Ever since posting my conversation with Dianne last week, I’ve been thinking about the social disconnect between men and women. It’s like when you have two friends, both of whom are great, but for some reason, they just can’t get along. Every time one of them speaks, the other gets defensive or angry or misunderstands. And you know that if they’d just listen to each other, they’d discover that they have a lot in common.
Thank you Steve. Thank you for your wonderful writing and your thoughtful, nuanced and compassionate understanding of every difficult topic. You make all of us think about a deeper and more complex reality. And that is what we need right now.
Interesting that a woman suddenly living as a man perceives things about manhood that men raised as men were raised to be, or naturally are, indifferent to. Is it the view of an outsider looking in or a woman's view? A Dave Chappelle skit comes to mind.
Like you, I don't know what it feels like to be a man, it is just a natural state.
Before reading this I had not given much thought to the shock of the downside of manhood to a woman stepping into a man's world since the usual buzz is all about my privilege as a man. A white one at that.
Physical beauty brings highly prized power to woman, thus the extremes that transwomen go to to pass, and pass as physically sexually desirable. Transmen need something a bit different in their mojo bag. The ability, or at least the persona of being capable of being a formidable and dangerous force. This does come with some baggage that plastic surgery and makeup cannot fix.
But as I wrote, I, and I think most men, are indifferent to the things troubling to the new transman. I do find it fascinating that I don't see transmen going on and on about transphobia and "genocide." That comes from trans women. Ironically it makes people think they are hysterical, emotional, pussies, the most negative stereotype of women that needs to be jettisoned. And yet, they are biological men.
"Interesting that a woman suddenly living as a man perceives things about manhood that men raised as men were raised to be, or naturally are, indifferent to."
If the Manosphere and Incelsphere is anything to go by, men are not indifferent to these things at all. The internet has provided a platform where they can finally openly discuss (or complain) about it, or downright act out about it in sometimes less than beneficial ways.
You become what you think. I had to Google Manosphere and Incelsphere. Hopefully you don't go by the people in those cesspools. When I speak of men, I'm not thinking of fringe aberrations.
Googled the Noösphere. Sounds like people who go recharge their crystals in a pyramid in the vortex in Sedona. The woman who wrote that article couldn't understand that the female version of incels wasn't buying into her misfortune of beauty, Geezzz.
The internet is quite a curse that is doing a splendid job of fucking people's minds up. I'm glad I came of age before people started listening to internet "influencers."
I agree that the internet is often toxic. But, the silver lining might be that we are learning things about each other and ourselves that we have never before considered. Where this new knowledge and insight might lead one can only hope.
You've gotta be as sick of being labeled a Grand Penis Patriarchal Master of the Universe as I am ofbeing a White Supremacist Devil, both of us oozing with so much respective privilege and venom for females / black people they might have to call Roto Rooter.
The transman's experience, though, is exactly what is *good* about the transgender movement. Someone born female has now experienced life on t'other side and it's not what she expected. Transwomen on TED talks have described having to deal with things they never had to deal with before, like loss of male privilege and male sexual harassment.
This is why, for however critical I've been of the trans movement, I do see some potential good in it and learning what it's like for someone you're not.
I know we disagree on this, Steve, but it's why I think transracialism *can* be a force for good in the same vein. Walk in another's moccasins for a little while. Done with sincerity and respect for those who were born that way, I think it could work. There would be a lot less hostility to trans folk if TWs were more respectful of women's rights, especially the right to personal safety.
I wonder if transmen like the fellow above could help usher in better emotional connection for women, because his observations really are amazing.
“This is why, for however critical I've been of the trans movement, I do see some potential good in it and learning what it's like for someone you're not.”
This was my thought as I was reading the piece. I think we have trouble putting ourselves in others shoes, especially if we haven't experienced anything like what they are going through. Increasing empathy on this planet would be a good thing.
I always get a good laugh over these people who "transition" (leaving out pediatric issues for now) and discover unexpected yet easily foreseeable consequences.
The backlash against "trans" is growing fast and it's matter of time before some states pass laws against opposite-sex people in bathrooms.
No, you can't go into the men's bathroom because you look like a woman.
No, you can't go into the women's bathroom because you aren't a woman.
Go squat in the bushes and wipe with leaves and ponder that you should have thought of this before you made a choice you're stuck with.
The trans, mostly pertaining to trans-women may have doomed itself with overreach. When it went from sex and gender are different things to demand for gender expression to be treated as a person's sex in domains where sex is the issue was bound to get pushback.
Then came encouraging children to question their own gender, hiding it from parents and gender "denying" cross sex hormones, puberty blockers and surgery for minors which was certain to bring the wrath of parents.
A judge recently overturned Arizona's ban on males participating in female sports. The courts that generally support trans radical rulings are generally seen as from the Democrat Party which seems to have hitched it's wagon to trans. This could ultimately collapse the Democratic Party. Good riddance, it hasn't represented liberalism in years.
But then, in full disclosure, if I found a genie in a bottle my first wish would be for the abolition of all political parties with a mandatory gruesomely painful death for anyone suggesting their resurrection. The insistence upon lock-step adherence to a bunch of unrelated issues is a curse on reason leading to the destruction of society.
Once all differences are eliminated, the people that divide us on our differences will simply find new ones (differences) with which to divide us. Divisiveness is the problem, not differences. Case in point, if you disagree with the above, that is good for both of us if we keep engaging, not isolating.
"No, you can't go into the men's bathroom because you look like a woman.
No, you can't go into the women's bathroom because you aren't a woman."
If Blaire White walked into a men's bathroom that you were in washing your hands and you didn't know who it was, would you think they made a mistake or belonged there?
I don't know who that is, a man who looks like a woman?
In Bangkok, very beautiful transvestites use the men's room. I don't know if it has changed thru the years but the last time I was there you used the WC you were plumbed for. Men with skirts raised at urinals were a common sight since they didn't use the women's WC no matter how pretty they were.
Blaire White is a prominent Trump supporting trans Youtuber.
Are not the "lady boys" of Bangkok "working girls" so to speak? In that case it would make sense they would use the men's room since it might be a space to gain clientele. And I'm pretty sure the "trans" demographic in the USA is quite different socio-culturally from "lady boys". Transwomen in the USA want to pass as women and just lead regular lives. Lady boys of Bangkok are in business as lady boys.
And I'm pretty sure that many American women feel uncomfortable with a very masculine presenting person using women's bathrooms. Most of the bathroom convo centers around transwomen but what about transmen?
Thai kathoeys are not all prostitutes. They are the ones with visibility to foreigners but within Thai society they exist outside of the bars near the Khlong Toei district on Sukhumvit Road. The first one I got to know well told me he was saving up to get transition surgery. This was years ago. I considered him to just be a flaming gay exhibitionist. While he did prefer sex with men, he could have been "trans", I don't know. Trans was not yet a fad.
When you speak of degrees of comfort/discomfort with men and women in the wrong WC there is an obvious double standard, but the reason should be obvious. Perceived threat level.
Where's the double standard? I'm of the opinion that you should use the bathroom for which your presentation is most aligned. Blaire White should use the women's bathroom (despite being a biological male) and a masculine presenting transman should use the men's bathroom (despite being a biological female). This is why "passing" is so important to many transpeople.
Personally, I wouldn't care if men's rooms were unisex, but I am not the spokesman for all men. Would women use that if there was a women's WC? Some might, especially in airports where they suffer in long lines. I am not a woman so I cannot speak on their behalf and only know what they say. Most say that want women's spaces to be woman's spaces. As a general rule, the reasons for woman's spaces are about sex, rather than gender as something distinct from sex.
Passing? If they are truly passing it is a non-issue since nobody knows unless they step into a stall and urinate while standing, a giveaway sound.
Great read! I enjoyed Norah/Ned's misconception that straight women are looking for a woman but in a man's body and that women generally seek a stoic man. In my own "way back machine" as a single young man, young ladies soon realized I was verbal, both sharing and inquisitive to intimate feelings and expression. It was then that a few of them grew to appreciate the "strong and silent type" as they preferred to have a monopoly on intimate expression. It is possible for a woman to feel insecure about a man skilled at such things when their female prowess was previously assumed. Having a man in touch with his feelings and expressive, for a few, was not what they had fantasized! In the end, hopefully we all find what we want or need. :)
Of course! An obvious example of emotional labor differences is where a mother has "mommy brain" which wakes her up in the night to any noise while the father sleeps away. Whether or not you thought people need to wake that often or easily is not my point. That one person can rest knowing the other person has mommy brain is! For example, whenever our kids were young, and my wife went out of town, suddenly I developed mommy brain, and woke far more easily to little sounds. I no longer had the assurance that my wife would hear things 'go bump in the night'.
You see this labor difference in all kinds of places where there isn't even a gender role formally assigned. How many of us know someone who is typically cleaning the bathroom and their partner rarely does? If the rarely cleaning partner thinks the bathroom needs to be cleaned just a few days less often than their partner does, the bathroom will always get cleaned before the other thinks it is needed. They will rarely clean it!
Same thing with cleaning the car and filling up the gas. I swear the cars would always be filthy and running out of gas if I didn't care for them, and I am always the one to do it. Does my partner not care about the car? Of course she does. Since I care about it more, I am the only one that takes care of it, yet we never decided formally that those were our roles. Also, I obsessively tidy the house and especially the kitchen. I am not sure if this has encouraged my wife to do almost no tidying. I am sure she cares about it, but she does it less than ever. That is likely due to me obsessing over it.
When my bride and I were new to being married, we both had high-commitment jobs. She started expressing being stressed out about getting home in time to make dinner, juggling her job with her 'new responsibilities'. I asked her when I showed such an expectation, and she realized that was her image of marriage and not mine. I reminded here that we want to eat together but not if it is difficult. I reminded her that I had been taking care of myself for much, much longer than we had known each other, and that I had not forgotten how to do that nor how to take care of her. It took some days to fully let go of self-imposed expectations, but she soon allowed herself to feel free of expectation.
My examples are how labor gets exerted, even when the partner does not intend to place it on the other. If it can happen that simply, it can certainly happen for emotional labor, and it can certainly be explicitly expected.
By strange sort of conclusion, I question the partner-commitment of an otherwise intelligent/inquisitive person who is unable/unwilling to "do the emotional labour" to question the explicit, unstated, and self-imposed expectations with their partner. This does not mean they come to agree 100% on what is needed and who provides it, but it does not remain a mystery.
Yes, everyone's trying to connect. But the risks for women are much greater than they are for men, so they are not equivalent experiences. Male violence is a problem. We don't have a problem with female violence.
Biblically as well as biologically Women and Men are wired to react and response to situations and circumstances distinctively.
Furthermore, as is evidence-based, our dwelling environment and its social eco-systems definitely has a definitive impact on the various narratives we adopt based on our unique interactive experiences and exposure...
Thank you Steve. Thank you for your wonderful writing and your thoughtful, nuanced and compassionate understanding of every difficult topic. You make all of us think about a deeper and more complex reality. And that is what we need right now.
💯
I have no idea what the next to last sentence Skaldish wrote even means-- and I'm okay with that.
😄 Yeah, I reread that one a few times before giving up. "Frith"??
Interesting that a woman suddenly living as a man perceives things about manhood that men raised as men were raised to be, or naturally are, indifferent to. Is it the view of an outsider looking in or a woman's view? A Dave Chappelle skit comes to mind.
Like you, I don't know what it feels like to be a man, it is just a natural state.
Before reading this I had not given much thought to the shock of the downside of manhood to a woman stepping into a man's world since the usual buzz is all about my privilege as a man. A white one at that.
Physical beauty brings highly prized power to woman, thus the extremes that transwomen go to to pass, and pass as physically sexually desirable. Transmen need something a bit different in their mojo bag. The ability, or at least the persona of being capable of being a formidable and dangerous force. This does come with some baggage that plastic surgery and makeup cannot fix.
But as I wrote, I, and I think most men, are indifferent to the things troubling to the new transman. I do find it fascinating that I don't see transmen going on and on about transphobia and "genocide." That comes from trans women. Ironically it makes people think they are hysterical, emotional, pussies, the most negative stereotype of women that needs to be jettisoned. And yet, they are biological men.
"Physical beauty brings highly prized power to woman..."
Does it bring real power though? You might rethink that reading this;
https://thenoosphere.substack.com/p/this-is-how-ridiculously-great-life
"Interesting that a woman suddenly living as a man perceives things about manhood that men raised as men were raised to be, or naturally are, indifferent to."
If the Manosphere and Incelsphere is anything to go by, men are not indifferent to these things at all. The internet has provided a platform where they can finally openly discuss (or complain) about it, or downright act out about it in sometimes less than beneficial ways.
You become what you think. I had to Google Manosphere and Incelsphere. Hopefully you don't go by the people in those cesspools. When I speak of men, I'm not thinking of fringe aberrations.
Googled the Noösphere. Sounds like people who go recharge their crystals in a pyramid in the vortex in Sedona. The woman who wrote that article couldn't understand that the female version of incels wasn't buying into her misfortune of beauty, Geezzz.
The internet is quite a curse that is doing a splendid job of fucking people's minds up. I'm glad I came of age before people started listening to internet "influencers."
I agree that the internet is often toxic. But, the silver lining might be that we are learning things about each other and ourselves that we have never before considered. Where this new knowledge and insight might lead one can only hope.
You've gotta be as sick of being labeled a Grand Penis Patriarchal Master of the Universe as I am ofbeing a White Supremacist Devil, both of us oozing with so much respective privilege and venom for females / black people they might have to call Roto Rooter.
The transman's experience, though, is exactly what is *good* about the transgender movement. Someone born female has now experienced life on t'other side and it's not what she expected. Transwomen on TED talks have described having to deal with things they never had to deal with before, like loss of male privilege and male sexual harassment.
This is why, for however critical I've been of the trans movement, I do see some potential good in it and learning what it's like for someone you're not.
I know we disagree on this, Steve, but it's why I think transracialism *can* be a force for good in the same vein. Walk in another's moccasins for a little while. Done with sincerity and respect for those who were born that way, I think it could work. There would be a lot less hostility to trans folk if TWs were more respectful of women's rights, especially the right to personal safety.
I wonder if transmen like the fellow above could help usher in better emotional connection for women, because his observations really are amazing.
“This is why, for however critical I've been of the trans movement, I do see some potential good in it and learning what it's like for someone you're not.”
This was my thought as I was reading the piece. I think we have trouble putting ourselves in others shoes, especially if we haven't experienced anything like what they are going through. Increasing empathy on this planet would be a good thing.
I always get a good laugh over these people who "transition" (leaving out pediatric issues for now) and discover unexpected yet easily foreseeable consequences.
The backlash against "trans" is growing fast and it's matter of time before some states pass laws against opposite-sex people in bathrooms.
No, you can't go into the men's bathroom because you look like a woman.
No, you can't go into the women's bathroom because you aren't a woman.
Go squat in the bushes and wipe with leaves and ponder that you should have thought of this before you made a choice you're stuck with.
The trans, mostly pertaining to trans-women may have doomed itself with overreach. When it went from sex and gender are different things to demand for gender expression to be treated as a person's sex in domains where sex is the issue was bound to get pushback.
Then came encouraging children to question their own gender, hiding it from parents and gender "denying" cross sex hormones, puberty blockers and surgery for minors which was certain to bring the wrath of parents.
A judge recently overturned Arizona's ban on males participating in female sports. The courts that generally support trans radical rulings are generally seen as from the Democrat Party which seems to have hitched it's wagon to trans. This could ultimately collapse the Democratic Party. Good riddance, it hasn't represented liberalism in years.
But then, in full disclosure, if I found a genie in a bottle my first wish would be for the abolition of all political parties with a mandatory gruesomely painful death for anyone suggesting their resurrection. The insistence upon lock-step adherence to a bunch of unrelated issues is a curse on reason leading to the destruction of society.
I’d vote for everyone’s skin to be the same tone. I’ve wished it for some time. No more crazed sneetches on the beaches.
I understand the thought, but I'd prefer that people appreciate the wonderful variety.
Once all differences are eliminated, the people that divide us on our differences will simply find new ones (differences) with which to divide us. Divisiveness is the problem, not differences. Case in point, if you disagree with the above, that is good for both of us if we keep engaging, not isolating.
"No, you can't go into the men's bathroom because you look like a woman.
No, you can't go into the women's bathroom because you aren't a woman."
If Blaire White walked into a men's bathroom that you were in washing your hands and you didn't know who it was, would you think they made a mistake or belonged there?
I don't know who that is, a man who looks like a woman?
In Bangkok, very beautiful transvestites use the men's room. I don't know if it has changed thru the years but the last time I was there you used the WC you were plumbed for. Men with skirts raised at urinals were a common sight since they didn't use the women's WC no matter how pretty they were.
Blaire White is a prominent Trump supporting trans Youtuber.
Are not the "lady boys" of Bangkok "working girls" so to speak? In that case it would make sense they would use the men's room since it might be a space to gain clientele. And I'm pretty sure the "trans" demographic in the USA is quite different socio-culturally from "lady boys". Transwomen in the USA want to pass as women and just lead regular lives. Lady boys of Bangkok are in business as lady boys.
And I'm pretty sure that many American women feel uncomfortable with a very masculine presenting person using women's bathrooms. Most of the bathroom convo centers around transwomen but what about transmen?
Thai kathoeys are not all prostitutes. They are the ones with visibility to foreigners but within Thai society they exist outside of the bars near the Khlong Toei district on Sukhumvit Road. The first one I got to know well told me he was saving up to get transition surgery. This was years ago. I considered him to just be a flaming gay exhibitionist. While he did prefer sex with men, he could have been "trans", I don't know. Trans was not yet a fad.
When you speak of degrees of comfort/discomfort with men and women in the wrong WC there is an obvious double standard, but the reason should be obvious. Perceived threat level.
Where's the double standard? I'm of the opinion that you should use the bathroom for which your presentation is most aligned. Blaire White should use the women's bathroom (despite being a biological male) and a masculine presenting transman should use the men's bathroom (despite being a biological female). This is why "passing" is so important to many transpeople.
Personally, I wouldn't care if men's rooms were unisex, but I am not the spokesman for all men. Would women use that if there was a women's WC? Some might, especially in airports where they suffer in long lines. I am not a woman so I cannot speak on their behalf and only know what they say. Most say that want women's spaces to be woman's spaces. As a general rule, the reasons for woman's spaces are about sex, rather than gender as something distinct from sex.
Passing? If they are truly passing it is a non-issue since nobody knows unless they step into a stall and urinate while standing, a giveaway sound.
Who’s “they?”
I think that her book should be required reading for potential trans-men. A summary of her story. https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Entertainment/story?id=1526982
Great read! I enjoyed Norah/Ned's misconception that straight women are looking for a woman but in a man's body and that women generally seek a stoic man. In my own "way back machine" as a single young man, young ladies soon realized I was verbal, both sharing and inquisitive to intimate feelings and expression. It was then that a few of them grew to appreciate the "strong and silent type" as they preferred to have a monopoly on intimate expression. It is possible for a woman to feel insecure about a man skilled at such things when their female prowess was previously assumed. Having a man in touch with his feelings and expressive, for a few, was not what they had fantasized! In the end, hopefully we all find what we want or need. :)
On the reverse do you think a lot of men expect too much emotional labor from women?
Of course! An obvious example of emotional labor differences is where a mother has "mommy brain" which wakes her up in the night to any noise while the father sleeps away. Whether or not you thought people need to wake that often or easily is not my point. That one person can rest knowing the other person has mommy brain is! For example, whenever our kids were young, and my wife went out of town, suddenly I developed mommy brain, and woke far more easily to little sounds. I no longer had the assurance that my wife would hear things 'go bump in the night'.
You see this labor difference in all kinds of places where there isn't even a gender role formally assigned. How many of us know someone who is typically cleaning the bathroom and their partner rarely does? If the rarely cleaning partner thinks the bathroom needs to be cleaned just a few days less often than their partner does, the bathroom will always get cleaned before the other thinks it is needed. They will rarely clean it!
Same thing with cleaning the car and filling up the gas. I swear the cars would always be filthy and running out of gas if I didn't care for them, and I am always the one to do it. Does my partner not care about the car? Of course she does. Since I care about it more, I am the only one that takes care of it, yet we never decided formally that those were our roles. Also, I obsessively tidy the house and especially the kitchen. I am not sure if this has encouraged my wife to do almost no tidying. I am sure she cares about it, but she does it less than ever. That is likely due to me obsessing over it.
When my bride and I were new to being married, we both had high-commitment jobs. She started expressing being stressed out about getting home in time to make dinner, juggling her job with her 'new responsibilities'. I asked her when I showed such an expectation, and she realized that was her image of marriage and not mine. I reminded here that we want to eat together but not if it is difficult. I reminded her that I had been taking care of myself for much, much longer than we had known each other, and that I had not forgotten how to do that nor how to take care of her. It took some days to fully let go of self-imposed expectations, but she soon allowed herself to feel free of expectation.
My examples are how labor gets exerted, even when the partner does not intend to place it on the other. If it can happen that simply, it can certainly happen for emotional labor, and it can certainly be explicitly expected.
By strange sort of conclusion, I question the partner-commitment of an otherwise intelligent/inquisitive person who is unable/unwilling to "do the emotional labour" to question the explicit, unstated, and self-imposed expectations with their partner. This does not mean they come to agree 100% on what is needed and who provides it, but it does not remain a mystery.
Has anyone here heard of the "incel-to-trans-pipeline"?
https://www.piratewires.com/p/transmaxxing
Steve, what do you think of this latest trend? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq82OcloUNs
Yes, everyone's trying to connect. But the risks for women are much greater than they are for men, so they are not equivalent experiences. Male violence is a problem. We don't have a problem with female violence.
Biblically as well as biologically Women and Men are wired to react and response to situations and circumstances distinctively.
Furthermore, as is evidence-based, our dwelling environment and its social eco-systems definitely has a definitive impact on the various narratives we adopt based on our unique interactive experiences and exposure...