Aibu? Don't want to include anyone but women

Getthatwindowclosed · 2025-01-17T18:47:38+00:00

I recently took up a position at a university and will be undertaking research as part of this. I had to propose the topic to three senior colleagues and my topic is women in my field - don't want to out myself too much here. I was able to get almost to the end of my pitch and one of my colleagues cut me off when I said 'women' and stated that surely I meant to include non-binary and transwomen too. Felt like I was under pressure to say yes. So I did. My field is notoriously difficult for women and I wanted to focus on this. I like to think that I'm open-minded but I just don't know how to handle this, as my colleagues seem very set on being as inclusive as possible. Am I being unreasonable by fighting to keep my research purely about women?

Winterskyfall · 20/01/2025 14:30

Manxexile · 20/01/2025 13:39

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the questioner did mean transwomen...

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Agreed. We are living in times when apparently logic and biology don't matter. Hopefully sanity will start being restored on this side of the pond too.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 20/01/2025 14:28

JellySaurus · 17/01/2025 23:10

No point pandering to the realityphobes by using their jargon. By their standards it's just as transphobic to exclude transwmen by saying you're only interested in 'cis' women's existence as it is to exclude them by saying you're only interested in women.

Exactly.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 20/01/2025 14:22

NeedToKnow101 · 17/01/2025 20:25

I'm quite active in the women's group at my work. Whenever someone brings up 'but what about traaaaaaannnssss' (and predictably someone always does) I say, 'yes, we include trans, we welcome women who identify as men or NB. Men? No.'

That's my position and I always state it, with the hope and intention that it makes others braver to state their boundaries.

Does this actually head it off? Well done 👏

Codlingmoths · 20/01/2025 13:44

Getthatwindowclosed · 17/01/2025 19:06

Post transition probably wouldn't matter. However, it would skew the research if not.

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Post transition would definitely matter. A whole different set of inclusion issues to women, everyone would know they are male.

Manxexile · 20/01/2025 13:39

KimberleyClark · 18/01/2025 00:24

I think the challenger must have meant transmen, not transwomen. Transwomen are biologically male and do not have periods. It would be nonsensical to include them in research into period poverty.

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I wouldn't be at all surprised if the questioner did mean transwomen...

Winterwonders24 · 18/01/2025 18:42

Trainors · 17/01/2025 20:07

Including non-binary people in research about women is nonsensical. Surely it would be offensive to a non-binary person to suggest they should take part in research about a gender they don’t identify with?

Trans women are a different kettle of fish as it could be seen to be excluding them in research on their own gender.

What kind of research? What kind of numbers? In a large quantitative survey the numbers of trans women would be far too small to skew anything and you could do a sub-group analysis if needed. For smaller numbers in qualitative research you’re unlikely to get any trans participants and if you did you could note where their experiences differ in your write up.

Sseeeeeeeexxxxxxxx!!!!it's sex!!! For God's sake, if you could 'identify out of your gender' we should probably let the women of Afghanistan ,as the Taliban would have no way of knowing who to oppress!!!

zerogrey · 18/01/2025 02:09

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justthatreallyagain · 18/01/2025 01:15

surely that would open up the topic too much - I would suggest they specifically need their own research project the results would be skewed otherwise…just you won’t be doing it

KimberleyClark · 18/01/2025 00:24

Azureal · 17/01/2025 19:45

In my previous university we had a presentation from a woman researching period poverty in England. She was challenged on why she hadn't included trans women. She simply replied the numbers were too small to be of statistical use. I thought that was a fantastic counter.

I think the challenger must have meant transmen, not transwomen. Transwomen are biologically male and do not have periods. It would be nonsensical to include them in research into period poverty.

LinnettdeBelleforte · 18/01/2025 00:17

bridgetreilly · 17/01/2025 18:58

You need to explain why, which shouldn’t be hard. “This study focuses on difficulties faced by cis women, to avoid confusion with complicating factors that may create different issues for non-binary and trans women.” Helps if you are going to look at things like maternity/menopause issues, for example.

Edited

That doesn't really help because non-binary people will still have menopause and maternity issues if they are biologically female.

WigglyVonWaggly · 17/01/2025 23:53

Your research is about sex, not gender identity. If you include trans women then your study is no longer about women, It’s about both sexes. So that’s what you make clear. Absolute bloody idiot colleagues of yours don’t seem to be aware that literally nobody actually changes sex and women’s challenges are just that.

NoBinturongsHereMate · 17/01/2025 23:25

Rather than AFAB, at least follow Cass and use the less ridiculous 'registered' (or it may have been 'recorded') instead of 'assigned'.

CautiousLurker01 · 17/01/2025 23:21

I’d simply state that the research subjects are women, then put a foot note in which you state that “by ‘women’ you refer to women that other literature and research may define as: ‘cis’ [ref], non-binary biological females [ref], persons AFAB [ref] and that for the purposes of your research, definition excludes TW, AMAB, etc.” and then I’d not mention it again… this is, in fact, along the lines of what I plan to do provided I can do so without sounding to arsey.

Smellslikemiddleagedspirits · 17/01/2025 23:13

assign

verb
past tense: assigned; past participle: assigned
1.
allocate (a job or duty).
"Congress had assigned the task to the agency"

designate or set (something) aside for a specific purpose.
"managers happily assign large sums of money to travel budgets"

But your word-salad arguement is based on the pretense that the sex of mammal babies is "assigned" at birth?

Google Search

https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-motorola-rvo3&sca_esv=567ab18d067741e3&sxsrf=ADLYWILYrfS0JuD9SPtfe2TxHDgvTrIKxw:1737155273042&q=how+to+pronounce+assign&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMIfcRowS3w8sc9YSn9SWtOXmPU5OINKMrPK81LzkwsyczPExLiYglJLcoV4pLi4GJLLC7OTM-zYlFiSs3jWcQqnpFfrlCSr1AA1JEP1JKqAFEAAD0nHSxXAAAA&pron_lang=en&pron_country=gb&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiTsuDX7_2KAxWYT0EAHUnxNgIQ3eEDegQIUhAM

JellySaurus · 17/01/2025 23:10

No point pandering to the realityphobes by using their jargon. By their standards it's just as transphobic to exclude transwmen by saying you're only interested in 'cis' women's existence as it is to exclude them by saying you're only interested in women.

Waitwhat23 · 17/01/2025 23:07

Friendtotheanimals · 17/01/2025 23:01

@Smellslikemiddleagedspirits
'What on earth is a 'cis' woman? Do we have 'cis' any other mammals? Cis-cats? Cis-cows?

Surely you are already aware. However, as a quick google will inform you:

Cisgender is a term that is used to describe people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. For example, someone who was assigned female at birth (AFAB) and identifies as a woman is a cisgender woman.

The rest of your question is of course spurious.

I mean, that's just a jumble of ideological jargon though, isn't it? Using latin prefixes co-opted by social science researchers in 1994 for the purpose of making women a subset of their own sex category is laughable. And sex is observed and recorded at birth (and often before), not assigned.

Friendtotheanimals · 17/01/2025 23:01

@Smellslikemiddleagedspirits
'What on earth is a 'cis' woman? Do we have 'cis' any other mammals? Cis-cats? Cis-cows?

Surely you are already aware. However, as a quick google will inform you:

Cisgender is a term that is used to describe people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. For example, someone who was assigned female at birth (AFAB) and identifies as a woman is a cisgender woman.

The rest of your question is of course spurious.

Notodrugs · 17/01/2025 23:00

Say it's for cis women. I hate that term but it should help keep your colleugues them happy. And to justify it, says it's because you belive that transwomen have their own set of issues and barriers in the industry and you didn't want those to skew the results. Can't argue with that, surely

Smellslikemiddleagedspirits · 17/01/2025 22:55

Friendtotheanimals · 17/01/2025 22:52

Hi OP. I understand that you specifically want to look at the experiences of women in your field, specifically cis women.

I also get where your colleagues are coming from. They are challenging you to look at the broader issues and also probably trying to save you from some pushback further down the approvals track.

Some of the possible issues that come to the top of my head are:

I'm thinking that you could certainly put a call out for cis women subjects only. But then it's not outside the realms of possibility that you might then come up against claims that you have discriminated against non-binary people and trans women.

You may even find this happens when the project goes to the further ethics committee approval stage, which occurs at all tertiary institutions. Hence your colleagues broaching it with you in the initial discussions.

Also, even if your proposal got approved as a 'cis women only' project, what are you going to do when someone, say, a trans woman, participates in your project having not declared that they are trans? As they are under no obligation to do so, I could see this could present some challenges for your research in a number of ways.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that it's therefore probably far more straightforward and reasonable, as some PP have already said, to open the subjects to cis and trans women, and non-binary people from the outset. That way you should also get around the issue of the possible non-declaration of identity.

In your introduction, subjects and methodology, you would obviously define and delineate all subjects, variables etc.

As some PP have also said, the sample size of trans women and non-binary people may be quite small. That is fine and not really an issue for you. You would simply note this for an area of further study in your discussion section.

As for the possibility of confounding factors that other PP have mentioned, such as what ages trans women have transitioned, that is a good point, and an obvious complicating factor. But again you could simply note it as an area for possible future study (and quite a fascinating one for someone to take up, I would say).

Overall, I don't really think this is a major issue unless you want it to be. I get that you wish to focus only on the experiences of cis women in this project. And I still think you will be largely able to do exactly that with some of the provisos I've mentioned. There'll be other issues I haven't thought of, which will no doubt come to light during further levels in the approval process. This is the nature of doing research at the tertiary level.

Try not to get sidetracked by the idea that some PP are espousing that it somehow 'isn't fair' that groups other than cis women may be included. We live in 2025. We are inclusive whether some people like it or not. Solve the research issue at hand.

(Also: a number of ridiculous and clearly false analogies abound in this thread. Ignore all silly comments about race and mice etc. That is all quite foolish and certainly doesn't assist you to solve your research issue. It's just people creating unnecessary drama.)

Best wishes with the project.

Edited

What on earth is a 'cis' woman? Do we have 'cis' any other mammals? Cis-cats? Cis-cows?

Waitwhat23 · 17/01/2025 22:55

'Cis' 🙄

Friendtotheanimals · 17/01/2025 22:52

Hi OP. I understand that you specifically want to look at the experiences of women in your field, specifically cis women.

I also get where your colleagues are coming from. They are challenging you to look at the broader issues and also probably trying to save you from some pushback further down the approvals track.

Some of the possible issues that come to the top of my head are:

I'm thinking that you could certainly put a call out for cis women subjects only. But then it's not outside the realms of possibility that you might then come up against claims that you have discriminated against non-binary people and trans women.

You may even find this happens when the project goes to the further ethics committee approval stage, which occurs at all tertiary institutions. Hence your colleagues broaching it with you in the initial discussions.

Also, even if your proposal got approved as a 'cis women only' project, what are you going to do when someone, say, a trans woman, participates in your project having not declared that they are trans? As they are under no obligation to do so, I could see this could present some challenges for your research in a number of ways.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that it's therefore probably far more straightforward and reasonable, as some PP have already said, to open the subjects to cis and trans women, and non-binary people from the outset. That way you should also get around the issue of the possible non-declaration of identity.

In your introduction, subjects and methodology, you would obviously define and delineate all subjects, variables etc.

As some PP have also said, the sample size of trans women and non-binary people may be quite small. That is fine and not really an issue for you. You would simply note this for an area of further study in your discussion section.

As for the possibility of confounding factors that other PP have mentioned, such as what ages trans women have transitioned, that is a good point, and an obvious complicating factor. But again you could simply note it as an area for possible future study (and quite a fascinating one for someone to take up, I would say).

Overall, I don't really think this is a major issue unless you want it to be. I get that you wish to focus only on the experiences of cis women in this project. And I still think you will be largely able to do exactly that with some of the provisos I've mentioned. There'll be other issues I haven't thought of, which will no doubt come to light during further levels in the approval process. This is the nature of doing research at the tertiary level.

Try not to get sidetracked by the idea that some PP are espousing that it somehow 'isn't fair' that groups other than cis women may be included. We live in 2025. We are inclusive whether some people like it or not. Solve the research issue at hand.

(Also: a number of ridiculous and clearly false analogies abound in this thread. Ignore all silly comments about race and mice etc. That is all quite foolish and certainly doesn't assist you to solve your research issue. It's just people creating unnecessary drama.)

Best wishes with the project.

Waitwhat23 · 17/01/2025 22:14

'I'm doing research into issues faced by people who live in a specific Edinburgh suburb, but I'll include people from Surrey who came up for the Festival a couple of years ago and felt that Edinburgh 'really spoke to them'

Waitwhat23 · 17/01/2025 22:00

'No, males won't be included in my research into issues which specifically affect females. Females who 'identify' as something else will be included as they are, and always will remain female. Obviously'.

How can any research be taken seriously if its basic premise is flawed through using nonsense parameters?

Treeinthesky · 17/01/2025 21:56

I did my top up research on breast implant illness in women i had to write this. I was told to. I don't agree with it btw at all.

NeedToChangeName · 17/01/2025 21:48

Azureal · 17/01/2025 19:45

In my previous university we had a presentation from a woman researching period poverty in England. She was challenged on why she hadn't included trans women. She simply replied the numbers were too small to be of statistical use. I thought that was a fantastic counter.

I'm not sure that was such a great answer. Would have been better if she'd challenged the absurdity of the premise that transwomen have periods