Life in a male body

It would be nice if everyone could grasp this point.

It’s the truth. I can’t experience life in a lizard body or an eagle body or an elephant body (and neither can any other human). We can try to imagine what it’s like, but that’s the limit of what we can do.

People who are not born X can’t experience what it’s like to have been born X. Of course they can’t, by definition: not being born X=not having the experience of having been born X.

The idea is that there’s such a thing as “feeling like” a woman and thus sharing the lived experience of being female, but the idea is wrong. You can experience your own idea of what it’s like, but you can’t share an experience you’ve never had and by definition can never have. You can try to imagine it, empathize with it, and the like, but you can’t literally have it.

But there’s always someone who doesn’t get it.

https://twitter.com/LyonStipsen/status/1251584651308740611

Because being presumed to be female is not the same thing as being female. At all.

It’s possible to have experiences that are like experiences that women have, but that is not the same as experiencing what it’s like to exist as a female, because of the whole not being one thing I just mentioned. You can imagine, guess, fantasize, pretend, but that’s all you can do.

Anyway, sooner or later the contempt and entitlement elbows everything else aside.

https://twitter.com/LyonStipsen/status/1251605953251811338

The pink flowers don’t cancel out the male entitlement.

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