Women have Adam’s Apples

[IHaveAnAdamsApple]

I have NC for this obviously.

This is a total minor issue but one that has been niggling at me for years. And I realised the other day that I rarely read here any more, as that thread all those years ago just made me feel like I could no longer be bothered.

It was a thread, I’m not sure how long ago but maybe 2-3 years ago? Someone was talking about the appearance of a person, and mentioned their Adams Apple. There followed a slight derail in which it was discussed that women didn’t have Adams Apples, a few saying that some women did, but then a few posters became dominant in the conversation and started laughing at the idea a woman could have an Adam’s apple. One post was something along the lines of “thank G-d you are here speaking reason, I have had these other posters trying to gaslight me into believing women can have Adam’s apples”.

I have an Adam’s apple and I am a woman. An actual one.

I just felt massively...ick? I’m not sure. I just thought “oh fuck off then” and I haven’t really been back.

And since then, whenever I see a woman with an Adam’s apple, I think of it, and I want to post something. So I am tonight. I’m a woman. I have an Adam’s apple, and that’s quite normal, and I’m not gaslighting anyone or really a man. Lots and lots of women have Adam’s apples. Everyone has a voicebox, and some women’s are more prominent.

Thanks for listening.

@cariaaad

All humans have an Adam's apple, it is the boney prominence of the thyroid cartilage. It is more prominent in some men but all women have one too, it protects the voice box.

Funnily enough I was listening to a radio programme yesterday about a murder and they described a wound on the (woman) victim - she had her throat cut (poor thing - but it was possible this was post-mortem to disguise the real cause of death) and her Adam’s apple was mentioned.

I never knew women had them.

Virtually no overlap

I think there are often times on here where posters are arguing the point about physical differences between men and women, and it ends up in generalisations that make me feel quite uncomfortable. I'm a woman, but I'm also 6" tall, my shoulders are broader than my hips, I have size nine feet and huge hands. I've read statements about male Vs female physiology which definitely put me in the male category and that has made me feel pretty crap. I know no-one is suggesting I'm actually a man, but I think some posters could do with remembering that there are a lot of women with physical characteristics that on there own could be seen as more typically "male" and account for this in their arguments.

I hope I'm being clear, I'm not for a moment suggesting you can't tell the difference between women and men at sight. And sorry for the slight derail, I don't know much about Adam's apples either (although I was aware that women have them too but they're generally smaller and less visible).

I get what you're saying frogs, I really do.

Thing is most of it is 'as a class' stuff. IE generalisations. Averages.

If the fact that on average women and girls are smaller and weaker than men and boys of a similar age and after puberty etc. If that shouldn't be said then what is the rationale for single sex sports, and there's no reason men should in general be able to overpower women in an assault.

The fact that women come in a variety of shapes heights strengths etc is a fact. The fact that on average men are bigger and stronger than women is also a fact.

As a woman who is 5'2, sightly built, and usually not very heavy. After my first serious assault at 19 I realised as I never had before how when it came down to it, if a man wanted to do whatever he could. And I would not be able to do anything.

DH could kill me easily if he wanted to. I would have to plan and be armed etc and even then it would be tricky. That's just a fact. The dynamic between men and women on average is. If man wants and has opportunity, then that's that.

Society says women should be built like X etc and I get that it's difficult to be outside that. I really do.

My brain comes out as male. I don't conform to standard in that way. It's never been comfortable. That's why I've been a feminist since before i often l knew the word.

The impact though of saying that female bodies that are unusually tall etc are 'make' I mean it's fucking sexist for a start. And if we stop taking in general. Then why are women at risk in the first place? If we are just as big and strong as men etc.

I hope that doesn't upset you I don't want that. I know it's hard but it's not personal, about you. It's about women on average.

As it happens, the topic of this thread applies to me, NiceGerbil (or did much more so when I was younger and whippet-thin!) but I completely understand what you're saying.

I think the balance ideally is that it is incredibly important to discuss women as a class as you say, while simply bearing in mind the nuance that there are outliers in all classes in various different ways that don't negate their belonging to that class.

Of course, in order for that to work, you have to be very clear about the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership of that class in the first place, and that to my mind is what is being deliberately obscured (often motivated by 'kindness' rather than malice, I appreciate, which unfortunately makes it no better in the final practical reckoning).

Not having an Adam's apple is neither a necessary not sufficient condition to be included in the class of female or woman. It should be uncontroversial as a matter of settled science and the essentially official record of our lexicon (the dictionary!) that female is a general reproductive sex class referring to producers (future, present, past; working or impaired) of eggs and bearers of children, and that woman describes that sex class in sexually mature humans.

Deny that, and deny the fact that the combination of many overt and subtle factors make it easy for people (especially women) to correctly sex others with an astonishingly high rate of accuracy within seconds of meeting them, and people will understandably want to scrabble for objective measures they can easily articulate in order to claim membership of their own class.

Which is a long way to go to say that I'm not offended by people saying things like, "women don't have Adam's apples!" even when they do, and some have very visible ones. I get it.

Yes I did get what you're saying Nicegerbil, and no offence taken. I think it does become offensive though when statements are made about ALL women being of xyz physicality, without any acknowledgement of the considerable number of women who fall outside of that. And for the record, although I'm much taller than most women I'm still weaker than most men - because I'm still a woman! And I'm still vulnerable to the many power imbalances between women and men. I still experience the multitude of irritations and inconveniences of having a female body in a world designed for male bodies, but with the added indignity of being frequently made to feel not fully female because of my frame.

@Frogsonglue

I think there are often times on here where posters are arguing the point about physical differences between men and women, and it ends up in generalisations that make me feel quite uncomfortable. I'm a woman, but I'm also 6" tall, my shoulders are broader than my hips, I have size nine feet and huge hands. I've read statements about male Vs female physiology which definitely put me in the male category and that has made me feel pretty crap. I know no-one is suggesting I'm actually a man, but I think some posters could do with remembering that there are a lot of women with physical characteristics that on there own could be seen as more typically "male" and account for this in their arguments.

I hope I'm being clear, I'm not for a moment suggesting you can't tell the difference between women and men at sight. And sorry for the slight derail, I don't know much about Adam's apples either (although I was aware that women have them too but they're generally smaller and less visible).

"I've read statements about male Vs female physiology which definitely put me in the male category and that has made me feel pretty crap."

This is exactly how trans women feel.

@Frogsonglue

Yes I did get what you're saying Nicegerbil, and no offence taken. I think it does become offensive though when statements are made about ALL women being of xyz physicality, without any acknowledgement of the considerable number of women who fall outside of that. And for the record, although I'm much taller than most women I'm still weaker than most men - because I'm still a woman! And I'm still vulnerable to the many power imbalances between women and men. I still experience the multitude of irritations and inconveniences of having a female body in a world designed for male bodies, but with the added indignity of being frequently made to feel not fully female because of my frame.

"being frequently made to feel not fully female because of my frame."

Again - this is exactly what trans women go through, so you're not alone.

this is exactly how trans women feel

You are comparing apples and oranges, there.

@BalladOfBarryAndFreda

this is exactly how trans women feel

You are comparing apples and oranges, there.

Indeed, along with a nice side order of forced teaming...

My brain comes out as male. I don't conform to standard in that way

What is that supposed to mean? Is that just saying "I'm not like the other girls"?

I've read statements about male Vs female physiology which definitely put me in the male category and that has made me feel pretty crap."

This is exactly how trans women feel

This early in the thread, really? Every part of a TW's physiology is male, because that is their sex. A woman feeling crap because the appearance of one part of her physiology is viewed as male-only characteristic is not the same thing at all

Women who are hairy, or tall, muscular - or have a prominent Adams Apple - are not in the same category of as men with gender dysphoria. They are the opposite sex.

Don't you dare compare me to transwoman just because I'm taller than the average female person.

After several deep breaths I'm going to try that again. Transwomen do not feel like tall women, or women with visible Adam's apples, or women with pcos, or women who've had mastectomies, or women who've felt their "femininity" called into question for whatever reason. These women feel uncomfortable and upset because they are biologically female, but have characteristics which fall outside of what is the average or main distribution range for women, which means sometimes they are made to feel not-quite-female. Nothing whatsoever to do with having a male body.

@Frogsonglue

Don't you dare compare me to transwoman just because I'm taller than the average female person.

Wow - that's the kind of reaction you would usually get if you compared someone to a rat, or a pig or a snake.

You must have a seriously low opinion of trans women that being compared to one makes you that angry.

@Frogsonglue

After several deep breaths I'm going to try that again. Transwomen do not feel like tall women, or women with visible Adam's apples, or women with pcos, or women who've had mastectomies, or women who've felt their "femininity" called into question for whatever reason. These women feel uncomfortable and upset because they are biologically female, but have characteristics which fall outside of what is the average or main distribution range for women, which means sometimes they are made to feel not-quite-female. Nothing whatsoever to do with having a male body.

That is EXACTLY how trans women feel.

I have met several cis women who were visiting surgeons who work with trans women to have procedures like Adam's apple reduction. Usually they got on really well with the trans women and were really quite moved to meet them because they had met so few women who really understood how they felt.

Shame your experience didn't give you some empathy for trans women.

Excellent gaslighting there, @Shizuku.

This is a ridiculous argument to be having. Let's approach it from the other side: I, as a female person, have no idea how it must feel to be a male person who badly wants the world to see them as female. I have literally zero experience of that. So no, I have no idea how a transwoman feels.

It's a bit depressing that a thread about the ops experience of judgement on not living up to womanhood has been predictably made to be about men.
Whether too tall, flat, hairy, clumsy, Adam's apple etc. the issue here is that women and girls are expected to be presentable for the male gaze.
Trans women don't experience this in the same way. Can we honestly not see the difference between say, Cathy Burke and Caitlin Jenner? The challenges they face- what society expects from them.
They may end up in similar roles but the road to get there looks very different.

You must have a seriously low opinion of trans women that being compared to one makes you that angry.

So transwomen are allowed to be angry that people compare them to men, but women aren't allowed to be angry that someone compared them to a biological male. Ok then

Frogs yes totally We're in violent agreement I think!

The gender (sex role) boxes are so very limiting.

The thing often mentioned is the socialisation into certain behaviours,what we are supposed to see as important, etc.

So the stereotypes we see over and over. One of these is around being keen to meet various beauty standards and styles of presentation.

Into that but maybe less focused on as a whole rather than one piece at a time is the fact our actual bodies are supposed to conform to a standard and women who don't meet them have it pointed out to them in their lives. Men get this too, to a lesser extent, or maybe the way it's expressed is different.

We are supposed to have curves here but not there. And wear special underwear to make it look that way. (I mean lots of women don't this is general). Surgery can be involved. Then, fashion changes and our bodies are supposed to have curves in different places. So there's different ways of trying to make it look that way, surgery.

Boobs. Bums. Waists. All the different corsetry and padding to force our bodies into different shapes. You get stuff like foot binding. A very serious one but done to women to make their feet match a female beauty standard. All sorts of stuff.

And we are supposed to be small. Not take up too much space. And of course not be 'manly'.

Men have for years derided women whose bodies they perceive as not right. Breasts too small. To tall. Too muscular etc. There's a whole racist side in there which is massive as well. Remember all that Serena Williams is really a man stuff. Misogyny.

Again society needs to accept that both women and men come in a variety of different shapes and sizes.

The fact that women have been pushing this for years and then in the last couple this argument has been turned on us to say that the issues a tall woman gets are the same as a transwoman is. Well it's par for the course.

I agree that saying all women this that is obviously a bold claim! And so not great.

I haven't seen anyone say that having or not having a prominent Adams apple is all the difference between men and women though!

Fwiw I didn't know we did. Never given it a moment's thought. Never noticed anyone's. Just consumed somehow that they are a man thing. Incorrect obviously.

A lot of people are ignorant about a lot of stuff and your average person probably has no info about Adams soaked l apples at all past learning about male puberty at school iyswim.

When this comes up I always remember the constant vile abuse and ridicule that Fatima Whitbread got when I was a girl.

A fantastic British sportswoman. Olympic medal winning. But all that seemed to matter to a lot of the media and society was the fact that she was not 'feminine' essentially and her colour came into that as well. A lovely woman who has been through hell as a child. She's an inspiration. A wonderful role model. But all she got was abuse from many quarters.

Nice bit of a comment there about how men in general are awful and horrible to each other as a general rule.

My brain comes out as male. I don't conform to standard in that way. It's never been comfortable. That's why I've been a feminist since before i often l knew the word

Nice Gerbil- I don't understand this comment from you. What do you mean "my brain comes out as male"?

What's a "male brain" beyond one which is composed of xy cells?

Oh the stupid bloody quizzes etc

The one on the BBC a few years back said I was male and DH neutral

The idea of the male/ female brain having certain 'hardwired' areas that make men great at logic spacial awareness etc and women great at empathy and bad at parking... All that bollocks.

My brain is in my head so it's female. The search to prove men and women are inately better at different things, coincidentally with the male brain being better at things that make money/ involve leadership, fucks me off no end.