Transwomen can't be a subset of women

Yes. But we all surely know that all female people are the entire subject of female people, in addition they are called women and girls. So, under the category of female people, there is women as a subset and girls as a subset. And that women is only female people who have reached maturity.

Montgomery is high on their own self described influencer 'fame' I think. They think they have discovered some wonderful gotcha, but it really is fuckwittery.

In maths, set A is a subset of set B if set B contains all the elements in set A. This means every set is a subset of itself, since it contains all of the elements in itself.

They’re correct mathematically, but clearly happy to forget that a set without a meaningful definition is merely a collection of arbitrary items.

What a silly point that this Montgomerie person is making. It's the mathematical point that a subset can be the whole set and still be considered a subset. So, if "women" is defined as all people who are biologically female, then women are technically a subset of their own sex, in mathematical terms.

This of course completely ignores the fact that people use the term "subset" in general conversation to always mean a "proper subset". ie a subset that is smaller than the containing set. So the phrase "women are not a subset of their own sex" should be read as "women are not a [proper] subset of their own sex". Only someone looking at that sentence in very very bad faith would take any other meaning from it. And certainly no mathematician is using that phrase to do any set theory calculations.

I think the only point that Montgomerie is trying to make is that "GC" people are all much stupider than Montgomerie! And a side order of trying to prove through wordplay that transwomen are correctly defined as female. Which is transparent nonsense.

I think what Montgomerie might be saying is that women who think they are women, and women who think they are men, are two subsets of the category 'women'.

Which is fair enough, but kind of pointless.

I wonder if this has been revived because of Montgomery's tweet.

https://x.com/misshumancat553/status/1737082965446856894?s=20

It was :

"What stupid fuck taught GCs the line "women are not a subset of their own sex" lol. Can't believe how many people blindly repeat that. How are there that
many people who don't know what subset means"

And another tweet

For the idiots in the comments, regardless of your view on trans rights the following are true:
1) X is a subset of X
2) straight women (97% of GC women and about 20% of GCs) are a subset of women. So are white women and tall women

and another

Obviously I'm right about the maths and anyone can just look it up, but also if you believe trans men are a subset of women then you believe cis women are a subset of women, so even in GC ideology the argument I'm discussing is stupid

There seems to be a lot of cyclical discussion going on. It all seems rather sleight of hand. I cannot work out quite what Montgomerie is trying to show here and I have given up because there is just so many tweets that I have not got time to read them to work it out.

And no. Of course men with gender identities aren't a subset of women. It's part of a whole lot of bollocks (verbal and otherwise) shoved on women to try and justify the bloody awful snatch and grab and colonialist behaviour of men who want to use women and their spaces. With varying agendas.

Which is mostly considered by other men to be fine until said men break those women a bit too much while using them, particularly while wearing pink leggings, and the press kick off.

It's a verbal fig leaf. There's a lot of them. Said men get really arsy when you pull the fig leaf away and state it plainly.

It is.

I'd say that 'heathen' is a mild term in comparison though. 'Infidel' or 'heretic' with the whole 'subhuman and should die' and 'damned for eternity' is nearer. This is the stuff of spittle flecked religious hysteria with witch burning than a mild 1950s middle class C of E thing.

??

Clearly need more with derogatory cis woman spiel.

Every cell in the body is xx or xy whether you're male, female or intersex - that old entirely unrelated chestnut TRAs like to draw on.

Some people argue earth is flat. That's ok, nod an smile. The idiocy is legislating to 'be kind' without discriminating between rationality and enforcing an individual's irrationality on the whole of society.

Forcing the term [cis] on us is like a religious sect which calls non-believers heathens demanding that all non-believers also call themselves 'heathens.' And when non-believers complain, they are told that all 'heathens' means is a non-believer of the tenets of that sect. Nothing to see here, move on.

Absolutely - a great analogy, nepeta!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a man not wanting gay men in men's spaces is homophobia and a man not wanting trans women in men's spaces is transphobia, but only one of these two things can be said out loud and spun as progressive.

It's not transphobic for women not to want trans women in their spaces, because they don't want any male people in their spaces, so it has nothing to do with the person being trans.

I can believe that quite a lot of men see both gay men and trans women are lesser types of men and don't really want them in men's spaces.

The so-called "progressive" ones put up with gay men in their spaces because gay men are not claiming to be women and have nowhere else to go, and also because it's no longer politically acceptable to object to gay people, but they are delighted to say, "trans women are women!" in order to get them out of men's spaces and foist them on women instead.

The ones who don't style themselves as progressive might be more aggressive, engaging in open hostility to these two groups.

But I don't think I would call it homophobia. They don't see men who have sex with men and men who identify as women as being the same, other than perhaps in the most general terms (i.e. they're all "freaks").

They probably also experience hostility from people based on people not wanting anyone with an open ‘sexual deviancy’ anywhere near the women and children of their community. And no, I’m not saying that means they’re all a danger. It’s just pretty normal for communities to not like transgressive types, especially of a sexual nature.

Great post, @nepeta.

FLO Your post is brilliant and so accurate.

I came on to say this.^^

Transwomen are cannot be a subset of women. They are a subset of men. Transmen are a subset of women.

The group 'cis' women is probably a tiny one in reality, because the definition of 'cis' means someone whose abstract gender identity just happens to match her or his sex.

Most of us don't have the kind of abstract gendered soul that this definition implicitly uses, so most of us can't be 'cis' even if we never transitioned.

Forcing the term on us is like a religious sect which calls non-believers heathens demanding that all non-believers also call themselves 'heathens.' And when non-believers complain, they are told that all 'heathens' means is a non-believer of the tenets of that sect. Nothing to see here, move on.

This forces us to act as if the gender identity ideology is true and something every single person believes in.

Which is the point of the exercise, of course. It turns 'women' and 'men' into feelings-categories, and it turns female women into the privileged part of the new woman-as-feelings classification.

In this new category (created by an authoritarian fiat by a small minority which is busy erasing all references to the female sex class) trans women would, indeed, be a sub-section of 'women', and the more oppressed one, too.

But in that system we won't be able to address sex-based oppression very well, given that we are not allowed to even have a name for its victims.

Except that they are mostly heterosexual men.

Trans women can experience homophobia, but not misogyny. Mainly because everyone knows they're men.

Schrodinger’s trans people.

There is not a human in the world who does not fall into one of the two categories.

And even if there was one, it have sweet FA to do with transgender people despite individuals with DSDs being used against their will as some sort of "gotcha" by TRAs.

If one were to imagine a hypothetical mathematical type "flow chart" with the little boxes and arrows leading on to other boxes, there would be a box at the top labelled "human", then it would split off into two lower boxes labelled "male" and "female".
Under the female box it would split further down into "straight", "lesbian", "trans man", "insert your choice of endless endless sexuality here" etc.
Under the male box it would split further down into "straight", "gay", "trans woman", "insert your choice of sexuality here".

Obviously trans women cannot fall under the "female" path of this flow chart because they do not belong to the "female" box.

Therefore they are not a subset of any kind of "woman".
They fail at the first hurdle (ie, they are male).

Likewise, women cannot be transwomen. Because they do not fall under the "male" heading.

And before any rampant TRAs decide to whine about DSDs, they still fall into the male or female headings under "human".
There is not a human in the world who does not fall into one of the two categories.

Ah @MargotBamborough they are not identifying as the “ women as universal service humans “ stereotype. They are identifying as the “ women as sexual objects “ stereotypes.

that’s why there is a lot of wearing of clothes , underwear, hairstyles, nails , san pro, pyjamas parties, high heels, girly chat about make up etc

and very little about being paid 13% less for doing the same job, endometriosis, the pain, discomfort and permanent damage from pregnancy and childbirth, doing all the housework and wifework, stress incontinence , being invisible past 50 etc

I will take “ transwomen as women “ a lot more seriously when I meet one who is 45 , used to have a a good career but gave it up to run the house and care for the children because “ their husbands careers is more important “ so they now work back shift on the till in Tesco. They dress in jeans , trainers and a top and spent their weekends looking after their husbands granny who is housebound ( because he is a busy working all week and needs time off ). And they would like to spend more time and money on clothes / make up / hobbies for themselves but they are saving for the kids school trip later this year and the gas and electric bills have doubled.

That’s the kind of woman I have a lot in common with.

This is absolute nonsense.

They do not experience misogyny because they are not female.

They are not seen as women by most people, and they are not treated as women by anyone. Obviously people who do not see them as women do not treat them as women, and people who claim to see them as women treat them better than they treat actual women, e.g. by prioritising their gender identity over actual women's rights and safety.

I've no idea what planet you're living on if you think people like Karen White and Lia Thomas are treated worse than women.