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?

Try this to test

1. Replace 'woman' with its definition to see if the sentence still makes sense

1. Replace 'feel like' with 'objectively know myself to be' and see if that makes more sense

1. Do a logic check as to whether you can extrapolate your statement to all people within the group 'women' and it still holds true.

1. If the logic check can't be extrapolated to ALL people within the group women, BUT can be demonstrated to ONLY be relevant to people within the group 'women', it is still significant.

So,
"I feel like a woman"
Becomes
"I objectively know myself to be a member of the sex class that produces ova and gestates young."
Which makes sense.

But,
"I love spa pamper days because they make me feel like a woman"
Becomes
"I love spa pamper days because they make me know myself to be like a member of the sex class that produce ova..." becomes nonsensical.

Outstanding post, Bea.

There's some really powerful posts on here, I think some of this should be compulsory reads not for anyone making decisions on trans rights.

The times I've felt like a women I've often felt rage and pain and powerless.

There is that recognition of other women and the shared experience that is nothing to do with our sexuality and it's also nothing to do with gender as defined by the trans movement.

Womanhood isnt a feeling. Being black isnt a feeling. Being a child isnt a feeling.

So logically, all the women who feel like "people" and get rankled / upset when they are treated "as a girl / woman" are in fact under the trans umbrealla and being misgendered?

This.

I’ve been misgendered. All my life. I’m a person identifying as a person.. made to do nor woodwork at school because I was not a boy. And all along I was just a person interested in stuff.

*ffs needlework not woodwork.

i guess feel has meaings ranging from the pure biological to the more or less just metaphorical -

I can feel being underwater because I can feel pressure. I can feel cold because my body reacts and sends signals. I can feel heat, thirst, hunger, pain, again because of what my body does. I call my reaction feeling.

I suppose emotions like love, sadness, despair trigger physiological responses that we also call feelings but that's slightly less directly to do with the body.

Then once you get to relationships it's getting less physical more to do with emotion "To Feel like...." "to feel as if....". To feel I'm at the heart of my family. To feel accepted. To feel rejected. To feel unloved. To feel lonely. "

Finally, to feel I am now part Czeckoslovakian (as I think I announced in young foolish days....) or to feel Jewish because I'm married to one. That's now getting into metaphor, opionion, simile surely? "I feel like a criminal" is a way of saying "I'm not a criminal."

You can feel British because that's a social and legal category. it's just the name for a group.

But can you feel you are a woman? I think you can feel you have grown into a woman after experiencing a certain milestone - that's feeling you are no longer merely a girl. But that's different from feeling that you are a particular biological thing, as if you had a phantom limb.

"The times I've felt like a women I've often felt rage and pain and powerless.

There is that recognition of other women and the shared experience that is nothing to do with our sexuality and it's also nothing to do with gender as defined by the trans movement."

is this the flip side of feeling like a woman after a positive experience of childbirth or breastfeeding?

I didn't feel like a woman after childbirth or breatfeeding though. I just felt like me being in bloody agony and exhausted.

Whatever this magical feeling that men who say they are women have is lost on me.

I am me. I am a woman because biology. If it was just down to feelz i'd be pretty shit at it.

I'm not sure what 'feeling like a woman' is, though I can empathise with people who feel their biological sex is 'wrong'. I remember how wrong and repulsive being a teenage girl felt (periods, weight gain, changing body shape), and how much I hated being 'treated like a girl' (even hearing 'this is my daughter, B' made me cringe). I think I would have jumped at the chance to transition if that had been an option.

I'm accepting of it now, but there's still a weird feeling of... surprise, almost, when I'm reminded that people see me as a woman. When DH says 'my wife', there's this little jolt of shock as I realise he means me.

However, I'm not sure that feeling like your body is wrong is the same thing as feeling 'like' the other sex. I have never felt 'like a man', and can't imagine what that would mean either.

I wrote this for another thread yesterday...

I don't feel like a woman, or feel human. I am those things. When transpeople tell me they feel differently, I don't distrust their word because it doesn't resonate with me.

I feel unhappy to work in high heels and makeup*. It's an emotional reaction. I hate it. Most women are happy to work like that. They could be lying. They could be deluded. Or perhaps we just feel things differently.

• you could substitute makeup for sexual attraction, nationality or culture...

These feelings may only become apparent when they are in conflict with the external world e.g. I don't feel very European or British 99% of the time. But when I went travelling to other continents (in my yoof), I felt my national identity strongly. Another more relevant example, 99% of the time I don't feel like a woman. However, in early puberty, I did, and when I went through pregnancy and childbirth, I not only felt my womanliness, I also needed to be surrounded by other women.

My understanding of the "feel like a woman" thing is that my brains expectations of my body and my actual body are the same. So I am at peace within my body and my gender identity matches my sex. For trans people my understanding is that there's a disconnect between what their brain feels they should be, and what they are.

But I don't know for sure, and I can't because I'm not trans. I think FlyTipper is on to something with their post. Most of the time I don't feel that I am Irish - I just am - but then when travelling I will feel it more strongly.

Whoops, I will feel it, not feel it more strongly! This what happens when you edit posts haphazardly.

Thanksforthatamazingpost

The positive aspects like being pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding I felt like a mother which is a subset of being a woman.

There are so positive aspects not connected to being a mother but generally I just feel like me, it's the reminder of the problems and restrictions of being a woman that make me feel like one

I only feel emotions/energy. I am aware that I am a women because of my biology. I like and dislike certain things that may be expected of me by society, because I am a woman. It's not possible for me to feel like a woman as there is no woman emotion/energy to be felt.

I thought all that, too, until I learned in depth the childhood of a male to female transsexual I know. She's changed my mind on this.

It was when I read about her 1960s childhood: that even before school-age boys refused to play with , saying was "a girl". And didn't want to play with them, either, and this wasn't about stereotypical toys, but about the way the children played, even with identical toys, or no toys at all. The girls in neighbourhood also thought was a girl and invited to join them. felt a kinship and emotional attachment to girls and their culture and their ways of behaving and not to boys.

When out and about with parents, every stranger thought was a girl and expressed surprise when told that was a boy. This went on through the teenage years, every new stranger assumed was female, even when "presenting as male" in tee shirt, trainers and jeans and with a flat chest and short hair.

also repeatedly told parents that was really a girl, from the time could speak right until had "sex change surgery" at 18.

And all this happened in an era and in a culture and in a community where nobody had never heard of anyone "changing sex", and in which the concept of transgenderism was wholly unheard of.

It made me think again.

Chimamanda Adichie famously said she didn't feel black until she lived in the US.

I always assume it’s more of a disconnect with who you are that leads to the decision you are someone else. So more they do not feel like a man. My DD at a BMI of 15 was still starving herself because she could not accept her body for what is was, technically she identified as being obese whilst never living in a body of an overweight person. It’s how I see those with gender dysphoria.

Since OPs explanation of what feeling like a woman means for her was deleted I still don't know what she thinks feeling like a woman feels like.

I feel like a person. I'm clearly a female person, as I was bleeding from my vagina a few days ago, and I often feel an affinity with other female people, but that's based on shared experiences, not some kind of ineffable inner essence.

This is not sad, it's just kind of how things work for those of us who're not of a mystical disposition.

I don’t think it’s possible to feel like a woman, simply because I don’t believe for a second that the way you experience being a woman is probably very different to how I experience it.

I can understand feeling that your body is wrong, that something is wrong, but how one can know that they feel like a woman is mystifying to me because I don’t even know what that feels like.

The only times I ever feel “like a woman” is when I’m experiencing something unique to female biology - periods, endometriosis, ovarian cysts, pregnancy, Caesarian, etc. But not all women share those experiences so even that is not what being a woman feels like.

Or maybe feeling like a woman is shorthand for feeling constantly shat on by a society that values you a little less than they would do if you were the same person on the inside, only with a penis.

Angry, I'm starting to get bored with the argument that transpeople's experience of gender must be the result of a mystical disposition as you put it. Or out more straightforwardly, gender is all in their heads. Well, isn't it just that? Gender is a social construct, or more simply, all in all of our heads. Just because you and yours don't feel that way, and can't imagine ever feeling that way, doesn't mean others couldn't possibly.

I'm starting to get bored with the argument that transpeople's experience of gender must be the result of a mystical disposition as you put it.

We are no longer allowed to refer to gender identity delusions as delusions. Other people can suffer delusional disorders but speaking of transgender people's delusional disorders is forbidden.
You will see that if this post is reported and deleted.

But what TRAs propose is that all of us have a feeling of gender in our heads, and that for those of us who are not trans it just bothers us less because it "matches" our bodies. So me and mine as you put it are being forcibly included in the group "people who have a feeling of gender" regardless of how we actually feel. Maybe if trans people were to admit that this is a feeling that they have that most people don't have that would help make the discussion less acrimonious.