Never Woman Enough: How Trans Women Are Held To Unrealistic Standards

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/unwritten/never-woman-enough-how-tr_b_8166308.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender

The Huffington Post/By Caitlyn Blair  Posted:  09/20/2015 12:42 pm EDT

"The word transgender can otherwise be defined as a person whose self-identity does not conform to the conventional notions of being a man or a woman. By definition, being transgender means being a non-conformist. So, it is an excitingly rare occurrence that the issue has been on the forefront of so much media coverage recently. While members of the LGBTQ community are surely welcoming the long-awaited acceptance that icons such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Fox from Orange Is The New Black have received, there are some who can't help but wonder if all the media attention has resulted in a misrepresentation of the community."

I wish I had the courage to do what Caitlyn has done and I am not sure if I ever will have that courage. I was recently told that I will never be a woman because I do not think like a woman and it had me thinking perhaps she was right and that I will always think like a man because I have lived my life like a man my entire life. I do know that I want to be a woman so badly but my everyday manly ways get in the way of that. I salute the folks that make the transition and those people are my hero's!

Quote from: Sandy74 on September 20, 2015, 01:44:28 PM
I wish I had the courage to do what Caitlyn has done and I am not sure if I ever will have that courage. I was recently told that I will never be a woman because I do not think like a woman and it had me thinking perhaps she was right and that I will always think like a man because I have lived my life like a man my entire life. I do know that I want to be a woman so badly but my everyday manly ways get in the way of that. I salute the folks that make the transition and those people are my hero's!

Don't let other people get you down. I don't know your situation, so I can't say it will be the same for you. Once I was on hormones long enough I actually began thinking differently. Now that I've been on them for so long no one would even question that I think very much like a female. I used to think very much like a male before, so don't give up hope.

That's a pretty awful thing for someone to have said to you, Sandy. Whoever it was, I hope you don't let them say things like that to you often, you don't deserve that. And unless there was some secret election to pick a Queen of the Women, I don't think she gets to dictate to anybody else what does or does not make a woman.

And we're not the same person from one day to the next. Every experience we have changes us. Some only a little, some by a lot. With that being the case I don't see why we're destined to think like men forever (and if we're perfectly honest we already stray pretty far from that particular narrative anyways, don't we?) or that we have to be beholden to everyday manly ways.

Quote from: Sandy74 on September 20, 2015, 01:44:28 PM
I was recently told that I will never be a woman because I do not think like a woman and it had me thinking perhaps she was right and that I will always think like a man because I have lived my life like a man my entire life. I do know that I want to be a woman so badly but my everyday manly ways get in the way of that. I salute the folks that make the transition and those people are my hero's!

What does it mean to think like a woman?

If you are a woman, then however you think will be "like a woman" since you're thinking like yourself.

Please don't let anyone else ever tell you who you are.

Quote from: Sandy74 on September 20, 2015, 01:44:28 PM
I wish I had the courage to do what Caitlyn has done and I am not sure if I ever will have that courage. I was recently told that I will never be a woman because I do not think like a woman and it had me thinking perhaps she was right and that I will always think like a man because I have lived my life like a man my entire life. I do know that I want to be a woman so badly but my everyday manly ways get in the way of that. I salute the folks that make the transition and those people are my hero's!

I got that from a good few people including friends and my wife. Guess what??? I told them where to go and continued anyway.

And I'm progressing along nicely, being the woman I always was.

Don't let the haters win. Be yourself.

Quote from: Sandy74 on September 20, 2015, 01:44:28 PM
I wish I had the courage to do what Caitlyn has done and I am not sure if I ever will have that courage. I was recently told that I will never be a woman because I do not think like a woman and it had me thinking perhaps she was right and that I will always think like a man because I have lived my life like a man my entire life. I do know that I want to be a woman so badly but my everyday manly ways get in the way of that. I salute the folks that make the transition and those people are my hero's!

Hormones have made me feel a bit more distant and able to be logical (I THINK so anyways) so I do feel like my STYLE of thinking has changed.  However, the thoughts I think and things I tend to think of are still pretty much the same. It's hard to properly distinguish the changes but I have many cis or mostly feminine identified friends who seem to think and act more like men than I do and possibly ever will.   If you are a women I believe you think like one, since all women, trasn, cis or anything else are SO unique and different none of them will ever think the same way.

When you look at a group of people who share something in common, men, women, geeks, cops, doctors exc. they seem to share all these similarites, its not until you take a closer look, till your a part of that group that you see just how diverse and opened that label may be.

most men and most new trans women see the things that they consider common to women and never consider just how diffrent each woman is in all things.

A few weeks ago I got all concerned about my appearance, my voice, my mannerisms (how I walk, talk and act). The few guys I asked about it rarely even noticed mannerisms and I was super concerned, do I come off masculine, feminine, exagerated feminine. Is it too much or too little it was driving me crazy and truth told it still dose a bit. But I had two female friends both tell me the same thing, Every girl they know looks diffrent, every one has there own gestures and movements, and well its a good idea to avoid things seen as purely masculine things (scratching certain areas for example) how exactly you gesture and move has more to do with you than some mythical feminine standard. I have been more relaxed about things sense then and just act how I feel comfortable, which is similar to pre transision but a bit more opened about the more fem gestures.

Serena

Quote from: Valwen on September 24, 2015, 02:26:25 AM
I have been more relaxed about things sense then and just act how I feel comfortable, which is similar to pre transision but a bit more opened about the more fem gestures.

Exactly! I was in an unusual situation. I was so deeply stealthed that I didn't know myself that I was trans. Subconsciously I shied away from any feminine behavior or interest that I couldn't justify as male also by example. After the realization, and even more after HRT, I let myself like, and say, and act the way I had always wanted to without realizing. A friend, a very good friend, sat down with me after 9 months of HRT and told me that my manner, which I had not tried to work on, came off as feminine to her, without thought and without effort.

I truly believe that being trans is a brain condition. That minor portions of the brain that bias our behaviors and preferences are more similar to those of our target sex. I think that of we relax with it, don't force ourselves to be one particular stereotype of women we mostly get along just fine naturally. There are plenty of studies that show one small change in the brain can drastically affect behavior (see "zombie ants" on google).

I think that agonising over being a particular type of girl rather than our type just carries on the dysphoria, just as it does in teen girls wanting to fit in.

Umm, what was the original question? I think I drifted.

The standards are impossible not only because they are so high, but because they are contradictory.

Transgender women are accused of not looking feminine enough, and over-feminized. Transgender women are accused of being too aggressive and too passive. Transgender women are shamed for participating in stereotypically male activities and for participating in stereotypically female activities. We are at once accused of acting like men and of acting in ways that conform with patriarchal standards of femininity.

I got hassled for riding a motorcycle cross-country. I got hassled for wearing a skirt and makeup. I got hassled for working in computers. I got hassled for so many things that I stopped counting.

The most important thing we can do for our identities is to own our identities independent of what other people think. I understand that it's hard, but it's what cisgender women do: Cisgender women  motorcyclists, cisgender women rugby players, cisgender seamstresses, cisgender women models, cisgender women hockey players and figure skaters, they all recognize that they're women independent of what they look like, how they present themselves, and what they do for a living and for fun.

Yes, it's an impossible standard. And that's why we have every right and responsibility to break it.

Quote from: Dee Marshall on September 24, 2015, 06:30:31 AM

I truly believe that being trans is a brain condition. That minor portions of the brain that bias our behaviors and preferences are more similar to those of our target sex. I think that of we relax with it, don't force ourselves to be one particular stereotype of women we mostly get along just fine naturally. There are plenty of studies that show one small change in the brain can drastically affect behavior (see "zombie ants" on google).

In all the studies of lesbian women, gay men and a few trans people, brain scans of each tend to reflect their orientation and chosen gender.  Lesbian women tend to have brain patterns similar but not exactly to the average straight male, gay men tend to have patterns closer to average straight female brains and transgender people usually have patterns closer to their chosen gender, so FTM are male in brain activity and MTF are female in brain patterns.  Obviously these are small samples- I don't know if hormone therapy could account for some of the difference, as I can't recall what the specifics of the studies were.  All the same, our brains are configured to our internal sense of what we are and what we desire, not the physical shell.

Quote from: cindik on September 24, 2015, 11:04:36 AM
The standards are impossible not only because they are so high, but because they are contradictory.

Transgender women are accused of not looking feminine enough, and over-feminized. Transgender women are accused of being too aggressive and too passive. Transgender women are shamed for participating in stereotypically male activities and for participating in stereotypically female activities. We are at once accused of acting like men and of acting in ways that conform with patriarchal standards of femininity.

Yes, it's an impossible standard. And that's why we have every right and responsibility to break it.

Cis women get pestered/annoyed or even harassed for things that transwomen do too, they just don't have the additional burden of having to PROVE their right to be female, as well as not having the physical and mental conflict of mental gender versus appearance of their body to society and themselves.  Cis women and men all can relate to feeling ugly, unloved, fat, not (insert anything here) ENOUGH, so I can certainly agree that many can relate to the feeling of not feeling safe and right in their own body, however there's a very real difference between a trasngender and cis person's body disphoria.  As I am almost 90% happy with my body EXCEPT for when I feel I am lacking in the masculine department, it's just that additional pain that can be the straw that breaks the camel's back...

There's an excessive focus on transwomen's bodies and behavior measuring up.  Since women can often still be expected to be the ones who have to 'look sexy for the male eye', it seems to compound exponentially for anyone for anyone not fitting the mold.  There's a lot of focus on women, trans/cis/anything else not measuring up, so I feel going from MTF has a lot more pressure overall, though it's not something that is easy to compare on individual levels.  I feel like I encounter some FTM hate and ignorance but (to me, in my OWN experience) it is akin to people just being base level jerks, whereas the venom lobbed at public figures like Jenner is atrocious and sinks to some rather disgusting depths.  It is often more depressing for me to read commentary hating on a transgal- I can't say why,perhaps because it is someone in a similar place as me, but not exactly- but it just feels so much more hateful and vile. :C

Aazhie, I read abstracts of those studies. They were performed by post  mortem dissection and many of the trans brains were chosen from people who elected not to have HRT.  Other studies have been done similarly with less invasive technicians. I don't remember details. I looked at that research when I was collecting evidence to prove to Sweetie that trans is a real thing.

one can only be held to an impossibly high standard if one allows oneself to be so. I don't. I don't require anyones approval or agreement, I simply am a woman, with or without their approval, and there is no other option available.

Others may not like the sort of woman I am, they may choose to call me by some other name, but that does not change reality. I am what I am whether others choose to acknowledge that or not. Hence the only standard I am held to is my own, and that I meet in full.

Its like war games (the film) - this is a game where the best way to win is to refuse to play. Thats what I do.

Quote from: Rejennyrated on September 24, 2015, 03:40:54 PM
Its like war games (the film) - this is a game where the best way to win is to refuse to play. Thats what I do.

IMO in recent years, trans advocacy and queer-theory-fueled identity politics more resemble Kirk's Kobayashi Maru solution.

I hold myself to my own standards, not standards based on stereotypes, ignorance or outright hatred.

What's the point of feeling displeased due to failing to please the unpleasable?

Quote from: Rejennyrated on September 24, 2015, 03:40:54 PM
Its like war games (the film) - this is a game where the best way to win is to refuse to play.

It was a great movie