My Gifted Life

Ridiculous.

I found a perfect analogy. This is a fiction and I have many lovely converted friends, but pretend with me.

My name is Claude, and I was assigned Protestant at birth. The doctor just asked my parents. They couldn’t ask me.

As soon as I started Sunday school I knew there was something wrong. The ham sandwiches made me ill. I hated the prayers we said.

I knew these Jewish kids and I realized that I really wanted to be Jewish, but I knew my parents would never accept it. I had friends in that community and they would shame and ridicule me, and turn me away.

Finally I became an adult and I converted. I went to a Mikva and the waters cleansed my soul. I felt reborn.

It’s true I lost some friend but gained others.

Then I grew despondent. I ran into Jews that rejected converts. They said we didn’t really understand what it was to be Jewish because we converted later in life, and didn’t hear stories of the holocaust. We weren’t branded as Jews by others because we didn’t look like Jews with curly hair.

I tried to reason with them. I tried to talk with them but they said I was a phony.

I told them how I had needed to study, to learn Torah, all to no avail.

They said I had never experienced a Jewish upbringing.

Point by point these arguments are the parallels to the arguments trans exclusionary radical feminists make. When made in this context it is obvious that they are both ridiculous and racist.

Their strongest argument is the lack of a female upbringing as if there’s this one standard female upbringing with one standard effect on all women that cannot be understood by any trans woman, even one who’s lived for years with sexism and transphobia.

It boggles the mind.

They also place great importance on the discomfort of a period that isn’t 100% universal, some natal women don’t have one, very few, and some just don’t have discomfort. I don’t envy them the inconvenience but I miss what it would have allowed.

Nor do they ever admit to trans women existing as anything but men. I don’t expect people to see me as the same, but I don’t think calling me a man is appropriate.

Instead they believe we somehow are fetishists getting our jollies expropriating the suffering of women and believe that in the face of our suffering from sexism standing right next to them.