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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Why can't you *feel* like a woman?

255 replies

polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 03:07

I might be wrong but after reading some of the threads it seems some woman can't feel like a woman: Womanhood is merely biological.

I am biologically a woman and feel like a woman. I just wonder why that's such a contested concept?

OP posts:
OnTheList · 05/05/2018 03:12

Woman is not a 'feeling' its a state of being.

Of course some people may genuinely believe they 'feel like women'. But..how can you know what something feels like if you are not that thing, if that makes sense? I cannot possibly know what it feels like to be my husband/brother/sister/etc. I can only know what it feels like to be me.

Its an odd question to think about really. It sets me off down some weird thinking and I end up thinking things like 'how am I thinking this, how does my brain know I am thinking' and so on and end up with a huge headache and in a bit of a trance sometimes Grin

ALittleBitofVitriol · 05/05/2018 03:17

polkadotwellies

What are you describing when you say you feel like a woman, precisely? What is this feeling, where does it come from, how do you experience it?
And is this feeling more fundamental to womanhood than our biology or socialisation?

OkPedro · 05/05/2018 03:20

How exactly do you feel like a woman?
I just feel like me, it so happens I am a woman
Do you mean you like pink and sparkly things and love cooking and cleaning?

BettyFloop · 05/05/2018 03:30

I'm really interested in this @polkadotwellies

Can you explain what it feels like to be an adult human female please?

KeefBurtain · 05/05/2018 03:35

I’m not a fan of pink and sparkly things, never had my nails done and hate shopping, never considered myself particularly ‘girlie’

But last week as I lay there with my feet in stirrups, speculum in my vagina, whilst the gynaecologist removed retained products of conception from my cervix with a forceps, I had never felt more like a woman in my life.

MadBadDaddy · 05/05/2018 03:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BettyFloop · 05/05/2018 03:49

KeefBurtain
I'm so sorry. And that's so brutally sad.
But I understand what you're saying - feeling like a woman is such a contested fucking concept?!

Just try actually being an adult human female.

(Most males can't even cope with having a cold....)

Flowers for your loss

polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 03:52

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 03:54

Keefburtain Flowers

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thebewilderness · 05/05/2018 04:03

I always felt like a people.
A person pretty much like every other person.
Things were done to me because I was a girl. So I dissociated.
Adults told me over and over that i was a girl a tomboy girl and that I could not do things because of that.
It was all I could do to get back that feeling of being a person. Being picked at constantly and then the menstruation and pregnancy all brought home to me that I am a woman, but the feeling that accompanied those experiences were not ones of "womanliness" as I have heard women express their pride of identity. My feelings were more along the lines of what fresh hell is this.

BettyFloop · 05/05/2018 04:14

Thanks for that explanation of what it feels like to be a woman polkadotwellies - I appreciate the time it took.

Just out of interest... have you read KeefBurtain's post above? Keef's brief but so painful account of what it actually feels like to be a woman - adult human female - is something only a female human can feel. A human man/male can never know that quintessentially biological female experience and I'm not prepared to pretend they can.

What goes on in someone's head is their own mental health issue.

(Went on a bit of a rant after that but decided not to post so that's all I'm saying for now.)

BettyFloop · 05/05/2018 04:16

TBW Flowers and much love - always and forever. ww

MrsTerryPratchett · 05/05/2018 04:27

@KeefBurtain Thanks

polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 04:36

Bettyfloop. Yes I did and it's so so sad. Keef thinking of you.

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DioneTheDiabolist · 05/05/2018 04:40

I don't have the time or energy to feel like a woman. I am too busy feeling like a mother, daughter, partner, employee, friend, client, service provider, knackered person, customer to specifically feel like a woman.

I am interested though. How will I know when I am feeling like a woman? Does it involve an all expenses paid spa weekend in a No Mobile Phone zone? Please say yes.

polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 04:48

Bettyfloop yes that's why I think in the trans debate has almost made it bad to say I feel like a woman.

For me it does exist and it would be a shame if I could only feel like a person.

It shows it's nothing really to do with gender as such but what experience of certain emotions as a biological women does to shape our minds and reactions ect.

OP posts:
Ekphrasis · 05/05/2018 04:56

keef ThanksThanksThanksThanks

I was coming on to post a separate post (not sure if I will now or not) but I saw this on twitter and just felt it summarised society's gender issue. There's a lot of wool pulled over our eyes growing up regarding gender. A truly equal world would have no word for gender.

Why can't you *feel* like a woman?
Ekphrasis · 05/05/2018 05:02

For me womanhood is biological but defines my identity and mind.

All our experiences define our identity and minds as individuals. But there are uniquely biological female exp

Ekphrasis · 05/05/2018 05:08

Arse finger slip.

For me womanhood is biological but defines my identity and mind.

All our experiences define our identity and minds as individuals. But there are uniquely biological female experiences and experiences driven by gender ideology. It's almost impossible to escape the gender stuff growing up so it's woven into your 'identity,' but in reality it's nothing to do with your biological reality or identity.

Having a child and mcs didn't make me more of a 'woman,' though I'm more able to identify with other women who've had those experiences since I've had them.

thebewilderness · 05/05/2018 05:08

For me it does exist and it would be a shame if I could only feel like a person.

For others, who have been told they were lesser all their lives, feeling like a person and not an object is a goal to strive for.

polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 05:10

DioneTheDiabolist

If you can feel like all those other things why are you offended at feeling like a woman. It's like I've been misogynistic and that's the partIdon't understand.

I'm not determining it's a conscious and constant filter to the world. I'm specifically talking about feeling like a woman because of threads in the feminist board.

OP posts:
polkadotwellies · 05/05/2018 05:23

For others, who have been told they were lesser all their lives, feeling like a person and not an object is a goal to strive for.

Feeling like a woman is not feeling like an object. It's a shame you feel they are interchangeable. Feeling like a woman may include experience of objectification and then how you respond to evoked emotions is up to you and 'your feeling'.

One psychologist says feeling is how we percieve emotion. In this sense I think it shows positively or negatively how our womanhood changes our views or associations.

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YimminiYoudar · 05/05/2018 05:36

Quite a lot of the time I feel like a tiger, an enormous dinosaur or a very small and hibernating doormouse, but the rest of the time I feel like a human person. I have a fairly flexible identity as far as species goes.

In some of my sexual fantasies I am male, and male-bodied.
But what I actually am, a human female, is dictated by my dna and that cannot be changed.

Happily it doesn't have to define me as I can and do reject a lot of the social and cultural expectations of womanhood in terms of clothing, presentation, following a STEM career and being assertive and contributing equally in business meetings (and no I won't sort out the coffee for everyone), and household responsibilities which are genuinely shared entirely equally.
I generally dislike my body, especially the inconveniently large boobs and the annoying way it bleeds painfully each month.

My lack of "identifying" as a woman hasn't made the slightest bit of difference to the various occasions that I have been subjected to verbal or physical sexual abuse. When an abusive man wants to be abusive it is his perception that decides what you are.

The extent to which I personally embraced womanhood was entirely irrelevant to the dozens of employers to whom I made job applications in my early 30s (happily I wasn't unemployed, just desperately unhappy with my current employment) and as I got to the final two candidates over and over again and then was told that it was really close but in the end they went for the other candidate (a man) every single bloody time. I have no doubt that at least some of these occasions were down to them seeing "woman" and thinking "childbearing age. Babies. Maternity leave". Women are not discriminated against due to their identity or presentation. Just their biology.

Each person can only experience and perceive their own experiences and perceptions by definition. Except in the case of mental illness, which obviously should be treated, any disjointedness between how you feel personally to be and what society and culture expect of your sex should be addressed by changing and challenging sexist societal and cultural expectations. You can't wish yourself into a different pigeonhole in the minds of other people. Work towards building a world without pigeonholes. It is hard and will take generations to achieve but it will be a lot more successful than fantasising that biology doesn't exist.

thebewilderness · 05/05/2018 05:38

Feeling like a woman is not feeling like an object
Is that what you think? How nice for you.
WE ARE NOT THINGS!
Is one of our battle cries, because after a lifetime of being treated like an object women feel it.

thebewilderness · 05/05/2018 05:40

It's a shame you feel they are interchangeable.

That is such an effed up repulsive thing to say to a woman that I have nothing more to say to a person who would say such a thing.