Guest post: We can only ever really live our own lives
Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on They would magically transform.
I’m not entirely sure they really want to be women, so much as they want to be what they think women are.
That distinction I think matters. I don’t think I could ever see myself as trans, because I am me, I can only ever be me, and thus I have no frame of reference for how to really truly be anyone else.
This doesn’t mean I can’t imagine how others feel, or that I can’t empathize, but that my frame of reference is based on data that is available to myself, and thus can never fully encompass someone else’s life.
If I were to try and be a woman, the best I could manage would be to be my concept of a woman based on paying attention to what women have to say about the subject, and that is going to only cover the things women care to inform me about that manages to penetrate my somewhat muddled brain.
Which is a very incomplete picture indeed.
I think part of the problem with the trans cult, is that what they seem to see a woman as being, is straight out of “As Good as it Gets” – a man minus reason and accountability. The worse activists behave in ways, that aren’t really acceptable in either gender, because what they have is that incomplete picture.
And it is not a picture you can ever really complete, because we can only ever really live our own lives. Of course the trans may respond that I’m not trans so my limitations apply to them as much as they do to women, but I’m not pretending those limitations aren’t there.
This is why the question about how to define a woman isn’t a gotcha – we really don’t have any clue what they mean when they say “Trans women are women”.
We need to understand what their understanding of what a woman is, and they can’t seem to tell us what that really is, because I don’t think it is the same thing that a real woman sees it as being.
Bruce, I think that’s very much largely the case, at least for the most obvious and vocal trans women. It’s fundamentally performative, as it has to be when you haven’t actually lived and grown up as a biological and cultural female. I’m not sure the ‘Good as it gets’ reference is quite spot on. I think they see women as something straight out of central casting. Or in some cases a porn flick. God alone knows what someone like Barbie Kardashian sees women as being like.
I would second that. I have noticed that their ideas about being a woman match television and movie women better than they do real women…and most of the women playing those women probably don’t…or didn’t…meet that stereotype, either.
That’s why they think we fail at being women. Towel piled high on head? Check. Lipstick, nail polish, blush? Check. High heels? Check. Head tilt? Check. Sexy pose? Check.
Then they look around at the women they know, and know of, and we aren’t doing all that. We’re just busy being people. So we must be doing it wrong. Their frame of reference isn’t women; it’s faux women on the screens they are so enamored of.
We’ve all seen (or been) this: a girl, or woman, in a state of deshabille, “frumpy,” hair uncombed, around-the-house pants on, or sweats, no “girly” shit anywhere in sight.
But I’ll bet not one of us mistakes this person for a “not-woman/girl.” In spite of all the social signals we have accumulated to mark the sexes, there is something about just being one of the sexes that registers with us.
We would see the girl/woman, in her natural state, feminine after all.
(Same for boys/men, too.)
Very much this. When I was a boy in junior high school, I remember thinking that I wished that I’d been born a girl, because I thought that girls had it easy. What I didn’t realize was that those girls had it just as hard, if not harder, but just in ways that I didn’t see as a 13-year-old boy. It seems to me that many of these transgender people are stuck in the same 13-year-old mindset, imagining that all their troubles will go away if they could just change sex.
James, when I was in my early teens NZ was a pretty solidly socially conservative place in a lot of ways. The City I grew up in especially so. It wasn’t that there weren’t people who didn’t conform, or wanted not to conform, it was just that social expectation was so strong it was hard not to. As a young teen male, if you didn’t want to be bullied or beaten up (which I was relentlessly at that time), you had to conform in clothes, behaviour, everything. I got bullied because I didn’t much like sports, my clothes were always hand-me-downs, and I liked reading. So, automatically gay (not). My clothes were the right colour at least. The safe colours and styles were a sweatshirt that was dark blue, brown, green, or grey; jeans (of whatever shade and cut were in fashion that year; and of course the ‘right pair of shoes. I remember thinking girls had it great because they could wear colours and different styles. Little did I understand at the time just how badly they had it in all sorts of other ways.
One of my erstwhile colleagues (Yay! I’m retired!) was saying something similar. Okay, women have to deal with things like sexual harassment, lower pay, etc, but they do have it great because they can wear colors and styles that are broader than men can wear. I agreed with him, but told him that wasn’t because of me (or other women). .Men are enforcing that on men by beating them up. Of course, some women enforce by sneering at men who don’t conform, and that can be a powerful force. My point is, don’t complain about women’s choices, do something to broaden your choices.
Then I told him he could come to work in a pink tutu, and I certainly wouldn’t say anything about it. He could wear what he liked (he would have looked quite bad in a pink tutu – so would I). But I imagine students would complain…he would be called to the office and put on some sort of improvement plan. But if he wants to wear those colors, etc, all he has to do is identify as a woman, and they’d fall all over themselves to accommodate him.
Correct.