content warning, I’m going to be glib and talk about misogyny and transphobia in a joking manner - I don’t mean to harm anyone, and I don’t want to upset anyone.
OK hear me out: trans-exclusionary radical feminists, at least the actual radfems who are often middle-aged and still stuck in second-wave feminism, should love gender-affirming care … doesn’t it do exactly what they would love to do to men? Like, a lot of these women are cultural feminists, they essentialise men and women and view women as superior and men as inherently violent, oppressive, and bad. At least that’s been my experience.
So, for example, if a man wants to suppress testosterone and take estrogen, shouldn’t TERFs’ fear about violence from men and the (admittedly simplistic) narrative that testosterone is responsible for that violence and aggression motivate them to embrace enabling as many men as possible to suppress their testosterone and chemically castrate themselves with estrogen?
Even if they don’t believe that makes the man a woman, shouldn’t they believe it’s an improvement?
It just sounds like a revenge fever-dream concocted by second-wave lesbian separatist: a woman goes about secretly injecting abusive men with estrogen to calm them down … it just sounds like a revenge fantasy they would be into.
The plot of The Gate to Women’s Country literally centers around this fantasy of castrating men to make “good” men.
And if that’s not compelling, I know they love the stories about chopping off dicks - come on, if they really believe trans women are a bunch of men, shouldn’t they support access to gender-affirming care like vaginoplasties that do exactly that?
TERFs should support gender-affirming care even if they don’t believe trans women are women. If men are the enemy they should be the biggest fans of chemically castrating and cutting the dicks off men.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
this is operating under the erroneous assumption that modern terfs have any connection to feminism beyond the moniker.
yeah, agreed - TERFs are mostly not feminists
but I do think the anti-trans movement that styles itself as feminist picks up a lot of average people who are like I’m describing, middle-aged second-wave feminists, and they are duped into anti-trans positions. However, the ideological core of TERFs is now anti-feminist as far as I can tell.
I always referred to extreme and misguided feminists as feminazis. TERFs are feminazis with a particular fixation
feminazi is a right-wing pejorative term for feminists, I wouldn’t be using that term (even for TERFs) unless you want to be perceived as right-wing.
Wouldn’t be the first time I made a name for mean folk, only to find out the right-wing have already claimed it. Yeah, if it’s already got a meaning then it’s a bad idea to use it, 'cause it can result in confusion. Like ‘football’.
yes, I think it would communicate the wrong idea to people, that you’re critical but from a right-wing perspective.
It’s also a little confusing to me personally, “feminazi” is a term I heard used and the way it was used and what in conjures in my mind is an overly zealous feminist who corrects people’s politically incorrect language or something like that, similar in concept to something like how “Social Justice Warrior” was a term of abuse for a while.
It is funny to me that TERFs as right-wingers are actually closer to “feminist Nazis” than the original meaning of “feminazi”, lol
I’m not sure there was ever a legitimate concern about social justice movements in the U.S. being genuinely authoritarian, even if we all don’t like change, being corrected by moralists, etc.
Removed by mod
Firstly, you’re breaking the first rule of this space and your comment will be removed. I would encourage you to ask questions in an appriopriate space, this one exists for trans feminine people and will be kept safe for them. Secondly, do you know that you have XX chromosomes? Have you ever had that tested? Or is that just the assumption you’re making based on your physiology?
You’re most likely a woman because society has largely told you that you are. They’ve told you that your body is what makes you a woman, and that being a woman comes with all these different things attached to it. You have internalized that identity as you were being raised and it has meaning to you, you have always seen yourself as the gender you were assigned. Cisgender is nothing more than just accepting the gender you were assigned.
Trans people experience dysphoria about our bodies for a lot of reasons. The way that our bodies are shaped and appear is itself gendered. So many trans people feel a gender based dysphoria about their bodies. The way that secondary sex characteristics are typified has an impact on us as well. Many cisgender women experience the same things about their bodies. We have an internalized view of our own gender and if we feel a dissonance between the way we are and the gender we have internalized, it causes distress to us. This necessarily includes our bodies.
As well, feminists don’t abandon all modes of gendered expression. We have our own tastes and preferences with clothing, expression, and presentation. Many of us still undergo gendered rituals about our bodies, like removing body hair and wearing clothing that emphasizes a feminine presentation. Trans people are just doing the same things. I experience all of the same pressures that cis women do to have a conforming presentation. I enjoy wearing gendered feminine clothing because those things correlate with my own identity, with how I see myself. This is a normal thing that everyone, cisgender included, does.
To your last comment, what are you? Presumably, you are a cisgender woman as you have identified yourself that way. What womanhood means to you is up to you. I understand this is something you’ve been told your entire life that you are inherently, and you have to find your own way to exist within the conventions of womanhood, but you don’t. As women, we can be masculine and/or feminine, we can be apathetic about our gender, we can choose to take part in gendered presentations like makeup or wearing clothing associated with femininity, we can work in any field we want and we can be whatever we want to be. Those things are all true even considering Trans women. Masculine Trans women exist. Gender liberation is discarding the concept of assigned gender roles entirely and allowing gender self-determination. It’s letting you decide what gender means to you.
So, as I often do to people questioning, I’ll say this. No one can tell you for sure one way or another whether you’re trans or not, nor whether you should transition or not. That choice is entirely yours. You have to explore your own feelings about gender and come to that conclusion yourself. So what are you? That’s entirely not a question I can answer. You have to answer it for yourself.
Yeah, for all that you can delete me and tell me to fuck off. Why did you respond to me at all? You wrote a wall of text to a banned opinion to pretend you actually allow my existence.
I experience all of the same pressures that cis women do to have a conforming presentation. I enjoy wearing gendered feminine clothing because those things correlate with my own identity, with how I see myself. This is a normal thing that everyone, cisgender included, does.
I do none of these things, does it make me not a woman? Can i not be a woman without the feminine trappings?
I would encourage you to ask questions in an appriopriate space
Where is the appropriate space to speak?
What womanhood means to you is up to you. I understand this is something you’ve been told your entire life that you are inherently, and you have to find your own way to exist within the conventions of womanhood, but you don’t. As women, we can be masculine and/or feminine, we can be apathetic about our gender, we can choose to take part in gendered presentations like makeup or wearing clothing associated with femininity, we can work in any field we want and we can be whatever we want to be. Those things are all true even considering Trans women. Masculine Trans women exist. Gender liberation is discarding the concept of assigned gender roles entirely and allowing gender self-determination. It’s letting you decide what gender means to you.
If you’re going to come to our space and ask us to explain ourselves to you, openly questioning who we are and whether or not we are who we say we are, the least you can do is actually read my response.
Yes, you can be a woman and not partake in gendered rituals we associate with femininity. The same is true of trans women. Gender liberation is relinquishing the notion that any assigned gender roles are good. But like we wouldn’t ask cis women to abandon nail polish because it’s associated with a certain kind of femininity, the same is true of trans women.
Where is the appropriate space to speak?
Literally anywhere else. This is a space for transfeminine people to exist without having to constantly explain who we are and justify why we deserve rights. Many of the people in this community live in places with governments that are actively hostile to our existence. You can ask questions about this literally anywhere else. There are unironically millions of places on the internet with content discussing the exact thing you’re asking about. I responded to you because you seemed to show a disposition of good faith and an awareness that you don’t understand what trans people are all about. I do not categorically ban people from this space unless they prove themselves to be a genuine risk to transfeminine people in this space. You seemed to have an interest in actually learning more about trans people. I provided my own thoughts and my own explanation of what it means to be a woman and how that fits with trans women and cis women. Because again, you seemed actually interested in some kind of answer.
I removed your comment because you openly identified yourself as a terf (aligned yourself with the term at least), and many people here, including myself, have some pretty bad trauma in relation to terf ideology. Terfs are a real political movement, specifically aiming to make my existence impossible. We have to deal with a 24/7 onslaught of terf misinformation informing government policies around the world. We have to deal with mischaracterization and incredible disgusting and horrific language about ourselves and our bodies. You ought to be able to empathize a bit with that as a cis woman. Openly identifying as a misogynist in a space for women would be a form of aggression. I realize this post is kind of inviting commentary from TERFs indirectly, but the rules of this community still stand.
This space is for transfeminine and questioning people first and foremost. As it says in the rules to the community in the sidebar, anyone is welcome to participate here, but disrupting the safety of this space for transfeminine people is unacceptable and will result in moderator action.
I just want to point out that there is nowhere on the fediverse where a person can ask these questions and the op started the conversation by accusing feminists of my age group of being terfs.
I just want to point out that there is nowhere on the fediverse where a person can ask these questions
I think anything remotely construed as terf would fail their respect rule. Trans support is an all or nothing here.
Respect in that context is more about showing that you’re asking questions in good faith. Disrespectful behavior would be calling trans women men, saying that gender affirming care is harmful, etc.
Yes I definitely recognize that this post was indirectly opening up this kind of conversation, I would not have been as open to engaging if this had been on another post. That’s not a slight against you, just that rather not all trans people are willing/capable of engaging in prolonged dialogs about whether or not they are who they say they are. It can actually hurt being questioned in this way and is something trans people are expected to do a lot.
As the comment below shared, the asktransgender community would be a better place to have this kind of dialog.
I never questioned anyone’s identity. Show where i did? I have never dead named or claimed a woman is a man or vice versa. I acknowledge that trans women are women, i also admit to confusion since it changes my own identity. The op attacked feminists like me and thays why i responded. I usually say nothing.
I didn’t intend to imply that you had, I was just saying as an example of why we are weary of people outside our community asking questions in our community and why we generally do not allow these kinds of discussions. I believe through the conversation we’ve had here you’ve shown an interest in learning more about us and are acting in good faith. If I thought that you were trying to call us men or anything like that this conversation would’ve ended a while ago.
Im questioning who we all are, what it means to be a woman because the idenity i knew is gone. Deal with it.
The identity you “knew” is still there you are just welcome to interpret it however you want to, the same that I am. You can be a woman, I myself am a woman it’s really not that complicated. I’m treated as a woman in every facet of my life, I work as a woman and engage with the world and everyone I know as a woman. I’m assuming you do as well? Again you’ve been raised to perceive gender as something that is assigned to you and that you can never be rid of. I am here telling you that you are the ultimate deciding factor in what your gender is, and what that gender means to you. It’s a liberation entirely from the constrained categories of assigned gender.
If you’re not actually going to read what I’m saying, then why are you here asking questions? Are you uninterested in an answer? If so, what is the point of you commenting here at all?
Ok, honestly that is how i lived my life. Im a woman because of chromosomes and it means nothing day to day. I feel like your ‘treated as a woman’ is not the same as my treated ‘like a person’. Woman means something to you but to me it’s incidental. I’ve always been here being a woman with no real meaning attached to that. Now there are people attaching meaning and that makes me uncomfortable because i can’t relate to their meaning. Whether it’s makeup and fashion or babies and boob jobs or whatever. I’m a person first and a mani pedi is a luteral nightmare. Now we have womens stuff on lemmy and it includes makeup and fashion? Am i not a woman??,???, i’m not a man so what the fuck am i??? I feel like the stereotype is enforced more than ever and i hate it.
By women’s stuff I assume you mean the community, and I would agree that it does fall at times into what I would consider pointlessly gendered.
I am a radical feminist and a gender liberationist. I very much believe that the assignment of gender at birth is one of the ways that patriarchy is maintained over women. The insistence that gender is a biological trait rather than a social class allows them to attach other things to womanhood and resist attempts to remove them. It’s easier to insist that all women must be subservient to men and stay at home to raise children if womanhood itself is something inherent and biologically ordained. Biological gender essentialism actually works against women’s liberation in this way.
I’ll admit that it’s not intuitive, but gender just really isn’t something that can be empirically determined. Like in broader social contexts, how you are gendered by other people is entirely up to their perception of you. That’s why the concepts of passing (being perceived and treated as a cisgender woman) and of clocking (being perceived and treated as a transgender woman) exist. Now I personally hate that and wish that gender itself was not ever assumed about other people. It would functionally make patriarchy impossible if no one was ever presumed to be a man or a woman, but instead we allowed other people to identify themselves.
I understand also that for you makeup and fashion and things we traditionally assign to femininity are constraining. For me, they are liberating as I always desired these things growing up and was denied them. The same with my body, with the shape and physiology of my body. But that doesn’t make my gender the one by which everyone else is judged. That’s why I’ve said that what womanhood means is up to you. It’s your choice. And if the identity itself of woman feels so repulsive on you that it causes you distress or discomfort you are not obligated to identify with it. Womanhood is what women are, and women are masculine and feminine and everything in between and beyond those terms. What is feminine and what is masculine is subjective too. To some women being strong and large is itself an expression of their femininity, to others it isn’t. Gender liberation isn’t about dictating who is right in this situation, it is rather about allowing everyone to decide who and what they are and refute constant comparison to others of the same gender.
I do also have to acknowledge that as much as these ideals are ones I firmly believe in, the world doesn’t operate cleanly along these principles. While I’m here discussing real gender liberation gender is still being assigned all over the place. And what gender means is still being dictated by others. In that way trans women and cis women face social pressure to conform to standards of womanhood dictated by others. I don’t think we should blame any women who do conform to those standards, but rather we should call out the people putting the standards in place to begin with. The people doing that are not transgender people, but those interwoven with systems of patriarchy and male dominance in society.
TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”, and originally it designated anti-trans feminists, like Janice Raymond (The Transsexual Empire), Sheila Jeffreys, Mary Daly, Robin Morgan, and others. A lot of these feminists are part of second-wave of feminism. Contemporary TERFs however are arguably poor feminists, and many of them even refuse to identify as feminists as they make alliances with right-wing politicians. Basically, TERFs today seem to be more anti-trans than they are feminist.
Since by definition TERFs are anti-trans, they would not agree with “trans women are women” or anything like that, they believe trans women are delusional men and invaders of women’s spaces. You could not be a TERF and believe trans women are women.
I consider myself to be a woman because i have 2 x chromosomes.
Did you have a karyotype test, how do you know you have XX chromosomes in particular? Even so, why do you think having XX chromosomes guarantees being a woman - there are certainly men who have XX chromosomes (for example trans men - I assume if you think trans women are women, you agree that trans men are men).
It seems to me that not only do chromosomes not guarantee a gender, but most people don’t actually know their chromosomes.
If we were being pragmatic, we might say you’re a woman because society perceives and treats you as a woman, but this can be a problematic definition for trans-inclusiveness. Simone de Beauvoir, the famous existentialist philosopher and foundational feminist thinker, in Second Sex, writes that what makes a woman cannot be reduced to just physiology, i.e. she rejects biological essentialism and the idea that something like a uterus or XX chromosomes makes a woman a woman, instead she points to the larger context of the way women are fashioned as subordinate to men and as an “other” in society, some important quotes from Second Sex:
If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through “the eternal feminine,” and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman? . . . The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say, ”I am a woman”; on this truth must be based all further discussion.
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
In the end I understand Beauvoir to be arguing that there is no inherent thing as being a woman, and that we should instead see view people as primarily human, the very same way that men are often perceived as human first (as the default / universal) and not particularly gendered or othered in their gender.
But this creates a problem for trans identity, and it does not accord well with certain facts about biology - for example, the common belief that gender is just a social construct, which came from feminist thinking and finds its roots in Beauvoir, resulted in the sexologist John Money deciding to have a baby boy whose penis was damaged by circumcision be raised as a little girl - after all, gender is just “socially constructed nonsense” and what does it matter. Money thought it would be better to raise the kid as a girl because it was easier to construct a vagina and give the child a normal life as a girl rather than raise them as a boy without a penis. The baby would never know they were born a boy, and they performed corrective surgery to give the baby boy a vagina and raised him as a little girl without his knowledge. This boy’s name is David Reimer, and he contrary to Money’s theory, he struggled to live as a girl and by the age of 15 rejected being a girl and lived to be a boy.
Now, this is an example of a cis boy who was raised as a girl and who experienced gender dysphoria trying to live as a girl and who eventually realized something was wrong and was able to transition back to being a boy.
What was going on with David Reimer, if gender is just a social construct, why did he struggle so much to live as a girl? He was pressured and expected to be a girl, and he conformed in many ways, but he was particularly rowdy for a girl, and he was, well, boyish.
Well, it turns out there is a growing body of evidence that indicates gender identity is actually a part of our biology, and there have actually been dissections of trans women’s brains that show particular structures in their brains that are more like cis women’s brains in terms of volume and density than cis male’s brains (even when the trans women did not take hormones or transition medically). We now know it’s a lot more complicated than brains just being “male” or “female” and there is a new model called the brain mosaic, so it’s complicated.
But the main take-away is that gender identity is biological not something we can mold with social influence - this is why conversion therapy is not successful, and why the only evidence-based and effective treatment for gender dysphoria that has ever been found is gender affirming care. We also now know that gender dysphoria is genetic, though likely caused by a complex set of traits rather than a single gene.
So why do people change their bodies? They got unlucky and inherited a genetic condition that causes their brain to feel like a different gender from the sex they are assigned upon birth, and that results in discomfort similar to if you took a cis person and tried to raise them as the opposite sex. This is all oversimplification and leaves out a lot of the complexity and diversity of trans experience, but hopefully this helps give you an initial idea.
I’ve thrown a lot at you, but in terms of “what you are” - I can’t answer that, nor can anyone else. Unfortunately nobody can inspect your gender identity, even if they can try to infer your gender from your body and gender expression. And even the inferred gender that society places upon you is not necessarily who you are in inherent sense. There might just not be any essence of what you are, or that gender essence might be too complex to fit with our current gender concepts. The “brain sex” that plausibly explains gender dysphoria in trans people is so complex that it is not clear we could ever construct something like simple categories or a taxonomy of sexes or genders from it, which is why the researchers describe it as a mosaic. It’s not even a spectrum, it’s too complicated.
If you are wondering if you could be a trans man, you could see if your experiences are like other trans men, here are some videos that may help explore that.
You might also find the Gender Dysphoria Bible worth reading, even just to learn more about trans people out of curiosity.
It does seem to me that you are saying there is some gender essentialism going on, produced by a complex set of genes/hormones/environment (like everything else) and I don’t conform to the woman stereotype therefore I am not a woman, not really, because i dont have the feminine self expression part of the identity. What if i reject gender as an overarching identity, can i be a women despite enjoying maths and machines? Why is makeup a prerequisite for female? Tomboy does not in any way mean male, i am entirely comfortable with my body. I am not anti trans btw, i fully support all trans rights, especially healthcare, i just have confusion. I think most people see gender as very important to identity and i dont understand that.
Gender essentialism doesn’t make sense, in the end the idea behind essentialism is that “male” and “female” are two categories that are clearly differentiated by a set of essential, inherent characteristics. Basically a woman is someone who meets a set of criteria, and those criteria are never particularly work to actually include all women and exclude all non-women.
Most TERFs are biological essentialists and many will say a woman is someone who produces the large gamete (i.e. eggs, as opposed to sperm). It’s not clear to me that essentialists like this have any sufficient response to the fact that there are very real (even cisgendered) women who are sterile and don’t produce eggs - are they not women because they lack that defining characteristic?
Other essentialist definitions focus on other biological components, like having XX chromosomes, or having a uterus, or the capacity to bear children (again problems for how to make sure sterile women are correctly categorized as women) … None of these definitions work, there are exceptions to all of them because human biology is very complicated and there is a lot of natural variation. (If you’re curious about the science, this Nature article is fairly accessible.)
Another problem with this kind of essentialist thinking is that we clearly operate in a social context where we do identify people as “women” and “men” without knowing their chromosomes, genitals, and so on. (I notice you didn’t answer my question about how you know you have XX chromosomes … I know my chromosomes because I have taken a karyotype test, but it still didn’t tell me anything about my gender.)
Gender dysphoria might have biological causes and might not be curable through therapy or brainwashing, but that doesn’t exactly give us an essentialist account of gender. The biology is also not the only factor, just like gender itself is complex and multi-faceted, the social context plays a role in shaping dysphoria and the distress experienced by trans people. A trans man might feel uncomfortable wearing a dress - whatever biological causes there were for the gender dysphoria did not include specific discomfort with dresses, the dresses are an arbitrary aspect of the way gender manifests in our society. In a society where people would not be put in strict gender roles the shape of dysphoria might look different for trans people than it would in a society where gender is put upon people and enforced.
I don’t conform to the woman stereotype therefore I am not a woman
I don’t think that is accurate, as you point out a tomboy is still a woman - not conforming to stereotypes doesn’t invalidate your gender. You seem to understand this already, so I’m not sure why you make this statement.
I think most people see gender as very important to identity and i dont understand that.
Some people are “agender” and don’t have any notable or strong gender feelings. It’s OK not to understand from a first person perspective what it’s like for people different than yourself. If you’re really hoping to empathize and understand better, one way to help with perspective taking is to read fiction works that take those perspectives - Stone Butch Blues for example might help you understand a trans perspective better.
I might also point out that you likely don’t understand what it’s like for cis men who are very masculine and who enjoy having hairy bodies, broad shoulders, and a penis and so on - but you don’t seem confused by the existence of cis men or their preferences … Maybe your confusion around trans people is similar to confusion you would have with cis men, from your account I could assume it’s general like that.
On a more personal note, it’s interesting the way you talk about gender, it reminds me of what I was like pre-transition. I somewhat hated gender and wished people would just shut up about it, and I wished they would stop gendering me (either way). I didn’t particularly care about my body and I would not have said I experienced anything like “gender dysphoria”. That’s not to say you’re trans or that these perspectives indicate a trans experience, but it is a bit surreal for me to be on the other side of transition and to see how radically different my interpretation of my experiences pre-transition are now. Where before I might have taken gender abolitionist positions and felt some affinity for agender experiences, now I am much more clear about how unconscious gendered preferences impact my life, and while before I coped with those through repression, I just relate to them differently now.
Anyway - feel free to DM me anytime with questions, this is admittedly not the right place to explore these kinds of questions.
Thank you, that was a great, educational comment and i found much to relate to. Im not going to respond right now because a knee jerk reaction would not be productive but i want you to know that i have read and i am ruminating on what you have said. It was not in vain! You have my ear and i will come back to this. I genuinely thank you for your effort and time and i sound like a complete fucking wanker but i actually mean well just shoot me! Sorry
All that matters is that you are engaging in good faith and have a good heart - thank you for listening and reading my comments, it means a lot to me ❤️
I’ll be here whenever you want to chat, I know it’s a lot to think about and to process (I spent months working through a lot of this myself, I know what it was like to be on the other side).
What womanhood means to you is up to you. I understand this is something you’ve been told your entire life that you are inherently, and you have to find your own way to exist within the conventions of womanhood, but you don’t. As women, we can be masculine and/or feminine, we can be apathetic about our gender, we can choose to take part in gendered presentations like makeup or wearing clothing associated with femininity, we can work in any field we want and we can be whatever we want to be. Those things are all true even considering Trans women. Masculine Trans women exist. Gender liberation is discarding the concept of assigned gender roles entirely and allowing gender self-determination. It’s letting you decide what gender means to you.
I’m just going to repost this here since I already said it elsewhere and you didn’t seem to respond to it.
Questions not allowed
Yeah, this is strictly a safe space. I’m happy to continue the conversation in my DMs if you would like, however.
Bigotry is not a logical ideology. It’s an emotional response to confusion and ignorance.
yes, please don’t take my post seriously, it’s meant in jest 😜
if we were being serious, I would claim TERFs don’t qualify as feminists, they abandoned feminism when they started working with misogynist right-wingers (just like the SWERFs in the '80s) and started making essentialist claims about women that most feminists reject. It’s hardly surprising when TERFs like Posie Parker (the woman who popularized “adult human female” as an anti-trans slogan) started off with feminist styled transphobia, and as soon as she started collaborating with right-wingers suddenly she identifies as “not a feminist” and started calling herself a “woman’s rights activist” instead. (I could be getting the timeline mixed up, so take this with a grain of salt - but I think the point still stands about how TERFs quickly become “not feminists” in the name of their anti-trans views. The transphobia is much more important than whatever feminism they might have had.)
