TRA understanding of 'what is a woman'?

[Jamdown123]

Hi all,

I'm really trying to understand this. Can anyone point me to a resource that explains what the TRA definition of what a woman is?

I've tried so hard to find one, and I can't.

As I understand it, 'gender' in feminism originally meant the social stereotypes surrounding each sex. It was a bad thing which reinforced the patriarchy. Now women are supposed to be defined and confined by those same stereotypes? It's like there's a whole lot of conservative, sexist thinking behind genderism.

Anyone still looking for their sense of humour, apparently we don't have one on here.

I think we should just say that a woman is someone who is not a man and a man is someone who is not a woman. As the words man and woman can not be defined by "assigned" sex, body parts, or stereotypes and presumably also can't be defined by a simple feeling, it is then just a case of flipping a coin. Heads a woman, tails a man.

Sorted. Best of 99

Define woman without referring to biological sex.

It's brilliant isn't it. Define a bicycle without mentioning transport, wheels or pedals. Ha! Gotcha!

It's been redefined as a social role.

Done.

Handily this also means that any woman in history who did things that were outside gender role were REALLY men. And voila! All women have ever done outside of marriage babies fashion etc. We didn't do after all!

Define woman without referring to biological sex.

Any adult human who isn't allowed to identify as a transwoman.

[quote PandaParty]Have a look at this drivel, OP.

www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/qke4po/good_answers_to_gotcha_questions/[/quote]
Thanks for this!

• Ok, so can anyone just identify as 'female' then? Why are trans women using the term 'woman' as opposed to 'female' OR anything else. If you draw the line at female, what makes you draw that distinction? What is it about 'female', whatever that is, why is it separated from the concept of woman?

• If the answer is 'I feel like a woman' then describe what you feel like for me please?

• Another question I have is 'so do you feel like a trans woman?' If yes, then why do you ALSO need to identify as a woman, without the trans part? If it's because you believe it is socially subjugated, ok, let's all get to working on changing that. I'm a black woman. I don't drop 'black' to level up to women who are not black, I get on with ensuring everyone knows black women are equals.

• When you felt like a 'woman' and so identified as that, did you feel like a 'woman' or did you feel like a 'trans woman'?

• If you say you have felt like a woman your whole life, you can't then use Simone De B and say 'one becomes a woman'.

So, in short, that reddit article didn't help, because this situation can't be helped it seems......

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I'm not a biologist, but I gather there are circumstances in which a person could have XX chromosomes and be male. This is because very, very rarely the SRY gene which is normally found on the Y chromosome can end up on an X chromosome instead. In that case, a few weeks after conception, when every embryo, male or female, produces a huge amount of testosterone, the presence of the SRY gene means that the embryo would develop from that point on as male. Without the SRY gene, the testosterone just washes through and the embryo develops as female.

I find this kind of thing fascinating and it makes me wish I'd studied biology a bit longer.

The intersex argument is a curious one to me. If there are exceptions to the rule, does that make the other factors a fiction?

Or another way to look at it completely - there is red, there is blue, there is also purple. Does the existence of purple mean there is no such thing as blue or red?

I don't understand how the possibility of intersex means there is no possibility of male and female. Unless we are saying we are all just human, and then why the heck are some people so keen to be known as women when there is no woman or man.

It obviously means SOMETHING. Woman clearly means SOMETHING.

The word 'woman' has been stolen. It's a crime.

I didn’t know that women are socially constructed. Are we figments of our own imaginations, like poltergeists or the Easter Bunny?

Some of the posters on that Twitter thread are using the argument that definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. I’d agree that words generally mean what people understand them to mean, regardless of what the dictionary says. This might not apply to specialist vocabulary, though.

However, I don’t agree that therefore, you can define the word “woman” however you want, at least not if you want anyone else to understand what you’re saying.

Other posters are suggesting that language is inadequate to define the modern concept of “woman”. I’m not convinced. We now have plenty of words to describe trans and non-binary identities, as well as the biological terms to define sex.

@Vanishun

How do they know what a male body is then? Transphobes.

Ah, I see.

yes, the rejection of man is valuable. So the question might be to ask 'what is a man' given that is what the person was, they should be able to answer that question.

Then we would have a range of elements which we know women are not. It's not perfect, but we'd be getting there?

[quote NiceGerbil]I've got a few definitions, see if I can find a couple.

From UN women Twitter-

"Trans women are women at the end of the day. Every woman is a woman. Women are multifaceted, intergenerational, international. They are limitless, formless ... women are the world.”
mobile.twitter.com/un_women/status/1235977079839166464[/quote]
So are men?

Not sure what you mean OP!

Men are men I'm pretty sure!

@NiceGerbil

Not sure what you mean OP!

Men are men I'm pretty sure!

I mean men are also are multifaceted, intergenerational, international. They are limitless, formless, the world....

So that doesn't help me with what a woman is at all...

Are they? I thought men were still just men.

Different ball game entirely to women!

Genuine sticker for sale from a New Zealand TRA.

Standard new defn.

Define identifies as
Define woman in terms of what that actually means to identify as

There never is an answer.

A comment off a trans women’s tiktok page due to men saying they wouldn’t want to date a trans women.

‘ @starlord5b76：these comments are NOT it if you have a "preference" between cis women and trans women your transphobic period’.

If I was dating a man and during intimacy I found they had a vagina and didn’t tell me beforehand, I’d feel horrendous. I am not bisexual or interested in women sexual parts, this really doesn’t make me transphobic.
A trans women on tiktok recently got a lot of stock for saying after genital reassignment they wouldn’t ever mention the fact they’re trans to anyone ever again.

It all feels a bit rapey to me.

I this this explains a lot too.

A trans women dancing to this sentence they’ve put.

‘Stop calling cis women ‘normal girls’ trans women are just as real and just as hot’

Tbh I think this speaks volumes. It’s all about sexual validation by being ‘hot’ isn’t it.

@Naunet

Most recent answer to that I’ve had is woman is a social role. They couldn’t clarify what that role was though…

Support human, I think.

Intersex is a very unhelpful word and I'm glad it's disappearing in favour of DSDs, standing for differences of sexual development, I believe. Inter as a prefix means between so intersex has led to people believing there are some human beings who fall between male and female. DSD as a term is more likely to make people realise we're talking about medical conditions, I hope. Physical conditions affecting how the body functions and fertility. Not psychological conditions, though I'm sure having a DSD may lead to psychological issues in some cases.

support human

This is exclusive to biological women. Nobody expects a transwoman to be a support human.

Exactly what I was thinking about that.

I mean, the really simple answer which they can give is that they can't give a definition because it's would break the whole "transwomen are women" movement.

Logically you cannot say "x is one of y" when x is literally not y.

So you have to redefine x into meaning whatever you need it to be, and then sort of live with the cognitive dissonance and try to shake away anyone who queries the madness of redefinition.

But it's just part of this huge weird dynamic in recent years which I can't understand - why can't transwomen be proud to be transwomen?

Declaring loudly and angrily to the world that yes, you are a woman and also totally indistinguishable from every other woman in the world - well it just seems like an impossible standard to set for yourself. You're going to fail. You've got to - how are you ever going to really rewrite basic knowledge in your own head, let alone everyone else's? It's got to be mental torture, surely.

@Cattenberg

I can’t see the reddit thread without downloading the app. But the definition I usually see is “a woman is a person who identifies as a woman”. I’ve also seen “a woman is a person who uses female pronouns”, which sounds less circular, but isn’t really.

That’s not going to work in Jamaica where in Jamaican Creole the pronoun (im) is the same for both male and female and as a possessive.

@Vanishun

I mean, the really simple answer which they can give is that they can't give a definition because it's would break the whole "transwomen are women" movement.

Logically you cannot say "x is one of y" when x is literally not y.

So you have to redefine x into meaning whatever you need it to be, and then sort of live with the cognitive dissonance and try to shake away anyone who queries the madness of redefinition.

But it's just part of this huge weird dynamic in recent years which I can't understand - why can't transwomen be proud to be transwomen?

Declaring loudly and angrily to the world that yes, you are a woman and also totally indistinguishable from every other woman in the world - well it just seems like an impossible standard to set for yourself. You're going to fail. You've got to - how are you ever going to really rewrite basic knowledge in your own head, let alone everyone else's? It's got to be mental torture, surely.

Maybe identifying as a trans woman undermines access to some things that women have access to? Particularly as trans does not mean transitioned in terms of surgery etc.