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

[polkadotwellies]

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?

I am no more ‘womanly’ post children than I was pre children. I don’t know what ‘womanly’ means. I am a parent, but so is my husband. I certainly don’t feel that being a parent has made me less competitive or more calm.

I am not questioning anybody else’s experience, but if something can’t be objectively described or observed I don’t understand how it can usefully be related to a group.

This is the thing though isn't it.

I don't feel that having kids has changed me particularly apart from now I have lots of extra responsibility and a lot less money and the poeple who live in my house and that I love are more in number!

I think the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and parenting maybe makes some women feel less "womanly" if they don't feel or meet the things that are "supposed" to happen?

This is a cause of a lot of distress particularly among mothers I think, because the template is narrow and idealistic and plenty of women don't experience all the pieces, or any of the pieces sometimes.

I just think that listing traits and saying whether they conform to ideas of masculinity / femininity and then matching people to them is a fairly pointless exercise? And then you have people like the evoluntionary psychs who take it one step furtehr and decide that the list >> the people >> all that type of people are like that >> because of some made up thing cavemen did.

If I made a list of what I feel forms my identity and what traits I have (risk taking, competition etc) it would be different to everyone elses.

I have issues as well around the way the traits are gendered in the first place. Everything is from the view of default male. When you look at something like risk taking, from a female perspective, we take risks that are not recogised as risks because they do not apply to default male or that teh cosequences are not recogised as severe because the gauge for everythinng is default male.

So I come from the standpoint that even the "givens" are up for questioning.

Example might be.

Young man drives car too fast at night. Commonly recognised as classic high risk behviour.

Young woman goes home after the pub with man she doesn't know. Or even man she does know... There is risk here, and she knows it, and she takes the risk. Is this seen as classic high risk behaivour though? No, it is seen as risky but framed as "she's stupid". It is seen differently.

I look at what I did when I was young and I see a HIGH amount of risk taking, that would not be sort of assessed, considered in the same way as the behaviour that everyone thinks about with young men and as a result says "young men are much more prone to risk taking than young women".

Hope that makes some kind of sense!

xpost with merrymouse who put part of what I said way more succinctly!

For a 20 year old to ID as a 70 year old might be a better comparison. As, they have never been 70, or even near, and while they might try to imagine what it feels like, they can't fully know, and anyway, 70yo don't all feel the same.

Yes, thats absolutely true. Age works that way around, and not the other.

I don't feel that having kids has changed me particularly apart from now I have lots of extra responsibility and a lot less money and the poeple who live in my house and that I love are more in number!

I think having kids made me grow up a lot. Before having them I actually had a horrendous temper, and (bad thing to admit on here) would use recreational drugs on a regular basis. I fell pregnant by accident, I was on the pill AND my partner was using condoms. Thats how much we did not feel ready. Well, he had children from a previous relationship, it was me really that was not ready for the responsibility, and mainly because I enjoyed my drug addled lifestyle too much tbh. Obviously when I fell pregnant, the drugs had to stop. I had a miscarriage a few months in, and everyone expected me to go back 'to normal' but I then pined for the child I had lost and really really wanted another, so I never started the drugs again. Luckily, a month later I was pregnant again, and this time I really really wanted it. Long story short, I was worried that my temper would be an issue but it never has been, it seemed to just...go away once I had my child. Its not just with her either, when people wind me up or try to start trouble, I am so unusually calm and do not bite. It felt odd to start with,. but I have got used to it now

So yeah, I do think having kids changed me, and for the better.

I think the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and parenting maybe makes some women feel less "womanly" if they don't feel or meet the things that are "supposed" to happen?

Pregnancy is the only time in my life I ever felt 'like a woman', and the only reason I felt that way, was because only women can get pregnant in the first place. I was in awe of my body and everything it was doing actually.

merrymouse I am not questioning anybody else’s experience, but if something can’t be objectively described or observed I don’t understand how it can usefully be related to a group.

I see what you mean, however humans regularly group people based on personality, or other vague notions of things like nationality. These are broad, hard to measure. I think we are a select group on here. If you went to the public at large, they would have no qualms about assigning themselves feeling of gender. The feminists would say that's all because of conditioning. I'm think it goes deeper and is relatively unexplored, maybe that's why it's hard to define. Greer in her Female Eunuch talks a lot about developing femaleness away from the make gaze, liberating the feminine in us, exploring what femininity really is. I feel there is this idea in British feminism that women are exactly the same as men but with social conditioning and certain physical and sex differences tacked on. I'm just beginning to understand it might not be the case.

If you went to the public at large, they would have no qualms about assigning themselves feeling of gender.

I would think that when asking the general public how they know they are a man/woman they would generally say 'because I am'. Or refer to biology. The only other possible way to answer is to revert to stereotypes. Which obviously do not apply to everyone who is male or female. So I know I am a woman because I like to bake cakes is bollocks, as many women do not like to bake cakes, and many men do.

Also

I feel there is this idea in British feminism that women are exactly the same as men but with social conditioning and certain physical and sex differences tacked on.

Well yes, women are the same as men, except when they are not, sounds about right

The differences are biology, and then how people treat us based on biology. If you think there is more than this, please explain what else? I have never seen anyone attempt to explain this, and am actually genuinely interested in the reply.

am actually genuinely interested in the reply. I am too. I'm glad you ask because it prompts me to think more. I don't have easy answers to give. Having read Greer, and thought about how I personally have developed, and compared my experiences with other women in RL, I do think there is something deeper. I am not the same as man. Even if you could rewind the clock, give me a hysterectomy, pump me full of testosterone, and bring me up as a male, I don't think I would be like a stereotypical man. I can't do the experiment. I can only say what I believe, which is terribly unsatisfactory, I know. As I said previously, is my development linked to oxytocin and the female hormones I've been subjected to through my life? That's plausible. Do I think it is cognitive? Well, hormones are controlled by the brain, so yes. More than that? I don't know (yes, I've read and enjoyed Fine's book - even she, if you read carefully, does not conclude men and women's brains are identical, she does says they are vastly more similar than most people would believe).

I haven't read any Fine or any Greer. Its on my to do list, honest!

I don't think its only hormones and biology. But also how people treat you based on that biology. Which will play a large part in forming your personality. We can only go on what we think though, as no experiment would ever happen due to the nature of the question tbh.

The reason I don't believe in innate gender identity is because I don't have one at all. I have thought about this so much and even if I woke up tomorrow in a male body, I would still feel the same. I would obviously be a bit freaked out at first, but I would get used to it. I don't 'feel like' a woman, so I would just..deal with it. I might even enjoy the extra freedom men get!

Of course its possible that gender identity is real and I simply am 'a-gender' and this is why I don't 'feel like' a woman. But I can only really go off what I personally believe. I do think that others really believe they have a gender identity, and respect that belief. Just, I don't believe in it myself at all. I guess its very similar to being an athiest. I do not believe in god at all. But I respect that other people do believe it. This whole 'gender' thing is very similar to a religion I think. You either believe, or you don't, or are somewhere inbetween. But you cannot try to force people who don't believe to believe.

If this post seems odd, its because I was just typing it all as it came into my head, so its my thought process

I know I am a woman when I look at my body, my biology

I feel like a woman through shared experience - in waves of different intensity through my life....

• being told I couldn't fight because I wasn't a boy- aged about 8 (I've always loved a bit of rough and tumble!)
• being allowed into the Headmistresses garden with the other girls, but none of the boys because they were too rough
• enjoying the power of looking sexy and how men reacted
• dancing in Heaven with mates and feeling SO LIBERATED that none of the men were interested in me and I could just be myself
• overwhelmingly when giving birth - the most amazing miracle in this world
• as a young mum, as a "mother" - sharing joys and challenges of babyhood
• in middle age as menopause rampages
• sharing and talking to DD as she grows up... exploring thoughts and boundaries

and most of all now, when I feel deeply threatened at an almost visceral level by the incursion of men with penises into our female spaces, whether physical or social

You can't feel like a woman because being a woman is not a feeling.

however humans regularly group people based on personality, or other vague notions of things like nationality.

Nationality isn’t a vague notion, it is a legal status that can only be gained through certain routes. It has nothing to do with personality.

Humans might sometimes attempt to group people by making assumptions about personality, but ill-founded generalisations have no place in government or law.

It’s not objective. You can’t have a subjective definition and base rights around it. If anyone could identify as disabled and claim disability benefits, then it becomes useless (and yes I know this benefit is prone to fraud already, but the point stands I think).

Also it’s circular. A woman feels like a woman.

If anyone could identify as disabled and claim disability benefits, then it becomes useless (and yes I know this benefit is prone to fraud already, but the point stands I think).

On the contrary, the rate of fraud in disability benefits is extraordinarily low.

But I get what you are saying. Just felt the need to point that out as a lot of people seem to think disability benefits have a huge margin of fraud, when its not actually true. if anything, people who should be able to claim are denied and have to go through year+ long tribunal processes (I include myself in that, even with seriously shitloads of medical evidence behind me, the word of someone who was a retired midwife, with no experience of my illness was taken over my consultants, GP, pain clinic, the lot)

I was unaware, where I’m from people claiming a bad back happens quite a lot apparently (relatively speaking). There’s also evidence such claims increase during recessions. But fair enough, i think what you said just makes the point stronger.

Disability is interesting.

Many forms (not DSS) now ask "do you identify as having a disability" or similar -

Many people are not "officially" disabled, as it were, but still have limitations, and there is a huge amount of personal and political stuff around disability.

So people can and do "identify as" disabled - people who another observer might say in their view was not. It's all subjective.

Where it's not something like a diversity form - and material benefits can be gained, then there are objective tests (or they try to be) and there is a certain threshold of disability that needs to be passed.

The interesting one is on some public sector jobs they commit to interviewing anyone who declares they have a disability (but they don't check, obviously).

Anyway.

When there are material benefits, then you need to have an objective test of some type.
Where there are no material benefits, does it matter? Yes, I suppose, if it takes something from someone else e.g. some of their space. Most people would say that "identifying as disabled" when you wanted to use the accessible toilet was a shitty thing to do.

Not sure where I'm going with this really :D just that disability is maybe not such a cut and dried example as it appears at first sight.

Should say that on the diversity forms stuff (again DSS aside), plenty of people who others would say are disabled prefer NOT to identify this way, for personal reasons.

Like I say, not so cut and dried.

I've just eaten a whole bag of fruit pastilles as I'm pre menstrual and craving sugar.

I feel sick

I know I'm a woman due to the pending blood

I was unaware, where I’m from people claiming a bad back happens quite a lot apparently (relatively speaking).

I would genuinely love to know how they manage this, given the sheer amount of medical proof thats needed in order to claim disability benefits. I need to learn something from them tbh, as I have a shitload of proof yet am still denied.

Maybe it's more difficult in the UK, I don't know. Certainly with back, it should be easy. It's not understood, is it? You could have a problem in a totally different place and it results in back pain. You could have a disc problem but it turns out that isn't actually causing the pain. It might also be that it's not the case any more, this was from some lecture related to health insurance where it was discussed.

We experience a show and tell of our position on the gender hierarchy from the day we are born. It is deep conditioning.

Sorry, I just assumed you were from the UK

Yeah its seriously hard to claim here, and there is a very low fraud rate. We have to have demeaning 'examinations' and hen in many cases the person assessing us lies, and then their word is taken over the word of various specialists that actually treat you. Its a bit mental. The success rate for tribunals when people appeal against the decision is something like 70%...which shows how bad the assessments are tbh. They are just there to get you off benefits not to assess your illness and how it affects you.

Re asking the public at large about gender identity
Many times my mum has told me I should’ve been born a boy. I asked her why
Because I was a tomboy when I was a child; I never liked playing with dolls; I liked grubbing about in the dirt, climbing trees and playing football; I wanted my hair short and refused to wear a dress.
When I was a teenager I didn’t act like a girl; I never put on make up; I never dressed up and short skirts and skimpy tops; I wasn’t interested in hairstyles; I never chased round after boys.
Now I am an adult I don’t act like a woman; I sit with my legs wide apart; I hate doing housework; I like drinking beer and watching football; I strut around the place like I am a man.
I asked her how this makes me mail, or more importantly, how it makes me not female. Apparently it’s just not how women behave.
I have had this all my life, and from lots of people, men and women alike.
How do I know I am a woman; I bleed out of my vagina for a week out of every month; I have become pregnant, carried a child and given birth; I have been looked at and commented on as if I am and because I am a woman’s body; I have been encouraged to do all the things that women should do, and warned against doing things that will put me in danger because I am a woman.

I have been expected to carry out all the duties and presentation of being a woman, and failed miserably, it would seem, yet I know myself to be a woman.
I have no idea whether there is a difference between men’s and women’s brains, or if I have a more masculine brain than other women and to be honest I don’t really care.
If gender is a set of standards we need to measure up to, or thing we need to perform, then I’m not interested in having one. If it’s a set of behaviours that we are taught related to our biology, then I’d rather nobody had one.
I know myself to be a woman because I have a woman’s body, and sometimes I feel like a woman because I get treated like one. There is no definition in my mind of how to be a woman other than the one that I am.

Sorry for the rambling post. I’m still trying to get my head around the idea of what it is to be a woman, or if there is a way to be a woman, aside from physically being a woman. I’m not sure there is, so my head is twisting in circles trying to come up with one.

@SardineReturns - i take your point about risk-taking, but here's why I keep on banging on about it. I'm into sustainable transport. Hardly any women cycle in this country (80% of cyclists are men) and when they're asked why not, the biggest reason is that they're too scared. As well we might be, because there's no decent flippin' cycle paths and when drivers kill people it's filed under Shit Happens.

Now I know you could hypothesise that this is down to social conditioning, too - women being used to victim-blaming - and you'd have a point. (and there are other reasons why women don't cycle. It's harder to go around on a bike if you've got the kids to pick up and the shopping to collect. And cycling is a stigmatised activity, and men can get away with stigmatised activities better than women can.)

However - it IS men who have most of the road accidents and Deaths by Misadventure.

If I'm right and women tend to be more risk-averse than men, it's another example of Equality not being Equity. All cyclists are put at risk by the current appalling lack of decent and safe infrastructure. But women are more disenfranchised by it.

Going off the subject a bit but - I hypothesise that where there are differences, physical or psychological, between men and women, they always have something to do with reproductive biology. But, you know, it's ok to disagree with me, I'm not going to issue death threats, unlike Some People.