What do you expect transwomen to do then?

[Blibbyblobby]

@JohnHuffam1812 asked me a question on the woke thread that I think deserves an answer. The thread closed before I could post it but I’m answering here and hope that JohnHuff will see it and maybe give his/her/their thoughts.

What do you expect transwomen to do then? Should they not just be extended as much as they possible can within reason?

I expect trans women to acknowledge they are not female and that female experiences are also valid. I expect them to take as a starting point that the existing female-only spaces - ie everything defined as “women-only” when woman was synonymous with female - remain single sex for now. And then we work together, case by case, to see what can be reasonably opened up as mixed sex/single gender, and what might justify some third provisions, and what is just plain female and doesn’t really intersect with trans women’s needs and lives full stop.

I don’t know where that conversation will end up, and I don’t need to know. Maybe we will come to an agreement that “woman” becomes an entirely gender term that coexists with an entirely separate name for the female-bodied. Maybe, as trans women learn more about female people’s lives, they will decide the thing they recognise in themselves is not womanhood and the journey goes somewhere else. Maybe we will see a way forward that reduces the importance of both sex and gender for everyone and as we gain a more truly equal culture, the need to be seen as the “gender” one “truly is” just seems less and less important.

The point is, the first step is to communicate fairly, respectfully and openly. Without that we won’t be able to find reasonable solutions. But once we do communicate fairly, respectfully and openly, reasonable solutions will be surprisingly easy to find.

Basically, I expect trans women to respect our differences, and I expect us all to respect each other, speak honestly, listen with acceptance, and take it from there.

@RepentMotherfucker

And if you want a world where 'sparkles' meet 'lumberjack shirts' you can just come look at my DD.

Those aren't the issue. It's the raping and the porn and the domestic violence and the having to be fucking kind to everyone all of the fucking time and constantly being asked, 'what can we give up?' 'What shall we offer to the oppressors to appease them?'

And this thread is PART OF THAT.

If you think this thread is PART OF THAT then you are not listening. It is not about “what can we give up to appease oppressors?” I explained that very early on. It’s about what do I expect from trans women (because I was asked) and why I think what I expect will help us move forward.

Check my history. I understand entirely about the risks and oppression that patriarchy imposes on women. I have posted again and again about why we cannot accept trans women as women (female).

I understand the way trans identities are being constructed right now is rooted in patriarchy, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Trans identities, being at heart a rejection of the dominant gender/sex constructions, have the potential to destabilise it and if you read past the angry males on twitter to the confused ones, that’s what they are really crying out for.

@RepentMotherfucker

But genuinely, things labelled “Ladies” as opposed to “Women’s” do tend to be gender/social constructs around womanhood and as such, I’d say fair game for anyone who feels thegender identityof woman

Like, erm...the Ladies?

Yeah, that’s why I specifically pointed out I’m not seriously suggesting it as a general rule.

@justaftb

What a load of baloney.

"Ladies" is a commonly-used synonym for "Women" and its use on a toilet or changing room door has nothing to do with gender/social constructs around womanhood. It does not signal "If you identify as a woman, you should use these facilities, if you simply identify as a biological female, please use the toilets marked "Women"".

You misunderstand. Of course it doesn’t signal that, because we don’t have that concept at all right now. What I was saying is (with the obvious exceptions of ladies toilets and changing rooms, although both less common uses than they were), “ladies” is often attached to gender/social stuff rather than laws and rights. Which isn’t surprising since it’s quite an old fashioned term now.

@MorkandMandy

I wouldn’t mind a definition/ term for the socially fabricated idea of women and girls that’s wholly defined by the male gaze as this seems to be the essence that TW identify with but is very far from real womanhood. If we can establish that so many TW actually identify as this, we can begin to reclaim our rights.

Doll? Bird? Skirt?

Trans identities, being at heart a rejection of the dominant gender/sex constructions

Trans identities exist because they completely obey the gender/sex constructions. So if you like girlie things that lots of members of the female sex like, it must mean you are really a girl.

Ladies nights exist because men want cheap sex with drunk women. Not because they are super generous towards people in skirts.

It has been a major mistake to try teaming a mixed sex group under the word 'woman'. It's allowed the concept of sex and gender to get totally fogged and has been actively used by male people for the benefit of male people to attempt to deny female rape victims the right to help or a female doctor. No.

As has been shown; good will in this situation does not work. The GRA was an attempt at this kind of compromise. What we've seen demonstrated over and over again is that if females provide a chink, the door will be forced to its widest extent, and it's taken less than 1% of the male population to cause this havoc for all females through utter disregard for them. No more confusion.

@Shedmistress

Trans identities, being at heart a rejection of the dominant gender/sex constructions

Trans identities exist because they completely obey the gender/sex constructions. So if you like girlie things that lots of members of the female sex like, it must mean you are really a girl.

Ladies nights exist because men want cheap sex with drunk women. Not because they are super generous towards people in skirts.

Absolutely. It is not a rejection. It is a wholesale acceptance of rigid categories and then a choosing of which category you want to be a part of. The complete opposite of rejection. I think the common ground you are looking for OP does not exist. I will do battle with any male who says I'm a man but I don't want to live live society says I should. But said man cannot be trans.

You misunderstand. Of course it doesn’t signal that, because we don’t have that concept at all right now. What I was saying is (with the obvious exceptions of ladies toilets and changing rooms, although both less common uses than they were), “ladies” is often attached to gender/social stuff rather than laws and rights. Which isn’t surprising since it’s quite an old fashioned term now.

A Ladies' Night is still an opportunity to enjoy the company of other women without having overbearing men dictating the course of the conversation or of the evening. Women are allowed to convene in groups without men interfering. There is absolutely no reason to give this up. If males with lady-feelz are allowed in, that changes the dynamic and excludes some women. If males with lady-feelz are allowed in to any women's/ladies'/girls' sex-segregated activity how can you justify other males being excluded from it?

Which must mean that women who are unladylike are not women....?

Logic (and humour) fail...
Women are women, and we can do womanning any damn way we want.
Transwomen aren't women so have to adopt some sort of 'ladylike' persona.

If there are any social activities where being 'ladylike' is the requirement ... that probably doesn't need to be single sex. Fill your high-heeled boots (and count me out).

But things where the necessary criterion is sex (sport, changing rooms and the 'Ladies room') ... being ladylike is immaterial.

I understand the way trans identities are being constructed right now is rooted in patriarchy, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Trans identities, being at heart a rejection of the dominant gender/sex constructions, have the potential to destabilise it and if you read past the angry males on twitter to the confused ones, that’s what they are really crying out for.

I can see what you’re getting at Blibby, and I think that’s what the trans lobby want us to think, that it’s all about destabilising gender roles and expanding identity possibilities and so on.

The problem is, in practice I don’t think it is. That’s the kind of thing young “queer” people (who largely aren’t trans but bi or gay or just lefty) like to think they are doing. I don’t doubt a few trans people think like this too - often people who sit on the borderlines in terms of sexual roles as well as sexuality.

In practice at its root though, there are two very malign cores at the heart of gender ideology. One is the effect of porn and patriarchy on distressed young women, often young gay women, who are encouraged to internalise their distress as gender divergence. (And if gender ideology is so freeing, why are they experiencing so much “dysphoria”?)

The other is the deep sexual and eroticised core of a lot of the other part of trans identity. And this often makes use of the narrative of poor kids trapped in their sex as a kind of sleight of hand to distract from this other aspect. And we are not meant to acknowledge the erotic bit or reference it, because then we can’t pretend any more that it’s all about pushing at gender expectations for ideologically progressive reasons. And that’s why I don’t think that the majority of this is positive or progressive.

Twenty years ago psychologists used to make a clear distinction between “transsexuals” (a relatively small group); and “transvestism” as an erotic fetish. Women used to be reassured in advice columns in women’s magazines that their husband didn’t want to become a woman; he just got a sexual thrill from wearing women’s knickers. In my twenties I used to live opposite a single middle aged doctor who could be seen in stockings in his window every night after he got home.

Where have all the transvestites gone…? (Sung to the tune of “Where have all the cowboys gone…”)

That might be a starting point for our answer as to whether gender ideology is genuinely attempting to carve out new progressive spaces under patriarchy … or not.

If you think this thread isPART OF THATthen you are not listening. It is not about “what can we give up to appease oppressors?” I explained that very early on. It’s about what do I expect from trans women (because I was asked) and why I think what I expect will help us move forward.

Honestly?

I think you're a bit out of your depth here.

And I think you started this thread and made a couple of offhand comments about 'ladies nights' and it didn't go your way and now you're doubling down and really I would stop digging. Feminists do not want the debate you are suggesting. Neither do TW from what I can see. And it would only work against us anyway for all the very good reasons people have been posting for the last three pages.

I don't want ANYTHING from TW. I have absolutely no desire to participate in any discussion about trans issues. Except where they threaten women's rights and there is absolutely no debate about that, it simply cannot be allowed to happen.

Trans identities, being at heart a rejection of the dominant gender/sex constructions, have the potential to destabilise it and if you read past the angry males on twitter to the confused ones, that’s what they are really crying out for.

Of course, your old-fashioned transsexuals might be a victim of patriarchy, in that effeminate men were treated to rampant homophobia and bullying. But identifying as women is playing straight into the gender roles.

I'm effeminate, therefore I must be a woman.

Its cementing patriarchal stereotypes.

And as for AGP men. It's the same but it goes further and fetishises them.

None of this dismantles patriarchy.

@Shedmistress

Trans identities, being at heart a rejection of the dominant gender/sex constructions

Trans identities exist because they completely obey the gender/sex constructions. So if you like girlie things that lots of members of the female sex like, it must mean you are really a girl.

Ladies nights exist because men want cheap sex with drunk women. Not because they are super generous towards people in skirts.

Trans identities exist because they completely obey the gender/sex constructions. So if you like girlie things that lots of members of the female sex like, it must mean you are really a girl.

Trans identitifying people reject the gender constructs attached to their birth sex. That’s the fundamental driver. IMO the (mis) identification with the opposite sex comes after.

So while I agree that the “really a girl” thing is very much a sex/gender construct, it’s the first part I am really interested in.

The way I see it (and this is why I really wish there was open communication, so I could learn more) is that first thing, the “I don’t match the type of person that society tells me my sex should be” feeling is real. That’s based entirely on their own knowledge of themself.

The second thing “I feel like what I believe the other sex feels like, I must be the other sex” is where it goes awry because it’s built on an assumption/belief about the opposite sex rather than actual knowledge of what it is to be the opposite sex.

So, what I think is going on for many trans identifying people is an entirely rational recognition that their own gender role under patriarchy doesn’t fit, but instead of leading to a recognition that sex/gender personality constructs are in fact bollocks, it’s being incorrectly diverted into a belief that one is actually the opposite gender, or a mix of genders, or something, based on assumptions about what others feel and experience.

Plus on top of that, a big chunk of original gender socialisation that gets carried with you into the “new” gender identity.

Not that I’m suggesting any of this is consciously thought. But that’s why I say the driver for trans identities is a rejection of sex stereotypes even if the result is actually to enforce them.

I think I can have sone idea of what is happening for younger F2M people

if you are always told you are wierd then you internalise that -it's your fault , something is wrong with you-girls reject you as not one of them so you must be a boy

It takes something else for you to realise that there isn't actually anything wrong with you , that it's the nasty girls who are wrong
Especially as a child where fitting in with your peer group is so important

@JellySaurus

You misunderstand. Of course it doesn’t signal that, because we don’t have that concept at all right now. What I was saying is (with the obvious exceptions of ladies toilets and changing rooms, although both less common uses than they were), “ladies” is often attached to gender/social stuff rather than laws and rights. Which isn’t surprising since it’s quite an old fashioned term now.

A Ladies' Night is still an opportunity to enjoy the company of other women without having overbearing men dictating the course of the conversation or of the evening. Women are allowed to convene in groups without men interfering. There is absolutely no reason to give this up. If males with lady-feelz are allowed in, that changes the dynamic and excludes some women. If males with lady-feelz are allowed in to any women's/ladies'/girls' sex-segregated activity how can you justify other males being excluded from it?

Am I suggesting no woman(female)-only groups ever? No. I’m suggesting as an example one particular, highly gendered social convention that might be appropriate as suitable for a gender-based group of “women” rather than sex segregation.

And as shed has so helpfully and insistently highlighted, the Ladies at a Ladies Night do not go there with the expectation of there being no males present, quite the opposite.

If you want to argue, as shed I think is, that Ladies Night itself is a bad thing that should not happen that is a different and valid point, but to defend this thing in particular as a female-only activity seems an odd hill to die on, if not actually counterproductive in forcing a gender stereotype right back onto the female body.

Except a lot of what trans people say about rejecting their birth sex is half about gender and half about sex - eg. being uncomfortable in their sexed body, having “gender dysphoria” about the body, and so on. So is it really discomfort with sex roles, or is it about sexed bodies? Is body dysphoria “gender” dysphoria or sex dysphoria? It all gets mixed up together in the gender ideology narrative, so I don’t think it’s remotely as simple as just rejecting the patriarchal constructs of gender.

And as shed has so helpfully and insistently highlighted, the Ladies at a Ladies Night do not go there with the expectation of there being no males present, quite the opposite...If you want to argue, as shed I think is, that Ladies Night itself is a bad thing that should not happen that is a different and valid point, but to defend this thing in particular as a female-only activity seems an odd hill to die on, if not actually counterproductive in forcing a gender stereotype right back onto the female body.

No, my response was based around your comment about free drinks for ladies in a nightclub. Not about specific female only groups or events.

Men who identify as women (aka 'Trans women') are men. Biologically this is an irrefutable fact. A trans woman's needs therefore cannot be said to be the same as that of a biological woman. TW therefore need to find ways to meet their own needs, whether it is creating their own spaces or engaging with their own sex to promote better acceptance / safety.

I can't say what is right for them as I'm a woman. I'm also a rape survivor and I will not compromise my safety or dignity for any man. Surrendering female single sex spaces for the benefit of men, or endorsing the notion that a man who identifies as a women is a woman will not solve TW problems - all it is doing is creating new problems.

OK, I missed that you were referring to a specific type of Ladies' Night. That sort is a misogynistic, sexist, patronising event, which I want nothing to do with.

To me, a Ladies' Night has always been something like all the women in a friendship group/class/department going out to socialise together, without the men. Without the men, however well we got on with them, no matter whether they were our good friends or even partners.

A different environment altogether

@Shedmistress

And as shed has so helpfully and insistently highlighted, the Ladies at a Ladies Night do not go there with the expectation of there being no males present, quite the opposite...If you want to argue, as shed I think is, that Ladies Night itself is a bad thing that should not happen that is a different and valid point, but to defend this thing in particular as a female-only activity seems an odd hill to die on, if not actually counterproductive in forcing a gender stereotype right back onto the female body.

No, my response was based around your comment about free drinks for ladies in a nightclub. Not about specific female only groups or events.

Yeah, that’s what I said. You and I were talking about Ladies Night at nightclubs which are very much not women-only spaces. Jelly misunderstood.

@foxgoosefinch

Except a lot of what trans people say about rejecting their birth sex is half about gender and half about sex - eg. being uncomfortable in their sexed body, having “gender dysphoria” about the body, and so on. So is it really discomfort with sex roles, or is it about sexed bodies? Is body dysphoria “gender” dysphoria or sex dysphoria? It all gets mixed up together in the gender ideology narrative, so I don’t think it’s remotely as simple as just rejecting the patriarchal constructs of gender.

Or does the discomfort with the body arise from rejection of the role? As you say, it’s all mixed up. Which is why I think communicating about it properly is the right place to start.

@RepentMotherfucker

If you think this thread isPART OF THATthen you are not listening. It is not about “what can we give up to appease oppressors?” I explained that very early on. It’s about what do I expect from trans women (because I was asked) and why I think what I expect will help us move forward.

Honestly?

I think you're a bit out of your depth here.

And I think you started this thread and made a couple of offhand comments about 'ladies nights' and it didn't go your way and now you're doubling down and really I would stop digging. Feminists do not want the debate you are suggesting. Neither do TW from what I can see. And it would only work against us anyway for all the very good reasons people have been posting for the last three pages.

I don't want ANYTHING from TW. I have absolutely no desire to participate in any discussion about trans issues. Except where they threaten women's rights and there is absolutely no debate about that, it simply cannot be allowed to happen.

No worries. I’m not out of my depth, I just disagree with you, but thanks for caring.

The Ladies Night was a passing comment in this context but not offhand, in fact it is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, what some valid single-gender things might be and the fact that what (Some? Many? The most vocal? I don’t know) trans women want from womanhood seems to be the bits Feminists would want to get rid of anyway.

I understand exactly where you are coming from by saying “not my problem” and in a black and white world you’d be right, but in the messy real world I think refusing to explore the possibilities that would be opened up by allowing gender to exist alongside sex ironically risks pushing people - not so much the TRAs and late transitioning males (though maybe some of the latter), but the mass of younger people exploring trans identities - who do feel a genuine and rational gender mismatch under patriarchal gender roles, towards trans ideology because TRAs are listening and giving them a story that explains how they feel.

As Floisme already said,

"Why is question even being asked of women? Ask the men."

Blibby

'
The way I see it (and this is why I really wish there was open communication, so I could learn more) is that first thing, the “I don’t match the type of person that society tells me my sex should be” feeling is real. That’s based entirely on their own knowledge of themself.'

Thing is, stacks of men women girls boys feel like that, to a greater or lesser extent. And I'm fairly sure plenty of people have felt like that whenever and wherever socially enforced sex roles have existed.

When the term feminist was coined, what it meant.

Then a chunk of women who felt that way described themselves as, carried out activism, read about, joined groups etc described as feminist.

I have been very aware of and very uncomfortable with gender/sex role stuff for as long as I can remember. Age 4, 5 maybe...

I felt confused, annoyed, unhappy, flummoxed by just so so much. I felt I must be missing something. But no idea what.

When much older heard about feminism (80s) I thought yep that's me.

This idea that it's unusual to notice and feel all sorts of negative things about sex role.

It's not at all.

I don't know anyone who doesn't reject at least some of the expectations. Men and women. And pretty much all would never say I'm feminist. Or I'm trans.