'Arm the Dolls'

[WrongKindOfFeminist]

Pictured is Natacha Kennedy of Goldsmiths.

T shirt says 'Arm the Dolls'

It is absurd to deny that will cause confusion in some people.

“What I do mind is people feeling like they have to refer to me in a certain way because they’re scared of what could happen.”

this is direct consequence of letting people think you are female when you are not. Not being honest and upfront creates the situation you say don’t want.

Quite so. People are being forced to lie to your face through fear every day. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

I just don’t buy that explanation. If I occasionally got misgendered I would understand it, but there is no way every single man and woman who has used gendered language for me over the last 5 years has been too scared. It just doesn’t make sense.

Well the men won't, and they won't want to accept your presentation as you being a man, which is a them problem. Hence what we've said about men being open to broadening the bandwidth of male presentation. The women, well as one, which you aren't, I suspect I'm mostly correct.

This is a lie. I have never stated that ‘everyone’ knows what your sex category is. If you have to resort to absolutist misrepresentations of what people say, your credibility is even lower than initially thought.

There are both female people who won’t be able to correctly identify a male person’s sex category (they tell us here regularly enough) and there will be many female people who will know and as we have said time and time again will not acknowledge it.

All people who need to know your sex category will benefit from your honesty. You seem very keen to keep absolving yourself of responsibility for your personal decisions.

The swivelling and pivoting and distracting just keeps on coming. Some male people simply cannot accept responsibility for their personal decisions and the denial tactics continue.

Would that be one issued shortly after you were born? As in, noting your birth? Or an accurate copy of that certificate issued in your infancy, with your date of birth on it and the words "Certified to be a true copy of an entry in the births register."?

If not, you have been sold a pup. What you have is a fake, not the real thing.

You admit this every time you say "I am male", which you've done at least twice on this thread alone. If your "birth certificate", says you're female, it is simply lying. You know this perfectly well; do you really think nobody else does?

Hang on: if absolutely everyone you meet thinks you are female, as you frequently assert, how can you know this? If nobody ever cops on to the fact you are trans, you can't know that being known to be trans leads to being abused.

(Of course, you wouldn't know about how being a woman leads to abuse. Sexual innuendo from, God help us, a sales rep half my age trying to get me to buy from his firm! What possible good he thought that would do him I cannot imagine, but he clearly couldn't help himself.)

To be honest, I really couldn't care less if some people perceive you as female (I highly doubt it, but let's just say this is the case).
In many, many cases it does not matter one jot.
Most women (being actual natal women. Although the word woman would just do) are so fucking busy being PA to everyone around them that we just don't fucking care what you look like or what you wear. I care as much about what you present as, as I care about what goths or steampunks or people into cottage core wear. Doesn't even feature on my radar. I couldn't care less.

But - the minute you enter a female space that is single sex due to privacy, dignity or safety, or attempt to be part of a female category of which the sole purpose is to ensure equity and fairness for women THEN it becomes a problem.

I dont really care any more if people in general do want to humour you and go along with the pretence. You can have your fantasy. But where SEX MATTERS it matters.

There are many transwomen who get by with being "perceived as female" (whether genuinely or through coercion) in every day situations, yet are self aware enough to realise that the delusion stops there when it really matters.

Edited to correct self important to self aware.

If nobody ever cops on to the fact you are trans, you can't know that being known to be trans leads to being abused.
You don’t have to experience someone your self for it to be true, right? I’m aware of the experiences of other trans people.

Ah yes, the classic Madonna/Julie dichotomy 🤣

Fair. But if you do not know it of your own knowledge, why not try it and see? You might be pleasantly surprised by women not bothering to be abusive to you –which is hard work: why should they bother? – and not really reacting at all. (Men on the other hand might be a different story. Do they "validate" you at present, or just ignore you?)

This is an option women have never had. Being abused comes with the sex, and starts early. Wolf-whistled and leered at with unpleasant commentary by building-site heavies when you are ten (so you learn not to walk past building-sites on the way to school; there are other longer routes you can take, after all). Having a man come up beside you at a set of lights when you are on your bicycle, expose his penis and start to masturbate while leering at you, when you are ten (so you learn to look at the car but never at the driver.) Expected by a group of older boys to bare your genitals, at the same age, to prove you're not a boy (so you learn not to wear shorts in the summer). Raped by a stranger at the same age. (The "crime" there was going to climb a tree in the field outside the house without a male escort.) The list is endless. How many men twice your size have backed you into a corner with obvious sexual intent when you were walking home after dark in the winter, so far? And that's ignoring all the times when you're a few years older and boys hanging about in the street at weekends start to chi-yike you as you pass....

I don't think I had it more than usually bad. I think the things that happened to me were pretty-much par for the course. And in some ways I was lucky: since I didn't live in London and therefore didn't take the tube, no male masturbated over me when it was too crowded for me to avoid.

....waiting....
And on the other issue, of women thinking you're a woman, and if they think you're male being too scared to say so, there is a list of reasons why a woman would go along with the myth that a TW is a woman:
They're scared not to. This is especially the case in the workplace. There was a thread on here some time ago by a woman who had got into hot water and was at risk of losing her job after challenging a TW who was about to take tampons from a stash in the ladies funded by the women in the office (some of those details may be incorrect, but that was the drift).
They're being polite. They see in front of them a confused person who seems insecure or emotionally brittle, and they don't want to cause upset (women are strongly socialised to 'be kind'.)
They don't want a row. Say your DC turns up with her friends 'Lettie' and 'Lorenzo'. It is 100% obvious to you that Lettie is a new incarnation of Liam who DC was pals with at primary school, and that Lorenzo, new uni buddy, is quite clearly female (5'3", small framed apart from the wide hips, no Adam's apple, delicate jawline). 90% of parents will play along, and while they might ask a few probing questions once Lettie and Lorenzo have gone, and might express outright terfy views to their own DC, Lettie and Lorenzo will never know unless DC tells them.
It's not worth the hassle. I was once handed across by a member of staff in a shop to 'young Leo, he'll be able to help you.' Leo was quite plainly in possession of XX chromosomes. What was I going to do? Say, 'Fuck sake, Leo, those cross sex hormones gonna trash your body?' Or, 'Fess, up, buddy, you're a girl, aren't you?' Of course I wasn't.

Some or all of these reasons, and probably others, play into people apparently accepting the 'acquired' sex when they encounter a trans person.

Also, one of my DC has a trans friend who went off to a fairly challenging career, involving dealing with people who weren't going to feel much need to be kind, or subtle, or polite. I thought, this is likely to be a fucking disaster, and trans friend isn't going to stay the course. Trans friend didn't. I worry about that young person, I truly do: nice kid, caring, funny, a lot of surface confidence and a lack of maturity amd common sense.

But if you do not know it of your own knowledge, why not try it and see?
I don’t see it as a risk I need to take.

Men on the other hand might be a different story. Do they "validate" you at present, or just ignore you?
I find men and women equally gender me female.

This is an option women have never had. Being abused comes with the sex, and starts early
I am well aware of the awful things men do. I would never claim it’s the same, but I didn’t have the privileged male upbringing away from male sexual assault you are imagining unfortunately.

there is no way every single man and woman who has used gendered language for me over the last 5 years has been too scared. It just doesn’t make sense.

It makes perfect sense.

1. Men are far worse at correctly identifying sex, especially when knickers are involved. This has been proven again and again.

2. There is a sizeable cohort of people who believe the mantra TWAW (but aren't female) and will happily refer to transwomen as She had transmen as He.

3. The prevailing social expectation has been to refer to trans identifying people as the sex they are attempting to mimic. Women are particularly socialised to Acquiesce in this way. We fall into line out of habit.

4. Every woman I know has experienced the consequences of Not Acquiescing to the demands of an adult male, to their detriment. Self preservation dictates we go along with what they want where we can.

5. Institutional acceptance of Stonewall law rather than the actual law meant that people were unable to speak up honestly at work or other environments. Look at the Darlington nurses, for example.

6. You'd have to be living under a rock not to see what happens to women who flatly refuse to play along. Losing friends, professional relationships, sacked, ostracised, death and rape threats, homes targeted, vexatious lawsuits from Fat Tony and others...

Damn, I took so long to type that Edith got in first and more eloquently.

Well you did have a privileged male upbringing seeing as how you are, in fact male.

Oh god is Dumb still living out his fantasy that everyone seems him as a woman 🙄

i worked alongside a very obvious TW - both myself and then men I worked with used his preferred female name. We didn't stand there chanting you're a man man manly man at him - we all knew he was though. I expect if you asked him, he'd happily say we thought he was a woman because we didn't say otherwise

because none of us wanted to be sacked

Yes, it’s so they can defend themselves against the literal violence of being misgendered and deadnamed, and being made to pee with the other men.

Which is ironic, because the only time they are likely to need to violently defend themselves is when they are around other men. Funny that, the violence is always linked to men, irrespective of what clothes they are wearing.

I am male but I certainly don’t feel that way

I am female but I certainly don’t feel that way. I don’t feel male either.

i have no idea what ‘feeling’ like a particular sex would comprise.

Yes another slogan was 'protect the dolls'. Some big burley men were offering to protect the delicate dolls and provide an escort to the men's toilets. Deluded is not the word. Another tw was saying how sorry us 'cis' wimen would be as our husbands would be seducing the ravishing tw in the toilets.

You’re very lucky to feel that way

Indeed.

No male ‘feels’ like a female person. It is logically impossible. They might choose to label their conceptualisation of their identity as ‘female’, but it is impossible that they do. Only ever their conceptualisation of female experience.

hence the misogyny.

You're identifying your sense of feeling female in terms of not feeling male. We are not malfunctioning men. If so many of us are telling you that despite actually BEING female, we don't know what feeling female means, there is absolutely no chance that you can.