[Discussion] How do trans women feel like women?

submitted by deity from self.GenderCritical

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[–]Spikygrasspod 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I feel empathy for that sadness. I daresay many of us feel sadness, either fleeting or more insistent, at not being 'good enough' women or whatever. The size and spread of the diet industry should be proof of that.

It would be good to have a lot more research on dysphoria/dysmorphia. I might be persuaded, with evidence, that we should treat at least some people differently on the basis of a sound diagnosis. But since the current gender talk lumps all manner of self-identifying people together with a smaller number of people with severe dysphoria, gives them all the same name, and forbids us to distinguish between them because it's 'gatekeeping' and offensive.... well that makes it difficult, because we either have to say 'yes' to all, or 'no' to all.

[–]Anna_Nym 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, your last sentence is really the issue to me, too.

Also, I am genuinely happy to treat someone as they want to be treated--pronouns, names, and all--in one to one interactions. I am not happy to have my needs, lived experience, and identity erased or have history rewritten. Woman is a biologically sexed term. Gender roles have been attached to it, but no culture anywhere that I am aware of have seen the gender roles as the primary definition of "woman/man" rather than the sex. Even in cultures that have third or fourth genders, those are still based on recognizing the reality of biological sex. And it is not a coincidence that there are way more examples of cultures that have a third gender that allows a biological male to assume a female social role than there is of the reverse. So I will use she/her, but I am not going to pretend that "woman" means anything other than adult human female to validate someone's desired identity. (well, I'm not going to pretend in the privacy of my own mind... I am a big coward, so even commenting on this message board is a toe step towards the courage to start saying this outside of my own mind.)