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?

Delusions: how can we know if GD is a delusion or real? That is the question. By asserting that we don't believe it cannot in itself give us the answer. If someone says they feel like they are Jesus, we can all laugh and say that is clearly a delusion. They have no mystic powers to heal people and so on. When someone asserts something about the state of their body i.e. gender, something we all agree is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT, how can we really be so sure it is a delusion?

When someone asserts something about the state of their body i.e. gender, something we all agree is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT, how can we really be so sure it is a delusion?

You realize that you answered your own question there, right? At least kind of, "gender" not in fact being a state of the body.

@Southfields - that to me is an example of a gender non-conforming boy who was ostracised because he didn't fit the gender stereotypes. Not that he was 'born in the wrong body'

Angry, I don't get the impression the trans lobby globally are saying to people they must 'feel' a specific gender. They are asserting what they feel. Admittedly, I have seen the Mermaid videos in schools where they basically teach what you're saying, and yes, there they overstep the mark. Very much so in MO.

And like all people trans people can of course feel anything they like. That doesn't mean that other people have to agree that what they're feeling is not only real but so real and so important that it must overrule what other people are feeling (for example, a desire not to share spaces involving nudity with people with penises when they themselves are people with vulvas).

Feelings are internal, subjective, opaque to others. That's just kind of how feelings work.

Welshness is a social construct. Nonetheless people assert to feeling Welsh and have relevant social and legal frameworks to protect their cultural identity.

That's a reality shit analogy @FlyTipper. Welsh people have a culture, language and country. It's not just a feeling.

When we have multiple generations of people brought up in trans families to treasure the cultural identity of being trans, with trans parents raising trans children in a way that does the best it can to preserve their native trans language from the foreigners who've colonized their country, maybe that might be a useful analogy. Right now you're just making yourself look a bit silly.

I don't feel like a woman and I don't understand how that would feel.

If another woman or a male person tells me that they 'feel like a woman' I wouldn't disbelieve them as such, but I would wonder how they can possibly know what that feeling is.

I feel like I could get a sense of gender dysphoria- the whole 'my body doesn't feel right to me'. That's one thing.

But 'feeling like a woman'? That's going to mean something different to every single individual that says it. I certainly don't see why that feeling is valid or important enough to base laws on.

Orchid - it isn't genetic though is it? Welshness is as much a 'fabrication', if you will, as gender feelings. Perhaps, and I'm playing devil's advocate, if you let generations of transgenders be TG in the way the translobby would have, then they would be where the Welsh are wrt legal/social rights. Then what will we say about gender feelings? Would we still say they are a delusion - if so, how relevant would that be?

Given that devil's advocate could be quite accurately translated as "goady fucker" isn't that technically against Talk guidelines?

Nobody likes a devil's advocate. It's an approach designed to irritate rather than illuminate.

I'm exploring the issue Angry, that's all. I haven't come down on the fence one side or the other. I'm just getting tired reading post after post with people telling me they don't feel their gender (I don't either) as if that were a reasonable argument for why TG are delusional about their gender feelings. If you want to interpret that as goady, that's your prerogative

Most mouses and/or laptops do have a scroll button, you know. If you choose not to use it and instead keep reading comments that you find tiring (shrugs).

Women are providing an illustration that what the transgender identified males feel a relationship with and to is the idea men have created and promoted of women in various cultures.
The illusion of the thing and not the thing itself.
Women are who these men say they feel like. Women say that is impossible.
Who you gonna believe?

I actually do think the majority of women I know identify as women in the sense of having an internal sense of gender. I think they do in the same way or at least a similar way trans women do. They think it has come from within. I believe that too is a delusion. But it us a mass delusion. Most people I talk to about gender don't really believe it is a social construct despite all the evidence suggesting it is . I do get frustrated sometimes because most people who come here are gender immune, gender non conforming or gender critical (and I am very GC) we talk as if the world thinks this way and trans people are the exception. Actually it is we who are the exception. Plus those who objectively study gender.

This is why the trams narrative makes perfect sense to so many people

Trams narrative? That would be a very niche identity

"I don't get the impression the trans lobby globally are saying to people they must 'feel' a specific gender."

If people are classified as either trans or cis then that is saying that everyone "feels" like a specific gender.

Those of us who say we aren't "cis" women, just women, are told we are erasing transwomen.

I don't feel like a woman, but I AM a woman. My entire life experience has involved being treated as a woman, and it will continue to. I don't think that my feelings are the most important thing. I am also not sure that my conscious understanding of my gender is anything other than superficial; I continue to be surprised and amazed by the things that my body can do (conception, birth, breastfeeding, mothering at different stages) and by the hormonal changes that go with it and which affect my emotional and psychological state more than I ha realised they would do.

None of the people I've asked about whether they have some sort of sense of themselves as gendered that's not related to their bodies have said they do. Granted birds of a feather etc and I'd be unlikely to be friends with the sort of people who strongly believe in the stereotypes requires to support that concept, but family and inlaws say the same, and seem confused by the idea that it's being proposed that this is a thing everyone has. The idea that this is a feeling that trans people have that makes them unique precisely because nobody else really has it seems to be far more common.

And if you called that feeling dysphoria and acknowledged that it's an unusual issue that's a defining part of the condition that used to be known as transsexuality then we might be getting somewhere, but no, that makes some trans people feel othered so we end up back at the point of "this is something everyone has and it just doesn't bother you because yours matches".

I would hazard a guess that there is a fair correlation between levels of education and emancipation, and perception of gender.

My family are working class. In-laws not so much.

I don't understand what feeling like a woman is like. I'm a person. I'm an individual. I'm a woman. I feel like me. I am aware that I am a woman, but it is my biology that tells me this. Most of the stuff that society tells me about me being a woman is fucking annoying crap that I try rather hard to reject. I acknowledge my biology. I reject the misogynistic patriarchical controlling crap that is gender.

Fair enough Angryattackkittens.

a woman's body is reality, feeling like a women is ignoring biological reality. unless there is a definition of what a woman feels like and is supposed to be? its stereotypes. We have our physical bodies and both male and female have to accept that. Our bodies are not wrong, society tells us that our bodies mean we have to 'ACT' a certain way. It is ridiculous.