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.

Sorry Warrior I'm not directly answering anyone in case you think I am responding to you and being shirty, my point is a general one about the nature of gender identity ideology and its supporters.

So what you seem to be saying is that Butterfly can’t speak ‘as a woman’ because - on the basis of your definition - she isn’t a woman?

Yes, Helen, exactly this.

Although it's not on the basis of anyone's definition, it's on the basis of a transwoman's sex being male. Which is simple fact.

A male cannot be a female, cannot speak as a female. That's it.

People seem to enjoy having all these philosophical conversations, and talking about stuff like gender expectations. And people write works like de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex". Or even Butler's "Gender Trouble" (shudder).

But what people sometimes seem to be confused over is that to explore complex concepts it's most productive to use clear, narrowly-defined terms.

The more specific (and hence non-inclusive) your terms are, the more elaborate constructions you can build on them. You have strong foundations.

If you decide to bake all the squishy metaphorical stuff into the language so you haven't even got a clear definition of "woman", how do you expect to produce anything worthwhile. To even communicate, let alone produce philosophy, or feminist critique?

I'm a mathematician, like Helen Joyce, and we know that precision of terms is vital. You cannot build an intricate edifice when your bricks are made out of jelly.

If we can define "woman" and "man" precisely, then we can have the discussion about what women need, what men need, and what men who feel like they are women need.

If "woman" means nothing, then everything you say about "women" means nothing.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Sorry Warrior I'm not directly answering anyone in case you think I am responding to you and being shirty, my point is a general one about the nature of gender identity ideology and its supporters.

No I didn't. Just musing about how women are being forced to analyse this at great depth yet again. 😘

Exactly Necessary.

The arts can be blurred and pretend what ever they want. The arts are not real.

(Speaking from an arts background.)

And I would like to pick up on something else here, to explain why I do not believe that ButterflyHatched is speaking 'as a woman'. We've had a number of comments sharing, stream of consciousness, an awareness of fears of male violence to explain why female-only spaces are important to ButterflyHatched.

(Page 30, 6/10 at 11:16)

But instead of applying this awareness to the women and girls in female-only spaces and reflecting on their needs, and the impact that the presence of males has on women and girls in female-only spaces, the next paragraph pivots to the needs of other males. ButterflyHatched expresses guilt at being in those spaces, not because that impacts on the female people in them, but because other males aren't allowed in.

And ButterflyHatched writes about being scared to speak up in favour of inviting those other males in, not because that threatens the safety of the refuge for women and girls, but because ButterflyHatched risks being outed and excluded from female-only spaces as male. Not once is there even an acknowledgement of the needs of female people here. Instead, there is this:

I'm acutely aware of it, that my perspective of other trans people is horrendously subject to the same social conditioning factors as anyone else.

We're not objecting to the presence of males who identify as trans in female-only spaces because we have been socially conditioned to have an (unreasonable or unjustified) perspective on trans people, but because we have real world experience with male people and male violence and have been taught how to keep ourselves as safe as possible from a very young age.

We also have other needs, to dignity and privacy, and many women have needs to be in a single-sex space for cultural reasons. ButterflyHatched has shown no awareness nor acknowledgment of any of that.

Instead we are made aware that all female people who know and care for ButterflyHatched are happy to share female-only spaces with ButterflyHatched. Which again, completely misses the issue women have with males in the female-only spaces that we routinely share with complete strangers: some male people are predators. Until they assault someone, we cannot tell them apart from harmless males. Safeguarding applies blanket rules for that reason - we cannot tell predators apart from other males. We can only stop giving predators easy and unchallenged access to spaces where women and girls are in a state of undress and therefore vulnerable if all males are banned from these spaces.

That means my lovely brother, who protects people for a living, and protected me, is still not allowed into a female-only public space, because other women don't know he is harmless and letting him in opens the doors to others who are not harmless. (He wouldn't dream of going into female-only spaces because he understands that women and girls might feel unsafe in his presence. He does not take this as a slight on his character or an insinuation that all men are predators.)

Equally so, again, we want and have a right to privacy and dignity in female-only spaces. Those other women have a right to expect my brother to stay out, even if we have no problem seeing each other naked.

When asked why ButterflyHatched cares despite passing so well that no one knows a male is in a female-only space, the answer is all about feeling guilty about "pulling up the ladder" and thereby stopping those males who don't pass (and therefore do scare women and girls) from female-only spaces (page 31, 16/10, 18:02).

And this is the worst passage for me:

The oppressions inflicted on people over those factors are real, and relevant, and there are situations where the inclusion of trans people without case by case evaluation and very careful refinement and consideration of safety and fairness is inappropriate. I don't think I've ever claimed otherwise? When it comes to sport, the matter is incredibly complex; when it comes to refuges and crisis centres, likewise.

That is as clear a statement as we can get that in the view of ButterflyHatched no female-only provisions are allowed to be exclusively female-only.

Rape crisis support, refuges and sport are three areas where most people, as well as the law, explicitly allow that exclusion, because these are clear cut cases for female-only provisions for the benefit of females.

And yet, ButterflyHatched calls it "incredibly complex". It's really not if the wellbeing of women and girls matter to you. But not even the most vulnerable women and girls matter enough to ButterflyHatched.

If we can define "woman" and "man" precisely, then we can have the discussion about what women need, what men need, and what men who feel like they are women need.

If "woman" means nothing, then everything you say about "women" means nothing.

This is an excellent point. This approach benefits nobody.

So, 40 pages in and we still don't have a quantifiable, legally workable, culturally transferable definition of "living as a woman"?

Another brilliant post from CharlieParley.

@CharlieParley
Instead we are made aware that all female people who know and care for ButterflyHatched are happy to share female-only spaces with ButterflyHatched. It also glossed over the fact that according to Butterfly many of those women have no idea that Butterfly is male. Of course they don't object because they don't know.
Oh and @ButterflyHatched by the time a woman in a rape crisis center or DV refuge asks you to leave it is too late. The damage is done, the stress, the trauma has been caused. Leaving quietly at that point doesn't undo the damage. And if TW feel the right to be there in the first place why would they leave quiet when asked? They insist on entering in the first place when asked not to.

Rape crisis support, refuges and sport are three areas where most people, as well as the law, explicitly allow that exclusion, because these are clear cut cases for female-only provisions for the benefit of females.

And yet, ButterflyHatched calls it "incredibly complex".

It's really not if the wellbeing of women and girls matter to you. But not even the most vulnerable women and girls matter enough to ButterflyHatched

YY. To me, the reason it looks 'incredibly complex' to butterfly is because these places are the ones that require the most convoluted argument, off the chart misogyny and serious amount of shutting down of opposition, to gain access.

Whining that these places are soo hard to get into. Ugh.

And it's why we are always being told how complex it is, how toxic the argument is. On tv and radio. It's because in order to convince people that males should have free access to raped women, you have to come up with something really, really different and special to obscure what it is you're really doing.

But not even the most vulnerable women and girls matter enough to ButterflyHatched

And it's always the most vulnerable. Most women only spaces only ever happen when women are at their most vulnerable.

Yes, I'm sick to death of being told how complex it is. To the point where we're talking about what a woman even is! When the very first criterion for being a transwoman is that you're a man. By their own definition.

It's not complex. Many men want to access women. Someone to attack them, some because they have a fetish about womanhood, some because they like bullying and intimidating women, some because they want the validation.

Hence third spaces being useless.

It's using women. From start to finish.

@Beowulfa

So, 40 pages in and we still don't have a quantifiable, legally workable, culturally transferable definition of "living as a woman"?

We don’t even have a definition of “woman” from the people who are claiming it’s possible to live as one without being a female human.

Well, it is "incredibly complex" to create a female-only space that admits males.

To the point of being logically impossible.

It's a bit less complex to invent some sort of "mostly-female space that admits certain males". But it's complex to explain why you would want to create such a thing, and what the inclusion basis (and indeed exclusion basis) for males would be. How do you include Butterfly but exclude me? Why should I tolerate that?

Female-only spaces are much simpler. Males are a very high risk compared to females, they can impregnate females, and they are easily visually identified, so the implementation is practical. (Same separation works across many species. This isn't human-specific!)

Having certain spaces be female-only spaces is what experts call a "no-brainer".

Totally eliminating them would be brainless. And heartless.

@Beowulfa

So, 40 pages in and we still don't have a quantifiable, legally workable, culturally transferable definition of "living as a woman"?

Woman - adult human female.

I think it's a useful thing to learn when someone keeps insisting that a subject is 'complex' or complicated, yet offers no useful solutions or ways to proceed. What they are really suggesting is that you are unable to understand and therefore should cede your authority/consent/boundary to others who know better.

It's a form of undermining, it is not helpful.

Life is rarely so complex we can't work out a way to navigate it - we wouldn't last very long were it so damn complex nobody could work out, for example, how to reproduce and perpetuate the species.

Live as a woman = be an adult human female + maintain homeostasis in one's body.

Will that do?

Sounds reasonable to me, Woman.

Having ascertained that there are only 70 places in the prisons of England and Wales for babies under 18 months to stay with their incarcerated mothers (created because we know how much damage separation does to human infants), I want to know why anyone on here thinks we should prioritise state money and effort to making sure some male prisoners in the prison system have more access to incarcerated women than those women's own children do.

Perhaps the root of the problem lies with how rigidly the category Man /Men is defined and policed by men? From boyhood, men seem to be comparing themselves with each other and looking out of the corner of their eye to check they're measuring up. Look how narrow the range of acceptable clothing is for men compared to what women wear! And the consequences for diverging from the gendered norm are much more serious for men. Gay men take a lot more stick than lesbian women, I think, though it's typically men who dish out the punishment to both groups.

So a man who diverges and feels alienated might well want to identify out of the incredibly narrow bandwidth called Men and feel it might be easier to identify into the broader, more tolerant, more colourful and much more fun bandwidth of Women.

Heck, it has to be easier than prising that male bandwidth open!

I guess from the outside it's hard to see the downside of millennia of fear and oppression all women carry, however lightly, especially when you're distracted by pretty heels, glittery lipstick and flouncy skirts...

Yes. I suggest we also need to prioritise practical, real world definitions that are easily understood and shared by most people.

woman - adult human female. As it has been since before language even existed.

@Beowulfa

So, 40 pages in and we still don't have a quantifiable, legally workable, culturally transferable definition of "living as a woman"?

We have put one forward, clearly defined, non-circular, universally applicable to all females of the species. We are still waiting for the alternative not based on sex. So, yes page 40, still waiting.

Nonetheless, I would like to say thank you to the many Mumsnetters who have contributed to this thread. It has been an interesting discussion and I have appreciated all the voices joining in, whether that was new posters or regulars. Thank you for giving your time to this thread.

RrrroooooooOoooooAaaaaaaaAAAARRRRRrrrr!!!