"Does believing there are differences between trans and cis women’s experiences make you a TERF?"
‘Cis’ woman asks: “Does believing there are difference between trans and cis women’s experiences make you a TERF?”
Cis woman here, It kind of reminds me of the argument 10-30 years ago about cis men and women being different but it was used in a hateful way. I agree that the way we are raised and physically are different. Depending on how much testosterone or strength you have in your body physical things could be harder for a woman than for a man. I don’t think that is sexist though men always used it to really discriminate in other ways, but literally it was true. Anyway,
Recently IMO it seems like we have gone from one opposite to the other. It used to be that trans people were constantly hiding fearing for their lives being hated and treated like shit. Now it is a lot more laid back and open but I feel like now it’s heading towards the opposite where we are trying to be so inclusive that sometimes cis womens voices are being silenced and some people will scream TERF!!! If you say anything slightly out of the norm. I do not agree with people like JK Rowling who are being hateful but I do feel that some trans women have tried to say they have experienced the same discrimination cis women have in relation to misogyny not general hate.
When you present as a different gender you begin to experience many things that cis people would, but I just get frustrated when some people try to say they experienced lifelong misogyny or childhood things like being told you can’t do something because you’re a girl or things that girls experienced from childhood to years and years into womanhood. That is the only thing that truly offends me. We can bond over shared discrimination and things we experience in our present day lives but with the other thing I just don’t believe that you can claim it unless you were female presenting as a child or a cis woman. I’m curious to know your thoughts.
The real answer is that you're not a TERF as long as you draw zero conclusions from your observations and agree that any differences that exist don't matter. But if you draw any conclusions or think those differences ever matter, then you're a TERF.
But let’s see what the notoriously reasonable commenters on r/honesttransgender has to say.
i have spent half my life as a woman. the only male socialization i have left is that i believe men are friendlier than women if everyone knows you are trans. women are cliquey and exclusive, and use their shedding uterine lining as an excuse to always throw shade at my existence. even the "nice" ones are like "omg we like totally support you, gurrrrrl". men arent assholes in that sort of way. when men are assholes, they arent speaking to you in sarcastic riddles, they are just up front about their negative feelings toward you and move on; they dont waste your time and toy with you unless they want to fuck you.
We don't have to pretend all our experiences are the same, but we're all women, do you have a problem with that? Are you trying to argue that I can't say I'm a woman because I wasn't oppressed enough as child? I honestly never have seen a transsexual woman say that she was victim of mysoginy prior transition, so what are you talking about here? what are you offended about?
By itself it doesn't, because it's just a fact that trans women are going to experience things differently. Even if a trans woman passes as cis and is treated the same as any other woman in her day to day life, the fact remains that she was treated as a boy however briefly.
Where cis women start to become TERFs is when they do stuff like this:
- Acting like cis women are some collective who have all had the same experiences... and on that note, denying that some cis women may have had childhoods very similar to a trans woman's.
- Using differences to try to exclude trans women from womanhood.
- Trying to claim trans women don't experience misogyny.
- Using terms like "male socialization" to attack trans women's womanhood.
“lifelong misogyny”
Maybe not literally, but I spent my life with women and still saw plenty of it with my own eyes. Plus, 20 years or 2 years makes very little difference here, experience one misogyny you've experienced them all.
“being told you can’t do something because you’re a girl”
You mean like being told I can't wear dresses or makeup or watch Sailor Moon or go to gymnastics because I'm "not a girl?" Gee, I can't imagine what cis girls go through at all.
I responded to these two things to make one main point. Yes, experiences are different, just like a cis girl who grows up isolated in the woods with her ultra-country family will have a very different life than one who grows up in Brooklyn. None of these differences make someone not a woman, simple as.
Women don’t share any meaningful experiences as a sex class because four billion women don’t all have the “same exact ‘experiences’”:
Literally nobody thinks trans women and cis women have the same exact experiences. The problem arises when cis women make a point of bringing it up acting like they have same exact "experiences" as the 4 billion other cis women on this planet, lol.
Obviously trans women have a different experience than cis women. Of course it doesn't make you a TERF for remarking on that. But if you want to use those differences to exclude trans women from women's spaces...
… then you’re a TERF!
There being differences between cis and trans people of the same gender isn't the problem. Cis women explaining trans women's own histories to them, ignoring them when you're corrected, and then trying to say that those perceived differences justify keeping trans women out of women's spaces makes you transphobic, if not precisely a terf.
Yes, if only women knew what it was like to have someone else explain their own history to them and ignore them when they’re corrected…
Op trying to deny Trans Women‘s shared experiences of Misogyny really gives it away, that’s absolutely TERF rhetoric no matter how much they try to disguise it
These days I move from fear, to hate, to nausea, to disgust, to grief and back to fear seamlessly whenever the issue if trans ideology comes up. Honestly, I never in a million years imagined that girls and women's indoctrination into patriarchy could be so complete that most women simply cannot recognize their own erasure, not to mention the destruction of their children. It's surreal and terrifying to the point of contributing to PTSD in those of us who see all of this unfolding like an unending nightmare.
Weird how "trans women" are infinitely more oppressed despite having no notable differences in their experience