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Men’s Rights activists joke about it all the time, but now one of them has gone and done it–allegedly. A big “allegedly.” In the Men’s Rights subreddit, one cis dude with a throwaway account and a beard boasts that he’s legally changed his gender to “woman,” to enjoy the supposedly vast privileges he’ll gain. And he couldn’t be more pleased with himself.
Yep. I finally did it, I’m legally a woman now. There’s so many privileges and advantages you get in my country (Spain) for being a women that I was forced to go change my sex. The list of privileges women get in Spain is VAST, so it’s deffo worth it.
It was a very easy process, I just had to state I identified as a woman and would like to be considered – legally – as such. Took like 5 minutes.
Anyways, now I get to enjoy the extra privileges, rights and advantages of the “opressed”.
In the comments, he says he did it to prove a point, not because he actually identifies as a woman. “You know I’m not really trans, right?” he tells one commenter. “I just did this to gain extra rights.” In another comment, he notes that he did it partly, “win some arguments and ridicule feminists.”
In Spain, which allows “gender self-determination” without having to jump through hoops, he says the process is simplicity itself: You simply
have to go to the “registro civil” and fill out a form, takes like 15 minutes. After that, you will have an appointment in no more than 3 months that legally changes your identity as a woman and you’re also asked if you want a name change. No medical report is needed for anything. Also, no one can legally challenge your gender identity by law in Spain, so they can’t verify if you’re lying.
Fifteen minutes? Earlier you said it only took five minutes.
Naturally, the denizens of the Men’s Rights subreddit are thrilled.
“I hope you have a beard and are hairy as fuck,” writes one commenter.
“I now identify as a lesbian woman with he/him pronouns,” the new woman replies. “And yes, my beard is spectacular.”
“I fully support men using the nutty gender ideology in their favor to gain rights and privledges they are unfairly denied for being male,” writes another commenter.
“And when someone tries to say you’re not actually trying to be a woman, you can accuse them of bigotry and gatekeeping femininity,” replies yet another commenter.
I would post more comments but they’re pretty much all the same.
Regardless of whether he’s telling the truth or not, I wish the OP only the worst on his personal journey.
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what extra rights specifically? the only one i have that men don’t is partial insurance coverage for facial hair removal since it’s considered a medical condition.
So, now when he advocates stripping women of rights, he is advocating stripping himself of rights. Makes about as much sense as anything these clowns do.
“I am proud to be an asshole! Assholes forever and ever! I can keep that self-loathing hopelessness at bay!”
Makes sense, because there is no one more well-treated by society than a trans woman who cannot or who doesn’t want to fit the feminine ideal * rolls eyes until they fall out *
Oh no, government records are meaningless! lol Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Just… what? What privileges or rights did he gain? I assume you would have quoted him if he’d said so…
And um, cis guy, what precisely did you prove? That Spain’s laws make legal transition pretty straightforward? That the only people who are allowed to challenge you are transphobes? Um, those aren’t things we object to. You do realise that right? I’ve known a few trans women with beards, it’s not the ‘gotcha’ you think it is…
I bet TERFs are happy, this hypothetically happening is the whole excuse for their movement existing.
Put me down for things that probably never happened.
@Ell:
I’ve known a few trans women with beards, it’s not the ‘gotcha’ you think it is…
Not to mention more cis women than you might suspect, since most of us take pains to suppress it.
(Fun Fact: facial shaving was a clandestine beauty secret among a lot of Golden Age Hollywood actresses:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150613030337/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/fashion/sometimes-even-women-need-a-smoothly-shaved-face.html)
Off-topic, but is there any chance we could get a Trump indictment open thread in the near future?
@Full Metal Ox – Ha, yes. I don’t think I could grow a full beard, but every week or so I’ll find thick little hairs growing out of my chin. I pluck them because I don’t like the texture, but maybe there’s also a thing about faces being important for a sense of femininity, at least for some people, cis or trans. But not everyone would have that sensitivity (physically or emotionally).
Anyway, I suspect the poster above is just making shit up, but if he’s not, I don’t think he’ll find his plan of being legally a woman so easy to maintain. I don’t mean necessarily that he’ll face major hurdles, but maybe get bored and forget to keep up the charade when he sees he’s not enjoying any particular “extra privileges, rights and advantages.”
@Ell
I need to shave because my hair folicles are hypersensitive to testosterone. I look like a teenage boy whi just started puberty when I don’t. I’m AFAB. It’s not just trans women.
This person reads like a transphobe who’s obsessed with the possibility that someone like himself could be using the gender recognition procedure for bad faith purposes. It’s the golden opportunity – if only you can figure out something to gain from it! Or at least, if you can logically formulate how it defeats the pro-trans argument.
I think he wanted to gloat to someone about his hypothetical trolling project, but had trouble finding receptive audiences, so he went to the men’s righters and handwaved something about stealing female privilege and defeating the feminist argument, without actually discussing what the “female privilege” might be.
Does this man realise that in order to gain the privileges MRAs think women have, he needs to present as female?
I know what’s going to happen. He’s going to tell people he’s a woman, they’ll blink in confusion for a moment then treat him how they’ve they’ve treated him, but he’ll only now notice that they treat him fairly positively and chalk it up to him changing his gender.
And because he doesn’t look like a woman, he won’t get any creepy behaviour from dudes or any gender-based prejudice that women would face.
The only “privilege” which women have that most of these men really care about is the one where “any woman” can just be like “anyone wanna f**k” and men will flock to her and do anything for a chance to have sex with her. That’s not really a women privilege, to the (more limited than they imagine) extent that this kind of thing happens, that’s an attractive and charismatic people privilege. (Or occasionally, a perk of flaunting extreme wealth, though you may not like the kind of people you attract.) There *are* men who see a lot of action.
The also exist some men who (additionally or instead) have an obsessive need to be busybodies, bomb-throwers, or voyeuristic creeps in the spaces where they would be least welcome, and consider any right to exclude them to be “unfair”. But that’s basically holding other people’s safety and comfort to be privileges as opposed to rights.
So this guy will have easier access to abortion (assuming he’s 16 or 17) and get paid time off when he’s got debilitating menstrual cramps.
That said, this guy is deffo 11 or 12, so these changes aren’t as sweeping for him.
Spain passes law allowing anyone over 16 to change registered genderhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/16/spain-passes-law-allowing-anyone-over-16-to-change-registered-gender
what extra rights specifically? the only one i have that men don’t is partial insurance coverage for facial hair removal since it’s considered a medical condition.
Yes! That’s totally necessary, ‘cuz those manly men have such huge thick strong beards that they need national government assistance to buy the razors and other equipment needed to keep them in check! True story!
And because he doesn’t look like a woman, he won’t get any creepy behaviour from dudes or any gender-based prejudice that women would face.
Yeah, more likely he’ll be smiling smugly at his own cleverness, while everyone else just rolls their eyes and finds someone else to talk to.
You mean the “right” to be cat-called by men at age 14 for just walking down the street while being there on holiday, as I was back then? Yeah…
@KMB
The don’t even wait that long. When I was already pesenting as female at age 9, I was already getting catcalled.
Apropos, just today Finland begins enforcing the gender recognition reform that was passed a couple months ago.
Finnish people too can now change their legal gender with just paperwork. But only if they’re over 18. And only once a year at most, to exclude the very real (according to some) possibility that someone might try to undermine society by repeatedly switching their gender back and forth.
As for female privilege, we have one real issue relating to it, and it was the only “female privilege” issue that ever came up during the parliamentary debates. That is the male-only military conscription, which isn’t an issue in most countries progressive enough to allow easy gender recognition. In Finland, we might be moving towards a gender-neutral conscription in the near future. Unfortunately, in the current national security environment, conscription as a whole isn’t going to be abolished anytime soon.
Currently, in order to avoid military service (or alternative labor service, which I chose back in my day) you’d have to remain legally female from age 18 to age 30. Some cis people seem to think this would be a trivial matter, if you’re a cis man and still able to live socially as a man. However, you could also just fake some medical issue and face (these days) only minimal scrutiny for it.
In other news relating to Finnish politics and national security,
Finland’s Nato membership bid was finally ratified by Hungary and Turkey last week, and now there’s just some final paperwork to complete. Meanwhile, Turkey is still withholding Sweden’s ratification (and Hungary is apparently following on Turkey’s cue). It is unclear to me if Finland has made any real human rights concessions to appease Turkey – but apparently more is being demanded from Sweden in that regard.
Meanwhile, Finland’s parliament election yesterday turned into a conservative shitshow. It’s still unclear how the new cabinet will build up, but it won’t be headed by the current progressive PM Sanna Marin, and it wouldn’t push something like the abovementioned not-very-radical gender recognition reform, even if such reform might still theoretically pass in the new parliament.
@Natsume
Urgh, that’s even more gross than at age 14! Absolutely horrifying.
@Lumipuna
Germany is finally on track to that, too, and also, finally, to recognition of non-binary genders. As, you know, the Federal Court said it has to be for years at this point yet it was only ever possible for intersex people. Seriously considering the change. Options are female, male, nothing, or diverse here.
No issues with conscription, either, because that is indefinitely suspended for years at this point, for anyone.
Heard about the election on the radio earlier. I’m sorry it happened, hope those right-whiner fuckers won’t cause too much trouble before you can get rid of them again. Was there any issues with Marin? Can’t recall hearing anything bad about her…
Sanna Marin remains very popular with leftist/progressive Finns, but leftist/progressive parties aren’t collectively popular enough to form a ruling coalition. They were barely popular enough in 2019. This time, Marin’s Social Democrats actually won a few more seats from their coalition partners, but said partners also lost many seats to rightwing parties.
It is typical for the ruling party to lose some popularity, because people tend to forget that the other parties, when running previous governments, were also kind shitty and unable to solve all the problems, which was why they were voted out in the first place. This time, it seems like Marin’s charisma and relative competence channeled that loss to the allied parties.
The two main rightwing parties ran both very successful populist campaigns, but they’re quite ideologically divided from each other. One of them (Petteri Orpo’s Conservative Coalition Party) will almost certainly have the prime minister’s seat, but they might form the government with Social Democrats rather than the fascist-lite Finns Party. Either way, it’ll be an awkward compromise, and staying in opposition (and not ruining the country now) would further boost popularity of the Finns Party (so they can ruin the country later).
@Natsume:
The don’t even wait that long. When I was already pesenting as female at age 9, I was already getting catcalled.
Ah, yes—bringing to mind the charming catchphrase, “Old enough to bleed is old enough to breed!”—whether you were in fact menstruating is irrelevant. And/or that your own age group had already learned that behavior.
Didn’t Marin commit the horrible crime of dancing at a friend’s house party while being female?