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.

@midgedude

I think perhaps part of my issue butterfly is that by following your route you are accepting the stereotypes that many of us fight against in different ways , and for me at least people like you actually increase my feelings of dysmorphia , body hatred etc

And I know it's healthier to accept my body as it is

But when people imply through their actions that woman is about more than biology , I feel pretty physically sick

I'm really sorry to hear that . One of the main reasons I'm not publicly out about my transness in person is because I don't like making other people feel uncomfortable, and it's easier for everyone if they just assume I'm not trans. I don't think that's a particularly healthy or positive filter for viewing one's own existence through, however, and a lot of people don't have a choice.

I'm not sure I am accepting gendered stereotypes; I was forced to jump through some very silly behavioural hoops when I was younger, but I certainly never accepted them. I just exist as me; it's the only way I know how to be.

I always think that since you had to change something about you that to say you just live as you is a bit off ... you changed yourself and probably physically harmed yourself to achieve that

Self improvement is one thing, but physically harm is not so good

It may have helped you but there may be much better ways to help people that we need to be searching for

And I guess comparing the experiences of people who resolved problems in different ways is an important part of this process

So you know why it isn't current practice in the uk, yes?

I don't want to derail this thread by discussing DSDs. You might find the information on this site useful if you want to know more.

dsdfamilies.org/

Particularly this as you were asking about what happens to babies born with DSDs (actually information for parents with a child born with a DSD).

dsdfamilies.org/application/files/1615/4236/8548/firstdays-dsdfamilies.pdf

Obviously there's lots more information out there that you can find by searching for yourself.

When we engage with society we enter into an implicit agreement that dressing and behaving in certain ways will prompt certain behaviours in response.

An 'implicit agreement'? I don't think so. Just because we are aware something is likely to happen it doesn't mean we have agreed to it, implicitly or otherwise.

By what definition can you claim your experience to be any kind of "womanhood", Butterfly? This remains unclear.

I will answer that last question as a female who think she understands where butterfly is coming from

Being a woman is in reality more than just our biology

It's also how society chooses to interact with us based on its assumptions which are based on its assumptions on what biology we possess

This is important. If it was just biology without social things there is no reason we would get paid less or excluded from parliament

The discrimination we face is purely societal

We fight against this but it is there in every interaction we ever have

If society thinks you are biological female it treats you different on average

And that is an experience that in turn affects who you are , your behaviour is a reaction to that treatment

And your reaction isn't determined by your genital biology , so there is an aspect of being a woman that isn't determined by your biology directly. In that if you had male biology but suffered the treatment that women suffer , you would probably react the same way

So today girls may be discouraged from doing maths , boys encouraged

So many girls will give up maths even if they are good at it . You gave up maths not because of your biology but because of how your biology led others to treat you. Other girls may continue , with an additional streak of determination ... you need to be mentally stronger to succeed so you learn skills and resilience that the boys don't need to

If the situation suddenly became boys being discouraged, then many boys would give up

So the way society treats you shapes you as a person in a way that is actually independent of your sex and I think that is the aspects of womanhood that butterfly is holding to

Remember that butterfly by very transition has shown herself more susceptible to societal influence than others who resist

We've moved on a long way since then, and it's always been clear that robust policies need to be in place to cover this kind of situation.

So do you think you, and other boys in your position today, should be allowed to use the girls' PE changing room instead?

I haven't seen an answer to this question yet. Plenty of vague deflective waffle, attempted forced teaming and exclamation marks though! Or is this supposed to be the answer to my question:

I don't have an axiomatic answer that neatly resolves it into clean categories, I'm afraid - but it's pretty clear in today's world that dividing on genetic lines isn't the way!

@WomaninBoots

By what definition can you claim your experience to be any kind of "womanhood", Butterfly? This remains unclear.

@WomaninBoots - I think womanhood, as a subset of 'personhood', is a story told by our brains as part of our awareness of ourselves and how we exist in relation to the world around us. It's as real as 'Middlesborough' 'Suffering' and 'Uranium Atoms' are as concepts - it's built out of a combination of different elements that combine to define a particular set of shared qualities to which we assign an identity.

Woman is the combination of factors that led us to exist in and interact with the world around us -as- women (performance), filtered through our own experiences of physically existing in bodies affected by properties we would define as female (embodiment), and coloured by the subjective personal awareness of ourselves as women (identity).

Of these components, identity seems to be the only part that doesn't either exclude people on grounds of narrow definitions of biology (women with DSD's, trans women) or behaviour (GNC women).

I think a definition like this is necessary because when we try and reduce womanhood to any other particular snappy reductive definition, we keep losing people through the grating below. Trans women are one of the many types of women. Their experiences may differ from other women, but all women's experiences differ from those of other women.

More vague deflective waffle.

Trans women are one of the many types of women.

No. They are one of the many types of men.

all women's experiences differ from those of other women.

No. Women have more in common with each other than they will ever have with transwomen. Transwomen have little to nothing in common with women.

women's experiences differ from those of other women.

No other type of woman is not female though. So, it is still shoehorning a person who is male into the definition of woman.

we keep losing people through the grating below

What other people do we lose through the grating below?

Do you want to tell someone from Middlesbrough that they are a subset of "people from Newcastle" because other people might perceive them as such?

But what is a "woman identity"?

Suppose people perceived to be from Newcastle get paid more

And you get paid a Newcastle rate because that's where they perceive you are from

You are hardly like your challenge that !

?????????

I don't think it's a good analogy. It was just a joke.

I have a cold 😀

Female isn't some nefarious concept is it. It is much more concrete than even blessed Middlesbrough. It is millions of years old as a reality for starters.

Butterfly is a male. You cannot be female and a transwoman. Butterfly's entire experience is male. It has to be. Butterfly's "womanhood" is male. A male concept from a male brain.

Womanhood defined as "the experience of female humans" is not reductive in any way, shape or form. Butterfly wants to call it reductive because it doesn't include Butterfly and Butterfly knows it.

Being a woman is a matter of biology.

It’s not a concept.

Middlesbrough can never be Monte Carlo, no matter how much you believe it to be so.

@WomaninBoots

Do you want to tell someone from Middlesbrough that they are a subset of "people from Newcastle" because other people might perceive them as such?

Could easily start a street fight worthy of being named World War Three!

And to preempt any complaint there might be about me calling Butterfly male I will refer people back to the fact that Butterfly responded to my first post on here that was just answering to the original question and not in any way aimed at Butterfly (as I find Butterfly's posts tedious and self-obsessed and don't generally read them), by asking "do you think I am male or female? " basically. So I feel I have been given due permission to answer the question truthfully.

I think womanhood, as a subset of 'personhood', is a story told by our brains as part of our awareness of ourselves and how we exist in relation to the world around us. Which is abut as offensive as it gets.

You have just utterly negated half of the popuation of the planet... and I bet you thought that was a clever sentence too!

Story told by our brains? That's the social mores, gender based stereotypes, nurture, not nature.

Nature gives us sexed bodies, with some errors (I have a cousin with MAIS and he had no idea until his wife could not conceive and he was whisked through a barrage of health tests very rapidly - if you do have a partial dx chase it up as a matter of urgency ). But we are all either one or the other, male or female, skeletally especially - and, as the song says, those hips don't lie!

those hips don't lie!

I suspect that it's hard to understand just why women feel so strongly if you haven't been one

What you express as what you want to be is what is forced upon others who don't necessarily want it

Their experiences may differ from other women, but all women's experiences differ from those of other women

Let's try to parse this sentence. It contains the word "woman" 3 times.

The first one must mean "people who call themselves women", not "adult human female" for the "other" to make sense.

In which case what does the second clause mean? If we're retaining the same meaning of the word "woman", then it's not saying anything about female people.

So conceptually it's "Their experiences may differ from other people, but all people's experiences differ from those of other people." That's not very profound. It would be a counterargument to "people living in Middlesborough aren't people", I guess. But no-one's saying that about people from Middlesborough (or transwomen).

I think an equivocation is being attempted so it's "Their experiences may differ from other (people who call themselves women), but all (adult human females') experiences differ from those of other (adult human females)."

Or "People from Monte Carlo's experiences may differ from other people from Middlesborough, but all people from Middlesborough's experiences differ from those of other people from Middlesborough".

That's just nonsensical isn't it, because the "other people" doesn't work. You could take the "other" out, and then it's just a non-sequitur.

None of which turns Monte Carlo into Middlesborough, or people living in Middlesborough into people living in Monte Carlo.

midgedude That certainly tallies with a rather pissed conversation I had over the weekend. A friend was mulling over just how 'old fashioned' TW (OFTW) manage these days. Gone are the days when a TW can use female loos assuming the women in there are accepting. TW now know that the women are having an entirely different internal monologue.

OFTW: Ah, sanctuary. I'll have a wee and my sisters won't bat an eyelid. I feel accepted
Woman: Shit. Don't make eye contact. No! DO make eye contact, Smile? Make conversation? No I don't do that with other women, but would it be kind? Am I being a bigot if I don't? Aaargh! Quiet panic
Other Woman: Fuck [leaves]
OFTW: [leaves, happily. With no idea what just happened]

Nowadays it is more like:

OFTW: I'll wait til I find a single cubicle loo, or I get home

And yes, said friend is an OFTW and is no more happy with the current lunacy than we are. And has been really troubled by having to re-evaluate the last 30 years of her public life. It just wasn't what she thought it was.