Highly Personal View
I am totally fine and filled with respect about all trans women out there who claim “Trans women are women”. Girls, yes you are! For me, for people who love and support you, for all those people out there who matter, who have guts to accept, love, and support us. People with a brain with thoughts that don’t recognize limitations. I think that all of you, my sweet sisters had never forgotten who you are and from where you came from.
The following essay is my own, deeply personal view that is applicable to me. If you recognize yourself in my thought — You’re welcome! If you are not agree — then okay, stay safe and love yourself!
I saw an image of not well ‘passing’ trans person, with a black t-shirt and white letters on it screaming: “Trans women are men!” (Debbie Hayter). My first, primitive, protective mechanism’s reaction was -”Look at her/him/it, ugly from the inside, ugly from the outside! Full match!”. Then I realize that this person gives up herself or himself or whatever pronounce it uses, on the hatred! If you feel that you are a man who loves to cross-dress and not transitioning, why don’t you stay a “man”?! Why you put your internalized transphobia and inner issues on display at the expense of others? Talk for yourself and the people you represent : ‘Some trans women like us (deeply issued and internalized transphobes) are men!’. That would please Posie Parker!
Trans women are NOT MEN!!! No, one who opened his mind and accepted us, see us as men. No one who dares to know us sees us as men. People who can see/cope with our true identity don’t see us as men…because they have a brain and sight for it! There is nothing MANnish inside us (where it matters)! I can swallow that I am biologically limited to have male characteristics, accepted for ‘male biological sex’, but I won’t bow down to the idea of being minimized and narrowed to some physical traits, that I don’t have any relations with. If you accept that, don’t call yourself a “trans woman”.
Growing up transgender, without even know how to name my mismatch between birth-assigned sex and gender identity — I didn’t have a name, back there, closeted, stealing moments and pieces of femininity I thought that ‘woman’ was associated with words like ‘beautiful’, ‘mother’, ‘princess’, ‘ballerina’, ‘gracious’, ‘tender’, etc. but mostly ‘beautiful’ and ‘feminine’. I grow up thinking that the goal of every woman is to find a man to love her, to marry in a pretty white wedding dress, to have kids, to take care of her family, eventually to go to work (like my mom). I had really stereotypical thinking like most of the children.
In my teen years, I was secretly jealous of other cis girlfriends around me, of cis girls overall. Deep inside I wanted to be seen as the girl that I am, to be loved by a boy as the girl that I am. My mind screamed when a pretty boy sat around with his ‘annoying girlfriend” and hold hands or kissing: ‘Hey I can do that! I can even do it with more passion, love, and care then she could!”. But no! I didn’t have any intimate relationship until my 30+ years when I found a man who can see me, accept me, and love me as the trans woman that I am.
Trans women are ‘trans women’, basically!
Some of us, maybe a minority, who are brave in a different way, don’t care or don’t have a choice, dare to say that! I am one of them! I don’t want to offend or devalidate anyone! I don’t want to ‘pull back the movement’ (Like TERFs do with feminism). This is my own view and I will share how I reach it in the following paragraphs. We can’t escape it! It will always stay with us and the moment we embrace it, it will be easier to live with it. No, I don’t call for you to stop calling yourself ‘a woman’! No way! ‘Woman’ is a mostly socially constructed role, based on the limited functional biological characteristics.
But they will never accept us! ‘They’ are those people who absurdly imagine that we are threatening their own sex and gender (which is absurd), we erase and destroy their genital status and the world! Wow, a minor percent of ‘diverse’ people destroy the whole wide word!!! Epic science fiction!!! People with a narrow mind, people with low confidence, people who love to oppress, because they are scared from the unknown and other people’s fight for their rights and for themselves, people who love religion as an excuse to act like a jerk. The world is filled with real delusions and paranoia and we are totally on the receiving end of all of this! Sadly: Quantity had never equaled quality! We are surrounded by ignorant people, blessed to not know how ignorant they are.
Watching women, who live in synchrony with the stereotypes and norms, even enjoying them or fighting against them just to bring the same oppression in a different form, make me realize that I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to call myself ‘ real woman’, because this means to be put equal to hatemongers like Germaine Greer, to be put next to women who obey to absurd norms instead of making their own decisions, women who die to confirm somewhere. I like to belong somewhere, don’t get me wrong, but I am not dying or scarifying what is precious to me, people who are precious to me, just to fit in society or other sub-group, to look in a specific way and to act in a specific manner to fit and answer some absurd normative. I don’t want to lose myself and then searching for suitable victims to project my misery on them and build cheap confidence on their blood and tears.
This is what ‘a real woman’ started to mean for me. ‘A real woman’ equals ‘oppression’! All of the above. This is what forced me to embrace my ‘transness’, someone who desperately tries to cover absurd demands from society, as the men do. I started to have my own views about womanhood and femininity like: I want to be a mother, but I don’t want to put my child in the chains of the other people’s opinion — I want it to have its own opinion and way, even different than mine, to be better than me and not to repeat me. I want to be a wife, but I want to have equal rights in my home, not my husband to dictate me what I can and what I can’t do just to display his cheap toxic masculinity, instead, we both have a dialogue — constructive and meaningful, about everything. I want to be a woman of my own, and every cis and trans woman who share this view is welcomed to be one. I like the feminine look, but I am not liking and doing it because of some man or the society’s acceptance — I do it for myself! I feel great to deceive the enemy that I am beautiful and weak when I am working to be strong and smart. With my own opinion, with my own views (as much as it’s possible).
I am a trans woman. I will never be a woman enough for narrow people, for small people, who think that genitals define them as a person. We are not competing with anybody. We are far, far away from teaching someone how to be something. We are ourselves, our identity, our goals, and just want to live our lives in a fulfilled, completed, and positive way.
I am a woman enough to those who matter. That is what we need to remember in the end. Those who grow up intellectually to see and accept us for who we are, who are brave to accept us as who we are. Trans women are women! Women enough for people with big hearts, real confidence, and who knows their way. Despite that I said the I accept for myself that ‘trans women are trans women’ — I am keeping this in my mind. But I love when people call me ‘a woman’, just a woman, not ‘real’ (real — it’s subjective, it means different things for different people) woman. I embrace it as well and I love that most of my trans sisters out there have the bravery to claim it because it suits them perfectly!
Do you know what: Trans women are women! Co-category, differentiation, diversity under the umbrella label ‘Woman’, next to cis women.
