Early in her new memoir, “Cleavage,” Jennifer Finney Boylan describes a moment of reckoning in a changing room. A size 12 dress is too snug....The problem wasn’t that she’d gained almost 50 pounds in 25 years. “The crisis was that it mattered to me now, as a woman,” Boylan, 66, writes. “When I was a man (sic), I can say most definitively that it had not.”
Is that "(sic)" in the memoir or is the NYT inserting it? I'm going to guess, because of the use of parentheses instead of brackets, that it's in the memoir.
Did not looking good enough matter to Boylan because she was a woman — and that's female psychology — or because she was transgender — and had taken on the task of influencing others to perceive her as a woman? Is it about expressing what's inside you or getting the response you want from other people?
Why is there "the pressure to look a certain way"? Once you're 66, aren't you entitled to look the way you look? Is the obligation to pass as attractive a woman's lifelong preoccupation?
ADDED: Aging — and gaining weight — can be de-feminizing — for any woman, not just transgender women. And it can be de-masculinizing for men. You don't have to care if this happens to you. It's interesting to think about why you care, if you do, and how far you will go to re-feminize or re-masculinize yourself if you see yourself losing what you once had. Men give themselves crew cuts and grow beards. At least that's fast. Women devote hours to hair and makeup, and we wear fussy, uncomfortable clothes. The non-transgender people are also trying to pass, even though we are all free to give up.
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102 comments:
Please engage with the substance of this post. Don't say reflexive things about transgenderism that you've already said in other comments threads.
I think "pressure to look a certain way" is a part of what being a woman is. I certainly feel it and always have. This person chose womanhood, to the extent possible. Those of us who were born to it don't get to pick and choose, although I suppose we could try to feel less of some things and more of others.
Honestly, it feels like some kind of mental issue, wanting to bend the physical world to your own imagination but then failing, and being shocked and hurt or angry.
Also...FIVE memoirs? What a boring, self-absorbed person. I can't think of a single person who needs to write FIVE memoirs.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
One of the first adult transgendered (MTF) persons who I met sparked a whole lot of controversy by straddling the fence in public. When a man, he worked in information technology (IT). He then transitioned (while married to a biological woman) and struggled to find a job as a woman in IT. So, this person appeared as a man (with female breasts; perhaps bound) during the business week and as a woman when out of the office.
In speaking to young women about this experience, MANY MANY MANY bio women in the audience were highly critical. "If you are a woman that's okay, but you must accept 100% of what it means to be a woman. I can't escape who I am."
It's part of pretending to be a woman that beauty is foremost.
Remaining fit and non-obese is not really about aesthetics. It’s about foundational health. Five years ago, I was losing my ability to walk. 45 years of hunching over a computer and 50 extra pounds. I lost the 50 pounds thru diet and exercise, and I continue with my physical therapy. I’ve preserved my ability to walk. I had to end my relationship with my girlfriend, who became obese and was feeding my obesity with her eating and cooking habits. I could not remain around her and retain my ability to walk. If you want retain your ability to walk into old age, and avoid knee and hip replacements, remaining fit and trim is essential.
She keeps telling her story because she’s an attention whore and the books make some money.
These trans people degrade and debase real women. Real women rightly might think, “I’m not pretty enough. I need to go to a plastic surgeon and get redone.”
I’ve been single for over 20 years. I love all the women of the world.
Tossed-salad mental logic isn't high on the agenda of pretending to be a woman, to take an actual stereotype that isn't adopted.
"Also...FIVE memoirs? What a boring, self-absorbed person...."
I reacted that way too, at first, but I think it depends on what you do within the genre of memoir writing.
How many "memoirs" has David Sedaris written? But he's not self-absorbed. He comes right out and says he's not interesting, but he's interested in the people he intersects with and writes about them in a way that is not at all boring.
I think Boylan is an interesting writer, and she writes one book after another. Click on the tag for Boylan. I've blogged about her many times, mostly just because I ran into an article about something she's written or a column of hers and it met my standard of bloggability.
"why she keeps telling her story"
because THAT WAS THE POINT of dressing up as a girl; to seek attention
Well, I will say this as a man, I was pretty overweight when I spent so many hours a week in front of a workstation, and when I retired I lost about fifty pounds, and I never realized it before I did it, but when I was heavy, I was all but invisible to women who didn't know me, a fact that never registered until I found out what it was like not to be invisible to women. Even in the grocery store, I noticed women's eyes stayed on me longer after I lost the weight. I guess the lesson is that if you want to be attractive to strangers, you need to pay attention to how you look, and to accept society's standards to a larger degree. No number of "memoirs" or articles is going to change human nature.
This person is a man with mental health issues. Every thought and idea coming from him is suspect because of said mental heath issues.
Doesn’t it always come down to who are you trying to impress?
if noone noticed.. it would defeat the point; wouldn't it?
Transitioning can make a man look like a woman, but does it make him think like a woman, assuming that women think differently from men?
At the record company party
On their hands - a dead star
The sycophantic slags all say :
"I knew him first, and I knew him well"
Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package!
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra track (and a tacky badge)
https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/51318/
The truism "truth is stranger than fiction" is explained by reference to the fact that fiction has to be plausible, while truth has no such limitation.
There is something similar going on with transwomen--a woman can just be, she can worry about her femininity as much or as little as she wants, but a transwoman has to pass. And to pass, she has to be feminine. If she's not feminine, she's not fully trans.
Trans women are obsessed with beauty because their masculine features cannot be masked and they create a grotesque uncanny valley version of a real woman.
It's definitely "getting the response you want from other people". Nobody can say with a straight face the ceaseless endeavor to "pass" isn't about manipulating perceptions of others, it's inherent to the word itself.
Transitioning can make a man look like a woman, but does it make him think like a woman, assuming that women think differently from men?
There's the rub, isn't it? How can we know? Certainly trans people appear to believe that they are "thinking like" people of the sex they want to be, but they cannot know. I can't know, as a woman, whether I "think like" other women - that is, perceive myself as a woman in the same way that other women perceive themselves. I know assuredly that I don't share the thought processes of, say, my sister - she and I have shared childhood experiences but are very different people. But do we perceive ourselves similarly as women?
In the end, I don't think it matters, for a trans adult. If it makes you feel better to cross-dress (and sometimes that's the limit of transness - very few go the whole distance), go ahead and do it, even if your perception that you "think like" a woman is mistaken. Any number of times in my own life, I've put on an outfit that I thought looked good, and it made me feel confident and happy to wear it - only to see pictures later and wonder, "What was I thinking?"
One of the benefits of maturity for me has been that now I get a giggle (as my daughter says) out of those moments instead of feeling mortified.
Both men and women like to be noticed. But the big difference is that women want to be desired. Thus the billions spent on cosmetics, perfumes, and strategically revealing clothing. Because "you can't just notice me, you've got to want me" is coded into their DNA.
Is it about expressing what's inside you or getting the response you want from other people?
I think it is a third option of getting the response you want from yourself. I think for many trans folks they will feel like the opposite gender but only in part. It is a mix of man and woman. But one of those aspects that they feel, feels off, so they want to eliminate anything from their lives that brings to mind that one aspect of themself that feels off. This can be things in their control, like the clothes they wear, their hairstyle, whether they wear makeup or not, but also things that are harder for them to control or outside their control, like their voice, the shape of their body, the parts of their body, the language and manner people speak to them, or even the involuntary facial expressions people make when they talk to them. To me it seems like a very fragile and inherently unstable position to try and stake out. A trans person might just catch a hazy side-long reflection of themself in a storefront window they walk by but that might very strongly negatively affect them and they could feel badly for days or weeks, because their own internal image of themself they have been trying to build up over time gets broken down. It is why I hope that we develop better long-term treatment for trans folks other than transition, because while it may be the best option for some it is inherently a very bad treatment.
Exactly how is a man who pretends to be a woman able to think like a woman? Is such pretending all it takes to actually be a woman? If I pretend to be a woman does it mean that I will finally be able to understand my wife's reasoning process? Honest questions and not intended to be reflexive.
Trans women are obsessed with beauty because their masculine features cannot be masked and they create a grotesque uncanny valley version of a real woman.
This is the justification for transing boys before puberty (girls too, but once this current version of The Crucible passes into history, we should go back to seeing almost none of them). Since almost all of the boys who have gender dysphoria turn out to be gay men (and the girls may be lesbian but are more likely just socially awkward), it's a pernicious justification.
I'd rather society accept trans adults as they are - trans women who have Adam's apples and broad shoulders, trans men who are gracile and short - in the same way that we accept people who have other physical characteristics that set them apart from the norm, like people with dwarfism: we recognize that they're different but do our best not to mark the difference. But this would require trans people to accept, for themselves, that they are not in fact the sex they are trying to appear as, which at present is a nonstarter - the trans people who say, "No, I'm not an actual woman" are, what would you say, gender traitors? Something like that.
(What I'm saying is that I believe it's clear that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder, just as everyone thought until a few years ago, and one that - if it persists into adulthood - is terribly hard to treat. In my perfect world, those who treat it by essentially giving into it, transitioning to whatever degree, would already have tried every other avenue. We don't demean people who have lost limbs for not using prosthetics - we assume that they have a good reason for not doing so.)
Men spend their money looking to be desired, too. That’s not just a woman thing. Think gyms, cars, sneakers (!), clothing, hair treatments, etc.
How frustrating it must be to realize that after all you do to appear as a woman, people still see you as a man.
It is why I hope that we develop better long-term treatment for trans folks other than transition, because while it may be the best option for some it is inherently a very bad treatment.
The better treatment is psychological and fully understood. The better treatment is coming to terms with the natural world and learning the difference between ideas, function, practicality, and mental illness. This is the second recent attempt to expand transgender treatment. The early efforts ended very badly in the 1970s and 1980s, with many patients committing suicide or reverting to their biological sex.
Before the recent state mandates to cover transition medical treatment, the left believed in mental illness and they cricitized dysfunctional beliefs. In a huge switch, they aggressively crushed the grounded viewpoint (i.e., Jordan Peterson and clinical psychologists) circa 2016. This change can only be explained by lazy intellectualism and the corruption of profitable quack treatments.
I too don’t really understand the “pressure to look a certain way.” In my working years, my wardrobe was a function of what I liked, what I thought suited me, what was available at the time, and my budget. I went through many phases…some really bad and some great. My sister has always been a Birkenstock chick. But she has a flair for style when she wants. My other sister was the 4” heel and a bit of bling type. She can’t do the shoes anymore but she retains her own look. Three women. None of whom look “a certain way.”
We can only keep up our looks for so long, Old father time takes care of that. I think its best to accept it and not fight it with beards and excessive exercise. You're old guy, and there's little you can do about it. So put away that toupee and sell that little sports car.
The man who tries to hold on to his youth has always been a subject of comedy. Usually women are exempt, probably because it hits too close to home. And seems cruel rather than funny..
As someone upthread said, you need to focus on your health, not your looks.
I think for most trans people their ideal outcome would be to be able to pass so well that they go unnoticed. To be in stealth-mode as it were. To the extent they do have gendered interactions with other people they want those interactions to reinforce their own preferred gender which while it is preferred, it is internally very precariously held onto. I think trans folks want social interactions to buttress their preferred yet unstable gender identity.
Jaq, ref getting ignored in the supermarket: yes, but what if you made sure to signify wealth? Buy a whole prosciutto, or a jeroboam of bubbly, or half a wheel of some expensive cheese. Then tip the bagboy with a sawbuck.
I bet you’d get a lot of female attention then. They’d probably like the obesity too, since it would be a signifier that you couldnt bang them senseless for hours at a time.
JSM
I have family in Brazil and I travel there about 3-4 times a year. Brazil - among the Mecca's for cheap cosmetic surgery - is an epicenter of sexual reassignment surgery and thousands of other body-modifications for both men and women. Brazil is one of those few places where there are men most men couldn't detect, but even there that percentage is exceedingly small.
The more you investigate, the more "passing" looks remarkably like the white whale Moby Dick and transgenders look like Capt. Ahab.
I love the comment from the NYT author author about he 2-3-4-5 memoirs "lacking elbow room". I am not opposed to multiple memoirs over a lifetime but just have grown weary of Hillary going to that well all too often. I now assume I know of Boylan from previous Althouse columns; I have an overall positive response to her as I recall. I find this reference interesting because it is relevant to other discussions o what constitutes a "trans women" both from and about trans women. One opinion is that to be a trans woman you have to subscribe to a view of woman as hyper-feminized. No running out to the grocery store without make-up and nails fit for a Hollywood red carpet. Yet as woman grow older they tend to adjust from wherever they began on that spectrum.
"I think "pressure to look a certain way" is a part of what being a woman is."
I would be interested in knowing where that pressure comes from. I doubt it is from men, given her age. It could be from women (in the same way that cis-women feel pressure to look certain ways from other women or from women looking askance on trans-women), it could be from the trans community or the transvestite community, the latter of whom in particular seems overly concerned with appearing as an almost cartooney version of a beautiful woman. It could be entirely self-driven, as she interprets every interaction with others as being directly related to her trans status (and wonders why the transition didn't solve all of her problems). Most likely, it is some combination of all of this.
I think they're running out of options.
This sort of fits...
Hollwyood is so de-based - it's naked people and ugly men with lipstick.. crying over Kamala's loss. Sad tits.
Trans rights are kind of analogous to gay marriage. The gay marriage people wanted that one word term of art so that they automatically got the same rights and responsibilities as straight spouses. Kind of like how blacks wanted to be citizens, period. Anything short of that risks what the group perceives as Jim Crow. Hence the trans people want to be able to walk into any space marked for the gender they claim, even if it means waving dongs in the faces of preteen girls.
But even the gay spouses and the blacks acknowledged reductii ad absurdum. No gay parent is going to demand to give a transfusion to their kid until a blood test makes sure the non-related blood is compatible. They realize the legal and social status must sometimes bow to biology, And blacks still call out for reparations and affirmative action, or even just making sure drug tests include proportionate numbers of black bodies. Trans people just want to flip the big Igor switch and be done with it for all time.
JSM
Her FIFTH memoir? I assume all were written after the switch? (Five in 22 years....one every four years?) Or this person already found himself fascinating before the operation?
From what I've seen, it takes a lot of facial surgery to make a transgender look more like a woman than a man. The average man would make a very ugly faux woman if he didn't do that, because masculine features don't look attractive on a woman. The physiology is just too different.
"The more you investigate, the more "passing" looks remarkably like the white whale Moby Dick and transgenders look like Capt. Ahab."
I agree. I think most trans folks get into a mindset, that there is just one more thing they need to do then then they will pass and everything will be fine. all they need is just a little more voice training, or facial surgery, or fat injections, or some other procedure. But there is no light at the end of that tunnel.
Here’s my gun, Clyde, ref “masculine features dont look attractive on a woman:”
In counterargument, I submit any British actress or lady singer: Christine Perfect, Florence Welch, Kristin Scott Thomas, Olivia Williams, etc.
JSM
Vault Dweller, you are entitled to believe ANY fantasy YOU want to believe;
so you can think that if you want to.
On the Other Hand; i am NOT required to pretend that your fantasies are real..
i will continue to believe my eyes; and MOST trans people that *I* see demand being in my face
Exactly how is a man who pretends to be a woman able to think like a woman?
It shouldn’t be all that hard for a trannie. As Melvin Udall said reflecting on his skill writing women characters, “ I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.”
- Krumhorn
That's caused by the hormones that ramp up during puberty (testosterone). This is why the transition zealots want to use puberty blockers and perform surgeries before bodies mature into a standard shape with standard sexual characteristics.
The better treatment is coming to terms with the natural world and learning the difference between ideas, function, practicality, and mental illness.
This sounds like the hoped for outcome of a treatment rather than the treatment itself. Step 1 Be trans. Step 2 ????? Step 3 Come to terms with the natural world learning the difference between ideas, function, practicality, and mental illness.
Breezy, you're identifying the Beta, pre-gay, and flaming gay males. The alphas don't give a shit. And women instinctively sense the difference as to which ones they want to be desired by.
"But there is no light at the end of that tunnel."
The only light at the end of the tunnel is generated by a mirror. The closer one gets to that mirror, the more they look like the Bogdanoff twins.
"There’s this feeling that, if we’re not beautiful enough, we’re not really women." Well.... there's your problem. And 5 memoirs is either someone that has an enormous creative talent, or someone that has an insatiable need to be paid attention. But that's the whole issue for everybody else, in these cases: I'm not paying you attention, because I don't owe you anything. If you were really a woman, you would know how to age gracefully instead of obsessing on how to pretend to.
Like aging movie stars lol. By god if cis boomers aren't going to mourn their fading looks trans women will do it for them. What kind of weird dance are we in, anyway.
The real ones, though. Not the ones with testicles.
"Transitioning can make a man look like a woman, but does it make him think like a woman, assuming that women think differently from men?"
We're told that the person is transitioning because they believe they are already thinking like a woman.
What makes a person think that? No one knows exactly how any other person thinks and the idea that there's a male/female difference and you can know where you are in a continuum from male thinking to female thinking is just another one of those ideas that people have.
Some people don't want to get involved in thinking about that at all and would rather say everyone's an individual and who really ever knows?
But some people get involved in it, for whatever reason. And some people get involved in the way other people get involved in it — perhaps because it really affects them, as in women's sports, prisons, and maybe a few other things and maybe because they feel called to protect other people's children.
I remember the "unisex" craze of the 1960s. That seemed liberating and fun-loving. No makeup. Natural (and long) hair. And colorful casual clothes. That was when there was "a whole generation with a new explanation," "a strange vibration."
I saw a politically active trans person that I slightly know at the Tim Walz rally in Omaha. Big chest and a feminized face but she was wearing a skirt and her legs were obviously that of a man.
If I were a trans woman, I think this would be because I feel like I am a woman. That's how my inner self would feel to me. However, I would often (I think) be confident that while I definitely do not feel like a man, I wouldn't be sure whether I feel (and think) like a woman, or whether I feel like a woman, plus or minus a few factors. I wouldn't be sure if I feel and think 100% like a woman, or maybe just 98%. Then when I look in the mirror as I am aging and have a certain reaction, I would not 100% know for sure that I am feeling and thinking about what is looking back at me 100% like every other old lady, or just 98% of that.
You like to read her(him cause he's a guy). Is it like watching ,"Blue Velvet", waiting to see how much more bizarre and pervy it can get?
Because at what point do you look in the mirror and say, "Fuck it", and go out and buy a pair of cargo shorts?
Also, one of my lovely nieces when she was in college made a resolution one year to "make every day a try day". By this, she meant "make somewhat of an effort to look halfway put together or polished, or like you actually tried a little bit". I don't know what led her to do that. However, I can say that when I exit the house not having made today a try day, I feel like I am letting the team down, perhaps in the way that a trans woman might feel if they don't try to look pretty or polished. However, the team I feel like I am letting down is the tribe of women my age. I'm just sayin'. However strange that thought is, I have it.
Most trannies are butt-ugly when viewed as a woman. They’re better off keeping their peckers.
- Krumhorn
" I think most trans folks get into a mindset, that there is just one more thing they need to do then then they will pass and everything will be fine. all they need is just a little more voice training, or facial surgery, or fat injections, or some other procedure. But there is no light at the end of that tunnel."
This may be part of a much bigger problem with the human condition. Most people believe that if they only do X, it will make them happy. Get a new job, get a raise, buy a house, win the lottery ... But, though it usually gives you a bump in happiness, that rarely lasts. After a while, you're pretty much back where you started.
Lionel Page argues that "the pursuit of happiness" is evolution's trick to get us to not stagnate. Those who were content with their lot were at a disadvantage, outcompeted by those who kept trying to do better. They did do better and left more descendants, but those descendants (us!) were destined to never be comfortable in their own skin.
The Buddhists are right that desire causes unhappiness. But they are wrong that lack of desire makes for happiness. It only makes for anhedonia.
Tyranny of beauty only exists when one looks outward and compares, and worries about what others say. Perhaps it may be helpful to know or realize that many who "come out" and declare their freedom from all constraints or social norms are in fact very much not free because they care so deeply about what you and I and others think.
As a biological male of a certain age, I've been through several cycles of rather easily becoming larger then laboriously and tediously becoming at least somewhat smaller again. I'm doing so now with diet, exercise and Mounjaro, with over 100 pounds of fat ass gone and a lot more to go. So I've been through the "clothes of my size suddenly too snug" problem myself, and I protest that it is not a problem solely experienced by women, female or otherwise. My wife certainly objected to my embiggenment and also rejoices over my current emsmallenment. Trans women and females don't own fat ass social issues or life problems.
Ann said, ""Transitioning can make a man look like a woman, but does it make him think like a woman, assuming that women think differently from men?"
"We're told that the person is transitioning because they believe they are already thinking like a woman."
I remember when James Morris had surgery to live as Jan Morris in 1972. James was a popular travel writer and historian. This was during the Second Wave of feminism, and many feminists complained that she was now writing and acting in stereotypical "feminine" ways. They put this down to internalizing the patriarchy, but perhaps, with different hormones and body parts, she really was thinking differently.
I recently saw a current picture of my old high school sweetheart. We are in our late 70’s now.
My God, I look twenty years younger than her!
I do absolutely nothing to try to act or look younger. My goal is to age gracefully. I have good genes I guess. My father was often taken for someone much younger even in his 80’s
But I do think it’s much harder for women.
Teenage tomboys who are influenced by their friends are different from mature men who decide in their fifties that they are really women and always have been. There's a kind of "power trans" phenomenon in the grown men that isn't found in teenagers who are struggling with their gender identity. "Admiral" Levine and Colonel Pritzker look like examples of that phenomenon. Maybe Jennifer Boylan is as well. They want it all, including the new chassis. Unfortunately, becoming a woman rarely makes 50- or 60-year-old guys beautiful, however much they might want it.
Does he, as a simulated feminine gender, as a homosexual/bisexual, seek attention from the male sex?
Women are said to age 15 years faster than men, while men don't live as long. For what I understand, it follows from earlier female puberty and the biological need to reproduce relatively young (~15 to ~45). They are also affected by dramatic hormonal changes at puberty, monthly, and at menopause.
Kind of like how blacks wanted to be citizens, period.
As opposed to what? And why is that unreasonable?
"Buy a whole prosciutto, or a jeroboam of bubbly,"
I am not a player and have no interest, I am a hobbyist novelist, so I watch people, including the women at the supermarket, that being said, I offer this advice:
Never lead with your money.
Find a good barber, visit them often.
Wear good clothes, nice looking clothes, nice shoes, nice glasses, etc.
This works a lot better than trolling with dollars as bait.
Men as a group and women as a group tend to think and behave differently. You could put together a pair of bell curves and there would be some overlap, but even from early childhood, boys and girls think and behave differently. Liberal parents who have tried to raise their children gender neutral often found out that the gender-neutral toys would be use as pretend weapons by the boys and as dolls by the girls. Thousands of generations as hunter-gatherers cannot be erased from our collective DNA. Scratch away the patina of civilization and that's what lies beneath.
Agree. Started feeling fat and getting back pain fairly routinely from too much sitting while working, and just being lazy. Joined a gym for first time ever two months ago and began a workout routine with modified diet. Doing some lifting 3x week focused on squats, dead lifts, and lower body strength. Some cardio and even yoga as well. Eating/drinking more protein (more than I can eat, so supplement with whey power shakes), and less sugar, processed foods, and reduced alcohol. Little change in weight but no back pain for two months so far. Far past the point of wanting or needing to or caring about looking good, but feeling good is great and swapping fat for some muscle is a nice bonus. Thought I'd be self conscious at the gym, but it's not that way. Plenty of old farts there among the very fit young people. Maybe Mr Tranny Lady should join a gym and stick to a routine. It's pretty judgment free and even the fatties get respect for trying to make a change. 6 months of effort and I bet she's slipping into that Size 12 with ease.
Some like it fat, obese, even. Is it a sexual orientation or fetish? There is a binary juxtaposition in Nature, a state or process in liberal social kinks.
Planetgeo, seems you recognize two buckets of men. I think it’s more complicated than that.
Trans don't want to be bullied and they demand 100%+ acceptance - all while they bully us. It gets old.
Homosexuals have everything they have ever wanted - and they demand that we fall on our knees to the pride flag every moment of every day. It gets old.
I read a study some years ago by a psychologist who tried to raise her son gender neutral. At the age of three or four she put him in a room with both boy and girl toys and observed through a one way mirror. He immediately went for the guns and joyfully “killed” all of the other toys. His mother was appalled.
'Why is there "the pressure to look a certain way"?'
Because there is nothing else to being a trans woman. They're not women. They just want to look like one, enough so (ideally) that people will think they are, in fact, women, and as a result treat them like one. The reality that most men who go down this path face is that no matter what, they just look like a dude in a dress. So the rest of us don't reflexively treat them like women - at most, we play along with their delusions out of politeness. But the further they are from genuinely looking like a woman, the more difficult it is to maintain the charade.
Because we should all spend more time concentrating on ways to accomodate mental ill people by pretending that they are normal.
@Jersey Fled: Give a small log to a girl and the odds are that she'll turn in into a baby doll. Give the same log to a boy and he'll either turn it into a truck or a gun.
"He immediately went for the guns and joyfully “killed” all of the other toys. His mother was appalled."
Women are extremely threatened by the spatial-oriented, tool-obsessed aggressive male brain. Their primary social-pressure weapons do not work well upon it, and they have very little defense against it.
I've often wondered how much of our culture's overtly pro-feminine slant isn't a form of social engineering to minimize or outright eradicate this very male characteristic. What's amazing and contradictory is that the very boldness and aggressiveness so many women like the psychologist above would do away with is the same boldness/aggressive that make men attractive to heterosexual women in the first place.
I can't think of any heterosexual women that would find a physically or intellectually unthreatening man attractive. It's a dichotomy, for women almost exclusively.
The evolutionary angst of aesthetics is a human odyssey.
Are their eyes really on you because you're so gorgeous? Maybe they think you look funny.
I have a good friend - 68, short, round, with salt and pepper hair cut short and spiked. She always wears black. But…she accessorizes with great jewelry, shoes, bags. And always, but always with red or another bright lipstick. Her attitude is she’s just trying to add a little beauty to the world.
I had a friend who said he and his wife were going to raise their girl with gender neutral clothes, etc. I just looked at him and commented that “gender neutral” pretty much means “boy”. Let the kid decide. If she gravitates to sparkly tutus, let her. If she gravitates to overalls, let her.
Laz, where did I say it was unreasonable for blacks to want full citizenship?
And in fact I applauded them (actually ‘us’; I’m biracial) for the equally reasonable position that there still are differences between blacks and whites that should be taken into account in eg medical research.
I applauded gay spouses for much the same willingness to back off all/nothing positions when reasonable.
And then I castigated the militant trans for not being as reflective as black or gay activists.
JSM
Trust me, men have body issues as well. Part of the problem for most guys is that one of the most important physical traits is standing taller than 6 ft. The next thing required is a flat belly and plenty of veins visible in your arms. Our big brains evolved to control our physicality. If you don't work your machine and stay in shape when people look at you they will be either disgusted or will take pity on your disgusting fat body.
Jaq, ref grooming and decent clothes: Those kind of are signifiers of money. Certainly signifiers of enough money that you dont spend the whole day in work clothes rushing from one part time gig to another, before you take your end-of-day shower and collapse.
JSM
Isn't it odd that homo sapiens is the only species that engages in transgenderism? We must really be the crown of creation.
I first read the headline as "The tranny of Beauty"
Well I guess you have never gone spearfishing for sheepshead fish in SoCal. The sleek pretty females transition into hideously ugly males with a forehead that makes them look like the aircraft pregnant guppy and they have crooked teeth like a West Virginia hillbilly.
Yeah, if you dress working class, even on weekends and in the evening, get your glasses cheap at J.C. Penny, and your hair cut at Supercuts in five minutes flat, you are not going to stand out, that's for sure. But I still think that all of this black pill stuff on women in social media has gone too far.
"Did not looking good enough matter to Boylan because she was a woman — and that's female psychology — or because she was transgender — and had taken on the task of influencing others to perceive her as a woman? Is it about expressing what's inside you or getting the response you want from other people?"
I believe in both cases it is the latter. A biological male trying to appear as a beautiful biological female has a lot more vested in his labors than a natural biological woman does. It's only through the validation of others that he knows if he has been successfully transitioned. As a biological female, I certainly felt the pressure to look good when I was young. I have found old age to be liberating, however, because no one cares that I am not "hot" or cute or beautiful. When my hair went gray, people were much nicer to me, including complete strangers. I feel like I'm accepted as myself now and I love it.
It's so much easier being a guy.
Look in the hallway mirror.
Eh. Good enough.
The "Dating and Rating Complex" obviously isn't disrupted when someone changes side, just how they are judged. And these days, the game continues well into a woman's dotage, though a man can acquire and retain the material things he is judge upon as women still in competition with ever younger women face decline in beauty. The most public transwomen seem to put even more emphasis on looks and passing in their competition with women and other trans-women.
In the 1930s, a sociologist gave the competitive system a name: the dating and rating complex. His study of a college campus revealed that the system was based on notions of popularity. To be popular, men needed outward, material signs: an automobile, the right clothing, and money. Women's popularity depended on building and maintaining a reputation for popularity. They had to be seen with many popular men in the right places, indignantly turn down requests for dates made at the "last minute," which could be weeks in advance, and cultivate the impression that they were greatly in demand (4)
--From Front Porch to Back Seat: A History of the Date, Beth Bailey, 2004, Magazine of History, Vol. 18, No. 4
And I found it amusing that the much maligned corset was abandon not because women were freed from the patriarchy, but because men preferred the softer sides of a woman. And cosmetics came into the fore in female on female competition with male attention the points that determined the score.
The flappers wore thin dresses, short-sleeved and occasionally (in the evening) sleeveless; some of the wilder young things rolled their stockings below their knees, revealing to the shocked eyes of virtue a fleeting glance of shin-bones and knee-cap; and many of them were visibly using cosmetics. "The intoxication of rouge," earnestly explained Dorothy Speare in Dancers in the Dark, "is an insidious vintage known to more girls than mere man can ever believe." Useless for frantic parents to insist that no lady did such things; the answer was that the daughters of ladies were doing it, and even retouching their masterpieces in public. Some of them, furthermore, were abandoning their corsets. "The men won't dance with you if you wear a corset," they were quoted as saying.
--‘Only Yesterday An Informal History Of The Nineteen Twenties’, Frederick Lewis Allen (1931)
Pressed for an opinion, I'd say it was fetishistic response to be regarded as beautiful.
Is it no longer axiomatic that however beautiful a man pretending to be a women is, he is still a man pretending to be a woman?
Yes, (sic) is in the book.
It does seem that the male perverts who want to look like women are different from the male perverts who just want to have sex with other men. They want to be desirable as women, rather than as homosexual men. I suppose that's why they come up with all that crap about how normal men are supposed to want to "date" them.
You remember that scene in Emilia Pérez where the dancing doctors are naming of all the surgeries.
Boylan's had several of them, including the big 2.
I admire that level of commitment. I'd probably at least keep my penis in a jar of formaldehyde on the mantle, if only for the memories.
My view, admittedly somewhat tentative, is that the differences in brain anatomy are sufficiently extensive that it is impossible for a physically normal male to "think like a woman", and vice versa. Obviously, a man and a woman working on a crossword puzzle, or solving a quadratic equation, will come up with the same answer. But I'm not sure that means they have the same thoughts.
rhardin, does that lady philosopher you're so enamored of have anything to say about this? The one who tries to understand animals (ahem).
It's very possible, I suppose.
Interesting. I have always been an extremely independent person, and I have always felt "pressure" to be less independent; to behave a certain way. But I didn't experience that as related to my sex. I suppose maybe the unwelcome expectation that I would enjoy team sports was because I was a boy. I chose not to.
That is sequential hermaphroditism. It occurs naturally and has an evolutionary basis. Does any knowledgeable person claim that human transgenderism occurs naturally and has an evolutionary basis?
@Breezy: Throughout most cultures and across time, a man with money or power can find a willing female mate. Easily. He can be a bully and an ugly fat lump with acne scars, but with money or power many women will volunteer for mating.
Women may prefer a physically attractive (to them) man about their age, but still happily choose power and money. "Is he dating material or marriage material?" "You can fall in love with a rich one as easily as a poor one."
One undeniable fact of mating is that a man who chooses an older woman can have fewer or no children with her. If the man desires a family, she must be fertile. Youth and beauty are predictive of health and fertility, hence the thousands to millions of years of female preoccupation with attractive and youthful appearance. It's called "display behavior."
Some men get ahead on appearce, but it's not critical.
I blame Apple and Steve Jobs.
Back when I was in the phone biz, Nokia was renowned for the jewel-like qualities of their smartphones. I worked with a very fashionable Brazilian woman (formerly a commercial building construction manager, go figure) who often carried several Nokia phones around the office. She, and they set each other off.
On the male side, there was the phenomenon of "lekking", which comes from the showy displays of power and health in the animal kingdom. The term was used to label the behavior of a guy who sits at the bar, pulls out the latest flashy phone, and ostentatiously fiddles with it.
Now all phones look boring, every kid has one, and no one cares.
All Steve's fault.
A man presenting himself as a woman is still no spokeswoman for how biological woman feel about impact of aging upon their perception of their own beauty. He's has no legitimate context for opining on topic
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