Once again I find myself musing on the eternal question: what is it,
Robin, that you think you and I have in common, beyond that which we have in common with any other human being? What commonality do we share, that puts us in a group and joins us together with most biologically female people while excluding most biologically male people?
Because I just don’t see anything. Nothing at all. I am a woman because I am biologically female and I reached adulthood. That’s it. The only commonality I share with all other women is our female biology (however functional or not that biology is). The word woman says nothing more about me at all. I get that you didn't feel comfortable presenting to the world as a man, or as how men are generally expected to present.
But I have no idea why the concept of being a male person who isn’t comfortable presenting as a man should therefore equate to you being a “woman”, as if the meaning of “woman” were simply “person not comfortable being seen as a man”.
That would presuppose that there were no meaning already attached to the word “woman”; that it were an empty space waiting to be filled. But it wasn’t. It isn’t. Being a biologically female human being is a question of material reality, one which you don't share and will never share.
It is also, in the patriarchal world we live in, an experience of being socialised as a female, ie the “second sex”: again, as someone who was brought up and socialised male, as a member of the “first sex”, this is something you have no experience of.
Where is the overlap? What is our common ground, beyond our common humanity? Calling yourself a woman is an act of forced teaming, but in what way are we a team? How are we on the same side? How are you, particularly, as a member of the oppressor sex class, on my side, as a member of the oppressed sex class, when you appropriate my name for myself, my spaces and services, my rights?
It doesn’t feel like you're on my side at all. It feels like you expect me and other women to support and include you without any thought of how that impacts us. It feels entirely one way, as has so often been the case in the dynamics between male and female people in the long and unillustrious history of patriarchy.
You are astonished at our lack of “understanding” for you.
I have never once seen you demonstrate even one single tiny iota of understanding for the women you presume to lecture here. Not one.
I have never seen you acknowledge a single one of our concerns, never seen you engage with our actual arguments, no matter how well articulated, never seen you express any compassion, respect or understanding for the life experiences that are exclusive to those of us born female in a society that habitually devalues the female and over-values the male.
I have never seen any wish to learn from us. Any hint that you think there could be something you don’t already know. Any wish to amplify our voices.
All I see is a biologically male person who presumes to know better than the biologically female people whom that biologically male person is addressing.
Which is something I, along with most (all?) other biologically female people, am already very over familiar with. This is our everyday, as it has been for women since forever.
I have never yet seen a post from you Robin which indicates that you recognise that we are human beings of equal worth to you. Tell me again where our common ground is?