Am I a self-defined woman?

[iisme]

A woman's group I am a member of is now stating that it is for 'self-defined women'. I appreciate that this is about inclusivity and I don't have a problem with trans-women joining the group. But I feel uncomfortable about the idea of being a self-defined woman. Firstly, I don't feel like I define myself as a woman. I am a woman and I'm fine with being a women (though pissed off with all the crap that comes with it) but it doesn't define who I am. I also don't feel, even if I am defined as a woman, that I am self-defined. I recognise my female biology and this is part of what makes me feel like a woman, and I experience life as a woman in a male-dominated world, and this is the other part of what makes me feel like a woman. But most of what I feel it is to be a woman is defined for me by society - something that is put on me because I am female bodied, and not something that I am choosing or defining myself.

Another woman's group I was looking at is for 'self-identified women'. This feels less problematic for me but I'm still not sure about it. I do identify as a woman in the ways I described above, but I again, I feel like most of the issues around being a woman are about external identification - because I am identified as a woman by others. My own internal identification - the core of who I feel who I am - is non-gendered.

Anyway, I'm trying to work through my thoughts and think about whether these phrases really are an issue and whether this is something I should address in the group. I'd be really glad to hear other opinions on this.

almond - but I just gave you loads of examples of people who have in some way experienced gender outside of their binary-categorised biology!! . Castor Semenya being one. And don't you think it's just a teeny bit oppressive to insist that hermaphrodites identify according to some supposedly 'scientific' taxonomy, whatever their actual, practical experience?

Like, maybe the radical feminist way of looking at the landscape is via a wide lens camera, so broad structures and groupings make most sense. And trans activism uses a microscope, and tells us hang on, those broad structures mean nothing at this level, look, it's all just different coloured particles arranged in an arbitrary way

I'm not really sure my the rad fems view is a wide angle lense but the trans activists is a microscope.

almond

Whenshewas, I think what you are describing in your post is a mixture of wanting to express femininity and living in a female body

Possibly, but at its essence is just that I do feel female. Not that I want to express feminity but that I feel like a woman.

bertie
The feeling British thing wasn't about whether you actually are British but how you feel about your nationality.
I can imagine a senario where person A and B have had a similar upbringing. Person A feels British but person B has no concept of that.
How does person A explain their feelings to person B?

I thought this was a good way to think about the difficulties of explaining gender identity to a person who has no experience of gender identity.
I probably wasn't a very good analogy though.

Hi buffy sorry I can't really explain that question further.

I read your landscape post and just wondered why transactivits had a microscope and I wasn't sure why they get a microscope not a wide lens.

I see what you are getting at. Sounds like both the wide angle lens and the individual approach have their flaws.

Yes the landscape is important but I personally think the grains of sand are also important.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/

Buffy, I can't find the link I was sent, but this one seems helpful.

Whenshewas, it seems to me that you feel like a woman because you are a woman, and it is no more complicated than that.

Holly, I didn't suggest Semenya should identify as intersex.

You said she was a hermaphrodite. As far as I'm aware, the term hermaphrodite is an offensive name for an intersex person.

So in my response to you I used the term intersex instead of hermaphrodite.

Also, biologists don't claim that sex is categorised as a binary.

It is a certain type of social theorists who have created a binary made up of two categories:

Category a: things which are a binary.
Category b: things which are a spectrum.

Most people don't think things in general are either a binary or a spectrum. I'm not sure where this obsession for labelling highly complex situations and experiences as binaries and spectrums comes from, but I've seen a few people do it.

Ahhh, sorry almond, I misread you - and yes, you are right "intersex" is the preferred nomenclature.

I should emphasize that I don't see a "spectrum" as running from A to B (I used a really bad metaphor to describe it as this, but as we are finding in this thread, metaphors aren't always that helpful!! We should probably stop this avoidance and start using the proper theoretical terminology, because all my metaphors are doing is sowing confusion all over the place!). I see it as pretty much anything that's not a binary - in my head it has many axes that are culturally variable. A "continuity" or "gradation" (as opposed to "defined points" of a binary) might be a better term - but even that's a problem because it could be interpreted as implying an infinity of possible options, when actually these are quite defined for any culture.

Buffy - Following on from that, I don't think there's a denial of a system or broader structures in post-structuralist approaches. I think they actually focus quite heavily on system, but see these (as you rightly say) as historically changeable because they are essentially power relations. The lens thing falls down for me - because it's not just about eternal universality vs temporal variability or big scale vs small scale but about the way these things are constituted (for me, there is no landscape 'out there' versus me 'in here' - that's precisely the model I'm trying to get outside of, IYSWIM!) I think there's a very different model of selfhood, agency and structure at work in each view, to the point that they aren't that commensurable. I am not sure it's possible to create a synthesis of Judith Butler and Germaine Greer because they seem to disagree at quite a fundamental level on quite a lot!

Whenshewas, it seems to me that you feel like a woman because you are a woman, and it is no more complicated than that

For me it could well be that simple. My genes, my hormones and my life experience mean that I have a female body and I feel female.

I just believe that for others it's not as straight forward.

How do any of these terms actually help?

In what sense is it a gradation?

A gradation like when things are put into an order by giving them grades?

A gradation like a colour gradation where one blends into the next?

Either way, gradation refers to a group of things that follow a specific order. What things, in which order?

I don't think we necessarily need more theoretical terminology. I think it is helpful for people to use language that accurately explains their thoughts, whether it is theoretical terminology or not.

I think this might be a case of typical mind fallacy. You think in a binary way. You think that everything is either a binary or it is a spectrum.

Everyone else isn't thinking that way. Everyone else isn't putting things on to axes all the time, although maybe some people think exactly like you. If you're reinterpreting other people's comments and ideas into that they mean a binary or a spectrum, I think you're not really going to understand their perspective.

Sorry I wanted to answer earlier but felt crap and tired so was a bit deep for me. Will go back to previous questions and then try to catch up :)

So if it was possible to diagnose gender disphoria using biological markers that would be OK?

I don't think that I get to decide whether something like gender dysphoria is "OK" or not. But certainly I'd feel a lot more personally convinced by the arguments if it could BOTH be biologically proven (not necessarily biologically diagnosed) AND it was proved that medical or social or therapeutic input was instrumental in improving or curing said dysphoria. With the emphasis on the second part rather than the first, there are many mental and neurodevelopmental issues which we tried to cure/help before we knew how to recognise or diagnose. I don't think that we have proof anything "works" yet which is why I remain a little bit sceptical. But I'm not a doctor and you don't need to convince me, you need to convince doctors if you want to advocate for treatment.

WRT nationality, yep you don't have the freedom to "identify" as any old nationality willy nilly, but people normally don't anyway. People tend to identify as some nationality which they have a connection to - either an ancestor or being born there or spending a large amount of time there. And for the most part it doesn't really matter which of the mish mash of countries which makes up most people's heritage that you identify as belonging to, unless you want to live and work there and you don't already, or you want to vote in elections there. For both you have to gain documents and go through legal processes. But living and working in a country and voting in a country's elections are not the same thing as being half French and half Irish. The latter is entirely nobody's business except your own, you can't be denied entry into any places because of it, nobody will refuse you a job because of it (well, if they do, they are being racist), and nationality has no bearing on visa eligibility but citizenship might do.

Maybe it's not a helpful analogy at all, sorry.

almondpudding perhaps that's why I'm getting confused/jaded about the whole thing. Yes, why is everything a binary or a spectrum? It can't be that simple, though?

Those are two different things though, aren't they - a type of ethnicity based on origins, and nationality.

Someone who has both French and Irish nationality has dual citizenship.

Someone who feels half French and half Irish due to their ancestry or living in a place for some time have that as their ethnicity, or part of their ethnicity. And ethnicity is self defined, but within certain social limits.

So I am mostly of Irish descent, but I consider my ethnicity to be English. Another person who is mostly of Irish descent but was born in England might consider themselves to be ethnically Irish.

But in a civic sense, neither of us is Irish. That is not our nationality.

Some people have an ethnicity and nationality that are the same, and some people have an ethnicity and nationality that are different.

But I think if I claimed, for example, to be Mexican by either ethnicity or nationality because I just liked some elements of Mexican culture, a lot of people would have massive issues with that.

I don't know Bertie.

It was a popular way of presenting things in some parts of social theory about 15 years ago, and I wonder if people picked it up there, or if that's just how some people think?

bertie

Re feeling British. It probably isn't a great analogy but I think you are stressing too much importance on are you actually British.

In my example person A & B are both British (& have a similar background).
Only difference is one feels British and the other doesn't.

As you said it's probably not a great analogy but the focus isn't on whether the two people are actually British (they are) but on what their feelings are about it.

I don't find it hard to understand why people feel British, or what that involves, even though I don't feel that way myself. When they explain it to me I can see how their feelings are different to mine.

I don't know how that relates to gender identity. I think you (Whenshewas!) are saying you have woman as your gender identity, but I can't see any difference between how you feel and I how I feel, but I don't consider myself to have woman as a gender identity.

YY When and I think that's where I started but got carried away with it. I know DH for example doesn't feel much of an affinity to being "British" or "English" except perhaps when he is mistaken for an American. He reckons he'd jump to German citizenship without much thought at all, if we stay here long enough. I think I'd find it harder mentally to give up my "Britishness". I suppose then this does relate to the gender identity thing, because I don't feel like I have a gender identity, if I woke up in a male body I'd be surprised and shocked of course and probably upset that I couldn't bear children any more but assuming that in this hypothetical situation everyone acted as though I'd always been male and didn't react to the change, I think I'd have no issues adopting the male body (some issues with learning the male social and cultural "language", of course) because I don't feel like my gender identity defines who I am.

But again this is nonsense because none of us know how we would react to the idea of changing our sex or the gender that others perceive us as and also it's not a situation which is actually going to happen.

almond

Ok so you don't feel British but I do. Does that have any impact on how we act day to day - probably not.

You don't feel female, I do. Does that affect how we act day to day - probably not, perhaps (only perhaps) with the exception of thinking about transwomen and transmen.

I do feel female in the way you have described. I have a female body and I have a lot of feelings related to my female body, that I think are part of my relationship to other women, my own mother, my son and daughter and so on.

I don't feel that I have a female gender identity. I still don't understand what one is.

I think that feeling British can change how people act day to day. Feeling English has an impact on the way I dress. I would probably dress differently if I didn't feel English.