'Biological essentialism'?

I think bioessentialism means sex and gender are perfectly aligned and should determine social roles. So women are childbearing and should therefore stay home to look after babies while the men hunt and earn money or whatever.

It is import to argue that sex is unchangeable but sex does not determine your role in society or your job or your intelligence. Hence, gender critical feminism rejects bioessentialism because we reject fixed gender roles and all the gender stereotypes that go with them.

Wear what you want, work where you can get hired but you can't change sex.

Understanding biology is important, essential even. Anyone who pretends the difference between males and females is not vitally important under some circumstances is either stupid or cruel. I wouldn't waste any more time on him.

He is the one with the thinking problem and is silencing you with his disapproval.

There is nothing inherently insulting in his choice of words but the interpretation that he has used them as an insult.

I have taken to using the phrase womanface. Being a woman is not a costume, in many parts of the world it must feel like a life sentence.

Some people use the phrase ‘biological essentialism' to describe the thinking that because women can have babies then that is what nature designed them to do and that should be all that they do - be mothers and housewives and nothing else.

I would say your friend is using a term that he doesn’t understand or that he thinks refers to the fact that mammals have two sexes and, for some reason, he thinks that humans are different to every other mammalian species in some way 🤷‍♀️

Feminism (of many different types) recognises the unique ability of women to be able to give birth but it also argues for women to be given choice to control their own fertility and to live their lives as they see fit i.e. working mother, stay at home mother, not a mother at all.

If “Biological essentialism” means understanding that women are adult human females and men are adult human males and that swapping between those two is not possible, then I’m a biological essentialist.

Understanding science and maintaining boundaries for women is not something I will ever be ashamed of.

Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with the term, it's just fact. I'd simply agree, "Yes, I believe in biological reality" and see what he comes back with.

It’s just words. Your ‘friend’ is using it as an insult. But, until you understand what he means by it, you can’t really engage with the insult or defend yourself.

Ask him what he means by the phrase.

I don’t imagine he will be able to articulate it particularly well as it’s just a sort of dog whistle phrase.

You can think that what makes someone make or female is physical and biologically based without believing that your biology (sex) determines your potential, ability, and value to society.

And I strongly suspect if he’s straight he wouldn’t challenge his thinking enough to sleep with a TW because he knows damn well they’re men too

But trans women are pretending to be women

they are not actually women because they can’t be because they’re men - it’s the literal qualification

honestly if he says that as a kind of gotcha just say yes you’re right they are pretending to be women. It’s true! They are!

To me, being a 'biological essentialist' means believing that only women have periods, babies and the menopause, and only men have cocks and balls. One can't become the other through some magical transubstantiation of chromosomes.

There's nothing in that about believing that a woman has to like pink, wear high heels, can't add up and must prefer making cupcakes to mending bicycles.

Mebbe it means something different in critical theory circles.