you with the face, I brought up my annoyance with the “girl” thing in the “About Radical Feminism” thread. It works my nerves for the same reason it does yours. I only refer to myself as a “girl” when I don’t want someone to take me seriously because I’m kidding around. So I have a hard time taking AHunter seriously when he calls himself a “male girl”.
I know he thinks the term is analogous to “tomboy”. I suppose if we were talking about kids, he’d have a point. But I don’t know any grown women who seriously self-identifies as a “tom boy”. I know that when I use the term, I’m referring only to my personality back in childhood and adolescence. I have gray hair on this head of mine. “Boy” stopped being an apt descriptor for me a long time ago.
By the way, AHunter is 58 years old. I think I’d be more forgiving of the “girl” thing if he was 20 or 30. But it is jarring from an almost-60 year old. “Girls”, like “boys”, tend to have unsophisticated views of gender and sex. Call me a grouchy ole ageist, but I’d rather hear what a woman or a man has to say on the matter.
AHunter, it doesn’t take much googling on the internet to find out why “female” ruffles some feathers. You don’t have to sympathize with the “ruffling”, but I do think it is strange you don’t get it at all. Perhaps you’ve never had to endure a bunch of guys sitting around talking about hooking up with “females”. Or ever heard someone ask for advice on “getting a female”. In my experience, people who reach for “female” before “woman” tend NOT to be people who are into relationshing nurturing and emotional connections. But YMMV.
Well that’s your problem right there. Calling someone a “woman” or a “man” does **not **invoke anything about how masculine or feminine they are. That only happens within *your *head.
I do also think it’s relevant to know that you are a diagnosed schizophrenic who refuses all medication.
New transgender women often call ourselves “girl” or “girlfriends” etc., and sometimes think of ourselves as such. I did for a brief bit, but then thought it was a bit, well, odd, being in my 40’s and referred to as such. But early on in a series of conversations about gender, the greatly predominant reason that other transgender women gave for referring to themselves as girls was essentially this: we are just “girls” in terms of experience. New, making untold numbers of mistakes, learning to function and exist in society, learning how to act, behave, dress, work, play, etc. Back when I first started, we were all “girls”. We never thought anything of it. Even cisgender women who hung out and were allies with the community called us all “girls.”
But then one day a post-operative transwoman joined our group, and I noticed everyone called her “lady” and “woman” - not “girl” or “girlfriend.” And I noticed that happened with me, after my second surgery.
(Surgery in vacuo is not an acid test, but to get corrective surgery you had to have already passed through many psychological, social, legal, and chemical barriers, thus it’s a validation of that experience. Having a lot of social activism “cred” will also get you the “lady” title automatically.)
The only time I’m called “girl” is by either crossdressers (who call just about everyone from femme gay men to cisgender women that), or young cisgender girlfriends. I slip and use it in speech about myself from time to time, but it’s not how I think about myself at all.
I’ve noticed that among transgender men, use of the word “boy” is very discouraged for anyone over 18. You’re a “man” when you reach majority or the beard comes in. Use of the word “boy” (except “boyfriend” in a relationship) would be gauche.
I’m not troubled in the least by AHunter using “girl.” Their situation is both complex and different from mine, and I can’t place myself in their shoes, nor their community.
I’ve gone on record here several times advocating for men and women to cop to being adults and to call themselves men and women.
I’ve equally denounced using “male” and “female” as nouns instead of adjectives. It’s police blotter talk and it’s obnoxious. Again, the proper words are “man” and “woman.” I’ve posted links to a picture of Civil Rights marchers in the 1960s all carrying signs saying “I AM A MAN” and contrasted their braving police dogs & fire hoses just to claim that simple monosyllable which is their birthright and shouldn’t need to be asserted. They struggled for the right to be considered men in an era when adult black men were addressed as “boy.” I posted links to Abolitionist memes from 200 years ago saying “Am I not a woman and a sister” and “Am I not a man and a brother” because I was frustrated with so many adult Dopers refusing to own up to being men and women, when men and women struggled so long and hard just to claim that simple birthright and people today are too wishy-washy about owning up to it.
That said, I referred to myself supra as “I’m just a girl”—hypocritical? No, because all along it has been colloquial for men to call fellow men “boys” and women to call fellow women “girls” affectionately—at the same time without degrading their manhood and womanhood. In sociolinguistic pragmatics, what matters is the register and context of an utterance rather than the actual words used.
Meaning we are pretty good at understanding the intended connotation from the nonverbal cues. Why it’s a stark violation of human rights to call adult men “boy” as part of the Jim Crow system or adult women “girl” as part of the patriarchy system, but it’s OK to say “boys” and “girls” colloquially among your peers as part of acknowledging one another as equals.
Another illustration: Shania Twain’s song strongly asserting she’s a woman? She introduces it with “Let’s go, girls,” expressing fellow-feeling to other women, without contradiction or hypocrisy.
Having sorted out when “boy” or “girl” is bad versus when it’s OK, I support you with the face’s critique of AHunter3 for avoiding the word “woman” and only copping to “girl” in all contexts regardless of connotation. While overall supporting A’s self-definition (girl vs. boy), I acknowledge that you with the face has pinpointed the serious flaw in saying girl vs. woman.
Conjoined with the really obvious fact that women hate being called “females” like a police dispatcher does over the radio, which AHunter3, if you want to belong to feminine identity, you really need to be aware of.
Interesting that you’re just now getting around to experimenting with that specific self-characterization when it’s been in common use to describe feminine men as far back as I can remember. As have, effeminate, effete and foppish, among others.
I also wonder if the impression I get from someone calling themselves a “girl” is:
*I see myself as a girl because girls are slender, pretty, and graceful; vulnerable, giggly, and fun…while women are fat and motherly, old and serious. *
Who wouldn’t want to be “one of the girls” if that means being associated with the more desired aspects of femininity? If it were that easy to take on that classification, older women could just claim “girl” as their gender identity and suddenly not be treated as boring, invisible objects anymore.
I would never tell you that you’re wrong to feel a certain way, or that you “shouldn’t” feel a certain way. Feelings are neither right or wrong, and I’m sure you have perfectly understandable reasons for why you feel as you do.
But I’ll cop to feeling like an interpolator even though I was born with a non-ambiguous vagina and two X chromosomes and an angry uterus that screams at me on a regular basis. I don’t think I have the “typical” women experience either, and so it feels strange for me to be speaking like I’m some kind of expert on womanhood. I only have my experience. Just like you only have yours.
I don’t feel “troubled” by AHunter3 using “girl”. But as I said, I do have a hard time taking him seriously as a feminist and an expert on gender identity. When I’m with friends, of course I use the word “girl” when referring to myself or others, as in “Gurrrl, did you see that shit on ‘Game of Thrones’? My girl Dani was killing it! I was all, ‘You go, girl!’”
But I would never speak that way in a conversation where I want people to take me seriously. Which it seems like AHunter wants us to do. And I say this as someone who doesn’t feel particularly emotionally mature. I am still waiting for my “coming of age” in some ways. I’m sure AHunter is no more a work in progress than anyone else, male or female. So I kinda see the “girl” stuff as borderline special snowflakism.
So you are comfortable in your body, you don’t care about pronouns - what is it exactly you want? I know it’s been asked before and i may have missed it. But is it just understanding? I don’t mean on a societal level but for you. To be accepted as " one of the girls"? To use whether bathroom you want? To not be seen as a man? What does your goal look like on a practical level?
Some of where you seem to more closely identify in feminine ways are only relevant within a relationship. Others ways are a matter of personal taste and only relevant to you. Yet other things seem to be gaining much wider acceptance under the umbrella of genderfluid.
What does acceptance or understanding look like on a practical level?
Having read through all of this (I believe I read it all), I guess I would have similar questions to the above poster.
IIRC, you have a beard and at least sometimes wear skirts. And that is all fine in general, but depending on the area, I can see that those two elements in some areas would give the average shopper pause when meeting you in the restroom. If you went into the men’s room, then guys are going to wonder about the skirts. If you went into the women’s room, well you have a full beard, so not exactly presenting as a woman.
So which restroom do you use and is that the one you prefer to use, or just what makes society the most comfortable.
Honestly, when all this bathroom stuff came up, my general thoughts were, if someone is presenting as the societal norm for that restroom, no one would have given it another thought, but a person with a full beard wearing a skirt entering the women’s room, then people start getting weirded out.
And I do not mean to make this all about the restroom (I just use that as a concrete example), what other areas are you wanting to change?
I hate resorting to analogies so often but not as badly as I hate failing, over and over, to answer the same question in a way that anyone can make sense of.
I’m not being frustrating to you on purpose. Believe me, this isn’t fun for me either.
Apologies if you, too, hate the analogy thing, but here goes…
Pretend for a moment that I was a female to male transgender person – a trans man. (Which I am not). Let’s assume that I was able to obtain hormonal injections without undue difficulty, and let’s assume furthermore that I had decided against surgeries for whatever personal reasons you may choose to imagine. Finally, assume that I am living a life that gives me pleasure, that I have accepting friends, accepting lovers or an available dating pool, a place to live, and don’t personally have an ongoing problem with using the toilets I feel I should be using. In short, I don’t have a single solitary personal problem, I’ve got my own situation handled. Got it?
So (in this hypothetical imaginary situation) I feel like other female-bodied people growing up like I did don’t have any TV shows or movies or books that represent our kind of experience, so if they’re going through what I went through, they have to figure it all out on their own. And I look around and I see lots of media attention about being transgender but it tends to focus on male to female people, and there’s not much about us. So I try to draw attention to our existence, to get people to be more aware of us the way they’re aware of transgender women and what they go through. Not primarily because trans guys have oodles of unresolved legal problems like housing discrimination or trans people in the military (although there’s still that) but because we need visibility. No one should have to feel lonely and cut off due to being unaware of other people who have gone through the same experiences. And even adults benefit from a wider society being aware of such folks as themselves, so that they aren’t constantly censoring little bits and pieces of their experience from what they can express to people or, in lieu of censoring, having to explain things to people who have never heard much about such matters.
End of hypothetical.
It’s like that. Except that, unlike the situation with the transgender man, instead of having very limited social awareness and only a few books and no movies or TV shows to speak of, I’ve got zero social awareness and absolutely zero books and movies and whatnot about my identity. By “my identity” I don’t mean AHunter3’s personal identity, you see that?
Now, I’m entirely aware that some of you don’t “get it” in the sense of “the identity you are describing doesn’t seem to us like something that sets you apart from zillions of other people, and the rest of them don’t feel it necessary to have An Identity about it, so why do you??” – let me nod about that sentiment, put a thumbtack into it and pin it over here to the side, OK? Now back to “what do I want from people”. Whether it is legitimate or not (depending on the concerns I just thumbtacked), let’s pretend for the moment that we agree that the identity, as such, is socially meaningful and valid, just like being a transgender man is. I want exactly the same thing as the transgender guy in my analogy: more social awareness of this particular kind of experience and what it’s like.
I cannot speak for others, but yes, that helps more than anything you have previously posted.
I think you kind of alluded to it, but yes, as a guy that was born in 70 and so is now just shy of 50, having lived the mostly traditional male life, it is hard for me to comprehend what you have gone through and how lonely that must have been.
As a young man, I would have had numerous role models living the life I felt comfortable living. And so yes, I had lots of support in that.
And while there were serveral traits that you had mentioned about you, that I felt I shared, I can see where in the grand scheme of things feeling comfortable being a person that presents aspects of both genders (aka beard and skirts) would be difficult. And knowing that there are others that have not gained the comfort you have nor have the kindred spirits to help guide them could put you in a place to want to offer encouragement or support. And attempting to help others understand that not everyone fits so neatly into the “main” buckets is admirable (I assume that is one intended outcome of these posts/blog entries).
Thank you for your patience and for the analogy that helped me to better understand (at least I believe I better understand) you.
OK, to continue the transgender man analogy, he just said
… I don’t think the guy necessarily has a list of specific behavioral changes in his head when he thinks or says that. He isn’t trying to coerce a set of politically correct behaviors, he wants an understanding. He doesn’t know how it’s going to “look” because that’s sort of dependent on each and every individual and how they are going to react to transgender men once they understand they’re out there and that their experiences are like this and like that and so on.
I don’t either. You think I’ve ever lived in a world that had that understanding established, so that I could describe for you how folks behaved? I haven’t, and I can’t! That doesn’t mean I don’t seek it.
