“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.

Yes - it’s ignoring the biology that is both necessary in order to make the “transwomen are literally women” argument and by far the most difficult aspect to dismiss for all the reasons PPs have mentioned!

Having said that, I have to say that my own sense of being a woman comes (I think) more from societally constructed notions of gender than from my body. In a more gender neutral society, we might notice the differences between male/female bodies less (and feel less restricted or defined by our female biology).

Comments like that are not helpful in the slightest though, and prevent lots of people commenting. I’m not a transwoman and dont feel paricularly strongly about being a woman so I have no reason to look for offence that’s not there. It’s how I feel and many others.

MrsKCastle, when you dream are you male or female?

Yes everyone has an internal sense of self.

Really though? I think the idea of a fixed identity, an inner self is quite outdated. Our identities are fluid and negotiated within society. Our sex is fixed. It is possible to identify as a female while having a male body and I can understand that this would be upsetting - but it is also not always permanent.

I also don’t think pretending an issue doesn’t exist (trans women are women) is a healthy one to take.

Could you please explain this more clearly? To me it sounds like you are telling people who post "trans women are women" that they have unhealthy thoughts? Are you saying something else?

Is the biology between men and women on a spectrum?
I know there are a few with intersex conditions, but apart from that humans are dimorphic. I agree that gender is on a spectrum, but biology?

So all of you who are biological women only know you're women because of your vaginas?

Well yes, along with all the other female anatomy and physiology. That's just what woman means.

Or at least what it used to mean. Now 'woman' means something else that I can't quite work out. We are told it's not biology, if it's feminine presentation and behaviour then I'm not a woman.

The internal sense of self thing is interesting. I have a sense of self inasmuch as I experience being 'me' but I can't say I particularly feel female (and certainly not feminine!) I just feel like me. I understand that a person can feel their body is 'wrong' and doesn't match their internal sense of self.

The mind is a strange, little understood phenomenon but from everything I have read I believe it to be an emergent property of the brain, not a thing separate from the body. Minds are imperfect and messy, malleable and frequently mistaken.

I don't understand why, when a person's mind is mistaken as to what sex they are, we should go with their internal feelings rather than the material reality that is their actual body. We don't do this with any other mistaken beliefs and I don't think it helps the trans person to reinforce it. This does not mean that adults should not physically transition if that is what they need to do to live more comfortably. To agree though, that 'yes you are a woman' when that is counter to material reality will surely lead to a lifetime of disappointment and cognitive dissonance as their body and the rest of the world provides constant reminders that this is not true.

I don't understand what a woman is anymore. I don't know if I still am one under the new definition. I don't think we have a definition any more.

I no longer know what to call the group of adult humans who are female. I believe we still need a word for this group.

@allegretto

So you don't have an internal sense of self. A unique you-ness that exists inside your mind?

I don't understand what a woman is anymore. I don't know if I still am one under the new definition. I don't think we have a definition any more

And that as I said earlier is another question yet to be answered, just what are people transitioning to.

How can anyone be a women when the word is no longer able to exist without causing offence.

And how, when biology is transohobic can it be taught at university and in schools etc

@TunaSushi
I think it is unhealthy to label natal males who wish they were natal females natal females (I think there is a widely held view that woman means adult natal female).
I think it is unhealthy for the person experiencing gender dysphoria and to those who know that natal males are not natal females (or vice versa).

MsBeaujangles

I had wondered if OJ and his chanting friends were in need of some psychological therapy.

What is the best response to these people trying to gaslight us?

@Flomper
I completely agree with your post!

Biology does not create a strict binary between male and female.

Eh? Of course it does - by definition! Presence of Y chromosome = male. Lack of Y = female. That's about as binary as binary can be!

I apologise if this is taking the thread a little too off topic, but I had a thought. It's weird how when talking about biology, female biology gets watered down to "if you have a vagina". The reality of female biology is massively more complicated than that (Quentin's post sums it up well), whereas it is male biology that is usually explained by the presence of a primary sexual organ.
Seems a very male-oriented way of viewing it, that it is down to the primary sexual organ alone, and not the myriad of effects that female biology causes.

MsBeaujangles
I agree with that, and would add it is abusive to coerce or force other people to pretend a male is a female.

A transwoman may thinks she feels like a female but which female would that be? What does feeling like a woman / female feel like? For me an endless juggling of work / childcare / housework . I wish i had time to attend to more important things like hair and make up and body hair removal 😀

@TunaSushi
I actually think that the only way we will get anywhere in moving things forward is to adopt a mediation approach whereby interests are focused on rather than positions. So instead of maintaining trans women are or aren’t women, we explore what people’s interests are that underpin these positions. I have to say, that I find it infuriating that on these threads, people on both sides present the interests of others in very sinister ways and then dismiss them out of turn.
Going back to your question.....I say that is is not healthy to deny/psychologically ‘split off’ from any of our lived experiences or parts of ourselves. It is good to move on, but to recognise how our past shapes who we are today.

My opinon?

They can live as a woman, in terms of how they feel they need to look, act, live etc in order to express their feeling of being more 'woman' than 'man'. I've got NO problem with that.

But you cannot turn a man into a woman!!! You only have to look at Caitlyn Jenner - outwardly the appearnce is as female as can be arrived at in someone who passed through male puberty many years ago. But the behaviours are 100% male, the thinking (at least in my opinion). Whilst Jenner may have felt 'wrong' in the male body he was born into at that time, the attitudes to him from others, his sporting career etc and so forth were all experienced and lived AS A MAN. Someone like this cannot possibly ever consider that they are 'a woman'.

Soon, you know what? There'll be no woman or man. In fact trans gender women also won't be able to call themselves women - because there'll be no women. We'll have no genders at all and will ALL lose our uniqueness. And I absolutely support anyone who feels trapped in the wrong body - that would be an awful situation for someone to be in and not be able to do something about it and I have no problem at all with this. But to say you've turned into 'a woman'. No, you're not having my womanhood that is bourne of my upbringing from day 1 and my experiences of 51 years being a woman - that is something you cannot replicate. 'As a woman' for me is the furthest it should and can actually go.

But this is SUCH a complex issue. It's one thing a bloke who changes to female dress and transitions (to whatever extent) at the age of 30, and a child of 5 who knows and expresses and is listened to that they actually don't feel like a boy and obviously just got the wrong body who never go through male puberty.

I can't figure out the practicalities of it because it is so very complex. All I know is, if you're in the wrong body and you want to change your appearance to right that wrong - you have my 100% support. But you want to tell me you're a 'woman'. No. Must we give up anything else about ourselves as women - our actual womanhood?!

I'm not trying to be PC, I'm not trying not to be PC, I've got no problem with those who want to change their appearance to feel 'right', these are just my unedited, rambling reactions to this subject.

So can I just check, the answer to the OPs question

“ why are transwomen actually literally women ? “

Is because they feel like women .

But no one is willing to explain what “ feeling like a woman “ means (beyond a few loose gender stereotypes that vary across time and culture ).

Is that right ?

But having said that anyone who thinks sex chromosomes are a simple binary needs to do a bit more than high school biology
Evidence for a third sex chromosome in humans please.

They are transwomen. They aren't and can never be literally a woman. They might think and feel that they're a woman but as they have never been a woman they don't know. Particularly if they identify with gender stereotypes including long hair make up and dresses.

This.

I have no problem with men who wish to dress and look like women. I don't even have a problem referring to them as 'she'. But they are not women, they are transwomen. There is a difference.

So you don't have an internal sense of self. A unique you-ness that exists inside your mind?

The way I feel about myself now is very different to how I felt about myself thirty years ago. My sense of self is not fixed, it is not the "real me", it is negotiated in relation to others and society. It is changing!

What this all comes down to is an ideological notion that men get to define women according to whatever they want and that that definition can be changed by men according to whatever they want at any time. Women do not exist outwith this definition. Women are not human in their own right.

Meanwhile men oppress, exploit, abuse and kill girls and women because they are female and everyone knows that this femaleness exists as a material reality (it's called where babies come from).

Women must accept both of the above conflicting ideas as being true at the same time. Woman as a material reality to be oppressed and woman as a non material reality to be used any way men want.

This is otherwise known as misogyny. It manifests in our lives as patriarchal society and trans ideology is simply one of its recent manifestations.

That people argue the above and fail to see how deeply utterly misogynistic it is is astounding and terrifying.