to be treated as cattle in some parts of the world, paid less than a man in an equal job everywhere, not sent to university while her brother goes etc is the expectation that she will one day bear children and be their primary carer.

Just like it is irrelevant that a man might be shooting blanks. No boy is given a sperm test before being socialised as a man.

"here is no difference between your supposed 'biological' woman and a transwoman after 2 years of HRT..."

Does HRT decrease lung capacity, shorten a man's femurs, and shrink the size of his feet?

There will be an uproar if and when a male who "feels like a woman" surpasses Paula Radcliffe's marathon record. It will be a peak trans moment for many women, I think.

All I can see there is a picture of a transgender woman who passes, FF.

By passing, I mean that all the women around them are too polite and kind (what with being socialised as women an' all) to remark upon the fact that someone in the photo is a different sex from the rest of the gals.

"how do you identify 'Biological woman', I have breasts, the same muscle structure as any other woman, I have a slightly bigger shoulder frame, but small than my mothers."

Seriously? Without meaning to hurt your feelings, I honestly think you need a refresher course in basic biology.

there are skinny men who are smaller than some women but they are still men.

basil that's exactly what it is. Someone socialised as a woman would not be so oblivious to the politeness of others.

"There is no difference between your supposed 'biological' woman and a transwoman after 2 years of HRT..."

Oh really? So transwomen do have ovaries, fallopian tubes, XX chromosomes, secretion-producing vaginas, wombs, then?

Or are those not really significant bits of women, what with men not being able to see and therefore fetishise them and women not being able to put lipstick or nail varnish on them?

Nymia you decided to come into a forum which is mostly used by women, to tell women on a thread discussing womanhood what it means to be a woman.

I have to say, one thing I don't really understand is how someone else can validate or invalidate one's identity. To the extent that that identity is based on fact, biological or otherwise, other people's opinions can make no difference to it. To the extent it is based on feelings or self-perception, well, ditto.

And certainly, I don't accept that one can expect or require anyone else to validate one's identity, whatever that identity may be.

None of us knows whether how we feel, as women, coincides with how other women feel about their sex and/or gender. We all have quite different notions of what being female is. I don't think I could validate any woman's or transwoman's identity for that very reason.

OK - the bit about MtF not being violent towards women - well here is a famous MtF in who, in here own words, committed horrendous violence on her wife and was witnessed by her children.

It's been widely reported in the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror - but my link is from a blog (for people who don't want to click on newspaper sites).
elegantgatheringofwhitesnows.com/?p=2541
PS apologies if link doesn't work - not that tech savvy!!