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 feel like a LangCleg. I don't have dysphoria so I don't give a special name to the feeling of being a LangCleg.

I am a woman because I am adult female of a sexually dimorphic species.

These things are self evident to me.

(Just wanted to note that I don't actually feel like a kitten. That would be weird.)

I read polkadotwellies's post before it was deleted and I agree that it was describing the shaping of our minds through experience in a world where experience cannot be separated from our biology. Then connecting with other humans who were shaped in similar ways by similar experiences by virtue of being born in a sexed body.

Children are treated differently based on their observed sex, subconsciously, as infants. It is literally impossible for an adult male, having the formative brain development within a gendered (social construct) society to feel like a woman or have a 'woman's brain.' They know what it is like to feel like an emotional/effeminate/outsider male, but woman does not equal 'a feeling of being not typically masculine.'

Even some sort of theoretical brain hormone wash in utero doesn't mean they are a brain-woman and doesn't mean they elude gender-socialisation - which is formative in the very elastic brain. Infants brains are fast growing, making connections as they respond to stimuli. Stimuli that is regulated by and tailored to their observed sex.

I cannot believe that with all the exciting research on brain plasticity, that people are buying into gendered brain theory. It is so regressive and limiting, and so depressing.

Before getting into esoteric theories about womanly feelings, we need language to categorise the sexes in our sexually dimorphic reproducing species. Because there are differences between the sexes that have different needs, that is true for every mammalian species. Dress how you like, call yourself whatever you want, but it behooves you to be honest enough to know which list of heart attack symptoms to watch for.

Can I just add that while I do believe that many many people have fully internalised a sense of gender identity I do also believe it is made up of stereotypes and personal narratives. I.e. What others tell us and what we tell ourselves.

I agree, and that's part of why I think it makes no sense for trans people to say they have the brain of the opposite sex, or the sense of "gender" if it means the internalized stuff. The internalized stuff comes from the way you're treated from the day you're born, and although effeminate boys are most definitely mistreated it's not in the same way that girls are.

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

Because its meaningless. You can't explain what it feels like to feel like a woman. You feel like you and only you. You are a woman, but you don't know how it feels to be any other woman, or if you feel the same way as any other woman.

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

Well yes, but their welsh identity is also tied up with actually being welsh, it’s not a separate thing they just feel.

I feel Scottish because I live in Scotland not because I have an innate Scottishness that’s different from actually being here.

I am a woman, you know a real one.

I have feelings. I feel things.

While everything I feel, I feel AS a woman, I have never felt LIKE a woman.

I don't know why my posted was deleted!!! Bit odd. Here are my thoughts. ..

There are lots of definitions of what it is 'to feel' but overall it is

1Mental assosiations and reactions to emotions influenced by experience, beliefs and memories.

In this context of womanhood: my experience of prejudice; or the positives of womans' networks; my beliefs that women are just as valuable to men; my belief that the history of women is important; my memories or schemas growing up has shaped my identify.

2"They play a role with how we experience and interact with the world".

For example, I choose to be a feminist, have empathy with other woman, and appreciate the bravery of some women who have battled for equality.

3"They play out in the mind"

As such I feel like a woman in my phyce.

how do you know we bothfeel womanhood the same way?

I just feel like me

It is not like emotions that change; I feel happy, I feel sad etc. I can only be me and feel emotions that arise out of my interactions as me with the world.

If "emotions are physiological. Feeling is our own perception of why we had such emotion- in our phyce."

If emotion arises purely because of our biology as a woman, then feeling about our womanhood is percieved consciously or subconsciously.

For example, emotions because of a dramatic birth or emotions because of sexist interactions in the world would evoke feeling about being a woman.

Individuality and subjectivity only makes womanhood a broad spectrum. How we chose to interpret our experience is up to us and phycogically unique but it links back to one common state.

@ polkadotwellies Can you explain this a bit more? I am having trouble parsing your point - it sounds like you are saying that feeling like a woman is about thinking of yourself in relation to your sexed body and how people treat you because of it. Which is something that I would agree with, but it doesn't seem to help the argument that it is possible to feel like a woman when you aren't actually female (with some wiggle room for people who may be intersex but female-appearing). Stereotypically feminine males are not treated like women. Stereotypically masculine females are not treated like men.

I could just be misreading, apologies if so.

"I feel Scottish because I live in Scotland not because I have an innate Scottishness that’s different from actually being here" or maybe you're deluded. My family are Cornish but I don't feel Cornish. If I went to live in Cornwall, I would not feel Cornish. That doesn't mean other people with Cornish ancestors and/or live in Cornwall don't feel Cornish. Or indeed exclude the possibility that a Polish person feels an affinity for Cornwall, goes to live there and eventually admits to feeling Cornish. National identity is not fixed in everyone, nor is it a feeling for everyone, though it is for many people. National identity is also entirely environmental. Just like gender feelings.

If you don't like nationality as an analogy, I'll try a different thought experiment. Have you never felt out of kilter with the world around you? I did. I won't bore you with the details but I had a hard time at school, hated the other kids, would have left if I could. I definitely didn't 'fit' my social group, but it was a group with social-economic dynamic that fitted my own. It was the group I was born into, the kids had parents like mine, had the same accents and dialect as mine, had been socialised in the same way. I didn't have autism or other major MH problems (probably light depression). So was I deluded to feel the way I did?

Maybe it's simply a case that if you don't feel like whatever your perception of a man is, ergo you must feel like a woman - which may seem the only alternative if you don't see yourself as gay.

OP - how do you even know you ARE a woman?

Asked previously but still applies.

How do you even know you ARE a woman?

“National identity is also entirely environmental.”

That was pretty much my point...

I feel Scottish because I live in Scotland, other people feel Scottish because they were born there or because their ancestors were, other people with any combination of those might not feel Scottish - that’s all fair enough.

But not feeling Scottish doesn’t mean they can feel welsh or Cornish or any other nationality if they have no link to any of those places, because the feeling or not feeling that nationality can only be linked to that place.

If I didn’t feel Scottish I couldn’t possibly determine that actually the issue is that I’m welsh, when I’ve never been there and have no experience of it... I could only know I didn’t feel Scottish.

FlyTipper
That just sounds like the human condition. We all feel out of place. Many of us hated school and never fit in. Do you think it's comfortable to live as a girl/woman under patriarchy?
Uncomfortable man doesn't equal woman. We are not failed men, nor a catch all for men who feel out of kilter with the world.

Flytipper

I think your analogy is helpful for normalising/ highlighting the lived experience of being part of a group you don’t align yourself with. I expect most of us have had similar experiences. A good example for this might be an NCT group. Whilst the group may bond over recent birthing and parenting challenges, a member may fail to experience alignment and may want to completely distance themselves from the group as aspects of the ‘group identity’ may repel that ‘member’. There are lots of reasons, unrelated to mental health, that can account for this.

However, relating this to trans issues, the defence against mental health doesn’t fit. If I decided I was nothing like my NCT group and actually fitted in much better and felt more ‘myself’ with the prostate cancer support group that met every week in the adjoining room, that would also not reflect a mental health issue. However, if I proclaimed that I am not a mother of a new born but am a male with prostate cancer, that would reflect a mental health issue.

I have thrown in the mother and prostate cancer variables in addition to the sex ones as they, in my mind, all reflect the same thing. Biologically determined characteristics that can be objectively measured.

I am a woman.
I get on with life.
I have neither time nor inclination to sit round contemplating how I feel about it. (I am also "old fashioned")

Okay MsBeaujangles we all agree there is the actual, biological experience of being a woman. It is physiological, it is genetic. There is the external experience of being a woman and an internal reality of feeling like a woman. For a man to claim they ARE a woman is inexact. TW will never be - can never be - women on the outside.

However, as I understand the issue, most/many TW say they are biologically men who feel like women. (let's exclude the TRAs for now).

The question of what TW feel on the inside thus raises the possibility of a conflict of external and internal realities. I can stretch my imagination and believe that perhaps some people feel a gender that doesn't match the sex they were born with. Just as homosexuals feel an attraction to people of the same sex - it goes against their external reality where procreation organs are bimodal and would suggest they 'should' be attracted to the opposite sex. This is not quite equivalent to a mother saying she isn't a mother and has prostate cancer. It is saying that, as gender is a social construct, a person can assume a gender identity without biologically being the sex of that gender (if you follow my meaning).

All I'm saying is I can't rule it out. Nor can I bring myself to say TG people are deluded.

All the way back to page 1, but I think @KeefBurtain really sums it up. And I'm so sorry Keef

I felt very much like a woman the other night when I broke down trying to talk to DH about how I'm still upset by my traumatic experience of giving birth to DS (7 months) and he just did not get it and told me, kindly, not to dwell on it and concentrate on our wee boy.

I was watching the Rachel Dolezal documentary on Netflix the other day and people were asking her (quite rightly) how can you feel like a woman of colour? You have not lived the experience of what it means to grow up as a black girl and live as a black woman. Some people said how is this different from Caitlyn Jenner identifying as a woman, and they were told that it's very different. I couldn't see how.

Sarah, you base your accusation of delusion to the fact that gender doesn't exist in the minds of people. (correct me if I've misattributed your words). You may be 100% correct. Or you may be wrong. Not believing in internal gender feelings yourself doesn't preclude others from feeling them. At some basic, philosophical level, we can never know what goes on the mind of any other person. I am straight - I can never get into the mind, feelings or thoughts (other than through empathy) of a lesbian. It is no basis for me to deny what lesbians say they feel.

Thank you @agentcooper and everyone else who offered their sympathy.

We all go through the same things in life. We grow up, fall in love, get married, have children. The end result is the same, but the route we take via our experiences to get there is what defines us, and makes us a woman or man. It’s a biological instinct. V

My husband and I both lost our baby, but it wasn’t the same experience for both of us.

We have 3 elder children. We are both their parents, but how they got here and how we raise them isnt the same for both of us.

In my opinion, Even a transman who gets pregnant and either gives birth to a baby or miscarries will not be experiencing it as a man, but as a woman, no matter how they feel.

flytipper
I think the term 'delusional* carries all sorts of baggage so I can understand objections to its use. The issue relates to conflating observable external characteristics with the subjective experiences one has a result of those characteristic.

Females share physical characteristics that males do not, and vice versa. How each female's life experiences are shaped as a result of these female characteristics will differ, but they will be shaped by them. Our sexed bodies impact on many areas of life and where this is the case it is nonsense to suggest that there is no difference between someone who has a female-sexed body and someone who has a male-sexed body, especially when the rationale for this is based on feelings and beliefs.

Having said that, where sexed bodies do not/should not impact then there is no reason to delineate between the sexes. This where I see there is room for gender identity. Where sex is irrelevant to any given situation, I see no harm in people having a gender identity or not having one. What does it matter?

“ I am straight - I can never get into the mind, feelings or thoughts (other than through empathy) of a lesbian. It is no basis for me to deny what lesbians say they feel.”

That’s not a good comparison though because the identity of your sexuality is dictated by your actual sexuality.

I feel straight because I’m attracted to the opposite sex, not the other way round.

The equivalent isn’t denying what a lesbian says she feels it’s denying she’s a lesbian if she’s only attracted to men or straight if she’s only attracted to women.