‘Welcome to Womanhood’
“Welcome to womanhood”
The first time I heard this phrase, I was elated – I’d made it! I was a woman! And that phrase seemed particularly important to me as a male to female transgender person, as it was a validation of my identity.
The second, third and fourth time I heard it, I suppose it was still very flattering. The 20th and 30th times, perhaps not so much. By the time I’d heard “Welcome to womanhood” several dozen times, it was starting to wear a bit fucking thin.
I mean how many damn times can I become a woman? Rather that validating my womanhood, it was starting to INVALIDATE my femininity and all my prior experiences.
The hard part is that I know people mean well when they say this to me. It’s supposed to be complimentary – and frankly, it would be rude to spit in their face and tell them to shut the fuck up. So part of my purpose in writing this is to educate the people reading it: please stop saying this to trans women (and trans men – “Welcome to manhood”).
Here’s the thing; I don’t actually need to be told this. For me, my ‘womanhood’ started for me the day I decided to transition. It didn’t start when I fell over in heels and a girlfriend said “Oh, that happens to us all, welcome to womanhood.” Nor did it start when I rubbed an eye and got eyeshadow all over my face and someone exclaimed “Welcome to womanhood!” It didn’t start when I got mood swings from hormones, breast pain, a ripped stocking, lipstick on my teeth, stretch marks, my first bra or blood coming out of my vagina.
The only person who gets to decide that I’m a woman is ME.
It galls me somewhat that cis women only need to bleed to be considered women, to be “welcomed to womanhood”. Hell, if we’re to be completely honest here, they only need to be born to be “welcomed to womanhood”.
It’s just another one of the many othering and invalidating behaviours that cis women push onto trans women – arbitrating our femininity.
So instead of trying to make a trans woman feel accepted and validated by welcoming her to womanhood, or saying “you’re nothing but a woman to me”, instead simply treat her as you would treat all your cis friends.
Because that’s the most validating thing you could possibly do.
While I’ve received this a few times, it’s always been in the ironic sense, while we bitch about misogyny.
Mym
20 Mar 11 at 2:46 pm
Very well said. Co-signed on all of this.
I also want to add that while I don’t often comment on posts, it’s because I am listening, reading and absorbing what’s being shared here. And just want to thank you all for helping me learn how to better stand tall with my trans brothers and sisters.
Neo-Prodigy
20 Mar 11 at 3:24 pm
I generally struggle with the issue of whether or not it is appropriate in given situation to spit in face and scream fuck you, because I find myself wanting to do that a lot
bren
20 Mar 11 at 7:16 pm
sounds like ‘CONGRATS FOR PERFORMING TO AN ARBITRARY STEREOTYPE OF FEMALENESS THAT IS MASSIVELY OFFENSIVE IN ANY CONTEXT, DOUBLY SO WHEN ACTING LIKE IT’S A COMPLIMENT TO THE TARGET OF ONE’S STUPID SEXISM.’ :////
Thene
20 Mar 11 at 8:29 pm
Those welcomes are a backhanded compliment if there ever was one. Besides, I personally consider I was born a girl and grew into a woman – it’s the most sensible explanation I can think of for my experiences – there’s no welcoming needed. What’s more important, I definitely don’t recognise the power differential implied – as if some or other woman was the arbiter of womanhood anyway. This isn’t limited to just cis women, by the way, I’ve had trans women do this, too, especially to people who’ve just had their vaginoplasties.
Carto
21 Mar 11 at 12:06 am
By the time I’d heard “Welcome to womanhood” several dozen times, it was starting to wear a bit fucking thin.
Not trying to equate transphobia and racism, but this seems very similar to how I react to White people telling me, “You speak so well!”
I generally struggle with the issue of whether or not it is appropriate in given situation to spit in face and scream fuck you, because I find myself wanting to do that a lot.
I think that would depend upon how many witnesses there are.
So instead of trying to make a trans woman feel accepted and validated by welcoming her to womanhood, or saying “you’re nothing but a woman to me”, instead simply treat her as you would treat all your cis friends.
You want me to treat you like a human being and respect how you identify yourself? Jeez, what more do You People want? If I can’t tell you who you are, if I can’t define your selfhood for you, well – what’s the whole point of everything, then?
RVCBard
21 Mar 11 at 12:10 am
You probably won’t like this or believe me, but as someone AFAB I got this all the time too. Stretch marks, crippling cramps, unwanted sexual attention, sexual assault, a certain health issue, having my bag stolen etc. were all met with “Welcome to Womanhood!”. Oh I never grew tired of that one, seeing as how I never was a woman.
Bob
21 Mar 11 at 9:36 am
Hi Bob,
What I actually don’t like is you assuming that I won’t like or believe what you say.
While you also experienced the ‘welcome to womanhood’ crap (my condolences), the dynamic is different, because you were not AMAB – and you have been able to escape it – whereas for a lot of trans women, they’re going to get it for the rest of their lives.
On a related note, if you identify as male, have people ever said ‘welcome to manhood’ to you?
cate j
21 Mar 11 at 12:26 pm
I don’t really hear “welcome to manhood.” Not the phrase itself. You don’t get welcomed to manhood, not if you’re me, anyway. I think manhood is this ridiculous phallic monolithic concept at which nobody ever really truly arrives. One can be welcomed to dude-hood or bro-hood, but manhood is something you’re supposed to prove yourself in again and again and again and… yawn… I don’t have the patience for this nonsense.
Men aren’t supposed to NEED validation, I guess.
What I do get a lot is people referring to me as “dude” or “bro” or and all these silly silly words that I don’t identify with, and going out of their way to do a lot of really ostentatious back-slapping “sup man” bullshit that they definitely wouldn’t do to a cis man who looks like me (eyeliner, glitter, nelly mannerisms). I’m not a bro, I don’t wanna be a bro, but people think that they way to validate me is to treat me like a bro… when of course they all know, as aforementioned, that “real men aren’t supposed to need validation.”
Asher
21 Mar 11 at 12:58 pm
Whenever I hear this “Welcome to womanhood” bullshit I’m reminded of having been pretty brutally assaulted a number of years ago and then having a cop at the hospital say to me “Who gives a fuck? You were asking for it, if you don’t want to be treated like a b***h then man up”.
That was my “Welcome to womanhood moment” and was quite a while before I transitioned – if people say that to me now I tend to ask them if they’re attempting to be ironic – I mostly don’t hear it twice unless someone is trying to out me.
Em
21 Mar 11 at 3:30 pm
Firstly, Em. Oh, dear… All I could do while reading your note is bust out crying. That cop should die. Probably not soon enough. As for the rest, I’m not sure I agree, even though you all seem to agree completely! Maybe it’s that I’m still in transition, but I don’t feel invalidated when a woman recognizes and congratulates my, what would you call it? My pain. Now if one woman, lets say a friend, said that 17 times, I WOULD tell her to shut the fuck up, but gently. I love being a woman and maybe I’m just displaying my self doubt when I continue to get joy at the “welcome to womanhood” line, but I don’t think so. Especially if I respect and like the woman saying it. Are they really putting you down? You said they’re not intending to, so let it go. Or tell them to shut the fuck up; then you have something to talk about for the next 20 minutes. And I’ll probably feel completely different a year from now!
JeanieW
21 Mar 11 at 5:56 pm
Hi JeanieW,
It might be a good idea to ask yourself “Would they say these things to me if I was a cis woman?”.
Thinking about that question might give you some perspective on the issue; saying things that point out our ‘transness’ and differentiate us from cis women are not (in my opinion) good things.
In fact, I think they are horrible and extremely invalidating things.
cate j
21 Mar 11 at 6:32 pm
This sentiment is expressed by cis women to cis girls and FAAB kids, especially during adolescense. I think many FAAB have heard similar sentiments when expressing pain, exhausperation, etc. in a way or in regards to a manner that is seen as gendered. But, the dynamic there does imply condescension of a sort. It implies that the older person is more of an authority on gender identity experience and it sort of suggests that this treatment is acceptable. The appropriate response to a ten year old being on teh recieving end of verbal sexual harassment in public is not “welcome to womanhood” it is “shut the fuck up and leave that kid alone”. But, when you translate this dynamic to trans women, who are often of a similar age group, it implies that the cis woman’s womanhood is more substantiated and that her past experiences are more valid as well (and it still has the “suck it up” attitude attached). It infantalizes trans woman and assumes they are inferior in terms of experiences.
cat
21 Mar 11 at 8:12 pm
There are times that things like this are said with irony, and those aren’t so frustrating to me. I don’t move in trans circles at all in my daily life (I’m an artist, those are the circles I move in), and I don’t tend to discuss gender identity unless I know and trust somebody very well indeed, so mostly when somebody makes a flippant comment like that it’s more along the lines of “Aint it great to be a woman? (and to have to deal with these fuckwits)”.
But if you think about whether somebody would say that to an older woman, in front of people, and over something that could be responded to differently then I’m sure that you could get how it could be rather ‘othering’ for somebody to say it to you when you know full well that they wouldn’t say it to a cis woman.
Other than people in my family, every time that I’ve heard that line it has come from a younger woman, and almost always in front of their friends – I made a paint of leaving those people behind after I was done with transition.
Having ones medical history used coercively as gossip or trivia is never a flattering experience in my opinion.
Em
22 Mar 11 at 12:39 am
to cat: I think it’s important here to check any assumptions about folks’ childhoods.
consider: kid transitions to male at 6 yrs old, you think he ever really heard “welcome to womanhood”?
mhs
22 Mar 11 at 7:57 am
God, what an awkward thing to say/hear. I do find it interesting that you seem to be hearing this in a context that is generally negative- the things that women experience as part of being a woman that are not fun or happy things. As a cis female (who tends to be very butch in presentation) I don’t think I’ve ever heard that particular phrase before, but in similar situations (dealing with sexism/misogyny, menstrual issues, street harrassment, etc) I have observed women rolling their eyes and saying something like “Don’t you hate being a woman?” I’m wondering if people might sort of check themselves when coming to that phrase in your presence and come out with something even more insensitive.
It also seems like it might be a way for the speaker to “claim the space” of being female. Like when something shitty happens to you because you’re a woman, she can remind you that even though you’re also a woman, she has more experience in this than you possibly can, because she was born female and has always identified as female. Which is even more fucked up in many ways. To give a much more trivial example, it reminds me of being new in school (I was new in school a lot as a kid) and always being “the new kid” even when I had been there for over a year. Any time anything happened that frustrated me, someone would always say, “Welcome to ___ School” as if I hadn’t already been there long enough to figure it out.
No matter what the reason- not cool in general, and I’m sorry you have to go through this. Also, I’m new to this blog, just started reading today and I wanted to say that I’m really enjoying hearing about everyone’s experiences. Is there an entry you’d direct me to to explain some of these acronyms (FAAB, etc)?
Hunter
27 Mar 11 at 11:04 am
I’m only one of many contributors to this blog; I don’t know of a specific post that explains these acronyms. Like you, I would have to use google to pin down specific explanations, were I to require them.
cate j
27 Mar 11 at 11:51 am
Some terms and acronyms are explained in this glossary: http://nnhs-gsa.org/transwhat/glossary/
Adam is still working on updating and improving it, and I look forward to seeing his new site, hosted at http://transwhat.org/
(Note that he has defined AFAB and AMAB instead of FAAB and MAAB.)
Sara
27 Mar 11 at 1:33 pm
(P.S. – I can chime in and say that I would find the phrase “welcome to womanhood” and all similar phrases patronizing and disrespectful if it seemed like they were said because I was trans.)
Sara
27 Mar 11 at 1:36 pm
These comments always struck me as sterling examples of gatekeeping. The issue isn’t whether you’re being welcomed or shut out; the problem is that you’re being treated like a petitioner. The speaker is setting themselves up as the arbiter of your gender. They’re locking your feelings into an easily parsed, trans-ignorant context, i.e. their own.
There’s a sarcastic transphobic feminist version that goes kind of like this:
Transphobe: Trans women have scads of male privilege!
Trans woman: Actually, murder and rape all the time?
Transphobe: YEAH, WELCOME TO WHAT REAL WOMEN FACE EVERY DAY, N000bz!!1!
Trans woman: Yes, that was actually part of my poi–
Transphobe: You’re still men, though. Men men men men men.
Trans woman: (sigh)
piny
28 Mar 11 at 12:40 pm
With that post, you inspired this comic, Piny:
http://hormonaltransrex.tumblr.com/post/4172886144/haha-take-that-rad-fems-wheres-your-fancy
Cate J
28 Mar 11 at 6:14 pm
“…If I was able to plumb the murky shallows of other people’s minds with my brainwaves…”
:D
Em
28 Mar 11 at 8:35 pm
I completely agree.
Its very demeaning when everytime some cis person knows you’re trans ask you “so how is it being a woman?” whereas you’ve been that way for over 3 years!!
Lind. Kenyan TG
Lindsay
29 Mar 11 at 10:58 pm