Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

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d4m10n said:
It's been many months since I've accessed any spaces built exclusively for men (IIRC) probably since the first COVID shutdowns went into effect. I've been teleworking full time, skipping the gym in favor of outdoor workouts, and avoiding the interior of restaurants. To make matters worse I've been doing stereotypically womanly tasks such as keeping house and homeschooling children. Where should I report to turn in my man card?
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Labor Day weekend I took a 6 hour road trip to see my mother. I realized it was the first time in 6 months I had used a bathroom outside of my house.
 
I think I'm coming round to agreeing with that. The only things that seem to come under the heading of "living as the opposite sex" are LARPing the trans person's idea of how the opposite sex tends to behave, which boils down to a set of regressive sexist stereotypes, and accessing the single-sex spaces and provisions of the opposite sex.

Now we're being asked to believe that the LARPing part isn't necessary, a man can be a woman without changing his appearance or behaviour in the slightest, so all that's left is access to women's single-sex spaces and provisions. Makes you wonder what the objective is in all this oh wait.
 
And somehow... accessing those single-sex spaces is a "civil right" for males who identify as women.... but maintaining them as single-sex spaces is somehow NOT a "civil right" for females who identify as women.
 
Meadmaker said:
That's not what "living as a girl" means, but I'll let Boudicca answer the question before I give my answer.
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So the way I see it, "living as a girl"* consists of two things: Acting as one thinks girls should act, and being treated as one thinks girls should be treated. But gender stereotypes are increasingly deprecated. There are very few places in society where we can find a clear, binary demarcation between men and women. Very few places where law and custom still firmly uphold the traditional view of sex and gender.

So while there's more to it than just "access to women's spaces", I think that is the predominant factor, by a very large margin.

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The whole question gets really weird, really fast, though. Does living like a girl mean wearing dresses and putting on makeup? But men can wear dresses and put on makeup, too. Nothing wrong with that.

Actually, a lot of communities do frown on men wearing dresses and putting on makeup. This is good for transwomen, because it means there's still a gender-stereotype line that they can cross. On this side, they're living as a man. On that side, they're living as a woman.

But they're not living entirely as a woman. If they're mannish enough, their community is still going to frown on them for cross-dressing. So even though they're acting like a woman, they're not being treated like a woman. Their community needs to treat them like a woman, not like a cross-dressing man. Really, their community needs to stop frowning on male-looking people who wear dresses and put on makeup.

But this then erases the clear gender-stereotype line that the transwoman crosses to achieve their goal of living like a woman. If there's nothing wrong with men wearing dresses and putting on makeup, then there's nothing to be gained in terms of lived gender identity by doing so.

Eliminate all these gender stereotypes, and what's left? Women's locker rooms. Women's sports.
 
theprestige said:
So the way I see it, "living as a girl"* consists of two things: Acting as one thinks girls should act, and being treated as one thinks girls should be treated. But gender stereotypes are increasingly deprecated. There are very few places in society where we can find a clear, binary demarcation between men and women. Very few places where law and custom still firmly uphold the traditional view of sex and gender.

So while there's more to it than just "access to women's spaces", I think that is the predominant factor, by a very large margin.

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When I first wrote what I wrote, I had something in mind, but the more I thought about it, the less I liked my answer.

First and foremost, "living like a girl" means telling everyone that you are a girl.

At first, I was going to say that also meant doing things to convince other people you are a girl, such as wearing female stereotypical clothing, and makeup. The more I thought of those things, though, the less logical it all sounded.

So, I retract my non-answer. I guess I don't know what "living like a girl" means. Telling people you are a girl seems a necessary condition, but beyond that, I don't know. Is it, like Rolfe said, and like I have occasionally seen among trans women, dressing and behaving like a guy's caricature of a woman? That doesn't seem right. After thinking about it, I have to admit I don't know what it means.


But, if you're going to say that you're a girl, could you at least shave off the beard?
 
theprestige said:
So the way I see it, "living as a girl" consists of two things: Acting as one thinks girls should act, and being treated as one thinks girls should be treated.
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It would seem my gay married sisters-in-law aren't living as girls in either sense. By and large, they don't care to dress and act in characteristically feminine ways, and they aren't generally treated nearly so well as they believe women ought to be treated.
 
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d4m10n said:
It would seem my gay married sisters-in-law aren't living as girls in either sense. By and large, they don't care to dress and act in characteristically feminine ways, and they aren't generally treated nearly so well as they believe women ought to be treated.
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You misunderstand the second part of my criteria. It's not about society treating you as you think women should be treated. It's about perceiving yourself to be treated the same way you perceive society generally treats women.

That said, your sisters in law are married to women, so they're definitely living as men. :-P
 
theprestige said:
So the way I see it, "living as a girl"* consists of two things: Acting as one thinks girls should act, and being treated as one thinks girls should be treated. But gender stereotypes are increasingly deprecated. There are very few places in society where we can find a clear, binary demarcation between men and women. Very few places where law and custom still firmly uphold the traditional view of sex and gender.

So while there's more to it than just "access to women's spaces", I think that is the predominant factor, by a very large margin.

---

The whole question gets really weird, really fast, though. Does living like a girl mean wearing dresses and putting on makeup? But men can wear dresses and put on makeup, too. Nothing wrong with that.

Actually, a lot of communities do frown on men wearing dresses and putting on makeup. This is good for transwomen, because it means there's still a gender-stereotype line that they can cross. On this side, they're living as a man. On that side, they're living as a woman.

But they're not living entirely as a woman. If they're mannish enough, their community is still going to frown on them for cross-dressing. So even though they're acting like a woman, they're not being treated like a woman. Their community needs to treat them like a woman, not like a cross-dressing man. Really, their community needs to stop frowning on male-looking people who wear dresses and put on makeup.
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What is "treated like a women"? How about we just treat them like a human?

But this then erases the clear gender-stereotype line that the transwoman crosses to achieve their goal of living like a woman. If there's nothing wrong with men wearing dresses and putting on makeup, then there's nothing to be gained in terms of lived gender identity by doing so.

Eliminate all these gender stereotypes, and what's left? Women's locker rooms. Women's sports.
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Nakani said:
What is "treated like a women"? How about we just treat them like a human?
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Yes, those are the questions. Ultimately, these are questions that transsexuals need to answer. The rest of us can only guess. What you're replying to, from me, is my best guess. If you have a better guess, I'd be interested in learning what it is.

I don't think "treat them like a human" is a better guess, though. Mainly because it's just not realistic. But also because it seems counter-productive. If how you're treated isn't supposed to change when you come out as a transwoman, what's the point of coming out?

These have been recurring questions in this thread. So far they don't seem to have answers.
 
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Small unified groups of trans folks in regional areas might get trans rights approved and enforced.
Get to the bigger picture and trans activists seem to go against the established rights of other alphabet soup groups and don't care who they hurt.

Even on a statewide scale, forget national, the infighting and the forcing their priveledge on others will be the resistance that ruins it for all.

A card carrying CA trans outside the big city, CA is not treated as well. Now if they traveled to Turkey or Saudi Arabia and demanded the card be respected the results would vary.
That person is painted into a small corner by personal choices.
 
theprestige said:
You misunderstand the second part of my criteria. It's not about society treating you as you think women should be treated. It's about perceiving yourself to be treated the same way you perceive society generally treats women.
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Okay, so part of being a woman is being treated generally the same way that similarly situated women are generally treated. In the case of lesbians, that would mean that women who are attracted to women are going to be somewhat flirtier with you than they'd be with, say, adult males. I suppose this is a reasonable thing for transwomen to expect from lesbians as well?
 
theprestige said:
The whole question gets really weird, really fast, though. Does living like a girl mean wearing dresses and putting on makeup? But men can wear dresses and put on makeup, too. Nothing wrong with that.

Actually, a lot of communities do frown on men wearing dresses and putting on makeup. This is good for transwomen, because it means there's still a gender-stereotype line that they can cross. On this side, they're living as a man. On that side, they're living as a woman.
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The problem with this, as I see it... is that while that gender-stereotype line might be good for transgender people... It's bad for cisgender people, both men and women.
 
d4m10n said:
Okay, so part of being a woman is being treated generally the same way that similarly situated women are generally treated. In the case of lesbians, that would mean that women who are attracted to women are going to be somewhat flirtier with you than they'd be with, say, adult males. I suppose this is a reasonable thing for transwomen to expect from lesbians as well?
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I am agnostic about "reasonable thing to expect." What I do think is that a transwoman who finds that lesbians still perceive her as too male to stimulate their sexual attraction, isn't going to feel like she's fully transitioned. My best guess, anyway.

What do you think? Is it reasonable for transwomen to expect to be hit on by men?
 
Emily's Cat said:
The problem with this, as I see it... is that while that gender-stereotype line might be good for transgender people... It's bad for cisgender people, both men and women.
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Well, yeah. That's gonna be a tough circle for trans-activists to square. I think it's no coincidence that nobody wants to answer what it actually means to live as a (wo)man.

What can Boudicca's answer possibly be?

"Reinforce gender stereotypes that everyone else is trying to get rid of."

"Spark sexual attraction based on my gender identity instead of my primary and secondary biological sex characteristics."

"Transgress clear biological distinctions that are actually important and actually matter."

Nakani suggests, "treat me like a human being", but that makes no sense. If gender didn't matter to this discussion, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Nobody says, "I should be admitted to women's locker rooms because I'm a human being."
 
theprestige said:
Yes, those are the questions. Ultimately, these are questions that transsexuals need to answer. The rest of us can only guess. What you're replying to, from me, is my best guess. If you have a better guess, I'd be interested in learning what it is.

I don't think "treat them like a human" is a better guess, though. Mainly because it's just not realistic. But also because it seems counter-productive. If how you're treated isn't supposed to change when you come out as a transwoman, what's the point of coming out?
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I was referring to your criteria regarding the way cross dressing men should be treated. No one needs special treatment based on wardrobe.

These have been recurring questions in this thread. So far they don't seem to have answers.
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Nakani said:
I was referring to your criteria regarding the way cross dressing men should be treated. No one needs special treatment based on wardrobe.
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That's what we're actually wondering, though. If we're treating people the same regardless of which gender roles they dress as, then what does "living as a gender role" actually consist of?

And if transwomen are choosing outfits and makeup on purpose to code as women, how does treating them in a gender-neutral way actually respect their gender identity?
 
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