“Transwomen are women”

[BertrandRussell]

There are plenty of angsty threads on this topic, but please can this one not be.

Please can someone who thinks that transwomen are actually, literally women tell me the reasoning behind the thought? If you have come to this conclusion because you have read scientific research, please could you link to it.

I will only respond with “Thank you” or to give you clarification if you ask for it,and please will anyone else interested do the same.

So all of you who are biological women only know you're women because of your vaginas? Is there nothing else in you that makes you feel sure you're a woman?

I think so yes but it's impossible to tell really. This sort of story makes me wonder if I am wrong though - www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11814300

A man who wants to be a woman and insists they feel like a woman and has no op can at any point stop dressing like a woman and then suddenly have the advantage of being recognised as a man immediately.

Regadless of what any of us think we are and our feelings only we the individual can truly feel them. Even the most empathetic person in the world can't truly feel anyone else's emotions.

Actually not everyone has a strong sense of self EUPD more commonly known as BPD has as one of its classifying criteria that people lack a sense of self. That is a diagnosable MH condition.

I have also met a few people in life who change radically to fit in. I can also think of two women who changed completely to fit what their boyfriends at the time wanted. I thought less of them. So I think their sense of self was very malleable it may have been to achieve a goal but I'm talking radical changes on stances.

I think a woman trapped in a man's body should be recognised as such and we should accept them as women.

How can a "woman be trapped inside a man's body"? A male who believes he feels like a woman has no way of knowing he feels more like a woman than a man. He is basing it on his own subjective perception of womanhood and women, and expectations and stereotypes around that.

I didnt ask for an recomendations for articles that explain transexuality, or discussed it to the point of being able to convince me that they are the same as biological women. I asked for peer reviewed papers in reputable scientific journals. That is a very, very different thing from newspaper articles, magazine articles, blog posts, tweets, websites with various agendas, political party manifestos etc.etc

Who are we to tell people who they are anyway.

They can think what they like, up to the point where their belief driven actions negatively affect others.

If natal females aren't aware of our gender identity because it's not in conflict, why don't we feel distress when we're pursuing typically "masculine" activities? Shouldn't we get upset changing a spare wheel, or find playing rugby too stressful?

“I’m all for protecting women’s rights but comments comparing being trans to wanting to be an animal or telling transwomen they will never be proper women (whatever that means) are completely unnecessary and will certainly prevent any transwomen from commenting in fear of being torn apart.”

I can think of two reasons this poster doesn't want a trans woman upset 1) The are telling lies, and centre the emotions and feelings of men before women. 2) They are telling lies, and know trans Women are mentally ill and want to protect them against women.

I think a woman trapped in a man's body should be recognised as such and we should accept them as women.

To me this statement is utterly meaningless. I mean totally devoid of meaning.

What makes a woman a woman is her body.

Plus you are demanding that I accept this faith based notion that souls exist outwith material reality and that when humans are made the force that makes them sometimes makes mistakes and puts these souls in the incorrect physical packaging.

I am not religious so this is nonsense to me and I live in a society where I have the right to be an atheist. A society which does not give you the right to impose your religious beliefs on me and insist that I live my life by them.

Plus you are claiming that ladybrains exist. This is essentialist and I have never seen the argument of the existence of ladybrain used in a way that wasn't misogynistic (and that includes trans ideology).

Everything that you are arguing is faith based ideology.

Why should I accept any of it, especially considering it erases my material reality, erodes my hard fought for rights as a political minority, erases my female oppression and is an attack on my humanity made by a population who have been attacking my humanity since the beginning of time (often by invoking religion / faith / inner soul type stuff)??

I don't think this is true, is it? That would be a huge leap. Surely people are just deciding that "woman" is no longer a label referring to a biological reality but a chosen identity?

If people believe “woman” has a new definition which includes biological women and trans women. Then transwomen are women. You can just get different types of women.

OP - I think one argument would be:

• Biology does not create a strict binary between male and female. There are male and female sex characteristics, but those can be on a spectrum (and there are of course people who are intersex). Therefore categorising people on a strict binary as male or female based purely on biology does not make sense. Alternatively, it needs to be argued that biology does not actually matter very much (compared to gender) when determining if somebody is male or female.

• Similarly, gender is on a spectrum. There are societal norms and gendered assumptions but there is also a sense of self identity when it comes to gender. Categorising somebody as having a female gender based on biological sex does not make any more sense than (and to many people makes less sense than) understanding gender to be fluid and potentially based on self identity (albeit that such self identity may itself be based on societally constricted understandings of male and female).

• If you accept the fluidity of both sex and gender categorisations, then determining whether somebody is “literally” a man or woman becomes a slightly redundant question. Instead, it opens the door to categorisation based purely on self identity - how somebody feels, how they wish to live in society, how they appear (and therefore are treated in society) etc.

I am playing devil’s advocate with this argument and can think of many arguments against it from both sides, but it is the only argument I have heard that makes at least some sense to me (because it does not necessarily depend wholly on gender being innate rather than societally imposed). I appreciate however that it is slightly reframing your question - I can’t quite see how to make an argument that transwomen are literally women unless biology is ignored or considered to be of negligible importance.

Why should I accept any of it, especially considering it erases my material reality, erodes my hard fought for rights as a political minority, erases my female oppression and is an attack on my humanity made by a population who have been attacking my humanity since the beginning of time (often by invoking religion / faith / inner soul type stuff)??

This times a million.

A man who wants to be a woman and insists they feel like a woman and has no op can at any point stop dressing like a woman and then suddenly have the advantage of being recognised as a man immediately

This is the thing isn't it.

I'm guessing this is why the activists will carry on shouting their mouths off and bullying everyone.

Because once this thing goes through when it all goes wrong they can bugger off back to the now empty and safe men's rooms.

All those Tw with the grcs and us biological women are stuck in the women's.

So all of you who are biological women only know you're women because of your vaginas? Is there nothing else in you that makes you feel sure you're a woman?”

I know I am a woman because of mybecause of what my body potentially do

The mind is a part of the body. Probably the key component of the body. The mind is manifest in the brain. All are part of the physical reality.

A woman trapped in a man's body is to say a person that has the sense of self of being a woman is trapped in the external physical body of a man.

So all of you who are biological women only know you're women because of your vaginas
I find this really dismissive of female biology.
For me, the biological reality is more to do with breasts (that men like to stare at and comment on as soon as they grow), periods (can be painful, messy and appear at inconvenient times), pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, intimate examinations by health care professionals should anything go wrong with any of these bodily functions at any time (and sometimes just for preventative reasons e.g. smear tests).
Having to take synthetic hormones for birth control or a variety of medical conditions and then being told the side effects of those are all in my head or that my husband's need for an orgasm trumps my need not to be sent loopy by progesterone.
PMT and being treated like a lesser being for having it.
My vagina is actually the least troublesome bit of all of it.
I feel like my biology is a cage sometimes that's invisible to men and I'm not going to be told by anyone that a feeling in their head is more important than the limitations my biology places on me
(And that's before we get onto what happens to women in other parts of the world, such as being aborted, left to die or abandoned in an orphanage because of their vagina; having their bits of their genitalia removed because penis people think it's wrong for vagina people to enjoy sex; being shut in sheds in sub zero temperatures and dying as a result because penis people thing period are unclean and people on their period need to be isolated from society; being kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery aka forced marriage because penis people think they can).

It is so reductive to imply being a woman is being defined by your vagina. It makes me really really angry.

Sorry for derailing your thread bert.

Fair purple but how is male female biology on a spectrum? My uterus is not more or less female than any other woman’s.

Perhaps some people have higher or lower levels of sex hormones and so some women have facial hair for instance. Some men are more muscular than others. But they are still clearly on either side of a divide. Even intersex people as I understand it are chromosomally male or female.

“Biology does not create a strict binary between male and female. There are male and female sex characteristics, but those can be on a spectrum (and there are of course people who are intersex). Therefore categorising people on a strict binary as male or female based purely on biology does not make sense“

Actually, I think that biologically it does make sense. My understanding is that there isn’t a spectrum. Psychologically there might be..........

the privilage comes from the idea that because you don't recognise your sense of self because it aligns with your body, that other people don't have a sense of self where it is in conflict.

You are dismissing people based on your mind body alignment.

I think that trans activists and allies are the ones who often dismiss others by labelling them as cis and saying 'you don't recognise your gender identity because it matches your sex.

I absolutely believe that trans people experience this sense of self, I recognise that it's valid and important to them. In turn, I expect them to recognise that it isn't a universal experience. I don't experience it, and it's not because I have always felt comfortable in my 'gender'. I haven't. I hated being a female as a teenager. I hated my female body and being treated/seen as a girl/woman. It has taken me a long time to feel ok about being me.

How can he be a woman trapped in a mans body when no one of either sex can explain what being a woman feels like? He can be a person feeling conflict, depression, negativity etc which could be relieved to varying degrees by dressing like a stereotypical woman, having surgery to look and feel more like a biological woman, living as his perception of how a woman lives etc. But fundamentally he's just an adult human being (I hope) choosing to live and present in a certain way as an expression of self. This does not alter his sex. I have no problem with that, as long as its not imapacting on my rights or as long as he/she/they (whatever pronoun they choose) is not trying to tell me they are "more of a woman now than you are", as my trans friend tried to tell me shortly after their op.

As many, many, many biological women have said on MN for many years now, I couldn't be less stereotypically womanly, in looks or outlook, but I am still a woman. I menstruate, have been pregnant, have to thibk about contraception and whther to try and have children, have experienced miscarriage, and have given birth. My friend dresses far, far more stereotypically like a woman than I do, wears clothes and shoes I dont, but she is biologically male and was socialised as such and will never experiece any of the above things that have contributed to me as an adult woman. So what, we're both adult humans that work in the same place doing the same job. As long as noone tries to trump anyone elses life or experiece live and let live I say. It people saying she is a woman exactky the same as me that takes it too far for me. Shes a transwoman, and good luck to her.

As a psychologist I find this conversation fascinating.
A key part of my role is helping people feel at peace with themselves, accepting perceived flaws and limitations and leading as fulfilling lives as possible.
Whether or not an inner sense of self exists for all or some doesn’t seem that important, unless one does have such a sense at it causes distress. The absence of such distress is no more a privilege than being able bodied or cancer free.
The key thing seems to be how to address the distress.
I don’t think saying there is no such thing as an inner sense of gender holds any weight as this is the actual lived experience of many, be they gender conforming or not. I also don’t think pretending an issue doesn’t exist (trans women are women) is a healthy one to take.

I've seen that argument used, purple. But the sex-as-spectrum theory doesn't get over the first hurdle, which is that deviations from a binary norm (such as intersex conditions) don't make something a spectrum.

I've no doubt that there may well be a biological function that causes people to believe that they are the opposite sex, but that doesn't make it a reality, nor does it mean that the only way to treat that condition is for everyone to act as if it were a reality.

I also disagree that gender is a spectrum- in a feminist analysis, it is a hierarchy. Masculine over feminine.

There's a lot of pseudo science deployed, isn't there? Are you at all convinced?

haarland so an actual trans woman can say what a woman is but an actual woman can't?
Nobody knows what another person feels like. Trans women can only believe they are women based on their idea of what a woman is not the actual reality of being a woman
I think they feel not men. Perhaps they don't feel masculine enough to believe they are men. And so have decided they must be a woman
Calling trans women feminine rather than female makes more sense
We need a name for biological women others statistics are meaningless and useless

Yes everyone has an internal sense of self. Mostly it doesn't manifest as a problem unless the external self conflicts with the internal self. Where it conflicts I think we should default to the internal self rather than the external self

Glitched are you saying that an individual with anorexia, who sees themselves as fat should be seen as fat by everyone else, as this is their internal sense of self which you say should be defaulted to?

Here are some transwomen in their own words from trans support forums and subreddits: respectthefemalebody.tumblr.com/post/168708300037/what-trans-women-think-about-womanhood-their-own/amp#click=t.co/KmBzS3ApI9

Alison, the privilage comes from the idea that because you don't recognise your sense of self because it aligns with your body, that other people don't have a sense of self where it is in conflict

You are dismissing people based on your mind body alignment

I didn’t say anything about other people’s sense of self let alone dismiss it.

And i have asked several times what makes someone feel like a woman and no one can answer me.

And I’ve said nothing about my own “ mind body alignment “ , why are you making such an assumption about me ?