Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[Boudicca90]

Actually I think Long Cho has a bit of a point about transitioning being a canvas for others. No idea about the other stuff she says.

I am, however, mocking Boudicca's views on wanting to be treated like a woman by society, but not wanting to be treated the way society often treats women. It goes back to the whole problem of not having a coherent definition.

The truth is, Boudicca doesn't want to be treated like a woman. She doesn't want to be sexually objectified. She doesn't want to be paid 75 cents on the dollar. She doesn't want to be dismissed from consideration for positions of authority and power. She doesn't want to be thought of as the weaker sex, or the homemaker, or the babysitter... Or does she?

This has been a learning experience for me, sure. I wasn't socialized as a woman and now i'm being treated like a woman in society and have to adjust. And that IS what I want, but that means taking the bad with the good.

Treating women as sex objects and paying us less and seeing us as less than men, that is all part of the female experience and I accept that, but it doesn't mean I like it. Whenever I would complain about something a cis woman would complain about, my friend says "Welcome to womanhood.", because she realizes I am going through a lot of new experiences I haven't been through before.

I also can't see it from a male viewpoint because I never viewed women that way in the first place. Which is something my friends warn me about now that I've started dating.

So that's where I am, I am learning to live as a woman socially, but I also don't have a frame of reference for really being a man which makes it hard to judge their intentions towards me.

 

[LondonJohn]

A post number will suffice here.

2731

 

[Tomboy]

So that's where I am, I am learning to live as a woman socially, but I also don't have a frame of reference for really being a man which makes it hard to judge their intentions towards me.

That's also part of being a woman. Most women don't have a frame of reference for being a man.

 

[Boudicca90]

On a related note... I haven't had a good description of what "woman" means. I do, however, have a transwoman acquaintance who provided a fairly acceptable description of her personal experience. She was pretty clear that she didn't have a definition of woman that makes any sense. From a young age, she liked "girly" things, even though she knows they're very stereotypical. She always felt more comfortable around females than around males. And mostly, she said she was constantly and persistent surprised to see a penis when she looked in the mirror. Logically, she knew it was there and attached, but she never expected it. It didn't match her mental image of herself. Even though she knew that the mirror wasn't lying to her, it made her feel perpetually disconnected from herself as well as from the world.

This is very similar to my own experience. I gravitated towards "girly" toys and interests as a child and always preferred female friends. I never had any real issue with my penis back then, but as I got older and differed from the girls more and more I started to notice the differences and I didn't like the changes that were happening to me.

So I noticed I wasn't like other boys when I was a child, and it wasn't until puberty that my dysphoria really got bad, but I still didn't know what was wrong with me because the internet was a new thing back then. It was thanks to the internet that I finally started to make sense of myself later on. My fear and anxiety of transitioning kept me in the closet for much longer though.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm just finishing off a re-read of The Left Hand of Darkness, not because of any relevance to this thread, but because the reading group I'm in has chosen to discuss 1970s Hugo Award winners this month.

I don't think it says anything useful about trans issues, because in this universe, human beings actually do change sex. What I found interesting was the extreme difficulty Genly Ai experiences in shaking off assumed gender roles when describing and interacting with the Gethenians, and of course this difficulty is shared by the reader, in spades. He has a rare moment of insight when he finally realises that Estraven is a woman as well as being a man.

What I found most insightful about the book, though, was the equality. As is remarked relatively early on, "anyone can be anything". Within the Gethenian society nobody is pre-judged, nobody is stereotyped, nobody is forced into or even steered towards any particular role in society, because of course everyone is the same. It's both a wonderful and in a way a terrifying idea.

I think this is why it doesn't illuminate the trans debate at all. Trans-identifying people don't aspire to a society where anyone can be anything, where there are no gender roles because everyone is the same. They can't achieve what they want in a society without gender roles. They absolutely depend on gender stereotyping to exist, because they want to play the role of the sex they're not. And yet they don't. The men in particular don't want to be treated the way society actually treats women much of the time. They want to LARP their own fantasy version of woman.

(This is possibly the main distinction between women and transwomen, other than the obvious physical differences. Many of not most women would happily fire gender roles and gender stereotyping into the heart of the sun, and would welcome a society where they weren't defined in any way by these roles. Transwomen need these roles, because without them they're just people, like everyone else.)

Nothing could be further from the Gethenian society at all.

 

[d4m10n]

2731

Cool. You're giving me grief (#2729) for not anticipating a post from the future.

 

[theprestige]

Despite my periodic bouts of anger in here, I still don't think that mocking is going to get us to a coherent definition.

I don't think there is a coherent definition. I mean, Long Cho has one, but it seems to be reviled by trans and cis alike. And Boudicca has already pulled out the classic woo dodge of having an explanation but refusing to share it because people will disagree with it. In the CT milieu, that's a clear indicator of having no explanation at all.

What you mention though, that's a part of my distance when it comes to trans issues. It's exactly the fact that most natal women don't want to be treated the way that society often treats us. It's not good for us, it's a barrier. The gender roles we're presented with, the childhood behavioral conditioning that we face, and the way we are treated by society in general as being less important and having less valued voices overall - those are things we want to go away. But a lot of those stereotypes that are focused on physical appearance and "feminine" behavior are things I often see in transwomen*. They reinforce exactly the same gender bias that I and most other natal women want to get rid of.

Like I keep saying, transsexuality doesn't work as a personal definition. It has to be society's definition in order to make any sense at all.

As a woman, I truly hope that's not what she desires.

I think at least some of it has to be.

 

[MisAndreG]

Got it in one. Men who identify as trans are trying to conform to their own fantasy of "woman". It bears virtually no relationship to the actuality of being a woman.

It strikes me as a cheap, often times deeply insulting, approximation (if this is the correct word) of what woman is. I’m thinking of a person like Blaire White or ContraPoints. Perfectly fine people, don’t get me wrong, but their woman suit is deeply offensive. I don’t even know what to make of the Clymers of the world.

 

[LondonJohn]

I suspect that John's premise is that a transwoman is by definition a woman, and that this is an immutable and objective fact that can be directly observed as incontrovertibly true. It seems to be based on some nebulous belief that the DSM-V changing the name of the condition means that it's a real, material, measurable thing somehow.

It's a very nice, supportive, and caring perspective to have toward transwomen. Unfortunately, it's also a view that pretty much erases the entire concept of "woman" and sets female progress back quite a bit. So... I guess yay for the 0.5% of the population with this condition... and screw the 50% of the population that are affected by it?

Oh I just saw this as I'm preparing to switch off and turn in.

This is not my premise at all.

My premise is that a trans woman - who has been properly assessed and diagnosed as such by medical professionals - should be considered, legally, politically and in a societal context, as a woman.


Tell me: is (for example) "being homosexual" something that is "an immutable and objective fact that can be directly observed as incontrovertibly true" and a "material, measurable thing"?

Or, in fact, can someone be accepted by society as being homosexual without that condition needing to fulfil these strange requirements that you've suddenly attached?

And if your answer to the above questions are "no" and "yes" respectively, then why cannot the same logic apply to the transgender issue?


(I wearily feel that I need to point out once again that I'm not comparing the two conditions - I'm purely making the comparison in order to show that a condition which is either solely or mainly related to mental/psychiatric makeup does not need to fulfil all these preconditions in order to be considered valid and real....)

 

[Rolfe]

It strikes me as a cheap, often times deeply insulting, approximation (if this is the correct word) of what woman is. I’m thinking of a person like Blaire White or ContraPoints. Perfectly fine people, don’t get me wrong, but their woman suit is deeply offensive. I don’t even know what to make of the Clymers of the world.

It's very often a porn-soaked version of a 1950s housewife. Indeed the amount of porn that subsumes many of the AGP trans accounts on Twitter is truly remarkable. And these are the guys people like LondonJohn and Earthborn are salivating to allow into all female-only intimate spaces.

 

[Boudicca90]

I don't think there is a coherent definition. I mean, Long Cho has one, but it seems to be reviled by both trans and cis alike. And Boudicca has already pulled out the classic woo dodge of having an explanation but refusing to share it because people will disagree with it. In the CT milieu, that's a clear indicator of having no explanation at all.

I don't have an explanation, that's my point. Everyone always wants me to define what I think feeling and being like a woman is and I don't know how to explain it, any more than I could if you asked me to explain how it is to feel like and be a man. Even after 30 years of living as one, I don't know.

I know that isn't good enough for you and others, but I'm still figuring myself out.

 

[LondonJohn]

Cool. You're giving me grief (#2729) for not anticipating a post from the future.

Picked at haste.

2379 then (as one example out of quite a few)

 

[LondonJohn]

This is very similar to my own experience. I gravitated towards "girly" toys and interests as a child and always preferred female friends. I never had any real issue with my penis back then, but as I got older and differed from the girls more and more I started to notice the differences and I didn't like the changes that were happening to me.

So I noticed I wasn't like other boys when I was a child, and it wasn't until puberty that my dysphoria really got bad, but I still didn't know what was wrong with me because the internet was a new thing back then. It was thanks to the internet that I finally started to make sense of myself later on. My fear and anxiety of transitioning kept me in the closet for much longer though.

But sadly, it would appear that some within this thread consider that all of your anguish - and the very root cause of your anguish - is the product of some form of mental disorder. Maybe you'll "grow out of it" or "learn to think conventionally and normally" or "respond to treatment and get cured"........

 

[Rolfe]

Or maybe Boudicca will learn to cope and live in a way that makes Boudicca comfortable without either denying physical reality or demanding to be accepted into the sex class Boudicca doesn't belong to.

 

[MisAndreG]

It's very often a porn-soaked version of a 1950s housewife. Indeed the amount of porn that subsumes many of the AGP trans accounts on Twitter is truly remarkable. And these are the guys people like LondonJohn and Earthborn are salivating to allow into all female-only intimate spaces.

I don’t think the twam types are aware of what goes on in online trans circles — I don’t mean going online and nutpicking bad actors as representatives of trans ppl, but just the baseline violent misogyny the extreme paraphilias not to mention the literally cult like mentality that pervades those spaces that you’ll encounter as a matter of course. It’s terrifying.

 

[Rolfe]

This resource provides a reasonable overview.

The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology

(I am not particularly a fan of Civitas and I am not politically conservative. However, I can't find anything that gives a better overview of the key issues in one document).

I've only read the summary, but it looks very informative and insightful. I think it would be helpful if the people on this thread who insist that current law and the proposals for reforming that law to conform even more to the desires of the trans lobby should be taken to define reality were to read this.

I find it difficult to know how it comes about that people who have not themselves, personally, been on the receiving end of the Stonewall-and-Mermaids-devised brainwashing courses can come out with the tripe being spouted in this thread and elsewhere by people like LondonJohn and Earthborn and others. I would be interested to know whether an insight into how public policy has been captured and subverted by this special interest group would make them re-think their position.

 

[Rolfe]

I don’t think the twam types are aware of what goes on in online trans circles — I don’t mean going online and nutpicking bad actors as representatives of trans ppl, but just the baseline violent misogyny the extreme paraphilias not to mention the literally cult like mentality that pervades those spaces that you’ll encounter as a matter of course. It’s terrifying.

After having read some particularly delusional posts from a female politician I remarked on Twitter that what I was having difficulty getting my head round was that the non-trans trans-advocates genuinely and seriously believe that transwomen are women.

It was very perspicaciously pointed out to me that no, they don't, not really. If they thought transwomen were women they'd talk down to them, talk over them and dismiss their concerns as over-reaction and over-emotional and hysterical. They don't though. They defer to them and treat their concerns as the most important things in the universe.

They don't think they're women, even if they think they do.

 

[Boudicca90]

But sadly, it would appear that some within this thread consider that all of your anguish - and the very root cause of your anguish - is the product of some form of mental disorder. Maybe you'll "grow out of it" or "learn to think conventionally and normally" or "respond to treatment and get cured"........

And I am ignoring them, because i'm finally happy with myself and don't need their negativity.

 

[LondonJohn]

Wow.

Right now, I can only see words one might describe as "militant", "bigoted", "delusional", "intolerant" and "extremist" coming from people on *one* side of this debate........

 

[MisAndreG]

After having read some particularly delusional posts from a female politician I remarked on Twitter that what I was having difficulty getting my head round was that the non-trans trans-advocates genuinely and seriously believe that transwomen are women.

It was very perspicaciously pointed out to me that no, they don't, not really. If they thought transwomen were women they'd talk down to them, talk over them and dismiss their concerns as over-reaction and over-emotional and hysterical. They don't though. They defer to them and treat their concerns as the most important things in the universe.

They don't think they're women, even if they think they do.

Yes you’re absolutely correct. The heart is witnessed in the act as they say. If all of this was just relegated to words and delusions I wouldn’t care, but it’s not. It’s now becoming a law in many places that in effect tw are women, and the brunt of the consequences will be borne by women, as usual. I’m also worried about what Paul McHugh calls the pathogenic meme aspect of t identity on young ppl and young girls in particular who seem very susceptible to this, who are mutilating their bodies and doing Darwin knows what to their brains with exogenous hormones. All of his horror is being cheered on and it scares me.