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?

I wasn't 'perceived' as female when I was born.

I was born female.

Female is a state of being FFS not a perception.

This is why 'cis' is a creepy silencing abusive term. Because it reduces my state of being to a perception. A subjective perception that anyone can adopt. The disrespect and trampling all over female state of being is just another form of violence against women. I am not a perception, I am not an assignation, I am not a feeling, I am not 'not a man', I am not an object to be fetishized or worn or bought. I am a human being and I am so done with men thinking that they have the right to define me and tell me what I am.

Fuck that.

Setting a random age range for posters on this thread, we have all spent 20-60 years thinking that we are girls, then women, because of our biology; we were taught about menstruation and pregnancy in school; we all shared a changing room and a netball court and showers. We were told to "quiet down, girls". We got notifications in our late teens about smear tests. We were taught how to check for breast lumps and about the risk of toxic shock. We wondered what choice we might make if we did get pregnant.

For our whole lives, our female biology has defined us and led to our self description as girls and then women. Whether that was right or wrong, it happened and was part of our cultural structure.

Our biology and our worldview are intertwined.

I'm having an early night. Glad to go to bed on that post

Err, yes. It's not just about being treated as, it's about being, experiencing, living.

Fear/hope of pregnancy, for example. Even if you subsequently find out you can't have kids, the thought is always there. And then the decisions needed upon conception. Periods ; either a pain in the ass because you have them, or a concern that you don't. And, in terms of what's going on right now in terms of women's rights. Pressure on abortion rights. Masses more that escape me right now. I don't expect trans women to get why it's important. I do expect that they don't try and stifle discussion.

It's not about perception, it's about reality.

I know you don't quite get it and I know you wish you did. I don't know what to say to that.

That took me a while to write.

Wot Beach said.

And, fuck, I got sucked into the ego show again. That was not what the op was about.

Actually Egosumquisum, I was using 'men' as shorthand for 'male supremacist society'.

And your post highlights perfectly what so much of this is about.

A woman who voices her thoughts about her state of being within male supremacist society = transphobic. A pariah, someone to distance oneself from, someone not to be listened to.

You know when women talk about ourselves within male supremacist society, sometimes we are just talking about ourselves within male supremacist society. It isn't always about trans.

Women are not "not men".

So, yes, trans women are a sub set of men. Not a sub species. That's inflammatory.

Egosumquisum, are you the poster who started a thread about not posting on trans threads anymore?

Beachcomber - I liked your posts.

"I suppose some posters on here want to use the word normal and abnormal to describe women and transwomen,"

These are your words, Ego. Not the words of anyone on this thread.

Again, no one has attacked you personally.

Ironymeter on 10!

Can you engage on the body thing? I really want to understand why not wanting a man's body means being a woman. Is it because you feel that's the only other option open to you?

I know you think that no-one understands. I'd love to, but I've asked you these specific questions before in the effort to do so, but I think I might be typing in white.

Heh, whatever.

You talk about empathy and "it's about the body" whilst slating women who totally get that it's about the body because that's why they are fucked off with men appropriating women's bodies

Ego, I didn't know until your last couple of posts who you were. Therefore anything I have said has not been a personal attack on you.

Men eh. I suppose that's your word for transwomen?

But hey. there's no transphobia on FWR is there. Just people calling transwomen men.

I'm sick of this.

Yes, if you push me to say it, I will. Transwomen are male, they are men.

And that simple statement of fact is not transphobic, it is not hatred, it is not an attack, personal or otherwise, and it is not an insult or a judgement.

And I bet I get deleted for saying that.

I bet I get deleted for saying a simple truth.

Because it is a truth that women are no longer allowed to say.