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.

butterflyHatched can you help me understand the specifics of what you do when you are "presenting in a particular way" ?

I'd really like to understand what that means, if you don't mind sharing.

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

butterflyHatched can you help me understand the specifics of what you do when you are "presenting in a particular way" ?

I'd really like to understand what that means, if you don't mind sharing.

Yes, so would I

It means sexist stereotypes.

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'.
Diddums.

It's mad isn't it, you can change your legal sex by post. An earlier poster said a doctor's letter is "several hundred pounds". The GRC form is a fiver.
There's no in-person panel. You might have to dress more femininely to convince your doctor (your GP? surely not Vickie P, she is happy to approve any ol' violent criminal, I doubt she'd give a fuck about lipstick) but that's it.
We keep being told how arduous and humiliating it is, hence we need self-id. It doesn't sound half as much work as becoming a naturalised citizen. For which there is obviously no self-id option.

I don't believe the GRA was ever fit for purpose, it poked a loophole in marriage law and it isn't required any more. There should never have been the option to falsify birth certificates or passports etc. We don't allow someone to have their birth certificate changed to say they were born in Swansea if they were born in Newcastle because they feel strongly Welsh, we don't allow someone to change their date of birth because they feel strongly older or younger than their actual age, we don't allow someone to change the names of their parents even if they strongly feel that their mate's parents are much nicer.

Yet somehow it makes sense to allow someone to change their birth certificate to pretend they were born as a little girl when they were a boy.

It's amazing the power that lobbyists had (and still have) to get such a nonsensical pile of shit passed as an actual law.

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

That's a really important point, LangBanana Thank you

Shame it got deleted. Can the important parts be reposted without whatever it was that broke talk guidelines?

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

So how does this not endanger women?Members of the male sex who identify as women are statistically as much of a threat to women, as other males. If society treats this group as if they were women and takes no additional safeguarding measures, how is that not to women's detriment?

@FlyingOink

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'. Diddums.

It's mad isn't it, you can change your legal sex by post. An earlier poster said a doctor's letter is "several hundred pounds". The GRC form is a fiver.
There's no in-person panel. You might have to dress more femininely to convince your doctor (your GP? surely not Vickie P, she is happy to approve any ol' violent criminal, I doubt she'd give a fuck about lipstick) but that's it.
We keep being told how arduous and humiliating it is, hence we need self-id. It doesn't sound half as much work as becoming a naturalised citizen. For which there is obviously no self-id option.

I don't believe the GRA was ever fit for purpose, it poked a loophole in marriage law and it isn't required any more. There should never have been the option to falsify birth certificates or passports etc. We don't allow someone to have their birth certificate changed to say they were born in Swansea if they were born in Newcastle because they feel strongly Welsh, we don't allow someone to change their date of birth because they feel strongly older or younger than their actual age, we don't allow someone to change the names of their parents even if they strongly feel that their mate's parents are much nicer.

Yet somehow it makes sense to allow someone to change their birth certificate to pretend they were born as a little girl when they were a boy.

It's amazing the power that lobbyists had (and still have) to get such a nonsensical pile of shit passed as an actual law.

Fantastic post! Agree with every word. How is it legal to falsify your birth certificate just because you don’t fancy being a man anymore? If you were born male, you were born male. Facts aren’t transphobic. Why then aren’t we all allowed to falsify all other legal documents?

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

butterflyHatched can you help me understand the specifics of what you do when you are "presenting in a particular way" ?

I'd really like to understand what that means, if you don't mind sharing.

Sure! I'll try and describe, though it's difficult - gender isn't really a conscious thing that I do or don't do. My 'performance' of it is reflexive; it's baked into my 'performance' of adulthood as I grew into both at the same time. It's changed over time - I'm in my late thirties now, and the way society treats you as you move toward middle age does change, alongside society itself changing over time anyway - but I'll give it a go.

My dysphoria was never about pretty dresses or pink toys; it was about looking in the mirror and seeing that the face that looked back wasn't really mine. Seeing (and hearing) the changes that male puberty was having on my body and realising that they weren't just ordinary teenage-angst levels of uncomfortable and self-esteem shaking, but actively incongruous despair-inducing horror.

I'd always been quite an 'effeminate' looking boy - my puberty was decidedly sluggish, enough for it to be commented on by clinicians at GIDS and later the GIC, who theorised I might have had MAIS (mild androgen insensitivity syndrome). When it finally started really kicking in, it was a source of serious despair - enough to drive me to ask for help.

It's a cliche, but I felt that I was a girl watching my body become a man's, and being expected to behave in ways that made me profoundly uncomfortable as a result. I just couldn't do maleness. I hated it in ways that are hard to express in words.

So I just...didn't. I sought out treatment that averted the course of my puberty (blockers), and wham - half the daily desperate suicide-looming dysphoria went away - then a few years later, as soon as I was allowed, started taking CSH to point my puberty in the 'right' direction. And most of the rest of the dysphoria went away.

At first, I was very careful how I dressed - in my mid-teens, I looked androgynous enough that I could happily use goth fashion cues to tip the scales toward being read as female, and it seemed important to do so in order to communicate past the ambiguity. As I moved into my late teens and the estrogen kicked in, it became nigh-impossible for me to even 'pass' as male if I tried. And that worked for me! I'd always connected with both 'sides' of my social group at school - the small group who'd accepted my gender nonconformism, that is - and the other girls increasingly took me under their wing as I gravitated over to their 'side' until I was just one of the gang. I was thus trained (socialised) to behave as young boy, a teenage boy/girl hybrid, and an adult woman.

I went to uni at the other end of the country and, for my own safety, disconnected from my old social group entirely; I started a new life where nobody knew I was trans; where nobody even knew it was possible for a trans person to look like me, and just got on with it, making a range of friends of different genders. By default, I was included in the 'women-only' treehouse in daily life - and likewise, subjected to the usual patriarchical oppression bullshit; I'm paid less than my male colleagues, I'm constantly talked over in meetings, it's baseline assumed I have a surface-only grasp on subjects under discussion. I'm expected to be the mediator; to always be 'kind' and 'neat' and 'nice'. Every day is 'comment on your appearance' day; I can't recieve compliments without having to deflect.

I've always been very careful to be respectful when orbiting parts of womanhood that don't apply to me -fertility and pregnancy, and the logistical nightmares and patriarchal bullshit that surround them, for example- while listening to and supporting the voices of women within those arenas.

Throughout my life, I generally found I was able to connect with everyone - to understand everyone's perspectives. As my proximity to those early awkward experiences of trying and failing to negotiate maleness faded, so too did even the faintest shreds of any sympathy for toxic behaviours in adult men. I understood, vaguely, how they happened, but with that understanding came an acute awareness of the importance of addressing them.

I had the freedom to dress pretty much however I wanted - I eventually settled on a range of styles that channeled the early-mid 2000's goth-industrial-gamer-geek aesthetic, and over time my interactions with lesbian culture helped me gravitate toward having the confidence to explore my own relationship to 'butchness' - something I'd have never have dared to do in my early twenties.

When we see trans women performing a hyper-concentrated version of femininity - the kind that sometimes leads to reflexive eye-rolling and (fair) accusations of regressive stereotype reinforcement - it's important to remember the underlying factors at work. If you can't just rely on being treated in a particular way due to baseline appearance, you have to find ways to compensate; to signal to others how you wish to be engaged with. This sometimes actually manifests in modes of expression that actually end up making it harder to pass - a striking outfit draws attention and scrutiny, after all! The same goes for trans men as well, especially younger trans men who are trying to project masculinity - that can easily turn into projecting a sort of age-skewed teenage uncertainty/insecurity which is easy to spot for those who have experience of it. It's quite a bind, and never a fun conversation to have!

It's important to remember that the things we learned in our teens - I won't say effortlessly, but at least as part of our general 'growing up' experience - are things that are harder to learn after the fact, and often come across as dissonant when practiced.

I think social gender roles are largely bullshit but they are, still, alas, the way that our society operates, and if you can't rely on baseline physical appearance to signal how you'd like to be treated, then there are modes of dress and behaviour that can help.

I think it's also fair to say when you see women getting really fed up at being told and shown that their physical reality is nothing more than a performance of stereotypes or dress that can be done by either sex, and is being used to remove their rights or even their ability to name themselves, that it's important to remember the factors at work there too.

@WouldBeGood

I’d make people have a bag full of partially clotted blood implanted between their legs, ready to explode at any time every 28 days 🤣 That would focus the mind on being female.

This 😄

Thanks for your explanation @ButterflyHatched, that's really helpful in understanding at least some aspects of the trans experience.

I haven't read any other posts by you, but I hope you've found your niche in life.

@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 think this is a point that needs some significant consideration. Because there is probably a link, in that it's only when we've significantly reduced the outward evidence of the differences between men and women that you could see an ideology like this thrive.

Because in a real way, for many people, sex and the ways in which sex is reflected in society, is not that visible, or where it is visible they've been trained to think it's problematic or even wrong. It's wrong that women might not be welcome in a certain company, or that that many are sexually assaulted. It's wrong that some industries don't have an equal balance of the sexes. It's wrong that more women stay home with kids. It's wrong that we don't have complete neutrality about feminine of masculine clothing.

In reality those things are not all equal and maybe some aren't wrong at all. But if you believe that the evidences of sex, if attached to sex, are always problematic, it will take you in some strange directions. One possibility being allowing for the evidences but divorcing them from the underlying reference.

@FlyingOink

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'. Diddums.

It's mad isn't it, you can change your legal sex by post. An earlier poster said a doctor's letter is "several hundred pounds". The GRC form is a fiver.
There's no in-person panel. You might have to dress more femininely to convince your doctor (your GP? surely not Vickie P, she is happy to approve any ol' violent criminal, I doubt she'd give a fuck about lipstick) but that's it.
We keep being told how arduous and humiliating it is, hence we need self-id. It doesn't sound half as much work as becoming a naturalised citizen. For which there is obviously no self-id option.

I don't believe the GRA was ever fit for purpose, it poked a loophole in marriage law and it isn't required any more. There should never have been the option to falsify birth certificates or passports etc. We don't allow someone to have their birth certificate changed to say they were born in Swansea if they were born in Newcastle because they feel strongly Welsh, we don't allow someone to change their date of birth because they feel strongly older or younger than their actual age, we don't allow someone to change the names of their parents even if they strongly feel that their mate's parents are much nicer.

Yet somehow it makes sense to allow someone to change their birth certificate to pretend they were born as a little girl when they were a boy.

It's amazing the power that lobbyists had (and still have) to get such a nonsensical pile of shit passed as an actual law.

Couldn't agree more.

Equally nonsensical is that something which is, apparently, neither a mental nor physical illness requires the input of a doctor and provision of medical services.

The worst for me is that on obtaining a GRC a persons previous existence is effectively wiped - medically, criminally - what a safeguarding and security nightmare and TRAs want to make this even more of a headache with Self-Id.

Why are certain people allowed to do what none of the rest of us are? Why are certain people allowed to hide their previous history when none of the rest of us are? Its discriminatory and dangerous and is being done to appease a small, vocal and very abusive minority with no thought beyond themselves.

I'd say to any woman: how they choose to dress, present themselves, name themselves, codes of behaviour and values that they choose, the history and experiences that have guided their choices, their relationship with the society they're currently choosing to live in, its all entirely unique to them. Their choices about adhering to any codes they perceive or intentionally transgressing those codes are all unique to them.

The only thing all women have in common is their biology. That's it. That's all. The experience of living life from within female biology. The breadth of that experience is a marvellous thing.

The only way to live as a woman is to be alive inside a biologically female body. They are free from that starting point to live any way they like, unless they are unlucky enough to live in a country where humans living in biologically male bodies have a sex based entitlement to enforce certain codes upon them as a means of furthering male agendas.

@OldCrone

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.

I think though you are dismissing the elements that are being referenced here.

I'm not suggesting that a person can, in anything like a complete way, live in the same way as the other sex. But my point is that I don't think it was ever supposed to mean that. It's certainly been taken in that direction by activists, and they may find that they end up hoist by their own petard when it's all said and done because it's completely incoherent.

But there are several areas specifically that this phrase seems to reference, and they are not totally without meaning. The main one probably is using the language normally associated with female people. Of course when you do that it's an inherent contradiction, we all know it's being used in some sort of non-standard way. In much the same way in some jurisdictions you can have same sex couples put as birth parents on a child's birth certificate. We all know that they are not the biological parents of the child, the idea is there is good reason to treat it the same way in any case.

Similarly, cultural gender markers like clothing. These may be relatively loose in our culture, but they exist and they are real. I actually don't think it's a common viewpoint that they are inherently wrong. But they do function as social signals about sex and as self-image, even when we choose not to follow them along those lines.

These are real things, with a certain amount of underlying content. Is it useful medically or in any other way for people to take this approach for dysphoria, or anything else? I have serious doubts. But it's not contentless.

@CrumpetShaw

Clothes, hair, and name. Thats it.

All of which you can do whilst still being male.

If a man wants to have long hair and wear makeup and dresses, the only thing stopping him is peer/social pressure. It doesn't mean he's magically female. I'm not female because I'm called Emma not Edward. I'm not female because I wear dresses. I'm not female because I wear make up. I'm female because I have two X chromosomes. That is the ONLY thing that determines my sex. So any male wishing to "live as female" needs to change his chromosomes.

I'm paid less than my male colleagues, I'm constantly talked over in meetings, it's baseline assumed I have a surface-only grasp on subjects under discussion. I'm expected to be the mediator; to always be 'kind' and 'neat' and 'nice'. Every day is 'comment on your appearance' day; I can't recieve compliments without having to deflect.

I find this interesting and wonder how your colleagues react when you challenge them on their behaviour. As a transwoman you have the unique opportunity to call them out. So what happens?

The singer Sam Smith once said that he 'thought like a woman ' . What does this mean & how the hell would he know ?

@334bu

*I'm paid less than my male colleagues, I'm constantly talked over in meetings, it's baseline assumed I have a surface-only grasp on subjects under discussion. I'm expected to be the mediator; to always be 'kind' and 'neat' and 'nice'. Every day is 'comment on your appearance' day; I can't recieve compliments without having to deflect.*

I find this interesting and wonder how your colleagues react when you challenge them on their behaviour. As a transwoman you have the unique opportunity to call them out. So what happens?

Why can only trans women call them out?

@334bu

*I'm paid less than my male colleagues, I'm constantly talked over in meetings, it's baseline assumed I have a surface-only grasp on subjects under discussion. I'm expected to be the mediator; to always be 'kind' and 'neat' and 'nice'. Every day is 'comment on your appearance' day; I can't recieve compliments without having to deflect.*

I find this interesting and wonder how your colleagues react when you challenge them on their behaviour. As a transwoman you have the unique opportunity to call them out. So what happens?

I thought Butterfly was stealth and therefore didn't discuss trans status. Is that not the case?

My bad , I thought their status was known and as a transwoman they could.debunk some of the silly stereotypes. However, I see that this might not be in their interest as it would out them.

@334bu

My bad , I thought their status was known and as a transwoman they could.debunk some of the silly stereotypes. However, I see that this might not be in their interest as it would out them.

How would it put them? Anybody can complain/protest about inequality.

@334bu

*I'm paid less than my male colleagues, I'm constantly talked over in meetings, it's baseline assumed I have a surface-only grasp on subjects under discussion. I'm expected to be the mediator; to always be 'kind' and 'neat' and 'nice'. Every day is 'comment on your appearance' day; I can't recieve compliments without having to deflect.*

I find this interesting and wonder how your colleagues react when you challenge them on their behaviour. As a transwoman you have the unique opportunity to call them out. So what happens?

Those of us who live 'stealth' have to be very careful about this; our womanhood is conditional in the minds of others, and outing ourselves is a one-way trip. The usual stereotypes applied to all women - that challenging sexist bullshit makes us 'aggressive' and 'fussy', that challenging misogynistic jokes means we 'aren't team players' or 'aren't a good fit for this environment' - also apply to us, but with a whole extra layer of bullshit on top.

If people know we are trans then everything we do is passed through that filter; subconscious stereotypes get applied automatically. Everything suddenly has an 'explanation' applied. We're held to extreme social standards of femininity; a failure to conform is used as 'proof' we aren't 'really' women, but we're still subject to the usual everyday patriarchal bullshit.

If people know we're trans, then campaigning for equality and challenging stereotypes gets dismissed as not being able to 'hack it' as women. 'Why did you want to be a woman so much if you knew it would be harder?' nonsense. Remaining silent -which helps nobody- would see us rightly accused of being complicit in our own oppression. So we campaign, as women, for the liberation of all women including trans women, while dealing with an extra intersection of oppressions, and trying to survive in our daily lives.

I'm white, able-bodied and from an affluent family; I'm positively dripping with privilege, especially in relation to many other trans women, and very conscious of this. This privilege means I don't just have the bandwidth to look after my own oxygen mask - I can help others with theirs.

Why can only trans women call them out?
Yes, I wondered that too. Why is ButterflyHatched "uniquely" qualified to do so.

Personally I thought there was a large amount of over- egging the "it's hard to be a woman" in Butterfly's post which may of course be playing the audience's assumed bias, but it does a disservice to women who don't put up with that sort of nonsense.

@334bu

My bad , I thought their status was known and as a transwoman they could.debunk some of the silly stereotypes. However, I see that this might not be in their interest as it would out them.

I'm still not following why they can't call it out. I'm neither trans nor a feminist and have no qualms at all about calling out that sort of nonsense.