If transwomen are women, and women are cis women, are transwomen cis women?

[Superlambaanana]

Obviously not. They're men. But how can transwomen insist on being women and then recategorise women as cis women without it exposing their whole position as fundamentally flawed?

I'm not anti men. I love loads of men. I have a very special one on the sofa right now.

I know some men who say they are women. They know they aren't. They know I know they aren't. They know that I know why they say they are women, and they know it is their fetish. I don't hate them. But I refuse to be part of their sex life by participating in their fetish in public.

I know girls who think they are boys. All of them are in some way already broken. And this is their escape. I totally get it. I'd probably be there if I was a teen. I spent my life in construction based work. I get it.

But none of them have actually changed sex. And it is a lie to play along with it.

I think there may be at least three reasons for men to “identify” as women.

A: For some, I accept that by their own admission they experience a sexual thrill from dressing and behaving based on their perception of women. Some of these go for the “fishnet tights, miniskirts and cleavage” look.

B: For some, it’s a gay man thing, but they don’t want to admit they are gay, so it’s more comfortable to think of themselves as women.

C: For some, I think it may be mostly discomfort with societal expectations of men. These “transwomen” are the equivalent of typical “transmen”. They are social misfits who don’t fit and are trying to escape their sex. They are vulnerable to social contagion. They are less likely to go for a sexualised look, at least to start with, than group A.

Of course, it’s possible that some people are a mixture of two of the above.

There is something all women share, to be called 'women.'

It's not height (tall or short etc.) or race (black or white etc.). It's not even, say, income or occupation or eye colour, or star sign or favourite food or marital status or political affiliation or religion or weight or hatred of beetroot or love of Agatha Christie. And so on.

We are seeking for the one thing all the very diverse women share, to be seen as members of the same group. And traditionally that has been being a human being of the female sex.

The above quote argues that it's not at all necessary to be female for someone to be in the group 'women', and if we take this as a hypothesis, then we should ask what, in their framework, replaces 'being of the female sex' in the definition of 'woman'.

And here I, at least, founder, because we are told that a person is a woman if that person says so, pretty much. It doesn't really matter if the underlying justification is an abstract gender identity or the many alternative explanations I have seen offered.

Once we dispense with something that can be objectively established we have destroyed the basis for even having that category. Why would we need categories reflecting how much people love or hate the colour pink, long hair, high heels, cars, trains, being choked/choking others in bed and so on?

The erasure of sex as the determining factor in who belongs to the category 'women' matters.

It matters, because female people are still the largest oppressed group on this planet, and erasing their name and existence in languages and laws makes fighting that oppression extremely cumbersome, if not impossible.

It matters, because the two bros, sexism and misogyny have no trouble defining what a 'woman' for them is, but we are stripped of the tools to fight them because the gender identity movement prioritises 1950s rigid gender roles and sexist stereotypes about femininity. This will make things worse for most women, not better, even in countries where women's legal rights already exist, at least partially.

Thanks!

Gods, the tiptoeing women have to do ...

@nepeta bravo 👏 great post thanks

You don't have a gender identity. There's no such thing. You're male or female, based entirely on your physical biology.

nepeta, you've absolutely nailed it with this sentence:
Once we dispense with something that can be objectively established we have destroyed the basis for even having that category.👏

That's exactly what I've been thinking for years, but couldn't quite get the right words for it, so I'm going to nick yours shamelessly and quote them repeatedly, if that's all right with you

I asked ChatGPT:

Transgender women are women, just as cisgender women are women. The difference between "cisgender" and "transgender" lies in whether a person's gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. Since transgender women were assigned male at birth but are women, they are not considered cisgender women. Therefore, while both transgender and cisgender women are women, transgender women are not cisgender women.

So much fail ChatGPT. We used to say, GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out

Putting the Artificial in Artificial Intelligence.

All it's doing here is answering the Q given by OP using the definitions of the terms as defined by dictionaries.

Yes, as Bez said. Garbage in and garbage out. It just shows the pitfalls of AI.

Well not the dictionary I use.

www.oed.com/dictionary/woman_n?tl=true

The dictionary you use has an entry for cisgender. Same as every other dictionary I've seen that defines it, it is also not defined as a slur.

"Designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth; of or relating to such persons. Contrasted with transgender."

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/cisgender_adj?tab=meaning_and_use#1171044060

And your point is?

Of course it’s not designated as a slur. Rule of misogyny: men are what they say they are and women are what men say they are.

Of course it’s a slur. It makes women a subset of our sex. It says men are a type of woman if they want to be. It implies we choose to be women, and thus eliminates the need for sex-based rights and protections.

I’m not even mid-thirties yet but I never heard it used when referring to women until relatively recently. My mum and grandmother were never called it, they were just described as women.

It is a power term used by the trans community and their allies to demean authentic women. (I’m taking that word back..)
As I said earlier in the thread, the Trans community and their supporters want the word ‘woman’ for themselves and to achieve that aim, they have to ensure authentic women have a prefix.

It implies we choose to be women, and thus eliminates the need for sex-based rights and protections

👏👏👏

Or more subtly, because plenty of TRAs would chorus "you don't choose your gender, why would trans people chose to be a target of ridicule /hatred /pity /misunderstanding?" it implies if you do not believe and publicly state that certain personalities belong in certain bodies so in your case your body mismatches your personality, your personality must align with the gender stereotypes of your sex"

It's another one of those quite clever linguistic tricks that has been used to move thinking in the way they want it moved (eg, first 'transwoman', then 'trans woman', because after all trans women is just another kind of women with a descriptor.)

Trans women are women, cis women are women. Just two different kinds of women.

I think the next move was to have Women and Cis Women so we'd be a subset of our own selves but things have stalled a bit 😉

@FlirtsWithRhinos exactly. It’s always about reducing women’s rights and freedoms - that’s the endgame (and why so many governments are on board with it). Put us back in our boxes, oh and if pesky things like equal opportunity come up, hire men in dresses. They’re women after all, because they say so.

Thses words are also in my dictionary:

Slut
Prude
Hag
Master
Slave
Lord
Servant
Subject
Subordinate
Daemon
Dragon
Unicorn
Teleportation

I know what all these words mean. That does not mean the concepts they express are universal, "true" or objectively meaningful, or that because these concepts exist and are understood it's ok to build them into society.

@Christinapple
“The difference between "cisgender" and "transgender" lies in whether a person's gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.”

“… cisgender … a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth … .”

How do I know whether or not my sense of personal identity matches my sex?

Christinapple seems very eager, on multiple threads, to impose a gender identity on women who have said repeatedly that they don’t have one and don’t want one, because we all recognise that gender as a concept is all about sexist and misogynistic stereotypes.

I thought assuming someone’s gender, or worse still telling them their gender was a Bad Thing?

Only bad for the sacred caste, not those untouchable cissies.

Of course. Maybe we should just all identify as agender, which I think is the closest there is to a rejection of it.