"Pornography is what it feels like when you think you have an object, but really the object has you. It is therefore a quintessential expression of femaleness." -- Andrea Long Chu
"Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is." -- Andrea Long Chu
"There is something about being treated like shit by men that feels like affirmation itself, like a cry of delight from the deepest cavern of my breast ... to be a victim of honest, undisguised sexism possesses an exhilarating vitality." -- Grace Lavery
"While I never really believed the cliché about women being good for one thing, I found that that sentiment kept creeping into my fantasies. I would imagine myself being sold into sex slavery and having strange men take advantage of me. It's called forced feminization, and it's not really about sex. It is about turning the humiliation you feel into pleasure, transforming the loss of male privilege into the best fuck ever." -- Julia Serano
To me they just sound like horny men parading their misogyny.
You certain that this is a good faith comment? Not trying to push a false narrative?
Do you agree with what was said in these quotations, and do you think that these three famous transwomen who said these things are actually women - or just pornsick, sexist men?
In trans circles, these guys are celebrated.
You've selected a short list composed by someone else of inflammatory quotations to use in a casual display of the spotlight fallacy, it's not at all compelling.
Hope you're not a white man, because boy do I have some inflammatory/trolly/silly/whatever remarks said by THOSE guys for ya! :)
The biggest thing that helped me understand women was when I changed my hormone dose and added progesterone two months ago. The subsequent few weeks were a roller coaster for me. I had a short temper, was irritable, and couldn’t control my emotional responses. My therapist said “you sound like a pregnant woman”. (I’m not saying it’s the same, just pointing out that this is something my therapist said.)
I have a partner who is non-binary but AFAB, has had two kids, and is going through perimenopause. They have strong monthly cycles, which have increased in intensity in the last two years due to perimenopause. We met this year so it’s all I’ve known.
Once a month they get really irritable, have a short fuse, and a harder time controlling their emotions. (I’m not putting this on them, they’ve been telling me about it as we have to plan our dates properly during this time.) Their emotional response to their period is more pronounced than anyone I’ve dated, probably because they’re in perimenopause.
I never fully understood the extent to which emotional regulation became difficult until I suddenly added progesterone to my body. Then I experienced a similar moodiness due to a change in hormones.
What I came to understand was how strong these changes can be in women. I now realize that for some women their period can be really intense, and they really can have a genuinely hard time with certain things. Exactly like I would if I was going through that.
So one thing I understand better is how hormonal fluctuations can change your body and your mind. When I first met my partner I didn’t understand the extent to which things would get difficult for them during their cycle. Then I started taking progesterone and I experienced strong emotional swings. It “clicked” for me how bad it can get for my partner.
The other thing is that women just make more sense to me, just in conversation. It’s hard to describe but things click more than they used to. You can never fully understand another person, but the point of conversation is to communicate complex ideas and mental states to others. I find that easier now than it was. Sorry that’s subjective but it’s funny actually it seems like women are more likely to believe someone’s subjective experience without interrogating it and demanding it get resolved to some factual kernel hah.
I have a partner who is non-binary but AFAB, has had two kids, and is going through perimenopause. They have strong monthly cycles
At first I thought you were saying that all three of them - mom and kids - have strong cycles. That makes sense, since it's known that women living in close company can synchronize their cycles, but your later discussion makes that sound really weird.
After a few re-reads, I realize that it's a pronoun problem. Your use of the plural pronoun made your comments rather more difficult for me to read.
It’s also helping me understand women more.
I disagree. I think you're understanding your own experience more, but then you've trying to fit that to what you see or hear about from women based on a lot of assumptions that probably aren't valid.
Since we have no direct access to the internal mental state of others (and scarcely that of ourselves sometimes!) we can never be sure that we're experiencing what others are. There's a millennia-old thought experiment about imaging how we each experience the color red. How can I know that what you experience when you see an apple or a fire engine is anything like what I experience? If we could stimulate the same neurons in the optic nerve or in the various brain structures, would we each understand the stimulus as "red"? And I think that modern observations of phenomenon like synesthesia suggest that our internal qualia really do differ a lot.
That leads me to believe that it's wrong to think that hormones have changed you to experiencing things "the way a woman would", and more strongly, I'm skeptical that there's any set of qualia that can be placed in a bucket as how a woman experiences the world - I think it's absolutely individual.
(this also, by the way, makes me question how anyone can believe that their internal experience more closely matches "being a man" or "being a woman")