There are also people who think that sex is the most important characteristic because they consider women to have been historically oppressed on the basis of their sex characteristics (for example, comparative physical weakness, childbirth etc).
While I understand where these concerns come from, I don’t consider there to be any factual basis behind them. Trans women face the same kind of oppression as non-trans women. Men who are seen as being ‘feminine’ face oppression. This oppression is based on stereotypes about and prejudices towards gender, not sex.
AuntBeastie I don’t know where to start. That is one of the most deluded, sexist things I’ve heard in a long time. Of course we were oppressed by our biological sex. The vast majority of females throughout history has been because we were the only ones capable of childbirth and men wanted to be sure the children they were rearing were their own. We weren’t allowed to work or learn or do anything that would have given us independence because we might get up to naughty things with other men if we got uppity ideas. We were essentially property, not human beings. And a hell of a lot of us died very, very young because of childbirth too.
These attitudes still persist - a 30 year old childless man or transwoman isn’t going to get turned down for promotion because their boss thinks ‘their clock is ticking’. Transwomen are never going to struggle with periods or abortions or childbirth and a ruined body and the menopause.
Even if they live their lives as females from a young age they’re never going to be socialised fully as women or make the same decisions as women because they will never have to fear pregnancy (or infertility for that matter).
Our oppression is damn right down to our sex. It’s absolutely ridiculous to claim that it’s not. Even the whole TRA movement is proof of this because they want women to stand aside and be ‘nice’ and ‘kind’ to them and do as they tell us and let them show us how to ‘woman’ properly. Because they might have surgery to take their genitals away but they sure as hell haven’t lost their sense of male entitlement and expectations that women should defer to them and their wishes. And they have proven themselves to be perfectly willing to use violence to knock fear into the mildest mannered female objector. Just like, well, men.
There are some sensible transwomen who are what used to be called ‘transsexuals’ like Miranda Yardley who have genuinely lived as women for years and from their experiences and reflection have actually ‘got it’ and have a deeper understanding of what it is to be female, they are totally sympathetic to women and understand completely why women don’t want any Tomasina, Deidre or Harriet with a full set of male tackle and a beard doing their smear test unsupervised or providing intimate nursing care or staffing refuges or any other safe female place. But the rest of the TRA movement sums up exactly why their oppression is never and will never be the same as ours.