Hi sisters,
I'm struggling with a thought I'd like your reaction to, and unsure how to express it.
It's no news that the female role and personality we are so attached to is not innate. It's a mid-20th century construct -- outgrowth of the 1920s, toughened in the Depression, flourishing in the 1950s and 60s, declining thereafter as women began to adopt wider roles and goals, but continuing on to this day in a diminished form.
I don't know where I'm going with this -- but it suggests there aren't a lot of "timeless realities" to our quest. Are we chasing a phantom?
~ I feel as if my mind just flew out the window.~
It's the difference between "female inner experience" and "male inner experience" I'm after. But the overlap between female and male is so much greater, it often blots out this difficult-to-pin-down kind of experience that is gender-specific. Or am I way off base?
Maybe that's why it's so hard to find traces of. In which case how are we to get at it?
Thoughts?
Love, Robyn Katie
Evoking Girlhood: Sources
Moderators: KimberlyS, CathyAnn
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CJ
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3562
- Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2003 11:12 pm
- Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Hi all,
Interesting post, Robyn.
Indeed, I'm not sure we can have our cake and eat it, too. Either we're looking to espouse the "phantom" that is the mid-20th century construct of womanhood or the "phantom" that could best represent the "timeless reality" that is womanhood, generally.
I'm thinking we'd be erring on both counts. There's no magical essence, here. Womanhood is simply the condition of being a woman. Girlhood (à propos this very thread) is simply the condition of being a girl. I don't care how much men profess to be female, the condition of womanhood is not accessible to them (nor is that of girlhood to boys). Not accessible, that is, if cold logic is our only guide. Emotions, sentiments, and feelings, however, are another matter altogether.
Maybe what you're looking for, Robyn, is impossible to pin down. If you're looking for accounts of what it FEELS like to be a girl or a woman, you may be on a wild goose chase. As it is the case for boys, you may find many accounts of what girls or women DO, but very few about how they feel about being girls or women. Same goes for men. In the purest literary "show, don't tell" tradition, you'll get a sense of how girls and women (or men and boys, for that matter) feel about themselves--as women, girls, men, and boys, respectively--by being a witness to how they behave and relate to their environment. This is true (perhaps especially true) in a fictional environment.
I'm against certain feminist tendencies toward some kind of essentialism. Essentialists will say that there is, in reality, a fundamental difference between men and women, aside from the obvious physiological ones. They're talking psychological predispositions, mostly. Show me incontrovertible proof that such predispositions have nothing to do with socialization (that is, with the building of social constructs), and I'll reconsider.
When a passably crossdressed Huck Finn, sitting at a desk, gets discovered as a boy just because of the way he presses his legs together in order to catch a falling pencil rather than spreading them apart in order to stretch his skirt and catch it (as he's told girls automatically do), well, that's pure hogwash. There are as many ways of catching a falling pencil as there are people on Earth (uh, I mean, as there are people on Earth who own a pencil). In other words, it's not a "girlhood thing" to catch a falling pencil by spreading your legs, any more than it's a "boyhood thing" to press your legs together in order to do same.
The only "hood" we can really get to know well is, of course, our own selfhood. Whether we do so as a woman or a girl or a boy or a man, is immaterial. It's funny, in a way; we, as male crossdressers, want to know (or believe we can know) what womanhood looks and feels like "from the inside," yet, by doing so, we evade the responsibility we have to get to know well who we truly are, as we are, i.e., as transgendered males for whom the feminine holds some appeal, from the fetishistic crossdresser (and that's all good) to the stealthiest transsexual (and that's all good, too).
Thus, what we really ought to be looking for is not accounts of girlhood or of womanhood, but of male transgenderhood. Stuff like Valory Gravois' Cherry Single, for instance (a novel about a crossdresser's coming of age). Even then, you'll get a sense of what it's like being a crossdresser, not because of anything the character feels (or says he feels) but, rather, by watching how he behaves in the world.
Again, Robyn, interesting post. Much food for thought, here.
Love,
CJ
Interesting post, Robyn.
Indeed, I'm not sure we can have our cake and eat it, too. Either we're looking to espouse the "phantom" that is the mid-20th century construct of womanhood or the "phantom" that could best represent the "timeless reality" that is womanhood, generally.
I'm thinking we'd be erring on both counts. There's no magical essence, here. Womanhood is simply the condition of being a woman. Girlhood (à propos this very thread) is simply the condition of being a girl. I don't care how much men profess to be female, the condition of womanhood is not accessible to them (nor is that of girlhood to boys). Not accessible, that is, if cold logic is our only guide. Emotions, sentiments, and feelings, however, are another matter altogether.
Maybe what you're looking for, Robyn, is impossible to pin down. If you're looking for accounts of what it FEELS like to be a girl or a woman, you may be on a wild goose chase. As it is the case for boys, you may find many accounts of what girls or women DO, but very few about how they feel about being girls or women. Same goes for men. In the purest literary "show, don't tell" tradition, you'll get a sense of how girls and women (or men and boys, for that matter) feel about themselves--as women, girls, men, and boys, respectively--by being a witness to how they behave and relate to their environment. This is true (perhaps especially true) in a fictional environment.
I'm against certain feminist tendencies toward some kind of essentialism. Essentialists will say that there is, in reality, a fundamental difference between men and women, aside from the obvious physiological ones. They're talking psychological predispositions, mostly. Show me incontrovertible proof that such predispositions have nothing to do with socialization (that is, with the building of social constructs), and I'll reconsider.
When a passably crossdressed Huck Finn, sitting at a desk, gets discovered as a boy just because of the way he presses his legs together in order to catch a falling pencil rather than spreading them apart in order to stretch his skirt and catch it (as he's told girls automatically do), well, that's pure hogwash. There are as many ways of catching a falling pencil as there are people on Earth (uh, I mean, as there are people on Earth who own a pencil). In other words, it's not a "girlhood thing" to catch a falling pencil by spreading your legs, any more than it's a "boyhood thing" to press your legs together in order to do same.
The only "hood" we can really get to know well is, of course, our own selfhood. Whether we do so as a woman or a girl or a boy or a man, is immaterial. It's funny, in a way; we, as male crossdressers, want to know (or believe we can know) what womanhood looks and feels like "from the inside," yet, by doing so, we evade the responsibility we have to get to know well who we truly are, as we are, i.e., as transgendered males for whom the feminine holds some appeal, from the fetishistic crossdresser (and that's all good) to the stealthiest transsexual (and that's all good, too).
Thus, what we really ought to be looking for is not accounts of girlhood or of womanhood, but of male transgenderhood. Stuff like Valory Gravois' Cherry Single, for instance (a novel about a crossdresser's coming of age). Even then, you'll get a sense of what it's like being a crossdresser, not because of anything the character feels (or says he feels) but, rather, by watching how he behaves in the world.
Again, Robyn, interesting post. Much food for thought, here.
Love,
CJ
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Robyn Katie
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Wow, CJ. As always your response is packed with things to think about.
I think you're right in holding out against "essentialism." I agree there can be no definable "essence of woman" any more than there's "essence of man." That's why I emphasized the overlap between the genders. As humans men have so much more in common with women than any distinction we could make! (And yet what a headbanging difference there is, even if ungraspable!)
In a way we're seeking to be ourselves -- but as feminine a version of ourselves (whatever we think femininity is) as we can intuit.
So our TG goal really comes down to achieving, not "true femininity" (that will o' the wisp), but whatever makes us feel most feminine. Inevitably those are things that, to a sensitized male imagination based on its own history, *seem* feminine -- male perceptions, having little to do with what a woman might feel.
You're right that my quest is to get under the skin somehow and learn how a woman feels. But no woman is going to be able to tell me that, any more than I can tell her (or anyone) "how a man feels being a man." It's the old Zen-and-quantum observation problem: the closer you scrutinize it, the more it isn't there.
The best guides I've seen to how girls and women feel about being girls and women are the three nonfiction books I cited at the beginning: Reviving Ophelia, Ophelia Speaks, and Promiscuities. All contain moving first-person accounts of adolescent girls being as expressive as they can about the gender adventure (and threat) they are going through.
Maybe the best equivalents for grown women are Nancy Friday's and Shere Hite's various books, featuring interviews with women.
But the accounts are situational. No one talks much about what girlishness or womanliness feels like, perhaps because it's a vanishment and an illusion, mere smoke and mirrors even for the personality experiencing it moment by moment.
As for fiction, I'm wary. Almost all of contemporary women's fiction is attitude. (Men's too, for that matter.) Publishers are on an attitude kick just as filmmakers are. The pretense of "realism" has practically eliminated reality in fiction. The chance of really conveying experience is thus even rarer than for, say, Madame Bovary -- observation, again, by a male, of course. It's like trying to establish the reality of ghosts!
Your suggestion we look for accounts of male transgenderhood is apt, but would be frustrating to me, for that's exactly what I want to transcend. Which is impossible, as any reasonably bright child could tell me.
We are left groping after our own intuitions of what nobody else can tell us about.
But then, some would argue that's a precise description of Life.
I would greatly value hearing from GGs on this. GGs, how do you envision the chances of saying what being a GG feels like? Possible? Impossible?
Meanwhile, CJ, thanks. I had hoped you would respond, and as usual you've done so thoughtfully and perceptively.
Love, Robyn Katie
I think you're right in holding out against "essentialism." I agree there can be no definable "essence of woman" any more than there's "essence of man." That's why I emphasized the overlap between the genders. As humans men have so much more in common with women than any distinction we could make! (And yet what a headbanging difference there is, even if ungraspable!)
In a way we're seeking to be ourselves -- but as feminine a version of ourselves (whatever we think femininity is) as we can intuit.
So our TG goal really comes down to achieving, not "true femininity" (that will o' the wisp), but whatever makes us feel most feminine. Inevitably those are things that, to a sensitized male imagination based on its own history, *seem* feminine -- male perceptions, having little to do with what a woman might feel.
You're right that my quest is to get under the skin somehow and learn how a woman feels. But no woman is going to be able to tell me that, any more than I can tell her (or anyone) "how a man feels being a man." It's the old Zen-and-quantum observation problem: the closer you scrutinize it, the more it isn't there.
The best guides I've seen to how girls and women feel about being girls and women are the three nonfiction books I cited at the beginning: Reviving Ophelia, Ophelia Speaks, and Promiscuities. All contain moving first-person accounts of adolescent girls being as expressive as they can about the gender adventure (and threat) they are going through.
Maybe the best equivalents for grown women are Nancy Friday's and Shere Hite's various books, featuring interviews with women.
But the accounts are situational. No one talks much about what girlishness or womanliness feels like, perhaps because it's a vanishment and an illusion, mere smoke and mirrors even for the personality experiencing it moment by moment.
As for fiction, I'm wary. Almost all of contemporary women's fiction is attitude. (Men's too, for that matter.) Publishers are on an attitude kick just as filmmakers are. The pretense of "realism" has practically eliminated reality in fiction. The chance of really conveying experience is thus even rarer than for, say, Madame Bovary -- observation, again, by a male, of course. It's like trying to establish the reality of ghosts!
Your suggestion we look for accounts of male transgenderhood is apt, but would be frustrating to me, for that's exactly what I want to transcend. Which is impossible, as any reasonably bright child could tell me.
We are left groping after our own intuitions of what nobody else can tell us about.
But then, some would argue that's a precise description of Life.
I would greatly value hearing from GGs on this. GGs, how do you envision the chances of saying what being a GG feels like? Possible? Impossible?
Meanwhile, CJ, thanks. I had hoped you would respond, and as usual you've done so thoughtfully and perceptively.
Love, Robyn Katie
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Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
On the other hand ...
Are (for example) a "girlygirl," a "tomboy," a "riot grrrl," an "old-fashioned" or "modern girl," an "I'm the kind of girl/woman who ..." or an "I'm not that kind of girl/woman" -- indeed any or all female self-categorizations -- merely indulging in figures of speech?
Or do they perceive a gender "grain" they're working with, or against?
Maybe the elusive thing that's not quite an essence can be gotten at by some such comparison. What is a woman doing when she struggles against the womanhood cliche -- or embraces it -- or chooses some aspects of it to identify with, others to reject?
Is that all just a matter of style and social conditioning? Or is there some core beneath that can be felt, experienced, accepted or denied by the individual?
For of course it all comes down to individuals, and each of us is different. So part of the difficulty in getting at an essence is to stop trying to generalize it across the gender, and look just at what girlhood/womanhood feels like for *one particular self.*
Different for each, of course, and some things in common too -- which is exactly what the Ophelia and Promiscuities books suggest.
Maybe there's a way forward from there.
Love, Robyn Katie
Are (for example) a "girlygirl," a "tomboy," a "riot grrrl," an "old-fashioned" or "modern girl," an "I'm the kind of girl/woman who ..." or an "I'm not that kind of girl/woman" -- indeed any or all female self-categorizations -- merely indulging in figures of speech?
Or do they perceive a gender "grain" they're working with, or against?
Maybe the elusive thing that's not quite an essence can be gotten at by some such comparison. What is a woman doing when she struggles against the womanhood cliche -- or embraces it -- or chooses some aspects of it to identify with, others to reject?
Is that all just a matter of style and social conditioning? Or is there some core beneath that can be felt, experienced, accepted or denied by the individual?
For of course it all comes down to individuals, and each of us is different. So part of the difficulty in getting at an essence is to stop trying to generalize it across the gender, and look just at what girlhood/womanhood feels like for *one particular self.*
Different for each, of course, and some things in common too -- which is exactly what the Ophelia and Promiscuities books suggest.
Maybe there's a way forward from there.
Love, Robyn Katie
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Anita
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- Location: Burlingame, CA (San Francisco Bay area)
Hi Robyn--
There may be a biological "essence" to being either male or female, and I suspect that there is, and it's shaped by hormones. I've watched many TG folks on both sides, born-male and born-female, go through striking inner changes just by ingesting hormones.
But I think what you're after is a quality that's shaped by socialization. We have a version of it that comes from growing up as boys. There are experiences that other men talk about that I just know--they're deep inside me, and whatever is being said resonates with me. It has to do with culture, and expectations about how boys are supposed to be in the world.
My feelings about sports, for instance, will always be more intense than probably 95% of women's feelings about them. Why? Because sports defined my world as a boy. As good an athlete that a woman might become, she is not judged by her athletic ability as a girl. On the contrary, she might be discouraged from displaying it. At best, her skill might be seen as "icing on the cake."
But for a boy in a small midwestern town, sports was the cake--to not be good at them was to be invisible. I didn't want to disappear, so I acted accordingly. And I enjoyed them, but I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Even if I hadn't enjoyed them, it was just something you did, if you wanted to "matter." No girl was ever judged in that same way, even if she was a tomboy and wanted to be judged for her skills.
To boy culture, she didn't exist. She would have to grow up and force her way into sports culture. Much like we had to grow up in order to cross our own version of gender lines.
So likewise, we're never going to know what it felt like for girls to be judged on their appearance all of their lives. I feel some version of it now, but it's never going to be as intense as what it was for them. It's in their bones, whereas for me, it's a scratch on my skin.
Bottom line: our experiences as boys and girls are very different, and it's difficult to explain to the other gender. But I do think there is a female cultural essense, and a male cultural essense. None of us conformed to every aspect of them, but all of us were aware of them, growing up. I know how boys are supposed to be act! And I also understand how boys feel, even down to the black-hole stuff that even boys don't like to talk about.
I may have broken cultural rules, but I had clear knowledge that I was doing so. And that 'supposed to act' knowledge is what shaped me. like it or not. Girls have their own version, and it's not easily accessible to us.
Maybe transgender women who live fulltime begin to understand it--but from talking to them, I know that they wrestle with this same issue.
This is more than a little cloudy, here. I hope there's some substance in there. Deborah Tannen's books on the differences between men and women's conversational styles is a step in this direction, though. [Carolyn has mentioned them in other posts; maybe some others have, too.]
There may be a biological "essence" to being either male or female, and I suspect that there is, and it's shaped by hormones. I've watched many TG folks on both sides, born-male and born-female, go through striking inner changes just by ingesting hormones.
But I think what you're after is a quality that's shaped by socialization. We have a version of it that comes from growing up as boys. There are experiences that other men talk about that I just know--they're deep inside me, and whatever is being said resonates with me. It has to do with culture, and expectations about how boys are supposed to be in the world.
My feelings about sports, for instance, will always be more intense than probably 95% of women's feelings about them. Why? Because sports defined my world as a boy. As good an athlete that a woman might become, she is not judged by her athletic ability as a girl. On the contrary, she might be discouraged from displaying it. At best, her skill might be seen as "icing on the cake."
But for a boy in a small midwestern town, sports was the cake--to not be good at them was to be invisible. I didn't want to disappear, so I acted accordingly. And I enjoyed them, but I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Even if I hadn't enjoyed them, it was just something you did, if you wanted to "matter." No girl was ever judged in that same way, even if she was a tomboy and wanted to be judged for her skills.
To boy culture, she didn't exist. She would have to grow up and force her way into sports culture. Much like we had to grow up in order to cross our own version of gender lines.
So likewise, we're never going to know what it felt like for girls to be judged on their appearance all of their lives. I feel some version of it now, but it's never going to be as intense as what it was for them. It's in their bones, whereas for me, it's a scratch on my skin.
Bottom line: our experiences as boys and girls are very different, and it's difficult to explain to the other gender. But I do think there is a female cultural essense, and a male cultural essense. None of us conformed to every aspect of them, but all of us were aware of them, growing up. I know how boys are supposed to be act! And I also understand how boys feel, even down to the black-hole stuff that even boys don't like to talk about.
I may have broken cultural rules, but I had clear knowledge that I was doing so. And that 'supposed to act' knowledge is what shaped me. like it or not. Girls have their own version, and it's not easily accessible to us.
Maybe transgender women who live fulltime begin to understand it--but from talking to them, I know that they wrestle with this same issue.
This is more than a little cloudy, here. I hope there's some substance in there. Deborah Tannen's books on the differences between men and women's conversational styles is a step in this direction, though. [Carolyn has mentioned them in other posts; maybe some others have, too.]
Last edited by Anita on Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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April Rose
- Miss Golden Goddess
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Elliott was amazingly liberated for a preachers Daughter.
She was definitely testing the waters of masculinity with Daniel Deronda. But I wonder if that book could have been written by a man? His Idealism, perhaps, would be in he male realm, but his empathy, constancy and sensitivity? This may be sexist, but I wonder if a male writer wouldn't feel that this was pie in sky, and shy away from it as unrealistic?
You do make a good point,though. Mirah who is rather the point of the story, is not as well developed.
On the other hand , his buddy the painter,feckless,comic and obsessive, could have been straight out of Kerouac.
Of comics I cannot comment. The only comics I've read as an adult were Zap comics from the late sixties. I used them for the designed purpose, which was reading them while stoned on marijuana. Consequently I don't remember that much About them. I do remember that there were lots of penises and women with big boobs and thick legs.
She was definitely testing the waters of masculinity with Daniel Deronda. But I wonder if that book could have been written by a man? His Idealism, perhaps, would be in he male realm, but his empathy, constancy and sensitivity? This may be sexist, but I wonder if a male writer wouldn't feel that this was pie in sky, and shy away from it as unrealistic?
You do make a good point,though. Mirah who is rather the point of the story, is not as well developed.
On the other hand , his buddy the painter,feckless,comic and obsessive, could have been straight out of Kerouac.
Of comics I cannot comment. The only comics I've read as an adult were Zap comics from the late sixties. I used them for the designed purpose, which was reading them while stoned on marijuana. Consequently I don't remember that much About them. I do remember that there were lots of penises and women with big boobs and thick legs.
I am a vessel of the Goddess. Let me express my calling to a feminine life through nurturing love and relatedness.
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April Rose
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Whoa! I missed a page. So much has happened since the post that Responded to. Robyn, I get sense that you are asking a question for which you will never find an intellectual answer. You are asking about the essence of being a woman and the essence of being a man. It's almost like asking what is the essence of mankind? or what is the essence of God?
They are all worthy questions, admirable questions. But, will they ever be answered? Well, not by me.
What I have is the here and now. I have my generation's accepted masculine behavior, and my generation's accepted feminine behavior. So, the question for me is "how do I liberate myself as a feminine man?"
As for "What to do about God?" haven't a clue. God's gonna have to take care of Herself.
They are all worthy questions, admirable questions. But, will they ever be answered? Well, not by me.
What I have is the here and now. I have my generation's accepted masculine behavior, and my generation's accepted feminine behavior. So, the question for me is "how do I liberate myself as a feminine man?"
As for "What to do about God?" haven't a clue. God's gonna have to take care of Herself.
I am a vessel of the Goddess. Let me express my calling to a feminine life through nurturing love and relatedness.
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Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
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- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Lots of excellent questions Robyn.
As to what is it like to be a woman (or a man) most of us can't really answer this because we've always been one gender. This is why I enjoy reading about the lives of trans sexuals so much. They bring a perspective to it most of us can only imagine. The perspective comes when they go about actually changing identities, how they present themselves, and even some of the biochemical stuff. Max Wolf for example wrote that his sense of vision seemed to become more 3 dimensional and that his emotional responses did seem to change.
As for what is the essential femaleness or maleness, gender is a social construct, yes. But it is also a social construct that every single society on Earth has, even though the form varies. To me that suggests there is something beneath all the social construct that is biological, although the human propensity for learned behavior is such that there are very few things I think can be absolutely ruled out as learned behavior. I think it perhaps has more to do with which behaviors, or ways of percieving things are learned.
There have been a number of discussions of this subject in various guises here over the years. Eventually they all start to go in circles, not that this is a bad thing. I think it points up a number of paradoxes about what we are discussing.
Absaroka
As to what is it like to be a woman (or a man) most of us can't really answer this because we've always been one gender. This is why I enjoy reading about the lives of trans sexuals so much. They bring a perspective to it most of us can only imagine. The perspective comes when they go about actually changing identities, how they present themselves, and even some of the biochemical stuff. Max Wolf for example wrote that his sense of vision seemed to become more 3 dimensional and that his emotional responses did seem to change.
As for what is the essential femaleness or maleness, gender is a social construct, yes. But it is also a social construct that every single society on Earth has, even though the form varies. To me that suggests there is something beneath all the social construct that is biological, although the human propensity for learned behavior is such that there are very few things I think can be absolutely ruled out as learned behavior. I think it perhaps has more to do with which behaviors, or ways of percieving things are learned.
There have been a number of discussions of this subject in various guises here over the years. Eventually they all start to go in circles, not that this is a bad thing. I think it points up a number of paradoxes about what we are discussing.
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
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Robyn Katie
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Hi sisters,
I am so impressed and delighted by your responses there's not much I can say except Yes. Still I want to try a quick response, knowing there's much more in what all of you have said than I can acknowledge.
Anita, your stunning post went right to the heart of it I think, with your examples of what males know in their bones and can't communicate to females even if they try their hardest.
(Also as you noted, on such matters there is an instinctive privacy and delicacy about those "black hole" aspects, so that if a member of the opposite sex asks, even with the best will in the world to answer, it's difficult not to close up and rebuff the question.)
You're also right that hormones and history intertwine to make such cross-gender knowledge impossible -- even, I suspect, to post-op TGs. (Maybe that was part of what pushed Renee Richards to repudiate her own transition -- that, deprived of a female life history, there just wasn't any *there* there for her?)
April Rose, it's not an intellectual answer I'm looking for, though of course it must sound that way, as I've talked about it. The answer I seek is one I can feel in my bones ... exactly what Anita so persuasively shows isn't possible. As you say, it's like asking about God -- pointless, yet the human spirit keeps trying.
Absaroka, I feel as you do that there is something beneath the social construct -- all that powerful biology underpinning a distinct psychology. We TGs and CDers depend on learned behavior, and some of us get very good at it. But maybe we will always be deprived of the sense of the core self beneath, because we are gender-fixed by our own histories since conception / birth.
Yes, I feel my pursuit of this elusive awareness turning circular. All I can say is, I keep trying. The quest is its own reward I guess.
As I guess a lot of us do, I sit quietly and imagine myself feeling female for a while. No more than a projection ... but barring hormones and a sex change, it's the path that opens before me. And I love to do it -- even though my enjoyment depends on forgetting that it's play-acting.
I'm sorry this is so complicated! A professor once told me that complex writing is a sign you don't understand what you're writing about, and that is certainly true here.
Love, Robyn Katie
I am so impressed and delighted by your responses there's not much I can say except Yes. Still I want to try a quick response, knowing there's much more in what all of you have said than I can acknowledge.
Anita, your stunning post went right to the heart of it I think, with your examples of what males know in their bones and can't communicate to females even if they try their hardest.
(Also as you noted, on such matters there is an instinctive privacy and delicacy about those "black hole" aspects, so that if a member of the opposite sex asks, even with the best will in the world to answer, it's difficult not to close up and rebuff the question.)
You're also right that hormones and history intertwine to make such cross-gender knowledge impossible -- even, I suspect, to post-op TGs. (Maybe that was part of what pushed Renee Richards to repudiate her own transition -- that, deprived of a female life history, there just wasn't any *there* there for her?)
April Rose, it's not an intellectual answer I'm looking for, though of course it must sound that way, as I've talked about it. The answer I seek is one I can feel in my bones ... exactly what Anita so persuasively shows isn't possible. As you say, it's like asking about God -- pointless, yet the human spirit keeps trying.
Absaroka, I feel as you do that there is something beneath the social construct -- all that powerful biology underpinning a distinct psychology. We TGs and CDers depend on learned behavior, and some of us get very good at it. But maybe we will always be deprived of the sense of the core self beneath, because we are gender-fixed by our own histories since conception / birth.
Yes, I feel my pursuit of this elusive awareness turning circular. All I can say is, I keep trying. The quest is its own reward I guess.
As I guess a lot of us do, I sit quietly and imagine myself feeling female for a while. No more than a projection ... but barring hormones and a sex change, it's the path that opens before me. And I love to do it -- even though my enjoyment depends on forgetting that it's play-acting.
I'm sorry this is so complicated! A professor once told me that complex writing is a sign you don't understand what you're writing about, and that is certainly true here.
Love, Robyn Katie
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CJ
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3562
- Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2003 11:12 pm
- Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Hi all,
My, my, this is becoming a thinker's thread.
Robyn Katie wrote (amongst other fascinating things): Maybe that was part of what pushed Renee Richards to repudiate her own transition -- that, deprived of a female life history, there just wasn't any *there* there for her?
Funny you should say this, Robyn; just yesterday afternoon I picked up a used book called She's Not There, by Jennifer Finney Boylan, a MtF transsexual. The subtitle is A Life In Two Genders. Looks promising.
I agree with you, Robyn; Anita's post went to the heart of the matter. Heh. Anita always finds a way to get to the meat of things using plain English, a skill I envy her. And Absaroka, too, is right; these are somewhat circular discussions. But that's quite all right; like you, Robyn, I find the quest to be its own reward.
Seems to me the notion of "embodiment" is often missing from discussions of transgender selfhoods. "Embodiment," of course, is the state of being embodied. Whether this notion of embodiment shows up in Queer Theory and Women's Studies (two disciplines that love to "write the body," i.e., to critically analyze the cultural notions "attached" to both traditional and transgressive bodies) or in neurophilosophy under the rubric of "embodied cognition," the notion has, I think, something to say about who we are.
There's a widespread belief out there, due in large part to inherited religious and philosophical traditions, that the body and the mind are two distinct entities. But this appears to me to be wrong; it's never been shown just how, exactly, these two entities--one material and the other immaterial--could possibly interact with each other. Yet, we come to see ourselves as a mind (or even a soul or spirit) somehow inhabiting a body, believing these former entities to be entirely separable from the body.
Inevitably, our mind is shaped by our embodied existence. A girl's mind develops into a woman's mind precisely because it does so within the context of a female embodiment. This very embodiment provides both socialization cues to those people in that body's environment (who will thus usually treat the "mind within it" as female) as well as a structure for the developing mind to exhibit its many facets, often based on that socialization.
I guess what I'm trying to suggest here is that we commit as much of a mistake when we think of ourselves as "a female mind in a male body" as we do when we think of ourselves as "a mind in a body," period. Perhaps there was no "there" there for Renée Richards because her mind was ever the same despite the drastic alterations done to her body. The only way it's possible for a man to become a woman (or vice versa) is socially. But this only says how others will henceforth perceive us; it says nothing about how we will henceforth perceive ourselves. Perhaps the hope, for some, in having surgery, is that, because the circumstances of their embodiment changes, so will the "flavour" of their mind. I seriously doubt this would be the case, though. A more realistic hope is that, with a different--ostensibly female--body (for someone born male), social relations will become coloured by the acknowledgment--late in coming--that a female mind "inhabits" this (new) body. But it may be too little too late for many; socialization (which, again, takes its cues from embodiment) is usually much more, uh, persuasive, in childhood, when the mind is more malleable. Learning does, after all, create a richer network of neuronal pathways in the brain, an organ that tends to resist change in adulthood.
So our TG goal really comes down to achieving, not "true femininity" (that will o' the wisp), but whatever makes us feel most feminine. Inevitably those are things that, to a sensitized male imagination based on its own history, *seem* feminine -- male perceptions, having little to do with what a woman might feel.
I totally agree with you here, Robyn. Especially given that "a sensitized male imagination" has its roots in a male embodiment, not a female one. Thus, being TG is, oddly enough, a form of pining after a history as well as after an embodiment that are both "other" than our own. Perhaps something can be done about the latter (to some extent) but the former cannot be changed, I think, despite the possible fabrication of intricate alternate autobiographies intended for public consumption. Then again, I know it's a salient feature of the human mind that when we stick to an untruth long enough and repeat it often enough, we start believing it to be true, so who knows?
May the quest continue.
Love,
CJ
My, my, this is becoming a thinker's thread.
Robyn Katie wrote (amongst other fascinating things): Maybe that was part of what pushed Renee Richards to repudiate her own transition -- that, deprived of a female life history, there just wasn't any *there* there for her?
Funny you should say this, Robyn; just yesterday afternoon I picked up a used book called She's Not There, by Jennifer Finney Boylan, a MtF transsexual. The subtitle is A Life In Two Genders. Looks promising.
I agree with you, Robyn; Anita's post went to the heart of the matter. Heh. Anita always finds a way to get to the meat of things using plain English, a skill I envy her. And Absaroka, too, is right; these are somewhat circular discussions. But that's quite all right; like you, Robyn, I find the quest to be its own reward.
Seems to me the notion of "embodiment" is often missing from discussions of transgender selfhoods. "Embodiment," of course, is the state of being embodied. Whether this notion of embodiment shows up in Queer Theory and Women's Studies (two disciplines that love to "write the body," i.e., to critically analyze the cultural notions "attached" to both traditional and transgressive bodies) or in neurophilosophy under the rubric of "embodied cognition," the notion has, I think, something to say about who we are.
There's a widespread belief out there, due in large part to inherited religious and philosophical traditions, that the body and the mind are two distinct entities. But this appears to me to be wrong; it's never been shown just how, exactly, these two entities--one material and the other immaterial--could possibly interact with each other. Yet, we come to see ourselves as a mind (or even a soul or spirit) somehow inhabiting a body, believing these former entities to be entirely separable from the body.
Inevitably, our mind is shaped by our embodied existence. A girl's mind develops into a woman's mind precisely because it does so within the context of a female embodiment. This very embodiment provides both socialization cues to those people in that body's environment (who will thus usually treat the "mind within it" as female) as well as a structure for the developing mind to exhibit its many facets, often based on that socialization.
I guess what I'm trying to suggest here is that we commit as much of a mistake when we think of ourselves as "a female mind in a male body" as we do when we think of ourselves as "a mind in a body," period. Perhaps there was no "there" there for Renée Richards because her mind was ever the same despite the drastic alterations done to her body. The only way it's possible for a man to become a woman (or vice versa) is socially. But this only says how others will henceforth perceive us; it says nothing about how we will henceforth perceive ourselves. Perhaps the hope, for some, in having surgery, is that, because the circumstances of their embodiment changes, so will the "flavour" of their mind. I seriously doubt this would be the case, though. A more realistic hope is that, with a different--ostensibly female--body (for someone born male), social relations will become coloured by the acknowledgment--late in coming--that a female mind "inhabits" this (new) body. But it may be too little too late for many; socialization (which, again, takes its cues from embodiment) is usually much more, uh, persuasive, in childhood, when the mind is more malleable. Learning does, after all, create a richer network of neuronal pathways in the brain, an organ that tends to resist change in adulthood.
So our TG goal really comes down to achieving, not "true femininity" (that will o' the wisp), but whatever makes us feel most feminine. Inevitably those are things that, to a sensitized male imagination based on its own history, *seem* feminine -- male perceptions, having little to do with what a woman might feel.
I totally agree with you here, Robyn. Especially given that "a sensitized male imagination" has its roots in a male embodiment, not a female one. Thus, being TG is, oddly enough, a form of pining after a history as well as after an embodiment that are both "other" than our own. Perhaps something can be done about the latter (to some extent) but the former cannot be changed, I think, despite the possible fabrication of intricate alternate autobiographies intended for public consumption. Then again, I know it's a salient feature of the human mind that when we stick to an untruth long enough and repeat it often enough, we start believing it to be true, so who knows?
May the quest continue.
Love,
CJ
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Erin L
- Miss Emerald Goddess
- Posts: 244
- Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2008 11:38 am
- Location: Queens, NY
Gosh, I've been away for a week, and look how the buds have bloomed!!
First, I've started Elizabeth Bowen's book, "The Death of the Heart". Just started it this morning, in fact, but I already love it. Wonderful prose! And I love how she sets the reader to expect Portia to be so difficult, until the point of view changes, and suddenly Portia is the reasonable one (don't know if this will continue).
Of the last several posts above, I only have time right now to say that just as there is no one "male" life, there is no one female one. Gender roles are not constant through time, across societies, or even socio-economic classes. I sometimes think that there are as many different ways to be a woman as there have been women.
I read somewhere once that the typical CD's view of women was a distortion of womanhood that most women now would eschew. This forum proves that view wrong. There are as many ways to be a CD as there are CDs.
Hope to stay longher next time!
Hugs,
Erin
First, I've started Elizabeth Bowen's book, "The Death of the Heart". Just started it this morning, in fact, but I already love it. Wonderful prose! And I love how she sets the reader to expect Portia to be so difficult, until the point of view changes, and suddenly Portia is the reasonable one (don't know if this will continue).
Of the last several posts above, I only have time right now to say that just as there is no one "male" life, there is no one female one. Gender roles are not constant through time, across societies, or even socio-economic classes. I sometimes think that there are as many different ways to be a woman as there have been women.
I read somewhere once that the typical CD's view of women was a distortion of womanhood that most women now would eschew. This forum proves that view wrong. There are as many ways to be a CD as there are CDs.
Hope to stay longher next time!
Hugs,
Erin
I'm not that kind of girl.
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Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Yes, isn't Elizabeth Bowen a knockout? Formidable, classy, a joy to read, and a touch scary. Because she is more penetrating than anyone, she also seems to pierce to a deeper reality few of us suspected was there. And she's so at home in it!
Erin, about your point that there are all those different ways to be a woman ...
It came over me a moment ago that what I am in search of is a way to be a woman *that will convince me.*
Talk about your impossible dreams! Seems I've set myself up to fall short, huh?
In a way it's a subset of the basic problem: how to be genuinely yourself so you'll be totally satisfied with the result -- impossible for most of us, given the human condition. With the addition that, for me, it must be a self I can accept as honestly female through and through. Corollary: no such self can ever be inwardly convincing, because I'll know better.
Yes, that's what I'm in quest of. I want to know my Robyn self from the inside so seamlessly that she/I will even fool me.
Ha! Call me a fool. Or just hypnotize me or something so I won't know the difference.
It was kind of a revelation to see it in such stark terms.
Your obedient servant, fresh out of answers but gamely grinning anyway,
Love, Robyn Katie
Erin, about your point that there are all those different ways to be a woman ...
It came over me a moment ago that what I am in search of is a way to be a woman *that will convince me.*
Talk about your impossible dreams! Seems I've set myself up to fall short, huh?
In a way it's a subset of the basic problem: how to be genuinely yourself so you'll be totally satisfied with the result -- impossible for most of us, given the human condition. With the addition that, for me, it must be a self I can accept as honestly female through and through. Corollary: no such self can ever be inwardly convincing, because I'll know better.
Yes, that's what I'm in quest of. I want to know my Robyn self from the inside so seamlessly that she/I will even fool me.
Ha! Call me a fool. Or just hypnotize me or something so I won't know the difference.
It was kind of a revelation to see it in such stark terms.
Your obedient servant, fresh out of answers but gamely grinning anyway,
Love, Robyn Katie
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Tania María López
- Miss Silver Goddess
- Posts: 43
- Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 7:58 am
- Location: Spain
- Contact:
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women. I love that book! I remenber I read it when I was 13 or 14 y/o and I was fascinated.
Esther y su mundo a comic by Purita Campos. It was also popular in the UK as Patty´s World: http://www.edicionesglenat.es/asp/serie ... =03&pPag=1
Esther y su mundo a comic by Purita Campos. It was also popular in the UK as Patty´s World: http://www.edicionesglenat.es/asp/serie ... =03&pPag=1
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Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Hi Tania Maria,
Esther y su mundo looks fascinating. Tried to see what's inside, but nfortunately my browser won't load the "ver paginas" link.
Googling Esther y su mundo gets lots of covers, but it would take a lot of research to find out which lead to inside pages. As for Patty's World, I come up with only one link.
Looks good though. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for chances to see more. Thanks for the suggestion!
Love, Robyn Katie
Esther y su mundo looks fascinating. Tried to see what's inside, but nfortunately my browser won't load the "ver paginas" link.
Googling Esther y su mundo gets lots of covers, but it would take a lot of research to find out which lead to inside pages. As for Patty's World, I come up with only one link.
Looks good though. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for chances to see more. Thanks for the suggestion!
Love, Robyn Katie
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Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Hi CJ,
The only way it's possible for a man to become a woman (or vice versa) is socially. But this only says how others will henceforth perceive us; it says nothing about how we will henceforth perceive ourselves.
[/quote]
Exactly.
So though perhaps we can get extremely good at kidding ourselves into feeling female, "a female self that will fool even me" is necessarily a phantom.
That makes me wonder what the variety of internal realizations of post-op TSs may be.
It's a trend that (like it or not) gender dysphoria is being IDd and treated younger and younger, so sex changes are taking place younger and younger -- and the younger, the more successful. So not just in socialization terms, but hormonally as well, the life experience of the new woman is fixed as feminine (or anyway female in a biological sense) much earlier.
Since the previous life of a young post-op TS is likely to have been strongly gender-dysphoric, then perhaps for a sex-changed youngster, girlhood can still happen. The older, though, the less likely -- or so the results imply.
But by and large we're not TSs, but non-op TGs. So for us, can femininity be more than skin-deep? I'd say only to the degree that we can condition ourselves into thinking and feeling it. Short answer: not really.
Chilly conclusion, but telling ourselves the truth is probably best.
We're always left with one huge resource, though: the human imagination. And, considering that it's powerful enough to create stigmata ...
Love, Robyn Katie
The only way it's possible for a man to become a woman (or vice versa) is socially. But this only says how others will henceforth perceive us; it says nothing about how we will henceforth perceive ourselves.
[/quote]
Exactly.
So though perhaps we can get extremely good at kidding ourselves into feeling female, "a female self that will fool even me" is necessarily a phantom.
That makes me wonder what the variety of internal realizations of post-op TSs may be.
It's a trend that (like it or not) gender dysphoria is being IDd and treated younger and younger, so sex changes are taking place younger and younger -- and the younger, the more successful. So not just in socialization terms, but hormonally as well, the life experience of the new woman is fixed as feminine (or anyway female in a biological sense) much earlier.
Since the previous life of a young post-op TS is likely to have been strongly gender-dysphoric, then perhaps for a sex-changed youngster, girlhood can still happen. The older, though, the less likely -- or so the results imply.
But by and large we're not TSs, but non-op TGs. So for us, can femininity be more than skin-deep? I'd say only to the degree that we can condition ourselves into thinking and feeling it. Short answer: not really.
Chilly conclusion, but telling ourselves the truth is probably best.
We're always left with one huge resource, though: the human imagination. And, considering that it's powerful enough to create stigmata ...
Love, Robyn Katie