Moment of realisation

[Footballmatchdilemma]

I was at an event last night where a trans woman I know vaguely was there. I had no reason to speak to them (the configuration of the room meant I wouldn’t have been able to if id wanted to anyway), but I could see them.

They are about my age, 40s, slim, nice clothes, long hair etc. But what made me, frankly, a bit pissed off, is that I thought, how nice for them to enjoy the long hair and the clothes and blah blah, but at this point in their life, what they won’t have to deal with, which most women will, is the sodding menopause. It hasn’t hit me yet, but I’m worried about how it will make me feel.

This person has no idea about this aspect of being a woman. No the menopause, not periods, not childbirth, none of it. How can they possibly, in any way, believe themselves to be a woman?! These things are the reality, before you even begin to talk about the burden of care that usually falls on women, low salaries etc.

It made me so very grumpy, and there’s no one I can talk to about it because my friends aren’t interested and my sister is all ‘be kind’.

"What is wrong with being a transwoman?
Why the people banging on about true self don’t want to be transwomen?"
Nothing. As long as we accept that transwomen are transwomen and not women.

But looking and sounding like a woman is all I need to do? So if a transwoman passes should she also be treated as a woman?

A transwoman who passes will probably be treated as a woman, yes. But they’ll never experience being a woman in the way we do.

This. I'm fully signed up GC, but for those who have gender dysphoria it sounds like an awful medical condition and for those who fully transition, being a life long medical patient with a medically induced hormone imbalance can't always be a barrel of laughs. I wouldn't want it.

I agree that being a TW is different from being a woman. I wish we had a state where everyone recognised this and TW and TM with dysphoria could genuinely be proud to be trans rather than claiming to be something else.

I have no time for people without gender dysphoria who claim to the literally the opposite sex or gender or whatever they claim, and I don't think these people should be under the label trans at all. Though I do think they should be able to dress as they please without getting shit for it.

but they’ll never experience being a woman in the way we do.
This is just so ridiculous though, sorry - we don't all have the same experiences!
Just because I've given birth more than once naturally, doesn't mean all women will, or indeed even want to.
Having different experiences doesn't make you any less women.
And there's more to me being a woman than what my body is doing right now FFS..
That's reducing me to my body parts and it can get in the fucking sea.
yes as I said hot as crap today and had enough 😁

Men used to stare at me, and proposition me and try to get me alone and wolf whistle and more. I was young and pretty and had the obligatory big rack. I lost jobs because I wouldnt sleep with the boss, I've always been paid less than men, I had to quit a career to look after my children because no one thought the man should do his share. Oh God I could go on and on and all this happened because of my female biology.
Doubt if anywhere near the same happens to transwomen.
Yes different issues , but nothing that makes them a woman. And as we know their biology stands them in good stead for countering most issues.

But I don’t have periods, I won’t ever be pregnant - the only thing we have in common by the sounds of it is that we are female, there isn’t really much of a shared experience of womanhood there. Having a period doesn’t “make you a woman” - its something that happens to you because you’re female

Ah @GoodJanetBadJanet you're skewing things, or falling for a cynically skewed, apparently liberatory narrative. Women have many different experiences and make many different choices; of course that does not make any individual 'less of a woman'. But having no capacity to give birth - even if only potential, or undeveloped or disordered or wounded or flawed - does make you less of a woman. In fact, it makes you a man.

Your womanhood might be more than your biology, but without your biology it is not womanhood.

That says it all really, Ndd! And you didn't even have to cheat to get where you are.

And @catsdrool, it is the social consequences of our biology which women share and which oppress us. We are a sex class.

We share characteristics and experiences with other humans, male and female. We might often feel a connection or an empathy - but that's not womanhood. It is our sex, and the consequences of our sex, which are unique to us as women and which, at the most basic level, define us as a class.

I've always liked to see men rocking their looks with long hair, dresses, makeup, whatever, but was very taken aback to find that some of them seriously thought this made them actual women, and was then flummoxed to find we were expected to go along with it

This!

Women stare because all women do a risk assessment with an unknown man - am I safe? - we all do it. Even for a millisecond. Transwomen rarely pass.

Given that fashion for women is moving away from being a Kardashian clone/wannabe pornstar , it's going to be even harder for transwomen to pass.
If a man feels more comfortable in dresses and makeup, that's fine by me. Just stop colonising our language and our spaces

I thought it was not the done thing anymore to expect trans woomen to 'pass'. It's all about the internal feelz, isn't it?
The reason people stare is because there are conflicting visual signals being given out and it takes a few moments to determine whether the person is male or female. It's a natural human process to classify by sex, just as you subconsciously classify people by age, height, skin colour, clothing, and a myriad other things.

Women stare because all women do a risk assessment with an unknown man - am I safe? - we all do it.
No, we don't. Don't try and speak for all of us.

No. Reducing people to their body parts is calling women ' people with uteruses' Or ' cervix havers' and so on.

No, women do not all have the same experiences. But we do all have the same female sex, which relates to our reproductive sex class. And only women have this. And because of this female sex, women, as a population, have experiences that no men has or that men, as a population, do not have. The data is there large and clear and throughout the ages, on how women, as a population, have different experiences from men, because of their sex.

What's ridiculous is trying to pretend that women does not mean adult human female, because not all women have the same experiences or in the same way.

That is likely trying to pretend that a horse is not a 'a large plant-eating domesticated mammal with solid hoofs and a flowing mane and tail' because some horses pull carts and some race in the Grand National and therefore they don't have the same experiences. And then, from that, concluding that a llama can also be a horse, as actual horses don't have the same experiences as each other, so other animals, such as llamas, who also have different experiences from cart horses and race horses must therefore also be able to be horses.

That is the sort of mad world you enter into when you try to remove the definition of a classification of living creature from its biology.

Ah, I see — women must make sure they never stare anyone directly in the face. To do so is terribly unbecoming and forward. Women should always remember to be uncomplaining, never to take up space, and never to betray any thoughts of their own — lest anyone else be for a moment inconvenienced by the idea that a woman might have any interior life or subjectivity.

No. Reducing people to their body parts is calling women ' people with uteruses' Or ' cervix havers' and so on.
Which I only ever see on here, never in real life.
Posters calling themselves uterus Havers or woman the cunty kind which I saw the other day 🙄
*
Ah, I see — women must make sure they never stare anyone directly in the face. To do so is terribly unbecoming and forward.*
Sorry, but what are you actually talking about?!
How did you get there from my post?

I genuinely have no idea what you're actually talking about.
I was just saying we don't all risk assess every time we're near men.
Yes some women will, but we're not all one person so it's daft to say all.

@Footballmatchdilemma I had a similar feeling at a family event attended by one of my young male relatives who has a relatively new trans identity. This young male (who has only dated other males) said, "I know I'm a woman because I feel I am. Cis men don't feel womanhood. I was born female gender, but it's just my body was wrong." This young male says this in a room full of middle aged (and older) men and women who are all married w/ kids. After this pronouncement is made, I ponder to myself how these older men, husbands who have seen their wives in all states/ages of naked, have seen them go through painful periods, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, some endometriosis, menopause, etc. have FAR MORE INSIGHT into being a woman than you do, oh young, naive summer child you are.

I did not say this, but I am 100 percent positive some variation on this theme was running through the heads of all the older folks in attendance.

Seems to have gone on a tangent as I thought that this was about opting out of biological realities of your sex? Less so about sociological realities.

Isn't a transwoman opting out of the biological realities of manhood? Isn't a transman opting out of the biological realities of womanhood? I know we get into very messy territory with pregnant trans men (who have had to stop testosterone to be able to function as a woman again).

A transwomen benefiting from male privilege can only do so if they transitioned later in life, but if someone transitioned before the age of employment then they wouldn't have gained such privileges.

Pip Bunce and Eddie Izzard are not transsexual, they are essentially crossdressers who use both male and female personas for their benefit.

Isn’t the entire point that having a male voice, or being able to be a physical man for the purposes of an acting role or a business deal, precisely about the biological realities of manhood? They’re retaining the advantages of male physicality when it suits not to present socially as a woman.

Not to mention that the whole “95 percent of transwomen keep their male genitalia” is precisely about retaining male physicality when that suits.

If you think language where women are reduced to their bodily functions only ever happens on here, you really aren't paying attention. Its happening in public documents, adverts, science journals, health promotion material.

It only goes to show how weak your argument is that you pretend this is not happening. I presume you condemn this language though, as it reduces women to their bodily parts. Can you confirm this?

And I notice you ignore the other points I made too.

This is simply brilliant. What a succinct summation of women's reality that men opting to be seen as women or feeling like they are women will never experience and more importantly will never have been shaped by since those experiences are not options females get to choose. The phrase "the extreme consequent limits on our agency" knocks your post out of the ballpark.