A question for Transmen and Transwomen

[SpiritOfEnquiry]

I have name changed for this.

I'm not sure whether this is the best board (or place on the internet) to post this but I gather it's watched by many people so I'm hoping to get an answer from people with first-hand experience one way or another. This is not intended to be in any way goady, there just seem to be so many different understandings of what makes someone 'trans' and I think it's important to know what we're talking about.

I'm generally and genuinely curious about how transmen and women view their own desire to present or be viewed as the opposite sex to which they were born.

Leaving aside anyone for whom presenting as the opposite sex is a sexual thing (I gather there are complicated rules on speaking about this on this board and don't wish to be offensive), my current (no doubt very basic) understanding is that it must fall into one or both of two categories:

1. Dysmorphia in the sense of being uncomfortable or horrified by your physical body, or parts of it, as are people who feel a deep revulsion towards a healthy limb.

1. A feeling that you are a man or a woman, regardless of your body, and wish to be treated as such.

The first category I can get my head around to an extent. I don't pretend to know the reasons or best response but I can understand what is being said.

The second causes me more problems and I am curious to know how transmen and transwomen think of it to themselves. What, to you, counts as 'living as' a woman or man? What, in your view, is the difference between being treated as a man and treated as a woman? If you lived in a society where the expectations ascribed to each sex we're different, or you'd received different messages about that growing up do you think you'd feel differently?

Particularly:

A) Do you believe that there are in fact (perhaps even in science) internal feelings/traits etc. common to all women or all men regardless of the society they live in that you, as someone biologically of the opposite sex unusually share, making you therefore really a man/woman on the inside? Or perhaps
B) Do you feel that 'feeling like' a man or woman is indeed based on sexist stereotyping of the society in which you live but, while that stereotyping is alive and well, it's more comfortable for you to describe yourself as being the opposite sex than to try to present as the biological sex you are but live outside of the stereotypes?

Doubtless I'm stepping on landmines left and right, here, but I truly can't find my own way through the difference between "living as a woman" and sexist stereotypes, and rather than immediately conclude that there isn't one, I'd be very interested to hear others' thoughts.

Thank you in advance.

Personality? Been with over 20 years. Like to think that plays a part, it's not how you look or present. It's who you are

That is far too simplistic. Human relationships are as much of a negotiation as anything else - certainly when it comes to adult relationships, anyway. We enter into a dynamic which fulfils us in certain ways, or which replicates ingrained scripts.

And people do change. We all do, and as we change so do our relationships with others. It seems standard for later transitioning men, to change in ways which makes them utterly self indulgent and neglectful of the relationships and duties they had signed up for. Like a form of narcissism.

How can someone not change post transition if the narrative is they have become their “true, authentic selves?” Does that not imply that pre transition they are not? These are the words trans people use.

Really not being disingenous.MY thoughts and experiences

This over focus on one's feelings does sound typical of what is discussed in a really interesting book, I'm in the middle of reading: " The coddling of The American Mind ( The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt)

Over indulgence of personal feelings or perceived identities and the culture of 'safety'ism' that has arisen from that. Looking specifically at the change in culture on university campuses, and on how younger people are being shaped by the idea that feelings are always right and the best guide; and how this leads to mental fragility and worsening mental health outcomes.

So because I have a different view, I'm supposed to know the ins and outs of every persons personal life before I post?.
If they didn't want to hear an answer maybe don't ask the question in the first place?

I've always assumed the trans 'widow' thing was akin to 'deadnaming' - so the person pre-transition is considered to be effectively 'dead'.

If you married someone of a certain name and sex, and then found out that person no longer existed, then I can see why people make that association.

This might save some time:

www.transwidowsvoices.org/frequently-asked-questions

So because I have a different view, I'm supposed to know the ins and outs of every persons personal life before I post

The world does not run according to individual feelings. Getting tangled up in pure subjectivity means you cannot see the wood for the trees.

*I thought I'd gotten immune to Lemonade's opinions, but this disdain for abused women is a new low8

I'm not sure it is disdain, more like a rather immature, naive and overly simplistic view of the world based on nice ideas and feelings.

If they didn't want to hear an answer maybe don't ask the question in the first place?

I asked you some questions, and nearly 100 posts later I'm still waiting for an answer. Here they are again.

Do you believe that all spaces (toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons etc) should be mixed sex? And that there is never any need for anywhere to be for one sex only?

If not, and you think there is sometimes a need for single-sex spaces, can you explain why they are important?

Spartacus - I'll just say this again
So because I have a different view, I'm supposed to know the ins and outs of every persons personal life before I post?
If they didn't want to hear an answer maybe don't ask the question in the first place?

So because I have a different view, I'm supposed to know the ins and outs of every persons personal life before I post

You could have educated yourself a bit first by reading a page or two of one of the trans widows threads. Before you assumed you knew more about their experience than they did by living through it.

Lemonade:
You (general you) don't get to tell other women what they should or shouldn't be frightened of.

Nor do you. And I respectfully request that you check your privilege.

I'm not sure it is disdain, more like a rather immature, naive and overly simplistic view of the world based on nice ideas and feelings.

I think Spartacus has it right, actually.

No, Spartacus doesn't have it right actually

Lemonade, I know you have a different view. That's fine, and no one on this board ever totally agrees with someone else

The difference is that we try and listen , perhaps try and understand why and how people end up at different points and then, weigh up the implications of different courses of action on different people based on what they have told us

So suppose you are happy for transwomen to change in your changing room. Others are not. The solution is to therefore design changing facilities that are suitable for all.

Suppose you are happy that women means gender identity of woman and others are not. The solution is not, " well I'm alright with that change of meaning. End of" since it's clear many are not happy.

Otherwise, it just comes across as " I don't care about anyone else but me"

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

No, Spartacus doesn't have it right actually

So Justhadathought is right then?

@midgebabe

Lemonade, I know you have a different view. That's fine, and no one on this board ever totally agrees with someone else

The difference is that we try and listen , perhaps try and understand why and how people end up at different points and then, weigh up the implications of different courses of action on different people based on what they have told us

So suppose you are happy for transwomen to change in your changing room. Others are not. The solution is to therefore design changing facilities that are suitable for all.

Suppose you are happy that women means gender identity of woman and others are not. The solution is not, " well I'm alright with that change of meaning. End of" since it's clear many are not happy.

Otherwise, it just comes across as " I don't care about anyone else but me"

For my own personal behaviour and beliefs i agree with midge thanks to all of mumsnet i am much more able to take my self out of the debate (on loads of subjects) and see how things affect other people

People are so used to disregarding women. Paradoxically, even other women. Maybe inside they hope that if they play nice as fellow travellers to men's interests, they won't be ignored or ridiculed as women.

It's daft to complain that information is tedious, and then decide that your opinion about should still be acceptable.

I'm loving how self-fuelling this discussion is despite barely any input (much less welcome input) from yer actual trans people!

Feminists on one side, MRAs on the other. Everyone's got their answers, explanations, stats, stories and agendas. Witnesses for the prosecution are in abundance. Trans people seem almost...optional.

This thread is a perfect microcosm of the wider situation. And, super ironically, this is our experience of being trans.

Let me know who wins.

Define a transperson.

Someone who feels their gender identity does not match that expected of their sex? Stonewall for example

Then this board and this thread is full of them. It's just most of them think that gender identity is so restrictive that is really belongs in the dustbin, and that people should be allowed to express themselves and be themselves without needing to align with any gender

Or just those that experience an intense revolt with their sexed body ? Who feel that their body is wrong and doesn't belong to them?

Then this board is full of people who lived with that problem for typically ten years.

So we are just not the right sort of trans people. Because you can't be trans ever if you ever backtrack on any aspect of transgender ideology. You can't be transgender if you accept that sex is biology is just real.

This thread is a perfect microcosm of the wider situation.

I don't think so. Because in every other space online it's women who centre women's rights who don't get to have a voice. So not really like that at all.

As previously mentioned, this is the Feminist board. Any individual is free to contribute, or not. No one is that bothered either way. But everything on the Feminist board will naturally be discussed from a feminist, women-centred perspective.

Surely that's a bit of a misunderstanding. The problem is that including trans people is for all intents mandatory. Women are unable to do anything without the monitoring presence of the trans people that have included themselves. Even "optional" would be a vast improvement on the current non consensual enforcement.

This isn't a microcosm of anything.

This is a macrocosm of women talking.

Again, feminist board. Women.

Women, feminists and their space is not the 'definition of what it's like being trans'.

😄