How are we the same?

[Aesopfable]

What have transwomen got in common with women?

I can’t think of anything that we don’t have in common with other men. It seems a simple question. Can our monitors and visiting TRAs provide any answers?

Transwomen will, on average, have the same height/weight/strength advantage as all males have over females. So they do not share the experience of male violence in the same way

This x1000.

Seems all your answers have come from women so far OP.

I’ve met a lot of transwomen and I didn’t Particularly have anything in common with them.
They seemed nice enough though.

Nothing. Our socialisation and experience are such a massive part of who we are. Who we are, in terms of common ground as women, is based on the shared socialisation and experiences we have which is based on our observed sex at birth and on the facts of our shared biological reality

Great post, Barracker. Truth.

Well trans women who pass would be just as likely as any natal woman to experience sexism, misogyny, sexual violence etc.

This is bullshit. Aside from the fact that only a minuscule percentage actually pass, one of the biggest and most harmful aspects of misogyny is internalised misogyny. This is a direct result of growing up female in a misogynistic world: all the unconscious bias directed against us that we absorb and internalise without even realising it as we're growing up, never mind the conscious stuff which we are still fed on a daily basis.

No biologically male person is subjected to this - all males, on the contrary, learn (whether consciously or not) that their place in the pecking order is considerably higher than that of females, that they are full, autonomous humans while females - actual females - are the “service humans” there to facilitate their lives.

This is embedded so deeply in our society - in all societies - that even when conscious attempts are made to tackle it, the bedrock stubbornly remains.

Why else would we have so many women falling over themselves to accommodate this sub group of males at their own and their female sisters’ expense? Women who genuinely believe themselves to be “feminists” and yet are utterly blind to the way they are shoring up the same old patriarchal oppression of females by males as always.

There is nothing I and all other women have in common with all so-called transwomen that we don’t have in common with all other males too. Not one thing. Our shared human-ness is all that binds us. Human-ness that we do indeed all share, much as TRAs would like to deny that we do.

Seems all your answers have come from women so far OP.

Are you assuming their gender id? Transphobe!

Thank you everyone. It seems I wasn’t missing something.

Performance and presentation are what men use to 'live as' women.
Unless a man makes efforts to change their look and how they act, then they aren't considered transwomen, just regular men.
No woman has to perform her womanhood, nor do we need to present in a particular way either. We just are women.

Seems all your answers have come from women so far OP.

Imagine that. Women. Women having opinions on what we, as a group of, oh let's see, 3,800,000,000 may or may not have in common with a subset of the opposite sex who have very strong opinions on us.

When I reference the other 3.8 billion female humans in relation to myself, when I declare that we are all the same group, you know what I assume about their likes, dislikes, abilities, aptitudes, personalities, behaviour, cognitive strengths, political opinions, clothing choices?

Nothing.
I assume nothing.

I assume those characteristics are as wide and varied as humanity itself. All humanity, male and female.

I'm referencing one thing, and one thing only, about those other 3.8 billion females when I declare we're the same. I'm referencing our biological sex, our bodies. That's all. I'm saying this, and only this: I belong to a group of humans who all developed down the biological path to be the reproductive category that makes eggs not sperm, the only sex that creates offspring. It's a fact. Not an assumption. Not a value judgement. A material, observable, immutable fact, and I don't need permission or agreement or consent to freely observe the material facts of the world in which I exist.

Any other characteristic you could possibly think of is a characteristic of all humanity, not of sex.
And any characteristic of sex, references biology, and biology alone.

We need to stop scrabbling around for completely universal human traits that we can shoehorn into one category and claim as evidence of a common sex.

Female is a state of biology.

Woman: born, not worn.

Those I’ve met I’ve had nothing in common with that I wouldn’t have in common with a man.

(Except we both wear clothes with inadequate pockets, but that’s hardly something to build a sorority on)

Strangely, I feel I have more in common with the transmen I have met, not transwomen. I dress more like them (trousers generally, the more pockets, the better!), I have similar sort, low maintenance hair, I wear no make-up. I work in a very male dominated field, always have, and most of my close friendships are with men. I share what are generally considered male interests and stereotypes. I find it easier to make friends with men, because we seem to have more in common than I do with other women, trans or otherwise.

The only area where I have difficulty is where things relate to biology - for example, when I was pregnant I found it difficult to talk to my male friends as they didn't have any shared experience. But transwomen would be in the same category as men there.

It's a good question. I can't think of anything at the moment, because the only aspects of my life where I feel female are biological, but that is not something we have in common.

Some great posts from @Barracker.

This is why the TWAW mantra fails when you start to think it through critically. And why TRAs are so keen to stifle debate.

I honestly feel like I have less in common with transwomen than I do with most men.

I read a lot, including a guilty habit of reading random nonsense online. I feel like I can empathise with most experiences to some extent. I have an alarming tendency to sympathise with unsympathetic narrators. I don't often read something that was written by a man and find it bizarre and unrelatable.

But when I read stuff that transwomen have written about their experiences of being trans or their interpretations of being "women," it is almost always bizarre and unrelatable (and often insulting to boot, if I were to consider the trans interpretation of womanhood as having anything in common with my actual experience of womanhood.)

It seems that being a transwoman is a very particular kind of experience that involves some unusual cognitive processing. So I'm not speaking in pure generalities, one striking example of that is the "denying our existence" rhetoric which appears to make perfect sense to trans people but which leaves me emotionally baffled. There's a lot of stuff like that!

Those I’ve met I’ve had nothing in common with that I wouldn’t have in common with a man.

To get graphic for a moment..

The genital topology on a post op woman is more similar to women than men. Not the same, but more similar than to men. Eg trans women don’t have an organ that can penetrate, but instead have an area that can be penetrated (by a man or a woman). Men do have an organ that can penetrate and only an anus.

Trans women have a neoclitoris, not the same physiology as a clitoris by a long chalk, but it is a small senate organ that provides sexual pleasure and isn’t used to penetrate another person. A normal clitoris is a sensate organ that doesn’t penetrate another person. A penis can. So TW more similar to women than men in that regard.

Trans women have to work out which oestrogen form and dose is right for them, particularly post op. That is more similar to women than men.

Some trans women do pass well enough to experience being trivialised by men, or to have lewed comments made, or smile love it might never happen.

So there are some similarities depending on what you mean by ‘trans woman’.

No, women's experience of sexism is specific to being female, and it isn't true or helpful to females to appropriate this as an intended gesture of kindness to people born male.

Any time female people are talked about or in a context alongside those born male, the sexism towards the female people is stark and staring. The difference in whose voices are heard with head tilts and soft voices and who gets death threats in this debate is very obvious. The difference in who gets talked over and who talks over others is very obvious. The difference in who gets why single sex spaces matter to females and the utter bafflement at females being difficult about it is very obvious. Males do not experience the world as females do, and females cannot identify out of their lower society status - as the total lack of TM anywhere in anyone's debate demonstrates. Males can also not identify out of their male socialisation or that others read and respond to them with the privileged status given only to males. Not to mention the TW who explain on tv and in articles that they regard sexual harassment and that kind of sexism as validating and delightful to receive as part of their chosen identity, and wish female people to stop discouraging it, oblivious to the realities of lived experience of sexism as a female and not being able to identity out of the grim bits.

It is a sex based response. Not a gender based one.

I honestly feel like I have less in common with transwomen than I do with most men.

i agree

What have TW as a group got in common with women?

What have any group of people got in common with another group of people? On an individual basis, probably lots of things.

If you're asking about what creates a specific classification of people that both women and TW fit into but no one else does? It's not possible. The only thing all female people have in common that creates a class of female people is biology. That's it. That's all. Females don't all have some magical inner sense of female, they don't all perform femininity, they don't have a uniform, they don't have restricted hobbies. Humans with female biology. That's it. That this is a distressing reality to some males is sad, but does not change that fact.

Trans women have a neoclitoris, not the same physiology as a clitoris by a long chalk, but it is a small senate organ that provides sexual pleasure and isn’t used to penetrate another person

See this is the kind of thing that I mean! I don't think of "not used to penetrate another person" as being a primary or even relevant attribute of my clitoris! I don't have this weird obsession with penetration/not-penetration at all and I can't empathise with it. However a lot of transwomen do have this obsession, for example those who think lesbians are fucking each other with strap-ons the entire time. I think I have FAR more in common with a man who doesn't think about sex in this narrow, boring, penetration-obsessed way than I do with someone who got drastic genital surgery in order to get penetrated.

Incidentally if you want to think about the unique female experience of sexism, look at which group are forcibly and coercively trying to redefine half the human race in their own image to achieve forced teaming with women for their own personal benefit, rejecting all care or interest in the impact on these other humans, and threatening rape and oppression to those who dare resist..... the differential in power, empathy and entitlement is right there.

Arthritica "(Except we both wear clothes with inadequate pockets, but that’s hardly something to build a sorority on)"

This tweet seems made for this comment

I've only met fully clothed transwomen.

Not knowing what their bodies look like underneath their clothes has made no difference to my experience.

We are not the same and I have nothing more in common with them than Gary my next door neighbour.

I asked a TRA this once. They thought long and hard before concluding that both natal women and trans women are victims of the patriarchy...

I think I have FAR more in common with a man who doesn't think about sex in this narrow, boring, penetration-obsessed way than I do with someone who got drastic genital surgery in order to get penetrated.

Well said.

Transwomen as a group have nothing in common with women as a group that isn't also shared by men. So, human universals, in other words.

The superficial things don't work. I could say that I like wearing skirts and so do lots of transwomen - but plenty of women never wear skirts, and some men do.

Fieldofgreycorn you know that the vast majority of transwomen keep their penises? 'Not having an organ that can penetrate' isn't a quality shared by most transwomen.