Can transwomen live as women?

[chocladoodle]

I've been reading about the council appointed women's officer and some of the responses got me thinking. Obviously biology means that transwomen can never truly experience the lived experience of women, neither than being conditioned as male throughout their childhood in anyway can compensate the privilege automatically bestowed on them.

In this example it is especially ludicrous as we are talking about a 19yr old, but what about older transwoman. Could they, are they ever going to be accepted as 'woman' without controversy. Is there ever a right time for them to be given 'womens' posts etc.

As women we all have different life experiences and different needs/priorities. Some are lesbian, some heterosexual, some married to men, some to women, some with children, some in full time successful careers, some care givers, some unable to work because of childcare, some disabled etc etc. We all have different takes on life, and I will always hold onto biology to define us as a class, but no one woman can speak for all us. A straight woman, married to an abusive male, struggling with 3 children under 5 has very different needs to a middle age butch lesbian, with no children and a successful career, for example. Neither of these women could truly understand the others way of life.

With that in mind, is appointing a 'woman's post' to a transwoman (not a 19 yr old) that controversial? Until today I would have always said yes, must be a female, I'm not as sure now. I'm hoping some of you who have a better knowledge could help me get my head round this.

Socialising a transgender-identifying male from early childhood as if they were a girl will produce a transgender-identifying male who has been socialised as a girl and as a woman. It will not produce a girl (female child) or a woman (female adult).

Boys who are socialised as girls? I’m willing to bet not even the parents truly believe they’re girls.

Just boys who want to be girls. And they still get preferential treatment.

A women is an adult human female. It's not a lifestyle, or how men perceive our parking abilities or how vulnerable we think we are.

When men say they identify as a women or live as a women, what they really mean is they are not women but what to be seen as one. But they are still adult human males, and that is not a women.

I am irritated by the idea of 'living as a woman'. What does this mean?

I don't live as a woman. I just live.

For 364 days of the year I don't wear high heels, or makeup, or dresses, or jewellery.

If I had to pinpoint the parts of my life that make me a woman, I would cite periods, pregnancy, motherhood. Balancing impossible demands. Being responsible for everything and everyone. Being physically weaker than men. Oh, and being penalised in the workplace for taking maternity leave.

Not a costume that I don't even wear.

@Salmon - "you have completely misunderstood what it is to be trans if you think that trans women could just identify as 'effeminate gay men' "
You added the word 'just' and so are arguing with yourself.

My point (lost, it seems) was about the meaninglessness of social labels when compared to actual, scientific/biological facts.

Vesuvia, I would go further and argue that the boys who are being 'transitioned' from a very young age are not being socialised like girls - they are being socialised like boys in the midst of an abusive medical experiment.

It's impossible for parents, doctors, teachers - anyone who is aware of the boy's true sex, to treat that boy 'like a girl'. Because they know what he actually is, and will be acting accordingly, even if only subconsciously. Further, the cognitive dissonance the child will inevitably feel over the fact that his 'true self' exists in a physical self that is to be socially disguised and medically altered, at the same time as he is receiving excessive praise for being 'special' and 'brave', means his perception of his social situation cannot be like that of his female peers.

Similarly, even the few adult male transitioners who manage to 'pass' as female are not really being treated as women if anyone around them is aware of their trans status. The knowledge on the part of other people that the 'trans woman' is male gives him authority and entitlements that mere 'cis' women can only dream of.

In her book Sex Changes, Christine Benvenuto writes about the surreal experience of witnessing how her husband's transition to a 'woman' actually invested him with greater male authority than he had previously possessed. Once he started living in his feminine persona, he and everyone around him (therapists, friends, 'feminist' supporters) emphasised to Christine and her children the primacy of HIS needs, HIS feelings at all times. He was allowed to behave like a supreme patriarch within the family, and the feelings of his wife and children did not matter one bit. This is actually the opposite of what people expect of women - they are naturally expected to prioritise their husbands' and children's needs over their own, and most do so without a second thought.

And, I resent the fact that I spent so much of my career-building life fighting against the vagaries of a fulsome menstrual cycle that disarmed me for one week out of four. Exams, meetings, deadlines all met and passed with hard work and gritting my teeth against pain, confusion and impractical toilet visits etc etc etc.

I did all this because as a biological woman I am encumbered by nature/biology to do the hardest part to perpetuate the species.

So I resent one of the others, who has to do nothing much but spew some juice when having fun, to choose to slip on a dress and turn round and steal the gifts that should be mine or other natural-born women.

No transwoman can possibly know what is like to be a woman. No matter how many tablets they take or operations they have.

Just like no woman can possibly know what it is like to be a transwoman.

To lump them as "the same" is bonkers

DonkeySkin

You’ve nailed it.

Anyone who believes that transitioning means you live as a woman is sorely mistaken.

All the famous men who transition? Bruce Jenner, Kelly Maloney, Zoey Tur, Paris Lees, Shon Faye, Jane Fae, India Willoughby, Juno Dawson, Jazz Jennings.

Who the hell had ever heard of them before they transitioned? Even Bruce Jenner was an add-on to the Kardashians for the general public. And Kelly Maloney, feted and celebrated purely for being trans. I had no idea who he was before.

Give me a list of the top 10 transmen.

I’ll wait...

All those women who have transitioned and reached the dizzy heights of male privilege?

I only know of two transmen. One of them was famous for giving birth, the other in the papers for being raped. That’s living as a women.

The stupidity around this is ridiculous.

Transwomen who pass, shout it from the rooftops.

They do not, in anyone’s universe, live as women.

I think the Equality Act and GRA do need to be re-written, but it must be done with extra care. The conflation between gender and sex in written law is appalling.

So, even if a person applies and receives a GRC and gets a new birth certificate, the law says it isnt rewriting history, as the persons original birth certificate still exists. This person is protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment. Yet this is where it gets fuzzy, as their sex is changed on the birth certificate. This, in my opinion is where a rewrite is needed. There needs to be something that clearly states a TIM is still a male, but can be given the recognition of living as a woman.

The circus that society has become has conflated these two, and that is why we are seeing transwomen in women's posts etc. The law wasn't written with the intention of overwriting women surely.

I think that there could be a universal experience shared by all
transgender-identifying male people that is not shared by any female people.

It is:
wanting to transition from male/a boy/a man to female/a girl/a woman. i.e. the very fact of their male "transness".

(Women and girls who are not transgender would feel no transness. Women and girls who are transgender can only ever feel the female version of transness - i.e. wanting to be male, which is opposite and different to male transness.)

Could another way of putting this be: no female person has ever wanted to transition from male to female (because they are already female) nor return to being male (to cover the case of some detransitioning transwomen who consider themselves to have transitioned from male to female and then reverted to male). Could this perhaps be used as a response to the point often claimed by TRAs that there is no universal female experience?

I'd strengthen the Equality Act so that it was a hell of a lot clearer about protecting women, and at this point in the game I'd do away with the GRA altogether. Let men wear whatever clothes they like, use whatever name they like, live however they like, all with full protection from harrassment, but don't give them the right to claim anywhere that they are women.

chocladoodle I agree. The law needs to do away with the thing whereby a GRC means for all intents and purposes you are of the opposite sex.

I'm almost tempted to say ditch the GRA altogether. I'm pretty sure discrimination due to gender presentation is already in the equality act.

This would massively simplify everything. You can present how you like and can't be discriminated against bit you can't change your sex That way everyone is protected.

And I'm sorry but I'm starting to not give a shit that TIMs insist they are women - they are not and they should not be allowed in female spaces at all.

Previous to all this shit I would have said live and let live, bit thanks to the TRAs it has become clear that sex can't be changed , and in single sex spaces must remain single sex without exception - there is no other safe way to draw a line.

Datun wrote - "All the famous men who transition? Bruce Jenner, Kelly Maloney, Zoey Tur, Paris Lees, Shon Faye, Jane Fae, India Willoughby, Juno Dawson, Jazz Jennings.
Who the hell had ever heard of them before they transitioned? Even Bruce Jenner was an add-on to the Kardashians for the general public."

I agree with you about everyone you have listed, except for Jenner.

Jenner, when known as Bruce Jenner, was world famous in the 1970s, so if people have not heard of Jenner until recently that is a function of time passing, not that nothing noteworthy was ever achieved by Jenner when known as Bruce.

The GRA should be defunct now. What with same-sex marriages etc there's really no point to it.

People with severe gender dysphoria would be negatively affected by this though, and I think this point needs further exploration. It is a medical condition, one of many, but the only one I can think of that has a law specifically in place to assist? That can't be right, is it? Also, isnt America thinking about doing away with this as a medical condition?

DonkeySkin wrote - "boys who are being 'transitioned' from a very young age are not being socialised like girls - they are being socialised like boys in the midst of an abusive medical experiment."

Thanks for pointing out that distinction. I agree with you.

The law wasn't written with the intention of overwriting women surely.

Title IX in the US was a law written specifically to protect women on the basis of their sex. It is the exact same law that allowed trans people to access everything female.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX

People with severe gender dysphoria would be negatively affected by this though, and I think this point needs further exploration

Why? My understanding of gender dysphoria is that you feel in the wrong body. If people have gender dysphoria they should be able to get the treatment they need (even surgery if it is properly researched to be the best option). But do they really need to become "officially" the opposite sex?

vesuvia

Yes, I agree about Bruce Jenner.

Although there are now very few people who have not heard of him. Whereas before, you would have had to have been into sport.

He’s now famous for nothing more than being trans.

ItsAll - I agree with what you've said. Why does a medical condition have a law specifically for it?
The GRA was introduced purely as it meant trans people couldn't get married, that's no longer the case.

Why do we need the GRA?

Datun Kelly Mahoney was well known as a succesful boxing promoter prior to transition. I had heard of him even just as a casual boxing fan.
Chaz Bono is a famous FTT , though probably would not be famous if not born to famous parents. Though they're not alone in that respect.

Medical conditions that are severe and long term (which dysphoria is both) are already covered by the disability section.

IMO, a new GRA would be appropriate for intersex people, and they shouldn't have to pay a fee.

counterpoint
Is this person a woman or not? (No trans element in this link - just CAIS - Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome):
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11381463/Woman-born-with-no-womb-gives-birth-to-miracle-twins.html
She is genetically male with XY chromosomes. No-one had any idea she was anything other than a perfectly normal little girl at birth. The doctors were probably perfectly satisfied; the midwife would have held her legs apart shortly after birth and declared "congratulations - you have a baby girl". Her parents would have registered a girl and even she herself would have grown up as a girl with no "gender identity" issues whatsoever. In fact no idea that anything was "different" about her until she was 19.

Yet - with a greater or lesser feeling of loss - she's barred from your kitchen due to having a Y chromosome.

Likewise, this woman was born with (presumably) XX chromosomes, but without a uterus, cervix and only a partial vagina.
www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a9100737/womankind-woman-born-without-womb-vagina/
She needed a vaginal re-construction. So is she a woman, if she wasn't born with a vagina? Is it in fact a vagina at all?? As one MN user posted in regard to such re-construction surgery "it's not a vagina - it's a hole made for sex". I can understand how the distinction would be lost on some men, but it's important to women.

Just a thought.

I'll leave the interested reader to read up on Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser Syndrome (MRKH) and the (remarkably simple) role of the Y-chromosome.

What about a 50 year old biological male who went through HRT and full surgery at the age of 20, and has been living as a woman for 30 years.

Someone whose formative years were spent as a male, you mean? Jeez.