{TRIGGERS} Being a woman...

[MbutF]

I don't have an answer. Honestly. My view on 'being a woman' might be too idealistic.

but I'll just go with this quote, because this is what I face everyday.

Ugh, trying to be a guy would physically drain me so much. To pretend to be masculine all the time, gestures, intonation, strut, et cetera. You don't need to look pretty, sure, but you need to be 'a man', and there's a lot that goes with that. The constant power struggles and dominance plays in social groups, amogst friends, or vying for female attention. The worst was going out and trying to sell yourself to the 'opposite gender' and feeling like a fraud, ughh. I'm so glad that chapter is closing.

Nattie, what you said above..... is basically.... my biography so far.  It's SCARY, It's like I wrote that, but yet you did....,  Yeah, this  prettttty much sums up how I am right now. I do weird stuff I'm not even comfortable with, because I am expected to do so, I regret it later.

To answer the question again, I have no idea what 'being a woman' means. I think I know, but I might be fooling myself with an idealistic view.

[sam79]

It is a difficult question. I don't know how to answer. Because I've always been a woman. Due to social conditions and my physical situation, I just didn't live the life of typical woman.

Living as myself now, the social situation has changed dramatically. But I don't know if that has any bearing on the answer. I'm the same person at the core, just living in a different world.

Looking at the other side for FtM guys, I totally don't get that either. I just can't comprehend what it means to be a guy. Which seems strange for me to say since I got to see how guys live and behave from an insiders point of view.

[Misato]

I have no idea what it means to be a woman vs a man. To be vulnerable, sometimes I pause and wonder "Why did I go through transition?" Usually such thoughts are closely following a lesson in how similar men and women are. I mean, I've come to meet some beautiful fashionable women and what's in their Facebook updates? Playing Nintendo 64. Corrupting new people into the Lord of the Rings. I know a woman who gets so angry she can be driven to punch the wall. All these behaviors are so very familiar to me from my life prior. Seeing them makes me feel incredibly naïve. There were girls, there had to be girls, being derided by their peers as much as I was for playing video games as a kid. Really, I'm finding the experience of men and women to be much more alike and it's only a surprise because we don't talk about our similarities as a culture.

Maybe it is due in part to a lack of rites of passage for boys and girls. I think of youthful initiations and for boys I think it's getting kicked in the junk, for girls that's getting their ears pierced? Older, for men building a man cave for women giving birth? Wait, no, can't be some of those because as trans people and for some cis folks... we... yeah. Moving on, as women who lament their experience being repressed in favor of a man's experience must know, there is really no justifiable reason for her experience to be marginalized. Now back to rites of passage: for men learning they have social privilege and infallibility, for women learning to deal with the privilege of men. But really men and women having the same kind of life, I'm okay with that.

So, why is my life easier for me to live now?  I am confident and secure in my identity as a woman and I'm pretty sure that helps. Maybe for me that confidence is even the only thing that matters. Do I think I still would've needed to transition if social norms allowed men to be more feminine? I do. For all the similarities I do not see how I could've been happy in life if when I interacted with people those people saw man. Can't explain it and please forgive me for being a bad philosopher, but I'm just going to accept it on faith.

I have no idea if any of the above makes any sense. I should really be sleeping.

[JulieBlair]

Hello everyone,
The question of "What makes a woman" is thousands of years old.  Men and Women have always wondered, and always seem to find answers that entail submission and subjugation.  I reject dependence even as I embrace femininity.  But it still seems odd, even though I have known at some level that I have been a girl/woman for almost as long as I can remember, donning the accoutrements of western womanhood was and is pretty essential to my experience of being feminine.
Makeup and clothing are more to me than the costume of the day, but substantively contribute to my internal dialog and self identification.  Yes becoming woman is an inside job, but the body changes from HRT, a little help from Nordstroms, and even the occasional confirmation by  men, are fundamental to my experience as a woman. Forty years ago I tried to be a girl, then tried to be gay, then just hid in despair.  What I think I missed is that for me cross dressing was just a performance.  For me to be in drag is not to experience being female.  It has taken immersion into the culture of femininity, and the sisterhood (if I may be so cliché) to get the inside and outside in sync.
I am a woman both because that is my self identity, but also because I behave, dress, smell, smile, and love femininely.  I love being a girl, I am grateful that that gift was mine to choose, and that I get to share that experience with everyone whose path I cross.
Peace,
Julie

[suzifrommd]

what does it mean to you? A difficult concept maybe. Many trans women are without the trappings that usually define 'woman', so what does it mean to you? Being female. In scientific terms this implies the ability to give birth, but is obviously more than that. What is the essence of woman - her beauty, her breasts, her genitals? I had all these and was not a woman, however much I tried to be. So, what is it?

Can't tell you, FA. I still don't feel like I am one. I feel feminine a lot of the time - softer, kinder, gentler, less angry, less fearful or defensive, more focused on others and less on my on ego. But I still feel like actually calling myself a woman is awfully presumptuous.

Woman-ness and man-ness are very complicated concepts.

Perhaps woman-ness and man-ness comes by experience. Maybe I'm becoming more of a woman by living as one.

[Inanna]

what does it mean to you? A difficult concept maybe. Many trans women are without the trappings that usually define 'woman', so what does it mean to you? Being female. In scientific terms this implies the ability to given birth, but is obviously more than that. What is the essence of woman - her beauty, her breasts, her genitals? I had all these and was not a woman, however much I tried to be. So, what is it?

Feeling normal in a female body, in the same way I feel normal in a human body and identify as human.

The body is one's interface with reality.  You wouldn't want to have a plane's controls while on a ship.  That's the simplest way I can express this.

There's obviously more to the story, involving self-expression and social function, that can't just be ignored.  However, this part varies so much from person to person that I don't feel any blanket statements apply.

[Sephirah]

I don't think I've ever really given this much consideration before.

I guess for me, it doesn't really mean anything. In the same way that having dark hair or green eyes don't really mean anything. It's just part of who I am. I don't really attach any sort of significance to it. Which is probably weird, lol. I guess it's just a fundamental acceptance of self, to the extent that I don't feel the need to assert it. And doing so just leads to mental gymnastics that I don't have the energy to deal with. Too many questions that I can't be bothered to answer. It's just being me, through thought and word and deed. Expressing myself naturally.

Beyond that... I dunno.

[Inanna]

That's a good description of it, Sephirah.

[swatch]

Being quite cartesian, to me, it's close to the basic binary view of sex/gender. So, it's about the expression of biology and genes, beyond any social or psychosocial thing.
But, it gets more complicated than that : it's more about a common perception of one person correlated with their self-perception. That is, if any transsexual person passed really well in my eyes, my brain would have a hard time questioning their sex/gender, and I wouldn't bother, even though technically, it can still be discussed. (my sense of reality makes transitioning a harder time, I can't embrace blindly the "I am female" leitmotiv)

[Joanna Dark]

Well, Lately I've been staring at women (not in a creepy way, just in a daze) and I keep thinking to myself why have I done this? Is there really any difference? What makes it so special? Why can't I just be a man as it would be so much easier (aside from being treated like dirt again from my appearance and mannerisms)? And I can't think of an answer to why this is so speical and becuase of this specialness, I turned myself into a woman. Not that I was manly in any way before, but I passed as one about 80-90 percent of the time as I have reached 30. It used to be more like 30-50. I also did a lot of exercise to get to that point and even exercised my jaw muscles so my face wouldn't be so round and feminine. I also spent a lot of time on my shoulders.

But, now that I've actually done it, I keep thinking about why. My mom finally accepts me and I walk around the house dressed like a girl and she says nothing, doesn't give me dirty looks and talks to me like it's all completely normal. She has gopne back to being uber-protective like when I was a kid. When I was 12, my dad, my brother (who is two years older), me and my mom went tubing down the Delaware and my mom tied a rope around my tube so I wouldn't float away or something even though my brother is barely older than me and he could just float freely. But, it's like that again and I have to check in with her if I go to my friend's house, or my old apartment as it is, since four white girls have been attacked there recently. I was on a date and she texted me and she told me to leave before midnight as the place wasn't in the greatest of neighborhoods. I had to tell her James, me ex, was arond the corner so she need't worry. She did shut up then. Okay, this is a tangent...my point is I have gotten everything I have ever wanted and now I'm left with this feeling of why. It prolly doesn't help that lately I feel like I'm made of boobs and legs. Everything else is just so...tiny.

So what makes me a woman...well aside from the fact i genetically am one...but I have a half-developed thing so....I think I'm a woman cause I say I am, cause I act like one, cuase I can idetify with all the behaviors other women my age identify with and I do them without thinking. Like I read a lot of women's life style Web sites, like Elite Daily (just a life style site with a woman's section), and they have these lists like 29 Things Every Basic Bitch Does. And I can identify in a major way with pretty much all of them right down to weird ones like "when you hear the word basic you think they're talking about a section of H&M."

I guess it's really just a matter of shared behaviors and likes and dislikes that I fall into for some odd reason. But why does being a women now make me so happy? IDK. All of my dysphoria, which I used to just call  being alive, has vanished and the only way I'm dysphoric now is genitally. But in a year or so that will be gone as well.

But then what if my best friend from childhood was right? What if I go through all this and I regret it and end up killing myself? Why he was reading all about hermaprodites and transsexuals I didn't realize at the time. He was in love with me. But this is a long winding response so sorry for that....oopsie.

[kira21 ♡♡♡]

its a label so it is whatever you label as such and has as much meaning as you load onto it. No more, no less.

[Joanna Dark]

Another way to look at this questions is how does the majority of peeps in the world view "being a woman" as? I think most would use the default vagina v. penis analogy so aptly said by that kid in Kindergarten cop: boys have a penis and girls have a vagina. And people say gender is a social construct, which I believe up to a point, but what about david reimer. He had a vag constructed for him after a botched circumcsion. (if only I was so lucky but my mom took me out of the hospital "against medical advice" at age 3 and wouldn't let them play lab rat with me) Then, even after intense and enforced female socialization, he still felt and ultimately became a man. So that's a case study hard to refute and one that kind of turns gender as a social construct on its head. I'm not saying it isn't a social construct, but I think there are traits that people are born with that make them display feminine or masculine behavior. For instance, as a child, i was a drama queen and cried a lot, especially if I didn't get my way. But I also believed I was a girl and would not use the men's room until my mom forced me to at age 6 before kindergarten so i would at least have a chance to be normal. EPIC FAIL lol

What about me? I don't have a Y chromosome, have a blob of Mullerian tissue aka a malformed uterus and broad ligament, yet have a penis (i even hate writing it) and scrotum with two little thingies in there that are able to raise my free T level to 182 (about the amount a woman with PCOS would have). So what the hell am I? All I know is I underwent a weird kind of quasi-male/female socialization at home but at school too and was never allowed to play contact sports with boys. I literally had to sit out in gym class and was made to do the girl push up variety (on knees) to pass one gym class. Plus even when i tried to fight someone they usually replied with a "I don't fight girls" put down. This never ended. A couple years ago I was drink and made the mistake of accetping a challenge to arm wrestle my friend and she beat me, and beat me quickly. I didn't even have a shot. And what did she say afterwards: "I still have never lost to a girl. My record stands. I'm still perfect. I rock!" Her brother shushed her but tried to so it in a way where I wouldn't notice as soon as she mentioned she basically thinks of me as a woman. Apparently, most people do. I also got in the Viper Room on ladies night for free and tried to pay and they were all like "Well, you're close enough, go in." I think they thought I was an FTM.

But, at the same time, even with my oh do complicated medical history, I question if I'm a woman. I'm more some half thing that's part Jill and part Jack. But mainly I feel like a nothing. I saw the movie "Let Me In" and in it this 12 year old female vampire starts a friendship with this boy but then goes "Would you still love me if I wasn't a girl?" And he goes "if you're not a girl then what are you?" And she replies: I'm nothing. And that's how I feel often. I feel like a nothing. That's my main reason for transtioning so I can get out of this androgynous state and have people stop making comments about my body and to have everything match. I don't ever, ever ever want to be anything close to an activist and just want to slide quietly into the background and live a normal life, or as close to I can get, to a female. Transition for me is normality. Womanhood to me is a state of normality where my personality and body match and fit in with other women in a way that it simply does not with men. Every guy I have ever been friends with has stopped being friends with me for one reason: his friends almost in every case highly dislike me and how I act and look and don't want to be hanging with a queer anymore. I do consider myself queer. I am just not welcome in manland. I remember I had this one job and a I barely talked yet whenver I tried to bond they would all walk away or yes me and would not let me participate in their guy talk. Yet, I have had close, intimate friendships with women where we get along so well and I always get along with her friends in most cases and that never happens. Usually the friendship ends in drama. How typical, yes?

So, i've answered this thread like three times now lol and now I feel like I have a better grasp of why again I am doing this. So thanks FA!

[stephaniec]

Another way to look at this questions is how does the majority of peeps in the world view "being a woman" as? I think most would use the default vagina v. penis analogy so aptly said by that kid in Kindergarten cop: boys have a penis and girls have a vagina. And people say gender is a social construct, which I believe up to a point, but what about david reimer. He had a vag constructed for him after a botched circumcsion. (if only I was so lucky but my mom took me out of the hospital "against medical advice" at age 3 and wouldn't let them play lab rat with me) Then, even after intense and enforced female socialization, he still felt and ultimately became a man. So that's a case study hard to refute and one that kind of turns gender as a social construct on its head. I'm not saying it isn't a social construct, but I think there are traits that people are born with that make them display feminine or masculine behavior. For instance, as a child, i was a drama queen and cried a lot, especially if I didn't get my way. But I also believed I was a girl and would not use the men's room until my mom forced me to at age 6 before kindergarten so i would at least have a chance to be normal. EPIC FAIL lol

What about me? I don't have a Y chromosome, have a blob of Mullerian tissue aka a malformed uterus and broad ligament, yet have a penis (i even hate writing it) and scrotum with two little thingies in there that are able to raise my free T level to 182 (about the amount a woman with PCOS would have). So what the hell am I? All I know is I underwent a weird kind of quasi-male/female socialization at home but at school too and was never allowed to play contact sports with boys. I literally had to sit out in gym class and was made to do the girl push up variety (on knees) to pass one gym class. Plus even when i tried to fight someone they usually replied with a "I don't fight girls" put down. This never ended. A couple years ago I was drink and made the mistake of accetping a challenge to arm wrestle my friend and she beat me, and beat me quickly. I didn't even have a shot. And what did she say afterwards: "I still have never lost to a girl. My record stands. I'm still perfect. I rock!" Her brother shushed her but tried to so it in a way where I wouldn't notice as soon as she mentioned she basically thinks of me as a woman. Apparently, most people do. I also got in the Viper Room on ladies night for free and tried to pay and they were all like "Well, you're close enough, go in." I think they thought I was an FTM.

But, at the same time, even with my oh do complicated medical history, I question if I'm a woman. I'm more some half thing that's part Jill and part Jack. But mainly I feel like a nothing. I saw the movie "Let Me In" and in it this 12 year old female vampire starts a friendship with this boy but then goes "Would you still love me if I wasn't a girl?" And he goes "if you're not a girl then what are you?" And she replies: I'm nothing. And that's how I feel often. I feel like a nothing. That's my main reason for transtioning so I can get out of this androgynous state and have people stop making comments about my body and to have everything match. I don't ever, ever ever want to be anything close to an activist and just want to slide quietly into the background and live a normal life, or as close to I can get, to a female. Transition for me is normality. Womanhood to me is a state of normality where my personality and body match and fit in with other women in a way that it simply does not with men. Every guy I have ever been friends with has stopped being friends with me for one reason: his friends almost in every case highly dislike me and how I act and look and don't want to be hanging with a queer anymore. I do consider myself queer. I am just not welcome in manland. I remember I had this one job and a I barely talked yet whenver I tried to bond they would all walk away or yes me and would not let me participate in their guy talk. Yet, I have had close, intimate friendships with women where we get along so well and I always get along with her friends in most cases and that never happens. Usually the friendship ends in drama. How typical, yes?

So, i've answered this thread like three times now lol and now I feel like I have a better grasp of why again I am doing this. So thanks FA!

I my self was never accepted by males at work. I don't know why . I think I looked male. They for some reason wouldn't let me in the inner circle. I put up with it for 20 years. What ever

[sad panda]

Doesn't mean anything to me, it's just what people decided to call me :/

I'm never gonna be female and I don't particularly care except that life would have been easier for someone like me if I had been.

I don't even know what the genders are supposed to be other than stereotypes of how the sexes think and behave.

I definitely identify with that as a guy. And it sucks. But at least it's mostly behavior based. As a girl, it's all about winning the genetic lottery. You either look good or you don't. And even if you do, it doesn't last. A guy at least, has the option, however difficult, of changing his behavior. And he's got time on his side to prove himself. For a girl - it's much more limited. If she didn't win the genetic lottery, she's out. For good. No amount of behavior will save her. And even if she did win, her time is very limited. A man has all the time in the world.

Honestly FA I get how you feel but this is so black and white. And that's coming from me. :/

Ugh, trying to be a guy would physically drain me so much. To pretend to be masculine all the time, gestures, intonation, strut, et cetera. You don't need to look pretty, sure, but you need to be 'a man', and there's a lot that goes with that. The constant power struggles and dominance plays in social groups, amogst friends, or vying for female attention. The worst was going out and trying to sell yourself to the 'opposite gender' and feeling like a fraud, ughh. I'm so glad that chapter is closing.

Guys don't have to do any of that if they don't want to....

[Kara Jayde]

Guys don't have to do any of that if they don't want to....

Well, I agree, you don't have to do anything really, what I'm describing is being socially successful in a masculine gender role, and putting yourself in a position where people openly accept you in that role. I suppose I could just be a very feminine male who shaves and dresses andro, but without HRT it feels like a lie? Certainly a line of thinking I need to follow.

[Nero]

Honestly FA I get how you feel but this is so black and white. And that's coming from me. :/

Well it is, but on a societal level, it's true. Most people don't actively think about it. But they (men and women) do judge women on looks and men more on behavior. This doesn't mean men are never judged on looks; just that it matters much less. And no matter how unattractive a man is, having an attractive woman on his arm raises his esteem in both men and women's eyes. That says it all. This whole value system means that women's value depreciates by the day (aging), but men's can grow as they get more experience, competence, and money. Basically - women are valued most for a depreciating asset. Yeah, I know it's depressing - I was a woman.

[stephaniec]

Well it is, but on a societal level, it's true. Most people don't actively think about it. But they (men and women) do judge women on looks and men more on behavior. This doesn't mean men are never judged on looks; just that it matters much less. And no matter how unattractive a man is, having an attractive woman on his arm raises his esteem in both men and women's eyes. That says it all. This whole value system means that women's value depreciates by the day (aging), but men's can grow as they get more experience, competence, and money. Basically - women are valued most for a depreciating asset. Yeah, I know it's depressing - I was a woman.

wow, I thought I was going to find greener pastures

[Tori]

That is one way to look at things, FA... although, it is almost entirely fallacious.

Vanity has nothing to do with sex or gender. Unfortunately, many people buy into the fallacy, literally. There is a billions dollars industry that caters to vanity.

It is surprising to see your thesis, and while it is more nuanced, it, at first glance, reads like, "You will only be a real woman if you are young and pretty." And if that is the case, that is society's problem, not mine.

[sad panda]

Well it is, but on a societal level, it's true. Most people don't actively think about it. But they (men and women) do judge women on looks and men more on behavior. This doesn't mean men are never judged on looks; just that it matters much less. And no matter how unattractive a man is, having an attractive woman on his arm raises his esteem in both men and women's eyes. That says it all. This whole value system means that women's value depreciates by the day (aging), but men's can grow as they get more experience, competence, and money. Basically - women are valued most for a depreciating asset. Yeah, I know it's depressing - I was a woman.

Yah, it's just not absolute. I don't think it's right to say women can't do anything about it with their actions or personality. I mean to phrase it like that cuz you know it's not true. And treating it like it is true, and for women to keep believing it is true is just discouraging women from even trying. On paper there is nothing definitely keeping a woman from being utterly successful from her actions alone. In reality there are a lot of roadblocks, but you did say that men can do it "however hard." Well women can do it however hard too, it's just harder in a lot of ways. Not impossible. That's what I meant about it being black and white.

(and I'm saying that as pretty much the most powerless person ever, lol.)

[Nero]

That is one way to look at things, FA... although, it is almost entirely fallacious.

Vanity has nothing to do with sex or gender. Unfortunately, many people buy into the fallacy, literally. There is a billions dollars industry that caters to vanity.

It is surprising to see your thesis, and while it is more nuanced, it, at first glance, reads like, "You will only be a real woman if you are young and pretty." And if that is the case, that is society's problem, not mine.

Not at all fallacious. This youth and beauty trap for females is at least as real and potent as the behavourial codes for males. I'm not advocating it by any means. I'm saying this is the case for women on a societal level.  You probably won't hear this in such stark terms elsewhere - but you get it every day in subtle ways. Young girls grow up knowing their power is in their looks.

Now obviously, I'm not saying that on the individual level, every woman's life sucks if she's not young and pretty.  But it's the same as how a man's life doesn't have to suck if he's effeminate. He may be living it up. Doesn't mean there aren't huge societal behavioral restrictions for men.