What would it take to properly operate within a given sex-based subculture?

[Zero Day Defense]

Let me try to exemplify this question:

An FtM can't "become a man"-- more than biologically, they consistently do not attempt to take on most of what their surrounding culture considers "masculine". The temperament they had-- neurosis aside-- is never distinguishable from that of most other women, and this doesn't change during or after their "transition".

Suppose they actually tried, however, to "be a man". Suppose they truly sought to conform to the normative masculine tendencies of their society. Not as someone who happens to have some marked temperamental covalence with men (e.g. certain kinds of "tomboys" associate unusually well with men, only sometimes due to shared material interests), but as a remarkably earnest but still altogether deluded "invader" (along the lines of an MtF in the girls locker room who doesn't leer at the women-- please, suspend your disbelief for a moment).

It's a given that they still wouldn't be able to even substantially assimilate into the male subculture, principally because they weren't born a man and everyone would be able to tell. Their not being born as a man necessarily means that they're lacking in the kind of experience that a boy would have-- both internally by way of hormones, as well as interpersonally by way of others recognizing them as a boy on their way to becoming a man.

The particular question, therefore, is the following: what, exactly, does a woman incorrigibly lack when she's not born as a man but "wishes to be one"? To which lessons is she not exposed when she's doesn't have membership in men's subculture? If anything, what specific effects do her hormonal developments have on her thinking that render her mind essentially incompatible with said subculture?

I would also consider anything speaking in the "vicinity" of what I've described and asked as relevant.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Things that give away a female troon online/when I can't see the face:

1. Bitching about chronic illness or disability. Not only are women more likely by a ratio of 2:1 or greater to have most of these chronic pain illnesses- whether it's physical/autoimmune or psychological/malingering- they are far more likely to grouse about health problems than men. You could say that's due to men being taught to tough it out, or that it's because women are more sensitive to certain kinds of pain- there's truth in both those things. Either way they can't keep a lid on it and it's a dead giveaway. When's the last time you heard a 35 year old male talk about having "fibro"? Right, never.

2. Bitchy, passive-aggressive communication style. In one of the community watch troon threads there's a ftm who posts on reddit all the time about her surgeon and does this very distinctive female thing of wrapping a harsh derogatory comment in a bunch of superficial praise. "Oh Janet is the greatest I love her to death, she's absolutely the best gal. And you know this one time, she showed up smelling like literal walrus BO and she's just so sweet none of us wanted to say anything to her. I mean how do you end up smelling like walrus BO? Anyhow I know she is trying her best and you really should hang out with her some time."

3. When they try to "talk shop" it is filled with emotional, personal commentary. "Oh I LOVE this, I HATE this, this thing is GARBAGE this thing is AMAZING." This sounds subtle but if you now go look at one of those reddit troon surgery threads and see the way ftms talk about the "specs" of their procedures, it's a JoAnn Fabric Store vibe that's immediately obvious and reeks of the female relational style.

4. Smiley socially appeasing behavior. Even the most passive, effete man will do less in the way of attempting to curry favor and beg understanding from his audience.

5. Lack of quantification and visual-spatial "male brain" thinking. Everything is a long wordy wordfest. This is a biological difference between the sexes that is a generality, not 100%. But it still impresses me how consistently it shows up given how many female troons are autists and therefore ought to be more "male brain" than the average female.

The astonishing and fascinating thing to me is that obviously most of this is not biological (other than being more likely to get lupus.) It's socialization. But it runs so deep they aren't even aware what they are doing, at least not aware enough to slam the brakes and try communicating in a different style. And this is supposedly people with the "male brain" trapped in the female body.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

What would it take to properly operate within a given sex-based subculture?

>literally asking how to gay operate

Nicely done, Zero Day.

4. Smiley socially appeasing behavior. Even the most passive, effete man will do less in the way of attempting to curry favor and beg understanding from his audience.

This is a big one, yeah. It goes back to socialization as you said, but I think it even gets extra reinforced for a lot of the FtMs since much of the reason they're transitioning in the first place is just appeasing behavior and trying to define themselves congruently in some social context. (Compare with MtF troons, who are often depraved and hilariously anti-social.)

 

[Zero Day Defense]

5. Lack of quantification and visual-spatial "male brain" thinking. Everything is a long wordy wordfest.

Do you have an example for this? My presumption is that you mean to say that women tend to verbally, and generally cognitively, meander more than men.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Do you have an example for this? My presumption is that you mean to say that women tend to verbally, and generally cognitively, meander more than men.

They meander, yes, though anyone who has had a farmer grandpa can tell you men meander verbally in a particular way too. Mostly they aren't direct and precise. For instance from the "Seahorse dads" thread:



FTM: "Um like, could you maybe, if you can read this 3 page printed document with my preferences um try like to um call me him and dad?"

MTF: "ITS MAAM MOTHERFUCKER."

 

[Otterly]

It’s a good question - male and female behaviour is different and we all know it at a subconscious level. I think women are more fear and emotion driven than men, we fear that any aggression or complaint on our part will be met by violence. That may not be something women realise but it’s behind almost every appeasement behaviour; the rambling ‘it’s not you it’s me’ complaints, softening language etc.
Women use language differently - I was surprised people on here thought I was a bloke for ages, because it seems obvious to me that it was a woman writing.
Men expect stuff to be done for them. I just got a new hire at work who expects everyone to be running around him and he’s the most junior in the team. It’s amazing to watch him boss the other (female) new hire around and her polite but baffled attempts to negotiate it by being nice when he’s ordering her around (yes I stepped in and stopped him being an arse) but that’s something I see again and again at work. Men just expect to be good and to get ahead. They apply for jobs they aren’t qualified for, women agonise over if they fit every single point of the description.
Men approach things with lower emotional tone. A woman will bring a problem to a man and he goes straight to ‘fix it’ mode. Woman gets angry becasue HER first step is to express her emotions about the problem - the man going straight to fix it she sees as him not caring (I bet some of you have had arguments over this. If so, remember to stop for the emotion part of the process before fixing the problem.)
Even more interesting, women who present with man type behaviour are really treated negatively by society . They are seen as cold, bossy and uncaring. At work I see women treated negatively for things men are praised for. ‘She’s so aggressive’ for a bid defence when a man doing the same is assertive. I’m not talking about the ball breaker type personality, just normal things that men do and women are flamed for.
Men NEVER pass behaviourally as women. I can’t say if it works the other way around as I’m not a man but never, ever do you mistake male interaction for female.

 

[Heydrich]

Weird post. Let me guess, you're asking for a friend?

The particular question, therefore, is the following: what, exactly, does a woman incorrigibly lack when she's not born as a man but "wishes to be one"?

She lacks being a man. It's really not hard.

 

[Meat Target]

The particular question, therefore, is the following: what, exactly, does a woman incorrigibly lack when she's not born as a man but "wishes to be one"?

A Y chromosome.

 

[Dilligaff]

I discuss this with Mr. Dilligaff - FtM cannot banter and do not do the mutual insult thing very well. They often end up running off to cry somewhere. I have a couple of female friends who can do the banter/insult thing, but it's still not the same.

 

[Space_Dandy]

Men and women process experiences and ascribe importance to memories and concepts completely differently. Essentially, these are very different cognitive systems. You can 'feel' like you are a man socially or whatever, but you're actually having those thoughts about a system you can't fully understand, generated from within a decidedly un-masculine mind.

To make an analogy, this would be like if a small child felt too mature for their age and wanted to be identified as a 26 year old. They might observe adults and copy their behavior, and THINK they understand the reasoning behind it all. They may truly enjoy roleplaying as an adult that they forget they are roleplaying and legit would prefer that to acting their age. But still they lack the experiences to understand the why behind everything, they don't know why its important to act dignified and respectful in certain situations, etc. They can swap a crayon for a pen, and animal drawings for bank notes but they will still be using the mental processes more similar to coloring channeled differently.

Any situation where they must go into a situation with no pallet on how their preferred identity would behave, would see them making deviations from the real thing in some great or subtle way. Over time and in the longrun, it mounts into an intangible feeling that something is inauthentic about this person.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

Women use language differently - I was surprised people on here thought I was a bloke for ages, because it seems obvious to me that it was a woman writing.

I mean... how wouldn't it be obvious to you, as the one writing those posts?

Men expect stuff to be done for them.

What could you say about women, comparatively? I should say, I've never really seen this tendency outside the context of culture-granted seniority-- in which case I see it from men and women alike.

Men just expect to be good and to get ahead. They apply for jobs they aren’t qualified for

I don't see the latter statement as exemplifying the former. Particularly in the tech industry, there are job descriptions made to justify getting cheap H-1B labor when nobody meets their inflated standards (e.g. five years of experience with a language that's been out for two). That aside, applying for jobs you don't necessarily qualify for on paper is about about maximizing the chances of at least a callback.

In this context, if they do hire you, you're qualified in effect. If they have requirements you don't quite meet, that's on them to get you up to speed. I find it odd to agonize over meeting the written requirements versus the actual hiring decision, as if I get a say in whether I get a callback in the case I do meet the former.

Men approach things with lower emotional tone. A woman will bring a problem to a man and he goes straight to ‘fix it’ mode. Woman gets angry becasue HER first step is to express her emotions about the problem - the man going straight to fix it she sees as him not caring

I reckon the disconnect is that she sees "caring" as "emotional investment" and "emotional investment" as the presence of principally emotional cues (as opposed to any kind of investment), whereas he sees the fact that he's devoting time to trying to fix her problem at all as "emotional investment" ("of course I care, I'm spending time talking about this with you").

A thought occurs: is it that women tend to conceive of their problems as having a remarkably important emotional axis, i.e. what they feel about the issue is a not insignificant part of it? Would not clearly addressing how she feels while attempting to provide a solution be tantamount to throwing money at the problem with no other input?

I have a couple of female friends who can do the banter/insult thing, but it's still not the same.

Are there differences outside of their threshold to "cry in corner", in those cases?

 

[Otterly]

A thought occurs: is it that women tend to conceive of their problems as having a remarkably important emotional axis, i.e. what they feel about the issue is a not insignificant part of it? Would not clearly addressing how she feels while attempting to provide a solution be tantamount to throwing money at the problem with no other input?

Yes. But that’s a logical input to what is an emotional issue. Example. We had some work done by contractors a few years ago and they did it poorly. I was really quite upset about it becasue it was inside the house and it’s my home. So I went
- upset - cup of tea - fucks sake - call contractors, explain calmly what the issue is, arrange for them to come back and fix it - they do, it ended up really well done.
Mr. Otterly on the other hand would go straight to step 3. Same endpoint, but he doesn’t have that initial emotional framing. Almost all women do. I do, and I can’t eradicate it. It’s inbuilt. Women worry more.
This isn’t necessarily a negative - when a young kid goes to mum with a scraped knee the initial step is to soothe the child, then clean up the knee. If you skip step one, the child is still upset. But it’s a different framing of problems. A pairing of man/woman who work well together sees the best of both worlds for the day to day issues facing a family. Mr. Otterly compensates for my insanity and I for the things he’s less good at.
Funnily enough, I seem to operate more in male type mode at work where I have a rep for no politics, no daft stuff and just fixing problems. But at home, I always seem to do the emotional first step. I don’t mean in a hysterical way, but more ‘this is upsetting me, I need to fix it’ rather than ‘x broken, fix x.’
Women are more anxious and again this is partially adaptive. A cavewoman worrying about the baby is going to keep them close. One who is too chill is getting the baby swiped by a predator.
To note as well, it’s not that I feel my problems ARE important to anyone else emotionally. I don’t expect anyone else to give a shit. Some women do expect that and that’s where the more demanding personality types come in.
Men never pass as women. Very much older women who I know who do stuff like crofting and are capable of hard work and rebuilding farm machinery are in some ways more manly in behaviour but still, always the female filter. It’s remarkable how different the sexes are.

 

[Space_Dandy]

Men NEVER pass behaviourally as women. I can’t say if it works the other way around as I’m not a man but never, ever do you mistake male interaction for female.

I definitely agree with you, including about how men and women phrase things. When reading fiction, I can always tell when a female author is behind a male protagonist, because he always spends much more time being introspective on his feelings and reflects on everything that happens more than I would see if the author were a male. Similarly, a male author writing a female protagonist tends to portray her as much more action oriented and carefree.

In my experience, transsexuals both ways are generally far off behaviorally. FtM tend to have a gigantic chip on their shoulders, like they have something to prove. Very unpleasant, very unconvincing and transparent too. MtF tend to be far too aggressive and direct to be convincing as women. Its as if they want to be sexy edgelords and flaunt themselves carelessly.

I've been wanting to ask a woman, @Otterly, what is your insight into the reception of both kinds of transsexuals among women, especially straight women?

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

The particular question, therefore, is the following: what, exactly, does a woman incorrigibly lack when she's not born as a man but "wishes to be one"?

If I had to say it was a single thing above all others? Disdain for a love which contains no respect in it, my wife wishes me to be devoted to her emotional and logistical needs (her hobbies, her family) whereas I just need her to treat me nicely and honestly in her tone more than I could ever want anything materially from her other than children. Guys just don't need society, like the womenfolk do, women are tugged emotionally to poke other people with their feelings and empathically tie them down. She runs on my teasing and my attention more than I do for her, I just need the idea in my head that she likes me. She needs the bunting and the showmanship to reassure her that she's liked and that I understand uniquely who she is behind the public mask women wear.

Moreso, it is a woman's outstanding characteristic that she can do anything for the love of a man. But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man's prerogative. Women worry about their relationships and female romanticisms, Men worry after abstractions like honor and efficiency and male romanticisms. It is the balance that nature has put us into and we are completely unable to reinvent ourselves within a generation otherwise.

Women also emote more as a step in their thinking, the result might be the same, but pushing a man through that stage is vastly easier than a woman. If I had to define it, I would say that women want to emote socially at people to take in their feedback and formulate their response based on the socially acceptable answer? I don't know, my wife wants me to listen to her troubles and boo and cheer moreso than come up with solutions. Women are probably far more socially wiser as a result, although it differs greatly between women as to whether they are proficient at managing crowds or individuals.

Them chicks built different, that's how. Best I can say for sure.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

I definitely agree with you, including about how men and women phrase things. When reading fiction, I can always tell when a female author is behind a male protagonist, because he always spends much more time being introspective on his feelings and reflects on everything that happens more than I would see if the author were a male. Similarly, a male author writing a female protagonist tends to portray her as much more action oriented and carefree.

I'm very interested if you have more observations along this topic.

 

[Otterly]

what is your insight into the reception of both kinds of transsexuals among women, especially straight women?

FTMs are just kind of sad and MtFs are a threat to safety. That’s it in a nutshell.
Of course it’s more complex than that. When I first had kids I kind of assumed every other parent would walk over hot lava to protect them, but what I actually saw was that isn’t true. There’s a small but significant number who are abusive outright and even more who abuse in this kind of way - sacrificing their kids for social media uproots is the modern gift to moloch.
So some women see MtFs as an active threat and are open about it and others feel they’re a threat but can’t understand that - yet the appeasement behaviour IS one of the threat responses. Comply with the new string overlords and they may let you live, has shaped female behaviour for a long time and I don’t think appeasing Wokeness is any different. It’s ‘eat me last’
Women seem to fall into either loathing the loud MtFs or being the trans equivalent of fag hags. FTMs are no threat to women, physically or sexually and so they’re just kind of ignored. I do come from TERF island though so maybe I see more of the former.
It’s quite notable how much the recent crop have turned the opinion tide. Prior to all this the only trans MtF on TV was a character in Coronation Street (a long running and quite funny soap) who is very much sympathetic. People were ready to be accepting if they were like Hailey from Corrie, and instead we got ITS MAAM,

 

[Space_Dandy]

I'm very interested if you have more observations along this topic.

Sure, thanks for reading. I'll give you a positive example, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Its one of my all time favorite books, it really gets you into the mindset and emotional state of the characters. However, its pretty clear when reading it that the described, while beautiful and eloquent, is extremely unlikely to have originated from the mind of a man. @Otterly You may like this too.

Example:
"I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy... I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!”

 

[Ser Prize]

Sure, thanks for reading. I'll give you a positive example, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Its one of my all time favorite books, it really gets you into the mindset and emotional state of the characters. However, its pretty clear when reading it that the described, while beautiful and eloquent, is extremely unlikely to have originated from the mind of a man. @Otterly You may like this too.

Example:
"I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy... I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!”

While I agree with your assessment of male vs female headspace there is a somewhat likely possibility that Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was partially ghost written by her male lover.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

As an aside (more along what @Space_Dandy was highlighting), I found this tool that purports to be maybe >=60-70% accurate at predicting whether something was written by a man or a woman. I ran your excerpt through it, and while it doesn't have as much words as the script would want...



For kicks, I took one of @Otterly's posts (trimmed out the links) and got this as a result:


You got some splainin' to do.

I kid, I kid.

I'm unsure about how much this helps my inquiry, but I found it amusing and somewhat topical.

 

[Dilligaff]

Are there differences outside of their threshold to "cry in corner", in those cases?

I've been thinking about this, and maybe they've just had life experiences that have allowed/forced them to be able to give and take banter better than some of the rest of us ladies. Some of it could also be personality.

I have tried to do the insult thing with my male friends but they often think I'm being serious. I don't know if that's because I'm a woman or it's just me in particular or a combination. Could just depend on them individually too. People are so complex it's difficult to tease out anything absolute.

This is a fascinating thread, just sayin'.