I very much appreciate the discussion about the term “mother” as it has always concerned me that I had no real answer when that analogy was raised. However I see now that it is quite a good analogy. There is a core definition of what the word mother means (a woman who has given birth) and various other claims made to motherhood, some of which are legally mandated and some of which have gained general societal acceptance over time.
Those other definitions still rely however, either on that legal mandate or on “be kind”. Lots of people recognize inherently that it would be unkind to point out that those women are not really mothers by its core meaning, but that through their actions, have earned the title of mother. If challenged then, most people would acknowledge that this is an honorary title.
When the mantra “Transwomen are women” was first in use, it was understood by most to be asserting a similarly honorary position. Everyone knew that transwomen were not women, but that it was kind to acknowledge them as such. The basis of my understanding here was that this was a medical condition, for which there was a treatment that not only involved physical medical intervention, but for success, required that others in society played along. Many of us, at that point, would have argued that transwomen were women, but that was always in full understanding that this was only in an honorary sense, and that, if push came to shove and it really mattered, that it would be acknowledged that they were not.
So the problem has arisen because it has become apparent over time, that being acknowledged as honorary women is no longer acceptable to some men who claim they are women. That goes hand in hand with the attempted obliteration of the shared understanding that “if push came to shove and it really mattered, that it would be acknowledged that they were not.” In addition, it is now being pushed that there is no need for a man to experience gender dysphoria to claim womanhood. It is simply his right to do so, if he feels like it.
And it is these men, who no longer accept that honorary womanhood is enough who are currently leading the demands for legal and social changes.
Rather than accepting that women have needs that should be met in addition to the separate but equal needs of men who claim they are women, they are attempting both legally and socially to force their own desire to invade women’s spaces and extend all women’s rights to themselves on us all. And that is why those women who recognise what is happening, are beginning to object, in larger and larger numbers.
So can I ask, Spooky, do you really believe that transwomen are women in an absolutist way and that there can never be any distinction made? Logically, if you believe transwomen are women, then you believe that they belong in women’s prisons by right, for example, and that any exclusion of them can never be because of an acknowledgement of their different sex, but must always be done on the basis of exactly the same assessment as other women regarding risk factors and so on.
And it would then follow that transwomen, as actual women, must belong in women’s sports and thus any rules that discriminate against them based on physical factors can only depend on height, weight or age or any other means that are currently used to distinguish different groupings within one sex. Acknowledgment that there are physical differences between the sexes would not be a valid reason to exclude them as they are women, regardless of their sex.
Because this is, in my opinion the reason that the absolutist version “transwomen are [literally] women” is now being pushed in place of the previous understanding that “transwomen are [honorary] women”. It’s because if we acknowledge that some men literally are women, then exclusion becomes inherently unfair in any and all situations and then we are left scrabbling for reasons to exclude them that would apply equally to any woman.
And not only is that a very difficult task in itself if we are not allowed to use sex as a reason (given that women can, by definition now be male or female) but we might then end up excluding some adult human females from spaces or rights that previously would have been theirs automatically on the basis of their sex.
In simple terms, the insistence that transwomen are women is an attempt to change the meaning of the word “women” in law, because changing the meaning of that word is actually easier than changing the laws themselves. It’s an attempted short cut, not to introduce separate but equal rights, but for those men (or transwomen if you prefer that term) to redefine themselves legally into a group they don’t belong in (in my opinion) to the detriment of those women who previously had those rights.
Do you see any of the problems here as being important in the question of whether we should accept the redefinition of the word women to include some men?