Help me get my ducks in a row here...

A lot of the arguments from TRAs are in response to women saying
"TW don't get periods"
TRA replies "well not all women have periods, so you're saying these women are not women?"

"TW can't get pregnant"
TRA replies "Not all women can get pregnant are you saying infertile women aren't women?"

They completely dodge the fact that majority TW can ejaculate, are fertile, (or a small minority made a choice to compromise their fertility for cosmetic reasons) which is COMPLETELY different to a woman who can't get pregnant.
It's not even really worth bothering to argue with stupid.

A man who identifies as a woman is not "an infertile woman" because they can't get pregnant, have a period etc, like an infertile woman can't.

Trans women can actually produce sperm, get an erection and get a woman pregnant. That's kinda the opposite of infertile.

They want you to be defensive, but they are the ones with misogynistic ideas about people.

In particular their denial that it is necessary to recognise sex is based on misogyny and a refusal to recognise the reasons that women need sex based rights and services.

Why do they think that even women with a great deal of privilege have such difficulty fleeing countries like Dubai? What do they think happens to women who don't have that privilege? How do they think society became patriarchal?

Thinking about you getting your "ducks in a row", actually ducks are quite a good example of how violent the male of the species can be...

With chickens you sometimes get a male bird entirely in female plumage, or a chimera where you can see some parts have male and others have female plumage (I've seen a photo of one and a friend briefly had one, HE was very aggressive apparently).

These birds still have one set of gonads and behave accordingly...

They want to argue about how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

It's two:

One to change the lightbulb and one to get the joke right.

Gotta say I'm not a fan of women calling other women bitches, esp on FWR, irrespective of what they have done.

Barracker
You are wise!

I have just wasted half an hour arguing on Twitter with angry sex denying teenagers. Lol.

Your approach is much better.

My go to statement on sex is Dr fond of beetles..... but you're right. They don't want the truth. They want to argue about how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

On fish - ask her if people can also breathe under water. If the answer is no then comparisons to fish are irrelevant.

As others have stated, the leg analogy is the best - some people are born with 1 leg (or unfortunately have one amputated); there have also been cases of babies born with 3 legs (you can google it). Does that mean humans aren't 2-legged? Outliers are outliers for a reason.

If you're interested in the philosophical exercise, this can be a great way to sharpen your thoughts.
But the people who pose these 'gotcha' challenges are not interested in philosophy, or linguistics, or logic.
They already know that a car without petrol is still a car, and they know that a woman without ovaries is still a woman, and they know that a man with penis and testes is still a man.

So, whilst you can engage, and discuss necessary vs sufficient, or classifications of exclusion, your efforts will be as wasted as they are on the people who declare 'this is the least violent, most oppressed group' and proceed to scream in your face when you present evidence that this is untrue.
They don't want the truth.

A more effective approach is to challenge their own bias
"So, you are saying that breast cancer survivors with mastectomies are not actually real women? Wow. And women with hysterectomies are almost men? That's horrible."

Let them defend why they think removing body parts changes sex in people who are ill. They want you to be defensive, but they are the ones with misogynistic ideas about people. Let them justify themselves, let them explain to someone who really IS vulnerable why they're not a woman because they had a hysterectomy. Let them squirm.

Ignore Alice Roberts, she's a bitch. She's the one who tells other females that they are not real scientists so she can fuck right off.

Forget your foolish friends, stay at home and watch PeachYogurt’s Transgender and the Bicycle Analogy. You’ll have way more fun.

I do think this nonsense could never have taken off in a society that was primarily rural and was used to the real mucky business of raising and breeding animals.

Or one where there was no artificial contraception of the type that you can forget about it.

In the minds of many people now sexual activity is mainly done for fun, or as an expression of love, they no longer think of it much in their lives in terms of its main biological purpose. You'd think they would, but they don't.

I suspect it's because they often believe ideologically that sex should not be thought of that way in humans, and it creates a kind of odd forgetting of the facts.

Many people are really very separated from their physicality.

Oh thanks inebriati I didn't know about the marriage of April Ashley, well at least not how it ended. Interesting.

On a slight tangent does anyone know of anywhere in the world that has a useable, non-circular legal definition of sex?

In the UK your sex is determined by biological sex characteristics; chromosomes, gonads and genitals being the 3 main ones.

Corbett v Corbett
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbett_v_Corbett

Simple question - when Prof Roberts digs up a skeleton, how does she know whether it is a human or a clownfish? Oh yeah - cause people aren't fish.

Ask her to go talk to a farmer about sexing chicks or milking cows. Sex is immutable.

I do think this nonsense could never have taken off in a society that was primarily rural and was used to the real mucky business of raising and breeding animals.

Humans are bipedal. If you only have one leg, through accident of birth or just accident, are you no longer human?

If you get a wooden leg, are you a table?

Yes Smiley It is a helpful piece.

Can't believe we even have to explain the basics in 2019, along with why Earth is round...

And yet it moves.

@HandsOffMyRights that is a really good article, thank you for linking

Your friend brought Clownfish in to this.

Ask her to go talk to a farmer about sexing chicks or milking cows. Sex is immutable.

Few people know they are infertile until they try to have children. They will have been treated as male or female throughout their lives based on their genitalia and other sexual characteristics. And when infertility is suspected (usually due to trying and failing to get pregnant) the doctors will know which tests to apply to which partner. Nobody is asking for a sperm sample from a woman or scanning the fallopian tubes of a man!

But I do think part of the issue is that there are “respected” scientists saying it is complicated

I think respected scientists like Alice Roberts get caught up in the weeds of clown fish and mushrooms, and forget about the practical consequences of sexual reproduction.

Even if you could successfully argue that a male brain can exist in a female body (which is an idea that depends on philosophy and linguistics as much as biology), the person with the male brain wouldn't be able to escape the consequences of having a female body e.g. need for access to contraception.

Maybe ask her how these “many sexes” plan to do things when they wish to have children. Because in all human history either entirely naturally or via whatever medical intervention a sperm fertilises an egg. There are two sorts of gametes and two sexes.

So why is a man who removes his penis not still a man?

Because removal of a penis does not create female reproductive organs, a female phenotype or female chromosomes.