Susan's Place Transgender Resources

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The past two weeks I been having strong cravings to bake and create "healthy" food items. I will search up food items, read about it, and think what I could make with it.

But, lately I wish I had someone to bake for or take care of. I want a family, and I just want to be the one taking care of dinner. Its rather sad. Something so many women get to do....
For the purpose of raising a family.

Well Im going to bake a banana cake tomorrow. I got an endless and magical supply of bananas and oranges that my job offers. And apples and milk... But what do you do with that?

So do you think psychologically women are made to cook for the family or is that society doing?

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This is so interesting.  I've totally picked up the urge to cook, bake, an clean - way more so than in my life pre-HRT.  I think most of this is because women who do those things are considered more feminine, and in knowing that, I may have (however subconsciously) been tempted into doing more of those things.  In other words, I don't think there's any biological basis in me having these newfound tendencies/desires, just like my current obsession with the colour pink has nothing to do with hormonal changes.

Having said that, I do think these norms of femininity are so strong that they begin feeling inherent once you have a desire to be feminine or be recognized as a woman. 

Also, especially in my family of origin (as much as I love them), I notice that there is a very high tendency for me to be misgendered or called by my birth name if I deviate even slightly from conventional expressions of femininity.  This tendency, in and of itself, sort of forces me to either adopt extremely feminine norms, or come to terms with being seen as male.  Maybe this is why some trans women tend toward hyperfemininity when they transition?

 I have done the cooking since I first got married over 30 years ago, my wife's idea of cooking was opening a can of spaghetti O's. 

This is something I'm totally obsessed with, too. The only reason I've held myself back is because my roommates have no respect for food ownership. Everything will be gone within the next few days before I get a chance to do any cooking, which makes buying any cooking ingredients a total waste. I also just want to cook for my boyfriend and me, but the roommates would also devour whatever I made. It doesn't matter how many times I try to beat them away or make artificial boundaries; they keep coming back in to ruin it. I can't afford that. I'm holding out until my boyfriend and I can move out into our own place. Eventually the kitchen will be mine again!

I've always liked to cook and I make really good food too.  Lately I have been much more into cleaning the house.  I don't attribute this to some effect of HRT though.  What I think happened is that I'm finally feeling really good for the first time in like 45 years and my mind isn't totally weighed down with dysphoria all the time.  Living in a clean space is just more pleasant than living in a dirty one.  That's my theory anyway.


Sapere Aude

Given that there are many male chefs and cooks I would say no. It's not a "feminine activity" it is an activity.

I've  been cooking since I was around 12. Mom being a nurse sometimes worked evenings and my father was usually so drunk his breath would have set the house on fire. I don't like cooking per se but I like making my Key Lime pie from scratch.  BTW my son is a pastry chef and does all the cooking at their house.

I'd call it basic human survival. I've been alone all my life so it's either fast food and obesity or healthy food plus it's a lot cheaper to make something from scatch

I'm not even on HRT yet, but have that as well. All my life I was laughed at for engaging in these stereotypical feminine actvities. When he was younger, even my son called me "mapa" because of that. I love cooking, cleaning house, taking care of people, am an awful gossip etc etc.

Feminism tells me I shouldn't consider these activities to be feminine, but I'm different from all males I know. Before I started transitioning, I heard at least twice a day comments like "what are you, a woman"? Being able to freely be who I am without being laughed at or get these comments is one of the reasons I started transitioning.

Quote from: Deborah on February 19, 2016, 11:36:05 PM
I've always liked to cook and I make really good food too.  Lately I have been much more into cleaning the house.  I don't attribute this to some effect of HRT though.  What I think happened is that I'm finally feeling really good for the first time in like 45 years and my mind isn't totally weighed down with dysphoria all the time.  Living in a clean space is just more pleasant than living in a dirty one.  That's my theory anyway.


Sapere Aude

I think there is a lot of truth in this.

When you are happy you want to be in a nice place both physically as in your home, and mentally as being clean and well dressed, fit and healthy.

You also want to socialise, have friends and be part of the society.

You enjoy life.

When you basically can't cope with waking up and facing the day, all of that seems unimportant.

While I don't want to derail the topic or even discuss RLE, that is part of what the therapists are looking for.

Are you now happy being you after you have transitioned?

If you are, it was the right call. If you are not there needs to be other investigations to allow you to be happy.

I view it as an archaic sociological construct which can be attributed to conflict

Throughout history, when war broke out the majority of men went off to war and the majority of women stayed home to keep house and look after the children

But more over I feel that the need to comfort and/or please others is a basic humanistic trait inherent to most people regardless of gender

On a personal note, I enjoy cooking/baking and creating treats and I often do feel a strong sense of femininity within myself while doing so - But then again, I feel rather feminine regardless of what I'm doing

I find that keeping a decent home, helping others and sharing my home made tasty treats to be rather therapeutic

Nothing warms the heart like bringing a smile to another  :icon_chick: 

Quote from: Ms Grace on February 20, 2016, 01:05:45 AM
Given that there are many male chefs and cooks I would say no. It's not a "feminine activity" it is an activity.

I agree with Grace on this one, I'm sorry but there really is a huge difference and a lot of greater depth to being a woman than this type of thing, please please understand I don't mean this in a bad way at all, but quite often on this site I often find that a lot of comments and posts talk about women and women's activities in a male perceived way, and don't get me wrong, what I mean by that is sometimes a short time having transitioned and everything people were exposed to pre transition can and will add to that idea. Maybe even I thought somewhat like this when I first transitioned 7 years ago. But being a woman is a lot more complex than cleaning, cooking and raising children. Those are just old traditionalist gender roles. And this is coming from me, I am very much into traditional gender roles. The point is that this type of post is almost patronising. because just like not all men are the same, not all women are the same.

There has also been other posts in which trans women went on and on about how afraid of men they were and how unsafe they felt around men, and all this who shot John about men as if they are evil creatures, almost like what I would imagine is a male perceived way of what women think of men, which is absolutely innacurate. Again also wrong to do sweeping generalisations. And stereotyping. Don't stereotype yourselves ladies.

Do what makes you happy, wether that is monster truck racing or knitting sweaters for your cat. Don't patronise yourself by trying to do what old gender roles dictated to women, they quite often weren't things women wanted to do, the jobs women did historically often fell on them because they were the more undesirable jobs by men or because they were non paid jobs, which meant men could keep more of the power at home, I can assure you all that there is no I want to clean and cook gene in us. However I will say I do happily clean and cook in my home. But that's me, I know many many girls who don't.

Be your magical selves. Not a cartoon of what you think life should be now you've transitioned. There was a movie with Julia Roberts in which she got married to all these guys and pretended to like what they liked including the way they ate eggs for breakfast.in the end she finally has one day in which she has eggs in every way and picks her favourite, she learns what she truly likes. It is then she finds true love and yadda yadda. Because she became herself

:)

I have always been in cooking, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, etc. since I was ten or eleven (my mother had been sick for many years at that time), but until I started HRT I have always been doing it by necessity, not for the pleasure. But I have noticed that I enjoy a lot more cooking since I have been under E. However laundry and cleaning are still more a chore than entertainment...

Ok, so this may not be in line with the dominant feminist discourse, but I don't see why I should necessarily fit in with that. A few days ago I was researching the Indonesian Waria for the front page of this site and had a flash of recognition when reading the following in an article about them (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-huang/tales-of-the-waria-indonesia_b_1546629.html) on the Huffington Post:

"Warias also hold notions of womanhood that would dismay modern feminists; for many warias, the height of happiness is to find a "laki-laki asli," a manly man, and to spend their days looking after him."

Should I be ashamed of myself for feeling the same way? Should I repress that, like I used to repress my femininity before? Should I doubt myself when I feel happier, at ease with myself and more feminine when cooking, cleaning and taking care of my man?

I resent that.

I do understand how this kind of life is a prison to many women, but to me, it's actually liberating to give in to that.

Quote from: Lucie on February 20, 2016, 03:49:17 AM
I have always been in cooking, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, etc. since I was ten or eleven (my mother had been sick for many years at that time), but until I started HRT I have always been doing it by necessity, not for the pleasure. But I have noticed that I enjoy a lot more cooking since I have been under E. However laundry and cleaning are still more a chore than entertainment...

I must add that cooking or doing any housework does not make me feel more feminine than any other activity.

I believe that it is more of a society driven thing. It has nothing to do with your gender. My big brother is a really manly man and yet he loves cooking so much that he is a head chef on the Gold Coast.

I don't really enjoy laundry now any more than I ever did.  However, I do enjoy not wearing stinky clothes a lot more whereas before I didn't really care until they got really offensive.


Sapere Aude

Quote from: Deborah on February 20, 2016, 07:14:05 AM
I don't really enjoy laundry now any more than I ever did.  However, I do enjoy not wearing stinky clothes a lot more whereas before I didn't really care until they got really offensive.


Sapere Aude

and this is why I'm forcing myself to clean my apartment today

Quote from: DanielleA on February 20, 2016, 07:13:44 AM
I believe that it is more of a society driven thing. It has nothing to do with your gender.

You believe that a gender identity isn't influenced by society at all? That it exists entirely in isolation from that? To me, gender identity may be a biological condition, but the way it expresses itself depends to a very large extent on the society you live in. After all, any "private language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument)" is incoherent. I like Julia Serano's take on it in "Whipping Girl" and could very much relate with the following:

maybe I was born transgender—my brain preprogrammed to see myself as female despite the male body I was given at birth—but like every child, I turned to the rest of the world to figure out who I was and what I was worth. And like a good little boy, I picked up on all of the not-so subliminal messages that surrounded me. TV shows where Father knows best and a woman's place is in the home; fairy tales where helpless girls await their handsome princes; cartoon supermen who always save the damsel in distress; plus schoolyard taunts like "sissy" and "fairy" and "pussy" all taught me to see "feminine" as a synonym for "weakness." And nobody needed to tell me that I should hate myself for wanting to be what was so obviously the lesser sex. (from chapter 15)

I for one stopped hating myself for it. It's who I am, how I was formed.

Oh HELL no.  My daddy was a pie baker, and his father before him, and his father before him... baking is the most masculine thing I do.  Stick it in your pie hole.  No really, it's f'n delicious.

While I am not on HRT I can say from my experience that cooking and cleaning are not feminine activities in my eyes.  I have always had a fondness for creating delicious concoctions in the kitchen.  All the women in my wife's family (her included) are terrible cooks.  As far as cleaning we share the responsibility.  It's always been more a matter of practicality.  Many of my guy friends are envious of my cooking skills, just too lazy to learn.

All of these things are simply activities that have been gendered by society. I find it frankly problematic to suggest that hrt makes people more likely to enjoy cleaning or other stereotypically female roles. If I said anything like that to my female friends they'd give me a proper good ear bashing.

When I started transition a couple of people suggested that I get rid of my motorbikes, and just recently a trans woman suggested it wasn't a very 'feminine' thing to be into. I'm not doing all of this to go from one rigid gender role to another, I'm doing it to live a life that's truer to who I am. I'm a trans lesbian who listens to rock music, rides motorbikes, plays video games and drinks real ale. I'm terrible at cooking and my flat is a tip. So there.

I am going to say cooking for family is a nurturing type activity done because you love your family. However saying this nurturing effect is what drives male chefs is a little hard to understand. One, what you do is for love. What male chefs do is for money. I personally love cooking for my kids and they think I am the best cook ever.

I've always enjoyed cooking meals for our family, long before transition. We've pretty much split this in our household over the years. More so lately I'm baking more bread, cookies, and such...It's fun to prepare a meal and have our daughters and their boyfriends come over. They get involved in the kitchen when they visit, and it becomes something we all like to do...

Cynthia -