what does it mean "live as a woman"?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

I gather that in order for a male person who believes themselves to be feminine they have to "live as their acquired gender" for 2 years in order to get a GRC.

Is there a definition of how women live? Because I don't think I qualify.

@wincarwoo

I'm coming to the conclusion that the trans-women are women notion is one of the biggest, most audacious cons of our lifetime.

Yes, along with 'transmen are men' and 'non-binary people are valid'. The latter, as slogans go, is extraordinarily unpersuasive.

@EdgeOfACoin

Stefonknee Wolscht lives as a 6-year-old girl.

mercatornet.com/the-mechanic-who-transitioned-to-a-6-year-old-girl/20016/

Stefonknee identifies as a 6-year-old, dresses in short frilly dresses and has adoptive parents. Her best friend is the daughter of her adoptive parents.

I presume that everyone who believes that Stefonknee 'lives as' a female and has transitioned to being female also believes that Stefonknee is transage and should be treated exactly the same as any other six year old girl? For instance, joining the Rainbows?

Would those who believe it is possible to live 'as a woman' confirm that it is also possible to live 'as a little girl', provided that the transitioner's identity is genuine? That it is possible to become a different age, just like it is possible to become a citizen of a different country?

By the same token, Chloe Jennings-White is a transwoman who is transabled.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2366260/Body-Integrity-Identity-Disorder-Chloe-Jennings-White-58-disown-legs.html Daily Mail link to article about Chloe, who is an American research scientist fascinated by disability since childhood, when Chloe's aunt had a bad accident and ended up using leg braces. Chloe wanted them too. Psychiatrists believe Chloe has Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Chloe would like surgical intervention to sever the spine, but fortunately has never been able to afford the price suggested by the only unprincipled surgeon who has ever offered to do it.

Now, I don't think anybody reading about Chloe genuinely thinks Chloe is right about Chloe's legs not belonging with the rest of Chloe's body.

But Chloe is also convinced that one other big biological fact about Chloe is wrong, and we're bigots if we don't accept that.

As a layperson, I strongly suspect whatever is wrong in Chloe's psyche is manifesting in more than one way.

We can ask from some abstract philosophical position what it really means to live as a women, but I think it is really just useless for people to speak as if they don't understand quite well what it means for someone to present oneself socially and perhaps legally as a woman, or man in whatever form that takes in their culture, within this medicalized context. It doesn't prove anything and seems rather forced.

The point is that the only way a man can 'live as a woman' is by adopting stereotypical behaviours and aspects of appearance which are associated with women. At the same time as encouraging this parody of womanhood, the same people will say that stereotypes like this are bad and regressive and that we should fight against them. It's contradictory.

Thinking about this a bit more, it is only in cultures in which (other than in biological functions) there is no clear distinction between living as a man and living as a woman that the idea exists that a man can live as a woman (and vice versa). In Afghanistan nobody can identify out of their sex. A girl can't decide she is a boy, cut her hair and go to school with all the other boys.

Saying that a man can live as a woman implies a distinction between the lives of men and the lives of women as there is in countries like Afghanistan. That distinction doesn't exist here, so there is no way that a man can 'live as a woman' because of that lack of a division between what is acceptable behaviour or dress for each of the sexes. A woman wearing 'male' attire (short hair, shirt, trousers) is unremarkable. A man in female attire is more noticeable, and may draw some stares and even shouts of abuse, but it's not illegal. But a man in a dress is a man in a dress. He's not living as a woman just because he's wearing "women's" clothes.

Short version: The idea of a man 'living as a woman' is a luxury belief which is only possible in tolerant societies in which there is little real difference in the way each of the sexes is permitted to live and the range of behaviours and modes of dress which are acceptable for both sexes. It's also redundant in such societies for the same reasons.

You live, just like a woman,

You know you head-tilt just like a woman,

Then you kick-box just like a woman,

But you puberty-block like a little girl.

@OldCrone

Short version: The idea of a man 'living as a woman' is a luxury belief which is only possible in tolerant societies in which there is little real difference in the way each of the sexes is permitted to live and the range of behaviours and modes of dress which are acceptable for both sexes. It's also redundant in such societies for the same reasons.

I suspect very few people would want to 'live as a woman' if it meant being denied a right to vote, have money of your own or access to certain careers/education.

@OldCrone

Short version: The idea of a man 'living as a woman' is a luxury belief which is only possible in tolerant societies in which there is little real difference in the way each of the sexes is permitted to live and the range of behaviours and modes of dress which are acceptable for both sexes. It's also redundant in such societies for the same reasons.

THIS. Oh yes, so much this.

Grayson Perry talks about a similar thing called 'casting':

'Speaking as a pervert myself, what the internet did was tell you that you weren’t alone. And it was shocking. When I was young, when I was about ten years old, I used to have this fantasy, which used to turn me on greatly, of being in a body cast – lying in hospital, motionless, unable to move.'
www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2013/11/internet-has-taught-us-we-are-all-perverts

Grayson Perry: I thought this was such a weird fantasy to have and then I found a website a few years ago and they call themselves Casters. So there's men out there walking around in the street who actually haven't got a broken leg, they've just got a cast on.
BBC: They just find it a sexual turn on?
GP: Mmhmm.
. . . 'And there is an element of exhibitionism in it, in that I want people to see me dressed up. I want the reaction, for whatever reason. I want to fantasise about being humiliated or maybe I just want people to coo over me.'
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p03js3g5

Men with paraphilia usually have multiple; Perry also has fetishes for transvestism, autogynephilia, headscarves, rubber suits, the 'fantasy of humiliation', bondage and dressing like a female child. He enjoys talking about his fetishes publicly whenever possible. Erotic target location error is the cause of the 'auto' paraphilias, where a man tries to look like his ideal target. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797616677082

The only ways in which I have lived as a woman today are to have menstruated and breastfed my baby while in possession of XX chromosomes. That's it. A trans-identified male cannot do these things.

To live as a man would require me to have XY chromosomes, which will never happen.

This isn't "biological reductionism", or whatever TRAs might call it. It's just the truth. The plain, boring truth.

@EdgeOfACoin

Stefonknee Wolscht lives as a 6-year-old girl.

mercatornet.com/the-mechanic-who-transitioned-to-a-6-year-old-girl/20016/

Stefonknee identifies as a 6-year-old, dresses in short frilly dresses and has adoptive parents. Her best friend is the daughter of her adoptive parents.

I presume that everyone who believes that Stefonknee 'lives as' a female and has transitioned to being female also believes that Stefonknee is transage and should be treated exactly the same as any other six year old girl? For instance, joining the Rainbows?

Would those who believe it is possible to live 'as a woman' confirm that it is also possible to live 'as a little girl', provided that the transitioner's identity is genuine? That it is possible to become a different age, just like it is possible to become a citizen of a different country?

So so creepy

Old Crone could you just be in charge of everything, please?

It was be so smashing.

I’ve had deletion on here for using the word ‘creepy’ in relation to male internet harassment of GC women so I’m hesitant writing this.
But all of this othering of girls and women shit, all this not seeing us as individual human beings, unlike men who are allowed to be individuals. It all comes from the same misogynistic source and it is dangerous for us because it debumamises us. And therefore (putting it extremely mildly) it should all be filed under CREEPY AS FUCK

So so creepy

Well that was my initial reaction. But there have been people on this board explaining how becoming a woman is analogous to passing a citizenship test.

Surely becoming a six-year-old girl must also be analogous to passing a citizenship test (logically)? It just takes the right clothes and mindset, right? Or is Stefonknee's case not analogous to seeking citizenship in another country?

I'm waiting to be educated.

Sigmund Freud spent much of his life mulling over 'what women want'.

That was the first clue I got (not having read his work) that he didn’t know what he was talking about. If it didn’t occur to him that women were, er, human beings with all the same variety of wants as anyone else … he didn’t understand much.

@OldCrone

Short version: The idea of a man 'living as a woman' is a luxury belief which is only possible in tolerant societies in which there is little real difference in the way each of the sexes is permitted to live and the range of behaviours and modes of dress which are acceptable for both sexes. It's also redundant in such societies for the same reasons.

This seems right to me too.

I would add that there would be equal access to equally effective healthcare for both sexes.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

Sigmund Freud spent much of his life mulling over 'what women want'.

That was the first clue I got (not having read his work) that he didn’t know what he was talking about. If it didn’t occur to him that women were, er, human beings with all the same variety of wants as anyone else … he didn’t understand much.

Exactly ! I always thought he was a creep obsessed with sex and a prime candidate for some sort of therapy himself.

I'm guessing it means presenting yourself in such a way that most people either think you are female, or accept that you are (possibly unsuccessfully) trying to convince people that you are female.

@Turquoise11

Maybe ‘living as a woman’ means getting accustomed to being objectified, talked over, being paid and valued less. But that doesn’t seem to happen for some strange reason.

Experiencing those things was certainly part of what it meant for me, and I've been 'living as a woman' or whatever you want to call it for 20 years.

Gender is an experience and a performance; a two-way negotiation with the rest of society. By presenting in a particular way, we are treated by society as belonging to a particular group of people.

By presenting in a particular way, we are treated by society as belonging to a particular group of people.

There is certainly some truth in that.

Males who identify as 'transwomen' are treated like extra special males and not at all like women.

See for example this thread, about a mediocre male sportsperson who has won an award as 'Sportswoman of the year' for failing to perform at the Olympics, ahead of all the female medal winners.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4364338-Laurel-Hubbard-Sportswoman-of-the-year

The 'particular group of people' they belong to appears to be 'people who are treated as extra special and can't be criticised'.

See for example this thread, about a mediocre male sportsperson who has won an award as 'Sportswoman of the year' for failing to perform at the Olympics, ahead of all the female medal winners.

Exactly. A woman who looked like Hubbard and performed like Hubbard would never have been awarded Sportswoman of the Year.

@WarriorN

Why don't they tell TW to live as a uterus owner or cervix haver?

Why are we denied woman and they can have it when they have no womb?

I can't speak for all trans women, but if I could, I would. It's been over twenty years since I transitioned in my teens, and sadly technology hasn't moved that far yet.

If the option had been open, I'd have jumped at it without a moment's hesitation.

My son's school has a mixed toilet, which really surprised me, but I can see that for the LGBTQ+ community that might be a really good thing.

For the T. Maybe for the Q+. But when people talk about the LGBTQ etc community, they’re practically never thinking about the L. We’re just tagged on for credibility.

I listened to one of the discussions on the GRA. Cat Burton was part of the panel. This person is a transwoman who was British Airways most 'senior female pilot'. During the discussion they talked about getting a GRC and how they had to send boxes and boxes of information to prove they were 'living as a woman'. I genuinely would love to see what was in those boxes, used nail varnish, high heels, a gas bill in the name of 'Cat Burton' perhaps? Frankly it was ridiculous, another transwoman claiming to be the first 'female' something and believing they 'live as woman'.

That's a really important point, LangBanana Thank you