Somehow it looks like male privilege is determined by one's current gender but female privilege by one's birth sex.

Anyway, back to the original question, I wouldn't have worded it quite like that, but yes. Looking back, if I had been born as a girl I'd have chosen a somewhat different path in school, resulting in a different career path. Similarly, if I had been born as a boy I'd have chosen another path, again different from what happened. The gender dissonance I have, and being treated as a boy while having fundamentally a girl mind, has prompted me to make a mix of 'male' and 'female' choices, so yes, it has helped me in areas women typically struggle with and also in areas men typically struggle with. Of course, it also has made me struggle in areas women find easy and in areas men find easy, so in that sense it balances out. All in all, though, it is quite certainly something I do not regret.

  Nfr

hi hypathia.  i can't say i really understand your quote and then response.  i hope you didn't take my post as suggesting unworthiness because that simply isn't the case.  my post was just an acknowledgment of their rights to their own feelings just as you and i have rights to our own feelings.  because they see transsexualism through different eyes then my own doesn't necessarily mean they see me as unworthy, just that they feel our shared experiences are very limited and don't add up to our inclusion into what they see as their specific space.  i won't project my feelings onto theirs.  i've not heard one case of any of the spokespeople from mwmf suggesting we are "unworthy" only that we are different.

i disagree with them in many respects, but their feelings are theirs and they are real and are worth more then my dismissal as illigitimate, something to make jokes about.  i think it's possible to respect people who think differently then myself enough to not tell them how they should feel and what they should think...i think sharing my views respectfully is about the best i can do to provoke change.  i don't think i am unworthy, nor are you...and nor are they.

Quote from: Nero on October 16, 2008, 05:11:37 PMAssertive or confrontational women are often labeled bitches.

Um yeah, and that still goes for us.  I've definitely been called that before, although not that often.

Quote from: Nero on October 16, 2008, 05:11:37 PMAnother typically female struggle is body image and the pervasive belief among young girls and women that one need be pretty and thin to be worth anything. So many women measure their worth by their looks consciously or subconsciously. And if they fall short of the feminine ideal, they need to be working to achieve it.

I think this is an issue that women experience whether they are trans or not.  I know I strongly fall into the "normal" for women on this one.

However, in answer to your main question, I think the overall answer is yes.  For instance, guys really aren't as mysterious to me as they are to a lot of women.  Plus I don't "wonder" much about what it's like for guys like some women do.  In the last musical I was in, me and this other girl went with a couple of guys to "sneak" into the guys dressing room, so I kind of had to "act" like it was all mysterious and stuff, but I really don't have any particular desire to really go into guy-only areas.

Quote from: pennyjane on October 22, 2008, 10:43:17 AM
"bumping into people"  it's not one-sided.  i think what this means is that we are used to navigating hallways, elevators and such in a male frame and frame of reference...and people have seen us as being in that same place.  bumping into people because you are used to having them get out of your way...they don't do that anymore, as well as them offering you feminine deference, which you aren't used to either.  the way you utiliize the space you're in doesn't just change like a new dress.

it goes beyond space, it really affects all kinds of ways in which we interact with the world around us.  no, we don't want to exercise male privilidge, but we are trained to do so in many unconscious ways...producing those sublimial signals we put out.

i remember my outrage at first hearing about how the women with the michigan women's music festival refused entrance to transwomen.  i took it as a direct slap at my validity.  "womyn born womyn" indeed!  my lesbian therapist and i spent more then one session expressing outrage at this behavior, experiencing the hurt and the pain at running into such an unexpected glass wall.  just who do these self-righteous women think they are...defining my womanhood for me?  i read explanations from them, even found myself across the street at ->-bleeped-<-town protesting our exclusion that year.  after i'd expressed my outrage in about every way i began to get it under control...not by dismissing them as a bunch of bigots...but by beginning to understand where they were coming from.  history, it seems, can't be killed or altered.

let's face it, most of these women...virtually all of their leadership are lesbians.  they have lived lifetimes of not only female discrimination but the particular discrimination and illigitimization of being women who are sexually attracted to other women.  they don't view lesbianism as just defining who ones sleeps with but as something much larger...it's about who one is...and is from birth...it's about how one comes to be who they are...the specific lives they have led and the feelings and facts that they share among themselves just as we <transsexuals> share so many.  just as i have seen so many feelings and histories of my fellow transsexual women that i can relate to with far more depth then any empathy can allow for...i think this is something that happens with them too.  these are the things that someone who wasn't born and raised a lesbian can't really know in all their intimacy and depth.

this is why, that even though i may fit the surface definition of lesbian, i have a lot of difficulty in calling myself lesbian.  to me, my lesbianism is only defined by who i sleep with, it goes no further...i can't compare this with the reality these other women were born, grew up with and have lived with everyday of their lives.  i always had the character of the heterosexual man to fall back on...to hide in...to protect me from all the things my sisters had no protection from. 

"womyn born womyn."  it's not some awful thing to me anymore.  it's a legitimate concept from their point of view...and i can respect it.  i will forever fight for bringing us all to the next level...where that concept is not defeated, but outlives it's reality...then it will go away and we will all be somewhat closer.

i guess this is what i think about when i see the "male privilidge" thing.  i didn't ask for it, i don't want it..i don't like it...but it is a part of my history...i can do what i want with that...anything but rewrite it.

Comprehending how someone came to the conclusion they came to does not necessarily legitimize the conclusion.

Many of us experience gender-based discrimination for pretty much our entire life, particularly before transition, and more than just gender-based, it's because we're girls. It's often no different than a father who really really wanted a son, but ended up with a girl instead, and ends up being highly discriminatory against her (even if she turns out a total tomboy). It's just intensified because there's a visual perception that this child of theirs really is a boy, despite trying to be a girl.

As also mentioned, there's plenty of women who don't realize they're a lesbian, or at least don't come to terms with it, until later in life; but that doesn't make them less of a Lesbian Woman. The ideologies there are no different, and no more legitimate, than one of the things I hate most about men, how they have to prove just how much of a man they are, and how if they start to lose out on any of those traits or aspects, they become less of a man (paralysis, memory loss, muscles weakened by old age, failing eyesight, failing hearing, etc).

Of course, this probably is one of the reasons I've never been fond of feminists. So many of them seem to just want to turn all women into men. Personally, I'm very happy with being a woman, and would happily live as a woman even if we were still in an age of women not being allowed to vote, etc. I look forward to being primarily a housewife once my BF and I get married.

Back to the note of figuring out they're lesbian, I actually figured out I'm a lesbian before I figured out I'm a girl.

Personally, I'm very happy with being a woman, and would happily live as a woman even if we were still in an age of women not being allowed to vote, etc. I look forward to being primarily a housewife once my BF and I get married.


wow

I would like to be Miss Kitty in Dodge city and have sheriff Dillon pay me a visit after hours and we can have us a little party just the two of us. Chester? Just send him out of town on to vist Billy Jo for the evening. 

Cindy

Sure, and I'd like to be Mary Harris Jones or Elizabeth I too.  Or perhaps Catherine of Aragon.  Still, I have to go to work in the morning.

I love my job, I pilot a junk ship for the international disposal corporation for the Zeltke asteroid belt in the Delta quadrant. "Hee, hee, hee." Just messin with you, I do pray you knew that huh. But you should see the size of those baby Pladipussies, goodness they have grown since the last time I visited the Pledosine Galaxy. 

No truly I love my job at the women's shelter. I dropped off some donations there today and when I was hugging the girls before leaving I was in tears. Wing Walker and I are leaving to go to Montreal on Friday next week.

Cindy

Hey and I love sitting on the side of the stage, away from the crowd, and watching Patty Smith too.  Of course I have to do the same with the Kings of Leon also, so no life is perfect.

Ah yes, the stage. Cindy takes hat with long plume off and sits on the edge of the stage, raises one leg up and sets her hat on her knee and folds her two hands around her knee and leans against the wall in preperation to watch Tekla perform.

Tekla walks out on the stage with guitar in hand, and the crowd goes wild throwing streamers and other assorted items into the air as they stand and scream while the teeny boppers jump up and down, also screaming wildly and waving their arms.

Tekla waves arms then bows several times then the crowd goes silent. Tekla picks up the guitar and begins to strum the strings rythmicaly and comences to sing.

Cindy

I wish, almost, but still as bob said:

Na, na, na, it ain't me babe.

I sit there, quite in the stillness of the sidestage.  And SHE walks up, rips the mike off the stand and:

Take me now baby here as I am
hold me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed

She is still, yet restless.  And her lovers, all 2,000 of them hang on each and every word.  And in the stillness, the huge, major drum drop, and with all the power SHE has, which is in and of itself a force of nature SHE grips the mike and shouts:

Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I'm in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can't hurt you now
Can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now
Because the night belongs to lovers

And I know that ain't ever going to be me, it never was me, and I'm not so sure I would even want it.  It's her's, and what's mine is mine.  That's enough for me.

Ahhhhh, but to dream, my dear. To dare to dream and just maybe that one little spark of magic is all that is required to manifest that dream.  What is a dream but hopes, + some hard work = a dream come true. Dreams are realised every day in real life. Book writers have found the answer to this secret, just as performers of the arts have found their dreams through their work. Nothing is impossible and everything is possible, my dearest.

Cindy 

Patti Smith still has that amazing power. She absolutely rocks!

Z

hi katrina.  i guess you're right in that comprehending how someone might be the way they are has no affect on the legitimacy of who they are.  it's nice to have when one wants to understand though.  understanding very often will lead to legitimacy...but, again...not necessarily.

i don't hate men and i don't hate feminists, maybe that has something to do with understanding.

i guess, too, it's clear that we have a very different conception of what a lesbian is as well.  to me, to my understanding of the word, one would necessarily have to be female to be a lesbian.  so if one believes herself to be a man...well...how they arrive at being a lesbian is something that is probably beyond my understanding.

Quote from: pennyjane on October 24, 2008, 08:03:36 AM
hi katrina.  i guess you're right in that comprehending how someone might be the way they are has no affect on the legitimacy of who they are.  it's nice to have when one wants to understand though.  understanding very often will lead to legitimacy...but, again...not necessarily.

i don't hate men and i don't hate feminists, maybe that has something to do with understanding.

i guess, too, it's clear that we have a very different conception of what a lesbian is as well.  to me, to my understanding of the word, one would necessarily have to be female to be a lesbian.  so if one believes herself to be a man...well...how they arrive at being a lesbian is something that is probably beyond my understanding.

Yes, and I was always a girl. I just hadn't figured it out yet.

I can understand perfectly why feminists, lesbian or not, would have a problem with transwomen. From an outside perspective, we're men who are trying to encroach on the world of woman. They likely do not understand that we have always been women, and while we may not have had the specific problems of growing up a female in a female body, we had other problems that were still an issue of being female, and still an issue of men oppressing females (You're less of a man (less of a person) if you act like a girl).

The issue is, to put it simply, a lack of understanding on the part of the feminists in question. There perspective doesn't take into consideration the full truth of the situation, and they don't make an effort to figure out that we really are sisters, not brothers playing barbie dress up.

Now, that's not my beef with feminism, really. Since I'm not a feminist, I don't care if they let me into their "No boyz allowed" club. My beef with feminism has more to do with the overzealous "equalization" crap. Despite my earlier statement that I would accept being a woman in a world where women couldn't vote, etc., I do agree that women should have the same rights of equal opportunity and voice as men. Voting, same "ease" of getting jobs, same pay for the same amount of work, etc. However, if they want to equalize men and women on a social level, then instead of bitching at men for holding doors open for them and the like, they could simply reciprocate the gesture (it's no different than a woman paying for some dates while the man pays for other dates, and that's something they at least managed somewhat). Don't make men be as equally rude to women as they are to each other. Make women be as equally polite to men as gentlemen are to women. By raising the standards on both sides to equal levels, you improve life for everyone. Instead, overzealous feminists have pushed the quality of social interaction down for everyone.

Okay, enough of my ranting about feminism~ heehee

ok, i guess what struck me as a little off center was when you said you figured out you were a lesbian before you figured out you were a woman, putting the cart before the horse,so to speak.  that to me sounds like the girl who has decided to call her penis a clitoris.  i mean, there's what you want to be and then there is what is.  there is a huge difference between dreams and fantasy.  striving for the realization of dreams is a wonderful, growth oriented, living, thing....trying to convert pure fantasy into reality is something that usually will just never go anywhere...at least anywhere to stay.

as far as the "overzealous equalization crap", it's actually a very normal response to subjugation.  the fact that you respond to that in such a derogatory way suggests to me that your understanding hasn't led you to any empathy.  so be it, you are as entitled to your thoughts and feelings as the next person.  i hope you can find a way to cope with your anger and bitterness in a positive way.  God bless with...

Like some others have expressed, I never really flourished until I came out and began living my life as the woman I was supposed to be, in truth the only one up we might have had was the encounter at a filthy loo

Well, for my 2 cents on this topic. As far back as I can remember I have fantasised myself being female even when I was to young to know what the difference was in the sexes. I tended to want to emulate my sister who was four years older then me. Even after I learned what the difference between the sexes and about women's rights. feminists, women's rights to vote, Hell, for that matter, Native American rights to vote, male chauvinism, the patriarchal society of males, spousal abuse, rape, strippers, prostitution and all that neat degrading type of crap that goes against women, women don't do this, women don't do that, nya, nya, nya, on and on goes the line of crap.

That crap never deterred me nor discouraged me from wanting to be a girl. I still fantasised and wanted to be a girl, like, the one I had pictured in my mind. One unique unto my own personal personification of who I wanted to be. Nothing ever deterred from that obsession no mater how bleak the colors of the end result of that picture might be. I had already formed an image of who and what I was, wanted to be, aspired to be.

I just very simply wanted to grow up to be a live at home mommy with children, no more no less. Not much different then the dreams of many other girls my age around me had at the time. Well I got the opportunity to experience the part with the children, although unfortunately, I never got to experience the wonderful gift of carrying this life within me, like a new innocent soul, a little angel growing within me. But my dreams and aspirations were always of dreaming of myself as a woman and what her dreams and goals if she were to truly be free to live her life some day. A woman who had to live as a man because the body was what dictated I had to be in the real world.

I had to be this fake persona on the outside if I wanted to survive. I had to do a lot of stupid crap I didn't want to do just to prove I was just as much a man as my peers, *other men*. And I had better put on a good act. I had to do all this crap which at the time I thought was a good distraction from my solitary life and loneliness, even as self destructive as some of this stuff was that I did. After a time I truly did find myself enjoying it in a, Devil may care sort of way, so what if I die anyway attitude. Like my love Wing Walker says, buying into the lie.

After all those years of tribulation I have mentioned umpteen times on these forums, I finally arrived at the door step of opportunity. Very much frightened and yes close to committing suicide thinking about the absurdity of actually thinking of actually carrying out such a preposterous idea. I laid out my cards on the table and took my gamble and crossed the threshold of that door way and haven't looked back nor have I regretted it since.

Cindy       

Quote from: pennyjane on October 24, 2008, 11:41:34 AM
ok, i guess what struck me as a little off center was when you said you figured out you were a lesbian before you figured out you were a woman, putting the cart before the horse,so to speak.  that to me sounds like the girl who has decided to call her penis a clitoris.  i mean, there's what you want to be and then there is what is.  there is a huge difference between dreams and fantasy.  striving for the realization of dreams is a wonderful, growth oriented, living, thing....trying to convert pure fantasy into reality is something that usually will just never go anywhere...at least anywhere to stay.

I really don't see the correlation. Sexual orientation is as much an identity as gender identity is. I am a woman. I am a lesbian. My physical body really has little to do with what I *am.* Changing it is to allow others to perceive me as who I really am.

Quoteas far as the "overzealous equalization crap", it's actually a very normal response to subjugation.  the fact that you respond to that in such a derogatory way suggests to me that your understanding hasn't led you to any empathy.  so be it, you are as entitled to your thoughts and feelings as the next person.  i hope you can find a way to cope with your anger and bitterness in a positive way.  God bless with...

If you'd read everything I said, you might've realized what's wrong with your statement right here.

Equalizing men and women in the work place is a very logical thing. Sexism against men is a very normal response to the oppressive ways of the past (and present). Hell, I'm sexist against men, though I try not to let it be too much a controlling factor in my life.

Bringing women down to man's level when we were already set higher than men? That's idiocy. Gentlemen are becoming far less common these days because men are being taught to treat women the same way they'd treat their fellow men, which is mostly "like crap."

Now, there are some things where one could see it as a "normal" reaction to subjugation, but it's in reality an insane overreaction that, if anything, reinforces the stereotype that women are irrational and emotional.

They go too far with it and cause as many problem as they solve, if not more.

So, pennyjane, would you please reread all of what I said in my previous post? I think you'll find a lot more *reason* and *rationale* in there than "anger" and "bitterness" if you read the entire thing without making assumptions or jumping to conclusions.

Quote from: Princess Katrina on October 24, 2008, 03:25:45 PM
That's idiocy. Gentlemen are becoming far less common these days because men are being taught to treat women the same way they'd treat their fellow men, which is mostly "like crap."

yep. chivalry is dying and it's a shame.