[quote Helen8220]@CharlieParley
But not exclusively female experiences. More than 99% of all women experience at least one period. For the small fraction who do not reach menarche (first period) on their own by age 16, medical investigations are necessary to rule out life-threatening conditions, and during the course of these investigations, most of them will find out they were born with a difference in sex development or suffer from hormonal imbalances. Many of them will then receive medication to bring on menarche.
And more than 99% of us experience menopause, with all that entails. We don't go through it at the same age, we don't all have all of the symptoms, but we all go through it.
And there's motherhood. Yes, not all women become mothers, some by choice, some because of infertility, but 80% of us do. That's a large majority of women sharing pregnancy and birth as an experience.
Our individual experiences of being female, how we deal with them, how we cope and react, those are different (but given the human psyche reliably reacts to the same stimuli in a number of predictable ways, there's a limit to the amount of difference there is).
Of course, there's more than just biology, there's also the fact that being female in a male-dominated world has real-life consequences. At a meeting at Edinburgh University, Julie Bindel said - minutes before she was attacked by a male protester on leaving the building - arguably the most common female experience on this planet is the fear of male violence. Although only one in three women are estimated to experience domestic violence and only four in ten are estimated to experience male sexual violence, even those of us who have not experienced violence nonetheless know survivors of male violence and often have witnessed male violence (The Girl Guide decadal surveys consistently show that before they are 16, around six in ten girls have either experienced or witnessed male sexual violence). This has an impact on all of us. So the experience of male violence and its impact specifically on female people is something that all women have in common, too.
We have many more experiences in common, of course.
What though do all women have in common with all transgender male people that we do not also have in common with all other male people?
I’ll give you periods - I have periods, most women have/will have/have had periods. And conversely, it’s true that no one born without a uterus has periods. The thing is, I don’t regard having periods as a significant part of who I am, or a defining life experience. In addition, my experience of having periods differs from that of many other women (in terms of heaviness, level of pain, emotional changes), so it’s not like we’re all even having the same experiences.
Motherhood and pregnancy - yes, a significant majority of women experience this, but a significant minority don’t. I’ve never been pregnant and don’t think it’s likely I ever will be. If I ever become a parent (through adoption, or my partner carrying a child), I see no reason to think my experience of it would be significantly different from that of a person born with male biology.
I don’t live in fear of male violence.
So what do I have in common - that actually matters in terms of who I am - with you or any other woman, that I don’t have in common with @ButterflyHatched ?[/quote]
A need for smear tests not prostate exams? The need for medical staff to check for potential pregnancy before administering an x-ray? The ability of said medical professionals to rule out certain illnesses when treating you because they only affect people with XY chromosomes?