Hopefully, she never wears slacks. Ever. Not even at home when nobody can see her.
Seriously, trans(anybody) should be able to walk down the street in blue jeans, t-shirt & sandals and nobody says a goddamn thing about it. There’s a staggeringly short list of people who have any business knowing what’s under those clothes, and chances are, the casual passers-by aren’t on the list.
[re: breastfeeding]
In developing nations without ready access to clean water, running the water through the mother’s immune system can keep the infant from picking up certain awkward diseases. One of the reasons why there’s a Nestle boycott out there: they’re heavily marketing powdered formula in Africa, where they make it with luke-warm tap water because they don’t have the resources to boil the water first.
"Once we restrict analyses to siblings and incorporate within-family fixed effects, estimates of the association between breastfeeding and all but one indicator of child health and wellbeing dramatically decrease and fail to maintain statistical significance. Our results suggest that much of the beneficial long-term effects typically attributed to breastfeeding, per se, may primarily be due to selection pressures into infant feeding practices along key demographic characteristics such as race and socioeconomic status."j
(Forgot this isn’t a breastfeeding thread, so if you want to discuss further, we should probably move it elsewhere!)
The one benefit of this COMPLETE HIJACK is that my point is proven.
Women have insane contradictory expectations put on the by society, by other women - many of them cut right down to what it means to be female (being able to breastfeed - oh, you can’t - well, it would be child abuse if you could but didn’t, but you tried - it isn’t your fault your kid is stupid (breastmilk is said to increase IQ), sick (antibodies) and a sociopath (improperly bonded)). Motherhood. Marriage. Sex with men and not women. How you dress (wearing heels and a dress all the time or you aren’t taking being a woman seriously - really - what does that say for all of the cis-women out there who don’t own a dress?), You can’t be both a SAHM and a WOHM at the same time - yet each side of that debate can be just as judgy as the breastfeeding thing.
Women (cis or trans) shouldn’t let anyone else (men, other women - cis or trans) define what it means FOR THEM to be a woman. If a transwoman is going to start defining it FOR ME, I’m going to get about as upset as I get over the breastfeeding thing. But I get that upset when a quiverful woman starts spouting nonsense about what a woman is.
No one has to justify how they feed their child to you and studies currently show that the benefits of breastfeeding have been greatly exaggerated and that it offers a trivial benefit, if any.
There must be something really compelling about telling women what they must do and not do with their bodies. People get up in arms about formula-feeding but rarely express similar concern for babies and toddlers being fed soda, watching television, and not being given sufficient opportunity to exercise. The well-being of the child is clearly not the true concern from busybodies that behave in this manner, so it must be some kind of bullying thrill of controlling someone else’s boobs.
What a sick point of view. I guess it should come as no surprise that you don’t find pet abuse objectionable.
As a cis man, I look at that issue like this: I have a lifetime of experiences as a man, and I’ve had several dozen close friends of both sexes. In the case of women, I’ve had several long term partners, who generally wind up being much closer than close friends.
Based on that experience, the sex of a person hasn’t been a good indicator of whether I feel like our minds are similar. There are women who I just “get” and who seem to think about, react, or feel about things so much like I do, and there are men who I find incredibly inscrutable and difficult to relate to. The reverse is true too of course.
It’s true that I’ve never actually lived my life as a woman. I can’t say for certain that there’s not an aspect of the female mind that I’m totally oblivious to; that’s totally different from my mind. But there’s very few things I can say with complete certainty, so I’m generally comfortable drawing conclusions based on my life experiences.
So that makes me wonder if transgender people have the opposite experience. Does a trans woman find more familiarity in virtually every woman, and men all seem alien and inscrutable? It seems that would be necessary to conclude you’re actually in the wrong body for your mind, but it’s so different from my own experience in life.
This “but what if I want to call myself a DRAGON?!” nonsense smacks of the “but what if Tom and Mark want to get married just for insurance and aren’t really homos?” arguments against gay marriage.
Would you like someone telling you what you’re really thinking, how you really feel? I guess you’re not hetero if I don’t witness you humping someone of the opposite gender, you straight faker. So stupid. Jenner feels like a female, let her be. What harm can it possibly do to call someone by the pronoun they prefer? Is it really tweaking you that much? It’s maddening when people insist on making an issue out of something that isn’t. Respect people’s individual experiences and don’t be a dick, it’s honestly that simple.
At :42 seconds, the speaker describes being told repeatedly as a child “you’re a boy, you can’t play with that,” “you’re a boy, you can’t do that,” etc. Because she wanted to play with “girl” toys and do “girl” things, no wonder she concluded that she was a girl, since otherwise, why would she be attracted to “girl” stuff? If you accept the false premise that only girls like something which you like, it is perfectly logical to conclude that you are therefore a girl.
Since there are no actual girl clothes, toys, etc., I am not happy about anything that reinforces the idea that there are. Being a boy that plays with dolls, likes pink, prefers dresses, etc. is perfectly fine and people that think and say otherwise are the problem.
I don’t care what gender any individual claims to be, but when someone equates “being a woman” with wearing make-up, engaging in stereotypical “woman” behaviors, and dressing in “woman clothes,” I fear that it reinforces these stereotypes and thus harms the already vulnerable status of women in society. Personally, I do not often wear makeup, I refuse to bind my foot-shaped feet into a painful heeled “woman shoe” ever again, and I like to build things, but I am still a woman… At least I have always thought so, but now, who knows? If male privilege can be mine just by insisting people call me Bill or something, maybe I’ll take it.
On the other hand, this is very similar to “I’m part Native American because my great grandmother might have been Cherokee” that frankly seems to piss off many of those that actually are Native American. The writer has a point there. Lily white me doesn’t get to suddenly declare I have a Native American brain and a rumor of a fur trapper marriage in my distant ancestry and expect to be fully embraced by my tribal brethren. If I convert tomorrow to Judism, I’ll ALWAYS be a convert in that society - and there are parts of it I’ll be quite welcome in - and parts where I’ll never be a “real Jew.” Mrs. Vanderbilt had one hell of a time breaking into Mrs. Astor’s circle - her money was far too new.
There is a difference in our society between growing up female and growing up male. Women who grow up as women bring a lifetime of experiences to being women - not just a female brain, breasts and a pair of heels. As trans people transition younger, those differences will be less - maybe non existent if you transition young enough or as society shifts from gender binary identities. But Jenner wouldn’t fit in at my women’s bookclub - she simply can’t have the discussions about shared experiences as young women that are so vital for that particular group of women - who were raised in a gender binary environment. We’d try, we are an accepting group of people, but I suspect it would become pretty obvious that it wasn’t a fit.
Well, just got back from the plumbing supply store. A guy behind the counter treated me like I was stupid and told me the part I knew I needed did not exist, but his co-worker told him he was wrong and went and got it, so I must be starting to pass.
My SO took the news neutrally, but mused that he must therefore be gay. He doesn’t watch sports on TV at all, sometimes he cries, and he has no paternal instinct, so he could be a woman in denial, but I guess he will figure that out in his own time. If he is, I guess we will have to break up, because I am not attracted to women.
I guess it has to do with empathy. Why would a lily white person try to say that they are part Native American and want to be fully embraced a specific tribe? It’s usually to sound cooler to other lily white people, or maybe to get college scholarships, or for some business reasons. All reasons it’s hard to have a lot of empathy for. Even then, some Native Americans are cool with it, like some didn’t mind Johnny Depp talking about his Native background when he was promoting the Lone Ranger, even if a lot of other people thought he was being ridiculous.
But why would a transgender woman want to be embraced by other women? It’s because she’s felt like a woman all her life and wants the community.
Also, a white person claiming to be part Native American will likely have had all sorts of advantages during their life, so it will feel like they are exploiting things trying to become part of the Native American community. While some transwomen will have had the advantages of being a man, many will have had problems before transition. And after transition, they are definitely not gaining many advantages in life by becoming women. Caitlyn Jenner is gaining some advantages since she’s so high profile, but I believe most transwomen will be facing lower salaries and higher chance of being fired and more chance of being harassed and assaulted and killed.
Maybe I’m rambling, but that’s how I see it. Someone saying “Hey I’d like to join your group so I can exploit the relationship and enrich my life in social and financial ways?” then people want them to get out. Someone saying “I’ve been rejected by other groups, I’m looking for a community to belong to and people to have caring relationships with,” then people are more receptive to them. Transwomen are the second group, and thankfully more and more people are being welcoming and receptive to them.
It’s a standard tactic in political debate to find the one person on the other side who is a complete nutjob, quote that person, and then act like it is a mainstream position the side you are denouncing holds.
I don’t doubt that some ludicrous college student may have used “front hole” on their blog. I’m also sure she was the only one to do so.
Struggling to make a coherant response to your post. I know what I mean to say, but I haven’t put it in writing yet. Generally I am not trying to be mean spirited, but I am trying to poke fun at some of the more fringe aspects. I get that it can be a sensitive topic that can result in hurt feelings; I’m not trying to go there.
Gender roles and gender identity are not the same thing. Transgender women can be girly-girls or tomboys. “What gender are you?” and “How stereotypically masculine or feminine are you?” are questions that address things on different scales.
Not buying it, and the reason I’m not buying it is that there are countless threads here like this one:
Here is a guy who wants to be part of our community. And our response is a sort of rude “you are welcome to hang, but that doesn’t mean we like you.” Any attempt to change board culture from a newbie (or, going back to the great misogyny scandal, where we lost lots of good women posts - established female posters) is met with “we don’t need to change for YOU” or the more polite “you need to respect the norms of the community you want to join.”
Communities are a multi-directional relationship - and you don’t get to simply declare yourself a member and automatically get accepted to the community. I don’t get to do that as a white person to Native Americans, trans women don’t get to do it to cis women. Newbies don’t get to do it to the SDMB.
It would be awesome if communities were more accepting, but they aren’t. I don’t HAVE to accept anyone’s membership to my circles. I may choose to, because I’m generally a fairly civil and open minded person. I’m less likely to if I ever hear my behavior referred to as a “microaggression.”
No, she was not. Because Jenner has never spoken at all about what a “woman-by-birth thinks, feels or ‘knows.’” None of the examples she gave made that claim. It’s a strawman.
We accept trans people for the same reason we accept everyone else’s preferred gender. Because that’s who they tell us they are. Nothing about gender roles factors in at all. Trying to turn trans women’s desire to be accepted as women into some sort of misogyny is just ridiculous.
There is no dichotomy. Accepting trans women is in no way doing anything at all to cis women. It’s just this woman making up excuses for her own transphobia.
That’s why I felt the need to be as bombastic as I was with her article. I don’t want her bullshit pulling anyone along.
But you don’t have a choice when bigotry is involved. Gay people forced same sex marriage without ever conforming to the way men are supposed to behave. Black people didn’t have to conform to way white people behave.
If you don’t accept a trans person because they are trans, you are a bigot. You don’t have that right.