Hi Helen! I've been in touch with Miranda. She suggested that I contact you directly in order to pick up on your statement that "'Trans women are women' is a vicious and dangerous lie." Two questions (for starters) are "how do you define a woman" and "how do you define a transwomen". I do empathise with much of what you wrote, but I get bogged down with terminology that gets conflated and means different things to different people.
Thanksfor asking this. I think that they are really important questions. On thesurface they seem quite simple questions but once you start to look at theimplications we can start to understand what the real issues might be.
Yourfirst question is about the definition of woman. A good place to start withdefinitions is usually the dictionary.
“womannounAn adult human female.”
I don’tthink that the definitions of human or adult are in contention, but let’s lookat the dictionary definition of female.
“femalenounOf ordenoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguishedbiologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by malegametes.”
We couldjust leave it there, and some people would like us to, but I think that doesn’tanswer you question and wouldn’t help us to understand why these arecontentious words.
The wordsman and woman are imbued with social connotation.
“imbueverbinspireor permeate with (a feeling or quality).”
“connotation. nounan ideaor feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal orprimary meaning.”
In oursociety the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ mean so much more than their literalmeanings. The word ‘woman’ is imbued with what we understand women to be inrelation to our culture and our social environment.
We livein a society where we have very distinct expectations of what men and women areexpected to be. We have commonly accepted rules for what are consideredacceptable and unacceptable behaviours for men and women.
So whatis gender? Well here is where it starts to get tricky because even just lookingat dictionary definitions we seem to get into a bit of a mess.
The members of one or other sex
The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).
The behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex”
The firstdefinition isn’t really very helpful as it is just the same as sex.
Thesecond definition is a bit of a mess and actually encapsulates the confusionthat we often get into. If ‘female’ denotes the sex that can bear offspring orproduce eggs how can the state of being female have anything to do with socialdifferences rather than biological differences. It’s a contradiction in terms.
The thirddefinition I think pretty much nails it and that is what I mean if I refer togender from now on.
Ok. Stillwith me? Good. So armed with this we know that the dictionary definition of ‘woman’is an adult human female, but it has connotations of gender i.e. it invokes theidea of the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associatedwith females.
In thissense it is quite easy to define gender identity and transgender (and apologiesin advance for the repetition that is coming)
“GenderIdentity is how a person identifies with the behavioural, cultural, orpsychological traits typically associated with one sex.”
“Transgenderis used to describe a person of one sex who identifies with the behavioural,cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with the opposite sex.”
“A transwomanis a male who identifies with the behavioural, cultural, or psychologicaltraits typically associated with females.”
That lastsentence is probably quite provocative, but it isn’t meant to be. I understandthat saying that a transwoman is male hurts a lot of trans people and Iunderstand why. But it isn’t meant to hurt. It’s a rational and honest way ofdescribing the situation. Of course there is merit in deconstructing thisfurther and stopping to explore why it hurts so much, but that would be a wholepost in itself. We could also explore the fact that the experiences of sometranswomen feels like so much more than identifying with certain traits andit’s a feeling that the whole body is wrong and that this totally ignores thefeeling of body dysphoria. These are valid points for discussion also.
Now ifeverybody agreed on these definitions of gender identity and transwoman wecould stop here, but actually these definitions are problematic to differentgroups in different ways.
The transcommunity has adopted the mantra that “transwomen are women” and of coursepromotes any scientific evidence that suggests that there are physiologicalfactors in play and rejects any scientific evidence that there aren’t anyinherent differences between male and female brains. “Transwomen are women”makes sense in the context that we live in a society which is heavily based ongender and so we are more closely aligned with the superficial traitsassociated with females than those associated with males and seek to integratewith that social group. The argument is that trans people just want to be freeto get on with their lives without rejection or stigma and so the tolerant andcompassionate thing to do is to accept us as women. It is how we identify andhow we attempt to live.
However,the feminist community rightly points out that women have been oppressed for millennianot because of their ‘gender identity’, but because of their sexual andreproductive capacity as females. Feminists, especially radical feminists arealso opposed to the concept of “lady brain” as this has been used as ajustification for the oppression of females and instead assert that male andfemale brain function is inherently the same, and that any differences are aresult of socialisation. This community tends to reject that the scientific evidence presented of measurable differences between female and male brain function is evidence that the differences are innate rather than socialised. Instead they pointto the growing evidence that there are no real differences.
Animportant point is also that radical feminists see gender (as described in thethird definition above) as being a tool of oppression. The traits andbehaviours expected of males and females places women (as a class) in aposition of being subjugated by men (as a class). As a result many adopt aposition of gender abolition and believe that the emancipation of women canonly be achieved through abolishing the rules that constrain the acceptablebehaviours of males and females.
So we cansee how these two viewpoints conflict.
Gender abolitionists want to break the association betweensex and behavioural,cultural, or psychological traits and so find the implication that women aredefined by these things as both insulting and regressive. Hence they reject theassertion that males who identify with these traits are women as thatreinforces the association that they reject.
Having spent years thinking about these things and exploring them, Ibelieve that the aims of gender abolition actually serve women and transwomenequally. Both sides want the same thing. That we can all be free to not conformto the behaviours and traits assigned to us because of our genitals.
As a result, whilst I can see how “transwomen are women” makes sensewith reference to cultural norms, I support gender abolition as a cause thatbetter serves women and transwomen and so I don’t believe it’s necessary toconsider transwomen to be a subset of women in order to support us and free usfrom constraints and stigma.
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