Although that is probably sometimes the case (I've come across dysphoric terfs before,) most of the time when they say they relate I just don't relate to most of what they're saying.
A really great example of this is JK Rowling in her essay:
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j...gender-issues/
So many thoughts about this.
The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I?ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I've wondered whether, if I'd been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I'd found community and sympathy online that I couldn?t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he?d have preferred.
None of these things have anything to do with gender identity or dysphoria. You have OCD so you think you would have transitioned? And having a dad that would prefer you to be a boy is not an experience many trans people have, especially younger trans people who grew up post 90s.
When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette's description of herself as a 'mental hermaphrodite' and Simone de Beauvoir's words: 'It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.'
As I didn?t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it's fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it's OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.
I think it's really difficult being a guy and though I've never liked being short I think about how if I medically transitioned I'd have to live socially as a short guy, and I'd probably lose my hair (which I like,) I might face violence that I don't face now if people view me as a weak/effeminate man. That last thing is not something I worry about now at all really as someone who I'm sure appears female to everyone (JK Rowling brings this up a lot including in this essay. The worry about violence because of her female body. But I don't personally relate. She was in an abusive relationship in the past though.) I'd probably look really ugly if I transitioned and since I'm non-binary it's not worth it even though I often wish I had a lower voice. I just can't change my skeletal structure to be more androgynous in the way I want. Being able to shapeshift isn't possible. Then, I don't know how I could come out to my parents.
The thought of coming out to my dad actually terrifies me. I get panic like feelings whenever the topic of trans people comes up in real life. Like my dad started talking about trans people a couple of days ago because he brought up Starmer and how he couldn't define the word woman which my dad thought was stupid and he said 'you are what you're born with if you decide to change that medically later OK' the two statements kind of contradicted but I dunno. So I know that my dad is reasonably accepting of binary transsexual women so long as they get bottom surgery, but thinks they're not women until they get surgery. I don't think he'll ever grasp that I'm non-binary and I feel like he wouldn't be accepting if it was his own kid anyway. He's ambivalent when it's abstract. If I medically transition, I'll be forced to come out. He's already questioned me before about not shaving my legs and asking me why or if there was some deeper reason a few years ago but I just made up some crap and really there's no particular reason I don't. I don't really consider that 'expressing gender' I dunno. At one point I expressed an interest in working out and he told me not to get too big. I'm too lazy to actually work out though.
So I think about all that. I don't have any kind of irl social network with trans/non-binary people. My brother would support me I think though and he knows I'm non-binary.
The most common reason for me to think about the frustrations of being female is honestly when I see transphobes and terfs infantalising trans men and afab non-binary people online, which led me to consider the broader way genetic female people are infantilised and how men are creepily considered men or masculine when they commit violence and we place everyone into a predator/prey dichotomy. I always find it annoying.
I think there are a lot of social pressures women experience. I don't relate to most of them honestly. I've never worried about my weight or felt pressure to wear makeup. Even though a couple of people have commented on that (honestly very few people tbh, it seemed
mostly socially acceptable where I grew up,) and at one point when I was a teenager I was forcibly given a makeover like a scene from a film lol, I don't internally feel that pressure. Said all this before but I also had a guy I was attracted to/sort of went on some dates with keep suggesting I wear dresses, said I was boring to shop with (he was kind of metrosexual,) and ask why I 'act like a man.' And even when I think about what happened to me I don't really care. These aren't traumatic memories, but I think it's bad in a political/cultural sense. Because someone else going through that might care and feel pressure to change. I do relate to the social pressures non-conforming women experience somewhat since I've lived through things like people reacting weirdly to me having body hair or my dad's comments which were more annoying and uncomfortable maybe, and I worry about the possibility of strangers commenting on my body hair if I'm wearing shorts or something. I don't want strangers coming up to me in public because of my social anxiety.
I also relate to some cis bisexual men who are very non-conforming to the point of passing as female. I mean I spoke about the guy on twitter I straight up just assumed was a trans guy because stereotypes lol and the way he eventually responded to straight guys constantly thinking he was a woman and hitting on him. He had to announce he was a top lol and only interested in gay men, non-binary people and women responding.
I sometimes worry that I need social evidence of being male for other people since society has a lot of restrictions firstly built around who is or isn't a 'real man' and I've also had people online demand to know how I'm a man (I mean it's interesting that he jumped to that conclusion as most people interpret non-binary to mean agender these days, but I think he was probably confused anyway lol,) but also people tend to be more accepting of trans people specifically if they fit stereotypes (even socially liberal people honestly who say things like 'men can wear dresses.' That goes out the window entirely if you're trans lol.) I don't worry about that with being female
usually though there have been occasions online and also some trans feminists view certain non-binary people as essentially men and they feel a lot of envy because transphobic people don't let them into female spaces but will let some afab non-binary people who have medically transitioned and hell even binary trans men sometimes. In general, I think people both in the trans 'community' and outside tend to think of being non-binary in a similar way to bisexuality so it's like 'greedy' and 'you're really just one or the other but doing this to get some social advantage.' And they base which one you are on whether or not you've medically transitioned most of the time. One trans woman I came across seemed convinced that non-binary people should be neither gender and you can't 'go between both as it suits you.' That's cheating at gender or something lol. But in general, my femaleness is accepted because of my genetic sex.
I find it difficult being a man in progressive spaces online because it's almost fashionable to engage in misandry and I don't agree 100% with the feminist framing of gender politics. So given that these are the most accepting spaces/people towards trans and non-binary people it's difficult. You are coerced in a way to downplay your male identity. There's lots of social incentives both in terms of dating and community to be female or to avoid being male. Even most non-binary people and trans men play into the social politics I'm describing and that's alienating.
This discourse where people argue endlessly about this bums me out (I don't ID as a lesbian so that aspect I don't care about more 'am I invading [BEEP] women's spaces or not?' and 'is anyone allowed to be attracted to me categorically lol?'):
genuine question are you allowed to be a lesbian and be attracted to someone who is Bigender?? i know you can be a lesbian and date nonbinary folks but the nuance of the discourse has evolved a lot in the past 10 years so we are kind of behind. /GenQ
Not all bigender/multigender people are both a man and a woman, but many are and it's really gross to act like they can not be a lesbian (if they are comfortable with the label) because you think them being a man someone "infects" or changes them being a woman.
bigendered are not women
they are
men and women at the same time which is impossible
you can be fluid but not something and it's opposite at the same time? that's a fallacy
Take it up with Slaanesh. One day I'll have role models that aren't chaos gods or figures bringing about the apocalypse. Or Satan.
oh nd most people don't get this because they're transphobic as hell but this does mean that if you're a bigender person who's into women then u can be a lesbian and you're not invalidating your gender or 'invading womens spaces'
We now have men claiming they are bigender - sometimes male sometimes female and that when they feel female they should be given access to women's spaces. What's really the difference between that and cross dressing?
if someone is bigender, even under self-id they are not a woman. so they can't access women's spaces. i?m non-binary, assigned female at birth, and i don?t go into women?s spaces. legally i can, but i don?t. bc i'm not a woman, and don?t belong there.
??? surely the most common usage of bigender would be someone who is male and female.
weird bigender things: simultaneously welcome in and invading women?s spaces ??????? is that how this works??
There?s a lot of talk about how the phrase "women and nb people" is problematic but nobody mentions how weird it is to be bigender or genderfluid and not know if you?re allowed in these spaces or not
i wish i wasnt bigender, im sick of getting kicked out of women-exclusive online spaces despite literally being a girl
hearing stuff like this makes me legit angry. honestly you deserve to be in women-exclusive online spaces more than me seeing as how bigender generally means 100% woman (in addition to 100% man) whereas i'm 0% of both... who's doing this to you i'll drive over them w/a tractor.
Lol a tractor.
legit "spaces for non men" makes me feel so unwelcome. Like, we all *know* how they're gonna feel abt an amab NB
Or a transmasc bigender enby like myself who?s on T and is both a boy and not a boy at the same time?why can?t we just have spaces for marginalized genders and leave it at that. Trying to exclude people based on their proximity to maleness only does harm.
The lateral violence I've experienced by being trans and lesbian "incorrectly" as a bigender butch lesbian - the "men/non-men" binary, the questions as to why I'm on testosterone, the accusations of invading lesbian spaces - are not made more acceptable because [BEEP] people do it
And there's a lot of men bad rhetoric in transfem spaces. Which hurts because I may be transfeminine, but I'm bigender I am, always have been, and always will be a man. As well as a woman and well many other genders but that's another post.
?What is Bigender??
Bigender is feeling both male and female (or more!)+
"So if a lesbian/gay dates you is they a bi lesbian/gay?" No! Bi lesbians don?t exist!
Bigender people aren?t men, they?re bigender, which falls under the NB label. Lesbians can be / like NBs.+
The above two lines contradict...
The pressures I do/don't experience have nothing to do with why I id as non-binary though. I internally see myself as being both male and female. I consider myself to be both and also kind of androgynous sometimes as well I guess. I don't experience that as some terrible thing done to me by society that I should never acknowledge because there's some moral reason to consider myself exclusively female. On the contrary, it would feel kind of painful to stop viewing myself that way in spite of everything. That is my preference. When I first started questioning my gender I felt the opposite pressure in fact to try and just be female because being non-binary is weird/cringe and there's still a lot of pressure to not be non-binary obviously. I also felt like there was a moral reason to consider myself female I think at certain points. Which is sort of what I get from terfs honestly. 'You should feel shame for identifying as non-binary because women are politically oppressed.' And this is one of many reasons why I find feminism annoying. The brainworms.
If you find it to be something externally being inflicted on you, then you probably never would have been trans. There's a similar thing where people worry that they might be homosexual. It can be difficult to differentiate with ego-dystonic sexuality though I think, and I don't want to dismiss cases like that but yeah. Going back to this (and that's part of why I'm going on even though she said trans men, because she appears to be talking about non-binary people at certain points interchangeably because this has nothing to do with trans men):
When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette?s description of herself as a ?mental hermaphrodite?
Either that or maybe
you were forced by society to repress that you're non-binary or that you didn't have the option to transition and now feel envy? In which case I feel sorry for you. I dunno because I haven't read Colette. I only know of her vaguely because she has some association with Rachilde. Rachilde's friends kept calling them a lesbian and it annoyed them because they would insist they were a man. They expressed different things about their gender at different times though. Either way, I think people should do what feels right for them and what other people choose to do now should have no reflection on you or invalidate that you're female or your life choices.
Well I seem to have magically downloaded the book. So let's read that section.
I was secretly craving just then to be completely a woman. . . . I am alluding to a genuine mental hermaphroditism which burdens certain highly complex beings. . . . I happened to be making a particular effort at the time to rid myself of this ambiguity, along with all its flaws and privileges.
- Colette
Not really getting the point in connection with JK Rowling's stance. OK this quote is in a book written by someone else anyway. So I still need to find where she talked about this in the first place assuming that isn't the extent of it.. OK JK Rowling really should have put some sources in footnotes or something. I seriously can't find anything and not going to read all her books to figure it out lol.
Finally:
Ironically, radical feminists aren't even trans-exclusionary they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.
This is annoying. And nobody is born a woman.
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Naomi
