What does it feel like to be a woman?

[ChristineRenee]

Vicki,
Very diplomatic, honey!
Unless one is "born in the worng body" which leads hopefully to SRS then as crossdressers = males, hetrosexuals, we can strive to look pretty, feminine and even to react as feminine, but to think.... well maybe marginally. I have used the example of my wife and a lot of other GG's.
" Hey, Hon, what time is it?" response " You know I saw where Radio Shack is having a sale on batteries, and if you had fixed that battery operated clock in the attic, perhpas we could clean it up and give it to Mary as she really needs something to spice up her kitchen, what with the new stove her husband just bought. I understand he got it on sale a Sears but it sure looks nice and Oh!by the way they have invited us over for supper next week to see the pictures of there trip to Hawaii. I think I will wear my new slacks, but I really don't have a top to go with it so I think I'll go down to Macy's an see if they have something to go with it.Bye dear, have a nice day!"
Feeling, Acticng and Thinking feminine: Well two out ot three ain't bad!
I am going to print off and read your post and may have more to say later and see what my sisters also have to say!
Love,
Deborah

Feeling, acting, and thinking feminine...and therein lies the main reason why I will never consider SRS. It just is not me. There is world's of difference between wearing the clothes, and how you feel while dressed, and actually feeling, acting, and thinking feminine. Their brains and our brains are just not wired the same way. Even doing hormone therapy to reshape the outside is not going to change the internal thinking and feeling processes.

A very important consideration when making life altering decisions like hormone therapy and especially SRS. You better know who and what you really are and the ultimate consequences that will be brought about by this kind of external alteration. What's the old commericial line..."It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" There you go.

Just my 2 cents worth.


xoxoxo,

Christine

[CJ]

Hi all,

In light of my own recent struggles in trying to figure out where I am on the TG spectrum, I thought I'd resurrect this hoary thread.

My roommate Marie and I were having a discussion earlier this week in which she said that she so doesn't (and cannot) see me as a woman. "You don't think like a woman," she said. "You don't act, and (most of the time) you don't even dress, like a woman," she added, after a pregnant pause.

Well, I'll admit I'm stumped. I still, for the life of me, cannot figure out what it even means to think or act or feel "like a woman." I asked Marie and she gave me the usual pressed chicken (I hate baloney ) about tenderness, gentleness, caring, empathy, relationship-focus, etc., etc. But, the fact is, so many men I know are like that and so many women I know aren't that it makes me wonder if I'm living in the same world as Marie is. "Well," she finished (rather lamely, I think), "being a woman is certainly more than just about the clothes and makeup." Well, duh.

Yes, I know that these were generalizations (and as far as generalizations go, I'm tempted to agree with them--as I've said so right here many times in the past) but my point is, must we always abide by these views of masculinity and femininity?

If I were to become a woman (uh, hypothetically ), would it really matter that I be a woman more masculine in her thinking than most? What would be the big deal? I think that, in the end, although I would perhaps not know what it's like "to be a woman," I would most certainly have some inkling of what it's like "to be the woman I am." No?

Love,
CJ

[Eva]

Well, I'm not going to Thanksgiving dinner until late afternoon, so I had time to read all these weighty comments and, of course, add my own calories:
I agree with those who say we are all human and individual (for those who don't like long posts. Stop here. That's it in a nutshell).
I don't think anyone knows what their own gender is naturally about. It is all cultural specualtion. Things started to get mixed up, I think, when we began to wear clothes.
This brings to mind ( now where did I read this, possibly here) about the girl who went to sea as a cabinboy like her brother did. Until discovery, she survived well for months. For the rest of the voyage, she had to sit idly by, ladylike in a dress and could not climb the riggings anymore.
In women's attire, I appreciate things that I feel I do not appreciate most of the time en drab, such as paying more attention to looks, body, accessories, feelings, etc.
There also have been times and situations when I am only with men that make me feel that I am the woman of the bunch -- whether it is reacting to the things they are saying, being overly-protected, not able to compete physically, crying during a movie, etc.
To each his or her own, as they say, but thoughts can been too sweet a food, and sweet foods can cause heavy problems.
Personally, I think the best thing is not to be barraged in the boomerang of ideas and words and live one moment at a time, whatever genre or gender you believe you are in during that tick.
Luv to all,
e

[CJ]

Hi all,

Eva,

Great reply. Thanks! You wrote: Things started to get mixed up, I think, when we began to wear clothes. Oy! How true is that?!!?!? Whether you're thinking biblical fig leaves or prehistoric pelts (um, maybe, I don't know, like Raquel Welch in 1,000,000 B.C.? ), the end result is the same: we started associating physiological differences between men and women with differences in appearance. In a naked world (where nobody ever wore any clothes at all) and people focused on highlighting their similarities rather than their differences, I think there would still exist such a thing as a transgender identity.

I guess this is where I come out firmly on the "nurture" side of the debate. Physiology gives us certain predispositions but its limitations, though absolute, are few; men have testes that produce sperm whereas women produce ova, gestate, and lactate (and--when all goes according to plan--they both acquire the hormonal matrix that, respectively, allows them to do these things). These are, at this point in time, the only significant differences between men and women that we know for sure. The rest is speculation and hypothesis-building. Physiology gives us predispositions (after all, testosterone is not the same as oestrogen) but it's socialization and acculturation that narrows (or widens) our range of responses to those predispositions.

I often hear it said that women feel and think in manner that most men don't (and vice versa) but the bone I have to pick with people who focus on this "fact" is that they often seem to believe that this is a natural outcome of our natures and not something built into the way we're socialized, into the value system of the very culture we belong to.

I guess what I'm trying to say to the likes of Marie, for example, is "I challenge you to find two women that think alike and to convince me that, just because most men apparently don't think like women, no man does." Now, it may be true that I don't (think like a woman, that is) to people who [think they] know me well, but that doesn't mean that I can't. It just doesn't follow. If, as I think is true, the way I relate to the world around me has much more to do with what I've learned than it does with the gonads I was born with, then, of course, I can learn to think and feel in a way that is (stereo)typically associated with women. But would I even want to? Especially if I already like the way I think and feel?

Mind you, I'm not talking about social roles here, just psychology. I know full well that available (or unavailable) social options influence our psychological development, but that's not what I'm referring to, here. I'm talking about the here and now. Now that I'm here, now that this is who I am, now that this is how I think and feel, what is preventing me from taking that being, that thinking, that feeling "outside the box"? Well, one thing that's preventing me (and I'm slowly freeing myself from its stranglehold) is the common belief that women think and feel in one way and men think and feel in another.

Marie, getting caught in her own denied assumptions, says that even just the way I dress (in drab) proves that I don't think or feel like a woman. "You're always wearing jeans; your shirt sleeves are always rolled up; you wear these heavy walking boots; you're not 'delicate'." S'cuse me? Dressing delicately would prove that I know what it means to be a woman? Rubbish. "You're not a 'relationship-focused' person," she says. And, what? All women are? "You're certainly caring and compassionate enough," she says, "but it's buried so deeply that only those who know you well have access to that side of you--you hide it." True. She has a point there. But I asked her if she'd ever stopped to think that, just maybe, the reason I hide this sensitivity is because I live in a culture where men aren't supposed to be sensitive. Men aren't supposed to think and feel this way. How restrictive is that? Well, now it's wanting to come out. And neither her opinion nor anyone else's about what if "feels like" to be a woman is going to change that. I'll think and feel as I pretty well must. I'll think and feel the way I do because it's who I am... man, woman, or anything in between.

Love,
CJ

[Bernice]

Oh CJ, I envy your magnificent gigantic intellect and compassionate expression - why aren't you filthy rich?

Here comes my now standard soap-box - forgive the repetition.

There is no duality of gender. The olympic committee has struggled for a century for a test that reliably detemines sex. They can't, at least not 100% of the time. It simply is not a binary state, and there is no trait that determines sex or gender. All the tendencies we speak of are nothing more than society's attempt to force sameness upon us. Society teaches those it presumes to be female to act in ways considered appropriate for being female. Our learned behavior is then used to justify the original assumption. How flawed.

I cry at movies - my dear wife does not. I prefer to wear a dress - she prefers pants. I prefer to be on the bottom - she does not. She makes executive decisions quickly, while I struggle. Which one of us is male? A more enlightened question might be "which one of us has more traits typically associated with maleness".

We are whatever we are, along a continuous spectrum of gender. Not only does no single trait determine our gender, but also there will always be persons considered opposite that gender, who are less like us in those same traits.

For example, there will always be "women" who are taller, stronger, and more aggressive than me, "women" who are less sensitive, wear pants, have little hygene and grooming, and whatnot. Some may even have an extra Y chromosome floating around somewhere. All of this really proves nothing.

I think that what it feels like to be a woman is exactly the same as what it feels like to be a man, except for how other people treat you. Since we all have different experiences with different other people, we can never really answer the question definitively.

Hugs,

Bernice

[Absaroka]

Bernice's comment about the olympic committee is right on.


Here is my take on the real differences and it doesn't have much to do with sensitivity and so on. As something about differences it is no doubt sexist.

Women can have babies. So for the good of the species the old women and children first made perfect sense. One an can impregnate a lot of women but women can only usually have one child at a time. And back in the day only half of them lived very long, the rest were design failures that were discarded and eaten by other species. Men were mostly expendable and their primary purpose was to protect the species.

So here's where ages ago it got complicated. That same agression that made men good at this led them to think that they should be in charge. THere is a certain fairness to this. If I need to be called upon to risk my life for you I should have a say in what risks the group assumes. But we went a tad too far in my opinion.

Men are agresive in defending the territory and pack. WOmen are just as agressive in defending their young.

Meanwhile we got derailed in appearances in many ways like chivalry and attractiveness and so on and the old rules stopped applying about the time we moved out of caves. But when we talk about biology nature moves slowly in how it changes us.

What we were given though was intellect and far greater emotional reasoning also. So we get to move on and we are still confused about where to. But at the very bottom I will absolutely never kow what is was like to carry another person's body in mine and nuture it with liquids my body makes, all at some risk to myself.

As to folks who are towards the middle of the spectrum on this, although nature may discard ideas that didn't work, something also gave us a soul which transcends all of this and that came from the Creator who uses nature to further it's own ends. And that Creator does not make mistakes.

And all of this is so cosmic that it really doesn't address the question in terms of our particular society at all.

Andrea