What do transgender women/girls think it is to be a man?

[ValuePartnership]

I have tried and tried in every place to find out what exactly it is (specifically) that makes women, and especially girls, feel they are "really" men? Does anyone have any idea? I am a man and would love to know what, apart from some very general conviction (asserted but never made specific); wanting to wear male clothing; wanting male "body shape"; represents becoming a "man" to trans women (or girls). Such ideas are supposed to match the reality of having a male identity. I do not have any supposed cis-gender identity, but I know what things have been central to living as a boy and then a man - and it's nothing like anything I have read about trans men. I never thought being a man depended on others seeing me as man; I never thought about my body shape; most of the clothes I wear (and have always worn) are very ordinary and could just as easily have been worn by a woman. The big big deal for me all my life (I am in my 60s) has been the way I experience sexual excitement and arousal: my body will register it (and sometimes against my wishes) through penile erection; the next has been the experience of orgasm deep in my body (prostate gland); then how vulnerable to attack (friendly or violenbt) by other males, or my own clumsiness, my testicles made and make me. Only then came comparisons - I was aware of, generally to a high degree, being taller and stronger than females. Finally, I learned that I could become a father (with a growing realistion I was expected to do so); that I had a distribution of body hair (more than some other men and less than others) that affected my appearance. It seems to me that even if you think you are a man, you have no idea what being a man is like unless you are one. Hence nobody ever says. Anyone able to help with ideas?

Yes, I saw that too. Was a bit bemused by their claim to have a fully functioning vagina, not least because they still retain their male genitals.

*The best part of being a woman is leaving computer problems and house problems to men. I'm absolutely relieved I don't have to design bridges, fix cars, fight fires, fight wars, fight crime, deal with scary animals or lift heavy things.
If there's a mousetrap to be set, I ask a man to do it. For me, being a woman is about avoiding responsibility whenever possible, though I do still have many responsibilities. *

WTAF, I assume this is an April fool and someone doesn't still have such ridiculously backward ideas

it's all got so much for women, false tan, hair extensions, going to a salon to get eyebrows and eyelashes 'done'. Fillers to lips!?

What is it that men must do? Get up shower and brush their teeth. It's just so much easier to be a man and if a man is kinda ugly, he's not shamed for it or considered less of a man.

Female computer engineer here!
Maybe if I was a teenager now i’d go for nonbinary. Why? Because i also wanted to opt out off all stereotypical feminine stuff , like make-up and dresses and high heels. When i want to buy a magazine and i look at the magazines for women, they make me feel i don’t belong in that department … really zero of the topics interest me.

But i can’t see why i would want to be a man… I had this lovely rolemodel at school, this really Butch-like teacher who showed me that it’s really ok to be a woman without makeup and fashion, who had an interesting life of herself without the need to cling onto a man.

I stopped trying to be a woman

After 28 years of attempting to be a woman

playing a role I felt compelled to adhere to by society.

To transphobes, I have become the social failure I was warned about as a child.

compulsory cisgenderism, and therefore compulsory womanhood, is a narrative I’ve rejected.

These are the phrases which made me feel sad and angry reading this article.

Gender Ideology is a sexist and homophobic, regressive idea which teaches people that their very core identity can be inadequate, that something is wrong with their body or their mind if they do not fit into a neat little box called 'woman' or 'man'. It suggests that everyone else is judging them and looking at them with contempt if they do not match up.

I think there is a detransitioner called Chloe who has talked to Jordan Peterson. Before she 'became a boy' she wasn't obsessed with being male, she was obsessed with looking like Kim Kardashian and was so upset with what she felt was her perceived failure to be developing into this model of 'womanhood' that she felt she must be a boy and that her only option was to go through a drastic medical transition which has cost her her health.

The Trans narrative is so poisonous. It is so utterly negative. It's central tenet is wrongness, mismatch, you do not meet the standard, your body is wrong, people hate you. And it utterly rejects as 'conversion therapy' ANYTHING healthy and positive, love for who you are, acceptance of the self without needing to change, gender non conformity, freedom of expression.

They don’t care. It isn’t about being a man, it’s about not being a woman. The vast majority of girls rejecting their female bodies are victims of abuse, whether rape / sexual assault, or sexist stereotypes limiting their choices. They’re seeking an escape. Girls have dressed up as boys for safety reasons since the beginning of recorded history, and probably much longer.

It’s a completely different phenomenon from that of narcissistic men falling in love with themselves and fantasising that they can become women.

I’ve not rtft- this thread already has loads of posts, so I wanted to respond to the OP.

I think it is often the ‘male default’ in culture, for example, story-telling. When I was a kid I would never relate to the passive, empty, token women and would imagine myself as the male hero - brave and strong.

Hollywood has got a lot better in the last decade, yet the women are unrealistic in the strength and behaviour- they come across more like actresses playing a male part.

Us women can long to have our opinions accepted without excessive interrogation, to be invisible and free - able to go where we like at any time without being perceived as prey by predatory men, able to walk tall, feel commanding and authoritative instead of vulnerable and scared.

The frustration we face because all that is impossible for women, can make us think the grass is greener and that we would have been better born a man.

That's what neovagina means. It has very little in common with a vagina.

A huge part of the problem with Hollywood, and even animated movies, is that even strong female characters are almost always beautiful, and when they aren't, their physical "flaws" are part of the plot.

Disney has got much better recently at including characters of different races and body types, but it's still all a bit obvious. And in live action movies, the female characters who aren't physically flawless tend to be people like Rebel Wilson playing the fat bridesmaid, or size 12 Renee Zellweger playing the weight obsessed Bridget Jones (with everyone else around her being stick thin). I can see why young girls would see all of that and think, I'm never going to achieve physical perfection, I'm only going to be the character who is the butt of every joke, so I'm going to take myself out of the competition altogether.

Industries like Hollywood, Netflix etc could help massively by casting ordinary looking women (and men) in their films and series, and making zero reference to their physical appearance. Right now it's like, look at us, we're so inclusive having characters who are a bit chubby.

even when women are cast as “strong and powerful” it’s never within their own boundaries.

an actual woman could never fight off 15 male assailants, however well trained they may be in martial arts. While also looking feminine, beautiful, and in heels and short skirts or tight outfits.

so even if a girl is physically strong and athletic, she’ll never match up to the women on screen. She’s not as beautiful either. So failure on all fronts.

Yy @RosaBonheur and @Lastnamedidntstick

Yes, thats a really good point, @Lastnamedidntstick.

And it doesn't just affect young women. Now thinking of all the series with female characters who have high powered careers, amazing houses, three children and look 15-20 years younger than they are supposed to be. Grey's Anatomy springs to mind.

Fighting off ten men with nothing but kick ass martial arts skills isn't the only thing women do on TV that is impossible for normal women in real life.

an actual woman could never fight off 15 male assailants, however well trained they may be in martial arts. While also looking feminine, beautiful, and in heels and short skirts or tight outfits.

It’s an aside, but I think these depictions put women at genuine risk in the real world. Thugs in tights feel comfortable beating up women or trying to out-do us in sports, because they don’t know it is Hollywood fantasy. I watched the movie Mr and Mrs Smith recently, and felt terrified in the DV scenes where the viewer was supposed to think “ah look, just as bad as each other” when the force ‘Mr Smith’ was using, and clearly enjoying it, would have probably killed Mrs Smith and if not, caused her permanent brain-damage and disability.

I don’t think it’s really to do with wanting to be a woman/girl or a man/boy. It’s more about not wanting to be what or who you are, or feeling you don’t understand what or who you are. It’s a tale as old as time really - so common especially for teens and young people to navel gaze and feel nobody understands them. But now there is a box they can feel ‘okay, I don’t know what I am and I don’t feel I’m like others so I must be something so I’ll be this.’

@EndlessTea absolutely. I have an orange belt in kickboxing and used to train in a mixed sex dojo. The only way mixed sex sparring was safe for women was sparring was very very closely monitored - it was points based and men were constantly reminded to hit lightly and were made to leave if they did not. You could still tell how much power the men were withholding.

The only way it worked really was it was explicitly LGBT friendly and female dominated. The few men were mainly gay and accepted they were there on notoce of good behaviour.

@BobGalaxy

I'm a bit confused by this. Isn't identifying as a man buying into the binary system they claim not to believe in, even if they reject the surgery aspect?

Quite!

What contradiction? Rejecting stereotypes is mainstream and has been happening for centuries. Its no contradiction. They is not as special as they think they is. They is mainstream.

I think something happened c. 2000 and I do think it's linked to the explosion of media, online content and a gazillion new channels to watch.

I also know it was overly stereotypical. Eg Disney channel etc. from what the kids I was teaching conveyed. Toys and clothes became increasingly stereotyped. Consumerism ruled. I think it started in the 90s but I was teen and all about non conformity anyway.

I feel 20 / 30 somethings simply haven't experienced a world where being gender non conforming was commonplace.

Well they bloody well have given that so many middle-aged women don't buy into that shit. I really hate their assumption that somehow other women are buying into the marketers view of 'woman'. It just showcases an arrogant inability to look beyond your own nose.

Fuck knows.

Here we have a non binary she/her (correct pronouns) view on it all.

I think that it means sometimes women can wear trousers. That's non binary.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bella-ramsey-trans-day-the-last-of-us-b2312275.html

I'm guessing identifying as a man means wearing trousers ALL the time. Or shorts.

What a dangerous article. The safe way to bind is not to. Most people's 'gender has always been fluid'. We just call it not buying into sexist shit though. What is the point of a 'day of visibility' which just shows that you are pretty much the same as everyone else? I'm special, I'm special, I'm special. I'm the mostest special. God sake. I'm running of of fucks for this naval gazing shit.

I don't believe in some abstract floating gendered soul in human beings overall, though it seems the way some transgender people try to express their feelings. The problem is when that is imposed on everybody and then told that the gendered soul should be expressed by stereotypically sexist ways of dresssing, behaving, and living overall.

It's really just a new way of bringing back the subjugation of women, as it will be impossible to argue why people with a feminine soul (who are passive, submissive, emotional and nurturing, by definition) should have leadership roles or should care about losing their sports or their scholarships etc.

In reality we are all to some extent 'feminine' and 'masculine' (when those are defined by picking certain things a particular society has labeled as suitable for women or suitable for men), a blend of both, and so in the gender identity terms we are all nonbinary, as this has nothing to do with sex.

Very odd to realise that the traditionalist 1950s view of the world has returned with a vengeance, and that now the only way out of this would be to take hormones and have surgery for those of us who are female.

What's even odder is that this approach is seen as social justice, compared with the old idea of arguing that we should get rid of most gender rules and roles and let people just be what they as individuals can and want to be.

So I finally read the opinion piece in the Guardian. What the writer says is that being a woman is not just being an adult female human being, but a large set of sexist stereotypes. Anyone who refuses those stereotypes is not a woman, therefore, but can free themselves from all sex-based misogyny by simply identifying out of that group.

The problem is that the Guardian, a left-wing newspaper, appears to agree with this view of what 'woman' is. This means that all us women who are that simply and only because we are female (and who don't believe being female should set any sexist expectations on us) are told that we are wrong.

We, indeed, are now assumed to be women because of all the gender stereotypes the writer attaches to our sex (and their sex, of course), and if we keep accepting the label 'woman', then we are assumed to be content with those stereotypes as applying to us and our lives.

This is incredibly sexist.

Sexist and hugely offensive. There's something very wrong with the writer if they think that people who don't feel the need to jump up and down saying I'm trans, accepts those stereotypes. It might be that close they're not very bright, not very good at listening to others or struggle with flexible thinking. Either way, society has let people with those deficiencies down.

I often get my eyebrows done when I go to the barbers. Saves me doing it myself with the beard trimmer.

Soft White Underbelly has recently been doing a few interviews with detransitioners. This one with a former transman was very interesting. She talks about how gender dysphoria can have many causes and many treatment options, but medicalisation and trans identity are too often the only solutions given.