Am I a TERF?

[PurplePalms]

Discovered today a family member (male) is dating a transwoman.

Absolutely no idea on the status of her transition, hormones/surgery etc. as that’s her business. I have met her a handful of times and she is polite and pleasant. A very nice person.

My family member doesn’t know I know because …

I was having a snoop at her Facebook page, saw old posts and photos from when she was younger living as a male and recently saw a post from her stating “Transmen are real men. Transwomen are real women”.

This just didn’t sit right with me.

For what it’s worth, I’d consider myself quite liberal. I don’t discriminate on sexuality, race, age, gender etc. If you’re born a man and feel like you want to medically transition and vice Versa, that’s fine, do your thing and accept you’re trans.

BUT, to then say you are a real woman. Even though you were born genetically male and (most likely) have male genitalia- you can’t be a real woman? You can’t possibly understand how it feels to be a woman. Hormonally, emotionally, physically and socially.

Part of me feels awful for feeling this way. Like I am a bad person. Obviously I would never say to her face “you are not a real woman” never in a million years would I want to cause someone upset, start drama etc. Am I a terf? Do I sound awful?

I have just realised on my post punctuation would have been nice, I meant to say... Oh I don't know. Full stop. there is that feeling...

Totally changed my meaning, bloody punctuation doing a specific job and changing the meanings of things when they wander of f to punctuate how they like.

I wish there was something that we all as a woman had in common, other than the chromosome thing, as that argument gets old quick, that defined us as woman. A feeling, a trait, something, anything. It would make this a while lot easier wouldn't it.

I don’t even know if what I feel is woman at all.

i didn’t feel at all feminine when I was pregnant, which is when a lot of women seem to say they felt it the most.

mostly I feel tired and achy.

The feeling of dread when you’re walking alone in the dark and a man is walking a few steps behind you.

The feeling of confusion when a complete strange man comes over and tells you to “smile”.

The feeling of being uncomfortable when men catcall you and whistle at you from across the street, from a car window, from a building site.

The feeling of being utterly terrified when you’ve politely turned a man down in a bar because you’re not interested, but he won’t take no for an answer and becomes hostile.

The feeling of anguish when men make jokes to you about “getting back in the kitchen” and other sexist stereotypes.

The feeling of hopelessness when you’re visiting a male GP or male gynaecologist and they and tell you to take paracetamol when dealing with excruciatingly painful periods and masses of blood clots.

The feeling of embarrassment and being “dirty” when you realise your period blood has leaked through to your trousers.

Being at an unfair advantage in the workplace. Being expected to be SAHM and doing majority of childcare. Being expected to be sexually submissive. Having illnesses or mental health issues and it being blamed on “the time of the month” “going through the changes”.

This is what it feels like to be a woman, IMO. I have these types of discussions with my female family members and female friends. I’ve never spoken to one woman who doesn’t know what it feels like to be a woman in todays society.

Granted, yes, every woman’s experience of life will be different. But we sure do have a lot more in common than chromosomes.

The feeling of hopelessness when you’re visiting a male GP or male gynaecologist and they and tell you to take paracetamol when dealing with excruciatingly painful periods and masses of blood clots.

I feel you sister. Although at least with the men you can stand your ground and fight you're corner because they have no frame of reference having never had a period etc. In this one you simply tell them they cannot possibly ever know what it feels like and you expect better care from them and that they should listen to the woman in front of them actually experiencing it. It usually shocks them into prescribing something better than paracetamol.

The worst care in this regard that i got was from a female doctor who's never had a long, or painful or heavy period in her life and so refused to believe me that I was flooding before I'd even made it back out of the toilet.

Everyone is a terf, even Owen Jones and Eddie Izzard. They just can't admit it. Welcome to reality and truth.

The feeling of being uncomfortable when men catcall you and whistle at you from across the street, from a car window, from a building site.

@PurplePalms if it will make this one easier to bear, I used to work on building sites when this sort of thing was rife, like no woman was safe walking past rife.

I used to wait for a solitary man to walk past and then wolf whistle and duck down so when he looked up the brickie stood next to me looked like the culprit. The men being whistled at used to look really confused. I hope they felt just a slight bit of the disconcerting feeling having this happen gives a person.

Imo it's very liberal to say a woman is "any female, regardless of how she thinks, feels, acts, behaves, likes, loves, desires....".

I think it's odd to try (or pretend to try - no-one ever really does) to limit "woman" to an unwritten list of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, behaviours etc.
It's downright wrong to do it based on femininity.

(Not saying you're doing this, OP, to clarify. It's those that say "a woman isn't a female" but can't say what one is).

Fair enough, PurplePalms, those are feelings most women will have experienced. But they do not define us as women. They are feelings that result from societal stereotypes imposed upon us, from misogynistic and paternalistic attitudes imposed upon us. All imposed upon us purely because we are female.

Even before a little girl experiences these horrible things, what she and we have in common is our femaleness, which we do not have in common with males who have never and will never experience these things, tragedies of their beliefs or sense of identity.

I still say that there is no one way to feel woman, purely because woman is not a feeling.

A woman is an adult female human.

Flippin' autocarrot:

...males who have never and will never experience these things, regardless of their beliefs or sense of identity.

Though 'tragedies' fits. This ideology is a bloody tragedy all round.

So the only response to the " but i feel like a woman " ( damn you miss Twain) line from a man with a beard is to say "but you can't. You either are or you aren't a woman. it's not a feeling. its a descriptive marker that shows acknowledgement of the fact that I as a female have reached adulthood. "

Bit if a mouthful mind.

What a very odd one. Who gives a fuck who someone dates. As long as the person they date doesn't try any compelled language bullshit.

Yes.

It's tosh from start to finish.

'I feel like a (noun)'.

We have to have shared meaning on what that noun actually is to have any ability to know what 'feel like a' may mean. So despite that we're too polite to mention it out loud, what is really meant here is 'as a biological male, I feel like a biological female inside'.

To which the answer is: no, all you can mean is 'I feel like I imagine a biological female feels from the perspective of someone who is male'.

Which is fine, feelings are feelings, you do you, etc etc. The limit is 'and I wish to wholly rearrange biological femalehood around my feelings, needs, definitions and control as a male and expect all to indulge me in this at their cost'. To which the answer is: take your sexist and rather out of control ego and get stuffed mate.

nilsmouse

yes ^^.

This cannot be said enough!!!

To which the answer is: take your sexist and rather out of control ego and get stuffed mate.

@nilsmousehammer 👏👏👏

One of my female experiences is that of pride and hope when I see a successful, high-achieving woman, such as Dame Professor Sarah Gilbert. It feels (to me) like every great woman does it for all of us, in spite of the obstacles that we battle. I love to see women athletes and sportswomen succeed - I love Simone Biles and Serena Williams. I've noticed that even my completely apolitical and non-feminist friends tend to cheer on the women in eg Ninja Warrior (not Love Island though)

I've also noticed that watching lower league rugby, it's always the women shouting "Smack him!" 😉

Your perfectly reasonable and rational thoughts, OP, make you what gender ideologists call a terf. Welcome. Although the trans activists say we're on the wrong side of history, this is the side of rational, thoughtful people who pay attention to safeguarding.

What your relative gets up to is his own business. You have to work out how far you are prepared to go to support what is effectively a lie. Has your relative had same-sex relationships before?

The right that I very definitely do want to remove from trans women, because they shoould never have had it in the first place, is the right to tell women what a woman is and is not.

Indeed.

We can pussyfoot about with being polite, using preferred pronouns, treating transwomen as women for social purposes, but what makes me steaming angry is the TRAs' attempt to change the fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman. They can fuck off.

the TRAs' attempt to change the fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman.

Have they attempted it, though? An "attempt" would be to provide an alternative definition that isn't circular and is clear. They've not actually even managed that, have they?

Why would you snoop through the Facebook pages belonging to the partner of a family member?

That’s grossly intrusive behaviour and a clear violation of personal boundaries.

Yuck.

There we have it fellow inhabitors of social media!!!

Don’t read other people’s social media contributions, it is only ever intrusive.

You do understand how social media works, don’t you? And how privacy settings exist? And that everyone is responsible for curating their social media footprint as much as they can by asking for tags, and references to be removed that you don’t want to be public.

If that person didn’t want the knowledge to be public, they would have and could have done all that.

There are many reasons to check someone’s social media profile or ‘snoop’ as OP put it. Some are intrusive. Many are not. For instance, do you just accept any person’s ‘friend’ request, or invite someone to ‘friend’ you, without checking?

Or is it also not acceptable to want to know more about a person who you are forced, through family connections and etiquette, to share accommodation with? To have conversations that might be private and perhaps forced through family dynamics, and that etiquette makes you feel you cannot exclude that person from?

Rather bizarre to reprimand the OP for the person not setting their accounts to private or dealing with their privacy if that was what the person desired. And for using social media for reading about what others have left in public for others to read…. which is what social media is about?

Don’t let the purpose of social media stop you taking the opportunity to admonish a woman though!

What personal boundaries were violated, exactly?

@Helleofabore it's almost as if it isn't 2023 tomorrow. I mean yeah if she'd gone through the persons suitcase and read their private diary then OK but don't read stuff that people put purposely on line to be read???

Helle if you read this YOU ARE AWFUL. HOW DARE YOU READ THESE WORDS I WROTE TO BE READ BY THE PUBLIC. You are being so offensive to me right now anyone reading this. How dare you read my words I put out there for the world to access. I hope you are now thoroughly chastised and that you will spend the rest of 2022 facing the wall in the naughty corner thinking about what you've done.

pfft reading my public words like that. Pfft

Er no....what did I just say still reading public words...naughty people of the internet...did you not know the proper lady etiquette in this enlightened brave new world. Avert your eyes ladies.Avert your eyes.