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.

@alexk3 your posts are indeed very interesting, and thought provoking.

You do remind me a bit of a good friend of mine (we've known each other for decades) who went through massive feelings of dysphoria about her sexed body as a young woman, to the extent of seriously wondering if she was trans (we had many conversations about it into the early hours, and if you'd asked me then I'd have said "yes, trans, 100%, and I'm totally supportive).

Over the following decades her life has turned out a lot more complicated. I won't go into details because it's not my story to say, but suffice it to say, she went through a long period of seeming much more reconciled to her body as a gay woman, then a rather more androgynous stage.

I do see some parallels with your situation, in that the early stage where she thought she might be trans, she had a girlfriend who was actually bisexual (with serious internalised homophobia stemming from her religious beliefs) who was part of the enormous pressure on her to transition. Now of course, you're you, and you know what's in your head, but having known my friend for decades and watched her ongoing struggles, I often find myself thinking, particularly with young people struggling with these issues right at the beginning of adulthood, "who knows what he future will bring?"

I wish you every success in finding a path which makes you feel comfortable in yourself, but please, please take time and space before committing to anything irreversible.

Of course a long attitude-corrective rant about prison stats and the fundamentals of sex-based oppression relates to OPs questions, because trans-women. Normal service has been resumed.

MBD if you’re willing to take constructive criticism, your tone is what fails you every time.

There has been no ‘rant’, or ‘normal service (read snark)’. Just women and a transman talking. Sharing. Stats and ideas. No name calling or backhand attitude.

Maybe read the room better and try empathy rather than take down.

I’ve not agreed with much on this thread, but I’ve still found it useful, and I’ve not needed to ‘one up man’ on anyone here.

I hope alexk3 comes back to talk more.

@Whatsnewpussyhat I'm sorry cis bothers you, I genuinely didn't consider that it might. I want to use in this discussion as it's helpful and specific (to me). I don't say it in all situations as it's not necessary and doesn't add anything but in this discussion it clarifies my meaning. I suppose this is an example of how language in this topic can hurt. To me as a feminist woman it makes literally no difference to me or my identity to identify myself as cis in some contexts or use cis to clarify when discussing other women, but then to others it really does hurt them, and then to others again it makes them feel included and supported and seen. How important is it to ask other people to respect the language you want them to use? I'd say very, but what about when those desires clash?

@wellbehavedwomen thank you for sharing that info. It has given me a lot to research and think about over the next few days.

I just want to address this idea:

that women are no less violent and dangerous than men are so trans women prisoners pose no additional risk, and then go on to say that trans women must be in women's prisons, because the men's ones are too dangerous

I absolutely do not believe and never have said that I think women are anywhere NEAR as dangerous as men. In the prison context, I have issues with prison full stop and these discussions are just one aspect of that. I will go away and read the sources you've cited and consider how to address them. However I think it's helpful to say I do believe that there are several issues here that need addressing together and separately.

A) this all comes back to white supremacist patriarchy and the level of violence of all kinds it leads to in men, perpetuated against each other, along with women, and of course children.
B) the fact many (most) of the women in prison shouldn't even be there in the first place
C) the fact that prisons themselves are dangerous and toxic environments for everyone in them, no matter their gender or sex
D) that some people in prison will inevitably try and use the system either for their own protection or benefit (sometimes for fear of death or harm), or sometimes (rarely) no doubt to gain access to people they want to harm.
E) the idea of a trans only prison or spaces within prisons would only be a cover for the issues that are within prisons and the way they are managed. The issue of men trying to manipulate the system would only be exacerbated if they thought they could get access to a prison or ward with less inmates, especially vulnerable trans ones. We'd just be shifting the issue to another location and women would still be in unsafe single sex prisons. They wouldn't be at risk from trans women, granted, but they still would be at risk.

Viewing trans women as the biggest or even really a significant danger in these spaces I think is a distraction from the real issues that get women into prison in the first place and keep them there.

I don't want women hurt. I don't want women's needs devalued or sacrificed for the sake of the needs of anyone else. I just think the gender binary has built a lot of systems that are very precariously balanced and start to crumble as soon as that binary is questioned or challenged, and I think a lot of those systems very much need demolishing and rebuilding, with a focus on everyone in them being safer when that happens.

For me so far 'living as a man' is just a change in pronouns (I already had a unisex name), other than that everything is really the same as it was.

So the only change is a request/insistence that other people refer to you as male (opposite sex pronoun) which will mostly be when you aren't present?

Viewing trans women as the biggest or even really a significant danger in these spaces I think is a distraction from the real issues that get women into prison in the first place and keep them there.

Usually what got those women into prison in the first place is being subjected to violence and abuse from men. Letting transwomen into women's prisons subjects them to more of the same trauma that landed them there. It's not a distraction, it's the core of the issue.

By the way someone upthread said that transwomen are 5x more likely to sexually assault women in prisons than female prisoners. That's a huge underestimate. It's closer to 60x. (There were seven reported and recorded sexual assaults by transwomen in women's prisons from 2016-2019, but while exact figures have not been released, there were only about 30 transwomen prisoners in female prisons during those three years.)

also please listen to actual experts on this issue instead of speculating, thank you.

It's hard because people just want to feel accepted, I don't know how I would feel if it was me obviously but I don't really see how a respectful trans woman would infringe that much on a lesbian event, and I'm sure if they tried to hijack conversation etc. it could be dealt with in a way that was more like 'don't be self-centred' than focused on her transness. I don't know because being straight now I don't have the same oppression, but I don't think the odd tran woman would matter to me really.

This really needs addressing. Gender dysphoria should not be a condition that rewrites the meanings of words and sexual orientation. Homosexuals have spent decades being recognised as same-sex attracted and having it written into law. Gender dysphoria, whatever it's trying to solve, should not be undoing that. It's deeply homophobic to think it should.

Denying that lesbians are being persecuted for being same-sex attracted is perpetuating that persecution.

I don't think anyone cannot understand what it's like to have gender dysphoria and want to escape from one's female sex.

But you have to think about it not just personally, but intellectually on how it will affect all other women.

This is a small selection of what lesbians are facing.

I don't suppose anybody here would agree with the sentiments being expressed. But if you claim that same-sex attraction isn't based on sex, then you are complicit.

lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/

@Hanrora06 oh, I couldn't agree with you more on the prisons aspect. It's an insanely expensive way of harming people, for the most part. In women's prisons so many would actually benefit - and society too - if we invested the same money in a truly therapeutic setting, to support and heal and address the core issues. And in terms of the men's, in Young Offenders they've known for 20-30 years that a large, large majority have undiagnosed and unsupported learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental problems. They're young people who have been badly failed, and then we cage them and expect it to create decent adult men. This is a huge area, I know, but I don't think any prisons as currently set up and run are fit for purpose.

There's a really, really good charity that researches all of this, and tries to look at what we could do to actually support society and reduce criminality more constructively. There's also the Howard League, of course, and a US charity, Just Detention, that seeks to tackle the shocking rates of sexual violence in prisons across the globe. All produce some very thought provoking work.

Agree with Datun's last post completely.

All the lesbians I know are quietly enraged and upset. Very few dare say anything openly, for fear of being ostracised. It's not okay to deny the validity and reality of homosexuality, or to deny that lesbians or gay men should be able to have groups with those who share that orientation, only. I can't believe that even needs saying, in 2020.

Also don't understand why it's hateful for those who are same sex attracted to want their own advocacy group. There are several trans advocacy groups that don't advocate for LGB, but none the other way are permitted. Stonewall do very little advocacy for any other group now, either. Yet LGB Alliance is demonised. That's homophobic.

Viewing trans women as the biggest or even really a significant danger in these spaces I think is a distraction from the real issues that get women into prison in the first place and keep them there.

This attitude represents a failure in safeguarding. The biggest issue, the first issue we need to address, is the one where a woman is at risk.
Dealing with that is not a distraction from the real issue, its the whole point of safeguarding.

Women have the legal right to singe sex spaces and services because we need them. We are not going to give them up.

It's hard because people just want to feel accepted, I don't know how I would feel if it was me obviously but I don't really see how a respectful trans woman would infringe that much on a lesbian event

A male person at a lesbian event would of course infringe on every woman there.
Lesbians are women who are same sex oriented. It is specifically intended to be single sex for that reason.
There is a long history of males disrespecting lesbians. Its a great shame that more women don't offer better support & solidarity to those women who love other women.
Heterosexual men are not lesbians.

@Thelnebriati

Viewing trans women as the biggest or even really a significant danger in these spaces I think is a distraction from the real issues that get women into prison in the first place and keep them there.

This attitude represents a failure in safeguarding. The biggest issue, the first issue we need to address, is the one where a woman is at risk.
Dealing with that is not a distraction from the real issue, its the whole point of safeguarding.

Women have the legal right to singe sex spaces and services because we need them. We are not going to give them up.

Agree completely with that. I missed that phrase - was busy focusing on the wider picture of penal reform.

Male people do not belong in women's jails. The emotional harm is guaranteed, as is sexual assault. Just should never even be a question.

I don't want women hurt. I don't want women's needs devalued or sacrificed for the sake of the needs of anyone else. I just think the gender binary has built a lot of systems that are very precariously balanced and start to crumble as soon as that binary is questioned or challenged, and I think a lot of those systems very much need demolishing and rebuilding, with a focus on everyone in them being safer when that happens.

Many aspects of Safeguarding are sex based and/or age based.
This is in recognition of the known risks presented by males and adults.
If you are determined to demolish sex-based Safeguarding then you are advocating putting girls and women at risk of harm. It will always be the most vulnerable (chidren & women) who are harmed first and worst.

I'm sorry cis bothers you, I genuinely didn't consider that it might. I want to use in this discussion as it's helpful and specific (to me)

It doesn't matter whether it bothers anyone on here or not. Using that derogatory term for women is banned on this board. Many of us would like to use the correct sex-based terminology for the XY trans persons but we are not allowed either.

Depressing thread in terms of lesbophobia. Reminds me why I've pretty much given up on MN.

I’m still interested in why Alex and a couple of other PPs think it’s ok that lesbians are made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe, exposed to male sexual attention they very clearly dont want (being a lesbian is a pretty strong indicator of a woman’s wish not to be approached by males), and to have to put up with an acknowledged section of the trans community threatening and abusing them for being same sex attracted?

I would like to know just how many lesbians have to be made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe, suffer threats and abuse and be subject to unwanted male sexual advances before they would view it as a problem?

Alex, you are young, you’ve only very recently decided that transition is what you want and you admit yourself to not being particularly at odds with your femaleness until you entered into a lesbian relationship. You have pissed me off massively with your attitude towards lesbians and I make no secret of that, but still I do hope you think long and hard about what it is you really want, and what you can really achieve regarding your transition. You’re still so young. I didn’t know my arse from my elbow at your age and I doubt very many others did either. Even reversible decisions you make at your age can have lifelong ramifications you won’t understand for decades yet, and taking testosterone and having surgery is about as irreversible as you can get. You have already said on this thread that you struggle with being hallenged about your feelings and that you like to be right all the time, but it’s absolutely true that you are still very young, only just legally an adult, and that people change a great deal between the ages of 18 and 25, because your brain isn’t fully mature until at least 25. You would be doing yourself a massive favour and potentially, I’d even say very likely saving yourself a whole load of grief and heartache later in life if you slow down, allow yourself to grow up properly and accept that maybe what you want now might not be what you want in 5 or 10 years time. It took me until I was 30 to really come to terms with myself, and yes, I probably would have transitioned when I was in my teens if it had been available to me, but now I’m older and more experienced the very idea of me transitioning is ridiculous. Please understand that if anywhere near a fraction of the older women who felt like you at your age were to have persisted in their wish to transition we’d be seeing thousand upon thousands of middle aged women, especially lesbians, transitioning, and that just isn’t happening, so while you don’t like to have your feelings challenged there’s still a bloody strong chance you might ultimately be wrong, and transition is not the right path for you. I know you don’t like hearing from women like me, lesbians who struggled like you did, because it undermines your sense of what you want, but you’d be foolish to discount us for that reason.

Anyway, I hope whatever you choose to do works out well. I can’t pretend that I think you’re making sensible decisions but they aren’t my decisions to make, so it’s got bugger all to do with me. What is to do with me however is the way that lesbians are being treated by the trans movement as a whole, and if you could be honest with yourself you’d realise it’s got a lot more to do with you than you’ll admit. I hope you reconcile yourself to whatever path you decide to take but I think, to be quite frank, that your attitude towards lesbians stinks, and I also think there might be a day in the future when you look back and agree with me. Anyway that’s all I have to say because the whole thing is upsetting me too much and impacting my life too massively to engage further. I won’t give up though, because regardless of what you think, lesbians deserve to be treated with respect, whether or not that hurts a few transwomens’ feelings

wow this blew up a bit, am not answering everything because I need to know more before I give more opinions really!

@MadBadDaddy

thank you and you're welcome :)

@Fieldofgreycorn

I know what I want even if I've not explained it massively well, nothing anyone says on here is going to change my mind really

@wellbehavedwomen

your points are realy interesting, I still think in the cases of having a GRC, if the offence in non-violent then trans women should be in women's prisons. I think transgender wings seem a good way of doing things really.

@Bluebooby

I'm glad you're doing better now!

Depressing thread in terms of lesbophobia. Reminds me why I've pretty much given up on MN

Dr Julia Long

'Transgenderism & Lesbian Erasure'
25 May 2018

I just think the gender binary has built a lot of systems that are very precariously balanced and start to crumble as soon as that binary is questioned or challenged, and I think a lot of those systems very much need demolishing and rebuilding, with a focus on everyone in them being safer when that happens.

I'd also add that you can't alter the physical reality of male strength and size. Yes, gender roles are bollocks, but women aren't oppressed because of them. They're the method, not the cause.

If you abolished gender tomorrow, you'd still be left with sex. And denying sex denies women any way to voice our experiences, or organise as a group for our interests. It's the exact same as thinking racism would disappear if everyone claimed to be colour blind. It wouldn't, and all that would do would be deny the reality, and actually make the problem worse, by pretending it doesn't exist.

Men harm women, and biology is the root of it. We can counter it, we can defend against it, because we're as intelligent and resourceful and capable as men - but we're physically weaker and more vulnerable, and that's why every culture does, to some extent at least, privilege men. That isn't going to vanish because someone's read a lot of Foucault.

your points are realy interesting, I still think in the cases of having a GRC, if the offence in non-violent then trans women should be in women's prisons. I think transgender wings seem a good way of doing things really.

Why have transgender wings, if you think they should be a women's prisons? It's a contradiction.

I still think in the cases of having a GRC, if the offence in non-violent then trans women should be in women's prisons.

Even though most women prisoners have PTSD caused by men, and need single sex provision? Isn't that prioritising people born male over people born female, yet again?

Agree specific provision is the answer though. Trans women aren't safe in men's prisons. Nobody should be at risk of harm.

I still think in the cases of having a GRC, if the offence in non-violent then trans women should be in women's prisons. I think transgender wings seem a good way of doing things really.

If you start from the point of considering and understanding the needs of women prisoners housed in the female prison estate it is impossible to justify housing some male offenders there (regardless of the nature of offences they have been convicted of).

To me as a feminist woman it makes literally no difference to me or my identity to identify myself as cis in some contexts or use cis to clarify when discussing other women, but then to others it really does hurt them, and then to others again it makes them feel included and supported and seen. How important is it to ask other people to respect the language you want them to use? I'd say very, but what about when those desires clash?

Feminism is about and for FEMALES. Trans women are not female. Why does your feminism centre males?

Why should we accept 'cis'? Why should the 99.5% of the population who have no issues with their biology use the forced the language of the tiny minority that do? It's absurd.

It is not my job to validate the fragile identities of other adults. If someone needs others to constantly lie about reality to 'affirm' an identity then deep down they must know that identity is false. They cannot face their own cognitive dissonance.

By using 'cis' you are basically declaring yourself 'not a man' every time you use it.

Gender ideology is not my religion. By using 'cis' it implies that I think gender it some innate feeling (how can this be assigned at birth then) and not simply a bunch of regressive sexist stereotypes used to keep women oppressed.

By using 'cis' you are allowing adult males to insert themselves into the female category. It gives the false narrative that they are a somehow a subset of our sex class, then use it to imply that we are using the very biology they deny exists to oppress them.

Do not tell me that an aggressive group of mostly white, privileged, heterosexual, non dysphoric, adult males instantly go from oppressor to oppressed simply by saying 'I'm a women' and that I should sacrifice my words, rights and safety to stop their hurt feelings.

These males are also the ones who would happily call Alex 'truscum' and transphobic for being dysphoric and wanting surgery. Because that is no longer their definition of 'trans'

Alex, I just wanted to say again that you're impressively willing to engage calmly, and in good faith. Thank you for that. Really is both appreciated, and refreshing.

Yes, gender roles are bollocks, but women aren't oppressed because of them. They're the method, not the cause.

Exactly. They are the means used to oppress.

All the laws that women have been trying, for decades, to implement or abolish, are designed to mitigate the attitude that they are the property of men with no autonomy.

It's no surprise to feminists that women want to opt out of the female gender role. But it doesn't address the cause, just the symptom.

@DodoPatrol

thanks but I know what I want really! even if I haven't expressed myself well on here. But yes I'm at uni, and it's not been too bad! hope all is well with you.

@madwoman1ntheattic

love the username! but I'm very confident this is what I want really, not because I'm treated better as a man but because I know it'll improve my quality of life etc. - of course I'll still have other issues I need to work on but yeah.

@midgebabe

I mean I imagine they weren't very happy? I'm confident in what I'm doing and if I come to regret it later then so be it really, but I really don't think I will.

@wellbehavedwomen

yes agree with you that it's not about gender roles much, I don't seek out gender roles to adhere to it's just a coincidence that I am happy if I partake in them if that makes sense? But aye it is part of it diagnostically.

@testing987654321

It's not that I'm disoriented my gender steroetypes I just happen to have dysphoria about my body... I say 'fully pass' because until one time a few weeks ago I've never been called anything but 'sir'/'young man' etc., and have had distant family not recognise me and things like that.

@MadBadDaddy

really not trying to mansplain anything but apologies

@ChattyLion

I think if LGBT issues were just coming to the forefront now, then maybe the differences between the two would have been clearer than they were then, and maybe the two would be seen as having less in common. I do think we are stronger together though really.