Transwomen answer why they are women

[Bambambini]

Haven't seen these articles before. People are always saying TW never answer the question, thought these articles were quite interesting.

gendergp.co.uk/what-makes-me-a-woman-hannah-massie-050217/

m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/14427568?

Well precisely.

If it's not biology, and it can't be lived experience, and it's not hair, clothes or make up. There's nothing left.

Nothing that we know of. I guess you'd have to find someone who had transitioned but was still a "tomboy", i.e. Dressed like a man and had all the outward trappings of one.

But to be honest I don't have enough personal experience to be an expert.

What someone like Danielle Muscato?

"reducing being a woman/ female to genitals" (biology basically).

the word reducing is the misogynistic bit of that. I don't feel in any way 'reduced' by having biology which allowed me to grow and feed a whole new person!

I lost them when they said we think with our brains. They've clearly not grown up with PMT - whether from their mum or themselves. Part of what makes us female is our hormones. Of course we think with our brains, but both society and hormones affect how our brains work.

I do understand what it means to be out of synch with your physical sex, because I was like that, too. Not to the extent of complete body dysmorphia and self-hatred, but feeling lost, confused, worried, scared of my poor fit.

What sufferers of other body dysmorphias receive is emotional support and psychiatric treatment. Not the world bending itself round and forcing everyone else to conspire in the dysmorphia!

A male friend of mine used to spend a lot of time talking about how women were all caring, nurturing and respected automatically by men. Whenever I said that wasn't always the case and men could be patronizing and abusive it was explained to me that I was mistaken. A few years later he underwent gender reassignment still with this idealised view of womanhood.

This lasted until she took her car to be serviced for the first time. It was an enormous eye opener especially as she was technically minded and had never previously felt that garages were trying to pull the wool over her eyes. She was really shocked to be treated with contempt and her subsequent experiences didn't always tally with her assumptions of what life as a woman was all about.

I suspect she was far from unique in her pre op views

"It was an enormous eye opener...."

I've come across similar stories from transmen, in particular one story where someone returned to work and was assumed to be the brother of the previous female in the job. They noted how much better he was at the job............

Q

I'm a bit confused by your post goody I think with my brain at all times of the month.

.

I've read a similar thing to SomeDyke about a detransitioner who said that she realised that she'd been attracted to transitioning because it was an unconscious way of trying to escape misogyny. However, when she started passing as a man, men started talking about women around her in an even more misogynistic way (because they assumed that she was also male) and that was even worse for her because it made her realise how real misogyny was.

Obviously it's a reversal of the situation in mustbe's post but in both situations the transperson was surprised about the reality of passing and therefore truly being seen as the opposite sex. Which means that they clearly didn't know what it felt like to be the opposite sex beforehand.

This discussion is SO fascinating and I resonate with so much of what all of you are contributing. FINALLY we have a space to discuss this topic without having to censor ourselves for fear of coming across as anti-trans, or being misogynistic for not automatically including a TW when she says she is one. I'm really struggling with this notion of word censorship now and the over PC way of having to make sure everyone is comfortable. Example: I went to a meeting and we had to refrain from saying "woman", "mother" "breastfeeding" or "she". We were supposed to say things like "womb holder" "chestfeeding" (WTF), and "they". Even though this was a meeting about childbirth and lactation support. I am a lefty-left-left and a die hard liberal BUT.... this is getting ridiculous. You wanna be trans, fine, go for it, but this over the top INCLUSION is almost too much.

There are so many degrees of being a "woman" that can't fully be explained or even experienced by someone unless they grew up as a female. I feel like we fucking FOUGHT to get here, we are still fighting for so much in our culture. In my mind I just can't get past the point of this still being about men's privilege to decide that they feel enough like a woman to take this away from us too. It's a weird dichotomy of feelings with this issue.

I have not read one satisfactory answer from transwomen about why they feel they are women, not one. When frequenting the Guardian I have directly asked the TW posters on there and it's all vague waffley replies they give. I'm banned from commenting on trans issues on there now. I asked a perfectly legitimate question the other day about a trans topic and it got pulled with no explanation, fucking infuriating. It's only on here and a Reddit sub that I can be trans critical.

In that case, qumquat, you've never experienced the grisly depths of PMS and menopause.