Pregnant trans men Guardian article

[Todayissunny]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/22/story-one-mans-pregnancy-trans-jason-barker

I just find this so confusing....
It tells me that we should just be able to live how we want to. We should absolutely not be defined by gender.

Or am I just really, really old fashioned that this is just absolutely crazy.

merry I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying but I don't think I understand your final question. What is being signalled... by who? In what circumstance?

I don't claim to have the definitive answers any more than I think anyone else has, but Stillscreaming touched on it on a post earlier on; if you analyse yourself, your behaviours, your preferences, I think all of us have to admit we can't be completely sure those things were a free choice for us and not somehow a product of our environment. But equally we can't ascertain which are the manifestation of something innate - an inherited aptitude for music perhaps - or was it that your mother was a wonderful pianist and expected you to be? It's impossible to unpick why you are who you are, short of scientists identifying the genes for one thing or another, or identifying the environment most like to produce "X" result.

So what do you and Caitlin Jenner share beyond what you might share with any other human? The thing is it doesn't matter, because the things you DO share with any other person alive, most of those things we have no idea if you share them because you both have something innate which is the same (e.g. "womanhood"), or if it's just the product of cumulative circumstance.

Caitlin may think it's because you're both women, in some way.

You may think it's just a product of circumstance, randomness or individual choice.

At this point noone can prove it either way.

Believe in the existence of sex is evidence based. Belief in the existence of gender isn't.

Knowledge of gender is evidence based, we know that we gender clothes, names, pronouns and loads of other things. There is nothing innately biological about calling girls Kate and boys Kevin, that's a social construct.

What we have no proof for, is how much of gender or gendered behaviour is taught and how much is innate.

As an old lesbian, I know loads of other old lesbians many of whom have had children via assisted conception, which overwhelming, leads to male children. Some have done their absolute best to raise their boy in as gender free an environment as they can.

One is particular was quite a committed second wave feminist, her boys were taught to pee sitting down, had an array of colourful, non gender specific clothes, were give dolls, not toy guns etc, were encouraged to feel and share their emotions. All of the stuff that we thought would cure gendered behaviour.

She didn't raise them in a lab, the did socialise but they didn't have television and didn't spend much time around adult men.

By about four, they were pulling the arms of their beautiful dolls to use as pretend guns to shoot each other and taking great delight in peeing standing up. They are nice young men but they don't stand out as being particularly sensitive or unsullied by gendered behaviour.

Of course, this is an anecdote about a single family, it's not 'evidence' of anything. We don't raise children in laboratories because that would be cruel, we can't establish what's outside influence and what comes from within.

I have anything in common with other women beyond living with the consequences of similar biology.

There is nothing about our biology that presupposes us for the shit work. I don't have an extra hand for washing up or an extra set of eyes for watching a child but, overwhelming, women do the majority of shit work throughout the world.

On the whole, men tend to be bigger and stronger but there is a lot of human variation, there are some women bigger and stronger than some men. Those bigger and stronger women aren't pulled and role swapped with the smaller weaker men. You can't but gender roles purely down to biology because we have some variation in biology.

This is just one more of the Guardian's endless and tedious "me, me, me" articles by and about people doing perfectly ordinary things which the rest of the world just gets on with but which the writer has to make a song and dance about.

The "pregnant man" stories caught attention with the first few until readers realised it wasn't a pregnant man. What this person needs to realise is that apart from themselves and the Guardian no one is interested.

I don't have an extra hand for washing up or an extra set of eyes for watching a child but, overwhelming, women do the majority of shit work throughout the world.

Because historically women have been stuck at home having babies and many still are.

Women have less access to education in many countries because they don't have access to sanitation when they have a period.

Women struggle to earn money or access education once they have children.

There are many, many countries where maternal death rates are higher than 1 in 100.

Period poverty exists in the UK.

Women only started to be in control of their fertility in the 1960s.

Men aren't even biologically impelled to stick around after sex.

By about four, they were pulling the arms of their beautiful dolls to use as pretend guns to shoot each other and taking great delight in peeing standing up.

But girls do this too.

But girls do this too.

And yet it is a recognised stereotype of boyhood.

...and not of girlhood.

But girls do this too

And yet it is a recognised stereotype of boyhood

Stillscreaming and her friend despite (I assume) thiking of themselves as gender critical have simply decided that fairly typical child behaviour is typical boy behaviour.

My daughter 'signalled', I suppose. She has elder brothers, quite a few years older. She wanted all their toys and none of her own. She would also use something innocuous as a gun. She wanted to pee standing up , and asked almost daily where her penis was. She wore boys' uniform in reception, and occasionally asked to be called 'Lucas'. She grew out of it.

What she was actually signalling was that in her world, boys had it better: better stuff, more freedom, later bedtime. Because they were 7-10 years older. She didn't want to be a boy as such; she just wanted what they had. To the extent of sobbing, aged 2, because we had left her 'Latin' book in the car. It was just a picture book; but they had Latin books for school and she wanted one too.

Well you can bet the girls are quickly realised that they couldn’t pee standing up

And are probably swiftly told that guns are for boys as most of my female peers were

Nature or nurture?

My donor-conceived son raised in a single parent household has never pulled the arm off a doll and made it into a gun. He doesn't even like guns now. Is that my parenting? I suspect it's about the sort of person he is.

We find anecdata, like the embroidered maternity clothes and women cowering from a non-binary woman in the changing room, to fit our worldview, rather than the other way around.

And yet it is a recognised stereotype of boyhood.

Aren't we lucky that we now live at a time when we increasingly don't have to conform to stereotypes? Isn't it a shame that public policy is being created that enforces stereotypes?

I Find what you sa8d (quoted below)below very helpful Rat. I think I now get what you say about us participating in the construction...

But it does seem to be only certain aspects of the roles gendered “woman” that are signalled IYSWIM? Even when the person transitioning is fully grown (ie a born man in their 30s/40s) we only seem to see the “signalling” that I would associate with teenagers. Including the selfishness of teenagers.

Is it something to do with having missed out on feeling desired/looked at with desire when young?

“Here you go merry, I copied from my other post. So when someone like Jazz says they knew they were a girl because they liked dresses as a toddler, it's most likely a really cack-handed way of saying that they were compelled to "signal" themselves as a girl; by whatever means was currently associated with girlhood (i.e. dresses). And that this, to them, was one of the first indications that something inside themselves truly is a girl.

I believe some people cite stereotypical interests as reasons why they knew they were trans because to them they felt they were being drawn to express their allegiance to a particular group, indicating to them that they really were a member of that group in some way. It's called signalling. It doesn't matter what the signs are that one would use to display one's belonging to a particular group, or that the signs are different in different parts of the world; it is the desire to "signal" one's belonging that transpeople are commenting on in these circumstances.”

We don't know why women are opressed and held in low regard, we can't prove that it's because of our biology.

What else do all women have in common that could cause it if not biology?

I don't doubt for a second that some idiot on Twitter has said that. I think that it would be entirely reasonable to tell that idiot what you think of that idea,

Except it's more than one idiot. I've seen women have been thrown out of women centric Facebook groups by an angry mob of such idiots. Ive seen Twitter censor a women's art account for showing pictures of art of women's body parts and referring to it as "female". You are wilfully blind Stillscreaming. Your agenda is very clear.

There is nothing about our biology that presupposes us for the shit work

It's September. Two teenagers have just had sex and a baby has been conceived. Which one is going to have more difficulty taking their exams in June?

This Horizon programme discusses some interesting experiments on how boys and girls are affected by being treated differently:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04knbny/horizon-20142015-7-is-your-brain-male-or-female

@ merrymouse

All of what you say is true, all of the things you claim impact the poorest and most vulnerable women are accurate but what about the women we both read about in AIBU? The ones who do have access to free contraception and abortion, are financially independant, who are educated and have feminist leanings; why are they still doing as much of the shit work as more vulnerable women.

I read about childless women, working full time, bringing in a good salary, women who to my outsiders eye, have nothing chaining them to their relationships, still doing all the shit work?

We all know the thing that society overtly teaches girls, to be attractive, to be accomadating, to be thin, to be quiet and we know that we internalise those things to greater and lesser degrees but why can so many of us reject the beauty myth but not the, much less overt, shit work myth?

What else do all women have in common that could cause it if not biology?

She doesn't know. It could be like, literally anything that could cause it. You can't prove it's sex therefore you don't know!!!

Rat, am I right in thinking that in the exchange below you yourself accept that “girls do this too” ? That is how I read you.

I think that boys and girls both exhibit both the behaviours but the non-assigned behaviours get frowned on by society.

“But girls do this too.

And yet it is a recognised stereotype of boyhood.
Add message | Report | Message poster RatRolyPoly Sat 24-Mar-18 10:20:57
...and not of girlhood.”

Also it's foolish to dismiss social media as irrelevant. Like it or not policy is defined and changed because of "idiots on Twitter".

What is shit work? What makes it shit?

Parenting capable adults because they refuse to engage with family life is shit work.

It’s not the shit work that the trans identified males want, though, is it? If it was innate, they would