Recommend me a book!

[RibenaBerry]

Right, reading these boards recently has given me a bit of a kick up the arse on my feminist principles. I've done a bit of 'light' reading in the area (think The Beauty Myth as a teenager) but think I need something a bit more serious without being so weighty I never pick it up. I'd rather have something published in, say, the last 15 years than any of the 'classics'.

Any ideas?

SweetDreamerGirl

"earwicga, wrote "NB - there is no hyphen in trans woman. Like white woman, lesbian woman etc."

I know that. Thanks for sparing me the "NB" on "female-born-women" doesn't have a hyphen either. I know that too. Funny, that didn't seem to bother you at all. I was using the hyphens for emphasis only. Get a grip!!!"

Cis is the term you are looking for when you write 'female-born-woman'. Your term is incorrect as trans women are born female, they have always been female.

All good questions wastingaway and I think you will find the answers to these in the links as you read through them. Or Ghostlove may have the time to answer you more fully.

There are many many problems with the establisment's definition of 'gender identity disorder' and things are currently changing, albeit too slowly. The establishment's problems have caused many misunderstandings as well sadly and much cruelty.

I'm not feeling any confrontation from you btw, and thanks.

Can a person live their life as one gender then one day claim to belong to another and just co-opt everything that goes with it?

I am not trying to be glib but how is this different to me being born Caucasian with everything that goes with that, deciding at some point as an adult that I wish to identify as black or Asian, and insisting that everyone treat me as though I were

or better still trying to silence people who from birth identified as/were identified as black and insisting that my experience of blackness was just as or possibly even more authentic than theirs

I really don't get it

chibi, remember,

according to earwicga "trans women are born female, they have always been female.",

suggests to me that your black analogy would also include the factor that you were always black from birth, the world just didn't know it yet.

chibi - is gender the same as race?

SweetDreamerGirl, if you are as pro-trans and pro-transfeminism as you claim to be, you'd already understand the term cis and you'd use it.

Race isn't really a social construct. Gender is. There's your difference.

Y'all might want to look up David Reimer.

Also, SDG, I have not once accused you of being transphobic. I have questioned how pro-trans and pro-trans feminism you are based on your comments here, that's all.

Ghostlove, wrote "you'd already understand the term cis and you'd use it."

Sorry, the term slipped my mind. Is that allowed? It's been a long day.

How is gender different to race? Are you suggesting that a person can change how they manifest gender but not race? If so, what is your justification fir this?

I think how the world sees you makes a difference to how you experience the world

I may feel like the son of poor black sharecroppers in Alabama but if the world decides that actually based on the external signs, I look more like an elderly White woman from Basingstoke then that is going to impact how I experience the world, regardless of how I myself feel

I am not convinced that not feeling like a man = feeling like a woman

GhostLove, wrote "SDG, I have not once accused you of being transphobic"

At 17:14 GhostLove wrote in response to my earlier post ""Transsexuals are not vulnerable in employment because they are "women", they are discriminated against because they are transgender."
That's a pretty transphobic statement in itself,"

How closely do you read what you or anyone else has written?

Race is totally a social construct

history is full of people who have 'passed' for belonging to a different race than the one they were born to

if that isn't a construct I don't know what is

or people who are mixed race, eg ancestry comprising multiple, non-White races- what race are they? To suggest that concepts of race are immutable is a bit silly I think

If someone can be born with internal/external genetalia and chromosomes indicating male, and yet be a woman, why can I not be born White and yet be Asian, or Black? Especially if I always felt that way.

chibi, Genetically, Barack Obama is half-white (from mother) and half-black (from father). He and the world regard Obama as black because that is what he has chosen. So yes race is a social construct.

GhostLove, wrote "SDG, I have not once accused you of being transphobic"

You being a feminist will of course know what happens to women who make false accusations.

Ok but plenty of trans women will have no genetic basis for saying they are women

a better analogy is me, with no non-Caucasian ancestors (for the last 3 generations that I know of ) deciding that from now on I wish to be identified as ethnically Chinese,or Inuit

I can call myself what I like but can I authentically lay claim to a Chinese or Inuit experience, whatever that might be when I have spent my life being treated as and having experiences and perceptions directly shaped by being perceived as White?

Sdg what does your last post about false accusations mean, it seems vaguely threatening

GhostLove accused me of being transphobic then denied it. I am not threatening anyone, I was attempting irony about feminism and accustations. Apologies to all. I feel like I have been run ragged.

I don't get the birth certificate thing, surely it's a record of your birth, not what you have become later. Surely a separate certificate would be more logical.

wastingaway - you are right! That is why a Gender Recognition Certificate is issued.

chibi - you are also right!

"I am not convinced that not feeling like a man = feeling like a woman"

That's not what a transsexual man or woman feels.

Sigh. I didn't accuse you of being transphobic; I mentioned that a single statement of yours was construed by me as being transphobic. The sin not the sinner, you know?

I mostly want to know right now, when it was decided that transsexuals are women.

Also, there's a distinction between gender and sex isn't there?

I for example am wearing jeans and a t-shirt right now, no make-up and only one ring and a couple of body-piercing type rings in my ear.
If a man were to wear the same clothes he would not look like a woman.
It's that apparent focus on the outwardly feminine details that I am a bit about.

I don't want to stop anyone doing anything they want to do, but surely being feminine isn't what being a woman is about?

I am not sure that I do agree with the whole concept of trans gender. That is not to say that I would respond negatively to someone who considered themselves to be trans gender or who had operations. After all, in Scotland someone had a healthy leg amputated because they felt very deeply that the leg was not part of them and they would harm themselves if it was not removed.

But the concept of transgender reinforces the idea that the sex you are is implicitly linked to feeling a certain way about a whole set of random characteristics that society has designated as feminine. What makes a person female is that she starts life with a uterus and breasts. She then has to spend her whole life making decisions about whether or not she is going to use that uterus and those breasts. If she does decide to, there are huge implications for her body and life. If she decides not to, there are implications ( and very serious ones worldwide) in terms of her ability to control her fertility through contraception, abortion and her attempts to stop men from attempting to impregnate her.

So if a man says he feels like a woman, I don't understand that. Do they mean they spend a lot of time thinking about how to maintain control in their choices about breastfeeding and pregnancy? Do they mean that they are trying to adopt an identity that is difficult because they have been treated in a misogynistic manner as a female child in a misogynistic society?

Why does transfeminism exist if, according earwicga, "trans women are born female, they have always been female"?