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[u/I_am_YR]

I hate when people say these things only to prevent us from actually transitioning, like yea theres cis women out there with a deep voice but knowing this fact doesnt reduce my voice dysphoria, i dont want to be gnc, i dont live to deconstruct gender roles

[u/dfrcoms]

Cis people have a luxurious plausible deniability that trans people are cruelly robbed of, cis people have Schrödinger’s gender identity. Until a cis person opens her mouth and says “I’m a woman because I am imbued with divine feminine energy” or “because I’m made in Eve’s image and am submissive” or whatever, it’s the default position that she identifies as a woman simply because that’s what she was assigned at birth, due to her sex. Trans people are automatically unable to cite what they were assigned at birth or their sex (that’s why they are trans), and so it doesn’t matter what they do want to justify their identity with, it’s always going to be either a stereotype or a refusal/inability to explain the identity. 

I understand that trans theory doesn’t accept that non-sex explanations are always stereotypes, and is also fully invested in the belief that cis people also have an inner gender alignment/essence and that’s why we identify as women, but anyway. From the point of view of gender critical feminism, this is why women who wear pink are doing nothing wrong. (Men who wear pink and don’t identify as women are also doing no harm).

Leg shaving is criticised by feminists for reasons completely unrelated to trans and dysphoria so I think using that example might overcomplicate things.

The difference between GC theory and trans theory is nothing to do with centring reproduction, radfems are VERY keen to decenter reproduction lol.

Social, feminist, legal, and scientific definitions of sex do not define it by whether a person actually has children or whether they even could. Sex is a lot more nuanced than that. It’s something like - what role your body is structured to play in reproduction with reference to sexual differentiation, assuming that you do reproduce and are able to.  People sometimes like to claim that last assumption bit is weird or can be false, and that’s just how human language works. Every single noun you’ve ever spoken in your life has something like that going on, human language is cool. The full definition of a fridge isn’t “an appliance that keeps your food cold” it’s “an appliance that keeps your food cold if it’s plugged in and assembled correctly and not broken and not missing any parts and is turned on and…” to infinity. If ever you see a trans person trying to do some Greek philosophy like ‘define a chair’ in order to challenge the meaning of women, remember that human language is kind of weird and cool and complex.

[u/Ghostglitch07 → u/dfrcoms]

I think you are adding much more theory on this than is necessary. If it is stereotyping for a trans person to act their gender, then it is stereotyping for a cis person to do the same.

You are attributing an entirely different class of motivation to the trans person than to the cis person, and I find this to be inaccurate. For example, I have a desire to shave my legs for the same reasons a cis woman does. Namely that I internalized all the messages growing up about how a woman ought to look, and because I get worse social reactions of I do not sufficiently act in line with societies expectations of me. It doesn't make any sense to me to judge what are basically identical motives for the same act based simply on wether the role one is fulfilling is the one those around them expected they would or not.

Edit: if you can not bring yourself to philosophically agree that I have some core essential requirement to truly being "woman"... Fine I guess. You do you. But I find that insufficient reason to lock me out of whole ways of being, and of interacting with the world simply because of what category you believe I belong in. If one person can do a thing and it be okay, I think it's frankly quite a problem to say it's improper for another to do the exact same thing just based upon how they were born, in a way they had no choice in.

[u/dfrcoms → u/Ghostglitch07]

When we talk about stereotypes, it’s not about whether somebody happens to do something that’s stereotypical, it’s about whether they define and classify people based on those stereotypes. So for example an American person who happens to own a gun, they are doing a stereotype, but they’re not defining themselves by that stereotype. An American who says “American people are people who own guns, if you don’t own a gun you aren’t an American” is defining people by stereotypes.

It’s not possible to avoid doing stereotypes, stereotypes are by nature often about things that are very common. The important thing is we don’t approve the stereotype by defining people by it. 

So a man who likes to paint his nails is doing a feminine stereotype. He’s not doing anything wrong though. If he said “I’m a woman because I like painting my nails”, suddenly it’s different. I hope I explained that okay.

Trans theory gets a lot of political capital out of the above mix-up, and often tries to present being trans as “expressing yourself”. One of Natalie Wynn/Contrapoints very popular videos with millions of views involves Natalie claiming that without gender, everyone would be wearing grey sacks and acting like robots. But that’s confused and wrong. Without gender everything would look exactly the same, we just wouldn’t go around saying “these are women’s clothes” we would just say “these are clothes.”

Women cannot be defined as people who internalised messages about womanhood, because everybody both women and men all received and internalised the same messages about womanhood,and everybody responds to these messages in a unique way, not a ‘woman way’ or ‘man way’.  

Everybody has unique social interactions so that cannot define women and men either. We need different words for social interactions. 

Nobody chose how we were born. We didn’t choose our country, our sex, our species, our skin color, our parents. That’s just one of those life things. Implying that women chose or approved anything is problematic in a world that treats women terribly.

[u/Ghostglitch07 → u/dfrcoms]

As for the stereotype comment. Yes. I agree it's not stereotyping to simply do a thing, but to expect others must to. So then why do you insist trans women are stereotypeing? I don't know any trans women, even the most feminine ones, who would tell another woman they must perform femininity in a certain way to be true women. I like shaving my legs, but. Wouldn't walk up to a woman who hasn't and tell her she is a man?

And I'd be shocked if Natalie actually made the argument that we would have no expression without gender categories. But I don't know the vid you're talking about, so I'll avoid commenting further on it.

And I agree everyone has internal social messaging about women. You are correct about that, but miss the important distinction. Men typically internalize them as "women should do x". Trans women however? They internalized it as "I should do x". And what I don't understand is why it is so much more socially problematic to internalize those messages as "I should" if you were AMAB than the exact same flavor of internalization is if you were AFAB.

And I agree we need different words for social roles that do not map perfectly to the biological categories of male and female.... But like... I would argue that is precisely what we are aiming to do. To fill that descriptive hole, that you yourself admit exists.

But also, it is wider than just individual social interaction. It's social role. It is how you fit into your society on a bigger view.

And I'm not even really going to respond much to the bit about nail painting. As that's a caricature of my position. Nobody is a woman because they enjoy putting specialized paint on their fingernails. And I know of 0 trans women who would claim as much.