To learn feminine mannerisms
Mmmm.
No, chum, that’s not it. Spend your month off to learn being passed over for jobs and promotions, being ignored at meetings, being expected to make the coffee and keep the break room clean, being lectured and shouted at on social media, being a member of the sex seen as second, as an afterthought, as subordinate, as irrelevant, as stupid, as feeble, as scheming, as ball-breakers, as whores, as frigid bitches, as outsiders, as the enemy.
Woman is a costume. It’s rather difficult to see any other interpretation of that tweet.
When Robin is ignored, demeaned and harassed Robin will claim transphobia. There will be immediate remediation and Robin will gloat.
I’m not disagreeing with the criticism and the mockery, but my main reaction is sadness. Imagine deciding that you will be spending the rest of your life putting on a performance that you have to work so hard at — and being happy at the prospect. It speaks of a level of self-loathing that I can only pity.
The funny thing is though, that’s kind of what maturing as female felt like to me. It would be a performance, and it would take work. I was lucky in that the performance became less and less mandatory just as I was maturing so I did get to skip it, but it was looking grim for a while there. (I’m talking about clothes and shoes and haircuts and makeup as opposed to “feminine mannerisms,” which I’m not sure I gave much thought to.)
Screechy, I can’t be sad, because it appears this is one of those entitled males who somehow believes it is easier to get a job as a “girl” (no, that would be a woman, dude). I see that attitude constantly.
When I worked for the State of Oklahoma, there was a friend of mine who did not get a job that was available in the place where she was working as a temp; they told her there were no jobs available. Two days after she left, the man they hired in the non-existent job reported for work. Someone told me my friend didn’t score high enough; she wasn’t high enough on the register. She was fourth…the man they hired was, like, 11th, and scored several points less than she did. The state added 1 point to your score for being a woman; it added 10 points for Native Americans (and I think the same for other ethnic minorities). The man they hired had never lived as a Native American, never experienced the bigotry or oppression of a Native American, and had no more Native American ancestry than Elizabeth Warren (if as much). But they got him listed as a Native American so he could jump far enough on the register to pick him up…why? Because the top 10 on the register were all women, and there was no way they could reject all of them for cause. He jumped into third place once 10 points were added to his entitled male score…and he got hired. This place didn’t hire women (except as temps and interns, so they could look like they had a good balance).
So dude probably thinks, yeah, dress as a “girl” and I’ll get all the good jobs. 1 point added? Yeah, you still have to score in the top 10 to have a hope of being hired. 10 points added? You can jump over a lot of people. I don’t object when it is a genuine minority, but someone who has lived as a privileged white male his entire life using it is angry-making. And the main reason was to leap over better qualified women.
Now, if you really want to get a job, identify as a disabled vet. Those were immediately pushed to the top of the list as long as they passed the test, and you could not pass over them; they had to be hired before anyone else. But…just try identifying as a disabled vet, and see how far that gets you. No one will accept your self-ID.
OB: Yes, we all struggle with the extent to which we will conform to the roles (gender or otherwise) that society appears to want us to play. Women no doubt more so than men. Of course, feminism offers some help with relaxing those boundaries — which gets us back into the old conversation about how some people want to free people from their little gender-based boxes, while other people just want to move to the other box.
iknklast: I didn’t get the impression from this single tweet, but no doubt it’s a common enough misconception.
I thought transwomen always were ‘girls,’ and knew they were because their thoughts and behaviors didn’t fit into the male category. Why would they have to learn the sort of things which ought to come easily and naturally to them? I’m so confused.
Screechy, my reading of that line “After that I’m applying for jobs as a girl” was perhaps a bit ungenerous, but I do suspect that is part of what this is about. I mean, otherwise, that’s an odd formulation. Living as a girl, maybe, but applying for jobs as a girl seems…strange…in any other context.
I interpreted it as meaning “this will be the first time I’ve applied for a job while presenting as female,” as in she wants to be accepted as female and not constantly have to correct people. Basically “I want to pass successfully as female, or at least make it clear that I identify as such,” not in the sense of thinking there’s some separate file to which the Girl Job Applications go to.
But your comment was a fine point regardless of what this particular Tweeter meant.
This made me think of a scene in one of the X-Men movies, where Mystique is lifting weights while presenting as a “normal” woman, and Magneto tells her how much more effective she’d be if she didn’t spend so much energy trying to look normal.
“which gets us back into the old conversation about how some people want to free people from their little gender-based boxes, while other people just want to move to the other box.” I really, really like this. It just seems to me that the trans movement, or at least many (obviously not all) want to adhere to the most conservative presentation possible. How is that “progressive”. Look at Not-Bruce. Perfect hair, makeup, wig, “sexy” clothing. (And he is a hard core Trumpalo, I understand).