Stuff You Can’t Do As A Liberal Feminist

4thwavenow

have you guys maybe thought that the reason little girls say “i want to be a boy” and/or “i want to dress like a boy” is not because they are actually trans boys, but because they don’t have the language yet to describe themselves in a highly gendered society? they don’t like the clothes little girls are forced to wear and they want to wear clothes meant to fit and be practical for actual human beings (boys)? maybe stop insisting that girls are actually boys because they don’t want to wear fucking dresses? 

when i was 5 i thought i hated being a girl. people nowadays would have called me a trans boy. it didn’t occur to me until i discovered feminism that i just hated the gender hierachy and wanted to opt out of it.

I would also have been considered a trans boy. I feel victorious in my refusal to subscribe to gender stereotypes. The system is a bag of dicks. NOT letting society decide my gender for me is how I spend every day winning.

Females who have overcome dysphoria without transition to male?

I’m female and I have physical and social dysphoria, but I don’t want to identify as male or transition because it would complicate so much shit in my life. I just don’t think I can do that. 

I’ve been told by trans guys that transition is the *only* way to overcome dysphoria, and I’ve been told by radfems that it’s not even an acceptable way. I don’t think I agree with either of those stances, but I would love to talk to some woman-identified females who have overcome ‘ftm’ type dysphoria without transition. I would prefer reblogs or responses to the post instead of private messages b/c this is a side blog so I can’t respond privately.

It wasn’t even an option back in the day, so I did what I had to do to survive. I got therapy and antidepressants to deal with the depression I was coping with. I started making art, doing martial arts, teaching myself that my body wasn’t a decorative item for others. It is a tool for me to accomplish things. I started treating myself more kindly.

I’ve found a lot of healing in thinking of my body as a tool, or as a machine. It has purpose, and function. 

Hey whimsicalgoodies, 

So caveat–”dysphoria” means all things to all people, and if you want a really relevant response to your particulars, then let me know just what you mean by that. My experience is that dysphoria is not necessarily alleviated, let alone cured, by hormones/surgery. In some cases it is even exacerbated.

I hear that you feel there are polarized “camps” weighing in on your choices and you want to hear from those who have been where you are. I have been there. This is where I live. While I don’t fault survivors of girlhood for taking the path of transition to try to cope with our messed up world, I also think we deserve better options and do not believe that transition is cool, mystical, a liberation movement, a challenge to the existing gender hierarchy, or a safe and proven treatment for an objectively observable medical condition (as opposed to a psycho-social one). It is always odd to me to see something glorified as identity/pride, that is so obviously born of devastation and desperation. Also odd to see a disabling treatment model touted as a cure.

No, transitioning is not the only way. I am part of a community of 50+ womyn who have been through something like what you are describing, and we are handling it differently. Whatever “dysphoria” means for you, there are some among us who share that meaning, because we span an incredible range of experiences. We don’t all have everything figured out clean and perfect, but we also don’t have to hold this alone.

And this is not to mention all of the older womyn I know who hear our stories and recognize so much of themselves there–womyn who made another way before “dysphoria” even had that name.

So you are not alone and you are not doomed to that one particular path that you don’t seem to want to walk.

If you do want to talk privately about this off tumblr, feel free to email me at redressalert@gmail.com

I got halfway through reading this, thinking it HAD to be satire, before realizing it was written in absolute seriousness. How long will it be before doctors are jailed or fined for daring to declare a newborn male or female at birth?  And where the HELL are the reporters with the courage to push back against this nonsense?? [Bracketed comments by me] 

“Obstetricians, doctors, and midwives commit this procedure on infants every single day, in every single country. In reality, this treatment is performed almost universally without even asking for the parents’ consent, making this practice all the more insidious. It’s called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It’s a boy or a girl, based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring’s genitals.”

[It’s just the doctor’s OPINION, readers!  He barely glanced at the kid’s genitals, not that those matter, anyway. Humans are exempt from sexual dimorphism, unique among mammals!]

“… With infant gender assignment, in a single moment your baby’s life is instantly and brutally reduced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete set of expectations and stereotypes, and any behavioral deviation from that will be severely punished—both intentionally through bigotry, and unintentionally through ignorance. That doctor (and the power structure behind him) plays a pivotal role in imposing those limits on helpless infants, without their consent, and without your informed consent as a parent. This issue deserves serious consideration by every parent, because no matter what gender identity your child ultimately adopts, infant gender assignment has effects that will last through their whole life.”

[Oh, just come out and say it! This is a conspiracy by the medical profession–the “power structure”–and pure infant child abuse.  Call child protective services!]

“… Infant gender assignment is a willful decision, and as a maturing society we need to judge whether it might be a wrong action. Why must we force this on kids at birth? What is achieved, besides reinforcing tradition? What could be the harm in letting a child wait to declare for themself who they are, once they’re old enough (which is generally believed to happen around age 2 or 3)?”

[“Generally believed” by increasing numbers of people (and journalists), but absolutely refuted by decades of data indicating that the vast majority of 2 year olds who claim they are the opposite sex grow out of it!]

“Is it better to play the odds, or play it safe? Think carefully. Infant gender assignment might just be Russian roulette with your baby’s life. “

[You bad, abusive parent! Don’t you dare let some sinister midwife or OB-GYN misgender your newborn baby!]

Wow.

Transfer their consciousness into a toaster oven

In the interests of snark, I am sharing one of the many withering comments to the Slate article I posted earlier today.

jsphgag

Jun 29, 2014

The practice of assigning gender by making a judgement solely on genitalia is barbaric which is why, for our part, my significant other and I will be sewing our child’s legs together in-utero. Is it risky? Sure, but not as risky as telling our child that their identity in any way derives from their hormonal balance, genitalia, phenotype, or natural characteristics. It’s just sad that in this day and age we’d be so reckless as to limit a baby girl’s potential by telling them they are in fact female. I mean, how incredibly disrespectful of future possibilities and outcomes!  That’s like saying an empty lot has no house built upon it, or telling a crocodile it isn’t a lion. Who are we to judge such things? Who made put us in charge? Stating the facts of a situation precludes the possibility for change in the status-quo, or I’m glad someone is pointing out the obviously strong tie of correlation to causation between suicide and the acknowledgement of the physical and biological characteristics of newborn children. I also would like to humbly correct the author in pointing out that it’s not quite fair to expect that all children born human will want to remain human forever. Who are we to needlessly preempt them by ruling out the possibility that they will want to undergo extensive surgeries to be transformed into a house cat, or experimental procedures to transfer their consciousness into a toaster oven? We are stupidly naive to think that just because we chose to live our lives as human that our children will want to do the same.  We could challenge the very notion that being either male or female in any way defrauds, choosing instead to see it as an empowering starting place for lifelong metamorphosis, but who are we kidding - being told your male in this sick society will always mean being a chauvinistic womanizer, and being female will always mark baby girl’s as being weaker in the eyes of our oppressive sex-obsessed culture. The only solution is to put an end to the possibility of sex at the start - by birthing an entire generation of androgynous children as free and devoid of influence as the only acceptable and true morality - because realistically, who can say what is right? Who can say what is wrong? Who can say what makes a boy a boy, or that a girl is a girl, or that a human isn’t a paperclip, or that biology in any way contributes to our experience on this earth? The facts are the facts: 100% of people who commit suicide were at one time told they were either a boy or a girl, so we must stop this ridiculous practice.

so im at work and bagging for this lady and her little kid and the kids askin me about what its like being a big kid and all that so he goes “do you have a girlfriend? is she pretty?” and i live in a pretty liberal area and it was pretty quiet in the store so i just calmly responded “actually i have a boyfriend, but he’s fairly pretty” and the mom just kinda pauses on her phone and looks down at her son like please dont say anything bad please dont embarrass me but he just gets so fuckin excited and is like “you can do that ???? i didnt know boys were allowed to have boyfriends!!” and hes turns to his mom and is pulling at her phone trying to get her attention and is just really excited like “mom did you know that ? can i have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend ??” and she just started laughing and was like “if you want sure” and they took their groceries and left and im just standing there like

DID THAT JUST HAPPEN

THAT WAS SO CUTE

🌈 miami beach pride fest 🌈

My therapist agrees that transition would be best for me given my history of sexual abuse and subsequent physical dysphoria, my depression that developed from it, my reclusiveness, my lack of enthusiasm, the pressures I feel from society, and countless other factors. She only wants me to be happy and I respect her for that. I told her that if I do decide to transition, it would be done under duress given that my only options are to transition or face my sexual trauma or die. She wants me to be excited and positive about entertaining the idea of making such a huge and long-awaited change but, as I’ve explained to her countless times, I have been pigeonholed by circumstance and must now choose the lesser of the two evils until I get to a place where my options expand. As for right now, this is what I’m dealing with.

I'm sorry that you have been pushed into such a societal corner. It's sad that the current status quo is so limiting. However, giving it the middle finger and doing what makes you feel free is the best revenge imo.

“More tricky still are her attempts to teach her clients these signifiers while also deconstructing the stereotypes that she’s found aren’t helpful — particularly the thoroughly unmodern, and therefore unconvincing, idea that women should be coy and demure and keep their opinions to themselves. “A lot of my clients think that when they are in femme, if they go to a restaurant and order, say, a filet medium rare, and the filet comes to them medium well, they won’t send it back,” she tells me, by way of example. “They’ll be like, ‘Well, you know, I’m in femme, and it just doesn’t feel very feminine.’ And oh my God, it kills me that they think that suddenly because they look like a woman their right to have their food cooked the way they asked is stripped from them. I think it says a lot about how we socialize our men, right? Because the people who I work with were socialized as men to have an idea about what femininity is, about what being female means.” And what that subconscious idea entails is that women should not expect to get what they ask for or insist on having what they want.

What good would it do, though, to shame them, to make her clients feel more awkward for having been raised male? Instead, Monica very politely sends their steak back for them.”

Can’t shame them for their male socialization, so instead, she double down on her female socialization by doing their work for them.  Rather than make them aware of what their privileges are (which would be shaming) we just blip over that.  

Gender is a convoluted, ridiculous, thing.

These people are misogynists.

redressalert replied to your post:My therapist agrees that transition would be best…

I do not. I am truly alone in this. What little friends I’ve made from the personal blog I used to run before deleting to make this one have lost touch, disagree with my politics, or believe (as I have come to believe) that there is no choice but to choose a side. It’s a harsh reality but I want to think about something else for a change and I want to be happy and excited to live my life and if transitioning is what I have to do then that’s what I have to do. I can’t keep living the way I have been. I do live at home and my parents have known for a few years that I want to “be a girl” but I never acted on any of it besides becoming GNC and my mom is at a point where she wants to know what’s going on with me. She’s very supportive and it feels like now would be the right time to begin, I guess. However, nothing is set in stone yet. I’m in the process of seeking doctors and making appointments and getting my finances in order to see what I can realistically afford but, until then, I’m hoping I’ll have another breakthrough and discover an overlooked option or something. Believe me, I’m angry too. Transitioning is something I dreamt of doing since childhood but I never imagined it would be so depressing and disheartening once I had the means to do so.

conservatives: you can’t do this you are a girl

liberal pomos: you can do this but it means you’re a boy

4WN’s anon, write to me anytime. This is something I have both dealt with and written about on my blog. If you want to send me a more specific anon, or write a private email, please tell me more about what “physical dysphoria” means for you. For some people it’s targeted on certain body parts and for others it’s a whole body thing.Some people mean they hate what is there. Some people mean they are dissociated or feel disconnected from what is there. Some people mean they “sense” what is not physically there. Some people mean a combination or a variation on these themes. 

I don’t want to make suggestions that are not relevant to your particular issue, because I know it’s frustrating and painful enough to try different things in the first place. There’s not a single solution for everyone, but with a little more information I can tell you my own experience and point you to similar others.

This is why we are all here for each other.

things straight girls need to stop doing 

7. using the term “ girl crush” when you have no idea what that’s actually like

I really just wanna hug all the young GNC girls out there and let them know it’s gonna be ok. You don’t have to be what everybody else wants you to be. You are awesome just as you are. It’s awesome that you have short hair and don’t wear make-up and you’d rather play sports or build things than go shopping and talk about boys. Being GNC doesn’t make you manly. You are still a young woman, and you are awesome. Take up space, speak your mind, don’t ever back down. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for. 

Genderist pronoun interpretation

If you, as a gender-noncompliant female, say you are “she,” then genderists think that means, “I’m trying to achieve male-defined straight girl standards, but just failing at it really badly." 

If you say you are "he” or “they” then genderists think you are saying, “I am holding myself to a different standard, so don’t measure me by male-defined straight girl standards." 

What you relinquish within this model is the power to SET or SMASH the standards. To stop letting males define ANY of us.

And I imagine there are analogous giveaways of testosterone to teen girls whose parents aren’t bankrolling their “transition” to FTM.

Transgenderreality.com is providing a really important service. Please let parents of gender nonconforming kids know about this site.

This.