Need to vent!

[Ladyof2022]

A woman posted on a local community neighbourhood forum website that I am a member of, expressing how honoured she felt being asked to do the make up and hair of a person aged 82 who had recently changed sex. He changed sex, it turns out, by beginning to wear make up, growing his hair to just below his ears and wearing skirts instead of trousers, and is now called "she".

The OP mentioned how uncomfortable he said he had felt for years, "having" to wear a bra under male clothes, worried sick that someone might notice, but now he could be himself, sorry herself.

Not only was the OP gushing but all the women who replied to the thread fawned and simpered over the 82-yr-old, using words like how "amazing" the person was to have done this and phrases like "being her true self" etc.

Not one woman who responded asked WHY she felt that she "HAD TO" wear a bra when she used to be a man. None asked to have the process explained as to how putting on a skirt turns a male into a female.

Honestly these brainless handmaidens drive me up the wall!

I have to sit on my hands. We post in our real names on that site and so I have to gag myself, silence myself, as I could not cope with the onslaught of abuse I know I would get, the loss of potential friends and customers to my small local business. Yes, I know that makes me a coward and I feel bad about that, as well!

I was longing to reply as below, but I can't, so to get it off my chest I am posting it on here.

"You know what is genuinely brave and amazing? Negotiating life as a female. Not only battling all the disadvantages of growing up as a girl under patriarchy, but putting up with periods, boys staring and teasing and groping, men leering and commenting on your teenage body, then often a string of relationships with men who treat you like a second class citizen or talk down to you or browbeat you for sex when you don't want it. Then there are the multivarious female-only conditions that millions of women have to contend with: endometriosis, fibroids, etc etc. Then there is the labour market and the search for a half-decent husband. Then childbearing and childrearing, juggling work and childcare, being criticised by all sides. Next often comes a divorce, widowhood or other heartbreak which she just has to get over and make the best of things. Then there is the second struggle to be taken seriously in the workplace. Then comes the menopause, with all the horrors that brings many women, and then being denigrated as an "old woman" who is ignored, put down, or mocked.

WOMEN are the people who should be celebrated as brave, NOT a man who for 82 years enjoyed all the advantages and privileges of being a male in a patriarchal society - a better education, more prestige, higher status, higher wages, a little wifey at home to meet his needs and do his housework and raise his kids. At age 82 he puts on a skirt and some lipstick and suddenly she's this great, brave, stunning heroine, fawned over by women, many of whom have spent their lives as detailed above, but they still think the transwoman is braver and more amazing and courageous and stunning than they are, and indeed than any woman is.

My blood is boiling and I am so frustrated that I cannot post on that thread. Grrr!

Rant away!

Why he had to wear a bra under his clothes? The love that dare not speak its name?

To have all the positives of boobies and none of the not-so-niceties.
I'm guessing all that bra wearing didn't come with a letter from the NHS about mammograms?

I love your rant! I was cheering you on with every word!

Oh gawd, rant well deserved.

I'm highly suspicious that the needing to get someone to come and do hair and make up is just effing attention seeking validating bollox anyway. The client knew that the hair and beauty therapist would be straight in social media for the likes/kudos whatever.

The client is probably reading every word of the handmaidens with an extremely happy smile, iykwim.

Your articulate rant has my full support. Well said!

Women are marginalised? Just think about that for a moment, 50% of the population, marginalised. Pushed to one side, and by whom? That other 50% of the population, not forgetting the women “trans allies” who are now encouraging and supporting men to further marginalise women by encroaching on our spaces : our prisons, refuges, hospital wards,toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, recreational and professional sports, even muscling us out and trying to shame us out of using the words and language we use about ourselves.

Rant away OP, it’s about time women stopped being nice about the people who disrespect our sex by stealing our identity and mocking us.

I have noticed and wondered about this behavior by some women towards men who have ventured into traditionally female pastimes and groups. These women are so quick to gush and fawn in a way they would never do to another female. Perhaps the answer is deep in the evolutionary history of female attraction to competition for males. It could be argued that the gushing woman is reacting to the transwoman's sex and not the the woman costume. At a deep, fundamental and even subconscious level women can recognize men.

Crap I forgot to book my mammogram I’ll set a reminder for next week

Rant away speaking for many of us

I went out for the evening and suddenly realised that I had forgotten to include miscarriages and abortions in the list of what many women have to put up with in their lives. So add that to my list.

The trans woman is not disabled in any way, so yes, she does not need someone to come and do her make up or do her hair, which is simply a slightly wavy bob.

Yes, it's the fawning and adulation that gets my goat, which they would never give to another woman.

And, you know what else? LOADS of women in their 70s and 80s dress as men. I see them all the time (I live in a town with a high elderly population) -- trousers and baggy tee shirts, trainers, boots, etc and have short hair and wear no make up. Where's the adulation that should be heaped on them, for finally throwing away the tight, impractical clothing, the high heels and the shackles of cosmetics, having their long hair cut off, in other words, being at long last their true selves?

I care because it's unfair that men get fawned over for any little thing they do, and I care about fairness.

I know her lived experience because it was mentioned that she had lived a regular, stereotypical life as a man... good career, marriage, kids, etc. It was not a "make up website". Where did you get that from? I said in my OP it is a local neighbourhood forum.

Incidentally there are just as many men on the forum but not one of them joined the thread to fawn over the transwoman. Isn't that fascinating?

As for "let people live" - I am not removing this person's life; in fact I am not affecting it in any way. My criticism focussed only on the sycophantic fawners.

But now you mention it, presumably this former man who is now a woman just because they say so and wear a skirt to prove it, will be expecting to use female-only protected spaces. Granted they won't be taking a place on a sports team, but they might ask to be placed in a female-only hospital ward, should they need to be admitted, and will use female public toilets or the female toilets in a care home etc. And the women won't be given any choice but to share with this new woman with male genitalia who five minutes ago would not have been allowed in.

Yes exactly, this person is not being treated like a woman, but rather a very special man.
Sometimes I think that these women who clap along like seals are just so grateful that any man deigns to lower himself to our level and wants to be among us. They think it's a compliment. It isn't.

Essentially you prefer your kind-sounding assumptions to the not-so-nice sounding assumptions.

He can wear as much makeup and as many bras as he likes. I don't care. I care about women allowing him to use single sex spaces because they are being kind to an old dear who is scared of eyeliner. The "generational thing" is with him. The rest of us really don't bat an eye lid at men wearing make up. I'd do the make up for him if he wanted. It still doesn't mean he understand the first thing about females at home or in the work place!

The trans woman is not disabled in any way, so yes, she does not need someone to come and do her make up or do her hair, which is simply a slightly wavy bob.
What a strange comment, you don't need to be disabled to have someone come and do your make up and hair!
Loads use mobile hairdressers
I’m probably going to get battered by this but why do you care?
Exactly -also doesn't sit right the way everyone lists all the ways to be "a real woman" 🙄 and how terrible it is, which bits are worse etc, seems a bit self loathing to do all that

Let people live I genuinely don’t get all the hate, must be a generational thing.

Haha! Please teach us, young ally, for we old crones know nothing about oppression, having lived as (actual) women for decades 🙄

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no “hate”, just an unwillingness to accept the wholly unscientific belief that being female is a state of mind.

100% with you, OP!

Can you register as an alter ego and post your rant, plus the addenda?

A genuine question to people who have posted saying they are trans allies. Is the 82 year old a man or a woman? The reason I ask is this: in the guardian the other day there was an article about how elderly women who fall are more likely to experience a hip fracture if they are vegetarian. This is important to me as I am a middle aged woman who has been vegetarian most of my life so I need to ensure I take the correct suppliments. They do not know if men are affected in the same way. It may be that they are not. If the 82 year old suffers a fall and goes to hospital, should they be registered as a man or a woman? If they are allowed to answer woman because they 'feel' that they are a woman, this affects the data. Women of the xx chromosome type will not get the health information they need. Like many others I have no problem with this person wearing makeup etc. Break out of the gender constraints! Hurrah for you! But why does this need to be accompanied by everyone being forced to pretend that he is now a biological woman?

Which generation are you? I am of a generation which has read Blanchard's typologies (have a quick google when you have a minute) and then applied sufficient critical thinking to realise that LARPing as an X doesn't actually make you an X, and there is no such thing as "born in the wrong body".

Most posters don't care what clothes men wear or whether they wear make-up. If they can be arsed getting up early to do all that primping, have at it, I say! Some do care, and I understand why (i refer you back to Blanchard). What most do care about is that when men wear particular clothing and make-up and then use that as "evidence" that they are actually women. Leaving aside how incredibly offensive that is, some of us might not mind these men claiming to be women because #BeKind who is it hurting?

When men claim to be women, it does hurt women. The magical incantation "I'm a woman" gives men access to women's spaces. From public toilets and changing rooms right through to sports teams, rape crisis, DV refuges and prisons. Prisons, Lemon!

Men can be housed in women's prisons where they can access female inmates and the men who have done this have intimidated, threatened and even assaulted the women in prison with them. I won't go along with a social trend that does so much harm to women and girls.

I really hope that your generation will listen to what we are saying, and look at the evidence instead of just telling us to live and let live. We are long past live and let live when men are being placed in women's prisons.

If you want to understand why most here don't simply shut up and stop being so mean I recommend reading the thread entitled "break it down for me"

Not one woman who responded asked WHY she felt that she "HAD TO" wear a bra when she used to be a man.

I assume it's for the very female sense of relief one gets when removing it at the end of the day. 😁

Oh man if I had tiny gnat man boobs I would NEVER EVER wear a bra. Such freedom and comfort...

It is a generational thing, @Lemon1822 . When you too have lived a few more decades, become a bit older and wiser, especially to the ways of men in a man's world, you might be less naive and condescending.