Being silenced/feeling voiceless

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Can we talk about this?

There were some amazing threads on here a few years ago, about rape and about 'small' sexual assaults, and I remember so many posters saying they'd suddenly found a way to talk about something that had shaped them as people. It seemed really powerful to me. But I was wondering if we're actually going backwards in terms of feeling able to speak up.

I was in a meeting yesterday, and noticing how some women (including me) do that classic 'I don't know if I'm saying this very well' kind of minimising of their own points. I was really struck that someone said 'I need to learn the language to say this' - as if she was being inarticulate, rather than as if people weren't bothering to listen to what she was saying (which was closer to the case).

I keep on feeling this way, especially about all the debates raging around gender identity issues - I just don't have the language to say what I want to say. I can't help feeling as if all of us who disagree are just miscommunicating. Does anyone else feel that? I don't feel as if I have the language to talk about what makes me feel hurt and upset by words like 'cis' - I think it's a real feeling, and I think it is related to sexual violence, but I don't feel very able to put it into words, especially outside MN.

Does anyone else feel like this?

Please recommend some sources of information that you think would be helpful in understanding.

That's what I've been looking at.

OP, I've thought a lot about the miscommunication thing as I have similar thoughts and feelings as you. It's not miscommunication, though. Especially not when one has tried reframing ones point in many different ways. It's just a fundamental difference in opinion, often on subjects where there is no compromise position. In more general terms than the trans issues, the same old dismissal women's voices and subsequent calls of hysteria, stridency or shrillness if pursued apply.

I hear you and understand, if that helps.

Ego, they aren't directly parallel because straight/heterosexual refers to one type of attraction and gay/homosexual another.

If you don't have a powerful sense of gender either way, aren't you a-gender rather than cis-gender, similar to a-sexual?

Ok, a powerful sense of being in the right body, then.

Yes, it's about the body.

Do you understand?

It's kinda relevant to the op.

Therefore to label me as "cisgender" is to label me as someone who accepts the sex role and sex status society awards my female body. But i vehemently don't accept those things

This, exactly.

Ego, obviously some people feel a mismatch between their body and who they feel they are. I'd go as far as to say this is really widespread - without diminishing trans* issues - but, still, the issue of mind/body sex is clearly a big one.

So, fine. Change. Do what it takes to actualise yourself (as long as it can be done without harming yourself or others.)

If your self-actualisation means choosing to perform female gender in socially stereotypical ways, please don't ask me to support you 'as a woman'. I support your right to individual choice and will honour your chosen identity. I don't support gender stereotyping, however.

Neither will I support claims that identifying as a different gender is enough to alter physiology. Everyone I've told about this in real life goes 'huh?!?' but UK law currently supports this fantasy. I need to clarify that I am NOT anti-trans* or against individual self-expression. I am a pragmatic feminist. In current parlance, that makes me a TERF. So be it. I'm always open to discussion but not to being shouted down.

No, I wouldn't use the word "normal" in that way so it would be nice if you didn't put words in my mouth.

So a powerful sense of being in the wrong body, male/female wise is trans; a
powerful sense of being in the right body, male/female wise is cis and no powerful sense could be a-gender (I have to use gender here because asexual means something else already)

(I actually think the English language would be better if we had a different word for sex regarding intercourse and sex regarding male/female)

You're proving the op's point here, ego.

Though, since you ask, I would differentiate between transwomen and men.

Yes, it's about the body.

This, too.

Humans who were born with a uterus, working or not, and who were born with every appearance of having a uterus, have been and are devalued and, as the OP puts it, silenced. This starts at birth and continues.

Humans who were assigned male at birth have been, and are, valued more highly and afforded more credibility. This starts at birth and continues.

Hence feminism.

I don't have a word or set of words that makes everything all right, Ego, unless it's person/people.

I do know that the root of female oppression throughout history is that females are the childbearing sex and that, even now, the global treatment of females and males now remains related to the biology of their bodies.

A cis girl and a trans boy are both at risk of FGM if they are in such a culture; a cis woman and a trans man are both at risk of unplanned pregnancy; a cis woman and a trans man both have a higher risk of osteoporosis when old (and vice versa for circumcision, unplanned impregnation and prostate cancer).

Which are the words that groups these people by biology and biology's impact on their lives?

There's nothing to dispute in your reply, Ego. Neither is there anything relevant to your other points.

Do you understand the difference between biological sex and gender?

You should ask on here. They're all experts on trans people on here and understand the issues about trans people and why they undergo such procedures

Why answer with such a sarcastic comment after telling me I'm wrong for looking at accounts/diaries/blogs/various definitions from transgender people themselves?

Why don't you want to help? I'm trying to understand. It is baffling to be honest, not least because I cannot find consistent ideas, interpretations and definitions from transgender people online. And as has been pointed out, on a thread entitled "being silenced/feeling voiceless", I'm pretty much being told to STFU and find the information you think I should have - because the information I'm finding is not good enough - without giving me any help in finding it

I shouldn't bite, but...

It's not about body appearance! Why are you obsessed with this? It's about bodily reality. You're all over that when it's about the male body that you hate. Why can you not see that women's bodies are a reality too?

No, I agree with all that.