Listen up cis people! Educate yourselves!

[BettyBooper]

Read this and be told!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/sep/30/will-ferrell-harper-steele-netflix-documentary

I love the reaction to the bio trans women - especially the young women. I don’t support only fans in anyway, of course.

Them sticking lumpy things in their undies and calling themselves trans women is really getting discussion happening.

@lcakethereforeIam - yes! To both Broken Wings and Red Box.

How about China Crisis and Black Man Ray?

I've always assumed that feeling like a woman meant having that churning pain in the abdomen that comes with periods and seemingly random other times. Of course, not all women get this — I no longer do now I don't have periods — but still, I get that queasy feeling and memory of abdominal discomfort every time I hear, "feels like a woman." Eeeerrgh.

I genuinely can't think of anything else the phrase could mean, unless it's referring to feeling you're a second class citizen, your thoughts and voice dismissed, being patronised and overlooked, objectified in youth then ignored in old age. I imagine transwomen experience some of those things, but they could probably cease to do so if they wished, simply by not presenting themselves as female, whereas women can't easily at all.

There are even song lyrics about it, eg; man I feel like a woman and you make me feel like a natural woman. What the hell does it mean to feel like a woman?

I have come to realise that all these sorts of song lyrics are designed to describe sexual desire or the act of sexual intercourse, dressed up in “acceptable” language.

”How deep is your love” “I want to feel your love” “Love you all night long” ”I want to know what love is” and endless similar - all about fucking. Also, see poetry and literature down the ages.

”Feel like a woman” in the excerpt above means “experience sexual gratification (orgasm) as a female”

The word love has many meanings, and some languages (e.g. Greek) have different words for different sorts of love. In English, we have one. This confuses people. It also means that “feeling like a man/woman” is open to multiple misleading interpretations, when really it’s all about sex. The younger you are, the less you understand this, which is why teenagers who want to transition are all about the higher feelings, whereas older people (generally) are all about the sex/kink/whatever.

This is my personal interpretation, which I know others will disagree with. That’s fine.

unless it's referring to feeling you're a second class citizen, your thoughts and voice dismissed, being patronised and overlooked, objectified in youth then ignored in old age

What a sad, depressing way to see yourself.
Genuinely. Hope you're OK.
I've always assumed it's the sense of self that comes with being a woman, if some women have it like me it stands to reason that people who are trans have it too and that's what they're referring to, whether they're a trans man or a trans woman.

Ultimately ...

We need a term that describes biological women. They are, after all, 50% of the population.

I have no idea why we would need a term that lumps together trans identifying men and non trans identifying women. What does this group have in common? What do they all share that no non trans identifying man shares?

No one has ever been able to answer that question.

We don't need a designation for this - much less one that is deemed more important than a sex based one.

Your sense of self is, by definition, how it feels to be you. Surely it's the height of arrogance to assume that is how other people feel, that your sense of you is the blueprint of womanhood?

Seems obvious to me that "I feel like a woman" is the same as "I feel Christmassy" ie "I feel how my culture has told me I should feel in this situation"

Hence the women of FWR joking/ being satirical about the actual social and physical experiences of being female in our culture in contrast to the constructed "feeling like a woman".

The only commonality female people have is in how they navigate their life, and how society reacts, to them having a body formed around the production of large gametes.

No male person has any experience of this.

Even if they have had their penis flayed and inverted to create an artificial cavity that has only one purpose. This is not being a ‘woman’. This is being a male person who has had extreme body modification.

And ‘presenting’ as ‘feminine’ is not a male being a woman. It is a male wearing clothes that have been designed to be worn by female people with their body shape but they are wearing them as still a male person.

The commonality of the female experience is around our bodies. Whether that body is working as it should or not, it is still part of the experience and never shared by any male person.

I have no idea why we would need a term that lumps together trans identifying men and non trans identifying women. What does this group have in common? What do they all share that no non trans identifying man shares?

Exactly. What do I have in common with Harper Steele that I don't with Will Ferrell?

“I've always assumed it's the sense of self that comes with being a woman”

Based on dealing with your body and how you navigate life with it, including how society reacts to your body and how you deal with it.

No male can have this ‘feeling’ because their life is only based on their male body. The two are not based on a commonality. How can it? Even from birth, male people are treated differently. So those male people claiming to ‘feel like a woman’ have no fucking idea what it means to be a girl or a woman.

You might ‘feel’ like a woman, because you have a female body and are past puberty. You have seen how society treats all women and girls and you have knowledge of your self and how society has treated you since birth, even since conception.

No male shares this experience at all.

Surely it's the height of arrogance to assume that is how other people feel, that your sense of you is the blueprint of womanhood

I literally said " if some women.
Did I say all others? No.

Absolutely nothing.

Steele might say that they have a different experience to Ferrell because Steele 'presents' as a woman (whatever the fuck that means) but every single fucking interaction that Steele has is as a male person who has claimed to be a female. It has absolutely no commonality with how a female person will interact with life.

That anyone thinks there is commonality with Steele dismisses the x years that Steele interacted with life as a male as well as dismisses the years that Steele has interacted with life as a male claiming to be female. Never as a female person.

Not one second of Steele's life has been Steele interacting with life as a female person.

In what way(s) are they not men?

You also said "stands to reason that people who are trans have it too and that's what they're referring to, whether they're a trans man or a trans woman."

If you meant "...and though what they feel is personal to them and in reality unrelated to how I or any other person of their opposite sex actually feels, I understand they believe it's what I feel and that's why they believe they are women (or men)" I apologise.

If you meant "...and if they feel the same thing as me that means they are women (or men) and should be accepted as having an objectively cross sex identity that supercedes their true sex" I stand by my comment.

They have added pixie dust.

My sense of self comes from being myself.

The only parts of my sense of self that I would say are particularly womanly are the ones that relate to having a female body. Like, a big part of my sense of self right now relates to being a mother.

…No male can have this ‘feeling’ because their life is only based on their male body. The two are not based on a commonality. How can it? Even from birth, male people are treated differently. So those male people claiming to ‘feel like a woman’ have no fucking idea what it means to be a girl or a woman…

Exactly this 👍

My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that men (males) that reject their biologically determined sex can choose to opt out of that reality but have no right to choose to adopt a female role as they have never nor will ever know what it is to be a woman (female)
They remain men (male) and can call themselves ‘not men’

But now they think women should protect them but allowing them into single sex spaces so they can blend in better. The whole reason we don't want you in our single sex spaces is because we don't feel safe FFS.

That's the first single I ever bought, love that song!

Ha ha, I don't see myself that way. I think you've misunderstood: these are very well-documented and well-researched examples of how women are seen and treated in patriarchal societies. They're common experiences (I've not aged enough yet to become "invisible," for example, but friends and acquaintances in their 60s and 70s have talked about their experiences a lot. Of course, like most women, I've experienced being patronised, dismissed, talked over, stereotyped, etc.: I went to a top university where the tutors and male students were very, very angry that women had been allowed to join them and made their anger clear; most women will have experienced similar attitudes in the workplace.

I'm not sure what the "sense of self" as a woman means, as, of course, sense of self is individual. I imagine it includes the effects of socio-political position as a soman in society, alongside the physical, which is what I suggested in my comment.

A sense of self as a woman is probably a mix of that sociopolitical awareness and physical experience of my body.
A transwoman can't possibly have either of those, as they can't possibly experience them, so I assume they're mistaking something similar for these experiences.

DP is out tonight, so in the spirit of not criticising something I haven't seen, I've decided am going to watch this later. Perhaps I will be enlightened and feel a kindred with Harper! I feel that I am likely to need lots of wine to get through it.

Or, as the Americans put it, 'Man, that needs adult beverages!'

The only thing every woman has in common with every other woman on the planet is their biology.

You can make nice groups of people who believe they have similar womanly feels, you can make nice groups of people who have similarity in experiences, but the ONLY thing that links every single woman on the planet and excludes every single male is their biology.

And any one of that biology can have any beliefs, any feels, any experiences, the diversity is marvellous. But it doesn't change their sex.

Met my first trans-identified man in 1990. Lived among & worked with TIM sex workers for 3 years in one of those cultures often claimed, falsely, to have a “third gender” (it isn’t).
Dated a guy who later transitioned.
Worked with & supported a colleague during his transition.
Have known many socially & via politics, & read a lot.
Recently looked up someone I remember from school (a massive homophobic bully, which is partly why I remember her so vividly). Guess what she identifies as now & what her work consists of?

And…?

I know humans can’t change sex & that there is no good reason for males to be in women’s single-sex spaces.

And I wonder if you’ve ever met or listened to any GC people (or at least, any willing to be out to you).

CorruptedCauldron · Yesterday 22:22

Let’s say my colleague Gerald from the IT department transitions and becomes Geraldine. etc

How well put, that's my attitude, too.