Where did they hide the adults?
Ah. The woman who says “living as a woman” = being a woman is not just some random akkteeveest, she’s a big wheel.
Green MP for Bristol Central. Co-leader of @TheGreenParty. Engineer.
Too be completely honest, I would expect an MP and co-leader of the Green Party to be more intellectually serious than someone who blithers about “living as a woman” being the same thing as being a woman.
You would never hear a woman saying she was “living as a woman.” It would sound odd; daft, even.
No, it’s only a man who has to explain(mansplain) that he is “living as a woman.”
To which the only reasonable response is, ORLY?
Mike, I believe that the technical expression is ‘transplain’, as in ‘here they go again, transplaining womanhood to women’.
Aha! Thus the (skewed and self-serving) ‘logic’ behind the push for self-ID.
1. The passing of the GRA and the existence of a GRC means that it has already been accepted that, in principle, a man can be treated legally as if he’s a woman. Facts (and the rights of women) be damned.
2. Given that there is no test except self-declaration for ‘gender dysphoria’, nor a strict definition, in practice any man can apply for a GRC by self-ID’ing as suffering from it.
3. The only requirements for applying are that the man must be going through, or proposing to go through, ‘transition’, which isn’t strictly defined; and that he must have spent two years ‘living as a woman’, which is also undefined.
4. Given that there is no one way even for an adult human female to ‘live as a woman’, it is unfair to expect any man to attempt it; he can’t find out what, if anything, he should be doing to fulfil the criteria, except the vague idea that he should be doing ‘what women do’. Given that there are few things which almost all women do, and one of those is to enter spaces segregated for females, why then – he must use female toilets and changing rooms!
5. Therefore, if he has to be allowed into female spaces on his own say-so even to apply for a GRC, why is he being expected to do anything else at all except declare that he’s a woman?
It’s faulty ‘logic’, and flies in the face of reality and the basic human rights of women, but far too many people have fallen for it.
O course, I should probably add that ‘living as a woman’ is simultaneously:
So simple and obvious that it doesn’t need defining, and far too complex for a response in the course of an interview on that very subject;
Nothing to do with stereotypes, and instantly recognisable as something every woman does;
Nothing to do with biology, and doing it turns a man into a ‘biological woman’;
Nothing to do with clothes, make-up or being clean-shaven, bigot, and if someone is wearing a dress and lippy, that makes him a woman even if he denies it.
tigger_the_wing, #3 and #4:
Spot-on.
@3 Helen Joyce has pointed out that in our modern Western culture there is literally nothing only women do while ‘living as women’, as distinct from living as people in general, except use single-sex spaces designated female, which is one reason why this is such an incredibly huge deal for these men – it’s the only way to demonstrate that they’re ‘living as women’.
Menstruation or childbirth are things that only women “do” while living. Is that what “living as a woman” means? /s
Being a woman is a necessary condition for menstruation and childbirth, but it is not a sufficient one. I think the point was that there is no action which we can expect to be performed by only and all women, except (in principle) those specifically reserved for them by society. (Obviously, males can use spaces meant for females, even if they’re not supposed to. We may circumvent this caveat by instead stating that only women permissibly use women-only spaces.)
Another thing to consider is that childbirth and menstruation and menopause cannot be regarded as mere particularities of the mind, which could be encompassed by the concept of gender identity; hence, they are of limited interest for men wishing to “live as women.” They’re not things that anyone can just choose to do to reflect one’s gender identity. They’re not just in the brain. (And, as you suggest, they’re probably not desirable to most men “living as women.”)