Oh, I know, I had ambitions to devote a bunch of time this month to the secrets of womanhood, but I never got around to it, even though it seemed like a good idea. I’m going to tell you why. Because, in the end, there’s no such thing as something that is universal for all women. Not the way our genitals look, now how they function, not if and where we grow hair, not what kind of sex we like, nothing.
I was reading a blog recently of another feminist in which she was debating why “transmen” annoyed her much less than “transwomen” and it was basically all the same nonsense about how transgender women are really just men sneaking in to women’s space so they can, I guess, ruin it with boy cooties.
I don’t know. I’m not the greatest blogger about transgender issues. My stance is this. I would never question a person who was born with ambiguous genitalia (if I were somehow in a position to know what his or her genitals looked like) if he or she said “I am a man” or “I am a woman” or, hell, “I am not either of those words.” And I respect their right to have surgery to bring their bodies in line with the truth of themselves or to not want to have surgery, but just be taken at their word. Well, to me, once you accept that that’s the truth–that people are born with genitals that don’t give you the expected signal for what gender they are, then that’s the truth. There are people who are born with genitals that don’t give you the expected signal for what gender they are.
If you say you are a woman, that’s good enough for me.
I know that sounds simplistic and I am kind of cringing to write it, but this is the kind of stuff where you just have to cringe and be willing to look foolish and hope that your mistakes are taken as good-faith mistakes.
But that’s what I want to say to all y’all, regardless of your gender, when you wonder about women. There are no great universal secrets to us. There aren’t things you can’t know. There’s nothing that happens to us that’s so gross or disgusting that it’s somehow improper for you to be curious about it. And there are no universals. Each woman you meet, the woman you are, is different.
We live in a society that depends on everyone agreeing that women are so different and mysterious from men that we must be treated differently and, in many cases, that men, delicate men, must be protected from knowing the truth about us and that women must protect men from the gross baseness that is our nature.
These are not easy ideas to overcome. They’re pretty entrenched in our culture and they’re passed along often without us realizing it.
So, if you have questions, ask. Not me. Or not just me. But the women in your life. For that matter, the men in your life.
Oh, god, this was a cheesy opening to what I was going to say, which is this.
I totally forgot that I needed to do laundry until late. And then I forgot that one of the dryer settings has given up working. Which means that my regular pajamas were still wet at 10:30. And so, I put on the sexy red satin nightie.
You know, the one you save for special occasions, that, if you’re lucky, stays on for about ten seconds?
I just want to say this: Could there be a more hot and uncomfortable piece of clothing in a girl’s repertoire? I’ve never tried to go the whole night in one, but this isn’t a pajama. This is a slinky, slippery oven.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I made a horrible mistake about 10 years ago and bought my wife a pair of what they used to refer to as “man-cut” pajamas. That means exactly what you think – the tops and bottoms are cut exactly like the pj’s your daddy and granddaddy used to wear.
She now has a dozen pairs of the damned things, and not a nightie to her name.
One saving grace – she’s really cute in the pajamas. But even if she weren’t: it’s sometimes better to have a comfortable wife than a scantily-clad one.
God, I’m getting old.
I just could not get over how uncomfortably hot my boobs were all night. Clearly, a woman did not design these things.
And “man cut” pajamas can be very, very cute, on everyone, I think. And if your boobs get hot, you can just open up a button or two.
I’ve always wondered about satin. It feels great from the outside, but it just can’t feel that good from the inside. I imagine it must feel like Shirley Eaton felt with all that gold paint from head to toe.
I want to hear from someone who has done a satin nightie on satin sheets. How did you stay in bed? It seems like one move and the momentum would carry you onto the floor.
For us, the Great Satin Sheet experiment began…and ended…one night in 1989.
Jesus, what a nightmare. I never thought I’d hear two adult human beings beseeching Almighty God for traction.
Your boobs always look hot
I tried satin sheets a bunch of years ago. Kinda liked the sheets themselves, but couldn’t use the pillowcases too. my head was sliding all over and the pillow was sliding all over. disaster. but I didn’t notice any temperature problems.
Well, Exador, I think that goes without saying. But I deeply appreciate it when you do.
Mark, I hadn’t even thought about the logistics of trying to do anything with satin sheets, just getting into bed and not sliding across out the other side was baffling enough to me, but now I’m laughing at the thought of you and your wife trying not to kill each other while trying to figure out how to safely move.
Do you remember the Slip ‘n Slide from childhood? It was kind of like that, but without the grass stains at the end.
I have slept in the nude since I was 8. I cannot stand pajamas, nightgowns, big t-shirts, boy shorts and baby-ts or any of the other clothes you’re supposed to be able to sleep in.
They all wind around you and press in on your skin and make you feel like you’re straitjacketed.
As for satin sheets…my parents had some in the 70s. I never asked them about the sex, though. And I never ever ever will. Some things are better without the knowing.
Katherine, I’d love to know how many people started their adult lives sleeping nude, then hopped back into pj’s when they had children. My guess is that some people have a real phobia about their kids seeing them naked, and others develop the phobia after their kids are old enough to notice the “vive la difference.”
I try a lot of dependency and neglect cases: you’d be shocked by how many such cases contain an allegation about parents sleeping naked in the presence of their children cited as grounds for a neglect or abuse finding. Fortunately, most judges simply ignore such allegations — but that doesn’t stop DCS from bringing them up.
Hi. I’m a trans guy. I don’t comment here that often, but I think this post is very insightful and compassionate. Thank you.
First post, addressing several things.
Okay, I know I’m getting to this thread a little late, but first let me say that I almost went into an asthma attack just reading and laughing about the apparently adventurous life between satin sheets.
I’m not sure what this says about Justin Hayward having written Nights in White Satin, but it can’t be pretty. Maybe the lamentation of the song is due to being concussed after falling on the floor.
As for the feminist angle: I’m convinced that no good can come of exhibitionism–as much as I’m convinced that no good can come of the societal strictures of fashion. Oscar Wilde comes to mind, but I digress.
Both the man who abused me when I was a child and my thoroughly ex-husband were exhibitionists. My ex would wear no clothes, not because of any sexual prediliction, but because it was a means of controlling other people’s reactions to him. His younger sister (a tween at the time) was thoroughly used to his nakedness and paid it no mind. He was also profoundly convinced that he had the biggest dick ever in the history of mankind. When I informed him that “I’d seen bigger,” he became enraged and, thereafter, depressed.
Imagine, an entire person’s personality built on the phallacy (heh) that he had the world’s largest penis.
Out of my digression now. Just as there is such a thing as not enough traction, there may be such a thing as too /much/. Sex on the beach isn’t just a tasty drink, it’s a painful exercise in friction.
I vote for organic cotton 400 thread count sheets. Maybe Mark’s rule about comfort over sexy applies to sheets… cars… and people in general?
I love your easy simplistic view on trans issue, I don’t get it or really understand it, so I’m just live and let live.