[–]relentlessreading
I’ve only heard that from TERFs who claim to be on the left.
[–]Creativered4
It's just transphobia.
They don't see trans women as women. They see them as "women". They also dont see trans men as men. They see them as transmascs. Even the allies see us as trans first, and sometimes only.
The only thing I've found that works to get them to understand me is when I explain that
I am a man who did not get enough testosterone in the womb. I was severely underdeveloped. My brain is a male brain, the same as a man born with a penis. It sends signals to a penis. I instinctively flinch when people do a cup check, before bottom surgery I felt phantom erections, the same way amputees feel phantom sensations in limbs they no longer have. I have felt a great deal of pain from being underdeveloped.
I would have chopped off a leg if I had to in order to get bottom surgery.
People understand when they realize that men born without a penis are the same thing as men born with one (and women born without a vagina are the same as those born with one) and they empathize with the raw pain when it's laid out for them.
They start to realize when you keep reminding them that this wasn't a choice, and we wouldn't be going through costly surgeries, losing friends and family, and being targeted by those in power if it was a choice.
People understand when they realize that men born without a penis are the same thing as men born with one (and women born without a vagina are the same as those born with one) and they empathize with the raw pain when it's laid out for them.
Absolutely. You can even ask people, "What do you think your life would be like if you were born in the wrong body? What would puberty be like? What would dating be like? What would your friendships be like?" And, if they are willing to play along and take some time to think of some good answers, they will match what trans people experience, generally speaking.
Wait...
Is that why I get a phantom Vagina sensation?... Like just randomly I would feel as if I had a vagina and sometimes during masturbation I'm pretty sure I know how masturbating with a vagina feels like even though I don't have one yet lmao
I also one time had a strange urge to get pregnant when I got a little emotionally close to a man online...
Yup! Trans women experience phantom vagina sensations!
Yea I heard that before although I get phantom sensations in other parts of my body as well although it's the strongest over there as of now... Could be due to having an already feminine body shape that I don't feel it as strongly in the other parts
ngl I'm sorta iffy on that argument bc it's very based on bottom dysphoria which some of us don't get
[–]Dahling_sweetiepoo
the stupidest part about the "adult human female" thing is that i was confident in calling myself female waaaaaaaaaay before i was confident calling myself a woman.
I've always been kind of confused about how the world 'female' is a gotcha over 'woman.' Like... if you can't define 'woman' in such a way that it only excludes trans women, how in the hell are you going to be able to define 'female' that only excludes trans women?
Like... if anybody said that to me, I'd respond with, "Okay. Define 'female'," and watch them sputter in impotent rage.
Yeah... you'd have to add tons of qualifiers to even get close to trying to answer it. At that point it basically is a non-answer.
I mean, it's always been a non-answer that's designed to make them sound smart. They've nver cared about being right. They just want people to buy their bullshit for a grift and that's easier to do if you seem smarter than the people you're grifting.
Good thing I'm a biologist hehe love to see them argue and be wrong. Because I know as a biologist, sex is made up of many biological characteristics which are often not consistent across populations. Personally I ascribe to the sex is a spectrum model with many variations and intersex conditions between but it's also been a decade since I've been out of college so the current understanding may have changed a little.
Thats the other wonderful thing, our understanding of biology is constantly evolving and updating.
I myself am intersexed. I love when someone calls me a man (I'm nonbinary but appear masculine) and I can say, according to your definition I am not lol that always futs with them aha
The problem with that is they don't care if they're wrong. Logic and consistency mean nothing to them. Hypocrisy is a badge of honor. They just want to get into an argument and just "nuh, unh" their way through it like a four-year-old, because by their logic, if you give up first, they win.
It's like that movie, War Games. "The best way to win is not to play."
Yeah it's disappointing. I try my best to not get involved at all usually.
I blame a lot of this on the muddling of science by the far right that claim there are such things as alternate facts or alternate science as well as discrediting and replacing experts in fields and departments and replacing them with fully unqualified dunces who have no clue what theyre talking about. Its the dumbing down of society.
[–]MidnightJams
The leftists who say shit like this are desperate to be seen as some sort of reasonable, "both sides have a point" middle man standing proudly above the fray. They don't like that sometimes you have to take a fucking stand and say one side is right, and the other is wrong.
Trans women have never said that our experience is interchangeable with that of cis women. We are another kind of woman. To your question about comparing this to race—
I almost always avoid comparing the trans experiences to the kinds of differences felt by people of different racial backgrounds. I don't think it's a solid comparison, and I haven't lived any experience but my own. I think the grain of truth to pull out of that is that there isn't any one right way to be a woman. Some women have kids, some never get pregnant and have no desire to, some are drawn toward stereotypically feminine things, some couldn't be less interested if they tried, some are all about their careers, some aren't, etc.
There are as many ways to be a woman as there ways to be a human, and that's before we get into the differences of different cultures and countries, or how different it is to be a woman today than 50 years ago (let alone 100). Every single woman I know, trans or not, is completely their own person.
If we're talking biology?
Trans women aren't biological men. That line is super popular right now, and it is 1000% not true. That doesn't mean our biology is identical to cis women's, but
it's a far cry from cis men's. I don't think most people have any idea
how drastically HRT changes your biology—your skin changes, your hair changes, your fat distribution changes, body mass changes (some people even get shorter or lose shoe sizes), your body heat management changes, your sense of smell, taste, and sight can change, your relationship with your emotions changes, you literally grow boobs and can even breastfeed if you work at it, your genitals change in appearance, size, smell, and function, and more. People forget that men and women start out with the same tissue in the womb, which then develops into different shapes when exposed to different hormones in utero.
Taking hormones after that can still trigger a ton of those latent capacities that were simply never switched on in the first place. Men and women aren't different species, they're slight remixes of the same species.
There's no one single way to be woman, and trans women are simply one of the many ways to be one.
[–]plasticpole
Yes! Which is why any person (especially a woman) trying to define “woman” or “female” in a reductive way just confuses me.
Take the ‘biological’ or ‘genetic’ approach that is often taken. Yes, it’s scientifically wrong for one thing, but it also necessarily stips away any kind of humanity or freedom of expression. Not to mention the chances are no one even knows their genetic make up.
Do they really want to be reduced in such a way? To be stuck in a life dictated by genes and DNA? Has no one seen Gattacca?
It just sounds like a depressing way to view oneself and people at large.
[–]Throttle_Kitty
Tldr; Just woke-washed transphobia and misogyny.
Obviously trans women and intersex women are different than cis women, thats why they have different adjectives in front of them.
But people who say this sort of thing treat both groups like monoliths. As if women are a hypothetical alien species from a book or something, or a factory line of robots with identical OSs. Gender and its relationship to existing in society are complex and layered. Every individual person has a distinct and unique relationship to gender, society, and their place within both.
At the end of the day, grand sweeping statements not backed by any data or research like this are just reality fan theory by uneducated nobodies LARPing as experts.
[–]CatgirlDJ
I don’t even tell cis people I’m trans anymore unless I trust them. I’m a biological woman who was born a woman with a hormonal issue, just like women with PCOS and other similar conditions.
However, I do tell trans people and mostly because I don’t associate with most cis,
for example I won’t ever date a cis woman again. They just don’t understand us on a deep level usually
[–]Ok_Walrus_230
Im really tired from this new wave of “Trans women are women, but not female”
There are a lot of trans people saying this,
they are trying to make it easier for transphobes, but they are sacrificing our dignity in the process (and with arguments that aren’t true)
[–]UseResponsible1799
Can't say I've ever heard it before,
but it sounds like a "you'll never be a real woman" disguised as something thats supposed to sound inclusive
[–]classyraven
TERF dogwhistle.
They hope you won't notice them sneaking the second "trans" by you.
[–]Satisfaction-Motor
People who say that haven’t done much reading on trans women’s experiences. A key search term would be something like “gender socialization TERF debunked” or something. Gender socialization largely doesn’t map out onto trans folks.
Trans women often talk about how they weren’t raised and socialized as men — many talk about how they were raised as women or a third gender. During- and post- transition, they’re socialized as women. They have women’s experiences, bodies, hormones, etc. The search suggestion I provided would go into how gender socialization and experiences aren’t universal to begin with.
The people who say “trans women are trans women” are never taking marginalization into account — they’re always just further marginalizing trans women.
Gender socialization isn't as cut-and-dried as these ladies think it is, period. There are always confounding factors like race, socioeconomic status, disability...and of course, being a closeted trans person. I personally don't like seeing my experience growing up as"female socialization" OR "male socialization" because, due to being noticeably neurodivergent, I was socialized more as a thing than a person.
[–]slayqueen1782
Its funny because as a Trans woman i never claimed i am biologically female/born female/AFAB. However, that doesnt make me less of a woman. I am a woman. Period. TERFs and transphobic people xan go fuck.
[–]Cute_Win_386
Women have widely divergent experiences.
Having lived both with and without male privilege, I can safely say that trans women are women in the most universal sense, that being living absent male privilege. Almost every other aspect of womanhood only includes a subset of cisgender women. But all women live without male privilege, and the social implications of that are enormous.
And while transphobes love to say that trans women are men, they certainly don't treat us the way they treat men. Ergo: trans women are women.
[–]Taellosse
This attitude is called "gender essentialism" and is a form of transphobia.
Cis women do not have a universally identical life experience - they have certain elements that are broadly common, with a wide range of variation across individuals due to specific differences in other factors of their life situations and identities. Wealthy white women experience considerably less misogyny, on average, than poor black women, for example.
Womanhood is not defined by chromosomes, or reproductive organs. Women are not vessels for a uterus, they are people. Cis women don't stop being women if they are infertile, or have hormone imbalances that lead to growing facial hair. "Woman" is an aspect of identity and a social role, first and foremost - and when a trans woman undergoes transition, we take on those characteristics and are treated by others accordingly. Some of the common physical experiences of cis women are unavailable to us - actual menstruation
(though many trans women experience all the symptoms of periods except the bleeding) and pregnancy are most of that. But, again,
reproductive organs do not define womanhood - cis women get hysterectomies all the time and don't stop being women, and menopause doesn't revoke women's genders, either.
Trans women experience sexism just as much as cis women do, and often get an added dose of transphobia heaped on top. We can and do have the same range of tastes and preferences as cis women in fashion, behavior, hobbies, etc. There is absolutely nothing essential to womanhood that is the exclusive domain of cis women.
[–]ElementalFemme
I never see this phrase.
If you're seeing it "a lot" you're in the wrong spaces.
[–]HannahRachaelSavage
Trans women know more about what it means to be a woman. 
[–]-Antinomy-
What definition "works" depends on what you are trying to do. A scientist conducting a clinical trial might have a different definition of women for the purposes of that trail than a random person who wants to know how to address the women at the check out counter in the grocery store. Unless you believe in immutable souls, there is no single way to divine the sex OR gender of a person independent of culture. And we determine culture.
Put in the simplest possible terms: a women is who we say she is.
The world simply is not black and white. There is no definitive set of traits you could use that would include every women, including every women assigned female at birth or every trans women. Some cis women have XY chromosomes. Some trans women have high natural estrogen. A trans women IS comparable to being a tall women or whatever -- it's just defining the cultural concept "women" which includes a gradient of associations -- with a specific trait or fact.
I also need to correct an assumption you made: Physically, the average trans women who's taken estrogen for years IS the exact same as an average cis women on many terms. Specifically, they are the same on the terms that are most meaningful to our culture in defining women.
TL;DR
sex is a socially determined taxonomy of physical traits that we use to sort people at birth. Gender is the socially determined cultural traits we associate with people sorted into these sex categories. Neither sex nor gender is consistent in the traits we use to 'determine' it. A trans person is merely someone who's gender does not match what's on their birth certificate. It's that simple.
[–]TransSarahAstraIrene
Its just transphobia.
I'm a woman, i menstruate just like any other woman. Transphobes wouldnt be transphobes if they researched even a small fraction of what the word trans even means.
I'm pretty sure he's rot pocketed given how awkward and clumsy it looked. 
Don't let anyone ever tell you Asian trannies are better - they're just as gross as the Western ones 
) and top surgery (sometime in the future) can/ could make me feel. Also, I have long wondered whether I am bi or gay but my attraction to the leads and the characters has really forced me to reckon with my bi side (although I am still working out if that attraction to/hyperfixation on men is just due to me probably being transmasc myself and wanting to be them lol)!
I was also on a low dose of testosterone for a year a while back and I definitely miss how easy it made it to build muscle, which gave me so much more motivation to get to the gym. So I decided to schedule an appointment with an endocrinologist to talk about whether or not it makes sense to go back on (the reasons I went off it are no longer relevant). And building muscle isn’t the only reason but it was definitely something that occurred to me!
