How about this definition. “A woman is an adult who was born with XX chromosomes!”
72
Not a TERF, but very concerned that trans women contribute to a performative womanhood that excludes many native women. I've cared for trans women and never saw women who had short hair, small breasts, deep voices. Biological women are quite varied, but trans women are intentionally not so. I support the rights of trans women and men, but we need to stop the pretense that this won't further entrench negative gender norms around women. The most heteronormative behavior I've observed beyond the far right is transgendered woman who want nothing less than a C cup. Something about all of this feels very sad... and like a new jack erasure of womanhood in all of its glory.
80
Just like climate change, why not simply follow the science. Two " X " chromosomes ... you're a woman.
54
Is everyone nuts? I know, I know, you won't print it but I'm starting to think it's true.
49
It is April Fool's Day, afterall.
45
Here's Aerosmith's take on things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0oXY4nDxE
5
A woman is an adult female human. The female of the species are typically distinguished biologically from males of the species by their ability to bear offspring, normally bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei, and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries.
Sex is a biological distinction that has northing to do with gender conformity, gender identification, etc.Humans don't transition from one sex to the other. Humans are not among the species capable of changing sex after birth.
84
This feels like an April Fools piece. At least I hope so.
44
The more articles on transsexuals, the greater the likelihood of President Trump being re-elected in 2020.
66
The attempt to exclude people whose chromosomes are XY from the ranks of women reinforces the dangerous idea that there is such a thing as truth and reality.
62
This obsession with identity politics has reached absurd proportions, along with the pseudo-intellectual vocabulary that invariably accompanies it. I’d really like to retire the following words from the vernacular as soon as possible:
Cis ____
Binary, Non-binary
They, as a singular pronoun
Intersectionality
Woman/Man/Person of color
Woke
Safe space
Diversity
Inclusiveness
Progressive
Undocumented
Feel free to append...
48
TERFs please think sometimes of the ~550000 generations of plain boring women & men who provided the scaffolding for our current level of options
5
Perhaps the headline asks the wrong question, rather , should it be "What Counts as a Woman?"
6
“And surely we don’t want to go back to the days of defining women by their hormones or even their chromosomes — if for no other reason than we’d leave out the estimated 1.7 percent of women who are intersex.”
We don’t have to go back to those days. Those days are now. 1.7 percent of any group does not define the group. That’s why 1.7 % is statistically considered an outlier number.. an anomaly. If you’re born a woman, with female genitalia, and with a female set of chromosomes, you’re a woman. That’s an easy, classical and modern, agreed upon, biologically scientific way of establishing if someone is a woman.
81
2 X chromosomes seems like a plausible place to start.
46
There is so much hate on this comment board! If the only thing at stake were men pretending to be women, I suspect it would be less concentrated. The truth is that trans identity gives the lie to the standard way of conceiving of gender and that scares people, hence the hostility. Just so you “radical feminists” out there know—your rejection of trans people has aligned you perfectly with heteronormative patriarchy. I can hardly distinguish the “feminist” comments on here from the macho mansplaining.
14
If transfolks get to call themselves however they identify, so do other folks, simple as that.
Transwoman says she's a "woman" or "trans" or whatever, I'm happy to call her that and insist that others do the same.
But the same goes for me too, as a self-identified "woman" or "ciswoman" or whatever it is that I choose to call myself.
If I choose to be active on issues like, Black women dying in childbirth, or access to tampons in prison, or getting men to stop grabbing women by their "p"s, I can do that. If all those people who I advocate for in those situations, they also call themselves "women," that is what I am going to call them too.
Transfolks, I think, mostly get that, it seems to be the philosophers trying to reap more publications by sowing division.
14
This is nonsense. By your definition, anyone can be a woman. Which means no one is a woman.
77
Trans women seem to be more visible and vocal than trans men. It’s called male entitlement.
83
I sincerely request that the NYT follow who is funding transgender activism.
Deep pockets fund a whole lot of speech that gets elevated by national platforms-
There are no longer any lesbians at any US lesbian publication.
Instead bisexual women who will write articles about how lesbians must get over their objections to “Lady dick”, have been inserted.
The much vaunted all LGBTQ city council of Palm Springs has 3 gay men a transgendered woman and a bisexual woman. Where is the L?
Why is this being funded so abundantly? I’m not one to slam George Soros, or his generosity to charity, but Open Society foundation has given millions to the transgender cause, as have many other billionaire families like the Pritzkers, why no deep dives into any of this?
My guess is any woman important and influential enough to initiate such an investigation is far too comfortable in the or seats of power, to rock the boat, on behalf of all the other women in the world, who don’t have a safe and well-remunerated perch or even bodily autonomy.
55
Straight, gay, trans, natural-born, part-time, full-time, call yourself whatever you want, but I’m joining the crusaders against the nauseating term “cis-woman.” Women have had enough, way enough, of XY chromosome-carrying humans telling us who and what we are and expecting is to accept their descriptions and definitions of us. How dare these new entrants and their sycophants presume to rename me? Trans-women, Converts, The Ladies Formerly Known As Sir, call yourselves whatever you want, but whether you’re 0.5% of 99.9% of the population, you don’t get to change any words that describe me.
94
I'm really enjoying watching the misandrists tying their "reasoning" in knots as they try to reconcile extreme trans entitlement with extreme "feminist" entitlement!
5
Thinking like the author's will drive more women away from feminism than anything the most misogynistic man could dream of.
45
“And this sounds an awful lot like the biological essentialism that almost all feminists reject.“
“Biological essentialism”? What does this even mean? Biology is biology. Science is not, as some may claim, “fake news”.
53
It's interesting to note that Dr Hay proudly characterizes this op-ed as "TERF-bashing" in a Tweet she used to share this with her Twitter readers:
https://twitter.com/DrCarolHay/status/1112666449036918786
Is this something the NY Times Op-Ed stands behind its section being used for?
64
Hay: "... the estimated 1.7 percent of women who are intersex."
That's "hermaphrodite", for the politically incorrect.
More to the point, an intersex person is not a woman by definition. Or does Hay mean to discount men who are intersex? A philosopher should be able to express itself more cogently.
28
I believe in equal pay for equal work. I believe that women should have control over their bodies, specifically in terms of reproduction. For me this means I am a feminist.
I, and most of the feminists I know, do not have “a shared suspicion of conventional understandings of sex and gender,…”
But that is because we graduated from University and got on with our lives, rather than get mired in the ever reductive prose spun out on behalf of this or that minority.
Ms. Hay, I would submit to you that as many Women's Studies programs have changed their title to Gender Studies, so you should leave behind the mantel of Feminism and take up the cause of Genderism. This will allow you to leave the prison of gender by utilizing a non-binary term. Have fun in Utopia.
28
"assigned female at birth..."
The 1.7% of the population that are intersex are the only ones assigned anything at birth. The rest of us are simply categorized as male or female (sperm or egg producers essentially ...you know, that binary that has created every living human on this planet) and as such it becomes quite easy to figure out who counts as a woman ...or who counts as a man for that matter.
To paraphrase your subtitle then; the attempt to include trans women to the ranks of women reinforces the dangerous idea that a female can be pretty much anything. And considering the oppression natal women routinely suffer at male hands, that's an understandably frustrating pill for females to swallow.
55
The genes say it all.
20
Men have tried to take everything they want from women—now they take the name ‘woman’ and leave us with nothing. Our experience as women no longer exists—we are not ‘real’ women, but who is surprised? Not me. Male hubris and desire to appropriate knows no limits. Just as they decided to control and destroy the planet itself, they will keep going until there is no ‘female’—only ‘bodies that can bear offspring.’
66
Women are humans with wombs that support eggs and birthing and glands that feed and support infants. Men are humans who produce and exude semen. Female is an identification with being entered, and male is an identification with entering. Sex/gender. They can get mixed up.
10
With all the problems in the world today, does any of this really matter?
13
Call me whatever, but women, as far as I am concerned, are those born with female gentilia. I am completely indifferent to how trans individuals wish to identify and I most certainly do not advocate discrimination, but I am not about to change my view of the fact that you are what you are born with and,please, spare me the 'social construction' claptrap...
38
Why are we having this conversation? Why not just accept the complexity of categories, which exhibit wide variability? Each woman is not like every other woman. Various subtypes group together by choice. This is a bit too meticulous and precious for me.
Trans women may or may not convert their genitalia. A trans woman who is physically male is still female, but outside the category of variability of being a woman born with female genitalia. Here sex and gender-identity split. So why not form a separate but equal category of trans woman? Why do there have to be only two genders?
Think about it. The problem is equality, not sex or gender. All people should be treated equally regardless of sexual or gender preferences. Period. Stop obsessing.
7
Exactly! This is most important in the world of sports athletics where a movement is afoot to exclude women from competing against other women.
9
This has gotten way too complicated! My view: All of us, "male", "female", "trans" or "cis", "gay" or "straight", "butch" or "femme" or "non-binary" are in some sense performing gender. For it to be otherwise it would be necessary for there to be some sort of transcendental essence of "maleness" and "femaleness", sort of a super universal adam & eve! I really hope we've gotten beyond that sort of essentialism cuz that has led us into some really dark & nasty places.
5
All this drama and nonsense don't change the fact that "trans women" are men and they got excluded from the "ranks of women" at the moment of their conception. Sorry, men, you can't buy or browbeat your way into womanhood. Just accept that real women are under no obligation to pander to your fantasies.
59
Ahh I had a feeling the comments would be overwhelmingly against treating transgender women like women.
I wonder of feminists want transgender men to be treated like women. I wonder why transgender women like myself threaten feminists and ciswomen so much.
Yes, I grew up with white Male priviledge. Yet I gave that up. I gave up what is arguably the most privileged social class to become a member of a class that is considered pretty much human garbage.
I didnt do this because I wanted to. I didn't because I had to in order to survive. Women should not be afraid of me. I am no threat to anybody. I dont want to usurp a womans experience. I just want to be a small part of it from the moment I transitioned. I would never say I understand what it is like to be a cisgender woman. I only wish that cisgender women wouldnt look at me as a man trying to steal theirexperience.
My experience is that of a transgender woman. Transgender is only half of that term. Just like cisgender is only half the term. Women is an intersection, not a completion.
17
Nothing is more "male" culturally, than appropriating female-ness and declaring: "Hey I'm a woman too and I can do it better than you!" Wake up people! The Emperor's New Clothes? (hint: he wasn't wearing any). You can't change: XX, XY. You don't have a uterus. You won't carry children. And you don't bleed. Yes, your life (like ALL LIVES MATTER, defeated, apologistic society) has been problematic at times. But that doesn't make you- or give you the right to claim you are, a Woman.
52
Trans people are my fellow brothers and sisters. I wish nothing but that they flourish and be given all of the dignity, respect and opportunity that any other human deserves.
Trans identity is real. The people who say they deeply feel born into the wrong body are sincere. I want them to feel welcome to live as they feel.
Being civil, I will refer to a trans woman with "her," "she," etc., and a trans man with “him,” his,” and so forth.
But biology – chromosomes and hormones – are also real. Experience from birth is real. Even a male who has really, really felt like a female from his earliest memories has experienced that as a male, not a female.
So, when pressed on the issue, what I won’t do is mouth the preposterous lie, upon pain of being denounced as some form of bigot, that all gender is purely, utterly social construct. And when trans women start sweeping the gold in women’s Olympics, and gain the right to be housed in women’s prisons, suddenly we will begin rethinking the left’s latest lie du jour.
48
Who counts as a woman? Anyone who says they are?
Sorry, just doesn't work for me.
33
Nope. Get out. I will not have these aggressive billionaire financed trans-women demanding access to female spaces.
Only a man can be a better woman in their eyes. Get out.
50
And what about trans men? Who counts as a man? Why are we not discussing that?
21
Frankly, I am not 100 pc sure what all the expressions actually mean (being a bit out of the gender naming mainstream...among many other mainstreams, upstreams and down streams- and the author assumed we would all know what's what here) but, that (my cluelessness) aside, if someone wants to call themselves (or "identify" themselves- being more PC here) as a woman- then what's the problem? Life is too short and winter is too long (borrowing an old ad slogan) to worry about it. Or to quote Wilde, "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
4
Fear of pregnancy and all that entails is the only difference from an existential point of view.
9
Bingo
4
I treat everyone with the respect they deserve as human beings. However, all the surgery and hormones in the world cannot turn a man into a woman or vice versa; one can create a convincing facade and live the life one chooses but that will not change one’s biology. I will agree to treat you as you present yourself but that’s all; you are as XX or XY as the day you were born.
34
@Quills
We all live lives of facades...some convincing others, some convincing ourselves, and some fooling no one.
5
If a white person says they are black, because that is how they feel, is that okay as well? Should we not only accept that they are black, but celebrate their self-awareness and plaster them on magazine covers and give them awards for courage?
It seems to me the crowd that gets outraged about appropriation is the same crowd that vehemently defends the concept of transgenderism. (See: Rachel Dolezal.) Why? Why is it appropriation in the case of race but not in the case of gender?
The list goes on. If I say I am a zebra, is that totally normal and fine? Should I be treated as a zebra? We share plenty of DNA.
How about if I say that although I am 51, I identify as a 65-year-old? Who are you to tell me I am 51 just because that is the biological truth? I should be able to start collecting social security now, because the law should be forced to accept that I am actually 65. Because that's how I feel. And however I feel is the truth.
Why does this trans-fer only work for gender? I am genuinely curious. Respect and kindness should be extended to everyone, and I am as liberal as it gets, but there seems to be an obvious contradiction in all this. If someone could clarify, I am open.
59
Lordy. This is how we’ll lose in 2020.
44
TERF is considered a slur. The article lost me at TERF, just like an article would lose me if it used a racial or homophobic slur.
When dealing with rights, there needs to be balance between all groups involved. Trans women should not be discriminated against in housing, employment or education. They should not be subject to violence or harassment. I proudly voted for trans rights in Massachusetts.
But sometimes the issues aren’t so simple. Trans women competing in athletics, trans women wanting to date lesbians, trans women suing because a salon refued to wax their (pre operative) privates, trans women wanting money allotted for women’s health used to trans issues. (These are all real examples).
These are difficult issues that take thought and consideration. Screaming ‘TERF’ and ‘transphobe’ when a woman doesn’t want to date a trans woman, or points out the physical advantages a trans woman has in sports just shuts down any chance at dialogue and mutual understanding.
Demanding that you get everything you want, no matter the impact on others isn’t rights, it’s entitlement. Shouting down
opposing views with slurs like ‘TERF’ isn’t advocating for your rights, it’s hypocritical and uncivilized.
If you direct slurs at people who voted for your rights, you may lose allies.
414
Doth protest too much. As a woman I have never given half the thought this author has given to living subjectively as a woman. Is that my "priviledge" (wink, wink) to have been born female? I have the luxury of choosing not to constantly wonder if I meet some invisible audience's standards of womanhood?
Live subjectively as a woman if you wish. Consequences abound for sure. That's a choice and how the cookie crumbles.
Maybe work on society's acceptance of feminine males.
But ignore biology at your peril. It doesn't go away, nor should it have to. Objective females exist and have experiences related to our biology. It just is. Biology matters no matter how much you try to sweep it under the rug.
308
really? a whole article about a "move" that's a "gesture" that's a "performance" that's a "category" that's a "status" that's a "version" that's a "rhetoric" that's an "ethos" that's ... what? -- "shoring up gender essentialism"?
does anyone ever look at themselves in the shower, and the first concept that comes to mind is ... "gender essentialism"?
we've become so infatuated with our intersectional performance selfie selves that we feel categorically entitled to ignore the vast ethos we generate through our planet wrecking global infrastructure of high fructose twitterisms.
people will read these "current debates over trans women" a century from now and realize how utterly deluded we had become about our true moral center.
133
If gender is fluid, and the sex we are born into is only as correct as how we believe ourselves to be (a valid point), then age should be, as well. I'm 55 but I feel like I'm 45 so why not put my age down as that? Why not get rid of all identifying labels? I feel the world would be better if we didn't have to check any of those boxes. We are just... humans.
16
Aren’t there laws protecting against false advertising?
But then again I would be foolishly be mistaken that the majority of this audience would parse any argument to the “nth” degree to feed their own egos even when in s line staring at a brick wall and they say they’re waiting online.
1
"Aren’t there laws protecting against false advertising?"
Please explain what you regard as "false advertising".
Makes me wonder how transwomen would feel and react if some avowedly cis gender women publicly represented themselves as being transwomen and demanded unfettered access to, acceptance in, and even leadership positions in a trans-safe space or a space.
48
Humans are distinguished from all other animals by having the psychological ability to be dissatisfied with everything, including the genitals and chromosomal set they're born with.
I see the rise of transgenderism as part of a war against Nature and the creation of a science-fiction Brave New World in which humans will be increasingly engineered via AI, genetic, hormonal, surgical, and bio-machine alterations and implantations.
There may come a time when a natural-born human is an anomaly.
All of this is in an endlessly futile quest for "happiness."
The sad fact is that studies show that when people get gender reassignment hormonal and surgical treatment, most of them are less happy than before.
Narcissistic self-focus is a root cause of all kinds of disorder, and the gender reassignment industry capitalizes on this.
35
The womanhood of black women has always been questioned in Western culture. Black women were not only enslaved on fields. They were locked up in freak shows, and they were put on exhibit naked. Look up the story of the “Hottentot Venus” or Sara Bartmann.
Living in a female body is a distinct experience, and we live in a culture that maligns black womanhood and denies black femininity and fragility. Will trans womanhood challenge us to broaden our definition beyond the skinny white woman, or will it simply reinforce stereotypes that narrow our definition of womanhood?
If we cannot even recognize the womanhood of women who are born women but of a different racial phenotype, how are we going to recognize women who were born men?
11
'Look up the story of the “Hottentot Venus” or Sara Bartmann.'
Those examples don't support your thesis, because freak shows featured a whole range of performers. See the Wikipedia article: "Freak show".
3
The tension at issue here is that between what women want when they angle for equal treatment - even an equality which takes account of individual strengths - and their angling for the advantage which gender sometimes confers. There is something to be said for enjoying the advantages of a gender which suffers disadvantages as well - there is some equalization to be effected in that - but taking advantage of gender as such will inevitably reinforce gender distinctions and the disadvantages which come with them. That tension is not new, but it is getting ever more uncomfortable and therefore must be faced, head on, not only by trans women, or by women generally, but by all people. In order to eliminate gender inequality, we must examine whether we are, as a society, appropriately invested in gender, and to what ends.
1
'If a trans person successfully passes as cis and is later discovered to be trans, they’re seen as an “evil deceiver” who has lied about who they really are. Trans people who are open about being trans, on the other hand, are seen as “make-believers” '
Seen by whom? This to me is the issue. If the person involved can ignore their critics they'll do just fine.
2
Like most of what I read in the NYT written by Philosophers, I find the arguments here unconvincing. For example, in the concluding paragraph, she writes:
—-
When a cis woman complains that trans women haven’t had the same experiences as “real” women-born-women, then, what she’s really saying is, “Trans women haven’t had the same experiences as women like me.”
—-
So, if I, a cis man, complain that a trans woman hasn’t had the same experiences as “real” women, am I also referring to “women like me”? Please, try to be be more rigorous in your arguments.
18
@Chris
When is the last time a transgender pretending to be a woman ever worried about a missed period or possible unwanted pregnancy???
The answer is never, because men are not women and men cannot get pregnant.
25
A whole opinion piece about TERFs - a very small group of people - excluding trans women from the wider world of being viewed as real women. And then the writer spreads it to all feminists, usually white and privileged, doing the same. Stop. Just stop. The largest group of people who have problems with trans women are heterosexual men. Target that group!
15
@BB Fernandez best comment of the whole section!!
@BB Fernandez
How about targeting ideas instead of groups.
7
I would never argue that trans women are any less "womanly" than cis women (hey- many gay men are more womanly than actual women), but competitive sports is a special and different story. Just as juiced up male athletes don't compete fairly with their non-chemically altered competitors, men who have transitioned to womanhood do not compete fairly with cis women
18
I'm goingto use a word liberals love to use as a weapon but seem to hate hearing when not used against everyone else. False equivalence.
It is a false equivalence to compare being transgender to wanting to be another race. I noticed this has been a new go to argument in the constant attempt by everybody to invalidate transgender experience. I want to provide an argument against it.
Throughout history there has never been a contingent of every culture that has wanted to be trans-racial. Perhaps if your culture was being oppressed by another race there was a group that wished they were the oppressors, but nothing that developed in a culture intrinsically and not due to outside oppression. For example, I'm sure some blacks wish they were white, but that's not something someone is born withand it's not intrinsic to the black culture when white people aren't oppressing them.
Meanwhile, every culture in history has had transgenderpeople... it's a fundamental state of being. Transgender people have appeared intrinsically in cultures from Native American to Indian to Muslim independently of each other.
Being transgender is a fundamental state of being, like being gay or being cisgender. I find it ridiculous that western people, and liberals to boot, stand so firmly (this comment section proves it) against transgender identity. It would be funny if it wasnt so incredibly painful.
A few more decades perhaps. Or centuries, who knows...
10
"Woman" is not a moral category which means, therefore, that there can't be a "right" way to be a woman.
14
A woman is a homo sapien endowed with the mental and physical attributes which define "woman." All others are entitled to "feel" that they are women, but they are not, no more than women who claim to be "men" are, in fact, men. Declaring it does not make it so.
23
"Who counts as a woman? Is there some set of core experiences distinctive of womanhood, some shared set of adventures and exploits that every woman will encounter on her journey from diapers to the grave?"
Menstruation.
I was afraid I would embarrass both of us, when I needed to go on an emergency tampon run. It was 2014. We were downtown in Chicago, patiently waiting for Nik Wallenda to take his first blindfolded step onto the wire strung 600 feet above us.
It was windy.
No one can prepare you for the empathetic crisis that is getting your period in a public outing with your trans friend. I was afraid that if I brought up the topic, it would somehow invalidate her gender, so I stood there quietly, bleeding.
16
@Kitty
Your reality is as important as anyone else's reality. State the problem and go take care of it.
6
The only right way to BE FEMALE is to, simply, be female, or of the biological class that is capable of producing eggs and bearing young. Men have the world — why must they claim this too?
47
It's a circular argument to say that trans women are not "real women" because it presupposes that there are real women and women who are not so real.
"You are not real a woman because you weren't born female" is a most dubious claim. It's like saying (thinking of Jane Austen novels) you are not a gentleman because you weren't born one.
2
Disorientated doesn't sum up how I feel after reading this. Cis woman or non transgender woman is a complicated way of calling a woman a woman .Gender assignment at birth may fail to recognize intersex or those eventually identifying as the opposite sex but is still the path that suits most. This confused mumbo jumbo helps no one in the long run and PC gone crazy is the enemy of common sense .Call a spade a spade and a trowel a trowel.
37
While I don't think a functioning female reproductive system is a prerequisite to being a woman, or a feminist, and I support the rights of all to identify with the gender that is in their heart and mind, I think it is a bit silly to fail to acknowledge that the experience of a person who dealt with getting their period in middle school is different from a person who feels female without having had that experience. I often joke (and, yes, please don't take me to task for generalizing, I am aware that I am doing so) that women are more organized because of many years of planning ahead so as to avoid bleeding all over themselves at awkward moments. "Woman" is a word, and therefore a construct. Not all women are the same and not all women unite around the same issues. But feminism is also a construct and, to me, it is a philosophy that supports a right to self-actualization for all, so all who embrace feminism are feminists, regardless of gender identity.
12
I know that I'm a woman because I bled unpredictably every month for years and had to be aware of where I was in my cycle so I wouldn't be caught unprepared, I was at risk of getting pregnant if I was raped, I had to use birth control, I was paid a salary a third lower than the men I worked with, and I was simply not hired for some jobs because of my gender.
Being a woman is like being brown-eyed. If I get contact lenses that make my eyes look blue, it doesn't change the fact that they are still brown under the tinted lenses. I will never be a person who has blue eyes. In the same way, I will never be a man. Both are conditions that would convey some advantages, but that wasn't the life I got. I'm human, I'm alive in a certain way, I'm not God or god. I'll play out the hand I was dealt.
I feel sad that other people want to change themselves at such a fundamental level.
55
My aunt had a hysterectomy with a bilateral ooverectomy when she was 15. I think that would have been 1936 or 1937.
For a time I wondered about males who became women but never experienced a menstrual cycle, breast tenderness, cramps, inconvenience, and cost. Then I remembered having to have a hysterectomy one year, at the age of 32, and a bilateral ooverectomy 2 years later at the age of 34. I wondered if I was still a female. I felt like a female but was I? At the time of the hysterectomy I had been celibate for 3 years, and the time of of bilateral ooverectomy I had been celibate for nearly 6 years. The next 10 years were kind of tough but I think that had more to do with poverty and insecurity than it did without having all my woman parts. So when I had the occasion to talk to my aunt I asked her how she felt.
I brought wine, cheese, fruit, and questions. The conversation lasted 2 days (I spent the night), when I thought it would last an hour or so at most. We had both decided we were both still women, females, although we arrived at that same conclusion by different paths.
Honestly? I think the only thing we both noticed is a great intolerance for lies and 'excuses'. I mean, before my surgeries, I had thought my then husband was having affairs because I was so difficult to live with. After? Nope! He was a simple womanizer. There's more but...
Gender is complicated. If you believe you're a woman (or a man) well then, you are. Body doesn't define gender.
8
To be a female is not purely a construct, as there are differences rooted in biology (I'm talking about menstruation and child-bearing) which are real and not simply due to socialization. In this sense trans women are not women and will never be able to fully appreciate being in the body of a woman.
Caitlyn Jenner seems to be interested in being treated like a woman. I wish that trans women could appreciate this difference, that the desire to be treated as a woman is not the same as BEING a woman.
So much of the experience of womanhood is wrapped up in objectifying oneself or performing functions for others. This is part of femininity, which is a socialized construct, and NOT the same as being female. Anyone can be feminine; but only women who are born as biologically female can be women.
38
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself "as a woman." In many ways I'm different from most women I know. I don't pal around with other women much. A work friend recently told me that I'm the only woman she ever met who doesn't swoon over the idea of a "spa day." Ew! But if a square dance caller (for a weird example) calls for men on the right and women on the left, I know exactly which side I belong on. I am a woman. And we have a range of personalities and histories and grievances and joys.
The point is: how can someone who is NOT a woman claim to know that actual they are because the feel like one? Or feel like they're not male. This is total guesswork.
I can walk around in baggy jeans and a flannel shirt with no make-up and I'm still a woman. I can wear a tux and I'm still a woman. I can work as a plumber and I'm still a woman. Can a "trans woman" do these things?
Being who you are is not dress up, and it's not wishful thinking.
54
I accept that people want to change their gender...even though it is beyond me. But I cannot agree that trans men or women can or will share ALL the same gender experiences as those born to the gender that they have changed to.
24
Why does “woman” need to be defined? To me, it is a deeply personal expression, and anyone who identifies as “woman” in any shape or form, is accepted. Full stop. Society struggles today with toxic-masculinity, and so we are now trying to teach our young boys that there is no right way to be a man. Why shouldn’t this apply to women?
4
@Jennifer if it doesn’t need to be defined - what does “woman” mean then?
10
@Jennifer What's more toxically masculine than teaching young boys that any hint of femininity means they are a girl? Effeminate boys are routinely bullied by other boys and called girls. Transgenderism agrees with those bullies.
20
Well, we have reached the point of total hysteria, pun intended. "When I, a cis woman, perform my not terribly original rendition of conventional femininity, I am in part saying that this is what women should be like." No. You are simply living. The fact is that genetic women have experiences that are immutably associated with womanhood--menstruation, childbirth, etc. Beyond that, I simply do not follow the author's argument. Whether a trans woman should be included in the discussion of women really depends on the context of the discussion in question, doesn't it? If the discussion is menstrual cramps, perhaps a trans woman doesn't have much to add to the discussion. This entire issue seems like pigeonholing people on the heads of a pin.
24
Having a shared experience is the basis for political organization and movements. The fact that women have a common experience is the basis of feminism. Women as a sex class (sex, not gender) are oppressed specifically because of our sex. We don't identify with having a female body. We don't identify with menstruating or pregnancy. We don't identify with being paid less than men. We don't identify with being at a greater risk for sexual assault and harassment. They're simply experiences we oftentimes have to deal with because we're women. Women are adult human females. It's not a feeling or a set of stereotypes.
53
I'm not a women or even a trans-women, but isn't it counterintuitive that simply appearing like a woman and believing you're a woman is enough to be a woman? I thought it was based on a combination of both cultural expectations and physical aspects and how they influence your experience as a female.
At the same time that people decry sexism and stereotypes, many people diagnose gender dysphoria by seeing whether a child acts "feminine" or "masculine" and then apply that to looks through sex changes or hormone therapy.
I can only speak as a man, but masculinity is inherently tied to both cultural expectations and sexual organs. You can't have it with only one because your experience as a male is tied to both. You can't just appear outwardly as male and luve through the same experiences for a lot of obvious reasons.
And yes, intersex people exist, but that's effectively a genetic error. It's like calling a missing appendage or a genetic disorder the norm. You don't have to be a terrible person about it, but certain parameters do exist in biology.
Of course people are free to do what they want as adults, but it seems like a space is being claimed here.
41
"To think that two and two are four, and neither five nor three, the hearts of men have long been sore, and long are apt to be."
9
Way too much chatter about an issue that is much simpler than all this. Good grief.
11
Groups, sub groups, sub groups of sub groups all vying to be the most worthy yet traumatized group. I don’t care what anyone thinks or says their gender is, just treat everyone equally and with respect. Stop pitting people against other people. Whatever your gender, we are all human. Act like it. The world will be a better place.
9
Sorry, but as a confirmed guy, married for 45 years to a woman, only a woman counts as a woman.
Maybe there is something in-between, a man who isn’t a man, and a woman who isn’t a woman. But for man or woman, either you is or you isnt. There may be something else, but a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. Otherwise, you are a neither.
17
>>> "Sorry, but as a confirmed guy, married for 45 years to a woman, only a woman counts as a woman."
Did someone tell you that you get to make this decision for anyone other than yourself? If so, you have been misinformed.
2
The teeny tiny sliver of our population who are trans women should be free to dress and act how they want.
But no, they are not "women" in the same sense that actual women are women. They should not compete in women's sports or pass themselves off as real women where it actually counts biologically.
I am all for people loving who they want and dressing how they feel, but I draw a line at pretending biological reality doesn't exist. There are fundamental differences between men and women.
What is truly bizarre in all of this is that for the "intersectional" crowd, when a man wants to cross a hard biological line and become a woman, that is fine. But if a white person tries to fake minority status - something relatively subjective - then that is a major transgression.
57
Ain't it just like a man to downplay the significance of a uterus to womanhood and then demand that women include him in as a woman? This is just all too familiar an experience for this feminist.
It's not that there is a "right way" to be a woman, it's that womanhood is not a static state of being! Womanhood is dynamic and ever changing and trans are not. They deeply desire to be women but never experience all that icky woman stuff like menstruation and breast feeding and pregnancy and motherhood and menopause! The single warrior woman phase of our lives is about 25% of womanhood. We are girls and then ingenue and then warrior woman and then mother and then crone. A woman is a lot of different women throughout her life and I'm afraid we do not have a shared common experience with trans. Just as Rachel Dolezal did not have a shared common experience with African Americans.
I empathize deeply with those who want to be women- we are pretty great, after all. But women are not men with breasts, we're a lot more complicated than that.
49
I'd like to hear more on the "cotton ceiling" and that plays into all of this.
11
@Jerry Engelbach
No one is diminishing the suffering of trans people. They are subjected to horrendous discrimination and violence. It must be agonizing to feel that you do not like, want, accept, or actually inhabit your biological body. But this is not an oppression competition. Your suffering is simply NOT the same as the experience of biological women.
I can have all the empathy in the world and still deeply resent trans women appropriating my experience or telling me what it is to be female. I am not "cis." I am not being "exclusionary." I am a woman, formerly a girl, and a lifelong feminist who agrees with all the comments calling this article nonsense and a form of sabotage of the struggle that women, actual women, have been waging for literally centuries to be accepted as full equal human beings.
Call yourself what you like. Dress how you like. But don't tell me how to define myself, castigate me for wearing a dress, or a suit and tie if I wish, expect me to agree that our experience of life is the same, or ask me to call you a woman. I will call you trans female, or trans male if that is your direction, and I will fight for your rights as equal citizens. We don't need to efface our differences in order to respect each other.
68
Remember that white woman a while back who caused such controversy because she tried to present herself as an African American? One of her defenses was that she "felt black," identifying more with African American culture and experience.
Few found the negative reactions to her unjustified, especially the responses coming from black Americans. So how is this different? One can't change race, but one can change gender (yes, "gender")? No. Some experiences are shared; others can't be.
Moreover, attempts such as those of Hay to restructure reality by reconstructing the language are as destructive to thought, understanding, and communication as any to be found in "1984."
Trans people share a set of discreet experiences that I can only just imagine and can't claim to share in. As much as I may empathize with those experiences and care about the persons who lived them, it would be dishonest to pretend I understand them from the inside out. The same is true of being born female.
My 50+ years of life and the choices I've made have been profoundly affected in every way by being born a woman. People can't choose their race, gender, or whether they're gay or cis. The writer honors the first and third, tossing the second out the window.
The philosophical woolgathering that's characteristic of those such as Ms. Hay employs the intellectual rigor of Voltaire's Pangloss or all those in obeisance to Pope's "Goddess of Dulness." Unfortunately, she isn't writing satire.
41
"Remember that white woman a while back who caused such controversy because she tried to present herself as an African American?"
That is Rachel Dolezal, who changed her legal name to Nkechi Amare Diallo in 2016. (per Wikipedia)
So she is now both trans-racial and trans-nominal. :-)
3
Right.
1
Men who want to become women speak strongly about their feeling that they were born in the wrong body, and on the basis of those feelings they believe they are entitled to change it. That's fine with me.
But men who have medical and surgical treatment to look like women are still men raised men, and they carry with them, it seems to me, the sense of male privilege they grew up with. That is, to support their own feelings, they feel free to disregard the feelings of women raised women.
For instance, trans-women wasted no time shutting down the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which was a lovely event built. staffed, run, and attended by women only. Many who attended it felt wonderfully empowered, but because the women wanted to be only with other women raised women, their wishes were considered of far less significance than the wishes and feelings of trans women.
For a more common example, if girls or women don't feel comfortable having a man-turned-woman in their bathroom or other intimate space, then it is the girls and women who must submit to the change, or else be called bigots and worse.
Bodies can be changed, but for many, the sense of male privilege is still marching on.
75
Not to mention the impact of their practices, largely ultra-feminine appearance has on girls and "cisgender" women who are even somewhat gender non-conforming in appearance. Far from upending sex/gender stereotypes, by and large these transwomen (and transmen) reinforce them, to the detriment of people who really do believe that there are many ways to be a girl/woman.
42
Yeah, trans-women should have their own music festivals, and their own “women’s” restrooms. They can be separate, but equal.
(Do you see what I did there?)
If we could exclude from public restrooms all of those whose presence made us uncomfortable, you wouldn’t be allowed in mine. But I guess I just have to accept your right to be there. Maybe you can do the same in return?
And I’m sorry about your music festival, though I expect they had the option to include trans women and chose not to. A shame. Maybe if you’d met a few you’d actually like them.
Meant "practiced" and not "practices"
The confusion of the author is very disappointing, this could be an interesting conversation--but this opinion piece does nothing but muddy the waters. The experience of someone like K. Jenner is nothing like the experience of a woman raised from birth as female. To say all trans women have lived in the world unproblematically as men at some point is a crazy assumption, in fact all men do not live in the world unproblematically as men, those who are aware of their privilege certainly cannot. Is there a right way to be female, no of course not, we present Dolly Parton and Fran Liebowitz, so what is your point? Are you trying to take femininity away from woman who have identified from birth and always will identify as woman? It is not clothes or voice or access, it is being labeled as female by the world outside our minds. As frustrating as it might be to be female in our current world, I would say yes, there is a sisterhood and I embrace it. When my mother was born, woman were not even allowed to vote and although we have come far, there is still a very, very long way to go. I welcome men who have transitioned to female into the struggle. Trans people should embrace their identity, not assume a lie. Menstruation and child birth do not make a woman, it is being female to the world that makes us female, from birth.
12
A colleague I worked with for over 13 years transitioned into a woman recently. And though I really want to have empathy and cheer this person on for making a very brave transition.
However, I find it hard to erase the 13 years of her verbal abuse, obstruction to my professional advancement within my department and laser focused destructiveness that her previous self performed, when she was a he.
So when I first saw her newly transitioned personhood...the only thing that came to mind, was..."oh now I get it." It was like... his hatred of me, was an expression of his hatred of her. So internalized, so seething, and always so angry.
Now transitioned, she's not 1/2 as angry as she used to be. But I doubt she fathoms the pain she caused. I doubt she'll ever experience the type of dismissiveness and aggression that she so willingly played with, when she had the upper hand in the power dynamics.
I believe that alone, is the significant difference here. I've never had any options to play the power dynamics on anyone.
37
In psychoanalysis, gender is the mistake that allows signification to exist, so it makes sense that when it comes to gender there is so much Linguistically at stake. We want to fix for certain what a man is and what a woman is because it is out of the anxiety over those questions that language and meaning are born. Being sexed as male or female isn’t going to go away but it’s also always going to be a little bit wrong. Trans people remind us of this and we too often treat them with brutality because of it—because our own system of signification falls short—and the deeply conservative comments that I have read here under the guise of radical feminism are nothing short of horrifying.
37
@Jeremiah Crotser You really think language is born from anxiety about gender? I'm sure this is not the time or place, but... what? Really?
49
The issue for me is how much agency does a women have to define her gender and how far that definition extends into the public realm. By extending into the public realm, what is the reach of a collective gender identity ? Who gets to define the collective identity?
For many feminists, transgender women are a threat as they're seen as men trying to define what it is to be female, something women have experienced from cis men for hundreds of years. This male-defined version of women and its ensuing constriction of their role in society could be be viewed as a root cause of misogyny.
On a broader social issue, how much influence will trans women have in regulating issues with which they have no experience, i.e. birth control and reproduction control. Will trans women actively support women's issues that don't apply to them?
Another issue is who gets to define women's private space. Private space includes any realm that women have traditionally control. This includes safe houses and women's colleges. The larger question is whether an oppressed people have a right to space that doesn't include their oppressor. A similar argument can be made for racial minorities. Do Black colleges need to admit white people?
In time, cis women will no longer view trans women as a threat and accept them as another female archetype. There needs to be respect for the stress and trauma cis-women feel from our misogynistic culture. All in good time.
12
The right to be female and being a woman are two different things, of course trans women can be considered female.
2
@farm why can they be considered female - they are male - thst can’t change. You can’t just change the meanings to things to suit yourself and expect everyone else to just go along with it.
13
Not sure why this issue deserves any media attention given that it only impacts a very small number of people and bears no relevancy to the average person.
13
You could say that about almost any minority group. Please give us a list of those whom you’d like to exclude from public discussion. Or maybe just a guideline. What percentage of the population do you need to represmt in order to be considered “relevant”?
2
Impossibly convoluted., and trying < i think to cover toomany issues at once.
Trans women, cis women: we have different experiences. I have no doubt that being born a female and remaining one is different from transitioning from male to female.
Using Caitlyn Jenner's example: for my self, I found that the massive publicity paid her - and, yes, the caricature of femaleness she chose early on - really did get under my skin. That was however, a prerogative of celebrity and ego: did not that entire family live in a perfromance mode? It's not very like what I suspect the trans woman next door goes through.
We have to accept that there are differences -and they are very much influenced by biology, by hormones and genetics, and an amazingly complicated neurological system - but they shouldn't be threatening.
And that we shouldn't be trying so hard to define other's capabilities in terms of limitations. That is what feminism brought me to. And what I saw the 70's feminism as rejecting was the cage, or maybe the stage that women were expected to inhabit. It wasn't about judging other other women's roles as unacceptable, but about opening doors to all of the opportunities that had been locked out.
7
I am lucky that my chromosomes, brain chemistry and anatomy all align. I have always considered myself a woman and was also lucky enough that I did not grow up feeling I was "less than."
I have fought for women's and other humans' rights my entire life.
If you are a man that has "become" a woman through hormones, surgery or other means, god bless you and good luck. But do not tell me what it is like to "be" a woman. You have joined our community belatedly and while you may be well-intentioned, you do NOT have the lived experience to identify as a woman born and bred.
And please oh please do not call me "cis." It sounds like a disease.
68
I was disgusted to see Carol Hay boast on Twitter that she had "bashed TERFs" in the NYTimes. There was nothing new in this article that wasn't discussed in 2000, when I started my master's degree in women's studies.
She doesn't know women's history. White suffragist leaders invited Sojourner Truth to speak at national women's rights conferences. Because she was illiterate, white women took down her words and edited her book. They promoted her. She wasn't lecturing them that she was a woman, too. She was lecturing the white men who tried to disrupt these conferences.
There were plenty of feminists in the past who would meet the definition of intersectional. Some have criticized other women for their appearance and behavior but that is not unique to our movement. It's common for people who have been denied rights. Some played "respectability politics," in which they conformed to feminine norms to get along and encouraged other women to do the same. Others were angry at women who conformed. It's ludicrous to think all feminists do or should think alike.
Men have defined womanhood for centuries. I'm not interested in any of them telling me what it means to be a woman. I do, however, have sympathy for men who feel such emotional pain that they need to present as women for their mental health. I don't want to deny them rights.
It's probably easier for feminists to get ahead in academia if they bash other feminists, including most who came before them.
61
I consider myself a liberal and a feminist, but I have a question and it is 100% sincere. I am white, but what if I feel in my heart that I should have been born a difference race? I'm pushing 40 but what if I feel like I'm 17 and should be afforded the social privileges thereof? In a more nuanced society, we might have 3, 4, or 8 genders. But we don't have a nuanced society. I think people should live and let live. But let's not pretend this isn't complicated in our society.
25
A good society would be one where every person, from birth onwards, would be nurtured and encouraged to fulfill their potential in all areas. This would include not discouraging girls from math oriented pursuits, and not dissuading boys from being sensitive. It would allow every person to express their individuality, including their sexuality, in any way they choose, so long as they do not hurt others. How to truly avoid subtle guidance into normative gender roles, and how far we want to go in the effort to not do so, are open and valid questions.
In the meantime, we'd tackle climate change, the desperation of third world societies, the lack of jobs for many people, including those over 50. And so on.
Instead, we get identity politics. There are no more individuals, only collective identities assigned by a shrill ruling party which forbids all dissent. Instead of liberation, we got the thought police.
This is part of why Trump won. This craziness here.
27
>>> "Instead of liberation, we got the thought police."
Yup, the thought police and a bunch of folks taking themselves way too seriously -- while chaining themselves in claustrophobic cubbyhole-cages on the basis of "identities" that, apparently, must comply with conformation rules.
Lighten up people. Let everyone be who s/he/they is/are (complicated!) and want to be. Squabbling over who qualifies as a woman or a man is simply too narrow-minded to be helpful, to anyone.
3
If we are parsing what it means to be a woman as a cultural construct, then we must be a long way from the day when men and women will simply be people who are equal.
6
The opinion piece left out any talk about difference, power and discrimination and where those three intersect in our culture. A woman, born female and living the whole of her life as a women has not had the opportunities that male-ness affords to be powerful in the boardroom, the corporation ladder, or even the family structure. Especially women who grew up during the '50's, '60's and '70's. Todays women may not understand those power structures as we did, because those structures are broken down, but they still exist. Someone living as a man most their life, to "become" woman in their later years, has managed their "career" years, male, with all the power that comes to that. Included is the power to believe they have a right to change their gender and sometimes their sex, an expensive move.
Most "trans" are going from male to female, with an ensuing loss of power. It is the same with gay-males not being accepted by male gender. The power shift is downward. A gay male's sexual object of choice is another male. This is seen as a loss of power in traditional male culture, being penetrated and having it "done" to you. I believe most female's not accepting trans males into their circle has to do with power structures, discrimination and differences more than gender. I have also noticed young people trying on "being trans" as a fad. It needs to be taken as a serious life choice to be taken seriously. Today, being trans is like buying Birkenstocks. A fad.
16
I agree, there is no right way to be female.
From a biological/chromosomal perspective, it's a person with two x chromosomes. Research on transgender issues, though far from determinative, indicates that hormonal anomalies (involving androgens during gestation of some xy fetuses) appear to lead to later female identification, and many such people transition to become transgender females. That too is biological. Identity, while a social-psychological phenomenon, is also one with a strong innate predisposition which is not a choice.
From a psychological perspective, for persons who truly feel, for whatever reasons, female to the depth of their souls- and most transgender women have felt this all their lives- it seems fair that that they deserve the label women, as do biologically born males who live as women. Should they be able to participate in high level sports competition as women, given that bone and muscle give an advantage over the average xy female? That is a tricky question, with good arguments on both sides.
Thus the term "woman, while not infinitely flexible, has various valid reference points. Choose a different reference point, you end up with a different definition of woman. So there is no "correct" answer to the question: who counts as a woman.
Ultimately, it is an issue of values: If there is a reasonable claim to a label (not all are reasonable), we should respect the person's right to use it.
4
Like other woman commenters, I bristle at the suggestion that I can't really refer to myself as a women because some men have decided that they too want to be women and we must change our definition of women. No way.
I've spent my entire life as a woman with the ambitions that only men were allowed to have while dealing with the harassment and condescension for decades in the workplace.
And I question the whole notion of transgender. I don't agree that medical interventions like surgery and hormones - that alone can have profound, permanent affects on your body and how you feel - should be promoted as a solution.
If women and men were able to dress and behave in any way they're comfortable, why does anyone have to choose to be one or the other as if there aren't many shades between?
The current discussion seems so old-fashioned, like someone must absolutely decide to be one stereotype of the other. Transgender activists don't seem to allow for anything in-between, just like things were in the '50s. Haven't we gotten past the male/female stereotypes?
70
@Rebecca
I don't know who would say you can't refer to yourself as a woman just because trans women want to be themselves. And you obviously haven't listened to transgender activists much, because they talk about non-binary genders a lot.
3
There is one absolute and that is you are born either male or female in a biological sense. I don’t think I really need to go into what makes one biologically male or female. If you choose to identify otherwise that’s fine with me but to deny biology is like being a climate change denier in my book.
46
"There is one absolute and that is you are born either male or female in a biological sense."
Nope. Some babies are born with both male and female genitalia -- they are sometimes called "hermaphrodites". The term "intersex" is also used.
And there are various genetic conditions in which there is an extra X or Y chromosome. For example:
* XYY syndrome
* Triple X syndrome
* Klinefelter syndrome
"I don’t think I really need to go into what makes one biologically male or female."
And I think you do, since that would show what you really know.
2
@Thomas Smith
Yes, because having different personal views on gender than the mainstream is obviously comparable to denying something that's wrecking the entire planet...
1
Except, not everyone is born either/or. Hermaphrodites, for example.
A physics professor I had many years ago had a saying: "Philosophers are people who sit and think, but sometimes they just sit".
How right he was.
49
I was just having a debate about this issue with a friend, as we debated whether we could say that The Matrix was a "female-directed" film, when the Machowskis were not out as trans woman when they made it. My answer was that they may have made the movie as women, but they certainly got their financing as men -- because women are simply never given budgets that high. The Matrix with a female director would have had a two million dollar budget, if it was made at all.
I think that draws attention to a larger issue that's frustrating about certain discussions about trans issues -- saying someone who is a "trans woman" was "always" a woman denies the way in which they interacted with a system that often benefited them because the system perceived them as male. Even if they weren't happy as men, they were getting male access to power.
I suspect that the language we use now about inclusivity is not nuanced enough to tell the full story. I often find the language trans individuals use about gender more offensive than that used by most cis-gendered individuals. It is often trans women who say things like, "I knew I was a woman because I liked dresses and make-up" -- a definition of womanhood so reductive insulting that it feels like it could only come from a man. I wish individual trans people well, but it sometimes feels like people who have to "switch teams" to live their authentic self are policing gender stereotypes rather than breaking them down.
81
@RVC ALL. OF. THIS.
8
I would like to see this article reconciled with the weekend's article by Tina Brown that distinguishes a specifically male orientation toward power and decision-making with that of a female. Is her distinction also based in the notion of gender as construct, or is she allowing for an essential difference that goes deeper than construct? I think the latter. So, how does all this work together so that people can have any hope of understanding what is going on.
7
You just have to hold the two irreconcilable beliefs if you want to be an acceptable person in polite society today.
6
While we're on this topic, I have a question that I want for someone in the commentariat to answer with sincerity:
Is it true that parts of the trans community insist that the use of the word "mother", as in "I'm a mother", is unkind or discriminatory against trans women?
I'm totally cool with people being themselves and transcending binary gender roles, but I draw the line at erasing that which makes me who I am, a mother.
24
@Beanie
Not true at all. Trans people (like me) usually just want people to use the labels they feel comfortable with. A woman (cis or trans) who is a parent is a mother (unless she'd rather be referred to as something else for some reason) and there is nothing discriminatory about saying that.
4
@Marcie
Thank you for the answer. In my experience, trans people are warm, eager for connection, and very kind.
I was surprised to come across the argument against the word "mother" in an article that discussed TERFS, the first time I encountered the acronym. The article and follow up conversation were hurtful to read, as I have always been an ally and mentor for LGBTQ humans at my college and in my life.
Namaste :)
2
The National Health authority in the United Kingdom, has decided that mothers no longer exist, only pregnant people.
12
But at the heart of a lot of trans-philosophy is still the idea that gender identity is an individual, private essence accessible only to the transitioning person and not subject to intersubjective debate. I find it hard to square that with a 'radical' philosophy that critiques gender as a performance and grows out of anti-essentialism more generally.
Which is just to repeat the familiar critique of the TERFS - why can't people be free to be masculine women or feminine men absent an 'essential' change in the form of transitioning?
As a gay man I feel this effects my community too - I have personally seen young 'feminine' gay men transition (or start to) who in previous generations would just have been 'feminine gay men'. To me, that seems a retrograde step back to essentialist categories, not a liberation.
84
Who Counts as a Woman? I once spent some time years ago in a women's shelter. The sleeping quarters were rooms with two bunk beds in each for a total of four persons. I was forewarned there was going to be a trans person and that they had to take them. That person was in my room, in the middle of the night they gave out a large sigh and I was taken aback at how masculine a sigh it was, never would a woman have that depth to their voice. I told a relative about the trans woman at the shelter and his reply resonates, " he knows what he wants". So many people do not know what they want but I think that remark is accurate.
18
How about how does a trans woman even know they are a woman? how is it that their definition of "feeling like a woman" is to be taken at their word? What do they get from making other people call them a woman, and will they define it each time to each person who they want to call them that, since we cannot agree on what womanhood is? By the way, I feel like a superhero most days, but no one calls me that (or thinks I am). Can you advocate for me too?
48
>>> . . . how is it that their definition of "feeling like a woman" is to be taken at their word?
Well, umm . . . whose word would you rather take?
>>> What do they get from making other people call them a woman . . .
They can't "make" other people call them anything, they can only express a preference. It is no more than common courtesy to comply -- and why would you not want to? As for what they "get," a pretty good guess might be that they get the comfort and satisfaction of being addressed as the people they believes themselves to be. Who could that hurt?
3
@Douglas it hurts women and girls. We are a distinct class with some different issues and needs than that of the male class. Because we now have to use pronouns and call these males women - there is no longer anything Female only. No spaces for females only where they might feel vulnerable, no female only spirts but now we have to compete and even lose world and national titles to males. Our language to describe ourselves and our reality of having female biology has been taken and redefined by males to include them. So I’ll disagree that no-one is harmed.
19
@Douglas
You are missing the point. I am all for the rights/respect of individuals. BUT Trans men are not women, just because they "feel" they are. Just like I am not 25 even though I feel I am. Or a superhero, for that matter. When "womanhood" can be defined in a way that isn't a characture of my lived experience, maybe I will understand. Mostly I see transpeople oppressed by the same things that women experience (like, being told how to think and to ignore their own experience) but that doesn't make them women.
9
Women and men are different. Some men behave in a way that is very female. Some women behave in a way that is very male. As a courtesy (but it is a courtesy), we can refer to them by their chosen gender identity. But it n reality, what we have is women living as men and men living as women, with rare exceptions. And that’s okay! The attempts to redefine the words ‘woman’ and ‘man’ to something purely intellectual, and not physical, are hostile and risible. Because the words woman and man really do mean something, and it is necessary for those words to exist. Adding the cys prefix is not sensible when the words woman and man have already been defined. Live and let live... let the 98% not be forcibly reassigned just so the 2% can live a particular fantasy.
48
You lost me at "There are plenty of women who don’t meet the standards of superficial sexual attractiveness who do not get such attention, and some of them even long for it."
Where is the data for this sweeping generalization, that women who don't meet some unspecified pretty standard are "longing" to be objectified?
62
If you were not born a woman, then you are not a real woman.
Trans women asserting that they are real women is fodder for the Trump base.
Towards the trans world -- compassion, understanding, getting along...all good. But no one gets to assert stuff that is not true as if it's true. All that assertion is mere assertion, not dealing in facts.
82
@Joe
Trans-gender women have to get a yearly prostrate exam correct?
3
Yes and thank you, Ms. Hay, to all of this.
2
Anti-definition makes it impossible to even recognize those suffering. Oh, the pastimes of the privileged.
10
Most people don't know anyone who is transgender.
Most of us are ignorant of what being transgender is all about.
And until or unless someone you know comes to you and tells you that they're transgender, you probably won't bother trying to find out more about it.
We should all be willing to find out more about transgender folks, both women and men. They deserve our respect and support.
10
Women- you're doing the woman thing wrong, let someone born male show you how it should be done!
That's the message being sent.
Sorry, not buying it.
134
More of the pervasive identity politics, screaming about how unfair life is. STOP IT. Unless you're in the top 1%, life IS unfair – whether you're black, caramel colored, cis whatever, tall or fat. Move on.
20
There is a difference between those born with XX vs XY vs XO vs XXY. Call whomever you want a woman, but don't say that we can't make clear distinctions on sex and intersex.
31
So it's OK if a trans woman (i.e., man), wants to compete in the woman's long jump or the swimming races at the Olympics?
If there's nothing wrong with being a trans-female then why not stop saying that you're a woman? Be trans-whomever. But don't think you're someone you're not.
39
Transgender ‘women’ are not female. It’s not a dangerous idea...it’s just a biological fact.
73
Women, like every group, jealously guard their turf.
4
Actually and tragically, no we don’t.
19
"The attempt to exclude trans women from the ranks of women reinforces the dangerous idea that there is a right way to be female."
The only right way to be female is... to actually be female. To suggest that liking "feminine" clothing or activities makes you a woman is ACTUALLY dangerous. This leads both girls and boys to believe they are the wrong sex if they do not match sex stereotypes, which is a road to life-long and unnecessary medicalization. It also leads to women and girls being denied the right to organize, meet, or undress without the presence of boys and men. Feel free to enjoy whatever clothing, mannerisms, and activities you want! It doesn't make you the opposite sex. I wear my hair short and wear clothing stereotypically associated with men. I resent the implication that this means I am not actually a woman. This is exactly the type of ideology that the feminist movement has been fighting against for decades. These are regressive sex stereotypes!
Also, it is disingenuous to take de Beauvior's quote so out of context and it is racist to equate black women's struggle to that of men who wish they were women. NYT and Carol Hay, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
125
Be whoever you want to be but, to be a woman, you need xx chromosomes and a uterus, ovaries and a vagina. That is a woman. Who you feel like, wish you were, hormonally and/or surgically alter yourself into being is fine but biologically, you are not a woman. I'm not trying to be mean but this is a biological fact. XX
52
From the Staple Singers 1973, "I'm not trying to tell you how to do it. I'm only saying put some thought into it. Be what you are my friend and live the life." The roles assigned us by various societal constraints are not hard boundaries and have and will constantly change with time. That's human nature.
I would be interested in what this author has to say about women's sports. Would I be correct in assuming that she would say they can't be justified? That would be a principled position even though it would remove much of the sports opportunities for cis-gendered women. What is unprincipled is the exploitation of women's sports opportunities by trans-gendered women who have the biological advantages over cis-gendered women that justified separation of women's and men's sports in the first place.
30
Biology has a way of determining who and what we are. If we start messing with that prescription, we risk a plethora of alternatives that have a danger of negating our existence.
We seem to be in the midst of that debate wherein we want to know what and who we are. I guarantee the the next conflagration, (and there will be one), whether via war or climate, will help us sort out what is useful to maintain our species.
For those who, born the way they were or the circumstances in which they find themselves, wish they were of another persuasion, I say, deal with it. You can do with your life that which you will. It only takes self discipline and hard work.
Any society that can sustain such a debate is in danger of failure, modern medicine aside.
14
In trying to rightfully claim the same respect before the law, the claim that gender is culturally mediated tends to simply reverse mistaken assumptions about gender and sex. But culture no more universally determines this than DNA does. Certainly it plays a significant role, but culture is no more a universal balm here than being defined by one's genitals.
To be convincing, discussions of gender and rights needs to include both DNA and culture.
In taking a clear-eyed approach to these matters, it must be realized that most who identify their gender as in conflict with their genetically defined physical expression of sex do not undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Whether that is undertaken depends on many choices and the range of resources available to the individual. Short of universal healthcare, that will remain a factor in the US. But even assuming that all those who desired to go under the knife to address their own view of who they are, this in itself does not make one a woman or man. Culture remains an important factor as Ms Hay describes.
What never changes, IMO, is whether or not one harbors the "rape gene" - that problematic Y chromosome. It's notable that the discussion she elicits tends to focus on the conflict over men as women. Even with surgery, that ol' Y is still hovering in the background, but more worrisome are those who take advantage of womanhood as a cover for abusive behavior toward others. It's a small but definite % of abusers of young people.
11
Why only sex is a subject of self-identity? Why not age, or race, or height, or weight, or eyes color?
19
trans women are men.
60
1. No trans will ever conceive a child--ever--and none will ever try
2. No trans will ever be a NFL linebacker--and none will ever try
The only people for segregated sports are women. On the other hand trans are dominating womens' sport. Women cannot compete against trans. Nike doesn't hand out billion dollar endorsements to top tier female athletes, and on, and on, and on, and on...........
21
If there is nothing common to the experience of being a woman then what does it mean to feel like one when you are not one?
42
Who is denying science now.....
22
“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.” — Charlotte Perkins Gilman
24
Sateen,
I had a liver transplant at 44.
I just found out, 5 years later, that it is a man’s liver!
Aside from the fact that I now like coffee and have no horror of aging, having almost died young, I do not feel anything other than myself.
Man liver and all!
16
Cheers to you, Marlene, and your male liver! ;-)
7
Drivel. Drivel in place of attention to the biology of sex differences, and the massive record of the anthropology of gender demonstrating the essential similarity of gender roles and their connection to the material realities of human life. That should be the focus of Ms. Hay's critique. What she offer in its stead is intellectual fluff.
27
Pretty sure the kid in Kindergarten Cop broadcast to us all what makes a man a man and a woman a woman...
7
Sorry, trans women are not women. They were born with male equipment. Just because someone cannot deal with their birth gender should not be a problem for the rest of us. You do not get to pick your gender, mother nature already did that. If you need help adjusting to your birth gender, then seek it.
The rest of society should not have to accommodate your neurosis.
54
I’m very disappointed to see this racist misrepresentation of intersectional feminist theory. Intersectionality was developed by black feminists to describe the unique ways that women of color, specifically black women, experience racism and sexism in a mutually compounding way. The intersectionality of being born black and being born female is something which must be addressed in the movement for female liberation.
Black women are NOT analogous to transwomen, and to claim otherwise is EXTREMELY racist. There is no “intersection” between womanhood and being born male.
58
I don't know NYT. When Ms. Hay (@DrCarolHay) tweets about her own article: "here's some TERF-bashing I just published in the @nytimes," I wonder if you understand the hostility underlying some of these positions.
99
The trans movement is insidious, twisted misogyny. It’s frightening to see men demand to be considered biological women (they are not) and then scream when women refuse to agree with them. Another frightening aspect of this nonsense is the demand that biological women not discuss menstrual cycles, female organs, or basic female biology because it might make the man with fake breasts feel bad. Seriously boys, the dress does not a woman make. Get over yourselves.
99
What is "transgender"? If it cannot be verified physically or genetically, then sorry, you are just unhappy with your place in the world. As a philosopher, the author may be familiar with Stoicism, which basically means make the best of where you landed, and everyone should try it--it is the only road to personal liberation. Men who think they "always felt like a woman" it seems just wants to be coddled in the way that they imagine women are coddled, with candy and flowers and pink ribbons. I suggest they look at the crime section of the newspaper, or just talk to any mature woman. I suggest that this imagining is also an insult to every woman who pays the price of being a woman with menstruation, pregnancy, breasts that are too large for comfort, not pretty enough by some idiot's standards, harassed on the street and workplace, lower pay and promotions, forced to depend on a man's paycheck or leave their child for others to raise, and expected to warp their personality and intelligence to the cultural expectations for femininity. Being a woman is no joke, and accepting and working with what you were born with is the better option.
56
Sorry but unless you have had periods, and know the agony of menstrual cramps, then you are NOT a woman if you are a trans! You are still what you were when you were born. Besides, all of our cells have gender, so even if you change some body parts, you are still who you are. You can't change all your cells, so if a man thinks he can become a woman and really be a woman, he's only kidding himself...same the other way around too. Why do you have to change what God made you anyway? Ridiculous!
37
Woman = Adult Human Female
44
TERF Bashing is Hate Speech
48
Time to let Sisyphus give up and let The Stone tumble
higglety pigglety back down the hill into the Styx. Honestly, the turgid philosophical jargon, intersectionalist rhetoric, and winking, nodding,self-approving asides to one's academic colleagues and fellow believers has become all too familiar and seemingly even obligatory in what was once a promising NYT forum. Oh for a philosopher who could write for general readers and produce clear prose in the vein of Plato, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Mill, Camus, or Bertrand Russell these days.
26
If you have two XX chromosomes you’re a woman. If you have a Y chromosome, you’re a man. End of story.
38
The presence pr absence of a y chromosome is an objective test that works most of the time. It is superior to the subjective test of "I identify as _______".
22
Every time I read this meaningless PC jargon - "performative," "cis," "patriarchy" - I WANT TO VOTE FOR TRUMP.
39
Yes, but I hope you won't.
5
@znlgznlg
LOL. No, even this ridiculous drivel could not drive me to do that. However, between articles like this and the latest political hit job on Biden, my eyes have practically rolled out of my head. I would just like to clarify to the NYT, the writer of this article and it's readers: "No one in the world is required to make you feel comfortable."
10
Way to go Democrats! Because of all this crazy talk, you are handing the 2020 elections to the Republicans. When women have to defend themselves just to be women, then your party really has gone to the dogs.
No wonder you try to shut off people’s free speech, harm and intimidate people if they don’t agree with you. The Democrats have turned into absolute intolerant and scary nutters. This is how Fascism begins.
It is the Democrats not Republicans who are turning into the real Fascists.
34
@PLH Crawford, this is not all Democrats. I'm a democrat and I am fine with trans people BUT I do not buy that they are anything other than Trans - MTF are not women, and FTM are not men. I think they should embrace who/what they are - something in between and stop trying convince everyone else to believe in their illusions.
10
@PLH Crawford
What does this have to do with being republican or democrat? Nothing, nada.
Sorry but no.
Women are still discriminated against, harassed, underrepresented at every level of power, and frankly they need safe space to unite, develop solidarity, and build their power free from people with penises - whatever those people might call themselves.
Once women have true equal rights and equal representation at all levels then the discussion about gender nomenclature can be had in a non-threatening manner.
This is a remarkable piece for the Times to publish. I particularly object to the unexamined use of the term, TERF, which many, many feminist women consider derogatory and even hate speech.
If you wonder as I do why so many otherwise reasonable people end up voting for republicans read this article.
63
@Victor Lazaron
One wonders if the Russians are funding the whole transgender activist movement.
Five hundred years and black people still have nowhere near equal rights. Yet in a few short years, males claiming to be transgender women have gotten all sorts of protective laws passed, including making it hate crime to misgender them by using the terms he and him in reference to them. Who is funding the transgender movement?
16
While more "nuanced" than Indya Moore's tweet, "if a woman has a penis, her penis is a biologically female penis", the article does traffic in many of the same unfounded assumptions that Moore's tweet rests on.
A penis/testes are biologically male in sexually dimorphic homo sapiens, as are the gametes associated therewith; ditto the vulva/uterus for biological females. Trans advocates pushing to the contrary from assumptions hatched in academic bubbles are building enormous headwinds against their progress. And they should not assume gay folk are lined up to support such arguments, because largely they are not once you're talking about gay folk past university age.
39
There is a disappointing number of comments here from people who think it's simple, that if you have one set of genitalia rather than another, or one arrangement of chromosomes rather than another, you are This or That. Folks, it's perfectly OK for you to make that judgment, *for yourselves*. It is not OK for you to make it for others or for an entire species.
Whatever gender someone wants to be, or feels that s/he/they is, is perfectly fine with me. And I have -- have always had (I'm 68) -- a very hard time imagining how any other position could be humane or considerate or, simply, fundamentally decent.
As for the particular focus of this op-ed, squabbling over the "membership requirements" for a particular gender club just doesn't seem very . . . grown up.
8
I, too, think that people ought to be able to live the way they want. But saying "I am a woman" because one feels like a woman is not the same as being one.
As for women becoming men: Heavens, wear trousers, live with -- or marry -- a woman, and the rest of us will try to keep anti-gay laws from once again becoming a reality.
Life is difficult. Lots of people dislike their looks, their feelings, everything about themselves. The best cure for that is a little therapy, good friends, and living long enough to know there are worse things in life than sexual confusion.
12
The Elite of this world have zero respect anymore for common people. The MSM is now pushing purely for oligarchy in which we the little folk SHUT up and think and do as the MSM want and tell us too. Everything else is 'terrorism'.
A MSM no longer dedicated to informing respected citizens but morons being told that up is down and left is right. If we vote wrong ('Brexit/Trump' etc; I am a Sanders/Tulsi Gabbard supporter) we are told the vote was NOT legitimate or the candidate 'is not a real Democrat' to excuse cheating and sabotage.
No we live in a world run by the MSM who are clamping down on the rights of the un Elite to have opinions, disagree with our lying news narratives (truth tellers are set up on false charges of rape like Assange) or even engage politically.
Instead we have Gender wars and the absurd unnatural idea that a castrated man is a woman 'if they feel like they are'. This is Monty Python as policy and in line with the global libel of Russian collusion. The power of the media to create fake news. Right now the fake news MSM are using 'fake news' as an excuse to censor those who question the 'fake news' put out by our lying warmongering MSM.
Assange was never accused of lying. Unlike the media who hounded him, despite the Pulitzer prize, he is guilty of treason by way of truth telling and poor Manning is being tortured. The elite don't care. It's 1984. you MUST believe 1+1 = 3. Treat everyone with respect and dignity but do not ask us to ignore reality!
9
I don't spend a lot of time (ok, any time) when I am out in the world wondering what particular gonads are under other peoples' clothing. Let people define themselves.
5
I support the rights of transwomen but I do not see the experiences of trans- and ciswomen as identical. Transwomen frequently perform an exaggerated, stereotypical form of femininity, replete with clothes and gestures that ciswomen have been trying to distance themselves from almost all their lives. It also concerns me when individuals who have lived in the body of a woman or had female experiences for short periods presume to dominate the discussion for ciswomen.
56
@Lifelong Reader
None of it makes sense.
17
Please, stop with this nonsensical “cis” prefix. There are women - identified as female at birth who grow up knowing they’re female, having XX chromosomes (or rarely XY chromosomes but SRY deficient and with cells unable to “read” testosterone, but that’s another story) - and then there are late entrants to our cohort who were born and identified as male at birth. If, at age 12 or 99, these individuals elect to identify as women and live as women, they can call themselves whatever they want (trans-women, Xies, pineapples - anything.) Their names do NOT change the identifier woman. Those of us who are originally female and originally women remain women. Just women. No prefix. The others are whatever they want to call themselves.
16
As a straight, cis-gender male, I wish I had something valuable to contribute to this discussion, but I cannot imagine what it would be like to feel as though I had the wrong body parts. In fact, when I do imagine what it would be like to wake up tomorrow with my body swapped with a female one, it seems like it would be way cool.
But that's obviously not how people experience the contradiction in real life. So I'm left with a mystery and will never understand what trans women and trans men are going through.
So, apologies, but instead of contributing to the discussion of something I know nothing about and cannot relate to, maybe the best I can do is just love and respect trans people for who they are as human beings. After all, how much do we really understand anyone, really?
7
I guess I'm a little TERF-y. My gripe is not that trans women are not "full-women" because they haven't experienced being female from birth, but that trans identity reinforces gender stereotypes and definitions.
Author says, "If we don’t like what we see when trans women turn the mirror of femininity toward us, we have only ourselves to blame." Can I consider this hate speech? Women are not "only" to blame for absorbing the trappings of whatever culture has defined femininity for us. It's a pretty basic concept that women have been adherent to the construct of gender because they derive very real benefits from it - men hold more money, and more political power than do women and women of all socio-economic classes have repeatedly found their security boosted by playing the part, by ingratiating themselves to those in power.
I bristle at trans identity because I feel that it reinforces (a la Caitlyn Jenner) gendered stereotypes. And it turns the narrative critique of gender from a critique of society to a critique of the individual.
In my heart, I believe that society is sick about gender (forcing conformity and making a whole lot of people uncomfortable along the way), and that the trans-narrative has weaponized it toward individuals internalizing the social sickness. Slay me all you want, but it's easier to change your body and your image, than to beat the patriarchy. I just want to see less gender when I look around.
Signed,
A tired woman
63
thanks for your comment, so well put.
15
I'm not a scientist, but I believe that gender is simply irrelevant until puberty. Until that point, it is simply a social construction, based on society's mores. When puberty arrives, it's very hard to deny that (at least for women who begin to menstruate) that one is female. At that point one can reject one's biology and claim to be something that one is not born, but, because of biology, doing so does not give the same experiences as one who accepts birth biology.
The single defining factor in womanhood is the ability to bear children and the menstrual cycle. This has been true through history and across all cultures. To me, any person who does not have to face the consequences of child bearing is not a woman. Any claims otherwise are based more on a perception of social factors rather than reality.
I also believe that sexual orientation in humans is fluid and the result of life experiences and cultural norms, not biology.
12
@vineyridge
Gender is not irrelevant until puberty.
Gender differences in behavior and interests appear very early on, before societal norms can have any effect.
The fact there are some outliers changes nothing to that fact, anymore than the fact some children are born with missing limbs affects the fact that humans have two arms and two legs.
17
@vineyridge
Gender differences are there from birth, that , unfortunately, for many, includes how you are treated .
7
Men who feel they are really women, and want to dress like women, OK, rights and tolerance and acceptance, totally on that page. But here's the issue: I'm being told I can no longer be called a woman, I have to be a "cis woman." If I talk about, say, my periods or the experience of childbirth around trans women, I am being non-inclusive and need to change my ways. I'm being told that woman equals makeup and hairdos and feminine costuming. Trans women want to colonize private spaces designated for women, and to gain access to benefits reserved for women (and god knows there aren't so many of those). All this bullying behavior is very, ummm, male - I make the rules, do it my way, and if you can't, shut up.
146
@Lise YES a thousand times!
17
I don't think it's hard to define the female experience. It's living in and navigating a world that considers us to be less capable, weaker, and inferior to men, with a heaping dose of objectification and ever-present danger. As far as I can tell, trans women share that experience plus a heightened threat of violence. I don't begrudge any trans woman of the years she spent as a man, and I would think that having lived as one provides a sharper comparison of gender experience. As a cis woman, I welcome trans women to the fight.
And as a feminist, the most obnoxious aspect of Ms. Hay's piece is the insistence that presenting oneself as feminine is simply reinforcing stereotypes. My preference for wearing dresses to work is based on the fact that I hate doing laundry, and a wardrobe of dresses means I only need one clean garment to get ready for my day, not two or more. (Plus, pants are leg prisons.)
13
Thank you for your understanding and tolerance. The comments on this article break my heart. I have never seen so much “judgement “ by NYT readers. As a middle-aged trans woman, I can tell you that there is no lonelier life than living this truth about myself. Society ostracizes us on virtually every level.
7
I don't doubt that at all, Jane. You are a braver woman than I am, and I hope you are able to find the community of women who will accept and embrace you.
4
A woman and a trans woman are not the same.
42
@Joe
A trans woman is actually a sad, confused man.
11
Through academic rhetoric Ms. Hay avoids the real world problem of those 'born' women having to compete and live with those 'born' men who now identify as women. This is now a problem in high school athletics, where 'born men but identify as women' can claim state titles. It has also led to sexual assaults in prisons formerly exclusively for those 'born' women. Yet Ms. Hay speaks of ideals, and ignores reality.
54
This is why we need laws to protect us from ourselves. The title "Who Counts as a Woman?" It should be clear that is is anyone biologically female or has surgically and legally become one. This is foolish beyond belief that the question is even asked.
9
Who counts as black? Rachel Dolezal?
Difficult to appreciate this line of reasoning. I knew children who barked all day and identified as a dog. We all grow out of those fantasies. Those who don't, medical science used to call "delusional". For example, those adults who identify as Super Heroes, those who harbor an unfounded belief that they are adopted, and those who have an imaginary six-foot-tall rabbit friend. I see no difference between those delusions and the others.
Mental health treatment for the delusional is the most reasonable course of action. Put another way, don't parade naked down Main Street and expect everyone to politely admire the emperor's new clothes.
28
It is sexism itself that would impose on bio-women every notion of womanhood without consultation with them.
26
These claims should be offensive to all women who didn't elect into our female bodies, but were born with them.
What we have are biological men, with reproductive organs capable of impregnating women, asserting that because they're using makeup, pitching their voice into falsettos and otherwise trying to appear as women, that they are not just identifying *with* women or expressing their feminine sides, but that they are ACTUAL women.
And that any women who disagree with that are bigoted and engaging in hate-speech. Even while said biological men are partaking in arenas specially reserved for women, such as women's prisons, women's sports competitions, or women's shelters.
This should be just as offensive as it would be if a biologically European-descended white person demanded that everyone recognize him as black merely because he was adopting stereotypically black clothing or manners of speech.
I'm sure transgender people genuinely believe that they "feel" like the other gender. But NO ONE actually knows what it feels like to be anyone other than themselves. Transgenderism is metaphysics insisting on being recognized as material reality.
Is it a coincidence that it is entirely transgender women (biological men) who are the hostile activists, aggressively demanding entry into women's spaces and asserting entitlement to loving, caring embrace by women?
92
The author mentions Sojourner Truth as an example of how “all women don’t have the same experiences” and thus trans women must be considered “exactly the same” as the class of female people. Lets look at the larger body of Truth’s quote:
“Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”
Femininity—the province of white women—was never black women’s to ease into. It was a golden cage for white women and an easy excuse to deploy by white males to justify the murder and abuse of black men as predators. Truth’s “ain’t I a woman” call was to recognize herself in a world where she was seen as glorified cattle. (See Michelle Obama is a man.)
Trans women cannot become pregnant. That is real. They have a particular experience, that is also real. It is not a female experience. And that is okay. Trans women’s lives should not require that pretense.
This thinking, as articulated in this weak article, and the cry of transphobia against all who don’t agree with it, is dangerous. It robs females the reality of their oppression even the GOP wages war not on their *identities*, but their biology.
It is misogynist to its core.
83
@Sugaredpeas
i hope the author reads your commend and absorbs some of your clarity!
8
There is so much incoherent thinking in this article.
If anyone who feels like it can be a woman, why is there a need for the category of 'woman' to exist at all? And if the category of 'woman' does not exist, then gender does not exist. And if gender does not exist then surely transgender people do not exist either? If we decide that gender is meaningless then being transgender becomes meaningless too.
So either we have gender categories that mean something and are delineated for necessary social reasons or we have no gender and no-one ever needs to transition or declare pronouns or have gender recognition surgery.
Yet it seems to me that the trans lobby wants to have it both ways: define being a woman as a flexible category that anyone can occupy but also define that an AMAB child who likes pink and playing with dolls has to 'transition' to being a 'girl', whatever 'girl' means. Funnily enough, taking that kind of approach is a fantastic way for male-born people to have their cake and eat it. And so, somehow, the patriarchy always re-asserts itself.
73
Brilliant.
8
I get it Professor. Individuals who are trans feel bad because they are viewed as different than "normal" men and women. So they go though all kinds of mental gymnastics to try to re-define a standard word like "woman" to include individuals who are different. But that just makes those who are trans look pathetic. If those who are trans really want to be viewed the same way as those who are not without playing word games, I suggest that they refer to themselves and everyone else as humans. (That term should include most people.)
23
“If we don’t like what we see when trans women turn the mirror of femininity toward us, we have only ourselves to blame.”
Only ourselves. Really?
42
Woman - adult, human, female. That's who "counts" as a woman.
In fact, by proclaiming some "womanly essence" that they have special access to, it is trans-identified males who "reinforce" the idea that there is only one way to "be" a woman.
Gender identity is a sham and, as more and more evidence is coming out, is proving to be a hiding ground for pedophiles and fetishists.
38
When I got my first period in a McDonalds bathroom at 17 at the Del Amo Mall in Torrance, Calfornia. I was in a haze when had to get some huge brick of a " napkin" out of the machine in said bathroom with the dimes in my pocket. I waddled back in the stall and figure out how to attach the wings on that thing. After all that, I went back out to the food court to meet my friends with my sweater wrapped around my shorts like nothing happened. Little did they know, that in that moment, everything happened. If you are a woman, you'll remember your moment too.
52
This 2020 Census could become very entertaining.
How many straight white men and women are going to 'self-identify' as Native American transgendered 'other'?
The whole community rating thing Obama tried to do to force diversity in highly homogenized communities would be out the window forever.
8
"...if you’ve lived in the world as a man with the privileges that the world accords to men..."
Why would a "man" eschew these privileges to transform into a "woman" without an extreme need to be one's true self. Perhaps trans women are the truest of women.
4
@Dalgliesh
In the high tech industry, where there seems to be a disproportionate number of males transitioning to transwomen, my experience was that they lost none of their privileges. Everyone knew they were born male, and so immediately assumed that they knew what they were doing and were capable engineers and didn't need the constant mansplaining and undermining that women were treated to (imagine that). In my experience, very few of these fellows really "pass," but people politely pretend they don't know in order to be nice.
18
If there is no way to define "woman" -- or for that matter "man" -- then the terms are meaningless. There is no difference. Which makes me wonder why a trans woman (or any woman) bothers identifying as a woman.
20
@Itsy
Nothing is black and white. A large majority of XX identify as women and a large majority of XY identify as men. That's good enough for the dictionary and common parlance.
Divide and conquer is the tool of the oppressors. In my male opinion Feminists might want more recruits to "man" the barricades in the gender wars so they may want to welcome cis women.
Old fashioned thinking about gender includes the biological function of females procreating, something no cis female can do as yet.
Cis women seem to be caught in the no mans land where they can be rejected by biological males and females. Perfect victims for Donald Trump to discriminate against.
Young people seem to have embraced a non-binary and gender fluid approach. All this anti feeling against humans somehow reminds me of James Baldwin's observation that he finally got to experience in France being disliked for his personality, rather than his skin color.
4
@Michael I like the Baldwin quote but I think you might have cis and trans mixed up
9
"Simone de Beauvoir quipped in 1949 that one is not born a woman, but becomes one,...”
How appropriate I was born in 1949 and just hit 70.
For 70 years I have been trying to be a human being respected by medicine and science. I don’t care if I don’t dress the right way or learn to be the best WOMAN I can be I just wanted to be a trauma surgeon but men fought me at every turn! Why are we talking about who “fits” into the category of woman when we are ALL treated as inferior beings?
Congress is trying AGAIN to pass a “Violence Against Women Act!” WHY? Do we need our own SPCA? We’re kept from being CEOS, from running tech companies, from being admitted to MIT and Cal Poly--and even if we do get out PhDs the men controlling EVERYTHING abuse and assault us with no repercussions.
When I was a young nurse in the Vietnam War, I saw a country of women AND men working side by side in the rice fields. Then we brought war and those women were just as good at fighting to protect their country as the men. We killed 2 million Vietnamese and MANY women. Those women weren’t dressed in haute couture but man could they fight!
You’re writing about trans women when we haven’t figured out who WE women are! I am not the ads that fill the NYT. As a size 12 this paper wishes I didn’t exist. How STUPID is it to worry about the “right” clothes? I don’t want to be the perfect woman I just want to be treated like an equal human being!
Can’t we start there?
11
@Nuschler
"As a size 12 this paper wishes I didn’t exist."
You're paying for a subscription. I'm sure the NYT is happy you exist.
We don't want to define women by their chromosomes? No, we just want to "transplain" female identity to them. Sorry, maybe you should have asked XX-chromosome women if they were okay with that first.
51
Carol Hay, lost all credibility the moment she decided to elevate the slur, “TERF”, in this piece.
That word is flung at any woman who dares to question anything said by anyone at all, that might not adoringly declare transwomen to be the exact same thing, in every respect, as a woman- and immediately cède all of one’s own authority as a woman, to male bodied people, as the correct folk to define ‘womanhood’ for the rest of us-
Including sweeping away any of that nasty determinative biological reality that every female child is born into-and must live within.
Sorry not ready to be told how to correctly woman.
I had no choice in the matter- I live in this body- I did not choose it, or to grow breasts or to menstruate or to have men ogle and harass me through my preteens to my 40’s, childbirth and pregnancy are not curatable experieces despite what the media might say. Transwomen are welcome to share any space with me- pronouns of the he/she variety are not a stretch when you follow visual cues and engage with the human in front of you, it becomes obvious how they’d like to be addressed: politely and with respect.
The San Francisco public library got into trouble after the Degenderettes displayed, “Kill all TERFs” T-shirt’s spattered in blood and bats covered in razor wire and other weapons for killing women. Women with questions about how transgendered women can best enter womanhood, for all of our safety and without dictating to women what they must be-once again.
42
This is cultural Fascism. If one does not agree, one is hounded harassed and harried.
Only biological women are women.
All the pretending, all the plastic surgery, all the dress up will not change the science.
This haranguing of women who don’t agree with the Cultural Diktats must end.
Women have suffered so much abuse of the long years. weare finally getting our rights and now we must accept new overlords? No.
52
@PLH Crawford This made me laugh. I have actually wondered whether some of this activism is manufactured in a right-wing dirty ops tank, and we'll learn - 50 years from now - that it was their wedge issue of the day. The longer trans bathrooms can rule the conversation of the day, the less time we have to see what Trump is really doing behind the curtain with his GOP henchmen and donors to ruin our healthcare, our environment, and our financial lives. I can't help thinking of the 60's "activists" who were on the payroll of the FBI or other organizations and worked as paid instigators of turmoil.
11
If a trans woman is a woman why do we have a special term for her and call her a trans woman?
16
I see my previous post mentioning the sexual aspect of transitioning to a woman was deleted, but it needs to be said. The current scenario castigating women for not wholeheartedly accepting trans women never mentions that a significant number of trans women get a thrill out of dressing like a woman.
20
This entire conversation is sickening. Men who masquerade as women and vice versa is contrary to natural law. Just because one says one is the opposite sex does not mean it is validate a faux identity.
14
Last June a few elderly lesbians were in the Gay Parade in San Francisco, and were carrying signs objecting to hormone treatments and surgeries for prepubescent kids who thought they were transgender. Their opinion was that kids that age are often confused about their sexuality, sexual identity, and so on.
A group of trans activists drew close to these women in a menacing way, practically stepping on their heels. One of my friends who was marching nearby but not part of the group was threatened, and later the activists did what they could to destroy her business. Meanwhile, the trans activists had a display at the San Francisco Public Library that included a t-shirt that read, "I punch TERFs." (Meaning trans-exclusive radical feminists.)
IMO, these trans activists can call themselves women but I call themselves typically misogynist, violent males.
69
There are four natural genders of the human species: female, male, hermaphrodite, and asexual. If someone wants to modify its natural sex, either with the aid of props or medically assisted, it is one's right. But there should then be documented indication of the nature of one's gender, to prevent and avoid many possible misunderstandings.
1
The fact that females have bodies with a reproductive system (eggs and uterus) designed for the function of pregnancy is the ONLY fundamental thing women have in common. And also the only reason for feminism.
Other than that, I have nothing in common with other women, any more than I do with men. We all have different personalities, demographics, and circumstances...but the one thing we have in common is that our bodies are designed to gestate and birth other humans. Unlike men, whose bodies are designed to fertilize women.
It is from this fact that every other social, economic, and physical inequity between the sexes arises. Men evolved to be physically larger because there are billions of sperm competing for every one viable egg, and the competition sometimes leads to violence. Since they're larger and more capable of violence, men have historically been able to control law and resources, and create a system in their interests, including control and exploitation of women. Feminism is a political movement based on the commonality of our female bodies.
The feminist raison d'etre is for women to control their own reproductive destiny and not be discriminated against because of reproductive capacity. That holds true even for biological women like me, who choose never to reproduce, or for women with a health problem or defect that causes their reproductive system not to function properly.
Biology is utterly indifferent to ideology and political interest groups.
25
@kryptogal
thank you for making it so clear. your points are crucial.
5
“As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.” — Patti Smith
6
I'm totally confused. Who's the aggrieved party here?
2
Males have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (XY), and females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX).
7
"Transgender" is just another way for frustrated men to control and dominate all things female. Particularly disturbing is the branch of the "incel" movement, which openly advocates for violence against actual women, that insists that lesbians should be open to dating men who pretend to be women, whether they want to or not.
32
It seems men want the best of both worlds and to rob women of their very gender. Being a woman has nothing to do with socio political cultural constructs. It has to do with simple biology. A man can believe he was born in the wrong body and that he wants to be pretty and wear sexy clothes, but that does not make him a woman. The surgery does not make him a woman. Biology makes us what we are. A trans woman is just that, just as a tomboy is still a girl even if she hates it because of all the baggage and blood it entails. Logic must prevail at some point?
29
@M
to complicate things further, *many* self-identifying trans women do not have actual sexual reassignment surgeries and retain their male orogans.
12
Why don't you ask women that compete in sports that are getting trounced by men that 'identify" as women.
25
The subheader states "The attempt to exclude trans women from the ranks of women reinforces the dangerous idea that there is a right way to be female." There may be no "right way to be female." It is certain that there is a wrong way, and that is the transgender myth. You cannot wiggle your nose and change your chromosomes.
21
A powerful line from the 2003 HBO Movie Normal: “Frankly, honey, there’s no way you’re a woman – only a man could be this selfish!”
16
I find all the talk of oppression, stereotypes, being "assigned" a gender at birth rather baffling. I wasn't "assigned" a gender, any more than I was "assigned" a nose.
31
There's many defining characteristics to being a woman - growing up knowing you won't be seen as an equal, seeing yourself as the trophy, the token, either ice cold and professional or loving and an endless giving tree, or a nightmare....
But beyond that, there is a reality no matter how much we try to be equal - if a man is looking to hurt me physically, if we are alone, I can't stop him. That influences a lot of how men and women are. Men have to learn to remember to always have self control - that classical moment where a woman slaps a man in so many movies - if a man loses control like that, he might kill someone, and definitely goes to jail for assault. Women grow up knowing we will play equal, we will walk in the world acting and assuming we will be treated as equals, but we can't forget that in certain ways, we are not going to be equal - unless it's a guy who never works out at all and is sedentary and a woman who works out nearly obsessively.
There are physical differences. I'd love to see gender, and the question of who can and cannot wear a dress, who can be an artist, who likes pink, who likes trucks, etc. - just eliminated. We should be fine with either party being the SAHP, either party being the one who brings home the bacon. I really wonder sometimes how many would be trans female or trans male if they didn't buy into the stereotypical gender roles.
But - if it's a physical job, we aren't equal. Even after a transition.
11
This is the kind of thinking that leads to once-males who look like college linebackers dominating women's cycling, track and field and other sports.
One might need to "become" a woman, as Ms. Beauvoir said, but you are born a female or a male.
30
@Philboyd
And this is the problem. We are equal - by law, in society, in rights. We are not equal in all abilities, in particular, musculature and pregnancy. Any degree where we try to say we are all equal hits up against that number one discriminator - biology. We are equal, we are not the same.
Transgender doesn't change that. And to allow trans-women to have the same space as a woman has can result in a reduction of our rights, with trans women with mens DNA, mens abilities competing in women's sports. It's not going to work.
I like the sports who make rules limiting the amount of male hormones present, to keep the playing field equal, whether you were born or made female with an advantage in sports.
15
The writer seeks inclusion of transgender women by some ill-defined cohort of cis women, some group whose number, identity and influence remain
vague. Meanwhile I know my share of transgender women. Their struggle is way bigger than if they’re accepted by the likes of Germain Greer or her counterpart in the debate. Greer who? Gender fluidity isn’t waiting for acceptance. It’s happening.
2
I wonder how many of these commentators have actually interacted with a real, live, trans person...
I'm a trans-woman. I don't have a penis, grew my own breasts, but I don't think that I am exactly like a natal female. I am very similar in a lot of regards, and very different in others. I don't think that any person with muscular system influenced by male levels of testosterone should be allowed to compete in women's sports, nor do I think that any woman should be compelled in changing spaces to tolerate exposure to naked penises. Of the many other trans-people I know, not a single one has every expressed these beliefs.
Most of us are concerned with reliable access to medical care, employment, and housing. Aside from that, it is very painful to feel unwelcome in your own body, and most would not like to be reminded of this pain every time we interact with a person from the outside world. Surely this can be navigated without the current status quo of two groups each yelling endlessly past each other: "You do not really exist!", "No, it is YOU who doesn't exist!" This really does not need to be a zero sum game, and there are much greater threats right now to both trans people and genetic females than each other.
27
@Evette
I don’t care. Trans people have serious self esteem and other psychological issues. Telling society that it must normalize them, is not going to fix those problems.
22
@Evette
And this is the big issue - people who want to play "more righteous than you" - and keep moving the bar to ridiculous heights. Letting us all live and let live is what most people want and support. But when they are pressured by the "more righteous than you" types, people start turning against acceptance, as it then looks like supporting acceptance is going to lead to this nonsense where women's sports are a collection of trans men.
13
@Evette
Thank you for your measured and reasonable comment. It's very easy to empathize with.
Sadly, it is not the message most of us are getting, which requires total obedience to a new speech code or hostility and accusations of bigotry. It would be helpful for more voices like yours to be heard.
18
I am a successful professional. I enjoy being a women and do not feel confined by my gender. I am also the mother of a transgender girl. This was an unexpected journey for our family and I have watched my child handle with grace the existential issue of coming to terms with who they are. Not being trans myself, it is not a phenomenon I can fully understand, but I can tell you that it is not a choice and it is very real. My child wants nothing more than happiness - a quest I think we all pursue.
As I read the comments posted here, it is quite clear to me that my child is going to face more hatred and discrimination then I have ever had to as a female. Those of you who will not accept her, how would you have my child live? Should she be forever forced to hide an essential part of who she is?
10
Correction to my comment: It should read "I enjoy being a woman" not "a women" (typed and sent too quickly)
1
@Mike
My child is now a teen and I am quite confident her feelings will persist. She is not looking for attention, she simply wants to quietly enjoy school (where she excels), friends and sports like the rest of her peers. She is happy. I don't believe she will ever have the desire to hide (if questioned) the fact that she was born male, but I do believe she would prefer to be seen for how she treats others and what she does with her life rather than be defined by this one aspect of her life. Would you wish to deny her (and others like her) this?
4
Ann, I wish your daughter a long and full-filling life. I hope the comments here are not an indication of her future. I see evidence that younger generations are much more tolerant and accepting and I pray that will be your daughter’s experience.
3
The fact is, trans women are not actually women in terms of how they present, and everyone secretly knows this, even those most willing to let go of traditional biological categories. In some part of the mind, the person you are talking to is a trans woman, and never simply a woman. Children, for instance, are always always aware of these differences, no matter what they've been told, or not told. They know. In affect, presence, and even, aristotelian "substance." the voice, the hands, the bone structure of the face, posture, mien -- there is never any mistaking a trans woman for a biological woman. And yet we are forced to pretend, as if we have stepped onto a stage and the performance has commenced, is ongoing. I'm fine with trans women generally included in the category of women but I'm sort of not fine with the fiction that trans women are just like biological women. They are not.
39
Gosh, I hope people are not upsetting themselve by spending much time worrying about these differences.
Sheesh.
2
@Douglas. Spoken like a man. The difference matters to females....
8
It's nothing personal, it's just biology. A woman is an XX and a man is an XY. There may be a tiny number of ambiguous cases (XXY, for example), but to deny that there are two sexes, male and female, is to deny science.
47
About 0.6% of women identify as trans-gender, and about 5.0% as LGBT. What about the other 95% of women who are normal straight women and have their own concerns, needs, difficulties and challenges? This article would lead one to believe that trans and LGBT women deserve a disproportionate share of media and academic attention: I find that unjust and unfair.
35
What is a “normal” “straight” woman?
1
@Pat Someone who is not lbt.
1
The disclaimer that comments are monitored for civility can only lead me to believe that if these comments represent actual civility in current discourse, then the country has far greater problems than a trans woman winning a marathon.
3
@Joanna. I see nothing hung rude or disrespectful - just a deep difference of opinion.
16
Agreed. I have seen no ‘hate’ in this forum.
8
The idea going around, with no scientific basis, that children as young as 3 or 4 can "realize" that their true, innate gender is opposite that of the biological definition is absurd. Even if there were some correlate in the brain I would never accept this, as gender identity is way too wrapped up in society's perceptions (dress, manner, etc.) of what is "typical" of a female or male. I know I'm far from alone in this sentiment. The trans community, or anyone else advocating the belief that children are capable of making an informed decision such as this, can forever expect strong push back. Frankly, I consider any parent who encourages their young child to go the route of an identity swap as negligent, if not unintentionally abusive.
61
@Joe Schmoe My dog would not know that she was a girl if I did not tell her that she was a pretty, or good, or smart girl. To her, she is simply a dog.
By age three, a child has heard themselves called a "boy" or a "girl" at least 1,095 times. (That's once a day for three years.) That's long enough for most kids to have internalized the message that they are a boy or a girl.
I suspect that if we did not tell our children, from a very young age, that they were boys or girls, but simply called them a "kid" or a "person" or a "human being," and did not impose upon them the societally-approved expectation of what boys and girls are like, they'd grow up to be who they are on the inside without regard to their reproductive equipment, that is, until they hit puberty and their reproductive equipment started to change.
4
@Joe Schmoe the website 4th Wave Now is for parents who are trying to find clear and realistic ways to parent dysphoric kids without rushing into irreversible medical procedures that sterilize kids before their brains have even developed. It’s a tremendous resource for progressive parents feeling pressure and feeling alone.
8
Here in Chicago we have a trans that plays in our Womens hockey league. Weve all accepted her into the pack. Even
players that play against her like her. At first we are apprehensive but we could see she needed a place to play and she was no different from us.
6
@Therese Stellato: And the next biological male who is twice is strong, twice as fast, and has twice the endurance as anyone else in your league, who completely dominates on the ice and sets every record in the book...you'll be cool with that?
14
It seems fairly simple to distinguish between sex and gender. Male and female are biologically determined by genes and chromosomes and are fixed. Man and women are gender roles that people adopt according to what they feel represents them.
I am bewildered by the hostile attitude toward trans women because presumably they have lived privileged lives of men. There seem to be so many young people barely through adolescence who want to transition. These young people do not seem to have lived the life of privileged men, barely as men.
Finally I wonder about the lack of this discussion on the other side. Among males/men is there the same amount of disagreement, criticism and lack of acceptance?
3
@Carole
i think one reason why there is less discussion about transmen vis a vis their acceptance into normative maleness is because trans discourse has required women's spaces and feminism to expand such that it is capacious enough to accommodate female-born women, male-born women and female-born men. in many ways transmen function as an extension of lesbian / gender fluid communities. witness a NYT magazine article about "The Men of Wellesley" which detailed the struggle about the inclusion of transmen at traditional women's institutions.
3
How sad we are as people to decide who is a women. I include everyone who chooses to present as a women. What difference except inclusion or exclusion is there to be gained by blocking trans-women ? Seems to me there is way too much getting into peoples personal lives that isn't hurting anyone except intolerant and judgmental people. And those people need to look more deeply within themselves and not outside their lives.
1
Perhaps the problem lies with thinking of gender as a purely social construct. Those who claim to “feel” themselves to be a woman include people who were born as female and yet reject (or weren’t raised in) traditionally female roles as well as those who were born as male and have only ever been treated as such by society.
Perhaps humans are not merely physical beings, and the gender of the human “soul” or “spirit” (or whatever you want to call the non-physical part of a human) is separate and at times different from the sex of the physical body? Of course this theory can never be confirmed by science since science can only observe that which exists within the physical universe, but to me it’s the explanation that currently makes the most sense.
1
"The attempt to exclude trans women from the ranks of women reinforces the dangerous idea that there is a right way to be female."
What do you mean "exclude? Were they there?
20
I would bet a bazillion trillion dollars that the females commenting things like “I’m a woman and I embrace transwomen because all of us experience womanhood differently”; are approximately 24 years old, have no children and have been on birth control pills for most of their menstruating lives. I’d like to check back in with them when they’re 39 with 2 kids, pregnant with their 3rd. Or 39 on their second round of IVF.
41
@Sigh
I'm in my sixties, had a child, had endometriosis and a hysterectomy and I think that we all experience being a woman differently. I have no problem with trans women joining our ranks.
5
@Sigh Let me know how to contact you so I can collect on the bet. I'm 68 and fully embrace transwomen because all of us experience womanhood differently. So silly.
5
@Sigh,
You forgot workplace discrimination and the overwhelming expectation that women be forever young, fit and gorgeous lest they lose relevance, they must be constantly and eternally available to all and sundry needing support, backup, and the old emotional labor.
16
If I’m tired of thinking about stuff like this, I can only imagine what my trans brothers and sisters must feel.
I think we all know who counts as what. If anyone cares to redefine that for themselves, for any reason, they should be welcome to - why not? But redefining everything we know about men and women to accommodate that occasional occurrence is like removing all dairy from the world’s diet to accommodate those who are lactose-intolerant. Makes no sense.
Let’s get on with things.
10
@James
Or redefining humans as not bipedal or having opposable thumbs, because some humans are born without legs or hands...
5
Nobody is assigned a gender. The body signifies gender, which a small percentage of people later discover doesn't entail their identity as well as the other gender. The widely accepted use of reality-bending terms of propaganda like "assigned a gender at birth" as if the nurse or doctors made an active choice, undermines other perhaps more subtle arguments.
Second - some cis women define themselves by the male gaze, and feminists - ie, everyone who believes in equality - are opposed to that and should be also appalled by the sex kitten version of femininity of a Jenner and others that ilk. Set back women's equality and we applaud?
Third - a sensitive, nurturing, etc male arguably does more for equality of men and women than a male becoming female in order to experience those characteristics. The latter suggests that only women are sensitive, nurturing, etc., which is something feminists like me have been opposed to for so long. After the long backlash that started in 1980 after second wave feminists, the currently more retrograde gender stereotypes are adopted by far too many transgender people.
Fourth: liberty and equality - to excerpt the Declaration of Independence - is the whole ball of wax. Freedom / Equality. It's that simple. and it's taken us centuries to get this far along that road. Avoid doctrinal debates go for freedom and equality.
9
Excellent. Crystal clear. Thank you.
1
I am a man. I do not have periods, I cannot become pregnant, I do not have the monthly cycling of female hormones. I have no idea what it truly feels like to be a woman. Women do not truly feel what it is to be a man. Yes we have a lot in common as we are human, but we are not the same (vive la difference).
I know that the gender identity crowd say they feel the same as a woman. That is impossible and it is insulting to the true female experience. They should talk about a trans experience and not say that they have the same experiences as a true female.
109
@Sam By the same token, I cannot know what it is like to be a man. I can imagine it. I can dress up and pretend that I am a man. I can study men the way I would study a butterfly and may be able to emulate typical male behavior with a fair amount of accuracy. And I do know what it is like to be a human being and possess those androgynous qualities that both men and women possess. But I cannot know, in my heart of hearts and my soul of souls, what it is like to be a man.
10
If a trans woman commits murder and there are no eye witnesses, and the police find DNA at the scene, will they be looking for a man or a woman?
Intersectional this and performative that doesn't prove womanhood -- The need for such opaque language proves the lack of womanhood and therefore the need to justify in the extreme.
Man and woman may be fungible as genders, but male and female are absolute as biological sexes. We really need to stop conflating the two.
There's no reason trans women can't be counted as women. But, they will never be female. Sorry, but it's just a biological fact.
Adding "trans" to "woman" is the beginning of the problem. By using the prefix, trans women are being separated from the body of all other women. Linguistically, it makes no sense.
A man who has transitioned to a woman should be called a woman or a "trans man." That would eliminate a lot of the confusion. She's a woman. Period.
Adding the prefix diminishes what these people are. Let them be men or women, as they so choose. And, let the prefix be used to state what they were, not what they are.
Then, the language will match their perceived reality and we can all stop worrying about how other people live and get on with our lives.
23
@Elfego if a trans woman commits a murder will she be listed in violent crime statistics as a man or a woman?
6
@Elfego
Adding the prefix reflects reality.
3
Who is a woman depends upon why the question is being asked.
When testing new drugs, should a trans-woman participant in a drug trial have her data be treated identically the same as what was thought to be a traditional woman - including not even collecting the data that the person is a trans-woman? What of when testing new birth control pills or treatments for breast cancer?
Should we treat all college and professional sports as gender neutral? No more women’s basketball and mens basketball — just basketball.
As a society we should be moving away from categorizing and identifying people into different groups and ever finer sub-groups. Just treat all people with respect, allow people to be as different as they care to be as long as they don’t directly injure anyone else.
At the same time, when there are relevant differences, such as medicine we should not ignore the differences of Physiology.
15
How in the future will we classify a person as a man or woman or of this race or ethnic group or that and especially how will we devise classification for all the people who feel in between or of some other group than their own (which has often been imposed by others) or who feel themselves changing in these significant ways over a lifetime?
The answer is obvious: Through advances in genetics, biology, coupled with intense and ever clearer study of all the abilities, tendencies of which humans are capable, coupled with increased understanding of numberless environmental effects, eventually we will get beyond the ridiculous classifications we have now for example in America, where we assign people sex and gender by observing sex organs and where we have complete incoherence of assignment of race and ethnic group to point where a person if having black blood is black but a person such as myself (a White male with Native American blood) is not Native American but must be White, and description of each person will fall into something of a quantum field scheme, we will take each person as a package of abilities/characteristics with probable trajectory depending on this or that environmental effect, and all of society will be a vast and interlocking, interplaying dynamic field dedicated to maximizing, capitalizing on, the possibilities of each person. It's really only by a hyper-discrimination cognitive process coupled with justice that we overcome negative discrimination.
Something that was not covered by this article was the imposition of trans women into sport. There is no way that a biologically formed male (however she may have thought of herself and whatever surgery/hormonal treatments she may have undertaken) can be seen as competing fairly with other women, especially in sports that rely on muscle bulk (i.e. weightlifting). If you transitioned after puberty, you have an unfair advantage against your competitors and should expect resentment against your participation as a woman.
59
That’s simply not true. Any trans woman on hormones will lose muscle mass.
Just ask Renee Richards.
2
@Robin Absolutely true. Male muscles are different. Males bones, male pelvic structure. Even male blood is different than female. The current climate of permissive stupidity is destroying female athletes. Why work hard to improve when some guy can self-identify as a woman, take hormones for a year, and beat the stuffing out of all the women he competes with?
16
@Mike Friedman - But they won't lose their height, broad shoulders and narrow bony pelvis.
4
Doesn't the recognition of transgenderism destroy decades of feminist dogma that there is no difference between men and women, that perceived differences are all the result of culture?
As it is accepted that transgenderism is real, it would appear that there are differences between male and female in the brain, fixed at birth, with culture determining only outward behavior. If otherwise, transgenderism could not exist unless defined as simply a desire to participate in the cultural expressions of the opposite gender.
11
@David Yep, there's a contradiction in liberal dogma. Either sex differences are not biological (women are not good at math due to cultural suppression) or sex differences are biological (and trans people are more like the sex that they are convinced that they belong to).
Which is it, liberal folks?
@David
Yes, there is an inherent contradiction between these two viewpoints. The author presents an incoherent argument trying to reconcile them, and fails.
5
Until we decide to treat male and female children equally from the start, these issues will continue to haunt us. What about an option for increasingly available - but still voluntary - unisex bathrooms, locker rooms and showers?
The idea here is that we all have a body and - hey - get used to it! Once we accept people in that way, I think it will be easier to respect each others' rights and true identities. This will not happen overnight, but in what century and how else are we going to make a start of it?
The article presents concepts with which many straight people, raised in the traditional manner (like myself, in case anyone wondered!) are unfamiliar and even uncomfortable. Understand that first. Perhaps we need to get out - and outed - more. Maybe then we can meet us all half way.
2
@Chevy No, no and no! Women do not want to be nude in public or semi public spaces with males. The amount of sexual abuse and attacks against females and children by males is about the same as when we lived in caves. The evolution of males to a point where females can be safely around them without clothes except in a nudist camp will not happen in your lifetime or mine. Keep dreaming.
4
People in academia cannot understand why so many Americans feel they are self-righteous, out-of-touch, and condescending. This article, and similar ones, that tell people who disagree based on strong arguments and life experiences, only further the belief that academics have no connection to the real world.
80
What's the point of all the new 'non-binary' lingo if not to say, there are cis-males, trans-males, cis-females and trans-females--and there are distinctions (which in some cases may make a difference)? It seems ironic that feminists and gender theorists who have worked hard to open up these distinctions are the most adamant about enforcing to the good old fashioned binary term 'female' at the end of the day (both the TERFs and the hyper-inclusive feminists who refuse to admit a distinction between cis-females and trans-females). I mean, if we insist that all trans-females are really truly females and must be treated as such--how long until all the female professional sports are taken over by trans-female athletes?
20
Where to draw the boundary around a shared category of oppression is not a challenge just for "womanhood" and feminism but to any group seeking to understand and define the source of its marginalization. Race, class, ethnicity - all are very real categories of discrimination and yet their borders remain contested. Issues of representation are inherent in any liberation struggle. Why is this presented as a unique issue for feminists, and somehow an indicator of the movement's unworthiness?
The question for me is how to affirm oppression rooted in both biology and in gender in one unified movement. It seems a bit flippant to dismiss child-bearing and menstruation as poor markers of womanhood when reproductive control and coercion are bedrocks of women's oppression, no matter the individual circumstances of any woman (cis or trans). One shouldn't have to face charges of bigotry for pointing this out. Just as it should be easy to acknowledge the profound harm done by the straightjacket of gender roles, a harm that our transsisters know all too well. Unfortunately, feminism is not having respectful dialogue on these issues and finding a movement to accommodate our shared liberation. Instead I see assertions of the sex-basis of discrimination dismissed as simple TERF bigotry and the gender-basis of discrimination as something only AFAB women can understand.
13
Part of this, it seems to me, is in the clash of constructs and terms, and the seemingly interchangeability of woman and female, as well as born and assigned, not to mention cis and trans, as an attempt to organize and understand gender experience. The term assignment at birth is disingenuous as it presumes a rather cynical expectation, but how many people don't use boy or girl during a pregnancy in anticipation of the birth? And much of what is causing these clashes are the differences in being a cultural woman and a biological female.
3
Frankly, I see this as just one more way in which genetic males are trying to toss people who are genetically female under the bus.
Enough!
97
Could we ask Martina Navratilova about this topic?
28
Yes please!
This newspaper has been absurdly ‘exclusionary’ in its apparent delight in publishing anything at all trans friendly, (and these pieces lack the traditional, ‘on the other hand here is the other side of this argument portion’, of a reasoned argument or think piece)- it’s all pro trans puffery.
Why not give the other side of the argument and hash it out?
Why insist on silencing any gender critical views?
Let’s hear from Martina Navratilova and Meghan Murphy and Germaine Greer.
And if the NYT ever publishes again another article where ‘TERF’ is uncomplicatedly allowed? You lose this subscriber forever.
Grow up NYT- women can handle both sides of this debate and the ensuing necessary conversations.
Women are not small children in need of protection from scary ideas- I imagine transwomen can handle it also- step back or step up your reporting on this issue and stop infantilizing women by suppressing this necessary debate.
13
Trans women are not women, they are men. It is interesting how science matters when climate change is the topic or Trump supporters are being ridiculed, but science is thrown out the window when it comes to trans people. Then it is okay to say a man wearing a dress is a woman.
It is the height of misogyny for men, masquerading as women, to tell biological women that they are "better" females than us and that we must make room for them and take second place to them as women while they act out their masquerade. This madness is baked into the so-called Equality Act, and if passed, biological women will be forced to deal with men in women's restrooms and women's changing rooms. I will go on record here to say I am completely opposed to the Equality Act and have called my representatives to express my views.
122
@Lynn in DC
Outstanding. It should be explained that legislation passed in Canada and England to enshrine the rights of transgenders is being used to harass and silence women.
It is now considered a hate crime in those countries for a woman to refer to an XY transgender, even one who chooses not to surgically transition and to keep his genitalia intact, as "he" or "him." This is called transphobic misgendering. In fact, it is speaking biological and scientific truth. Sex is marked by Nature in XX or XY chromosomes and it is a fiction to say that one can change their sex. One cannot, sex is marked in every cell of the body. Once again, the patriarchy seeks to criminalize science and women.
Galileo was convicted of heresy for speaking the truth that the Earth revolves around the sun. Now, in the new age of inquisition, women are being criminalized for speaking the truth that XY males are males and not females.
21
@Lynn in DC where are trans women saying they are superior to you? What place do you feel you are being squeezed out of?
Brava, Carole Hay, Talia Mae Bettcher, and the countless trans women who negotiate trans misogyny, binarism, and real violence in their daily lives. Let's hope Gen Z, where one in three knows someone non-binary, can bring us all into a better future!
2
"“transvestite” is no longer the preferred nomenclature" - preferred by whom? If trans women prefer "trans women" then that's fine by me. I would actually regard anyone who has psychologically and medically transitioned from male to female to be a woman, full stop (sorry! period). By the same token my preferred nomenclature is "woman". If others can choose theirs then surely so can I. If I'm honest, moreover, I do share the same reservations about the type of 'femininity', as discussed in the article, that some seem to adopt (although not all by any means). I also share the safety concerns that have been expressed about those who have not fully transitioned being allowed into female only spaces, as in the recent incident in a women's prison in the UK, when a trans woman was brushing male genitalia abusively against other prisoners. Above all, I find it depressing that after centuries of being oppressed by men, women (of all ethnicities, incomes and ideologies) are now being criticised by former men. I'm not saying that none of it is justified but where are the accounts of trans men who have been pilloried, abused and even physically attacked by other men? I am quite sure they exist.
14
I guess if you say you are then you are. As a Lesbian, I am the target of "trans inclusive" lesbians that label me a hater. I was kicked off a gay pride stage for joking that "I have been sober since before women had penis'." More a lesbian joke, but was rushed by gay men and transwomen anxiously explaining the fluidity of gender. Thank you boys for taking me to school on this. Meanwhile, our "lesbian" writers conference has been turned upside down for a group of them deciding we should be inclusive. I am not for hate or discrimination, but I do want women born women space. I personally do not think someone raised as a boy has any idea of my struggle both as a woman and a lesbian. Yet they call me CIS, TERF, and privileged. Then want to take us on in sporting events and be included in all things woman. I am not a hater, rather a lover of my community and sisters, even those hurling insults my way. There is no alternate universe where a Dr. Can make a man a woman. Nope, not sorry!
152
@treylet
Thank you for bringing up something I’ve never understood, and I thought maybe it wS just bc I am straight: why gay/lesbian individuals are in the same category (LGTBQ) as transgender.
21
@treylet, thank you. As the mother of a lesbian daughter, I appreciate your point of view. It is incomprehensible that anyone could fling the term "privileged" at a group that has been so marginalized and without equal legal protections for so long.
19
I identify as a trans woman and I have never demanded anything from a genetic woman. I can certainly feel your anger and hatred toward me and I hope we never occupy the same space. Live your life, hate whom ever you want. But, know that true trans folk want nothing from you.
1
The fact that we hear almost exclusively about transwomen from transwomen in the media is just another example of the narcissism of men. Even when they’re dressed like women and injecting female hormones, it’s still all about them and their legitimacy.
Men. Ammiright?
143
Yes- you are right. Now what?
10
I freely admit that I simply do not "get" the trans experience. But if I am honest with myself, I find I cannot claim that someone else's experience is not real simply because it is not like mine.
Nevertheless, I have noticed over and over (and over) again how people as a rule are willing to do exactly that.
For most of Ms. Hay's column it seems like she is trying so hard to give a balanced view of opposing opinions that it's hard to tell what _her_ opinion is; but her final paragraph finally makes that clear, I think, and is right on the money. (Of course, by "right on the money" I mean that it aligns with MY experience. The irony is not lost on me.)
1
@Bruce really, i think it Crystal clear that Hay is totally pro trans and sneerily dismissive of women (or the abusive TERFS - which is a huge giveaway) who simply see being a woman as a biological reality that naturally excludes males.
12
Prof. Hay does not mention "Non-binary". I don't know if NB is more common in the UK than the US.
I transitioned male to female, and now identify as non-binary. not really of either sex/gender. I want to express myself as me, rather than by stereotypes male or female. I treat it as liberating- I can still sing baritone if I want, despite transitioning; doll myself up, which is great fun; dress down for practicality.
NB is a way of escaping stereotypes, which are oppressive and Procrustean. Masculine ideals can be oppressive for men, feminine ideals for women. They do not fit the real person as s/he is. I choose my own way. If the stereotypes are oppressive, then feminists should support any means people use to subvert them.
5
in order to survive, identities must remain exclusive. For instance - the straight white male identity - step outside the lines, and your political identity changes. If identity politics asks us to define our identities correctly, then where is the harm in new identities?
Why claim to "be" absolutely? Isn't there space in our constellation of identities for a former man to be a trans woman, with her own unique history and experience? why insist on identity absolutes?
as a cis man I don't feel entitled to anyone else's identity, or for that matter to protect my own identity. But that's because my identity is dominant across culture and history. If my identity were defined by a struggle, i'd be irked by appropriation (by rachel doleful for instance), but not by a new identity that shares experience and insight with my own.
as a culture, our insistence on absolutes is destructive. our reality doesn't conform to easy to two, three or even ten distinct identities. The trans culture is nothing new; it's as old as time. Why isn't the trans identity on par with any other?
2
@commenter being female, being a woman isn’t an identity, a feeling, an idea - something changeable from day to day. I don’t really care what folk choose to identify as - as a woman i care about biology - i have to
13
Let's scratch "feminism". Rather let's be activists who fight for social, political and economic justice for each and every individual. That's across ALL boundaries that divide us, control us, keep us from realizing everyone's true potential and contribution to our world.
Academic arguments such as this one, that worry about the definition of the divisions, do little for advancing the generosity of spirit that we need to extend to each other. Respect, dignity, security, we all deserve that.
There is an incredible, nuanced spectrum of people that we divide into over-simplified categories, into an "us" and "them". Across gender, race, class, religion, age, physical capabilities, political and social attitudes and more, we slice our world into categories, into primitive "friend" or "foe", "threat" or "not".
After millennia, we are still cave men and women. Blood, whether from menstrual blood or afterbirth or wounds, draws predators, and we still have social practices built on the animal biology of predator and prey.
What if we can get beyond our boundaries and categories, beyond our "us" and "them"?
2
Defining woman according to anything other than the physical body is regressive and sexist. Women are NOT ideas in men's heads. We are adult human females. And humans cannot change sex.
Erasing females legally eliminates the ability to identify sexism.
I'm disgusted that so many so-called progressives are gleefully embracing this sexist ideology, supporting the elimination of womens sports, women's scholarships, women's private spaces, and women's small business grants. I guess that explains why the left has stood by and let the right wing destroy womens reproductive rights. They dont care about women any more than the right does.
111
It is said that men on the Right view women as private property while men on the Left view women as public property. American women whose eyes are open can see that we are politically homeless and under attack from both Republicans and Democrats.
26
Should the same argument apply to race? Can I decide that I feel like a person of another race and that decision be respected by all? Unlike gender, race is a continuum, so maybe changing race should be more acceptable than gender?
56
Excellent question. I wonder what Rachel Dolzeil would say?
8
@BMD Someone already tried that. The actual black folks rejected the notion that you could identify as black. Now we are seeing sensible women reject the notion that putting on a dress makes you a woman.
12
@BMD
Not to mention that there is no absolutely certain marker of racial identity - you cannot scan a person's biology to be able to tell what race they are. (Besides, the "one-drop rule" would eliminate most claims of Whiteness!)
However... Every cell in our body is sexed and chromosomal combinations can be identified.
11
I am a transgender American. What scares me the most lately is the increasing demonization of transgender people on right wing TV (Fox and many more) and right wing radio for political purposes and ratings. Life is tough enough, and dangerous enough without being the new targets for discrimination and abuse. We are now being accused of recruiting child for "our agenda", of desecrating "womanhood", and a dangerous symptom of moral decay in society. Right wing outlets now use TERFs to promote their agenda of hate. What is dangerous for children is that those children with gender issues are now being subject to this hateful abuse. What must young trans Americans think when the president tweets (without "talking to my generals") that trans people are not worthy enough to serve in the military.
They are worthy and we are not going away.
2
@Rachael
What is dangerous now is that children, whose brains are not fully developed, are being given opposite sex hormones and being sterilized in the name of transgenderism.
Over 80% of children who exhibit some gender dysphoria or unhappiness with their sex end up growing up to be normal and content with the sex they were born with. However, transgender ideologues have been demanding that gender dysphoric children be fed hormones and surgically mutilated, rendering them permanently sterile.
As a child who was very much a tomboy and is now a grown woman happy with her life and body, I shudder to think what would have been done with me today. Adults would say I was gender non-conforming and needed male hormones, and a surgery that would keep me as a medical patient for life. Ugh.
13
TERF is a slur.
Please stop reducing women with questions, to a hateful and hated acronym.
With love, and please, share my space! But don’t tell me what I am and don’t call me names.
15
This is not true! Adults are not forcing drugs and surgeries on their children in order to change their gender. You are exaggerating to win an argument not to find truth.
1
This cis male remembers a school classmate in the early 70's whose gender dysphoria was so strong that the school made a special exception for gym, and peers just accepted that 'this person needs to be a girl so lets do the best we can to give them space."
This space was extended by consensus and honored even by relatively unenlightened lunks. I don't sense a moment of male privilege in that person's upbringing.
A few years after high school, still in the 70's, I met her after her transition, and saw someone who was finally herself, relieved, joyful, and feminine.
I don't understand her journey, but it was clearly one that demanded brave authenticity to self, as Katie commented upon earlier.
11
@Middleman were all the students totally onboard with this - especially the girls - or was there pressure exerted for girls to accept this no matter their beliefs or feelings or boundaries. Is that really healthy or good safeguarding?
16
There is another side to this story that is not well addressed in this article. The term TERF may or may not have started as a neutral term, but unfortunately it has become hate speech directed particularly at lesbian women who are being told they must accept some transwomen as lesbian women like themselves. The thinking goes, "If I identify as a woman, even though I may be biologically male, I am still a woman, and since I prefer other women sexually, I am therefore a lesbian woman. If you are a lesbian who does not want to date me or sleep with me because I am trans, then you are transphobic and a TERF." Google "cotton ceiling". Women, and especially lesbian women, have been targeted with death threats and slurs for expressing the view that lesbian women have the absolute right to choose who they wish to date, love or be attracted to. Obviously, this point of view is extreme and does not represent the thinking of most trans people, but it is creating a troubling divide in the LGBT community.
This view, albeit extreme and not representative of most transwomen, speaks to the need to retain the idea of woman as an actual biological category that is a reality for billions of people, even though there is room for wonderful variation. To gaslight women into believing that identifying as a woman is more real and more valid than being biologically female has its cruel side, and carries the potential to harm both women and trans people alike. This is not happening to men.
123
And w all this sexual theory stuff, you’re not even going to bring up the issue of biological males competing in physically demanding sports against women? It is absolutely wrong and unfair for biological males to compete with women in such sports. And, though I’m a man, I’ll bet most of the opposite SEX would agree w me. BTW, I know language changes, but, despite what the NYTimes thinks, “gender,” used in anything other than the grammatical sense, is a euphemism. And I’m sick of it. If you’re too dainty to use the word “sex,” don’t put yourself forth as an expert on the subject.
46
I’m amused when reading about a group that constitutes less than .3% of the populations of women and their plight when I see the contemporary orthodoxy of what constitutes and acceptable woman as largely those ‘women that voted for Obama”. To be a acceptable woman, one must like Oprah and hate Trump, believe in choice, see pay equity as a matter of equal pay for like job, see premarital sex as a enlightened, and so on. While I actually believe in the tenants of the above statement, I always find it striking the way that the press blithely dismisses the arguably 50% of women who disagree with some or most of these statements. I would focus on inclusion of the 75M+ the above camp
17
Trans women can feel, dress, behave as much as they want as woman. That is OK and nobody should object it. But they are still men!
73
I find this article and the whole argument offensive. Just because a trans-woman says he/she is a woman, does not make him/her a woman. Why should any of us have to accept this. How about adhering to the gender on your actual birth certificate? Sure, dress up and pretend to be a woman but don't expect me to consider you one. I agree with Germaine Greer--- just because a man got plastic surgery and wears make-up--- why is he/she now a woman? These hyper-feminized versions of women that many of the trans people evolve into, and their personas, are a form of misogyny.
93
I'm really disappointed that the NYT would allow an article using the slur "TERF."
Also, the only definition of woman that does not rely on circular logic or sex-based stereotypes is "adult human female." That's not offensive or exclusive - it just IS, like a dog is a dog, like a Democrat is not a Republican, like a black person is not a white person.
Finally, where's the similar uproar about the definition of men? Is it because the author views women as a soft target who will bend and accommodate men?
92
@Liz
Yes.
4
*In no way should biological males impose their will on biological females.*
Many biological females do not want biological males in their bathrooms, in their showers, in their locker rooms. They want and need their privacy and safe spaces from biological males.
For biological males and for an administration to disregard the feelings of biological males simply shows a total lack of respect and makes a mockery of #MeToo.
There are several Democratic presidential candidates who are biological females who have said nothing to defend the rights of biological females. For that matter, neither have the male Democratic presidential candidates said anything to defend the rights of biological females.
It was the Obama administration which totally ignored biological women's rights by legislating that biological males could legally disregard the rights of biological females.
While Democrats claim to value the rights of biological females, their actions show otherwise.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has restored the rights of biological females to not have their will imposed upon by biological males.
Apparently now the Democratic House, led by a biological woman, is attempting to pass a law that usurps the rights of biological women.
The Democratic Party used to be concerned with the rights of the disadvantaged (in this case biological women compared with biological men). What has happened to the Democratic Party we used to love?
50
I wish I was not born a women, and could become one at my convenience.
Think of all the would have missed
Menstruation and all the fun that goes with it
Losing Virginity
Being talked down to
Being patronized
Being Judged on my Breast size
Being Judged on my Bum size
Having my Breasts mistaken for my eyes
Sexual Harassment
Having my Derriere constantly pinched on the subway
My Breasts accidentally brushed against on a regular basis
Making ,75 to the Dollar
Pregnancy
Abortion questions
Miscarriages
Menopause.
Im with Martina Navratilova on this one. You are BORN a Woman. You cant become one.
I never ever thought in my lifetime, I would see such a headline in The New York Times
126
Every article on radical feminists posted by the NY times has dishonestly framed radical feminist objections to "woman as an identity" as merely frivolous "exclusion" of trans women (and has posited this "exclusion" of male born people as an ultimate harm). I look forward to the publication of an opinion piece by an actual radical feminist. This, to me, is journalistic integrity.
We do not believe a male person's needs should be centered in the WOMEN's liberation movement and we want answers as to how women will be protected when "sex" legally means "gender identity". Should girls be forced to shower with males? We say no. Should a female TSA agent have to pat down a male person or risk losing her job? We say no. Is it fair for women to compete in sport with male bodied people? We say no. Is it right for a domestic violence shelter to lose a $34,000 public education grant (see: Vancouver Rape Relief in Canada) because they believe female domestic violence and rape victims shouldn't have to share spaces with males? No. Discounting sex in favor of nebulous "gender identity" does not erase the reality of being female, and this is what we want to discuss. Why are we suddenly expected to act as if it's impossible to know a person's sex or that sex never matters? Throughout history men have done an excellent job guessing who to deny the right to vote, who to call witches, who to impregnate etc etc. If it's truly so hard to tell, males are the luckiest oppressors in history.
106
@not the fun kind Brilliantly put, thank you.
25
@not the fun kind
Trans women make all these decisions because this is still a patriarchy.
23
Thank you for such a well articulated and whip smart comment.
16
More intersectional victimhood olympics garbage. “Authors”like this won’t be satisfied until they compete twist themselves, and society, into knots. This entire way of thinking takes the exceptionally rare existence of transgendered people as a means to try and transform the existence of the other 99.9% of the population into self identified categories with zero biological basis. It’s literally crazy. And the simultaneous attempts to brain wash the rest of society into conforming to this way of thinking or face banishment make the worst Orwellian nightmare look tame in comparison.
43
Trans persons need to pursue self-acceptance as 'trans' whatever. It can be hard to hear 'stay in your lane' but not all women who feel that way deserve to be branded haters.
I think that for trans persons, gender IS nothing more than 'performative'. For the majority of us, it is inextricably bound to our chromosomes and biology.
42
This article creates a weird framing for these topics.
I think trans women are women. Period.
I am a woman. I don’t care for the term cis-woman. I don’t tell others how to label themselves, instead I do my best to courteously use whatever label they tell me they prefer, or I ask, or I avoid using labels at all. And I expect the same respect for me in my own turn. I don’t label you, so don’t you label me.
I don’t think Caitlyn Jenner is worthy to be on any magazine cover, period. I found her “the hardest part of being a woman” tone-deaf and appalling, and I would have found it so no matter which Kardashian-Jenner said it.
I don’t dress up or spend a lot of time on my appearance and I resent being told I have only myself to blame for .... what exactly?
Where do I fit in the ridiculously oversimplified and deeply unpleasant spectrum the author has attempted to lay out? Nowhere, I hope. This piece is incoherent and does no justice to feminism, women, trans rights, courtesy, or rationality in general.
18
Trans women retain some male traits, especially the need to dominate women.
76
A transwoman is a man who is genuinely convinced that he is a woman. How does that not describe the reality? Why the need to capitulate to someone else's delusion? You can still love and respect and honor the humanity of that person.
45
There is more to life than gender
5
"And surely we don’t want to go back to the days of defining women by their hormones or even their chromosomes — if for no other reason than we’d leave out the estimated 1.7 percent of women who are intersex."
Uh, excuse me but the words "man" and "woman" were intended to refer to individuals with particular biological characteristics. Someone who was "intersex" was neither a "man" nor a "woman." The trans community has no right to hijack the terms "man" and "woman" and change their historical definitions (and still current definitions according to the overwhelming majority of people on this planet) to suit their own purposes. If the trans community wants to create new words and new classifications that would be more inclusive than the terms "man" or "woman" have at it. But please leave the existing language alone.
44
@Jay Orchard Exactly! And lets stop legislation taking away the protections and rights of women that have been so hard won. Or making it hate speech to not go along with this delusion.
3
If it was socially acceptable for men to wear makeup and dresses, etc. would trans women even exist?
33
A consistent pattern in complaints about “TERFs” is that the opinions and lived experiences of cis women are nothing compared to the philosophical musings of trans women.
Apparently, in an M-to-F transition, mansplaining is the last thing to go
155
@Molly, NYC
This. Thank you.
18
If there's no biological sex, then "cis" and "trans" become sets null of substantive meaning and instead become merely gestural.
The problem the author describes is trying to have one conversation while avoiding another. That's already boomeranging badly. In case anyone has not noticed. "Progress" is neither linear nor irreversible.
8
I don't see why these arguments wouldn't apply to race or nationality. They would also seem to justify free choice of gender from day to day, or even moment to moment. Finally, if gender is not tied to biology, what's the point of having a category like "trans"? One isn't transitioning from anything, just locating oneself along the continuum.
24
The degree and frequency of the left's insistence that trans women are women looks to me like overcompensation-overcompensation for a problem that no amount of sympathy or compassion on our part can solve, the unimaginable (for most people) psychological suffering of transgender people. As much as we insist that we believe the slogan, as much as we wish that chanting the slogan could make it true and could effortlessly alleviate the pain of our fellow human beings, nobody truly believes it, because it is simply observably not true. What good does this do anyone? Everyone deserves respect, everyone deserves to express themselves and dress/act/love as they wish, but even if there were severe legal repercussions put in place for stating that men are not women (rather than it just being a social faux pas in some circles) people would still not *actually* believe it. Ultimately, there is no straightforward reason to believe that a collective false insistence of belief in this obvious lie would even help transgender people's suffering in any concrete way. Usually it is best not to lie.
21
Unless one has grown up as a woman, regardless of race, color, religion, etc., one cannot have experienced the social/cultural constructs and constraints of that experience, or the unique biological ones. And the same can be said of a trans woman—unless one has been on that the journey and experienced the constructs/constraints of that, one cannot know. Trans women, having once been viewed and “seen” as boys/men, cannot know what it is to be treated as a girl/woman and conversely women who have always been women, cannot know what it is to be treated as a boy/man. Each has its unique advantages, weaknesses, pains and sorrows. There is shared experience in being human, but a biological woman’s experience of life is not the same as a trans woman’s experience of life. And, welcome to the Sisterhood.
38
Well said. As a radical feminist in her sixth decade, it angers me to hear trans women claim the sort of cradle to grave experiences of those of us born and lived as women. If a person who has passed for and lived as white her whole life, for instance, later wants to identify as a person of color, she cannot claim to understand the life experiences of those who were born and lived as a person of color. Any effort to claim shared experiences is both insulting and a farce.
62
@LK This actually happened some years ago: a woman, working for the NAACP, if memory serves, and an activist in the black community, turned out not to have a drop of African-American heritage after all--and that community was outraged. Identity is not infinitely malleable.
3
There are two main points of this essay, it seems, one more explicit than the other.
One is that womanhood is a matter of performing cultural tropes. Anyone who performs feminity and identifies as a woman is thus a woman. This is a very debatable point that many would disagree with.
The other is that we must form the idea of womanhood around the goal of accepting trans women as true women. In my view, this is not honest philosophy. This is using philosophy in service of sociopolitical ends instead of using philosophy to seek the truth. Honest philosophical inquiry does not have its conclusion set out from the beginning.
76
I don't believe the majority of women feel the way Hays does, but I think the trans movement would love for us to believe that's true. Ask a group of ordinary women -- women born as women, who have dealt with male privilege throughout their lives, perhaps those who are mothers -- what they think. I believe they would say trans women -- like the men they used to be -- want to dominate women and determine our views of them and their politics. As for me, I don't believe for a second that a trans woman can possibly say he "feels like a woman." He hasn't a clue because he's a man in ways that surgery and hormones can't change.
85
Who is female?
The question is wrong. Doctor here, have studied all the endocinology I care to. Have you heard of intersex states in which babies are born with characteristics of both sexes? The classic example is testicular feminization in which an XY is born with the innate inability to respond to testosterone, resulting in an XX body and brain.
Male or female, eh?
The question is wrong.
Philosophy prof, learn a little biology. It will keep you from writing silly articles.
Next case.
13
"Trans" implies a category shift--"metaphorical" or not.
"Gender" is--a grammatical "trans." Masculine, feminine, neuter can be arbitrary--especially in romance languages.
"Male/Female" are not grammatical, but biological--primarily an anatomical/functional dichotomy in sexual reproduction--sperm/ova donors and equipment--expressions of XX or Y chromosomes. "Male/Female" are the sexes. Hermaphrodites are both. Some reproduction is asexual. "Man/Woman" are primarily human adult Male/Female.
"Masculine/Feminine" (grammar aside) are primarily cultural art forms--including enhancements, anatomical and behavioral--related to sexplay (orgasmic play)--sex appeal/attraction/attractiveness. These cut across Male/Female--thus masculine females, feminine males--not dichotomous but spectral.
Homosexuals are males or females wanting sexplay with the same (homo) sex. Bisexuals (AC/DC) play with both; they needn't be hermaphrodites. Thus regarding sexplay homosexuals are like the opposite sex so "trans". But they may or may not wish to be "trans" in other ways as well--eg cross dressing or surgical/hormonal trans. (BTW--cross dressers need not be homosexual--girls/women can prefer to dress like /boys/men and vice versa--more unusual). "Shemales" are more completely trans, as would be "hefemales". But so far, "chromosomal trans," is impossible.
Typical cultural experiences of men/women are irrelevant to the above--even if anthropologically interesting and important.
2
Never in the history of modern media was so much written by so many about so few.
83
What a step backwards we have taken since 2015, when the NYT published Elinor Burkett’s op-Ed, “What Makes a Woman?” (hint: not gender roles). https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html
My question is, what makes someone transgender? “Transgender” can only be defined by first accepting the premise that biological sex is a real thing. But even then, how do we define “transgender”? Who is excluded from the category of transgender?
25
There is a right way to be a woman; it's to be a biological woman with all the parts that science uses to distinguish male from female. And there's nothing dangerous about that fact. Women who are not biological women are not actually women, and it's NOT dangerous to say so, unless we live in a repressive society where freedom of thought is restricted. In Canada it is dangerous to say a trans woman is a man, because you can end up in jail for misgendering! To say that facts are not facts, but rather, dangerous, is what is actually dangerous, regardless of the topic, if we are going to judge what is dangerous by the trends in the meaning of rhetoric. But on this trans topic, it was also noticed that throughout history, the fall of great nations were precipitated by the effeminization of men, and other such trans issues. So, unfortunately most of the country and human history and science think you have it completely backwards. But who are they to question the validity of a philosophy professor's argument? "Philosophy of what?" I might ask.
41
The left can hardly accuse the right of being anti-science when it's the left wing who claim there is no real thing as a woman, and so anybody who identifies as one IS one.
Trans women are women in law and by social custom and deserve dignity and freedom from harm and oppression. But they are not biological women, and these attempts to pretend that the female body is irrelevant to the experience of women is insulting. It's also pseudoscience.
138
Why can't a man who wants to dress and behave 'like a woman,' be counted as a man? To me, this is the real bigotry.
69
The "right way to be a woman" is to actually be a woman.
65
Is a person with artificially boosted testosterone and an artificial penis and an artificial scrotum a man? Can that person compete in physical sports on a par with natural born men? Probably not. Can that person sire offspring? No. But can that person think like a man? Or as well as a man? Can that person be as virtuous or as vicious as a man? The sexes are different in some ways, but not in the most important ones.
6
There seems to have been a semantic shift recently. "Woman" can be both a biological woman or someone who identifies as a woman. But increasing trans acceptance (great) has led to progressives using "woman" to only refer to gender identity. Whereas most biological woman, who have various identities and closeness or distance from what their own society demands of femininity, call themselves women because that is what they were born as. It is not an identity that they choose. I know it is impossible to understand the dichotomy between biology and gender identity if it is something you don't experience. I despise the misplaced effort TERFs expend on attacking people who are already extremely oppressed and suffering. Yet it does seem like the current progressive ideology is to allow trans women to define what "woman" means and only refer to gender identity when using that word. Don't know what the solution is. As people transition earlier and earlier I think there will be less of a dichotomy.
1
As to the author's question: "Is it menstruation or childbirth?", Ms. Hay's asserts that some women are born without those abilities or choose not to have children and therefore rejects it as a definition of female.
The point missed is that those born without the ability to menstruate are few. Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome affects maybe 1 in 5,000 births and is considered a genetic anomaly. These women usually still have working ovaries.
The fact that I choose not to have children is a moot point. I still have the genetically constructed organs and my body creates eggs.
I don't care if anyone wishes to go to surgical lengths to alter themselves because they are in the wrong body. As a biologist, I have serious concerns about what science is comfortable doing, but that's individual choice. I'm just as concerned about 60 year old women having babies through intensive hormone therapies.
I believe there is nothing inappropriate with creating layers of identity though. If you want to create a narrow category for your situation and demand everyone accept that, then I should have the same privilege.
I'm tired of not being allowed to be who I am because it offends or excludes or makes someone feel bad about themselves. There is a difference between hatefulness and simply wanting to be with similar individuals. If I wish to start a women's group for women who have not transitioned from men then it should not be seen as a hate group or exclusionary.
71
The excellent Natalie Wynn just addressed this subject on her informative and entertaining Youtube channel "ContraPoints."
1
This opinion piece, like so many others before it, completely misses the experience of the cis/gendered woman who does not present as ultra-feminine.
This exclusion erases a percentage of the woman-born-woman experience as well as of the transitioned or, built-woman experience.
Not all trans women are femme presenting.
Not all cis-gendered women are femme.
Opinion pieces like this completely ignore women Who embody deep and rich female experiences.
Not even worth a mention…
Excluding women who do not “frill up” from the definition of woman is to exclude them from any discussion or definition.
Why? Is it too difficult for cis-gendered and mtf women to recognize their sisters who do not show up in makeup and dresses? Perhaps it is just too challenging for their own narrow woman world view?
Is it too scary for men to recognize the masculinity of women who both embody deep and rich female experiences while also appearing dapper and strong? So weak and unsupported is the male version of masculinity that no intrusion upon it by a woman can be tolerated?
Not even worth a mention…Thank you Carolyn Hay. The invisibility you have cast upon those of us who are cis gendered and not ultra feminine is noted.
Even if you can’t see us we are watching you.
23
@Carto Cranial
Oh please, give it a rest. Dr. Hay is hardly marginalizing you. The very opening of her piece in which she argues for the notion of culturally constructing gender becomes the very big tent in which you, and everyone else, gets to play their role.
Does it surprise me that so many commenters are straining to take offense at her argument? Not in the least. For many it appears, living in a state of umbrage is what keeps them alive.
1
@pigeon well, on Ms. Hays' twitter feed she is gleefully referring to her opinion piece here in the illustrious NY Times as "terf-bashing" so really, who's zoomin' who?
21
@cfaye
Point?
Would you say criticizing racists is a failure to embrace the full spectrum of racial experience?
I feel that your papers obsession with transgender people abandons common sense. A born male can never become a fully functioning female and vice versa. He or she may try to live an imaginary life in the opposite gender, but should not expect full support for this from society.
47
@Walter GerholdI
You're so right. The Times has an almost bizarre obsession with transgender issues. But you'll never find an article or OP-ed criticizing the concept.
3
That's right: “Trans women haven’t had the same experiences as women like me.” At the age of 13, I began to get my period. Up until that time, I learned that female bodies produced blood and that it sometimes hurt. That I could get pregnant if I let a boy "do stuff" to me. That my mother considered a budding and menstruating young body something to be covered and deodorized. That the breasts that swelled around the same time would invite leers and gropes. Whether we like it or not, being female is a lot about the lived experience--even before menstruation--of the body. Puberty and maturation, with the invitation of sexuality and the potential for pregnancy, looms large for many girls; once we are women, it is a lot what life is about, whether we accept it or push against it. I don't believe that growing up in a male body and becoming female is the same thing. Not by a long shot. It is that lived bodily reality that prompted feminism, the push for birth control and the right to limit family size. There's no problem here; it is what it is.
123
@Melanie Well said. A term like "lived body reality" is eschewed because it can't be manipulated with language and so-called philosophy. It's a discreet experience, an experience of the majority (dare I say almost all) of those born female, and just as we come into an age in which it's just beginning to be understood and accepted by others, I'm not going to stand aside and say "oh no, after you."
10
You are arguing that maleness and femaleness are defined not by biology but by identity. This is a religious belief, which you are perfectly entitled to espouse. But don't impose your religious beliefs on others. The women you call "terfs" reject your religious ideology, since we do not believe that humans have gender identities or are capable of changing sex. The New York Times should be ashamed to publish such unscientific nonsense.
77
@K Science corroborates transgender people, it does not dismiss them.
@K - It is like religion, because it is a belief.
I accept that there are people in the world who feel they are women although they have the bodies of men. I also accept that these people should be allowed to live as women if they choose.
But to accept that they are actually women? No, that is a belief.
29
@PM I accept the existence of gender dysphoria as well. I disagree with current medical practice that hormonal and surgical treatments are effective ways to alleviate gender dysphoria. It seems blatantly obvious to me that transition causes dysphoria rather than alleviates it.
14
As a transwoman... given the choice between presenting stereotypically feminine vs. risking being perceived as male and the possible danger involved therein, I will always choose the first. I also know many transwomen who, given enough time in transition, find they can expend less effort looking feminine.
3
If a biological male with a penis can claim to be a woman. Then the term gender means absolutely nothing.
55
@Noodles Well, that makes the term "gender" just like everything else. I mean, there is an infinite number of numbers, yet we still use numbers as if they have meaning. Why would the same not be the case with a word?
@Noodles
I agree completely: gender is meaningless. So there is no point in marginalizing or excluding people who identify as one construct or another, based on what biological hardware they do or do not possess.
2
@Gavriel
Exactly - where exclusion/ protection is the issue, let’s identify people by sex. I am happy for trans men or women to ask me to address them any way they like but as a female I do not want males in my changing room and I do not want College females to be forced by privacy laws to have to have male roommates. The really telling thing here ( the misogyny) is that “trans women “ have no empathy for females, and shout loudly about THeIR rights to invade our spaces regardless of the legitimate anxieties this causes. Sorry guys, this just demonstrates that male and female are not interchangeable.
10
I am a feminist and I love and admire men. I am also afraid of them. Play around with averages and statistics and exceptions all you want, but the fact is that a small minority of men kidnap, abuse, harass, and assault women, and women are afraid of these things. There is a special, unique major crime that men commit against (predominately) women where they force or coerce the insertion of their unique body part into a woman. This unique body part is The Penis.
Is there any single thing that contributes more to men’s own self image, self esteem, and identity as The Penis? For women, The Penis is a source of pleasure, but also the cause of great wariness and even fear. The powerful Penis is the thing that makes women pregnant, a truly life-changing occurrence that can happen with or without women’s consent.
I have tried to find statistics about how many trans women deliberately choose to keep The Penis, and why. I know surgery is expensive and difficult to obtain, but apparently a percentage of trans women want to retain The Penis. Some identify as lesbian and want to continue having male sex with women. I don’t question this, I simply state it.
If women in a common dressing room should not fear a trans woman with a penis, why not welcome in regular men with a penis? Most of them would not rape us either, would they? So, let’s not be disingenuous about why women might fear and resent the presence of certain trans women in their sports or their safe spaces.
100
The transphobia in these comments makes me ill.
I welcome anyone who identifies as female to celebrate themselves as such. I don't see why I need to exclude someone from our gender because of the sex they were assigned at birth. The trans women I know are resilient, creative, outspoken. I want them to be advocates for women, by my side.
I've worked in pediatric gynecology and know the vast variations of being female than can occur. I've worked with girls without vaginas, without uteri or ovaries, worked with kids born intersex. There are girls and women with XY chromosomes and boys and men with XX chromosomes- not because they're trans, but because of the intricacies of genetics and biology. The World Health Organization explains it well here: https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
Defining womanhood in terms of hormones or even chromosomes is simply false. Defining womanhood in terms of shared experiences is false- because there is a myriad of ways to grow up, and gender is not necessarily the defining factor of one's childhood. In fact, gender is expanding- the younger generation, and some of the older, are identifying as genderqueer, nonbinary, genderfluid, etc. TERFs and their ilk are going to be overtaken by a more accepting, more understanding generation, and I look forward that.
5
@Jen
People are not assigned a sex at birth.
Nature assigns a sex at conception, when the zygote has either XX or XY chromosomes.
Yes, sometimes there are errors in DNA/RNA transcriptions and mutations and an occasional rare person is born with different sets of chromosomes. Tjese are rare and irrelevant to the question of what a woman is. Women are adult female humans.
12
The “more accepting and accommodating generation”, that you speak of, is the same one that attacks and beats on old ladies attending meetings on feminism in England and coined the fun slur, “TERF”, to silence and subdue any biologically female objections to the takeover of feminism by male bodied people, who, surprise! Now have decided for us, that our female biology is irrelevant to the experience of womanhood.
10
@Jen Sure. Every human is entitled to respect but many of us do not want male bodies in our intimates spaces. Where is the respect for that?
8
As an educated person I know that gender dysphoria is real and the suffering it causes is real; that there have always been trans people, and that there are places and cultures where gender is not binary. I am perfectly willing to accept trans women as trans women: but sorry, gender is more than appearance and behavior. It's not OK for persons born without vaginas and lacking the physical experience of female-ness to shout down actual women. Call me a TERF if you like: no matter how fervently trans women believe they think and feel like women, they remain trans women--and should accept and be OK with that.
169
A woman is someone born without a penis. Live however you want, dress however you want, identify however you want but the idea that a born male will tell me that I must accept them as a female is offensive. If trans people want to form a rights group, that's their choice. But feminism is about WOMEN and their struggles. Trans people have different struggles than women do. Therefore, I, as a feminist, do not understand, can never understand and will not represent trans people. Likewise, they can never understand what it's like to be a woman. Caitlyn Jenner was born a man, lived as a man for most of their life and has now had plastic surgery on some parts so that they can look like a woman. But makeup and high heels aren't everything there is to being a woman. Also, they still have a penis. They apparently identify as both genders. Therefore, they cannot be represented by the feminist movement because they are not female. People like the author of this piece want to make it complicated- it's not. A woman is an adult human who was born female. The End.
64
@atb, in the 1970s when I was in college I interned with an MD who did genetic counseling for parents. There are many individuals with xy chromosomes who do not fully develop penises by the time they are born. There are also accidents during cirucumcision. Any time there was the slighted anatomical problem be it endocrinological or genetic, the MD in question would not give the parents a choice. He universally told them that the ONLY solution was surgery to make sure that their babies would be raised as girls. Never once did he provide "informed consent" about any other option than to turn these often XY babies into anything other than females. I think that there are far more individuals that are intersex in the general population that have had surgery without consent than you could possible imagine.
2
Identity is fraught: maybe readers will recall the woman who 'passed' as black a few years ago, who turned out to have no African American heritage at all. Identity is not infinitely malleable.
Transexuality is not a new phenomenon, there have always been trans people as well as cultures where gender is non-binary; trans persons are certainly entitled to call themselves 'trans' whatever, and style themselves any way they like. I don't care which pronouns or bathrooms they use, but as a person born with a vagina, who has been socialized and suffered as women suffer, who has borne and nursed children, I am tired of being shouted down by those who weren't regarding who qualifies as a 'woman'. One may fervently believe s/he thinks and feels as one imagines a woman thinks and feels--but that is intensely subjective. Call me a TERF if you like--gender is more than appearance and behavior.
The author of this article is talking through her hat. Trans women are TRANS women--not women.
59
I would really like to see this amount of energy and philosophy applied to trans men and who gets to be a man and who decided who is mannish enough, alongside the discussion of who decides who decided who is female.
Because there is so much attention given to the status of trans women..and of course the violence rained down upon them, which is horrific and indefensible...while trans men seem to be largely invisible to the world, except if one gives birth.
Apparently, the lives of humans born with penises is still valued more than the lives of people born with vaginas,..and it is not transphobic to say that it is simply an observation.
46
@Ellen. I have a theory-surgery May create the appearance of being a woman. But this shouting at females and telling us that our feelings don’t matter just demonstrates typical male oppression and misogyny.
11
The right way to be a female is so obviously aligned with nature its almost embarrassing to be a part of the debate on the subject.
Being born with female genitalia is the most obvious (and only) way. Or is a 100k surgery to remake nature juts as acceptance? Is there no difference?
17
I wonder why it matters to so many of us so intensely what such a small subsection of the population feel about themselves and how they express that. We should not need to have science corroborate this feeling, we should create a society that enjoys and expects difference and variation, where it occurs. Trans women and men are living in the way that they feel most comfortable and they are not any more than any other group of people harming any one. Suicide rates among trans people is very high, because they feel that they cannot envision being accepted (or even accepting themselves). Why can't we let them be as they wish, and not demand of them that they prove in some sort of empirical way that that's the way they really "are," whether it's a fantasy or not (and obviously, a lot of gender is fantasy)?
The only answer that I can come up with is that our deep concern and anxiety about this liminal gender status bears witness to to the anxious boundaries that we conventionally gendered people use to describe and to understand ourselves. Let's make a world where we can accept that some people will be (and feel) different from the norm, and that's ok. Science doesn't need to corroborate this, our culture does.
4
@Jeremiah Crotser I do not care how people identify. But laws are being changed without public input that legally allow any man to say he is a woman. This does affect me and all women, and we have a right to fight it. If you're a man, I can understand how you would think this isn't a big deal. Maybe you should listen to women about this.
Please stop using the suicide rates of trans people to manipulate women into giving up the language we need to describe ourselves. Suicide is always tragic, but someone else's suicide is not my fault.
You say that the world needs to be more accepting of trans people. I think you're the one that needs to be more accepting of feminine men as men. The people you call "trans women" are men just like you. Stop excluding them from manhood!
61
@K What exactly are you fighting and what exactly falls under the category of "i do not care how people identify?" If the only issue is with some sort of legal definition, why take the time here in your post to school me about what a "feminine man" is? I've been called a feminine man a time or two myself and I don't really feel bothered by it. You are talking about people who seriously want to NOT be called feminine men, and saying that I'm doing them a favor if I call them and think about them in a way that they themselves are uncomfortable with. Why? Do you think if our society were more tolerant of feminine men and masculine women that transgender people would disappear?
1
@Jeremiah Crotser A man does not have a legal right to not be called a man, even if he really doesn't want to be. You may choose to do him "a favor" by calling him a woman, but I'd argue that you're actually just soothing your own ego by telling yourself that you're a "real" man.
17
Transwoman and former professional dancer here... what I didn't understand until I started hormones was how much my mind and body would work differently, especially in the dance studio --- as well as the more obvious physical changes that must be accommodated. Whether my womanhood is "real" or not, the need to understand, accept and work with my body in its new configuration is quite real. And I need other women (cis and trans) to help me navigate that journey. How my body worked last year or 10 years ago or when I was born is no longer relevant.
3
@Elizabeth
I hear this a lot from transgender women, and it bugs me to no end, because you are essentially saying that having certain hormones are what makes you feel female. So does that mean that a pre-adolescent girl, or a post menopausal woman would no longer feel female? Horse baloney! What makes us feel female is the experience of growing up female and other within our culture. The details of this otherness differs from culture to culture, but it is always there.
And when you hit 50 or so, do you plan to stop taking hormones so you can experience the normal female menopause along with the rest of us?
12
I reject the idea that the woman in the photograph is inspecting the vagina of the woman in the painting -- presumably in order to check her gender. She looks a lot more like she's reading the label to the right of the painting.
14
Wow. Just wow. Reading the regressive comments to this opinion piece makes me realize that perhaps NYT readership is not as enlightened as it thinks it is.
6
Attempts to define womanhood elude me.
As a former breast cancer patient, I no longer have breasts, a uterus, or ovaries, and I've done everything in my power to remove the estrogen that my cancer fed upon. In the peak of my fertility, my ability to reproduce was removed from me. And yet - I do not think that any of this makes me any less of a woman. I'm a woman. I've always felt female, and removing the obvious markers of being female has not changed this one bit.
Perhaps because of my experiences, I have no idea why anybody would fight trans women's right to declare their womanhood. There are women who look female but are intersex, their are women who are born infertile, there are women who have male characteristics such as facial hair or other masculine features but are still women. They're all women.
I'm a woman, because I say I am. I'd say it's because I was born with a vagina, but that's inaccurate - removing my breasts did not make me less of a woman, and so removing any other outer indication of my female-ness would not make me less of a woman, either. It makes me scarred, and sometimes scared, but my femaleness simply is. It cannot be defined by anyone else, nor taken away from me.
How is it any different with trans women? People are kind to me because I had cancer and it impacted my outwardly female traits; why not be kind to those who were born into bodies that do not match their self image? It's really not that complicated.
8
@Kristina Same experience, same conclusion. Thank you!
2
@Carol Wishing us both long, healthy lives. And here's to hoping that people who hear our stories will make the connection that we have: physical characteristics are not what makes a woman a woman.
1
@Kristina
If physical characteristics aren't what makes a woman a woman, then the term becomes completely meaningless. Is it the way you dress? That has been completely variable throughout human history, from one society and even one generation to another. Same with behavior traits. Traditional Persian culture considered women more logical, men more emotional.
I am a woman because I say I am? And if I say I'm an orange, an orangutan, a physicist, or the Queen of Romania, that has to be accepted as true?
But I suppose in a society that is willing to accept "alternative facts"...
10
Please note that the author should be referred to as Dr. Hay, not Ms. Hay, because she holds a doctorate.
2
This is a long-standing issue with AP standards. Guided by AMA preferences, and inconsistent with general practice in other venues and international titles, it only uses Dr. for a few types of medical professionals.
7
A woman is someone who menstruates. Without it, you're not really a woman.
12
Thanks Tonya for defining me as male now that I’m 61 years old and have not menstruated for the last four years. I feel so enlightened to know that I get to change genders when I stop menstruating. Does that apply to the breastfeeding women (oops men) I work with who don’t menstruate for 6-18 months after delivery? I guess we’re also going to have to change The gender identity of women who have historectomies. I should have started calling my Mom, “Dad” when she had hers.
7
@Tonya - Lots of women, who qualify by every other criteria to be women, do not menstruate for various reasons. Presuming you are a female, someday you will not menstruate either.
4
If you are lucky enough to reach menopause, you too will not menstruate, so I guess you will cease to be a woman. As for myself, I had my ovaries removed as part of treatment for estrogen receptive metastatic breast cancer, so despite my relative youth I don’t menstruate either. And yet I’m still a woman, no matter what you think.
3
The Times is obsessed with the issue of transgender-ism. If that's the right term. We'll never get an article questioning the scientific validity of this.
36
The left loves to eat itself. Keep it up and we can count on seeing DJT’s smiling face until 2024.
26
The rush to silence the voices of women is troubling, as is the constant publishing of articles on this very same topic, day after day, week after week, in the NYTimes, in an attempt to force people to share the opinion that biological sex is some vague mental construct. Please, NYTimes, stop trying to silence women’s voices and tell readers what to think. Move on to other subjects.
87
Personally, I don't care what genitalia you have, or wish you had, but if you have breasts and I address you in a polite formal manner acknowledging you as a female (but you don't want to be a female) don't be mad at me for getting it wrong. How am I supposed to know your preference unless you tell me before we begin any conversation? The opposite is true as well, if you have beard and don't shave don't be mad if I mistake you for a male.
4
Please… Try this at the beach. I bet you’ll see plenty of openly available breasts on beings that you can challenge as female.
Plenty of boys have bigger breasts then plenty of girls. The unfortunate thing is that municipal codes make it so that we must observe their boys’ fatty lumps.
So go ahead, try it. See how many of those boys on the beach want to be called women because of their breasts.
trans women are trans women. they do not speak for women
65
I had to do a double take to figure out if this was an April Fools Day prank.
Its not confusing (or philosophical) or …. its biology/genetics...XX chromosome = a woman. For example Kim Kardashian = woman, Caitlyn Jenner not = woman.
Its not a right or wrong thing.... its something that is real or fake.... like margarine is not butter, olestra is not fat, etc.
What is dangerous is ideas like this masquerading as scholarship
42
Two questions:
Should a trans man who commits a crime go to a male prison?
Should a trans woman who’s 6’6” be allowed on the women’s Olympic basketball team?
15
Contrapoints did it better...
1
Re: "Feminists who deny “real woman” status to trans women seem to rely on a false assumption — that all trans women have lived in the world unproblematically as men at some point."
I've never heard a woman make that assumption. Feminists do make the distinction, which the NYT seems to have enormous difficulty with, between sex & gender.
Much of women's oppression has nothing to do with "gender": female fetuses aren't selectively aborted, female infants aren't selected for infanticide, girls aren't subject to genital mutilation, girls aren't bartered off as child brides, girls aren't consigned to menstrual huts, pregnant women aren't consigned to a mommy career track, because of "gender" -- it's all because of their sex. Sex is a real thing, & it matters.
The women for whom you use the slur "TERF" (maybe check yourselves, NYT: how very un-PC of you) are simply expressing the opinion that people who are born men shouldn't get **unquestioned all-access** to everything an oppressed group has gained, just by self-identifying into the group. There's a strong case to be made for single-sex (not gender) sports teams & rape crisis centers, for example.
Just as a white kid can't claim to ID as black & take a scholarship intended for an AA kid, society can't ignore the harm to women/girls by allowing male-bodied people to opt into their group.
For the NYT to resort to cheap virtue-signaling instead of tackling & analyzing complicated issues is disappointing. You can do better.
112
Isn't all this chatter about gender simply exhausting? Wouldn't you be happier spending your precious life on something more meaningful?
11
"TERF" is a slur used by some transactivists to promote violence against females. It has no place being published in the New York Times any more than any other slur that targets a particular oppressed segment of society.
85
Hilarious that the writer, who argues that there isn’t just one way of being a woman, then shows her contempt for the kind of woman she calls “air-headed eye candy”. Not her kind of woman, and so deserving of her contempt.
A big problem, unaddressed here, is that society grants women important advantages, such as the right to compete only among themselves in sports, admission to certain elite colleges, and - proverbially - early access to the lifeboats when the ship is going down. Allowing people who are biologically male to claim these privileges (yes, that word) threatens to undermine the logic behind them.
21
Why is it now hate speech to believe that women face oppression based on their biology?
Why are women forced to center men in feminism —and if they don’t comply are bullied and called terfs?
Why are there no editorials about excluding transmen from the category of men?
56
I always wonder why it is those born with the male sex who are making the biggest deal about being allowed in spaces for people born females. specifically changing rooms and womens sports. a young girl in a ymca changing room should not have to come in contact with a nude male, no matter how they gender identify.
It seems being raised a boy means something when it comes to entitlement than being born a girl.
trans rights should not come at the cost of what little rights women have gained over the past century: https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/07/05/trans-rights-should-not-come-at-the-cost-of-womens-fragile-gains
Also as far as using hormones and barbaric surgeries with tons of complications on people and CHILDREN, I think the future will look back on these practices to find them something akin to lobotomies:
https://medium.com/@sue.donym1984/the-new-homophobic-bridge-to-nowhere-child-transition-c621d6188d6e
45
“When Caitlyn Jenner says that she has always felt like a woman, for example, what she seems to mean by this is that she wants to be an airheaded piece of arm candy all dolled up for delights of the male gaze.”
Not all trans-women aspire to be Ms. Jenner. Some of us blend into the background, living essentially the same lives as our cis sisters. We rue the time we counted on male privilege to provide the financial space for transition, but we're thankful for it. We count ourselves as feminists. We cheer when women win at almost anything. Our hearts go out to women and girls who have suffered abuse for merely being female.
Performative femaleness takes many forms within the cis community. So many trans-people base their perceptions on mediated portrayal of their aspired-to gender, rather than mimicking people at the grocery store. Janice Raymond's hypothesis is that a male dominated medical community conspired to create gratefully obedient “arm candy” to replace uncooperative women. That was never going to happen.
My biggest fear is that in life or death women with whom I’ve been friends for many years will learn of my past and immediately discount our shared experiences—the laughter, the crying, the joys, the triumphs and the sorrows. I never set out to deceive. I’ve just tried to live as my authentic self, the same as every other woman.
149
@Katie
Thank you for being so coherent. I understand what you are saying and agree. I can’t imagine the life of a trans person and not being able to live out their personal truth. Andy Warhol said something like, you are who you tell me you are. I think we can build friendships and love on that.
18
@Katie
But Katie, you can choose to change your name, you can sleep with whom every you chose.
But at the end of the day, you are not a woman.
That's a biological fact, not some bigoted anti-trans stance.
117
Hey Chris, you can't invalidate someone's gender identity and then say you're not anti-trans. Words still have meaning.
29
Constitution quite clear on this...
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/madison-the-writings-vol-3-1787
Or – at least intent was...
“...in proportion to the whole number of white & other free Citizens & inhabitants of every age sex & condition including those bound to servitude for a term of years and three fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description...
Their thoughts and Madison’s words – not mine, for either part...
Perhaps the transition could be parsed into trimesters – and the individual be considered one-fifth. two-fifths, or three-fifths woman, depending on what stage they are at...
Although, SCOTUS tried this once – people reviling them ever since...
Cis-white male here, son of a lifelong feminist.
Seems to me that the TREFs are sexist bigots, just like racists, anti-semites, and, of course, the man in the White House.
I have NO idea what the pain a person suffers who feels they were born with the wrong sex, but one would have to be an imbecile not to see that pain is real and extreme. Real enough to go through extremely unsettling hormone treatments, excruciating multiple surgeries, the confusion of how to be a "real" man or woman, topped off with the rage and risk of a society "outraged" that such an individual merely wants to use the restroom assigned to their preferred gender. I may not be able to empathize but I can certainly sympathize and admire them for going through this. And advocate for them to have their civil rights protected as well.
One doesn't have to "feel" to be able to use ones brain, logic, reasoning, and ethics to recognize that there is no one "right" way to be a woman or a man. There is only what is legal and illegal and if it's legal it's nobody's business.
During a semester in Europe in the mid-70's as a 20 year old, I saw that the bars, cafes, and restaurants all had unisex WCs. Men could be standing at urinals and women would pass by to use the stalls. You know what? Nobody thought anything about it. It wasn't about sex, it was about a universal need to relieve oneself. American fundamentalist dominionist rationale is both cruel and irrational.
4
@Dadof2 Trans women are men just like you. You are projecting your disgust at femininity in males onto the women you call "terfs." You just want to believe that masculinity is innate in men, and to kick any man who doesn't conform to masculinity out of the man category. Check yourself please.
17
@K
Clearly you didn't read a word I said because I said nothing of the sort. You are projecting your own irrational opinions on me, as if I have them and I don't. You are the one who has no ability to accept that both trans men and women are in pain and deserve, at a minimum, our sympathy.
I will never know the pain of a woman in labor, but I certainly am capable of recognizing that it exists and of sympathizing with it, having tried my best to help my dear wife when she went through it, a tougher, yet more empathetic woman than you'll ever be.
I admit to being disappointed that people did not seem to have actually read my post and are cheering on @K's totally unfounded attack on me.
Please read what I wrote, not what you erroneously are trying to infer from my words.
But if people choose to irrationally believe I said and meant something I most certainly did not say or mean, I cannot help them and will not debate with them.
2
Ridiculous question as even the Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, and Socialists have NO idea whatsoever.
2
Transgender women assume women must accommodate them. But women don’t. There’s no mandate that women must let trans identified males into their spaces and on their sports teams. We’re “nice” to pretend. But a male presenting as a woman can just as easily enter a male’s bathroom instead of a female’s. Why this presumption by the transgender community that women “owe” them some type of treatment that they superficially define as being “treated like a woman”?
52
"...what set of core experiences supposedly make someone who was assigned female at birth a “real” woman."
Good grief. Can the NYT not find a biologist to write in the opinion pages?
The biological distinction between men and women is in sexual reproduction, which is why we call it biological sex. Evolutionary biology further suggests that gender and sexual dimorphism have evolved and commingled with culture to reflect these biological differences.
A woman cannot impregnate another human being with sperm. Men cannot bear children. This isn't hard. Stop the madness, please.
78
This is, of course, just social science jibberish. While we can accept that people can mutilate themselves with tattoos or cosmetic surgery, species really do have sex - even if once in a while there are mutations. So ok, let men who dress as women and take hormones and even castrate themselves into the ladies bathroom, but the natural history of the sexes will not include much about trans men or women. In fact we know little about personality or even how memories are stored.
That may sound old fashioned to some, but like the scientific debates before we had modern science, it is way too early to say much other than that we have 2 sexes and that behaviors are modified by culture, family and factors we do not understand.
12
Apart from not growing up with the sexism experienced by “cis” women, I’m a bit envious and very annoyed that privileged trans like Kaitlin Jenner can manufacture perfect breasts and perfectly carved faces without having to deal with a cis woman’s typical cellulite, wrinkles after menopause and wider hip issues.
Leave it to a “man” to figure out how to be more of a “sex symbol” then a typical “cis” woman.
My sympathies are greater for those trapped in an unwanted body without the resources to reassign their gender.
11
"It’s nonsense like this that motivated Germaine Greer to call Glamour magazine 'misogynist' for honoring Jenner at its Women of the Year ceremony, claiming that the move was tantamount to affirming that with enough plastic surgery someone who is assigned male at birth can 'be a better woman' than someone 'who is just born a woman."
After this, the author writes, "While the rhetoric used by those in the trans-exclusionary camp is frequently inexcusable..."
Perhaps feminists could pause in the process of eating each other to actually debate something. Greer is not "inexcusable." She makes points worthy of debate. The radical right doesn't have much to fear, when feminists seldom meet another feminist they like.
18
A lot of words signifying nothing. Only being born with a uterus can qualify you to be a woman. Those who think otherwise are science deniers.
18
This is the pinnacle of idiocy.
On the one hand people cry and complain that ‘women should be given the same chances as men’ – which is entirely correct.
But on the other hand, when a man wears a skirt and calls himself a woman, women go all out defending their right to take jobs, awards and attention from actual women, and they cheer for these men!
People, men in skirts are taking away jobs and opportunity that should be given to women.
Stop cheering for this! Start making the playing field even for men and women, not making it easier for confused men to take away what is rightfully a woman’s.
26
Clothes do not make the man.
A man should be allowed to wear a skirt and called himself a man.
How silly and inept we are to take all of our intellect and intelligence and use it to distill ourselves into two categories.
A man should be able to wear a skirt and called himself a man.
A woman should be able to wear trousers and call herself a woman.
People of the world need to recognize that threads, that fabric, that mascara and warpaint, that cologne or shoes do not change a person.
Social construct can change.
Take a greater worldview.
3
This was a great article, but it looks like many of the folks in the comments need more Contrapoints in their lives. Seriously, if you need more information to understand why treating "women" as a monolithic group is a very poor way to understand reality, Miss Points can help. I'd highly recommend her new video "Gender Critical", and one a little older called "Are Traps Gay?" - though you'll be rewarded by watching more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pTPuoGjQsI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbBzhqJK3bg
Go ahead! You owe it to yourself. Have a little fun.
1
Male / female is not "assigned". It is observed and recorded.
36
I've begun questioning the need for gender identify in most things. Why do we need it on licenses and passports for instance? I've got your picture (and anyone can change their physical appearance), your ID number, and all things I need as police officer, TSA, or customs officer to know who you are and if you a good to go or drive or not. What does your sex have to do with it?
It seems the primary reason to sex us is to separate and provide a basis of discrimination or to counter laziness. After all sexing chicks it what they do on farms so they know which chicks to keep for egg production. Removing that would solve many problems that people spend a lot of time dancing around.
There is only one "real" thing, and that is you. You are real. Everyone else is different and they are their own real.
3
No, it's about having two X chromosomes. That's all there is to it.
8
I was raised "old-school".
Back then we were taught that "sex" is what you ARE, and "gender" is what you LOOK LIKE.
4
"Who counts as a woman?"
Two X chromosomes.
13
On the contrary, every M - F tran person I know has adopted a stereotypical female persona, the kind of boxed-in idea of womanhood from which a lot of us are trying to escape. Who is asserting one way of being a woman?
35
Write this essay but instead of Trans women, write about people born white who identify as African American. Trans-racial? Should they be accepted by all as "Truly" African American? How wrong is it to deny them "their truth"? Oh, but...
24
Pardon me for commenting again but I would like to address the commenters, 95 percent of whom agree with me and disagree with the author of the essay: What Ms. Hay promotes is NOT feminism and it is not "progressive." If you disagree with Ms. Hay you may very well be a "radical" feminist; welcome to the club!
38
How many editorials has the NYT published on the subject of "Who Counts as a Man"? Does anyone else wonder why that category is considerably less fraught?
30
Many liberal feminists will be conflicted even when they are using a person's preferred gender identity just so that they can be "on the right side of history."
The pejorative "TERF" is used here like it is used elsewhere to basically shut down the discussion and "cancel" anyone who happens to be wrestling with the idea that "trans-women-are-women full stop." Openly wrestling with these ideas is a big no-no.
It is also interesting how "trans men are men, full stop" doesn't come up nearly as much. Maybe it is because women in general are taught to be agreeable and kind even when their own feelings and views might get erased in the process--so it's easy to bully them into going along.
We can say we are all on a spectrum in every possible category of existence... but then why not just say purple is purple, neither blue nor red? Why do we have to claim that purple-is-red and then tell red how intolerant they are when they say they don't feel represented?
Of course, no one wants to be called a gender identity they don't "feel" is them. But is that how identity works?
And if gender is socially constructed what if a majority of others still don't agree to construct the identity you want for yourself? Just yell "TERF!"?
There is more overlap between trans-racialism and trans-genderism than we care to admit. Is it racist to suggest Rachel Dolezol's identity as black is problematic? Should she get invited to all the cookouts?
50
It's actually kind of simple. Biology is a hard science.
If you are born with XX chromosomes, ovaries, a uterus, fallopian tubes, etc., you are a woman. If you are born with XY chromosomes and accompanying sex organs, you are not a woman.
Taking artificial hormones and/or undergoing cosmetic surgery does not change that fact.
37
Tribalism usually manifests itself through the divisions perpetrated by ethnicity, religion, nationality, education, sex etc.
Now we see tribalism at the sex/gender and woman/transwoman level. Come on people, we are all ONE. And we are all of ONE tribe. The Human Tribe.
3
Native Americans have referred to three genders for a long, long time. No one’s paid attention.
4
@MIMA "Native Americans" comprise a vast variety of different cultures, not a monolith. Stop pretending that there is one big inclusive Native American culture. Most of what you call "third genders" in indigenous cultures were made up of men who didn't conform to that culture's specific masculinity. No one was claiming that they were changing sex, and women were almost never included in the "third gender."
Also, the existence of these third genders in no way means that these cultures did not understand reproductive biology. I can think of few thinks as racist and colonialist as assuming that indigenous people didn't understand how babies were made until white people arrived to explain it.
18
Lately I think our focus should be on the right way to be a good human being.
Ego driven gender issues are a reality.
But as our country implodes with major issues over human rights I think navel gazing about persona isn’t a major deal ladies.
So can you help get trump and his gang out of power before refocusing on aesthetics of feminism.
And NYTimes you are a disappointment in focusing on fluff gender issues instead of the dangers this administration poses for all LGBTQ etc. in our communities.
4
If this counts as philosophy, then this series should be renamed "The Marshmallow" rather than "The Stone".
19
Who counts as a woman? People who are born women are now legally and ethically being pushed to the margins of their identity by a handful of extremely powerful activists who want to be seen as women -- activists who do not even represent the entire trans community, which is itself a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population.
To even have to write "born woman" is a grotesque erasure of identity.
To slur people with the "cis" label is a planned offense.
Hate crime activists have erased "born" women from hate crime law enforcement. Elena Kagan drafted the memo to Clinton and Holder strategizing how to not count women as victims of gender bias violence, even serial rapists of women, even serial killers of women. The category is just used for transvestites, transgenders -- not "born women." This is the sick consequence of transgender activism, a hate-filled denial of women being victimized as women. And it was orchestrated by transgender activists. So don't lecture to me about what a woman is. You folks have denied women victims of justice.
Gender is a zero sum game. I'm not giving up mine without a struggle.
40
Germaine Greer was correct.
Jenner lived his life successfully as a man and then decided to be a woman.
He was no "woman of the year."
70
There are only two biological DNA genetic procreative human race species evolutionary naturally fit genders.
And the two human genders are sexually dimorphic aka physically and physiologically significantly different by their nature and nurture.
Sexual orientation is naturally determined in the human womb when the genitalia and then the brain forms. While the physical genitalia and the brain more often match than not. That is not always true. And there is nothing abnormal nor unnatural about that. There is no choice involved.
Evolutionary natural and sexual selection makes that a minority of humans. Otherwise there wouldn't be any more humans.
The notion that LGBTQ deserve to be treated equally under law is a great aspirational protection goal. However, the idea that sexual orientation does not matter in every phase of civil secular life is not realistic. Caitlyn Jenner competing in a women's athletic event matters. Jenner in a marriage or the military or any job or school does not matter.
God/Mother Nature determined the right way to be female or male in order to keep the human race going. C'est la vie.
8
In all fairness, I think the elderly lady is simply reading the text from the painting's tag and not scrutinizing anatomy. (My brow, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be lifted by context much.)
3
“Cis” no longer simply describes isomers but supplements “trans” as part of a “woke” lexicon to describe male and female gender.
Carol Hay weaves a tangled web, of the kind that gives feminism a bad name. Hay’s critique of gender essentialism promotes a view of “women” as a social category that is so contingent as to be meaningless—even while reprising its essentialism.
For transgender women, the principal objective seems to be to reinvent themselves as attractive, sexy women, to prevail in a women’s beauty pageant—see, for example, Jennie Livingston’s documentary, “Paris is Burning.” Caitlyn Jenner is of this ilk. She seems to be engaged in a contest over beauty with her daughters. But this is precisely the construction of women that second-wave feminists reject.
Many transgender women, however, look eccentrically masculine—weird. Form does not follow function.
For transgender men, the main objective seems to be to minimize their femininity—hence the short hair, masculine attire, the suppression of secondary female characteristics.
Why the fetishistic attention to appearance if sex is of so little import?
Female tennis players were up in arms when Renee Richards petitioned to play on the women’s tour. They relaxed when they discovered that Richards was not competitive.
Sex researchers suggest that transgenderism is a form of homophobia to the extent that it masks the articulation of gay identity.
Culture enables, but we diminish ourselves if we neglect biology.
15
@MSI resent being labeled cis because I am a woman, born and living.
15
Good writing with depth and a laser like analysis of difficult logical distinctions. This cis man learned a lot. Bravo.
Why is there so much focus on trans women, and relatively little on trans men ?
17
@Oriole Because of the way biology works: we all start out as physiologically female fetuses; and then doses of testosterone at different times masculize the body. Undoing the effects of T is a long, slow and often incomplete process. For this reason, most trans men become indistinguishable from cis men on a day to day basis within a year of transition. Trans men are invisible in a way that trans women are not.
2
@Oriole
Because trans women are socialized as male and grew up asserting their right to tell women what to do. They all think they have the right to tell lesbians they are bigots for not liking male genitalia, or that they have the right to undress in public women's dressing room without any regard for the feelings of others. Trans men, on the other hand, are socialized as female, so they are far more likely to be considerate of men's feelings and unwilling to cause distress.
4
All this agonizing over the subtleties of what it means to be a woman, and still the real, practical questions that need answers are ignored: for example, if someone is incarcerated, how is gender determined? Can a man just say they are a woman to avoid men's prison? If not, by what standard do you stop them? How long until white and asian guys, fed up with affirmative action, decide to just check female and whatever race would seem most advantageous to further their careers-- who are you, and by what standard do you tell them otherwise?
Answer these questions, and then we can indulge in the touchy-feely of what constitutes the essence of womanhood.
12
How about if we agree everyone needs to be treated with respect? Let's look at the locker room issue.
Transwomen explain they are more likely to be sexually assaulted themselves. Transwomen are not the ones committing rape in the lockerroom - both of which are true facts. Plus the last thing, I expect, a transwoman would want, is to have her male parts exposed.
But this argument is not just logical, it is emotional. Women's fear must be addressed with compassion. Many women have been molested and/or raped. This creates fear of men and male organs. In emotional terms, not logical terms, these women do not want to be exposed to male genitals in locker rooms.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that often, saying I understand why you are afraid, or I understand why you feel excluded can go a long way to resolving conflicts.
Also, I do find it interesting that one group of women always seems to be made invisible -and that is lesbians, who also were pushed out and excluded by straight women. How about some articles on the challenges of lesbians?
8
It is somewhat enjoyable watching leftist identitarians embroiled in the inevitable civil war that any reasonable analysis of their intersectional beliefs predicted. When identity is everything and where your position in the intersectional social hierarchy is predicated on how “victimized” your identity group has been, then it rationally follows that everything becomes about who gets to claim each identity, what identity is the bigger victim, and how to enforce the hierarchy. (It’s easy for me since I’m a straight, cis, white, Christian, high income male, which means I’m just supposed to write checks and apologize for everything.)
My only wish is for this civil war to stay within the leftist borders. Unfortunately, it has spilled into wider society and is causing collateral damage.
9
One must marvel at what 21st century Americans talk themselves into.
14
"...When a cis woman complains that trans women haven’t had the same experiences as “real” women-born-women, then, what she’s really saying is, “Trans women haven’t had the same experiences as women like me.”
Amen and thank you.
2
Cultural and social environmental issues aside, gender is biologically determined.
Perhaps in the future we will have the technology to biologically change a persons gender. Our current technology offers only cosmetic changes.
There are some organisms on this planet that are naturally biologically gender fluid. Humans are not among that group.
12
I guess I am so out of touch with our modern world but a woman is one who was born with the female parts in which she was intended to possess. I do not think I have to go into too much detail but this is just the way I was brought up. Many will disagree with me but I still reaffirm my definition as being the way you came into the world. I am very content to be just the person God intended me to be. I have absolutely no regrets.
263
@KMW
One responsibility of adults is to inform one's self. On this subject, may I suggest you listen to the Radiolab podcast series titled "Gonads." It does a nice job of explaining how gender works at the biological level. It's a good starting point for an inquiry into a very complex field. Enjoy!
25
@KMW. There is no intention involved in actually having or not having the biological parts that determine a person's sex. It is based solely on chance. But I completely agree with you that only biological women are women. I guess we can come up with another category, but it's not important though people are trying to make it the most important because they are trying to ascribe positive rights to all so called disadvantaged groups.
32
@KMW
Sometimes a woman is born with “parts” that don’t match her gender identity. Imagine yourself with the “parts” of the sex opposite your own.,and how it would feel to be “you” but with those other “parts”. You would still be you, but in the body of the opposite sex. Which would you identify with?? I am guessing that you would go with “you” instead of whoever it was that thise those “parts” identified. Cis women and trans women are women. The women that God intended them to be. Full stop.
29
I recently tamed a small feral cat who came out of the woods and asked if she could be my kitty. No sooner had she settled in, than countless purposeful males that I never knew existed also emerged from the woods. The small feral cat forthwith produced 3 beautiful kittens, which, though a kitten herself, she raised to adulthood like a pro, cleaning, feeding, guiding, protecting with a deep intrinsic knowledge. It was all so simple for her.
And I ask myself, why? Why does the human race make everything so complicated?
7
@weeping in washington because we aren't cats.
2
Where was this trans movement when I was a randy 15 year old whose greatest fantasy was to somehow get into the girl’s locker room and see all there was to see? Now they would just allow me to march right in. All I would have to do is say that I identify as a woman or whatever the correct term now is.
32
If you were a teenager now, you would likely just log on and look at internet porn.
3
@Robert I like that.
The 1.7% intersex statistic is incorrect.
"Anne Fausto‐Sterling's suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late‐onset adrenal hyper‐plasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto‐Sterling's estimate of 1.7%.
Source: How common is lntersex? A response to Anne Fausto‐Sterling By Leonard Sax The Journal of Sex Research Volume 39, 2002 - Issue 3
23
A new wave of trans acceptance is welcome, exciting, and long overdue. It is crashing into our stubborn European beauty standard. We can't ease the grip gender categories have over us if we continue to fixate on narrow standards of attractiveness.
Example: the article quotes a feminist praising androgyny as a way to subvert patriarchal expectations. Sounds like fun, except I can’t do that. My breasts are unusually large and no amount of binding or bulky clothes would obscure them. One glance at me instantly summons a stereotypical image of a woman.
I’m not sharing this to lampoon androgyny or define womanhood by breast size. I’m noting that the barrier to all categories of intersectional womanhood coexisting peacefully seems to be our assumption of what a woman should look like (i.e. tiny waists, narrow hips, waifish or hourglass figure...). Once we let this go, we may find that it’s not so important to exclude women based on their experiences/appearances/proclivities.
45
@Kaila. So you are going to tell the rest of us what we are allowed to consider beautiful? I will continue holding the European beauty standard, more because people don't want me to than because it's my natural or conditioned feeling. I don't like this leftist trend of telling people what they should think or express. It's completely destructive.
19
@PJ ABC ....as is saying "no" just for the sake of saying "no." If we *all* thought about our own responses more, it might be a different world.
@Kaila Women are discriminated against based on their female bodies.
10
I can't help but feel like two groups of people who are often discriminated against are being set upon one another to fight about the results of highschool races and inclusion in the restroom. While the anecdotes about sports are certainly troublesome, I would rather spend my energy fretting over my bodily autonomy than trying to exclude someone from my identity group because they can't get into the same undesirable situation as I am. I am sure that they transmen have many undesirable situations that I cannot get into, and I don't envy them that. Let's stop arguing about Kylie Jenner and focus instead on equal pay.
1
@Laura and you don't see cis-males being told they must be supportive of trans males into their spaces the way females are being told to accommodate trans females. If accommodations are to be made, then both males and females are to be on board with the program.
4
I was gravely disappointed this year when the local women's march was rebranded "Womxn's March." If, as they say, trans-women are women, why the name change? Why can we not include trans-women as allies and partners without disregarding science and discounting biological women?
I was greatly dismayed when mailers from NOW instruct me that I must believe in and fight for men's rights to call themselves women.
Fringe right gets pilloried for their disbelief in the SCIENCE of climate change. Yet fringe left is equally dismissive of the SCIENCE of biological sex.
Perhaps our society's issue is in the narrow definition of masculine and feminine. Wanting to wear what you want, talk how you want, be called what you want does not change your sex but I support your right to do those things.
Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.
519
@Sarah B.
Biological gender isn't as binary as you seem to believe. The science actually supports the broad experience of actual people free to express the gender they perceive.
Lots of attempts at inclusion are ham-handed. They are nevertheless praiseworthy. True ire belongs to the exclusionary forces.
10
If they are going to put an x in such words, at least make it xx.
29
@Sarah B.--I also don't get the various titles used to describe women. If women are women, why not just use the word "woman"? Why are the "cis" and "trans" descriptions necessary? Why do we have to define ourselves according to who we choose to have sex with--gay, straight, bi, whatever? Can't we all just be women and not be so particular about defining what category of woman we fit into? The various words just further separate us and keep us in separate boxes. Why can't the definition of woman be expanded to include us all?
24
Please define what it 'feels like to be a woman" without using gender stereotypes or sartorial choices. You can't do it. The whole concept of "woman" being a feeling that can exist in a male person's head is ludicrous.
Live your life how you want to live it, but don't tell me that adhering to gender stereotypes is what makes a person a woman. I thought progressive people were against sexism.
50
OK ,peoples civil rights need to be protected,granted.The trans process however is 100% chemical transition by injections of hormone serums and additional surgeries in many instances. Nature is not involved ,nor are any of these individuals actually men ,or women.Certainly there are mental issues involved ,where individuals pretend they're of the opposite sex,yet as far as nature is concerned the facts are quite the opposite.Society has accepted this charade of entertainers and has the law,yet that is the extent of what society should be held responsible for.
10
I'm kind of torn over this one. I believe that the majority of life experience is defined by gender, and transwomen qualify equally as women in this sphere.
On the other hand, I believe that there is a *very small* sphere of life experience defined by biological sex (acknowledging that even this is problematic in a number of ways given nature's unruliness and technological advances) where at present trans experience is not identical and gender identity alone is insufficient for automatic membership.
Finally, I find the splitting of people into "trans" and "cis" anachronistic and unhelpful in resolving this issue, as if we were stuck pre-McKinsey scale with only "completely heterosexual" and "completely homosexual", with no allowance for gender fluidity of all people rather than bifurcation into arbitrary gender role stereotypes.
2
There is something deeply disingenuous about female academics following this train of thought. These "philosophical" problems of what constitutes a woman are little more than semantics for most women: Being paid 1/3 less than a man for equal work or having your body politicized by government are not philosophical problems resulting from an over-indulgence in female performativity. These are realities that academic feminists have decided are beneath them to discuss. That academics like Butler and Halbertsam flippantly think abandoning the female gender is the solution, not forcing the government to issue equal respect and justice for people of all colors and genders is an insult to everyone and shows just how pointless academic feminism is for the vast majority of the world's women.
As usual, it is women who have to justify their experiences and fight to be acknowledged while others police how we should feel and think - we can't even call ourselves "women" anymore - can you imagine trans men trying to enforce this linguistic shift on (cis) men?
To say that people who have never had to deal with the biological consequences (both good and bad) of "womanhood" have an equal understanding of womanhood is a complete erasure of "cis" women's experience. Trans women are welcome to join the fight, but they must respect that their experiences are different and that this difference should be acknowledged and respected, not belittled and erased.
751
@Elsie And you would think that trans-people would be on the forefront of equal pay for equal work, reproductive rights including abortions, not having to pay 42% more for a cheap pink women's blouse compared to a well-made men's shirt, equality in medical care without being dismissed as "hysterical" or lying, affordable child care, affordable and safe housing, and the blowing up of rape culture. But they're curiously silent about issues that affect real ("cis") women. If they were "really women on the inside," then shouldn't these issues affect them, too? And wouldn't they be saying, "I am a woman," instead of "I am trans?"
65
@Elsie louder for the people in the back!
The beautiful irony of ivory tower liberal white feminists calling themselves “intersectional” as they “cancel” and de-platform anyone questioning their high decrees and definitions of womanhood!
70
@Elsie Being paid 1/3rd less is nonsense. If a business could hire a woman for 33% less money, the business would hire ONLY woman and increase their profits.
10
where are the discussions around including trans men in the ranks of men? why are the debates around trans identity enacted in the media focused on inserting trans women into women's spaces? two reasins: 1. patriarchy. 2. the violence that men would enact if forced to accommodate transmen in the ways women are being forced to accommodate transwomen
19
@true patriot exactly! I am not seeing article busting cis-mens chops for not being supportive of trans males!!!
2
Carol Hay performs the usual sleight of hand. Defining woman biologically is not normative, it's descriptive. And it leaves space for every variant of womanhood and every woman's story. It doesn't say anything about race or gender or class.
When you define woman that way, you avoid the whole insane debate about what experiences make up being 'a' woman, or which ones differentiate women from men, and then you don't end up, like Hay does, in a Butlerian gender bending hall of mirrors where men not only squeeze themselves into the category 'woman', making 'woman' a conditional, dependent, derogatory sub-clause - "cis" - that reverses and undermines feminist discourse to define being a woman as being inherently privileged; they are, by Butlerian definition, and the logic of grammar, more 'woman' than women are.
Since, a la Hay a la Butler, men obviously parody women and gender norms better than women do, voila, men are not only women full stop end of (trans women = women, a mantra that needs so much repeating precisely because it ignores biological and evolutionary reality), but trans women are the most victimized women anywhere anytime and all "cis" and feminist women better check their "cis privilege" at the gate and let men define, and do, women better.
26
@Melanie I have a five year old son who seems as like as not to be aiming in the "trans" direction. He tells me he wants to be a girl, and he asks me at night if he'll always have to be a boy; he wants to wear girl's clothes to school (which we allow sometimes with things like shoes); he loves the color pink and is enamored of all the gender coded norms of femininity. It pains him even at this age to think of himself as a boy. I'm not of the mind to say, "OK, then you're a girl," just yet, and I don't want to insist on a change in identity prematurely. That said, the more my wife and I indulge his wishes to be like a girl, the happier he is, and the happier our family is as a result.
If, as you suggest, we should define women descriptively by their anatomy, you would not only leave this kid out of what might be the most comfortable place for him, but you would be challenging the very spirit of contrarian endeavor, in whatever form it takes. Surely, you would at least admit that a lot of what we think of as "male" or "female" is based in fantasy? As a feminist, you must have some of the contrarian in you. In a male dominated society like our own, the best feminists are contrarians, I think.
@Jeremiah Crotser You can and should do everything you can as a parent to ensure your son's happiness. Lying to him about his body will not make him happy in the long run.
12
@Jeremiah Crotser
Tell your son that it's ok to be a feminine boy. But he can't change his sex any more than he can change his species.
Then tell him that pink used to be a "boy color" 100 years ago.
6
Ms. Hay's argument is patently obtuse. Sexism is the air we breathe, the water we swim in from birth. So yes, all cis women across the world experience an assault on their being that demands they collude with their own diminishment. And a trans woman who was raised as a boy -- like Bruce Jenner -- is not swimming in that same water, is not breathing that same air. This is not to diminish in any way the assaults on a trans individual but they are different than being born a girl and growing up in a world culture that's hostile to everything female. How can Ms. Hay not see such an obvious reality?!
487
@cgtwet Her name is Caitlin. Of all the disrespects our trans sisters suffer, calling them by their name is the easiest to correct. When heterosexual women change their name at marriage, people don't assume that they have the right to insist that they use their birth name. Please extend the same courtesy to trans women who change their name.
13
@Sue
No, when you don't change your name at marriage, most people seem to insist that you use your husband's name anyway. I spent years being called by my husband's last name, even though it wasn't mine and no one called him by my last name by mistake. Until we stop these outdated, sexist practices we will never be considered equal.
82
@cgtwet
First, labelled as a trans female I have to tell you that I am sick of labels and want just to be referred to as a woman. I never reveal my previous miserable existence in the male world except to people that are very close to me. I would disagree with your comment of 'not breathing the same air' because I am now more aware of gender discrimination than you by having lived on both sides of it. I see the difference clearer than you as I can compare my previous experiences on the 'male side' to my 'female experiences' I now have. I can 'breath the air' much better that you can in actuality!
12
I am the proud mother of a transgender man, and I find articles like this deeply unhelpful. My son was not male at birth. If he had been, he would not have needed to medically transition. My son was correctly identified as female at birth, just as trans women are correctly identified as male at birth. But because they are both male and transgender, they need to medically transition to live full happy lives. We need health insurance companies to pay for medical transition. If we argue that trans people are born the gender they claim to be, that's a very easy out for the insurance companies. Why should they pay for medical transition if all it takes to be male or female is to "identify" as such? Male and female are biological realities. We cannot change our genotypes, but we CAN change our phenotypes. Hormones and surgery give immense relief to transgender people, and this is why being transgender is a medical condition (not a philosophical condition) deserving of full medical insurance coverage. The author asks "What counts as a woman?" Easy: someone who is genotypically and/or phenotypically female. A genetic male who takes female hormones becomes phenotypically female. I accept such a person as a woman. But genetic males who do nothing but change their pronouns and demand to be accepted as women can take a hike. Such people are also appropriating the lives of actual trans women (those who medically transition). Stop the gaslighting and appropriation. Please.
6
@Penny White Your understanding of what it means to be trans centers on the idea that a gender is confirmed via anatomical correspondence, but for many trans people this is simply not the case. There are lots of trans people, the vast majority of them in fact, who live with the anatomy they were born with while also feeling like and "being" another gender. Saying that you aren't who you feel like until you've got the plumbing is a way to put more pressure on trans individuals who for various reasons are unable or uninterested in getting the surgery.
1
in 1968 when my brother declared he was a woman, and started the process to "change sex" as it was known in those days, i began a perilous journey into my own female puberty. if my brother could purchas his womanhood, what did that mean to me? i menstruated but he did not. not all women have their periods. etc...you know where i am going.
the maze was endless. gender is being confused with sex here. sex is the basis of women's oppression. we grow up to know early on as girls that we may be raped. my brother never experienced that. we understand that we may never reach pay equity. women know these things because we are oppressed due to our SEX, not our Gender...
my brother changed his gender. he did it by taking female hormones and having a surgery. he spent a lot of money on becoming like me, but he is never like me. he has been paralysed for the past 35 years from strokes and embolisms from the female hormones. cross-sex hormones are never easy or simple.
he used to say he was trapped in a woman's body. now she is trapped in her body and can barely feed herself without help.
when i bury my brother as my sister, she will still be biologically a man.
my conclusion is simple: cross sex identified people are not the sex they chose, but the gender. women are women due to BIOLOGY not culture. we are oppressed because of our biology.
43
@gbh
I'm so sorry you had to endure the assault on your own understanding of your sex and sexuality as a result of your brother's choices. Those of us who are the family members and spouses/partners of those who make these decisions are invisible. When we speak, our painful experience is too often dismissed, or we are seen as and asked to consider ourselves as collateral damage.
14
@AKS absolutely true. every time i go to the long term hospital to visit my brother/sister, i am thrown into an alternate universe. people do not understand this when i say this to them. i have to accept my sibling's delusional reality and not concrete reality of real life. these people say i should just accept the philosophical or political constructs. however, this is personal, not philosophical. this translobby tries to bulldoze the real people living within this construct. it is not healthy. many people are being injured with cross sex hormones and surgeries. my sibling, despite being a pioneer in the transsexual sphere, was dropped like a hot potato when she first got sick and paralyzed by the hormones. nobody has EVER visited her. except me, and yet i am called a transphobe for saying a woman is not a man with a neovagina or indeed a penis, and vice versa for women being men. i wipe the spittle from her chin, and i feel the damage of this social experiment. the philosophers, like this writer of the article, will never know of the dark and very human side of this issue. it destroyed my family. so i ask this author @Carol Hay to come down to the families to feel the pain of this intellectual discussion. may you find peace AKS in Illinois.
14
By extension, I think Faulkner's quote has relevance here: “I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.”
4
I thought this was an April Fool’s joke. Truly, at a time where women’s reproductive rights are being taken away; where women are victims of rape and domestic violence; where women die in childbirth, we aren’t debating what it is to be a WOMAN? The answer is, and always has been very simple: a woman is an adult human female. Anything else is post-modern posturing for those with an inclination towards identity politics. I’ll pass on that, and keep working to protect and support women and our rights.
51
I think it is time for a 3rd gender. While I fully support trans people’s right to exist I do not think it is reasonable for a few million ppl to expect the approx 4 billion biological women on this planet to redefine ourselves and our biology to include them. And isn’t that just like a man to expect a woman to do that?
35
@Julie C
Unfortunately, science shows us there are only 2 genders
A third would be a "hey lets just make one up so everyone feels better" raection that would have no basis in scientific reality.
2
TERF is a slur, it is hate speech, it is a weapon that people use against women who dare to claim that women are women and trans women are trans women. Don't normalize hate speech. Call it what it is.
47
There is scientific consensus on this matter,
X or Y chromosome?
To ignore this scientific fact is to be in the same class of people such as climate deniers, flat earthers and anti vaxxers.
Nature tells us what a female is, to pretend otherwise is to pretend the earth is flat or there is no climate change
Knock yourself out, but dont expect to be on the right side of science.
13
Feminism is a political movement aimed at the eradication of an oppression based on biological sex. Globally, girls and women suffer from FGM, femicide, forced marriage, rape, and lack of access to birth control & education BECAUSE they are born into into a female body - not because of how they dress, speak, or present themselves.
Feminists (a group in which I include myself) don't deny that passing transwomen count as women in certain contexts, and are subject to similar oppression (i.e. sexual harassment). What they DO say is that biological sex is significant to how one's life goes, as well as to the goals of the feminist movement, and that this is central to feminist theorizing and activism. This does not have the absurd conclusion, as the author wishes to suggest, that women without children aren't women, but simply that those born with the perceived capacity to give birth are treated differently than those who are not. This means that we cannot blithely pretend biological sex doesn't exist - because it DOES exist, and has serious repercussions for the trajectory of one's lifeline which feminists seek to change.
Ironically, the author seems to think she is being 'woke,' but it is surely only the most privileged of women who can afford to deny the significance of the sex into which one is born. Try asking girls denied an education on the basis of their sex, or who undergo FGM if the category of 'woman' is really so difficult to define...
48
No intellectual am I but I do think about things and this subject has been tough for me. I do not want to deny any person their natural state. I have no idea what it is like to be trapped in a body I do not want but I cannot agree with Simone De B that one is not born a woman-darn right we are - right down to our little eggs that come as part of the package. I want Trans men and women to feel comfortable and welcome. I don't want to define womanhood by 40+ years of menstruation and the constant fear of pregnancy or infertility but those are the reality of women born. I do believe our experiences are different but not in a way that I want to exclude anyone. As for G. Greer she seems like she has gone and lost her mind.
3
I am a sword-wielding feminist. The definitions of feminism I've known and lived with for 80 years or so are "advocacy of woman's rights on the basis of equality of the sexes" and "belief in social, economic, political equality of the sexes" (Websters and Britannica.) Feminism's only goal is to end the absurd notion of male supremacy.
Feminism is not concerned with who "counts" as a woman. Feminists don't care who is a woman; we care about the human who is denied rights roughly half the world enjoys.
Stop weakening the feminist honorable and noble fight with nonsense!
284
@Rea Tarr How do you end male supremacy without a clear understanding of who is male and who is female? Why has half of the world's population historically faced sex-based oppression? If "woman" doesn't mean anything, then how does one advocate for women's rights?
80
@Jay Gill
All human beings should have equal rights, period. It's really not complicated.
30
@HWB That's true. But those rights are not protected and respected equally throughout the world. Feminism exists because women have historically been treated unequally, and feminism seeks to fight for women's rights and equal treatment in society. This unequal treatment is based on sex, not gender identity.
If you don't think sex-specific advocacy is necessary, then you are saying that feminism is irrelevant and women's rights activism is pointless. I don't think you are trying to say that, though.
68
To paraphrase a line often attributed to Einstein “something should be explained as simply as possible, but no simpler”. I remember in grammar school (elementary school) being given an essay to write (sometimes they called it a composition). You were given a topic and instructed to write 250 words on the subject. I remember counting the words, 107, 188, 212, etc . . . . . Maybe you only had 200 words to say on the subject, no matter, you had to add some filler to get to 250. Often with pen in hand we must decide to be terse or exhaustive. Terse is usually for the cognoscenti, exhaustive for those not in the choir. The problem with academics is they usually preach to those not enrolled in the choir. As confusing as making something too simple is making something too complicated.
Gender, in the biological sense, is not that complicated. You are born male or female. The doctor doesn’t assign gender, he or she takes note of it. If you have a certain anatomy and XX chromosomes you are a female, a little girl to become a woman; if a different anatomy and XY chromosomes you are a male.
Yet some feel a disconnect between their biological gender and their sense of self, maybe 3 in a thousand.. We should be sympathetic, empathetic, attentive, concerned. Exhaustive books could be written.
But while working to accommodate the 3, let’s not kid the other 997!
61
@Tom W. besides, trans people miss out on menstruating. Sorry, but without this, I don't think you can actually be a woman. It's the same reason I think it's wrong for trans people to compete in women's sports. You don't have the clear disadvantage of menstruation and its effects on your performance.
12
@Tom W.
Male or female - that's sex, not gender. Isn't it?
6
@Cavatina - No, gender actually refers to one's location on the binary chart, male or female. Sex can refer to either behavior or anatomy. Then there are the words masculine and feminine. These words are a little less distinct. If someone says "she is not very feminine" they don't mean she lacks the anatomy of a woman but that she is not behaving in a certain way.
1
On not growing up as visibly female: While transgender women have grown up experiencing whatever it feels like to be in a body of the wrong sex, most also have grown up being perceived by the world as boys and men. They have probably "missed out" on female experiences like being ignored, dismissed, not called on in class, etc. These experiences give many (most?) cis women an element of deference in their communications with others; a set of much-discussed "female" personality traits that have their advantages and disadvantages, and which are for the most part invisible and accepted in the female population.
In contrast, in my experience, some transgender women have been formed by their lives as visibly male to expect the world to automatically acknowledge their authority (i.e., in their professions and otherwise). This results a type of self-assurance and assertiveness that seems more male than female. (I liked Jamie Clayton's in Sense8 because she didn't manifest this remnant of maleness in the character of Nomi Marks.)
At any rate, transgender people are unique individuals, and their uniqueness will always include elements from their personal experiences as both genders. (BTW, if my comments here violate any current feminist ideology, please know that I've been a feminist most of my life and generally try to keep thinking through these fascinating topics rather than ever settle on "certainties".)
19
Ah, yes, the philosophy fail in which a clever debater logics their way to a conclusion based on false or cherry-picked assumptions. This may be why philosophy has answered so very few questions over the last 2300 or so years.
47
@Nancy
I agree, Nancy.
Not only do I rarely agree with any conclusion, I ALWAYS disagree on the starting premise.
If Plato were alive today I would just look at him with puzzled brow and ask, "Is that where you want to start....really?"
6
This is a fascinating article. I'm 73-years-old, so I'm mortified at the beliefs I had and was raised with about gender and sexuality.
The times have changed and, certainly, for the better.
I read a question in another comment that asks, "Is it fair for trans-athletes to compete with cis-women athletes?" And I immediately thought of major-league football where some of the players weigh 300+ pounds and others are much lighter. They play different positions that are advantageous to those positions. The same is true in most sports. And, what difference does it make, say, in weight-lifting competition if all genders can compete? Some men can lift more than some women and vice-versa.
In another comment in reference to anti-abortion laws that make abortion illegal as soon as a heartbeat is detected, the author asks, "Do you want to know what experience biological women share? It's the vulnerability that a sexual encounter can leave them pregnant and not in legal control of their bodies." This is true, but this is precisely because of bigotry, sexual and class divide that is contrived under capitalism.
It's hard to break "out of the mold" of "gender identification" that has been the "norm" in our society. But it hasn't always been that way. Some indigenous peoples have identified up to five genders.
We are all human. And, I might add, we are all sentient beings like the rest of our menagerie on this planet we share.
8
@Bonnie Weinstein In response to your defense of trans women who've gone through male puberty competing with cis women: Fallon Fox almost killed a cis woman when she boxed against her. Hannah Mouncy is a trans woman soccer player who broke a cis woman's leg when playing against her. A male puberty creates 40-50% more upper body strength and 30-40% more lower body strength. Why should female athletes have to be "nice" and step aside for trans women who had the physical advantage of a male puberty? What comparable sacrifice is being asked of cis men? Trans women like Jazz Jennings - who transition prior to puberty - should be allowed to compete with cis women. But a male puberty is a grossly unfair advantage in sports requiring strength and speed. Women fought hard for the right to their own sports teams. Based on your argument, women should just be told to compete with male athletes and suck it up when they can't.
17
"Assigned female at birth"
Gender can be determined at conception - the fetus has a gender during gestation. Most parents apply for an ultrasound during pregnancy to find out the gender of their unborn child. "Assigned at birth" and "cis-gender" are fairly recent made-up phrases, I refuse both of them.
140
@M Welch My son is transgender (F to M) He was female at birth, and he will always be genetically female. However, through medical transition he has become phenotypically male. He is also read as male socially. My son was correctly identified as female at birth, but he has transitioned. Now he is identified socially as male due to medical intervention. So I agree with you that "assigned female at birth" makes the trans community look stupid and it is a very unhelpful form of gaslighting. But I am proud to say that my son is a very handsome and wonderful man today.
14
@M Welch
The thing you refer to here is sex, not gender. How would we be able to determine the fetus's social construct during ultrasound?
14
@DaveD If gender is purely a social construct, then what separates a transgendered person who still appears as the sex they were born with from a cisgendered person?
7
There's a fundamental philosophical problem at the heart of transgender identity - specifically, an epistemological problem. How does one know what one claims to know?
If a person is born male, and comes to believe that he is transgender, how does he know this? How does he know what it's like to be a woman, and compare that to his own internal experience? How does he imagine that altering his body will make it better?
This is a paradox, and it shouldn't be considered trans-phobic to point that out, and try to understand it. Especially when the person claiming to have that knowledge is a child.
People can only measure their internal lives against others' by using their imagination to interpret others' performances.
The examples a person sees are the only material they have for understanding themselves.
With so much more trans visibility, the frequency with which people interpret their internal lives as transgender will increase. Considering the permanent medical interventions that can be involved in expressing a transgender identity, and the potential for regret if one comes to interpret their internal life differently after more experience, we should not be acting like one's gender identity is ever known for certain.
Comparing one's own inner life to another's is a paradox. Permanently altering one's body based on such a comparison is an act of bravery and commitment, but is also reckless in the sense that we usually don't know ourselves as well as we think.
82
@Patrick I think this is a problem of gaslighting. My son is a trans man - but he was correctly identified as female at birth. He was female then. He has since transitioned so that he is now phenotypically male. He is identified as a man by others. But he will always be genetically female. My son is very secure in his manhood. He doesn't need to gaslight people and demand that they tell him he was "always male". He wasn't. He knows that, which is why he transitioned. The woman who wrote this article may think she is helping the trans community, but she is not. She is making trans people seem crazy and out of touch with reality.
20
@Penny White
You acknowledge that your son wasn't "always male," which is something that many people won't do, for fear of appearing trans-phobic. Your son chose to change his gender; he could choose to change it again. As (presumably) an adult, that's his right.
However, the language around the choices transgender people make goes overboard (in my opinion) in assigning infallibility, and permanence, to a person's own interpretation and characterization of their gender identity.
The reality is more complicated, as you know, and some people wind up regretting their choice, attempting to reverse aspects of their transition, or further others, until they reach a point where they're happy or exhausted. They may never get there.
If someone is depressed, we don't automatically validate their self-concept. We might say things like, "I know that you feel worthless right now, but your feelings are wrong. You're important and you have a lot to offer."
If someone is contemplating a transition, and is open to discussing it, I do think that families and loved ones have a duty to be supportive, but also to allow, and help, that person to doubt whether their feelings about their gender are a sound basis for a transition, or whether such a transition will give that person what they ultimately need.
12
Great - another OpEd piece that considers why one independent form of victimization belongs in the same binary box as another. Maybe the problem is the two-way box, people.
If there is one thing we all should have figured out by now, it's that the binary choice paradigm is precisely the wrong way to address the unique concerns and problems our trans friends encounter living their lives.
12
There is an underlying question here that is understandably difficult to reconcile. The author essentially states that life is in fact quite a bit more complex than simplistic definitions allow for. (Surprise!)
Which inevitably means that the definitions of "man" vs "women" are at the very minimum wholly inadequate. If there is no gender binary - which I believe to be the case, the concept of "becoming" a man or a woman is then fundamentally conflicted, since the act of doing so re-affirms that the gender binary is indeed both very real and of significant importance.
The most obvious question that arises from this column, in my mind, is whether the concept of being trans-gendered would even continue to exist, if the constraints around being a "man" or "woman" were completely removed. If people are free to be the best versions of themselves - in whatever expression that takes, then there is no longer a need to become anything other than what than they already are.
Evidently this is idealistic, but there is a fundamental issue here that is potentially unresolvable. Rather than try to force simplistic labels to encompass a level of complexity that they never will, perhaps enlarge the language (and appreciation for the complexity of life) to not need to rely on them so heavily.
17
Here's my perspective as a trans woman in her early 60s: Having been freed from testosterone for some years, my body is dramatically different than it once was. I don't feel that my mind changed, though; I was always in touch with my feelings. I've settled into an androgynous mode of dress and grooming, not wearing makeup. I have no idea what it means to "feel like a woman", in fact, I don't really know what it means to "be a man", or "be a woman". I feel that all people have their own unique genders, and I wish we lived in a world that recognized that, though I have little hope we'll evolve to that state. For me, given the binary choice of man or woman, the choice is clear.
13
@Alley Stoughton - Not to be flip, but in their 60s, most people's bodies are dramatically different than they once were.
6
Some years ago I worked for a company with clear acceptance policies. One of the other women there was a transsexual woman who had never before felt safe to expose her gender. She had never physically transitioned.
On the late shift we were frequently the only women there and I was asked by other employees if that bothered me. My usual somewhat flippant reply was that she only bothered me by wanting to constantly discuss shes and makeup, items I quit wearing decades before.
I have thought more about that since, and realized that I had been able years before to make a *choice* to abandon the 'feminine' pursuit of frequently uncomfortable and time consuming appearance accepted as the norm. She, on the other hand, had never before been able to make the choice, so I can see why those things were so important to her.
5
If you want to understand why trans rights are about men more than women, ask yourself why it is that so many straight white women wind up writing about trans women’s rights, not trans men’s rights. Trans people are trans, that’s what makes them special, deserving of rights and equal treatments under the law and in daily life. The author is too quick to dismiss the idea that menstruation is the common binder between cis women. My mother wrote the text book on gender development, and what she always said is that as much post-modernists like to think it’s all performance, human biology is much more determinative of human behavior than people want to accept. In what other situation do we try and use the exception as the rule?
58
-----"why it is that so many straight white women wind up writing about trans women’s rights, not trans men’s rights."
Why aren't straight white men writing about trans mens rights? Why should this fall on women?
It seems as though sports is the arena where the first battle of this war is being fought. Last October a trans cyclist won the women’s world championship, and more recently two high school students who identify as female dominated their girls’ track competition.
These are real world examples of men who transition, or simply proclaim their womanhood, taking opportunities away from women. Should they be prohibited from competing because of the physical advantage of male anatomy, or would that be discrimination?
One obvious solution would be breaking competitions into classes, like weight or height, to ensure a level playing field, or perhaps having different leagues for trans people, but their relatively small number would probably make either of those measures impractical.
In everyday life, like using bathrooms and being referred to by the proper pronouns, unless someone is checking under the hood (so to speak), if a person looks like a woman, they're accepted as a woman. What constitutes womanhood is defined by the appearance and behavior of most women. So if someone can pass this becomes a nonissue. As for those who cant, sadly, they will not find the same acceptance. Same deal for trans men, which is actually more of women's issue than trans women when you really think about it.
17
@Gary Taustine
My general sympathy for trans people doesn’t extend to women’s sport. I think Navratilova had it exactly right—and was pilloried for being brave enough to speak out.
The athletes noted above had full male genitalia, the high schoolers hadn’t even had testosterone suppression.
Without biologically based boundaries, women’s sport will eventually die.
15
What makes women a class biologically different from men is over and above all our smaller stature and weaker strength, sexual attractiveness to men, and menstruation and the ability to give birth and suckle a child.
Those make us vulnerable in ways a man is not, and so has consequences on the organisation of society, which different societies have handled differently.
Of course there are also advantages to being a woman over being a man, and it seems some men envy those advantages more than they appreciate their own advantages, so much so that actually desire to become women. Like being desired, admired, lusted after, protected, allowed to be weak, frivolous, vain, etc., rather than having to be the protector, strong, etc.
I must say this trans movement has made me more appreciative of my own female privileges. If so many men are ready to get mutilated in order to enjoy the privilege of wearing pretty clothes and makeup, maybe I should appreciate my right to do so more...
29
@AG
Can I suggest something? That you actually read about the lives of transgender women before assuming things?
Your assumption that transgender women transition because they want to dress all girly, attract men and be lusted after by men, but then how do you explain the Kardashians, who basically do exactly what you accuse transgender women of?
Take it from me, if you knew how vulnerable transgender women are (Katlyn Jenner is a horrible example, not just her attitudes, but also because she was rich enough, lived in a bubble where she could do what she wanted, that she is a different galaxy. Transgender women who are minority face even more hurdles then cis women or men in that community, and transgender women outside the tiny few who are wealthy, face loss of jobs, loss of family, friends, and transgender women face violence, assault and rape simply for being themselves, so they do know what it is to be vulnerable. The fact that transgender women are willing to face the reality of what this means and do it says a lot, it is hard to be a women of any kind in this society, that is the point. A rich woman has little in common with a poor woman, a rich woman is exponentially a lot more safe than a poor woman, yet she is a woman as much as the poor woman is.
2
@music observer statistics, please.
5
@music observer
What makes you assume I haven't read a whole lot aout transgender issues, just because I don't agree with your view of them?
I have, for decades, and despite the more recent directive to refuse to answer questions about why, recognize recurrent themes.
Why do I keep reading about kids who decide they are girls because they were attracted to girly clothes, rather than because they had a deep desire to care for babies, the sick or old people, or to spend days cooking for loved ones at holidays, or to make cute crafts and sell them on Etsy, or keep family together through keeping track of birthdays and sending cards, etc.? Because that isn't what drives boys or men to identify as women. In every society from Thai to Middle East to European or American, the recurring theme is the attractiveness of the glamour, the sexual allure of the clothes and makeup, from transvestites to drag queens to trans "women".
10
Does anyone ever notice that almost all of those that make the case that trans-women should be considered women are not the ones that will have to wrestle trans-women? They aren't the ones that have to fight in mixed martial arts against trans-women. They aren't the ones whose scholarships are taken away when they lose a track and field event to trans-women. Those that advocate the "war is peace" approach to this topic are almost always fierce with rhetoric and light on the consequences of that rhetoric. The author of this piece for example: "professor of philosophy" read: I will make the edicts from my ivory tower and your daughter will have to wrestle a trans-woman.
192
I graduated from university, Class of 2000, at age 52.
So I really did live through the 50's and 60's.
Girdle and nylons were mandatory in public high school.
Likewise at prep school.
I remember white gloves.
I wasn't impressed with Jackie's pill box.
So, when I was 50, in my Women's Studies class, the teacher had, as a guest speaker, a transvestite: A man who dressed as a woman.
For one hour he took us through his regimen. Hair, nails, nylons - NOT pantyhose! - the difficulty of finding high heels that fit, selecting the right wig, how much could be plucked from his eyebrows for during the day he was a stockbroker, selection of jewelry.... and, make-up.
There was only one problem.
He looked exactly like my mother's best friend back in 1954.
I was, literally, the oldest person in the room.
I hadn't worn an outfit like his in decades.
Not one young woman in the room had ever seen it.
His choice of outfit was a pink and charcoal houndstooth 2 piece day suit.
Everyone else was wearing t-shirt and jeans.
Since that day I have wondered why men who want to wear women's clothes fixate so easily on the styles that were not fashionable even 50 years ago.
Why Margaret Thatcher?
Marilyn Monroe?
This is kabuki.
This is no woman I have ever known.
Why do masc2fems like to pretend that women are air-heads?
I have no idea.
But I DO take a great deal of this as an insult, a man getting a very specific joke on "the girls".
I find "trans" to be all about men, not women.
PASS THE ERA!
185
@rosa
"Pass the ERA"?
We would need at least 120 new courthouses around the country. Are you a lawyer? I happen to be one.
1
Reality is always so much more interesting and nuanced than anyone's claim to understanding it. As a transwoman, this seems to me particularly true of gender.
7
My concern is that we're spending so much time bending over backwards to erase the difference between biological women and trans women, when at this moment, the rights of biological women are being terribly limited. In Georgia, the new abortion law that is being proposed would make them illegal starting when a heartbeat can be detected. Women who don't even know they're pregnant could be subject to prosecution if their actions can be perceived to cause a miscarriage. Do you want to know what experience biological women share? It's the vulnerability that a sexual encounter can leave them pregnant and not in legal control of their bodies.
506
@Matthew
Not all biological women, there are a lot of women who can't get pregnant out there, women past menopause, women who were born that way, women who had themselves sterilized, or have much less risk because they have implants or an IUD......while it is true that transgender women don't have that particular worry , they do share something with biological women, that those who are pushing to restrict abortion are the same people who are also pushing for example to keep transgender women out of women's restrooms, and it is the exact same thing, they want the right legally to control what women do or who is real, it is the same threat.
8
@Matthew This is exactly right, and I’m astounded at how rarely the vulnerability to pregnancy is even mentioned in these needlessly obfuscatory discussions of “what makes a woman.” Reproductive rights are under attack not because people can get pregnant, but because women - human females - can potentially get pregnant against her will. The existence of exceptions to this does not nullify that women as a group (or as a sex-class, as the radical feminists like to say) are raised with the awareness that pregnancy is both an expectation and a danger. It’s also an amazing power, when a woman desires to bear a child - which is exactly why patriarchs in our legislatures are trying to curtail women’s reproductive rights.
On a more abstract level, bodily autonomy is a principle that underlies reproductive rights/justice and the rights of trans people to live in safety and dignity. But the details of our struggles are not the same; we can be allies but not at the cost of erasing women as a biologically and thus politically meaningful category.
113
@music observer. Only in some alternative (and irrational) universe, can one equate the effect of a law severely limiting a biological woman's access to abortion to a trans woman's lack of access to a woman's restroom.
103
Do women really need safe spaces?
Should women be allowed to have safe spaces?
If not, then no problem.
But if so, then they should not find in those safe spaces trans-women with men's parts and men's interests in them, and men's size and strength advantages, calling themselves "lesbian trans-women."
It is an either/or question, too often answered with equivocation.
Women need and deserve that, or not. Not they need it, except for.
89
@Mark Thomason
So you believe that women's safety is paramount, which would have to exclude larger, stronger lesbian women with interest in those women? See, when you draw lines, YOU draw them and invariably exclude.
I'm trans M2F and know that really becoming female takes years and it is from experiences more so than birth. Women and trans women get walked and talked over as presumed beta to men's presumed alpha as a given.
NO man acts or becomes female unless there's a truly compelling urge - it's biological from current medical science - because of the resultant exclusion, loss of privacy, danger, massive loss of privilege.
Life s a spectrum. Quit looking for binary. Open your heart. Respect differences. Let people come out of the Human Closet finally.
5
@Mark Thomason
"But if so, then they should not find in those safe spaces trans-women with men's parts and men's interests in them, and men's size and strength advantages, calling themselves "lesbian trans-women."
Really? So trans women are nothing more than men in a dress trying to get into women's spaces to rape them? The TERFs in the article would agree with this, and it is pathetic, it is nothing more than pure bigotry.I hate to tell you, but transgender women face sexual assault/rape and violence as well, if anything they might need safe space more than CIS women do, based on statistics.
1
Statistics show that in 2016,
3895 women were murdered in the US, 26 trans women were also murdered.
From the CDC.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/us-homicide-rate-female-victims-of-homicide-rose-by-21-percent-according-to-study-2018-12-6/
https://www.glaad.org/blog/2016-was-deadliest-year-record-transgender-people
5
I have to wonder if the new norms progressives have reached in the last decade is a trend or blip.
I suppose we’ll know better in 25 years.
14
Our society scrutinizes the physical appearance of women to an absurd degree. It can be difficult for plain looking girls and women to navigate a world that seems to value them only for their attractiveness to men. Doing so as a trans-women takes more courage than I can imagine.
5
It looks like this author wants to retain the category "woman" without allowing anyone to define what that category means or to exclude anyone from it. If a category has no boundaries, then it's not a terribly helpful category to retain; if we can't exclude anyone from the category "woman," then every human being is a woman. That seems like nonsense to me.
270
@Alex,
Not at all.
Excluded from the category "woman" are cis and trasngender men.
That shouldn't be too hard to understand.
7
On Hays’ view it is difficult to see how there is any distinction between or among any genders sufficient to support a feminist theory.
28
@Alex Schurman Totally agree. It's an unavoidably circular definition of "woman":
Woman, n. - A person who identifies as (or feels that that they are) a woman.
29
Biological men should not be competing in sports against biological women. Biological men should not be using high school showers with biological women.
Solve those types of issues and the majority of the country will stand for trans rights. Make my 12 year old daughter compete against biological men and shower with them and you will create a foe of trans rights.
261
@William
It's not just the shower, it's the fact that men are stronger than women. Period. A trained man will outperform an equally trained women and have advantages due to testosterone. It's not a fair situation for biological women to lose to men.
And we put such a large level of importance on athletics- how will parents feel when their biologically female daughter loses a soccer scholarship to a biological male? Or when prize money for the fastest woman in a marathon goes to a biological male?
All the sudden, it gets really unfair. It's very hard to incorporate trans women into sports fairly. It's basically like allowing some women to use steroids, while others may not.
The transgender community needs to recognize that they may find friction in some aspects of society and recognize that in some cases THEY are creating the unfairness and causing the issue.
152
@William
How many commenters have met and interacted with a young transgender child transitioning to a girl? I'll bet few to none. Seeing them you'll get their femininity and usual lack of interest in girls as sex partners. Kinda like being frightened of having a gay male near your daughter- makes no sense.
If you allow lesbians in the shower room with your daughters and you do even if you don't know it, what's the true difference?
What kind of male wants breasts, to live, be treated and be seen as female in a wholly male dominated world? Answer : No true man does, only a man who felt as a women. Treat them as women and let it go. Any sentient normal person is not looking at other's bodies in a bathroom/shower.
5
@AG it is not possible for a male to transition "into a girl." Humans cannot change sex. You are telling actual girls they are not allowed to have boundaries around their female bodies.
40
I think some of the ideas that need to move forward are going to be very hard to swallow by the people who's entire world view has been shaped by idea of the division of the sexes.
Cue in the rolling eyes, but please let me explain:
Physically, there are absolute variances between men and women.....but these differences are not absolute. So for example, there are people born with two sets of genitalia. There are people who are born in one body but feel it deeply that they were meant to be another. There are people who simply cannot conform to the expectations of their gender. People within each gender vary in a wide spectrum--but there are also many who bridge the divide. We must think of gender the way we do sexual orientation: as a full and varied spectrum.
Because I had boy-girl twins, I have thought a lot about this. When the babies were six months old, I remember looking at them and thinking "who is going to tell my daughter that she needs to expect less than her brother?" Answer: Society is already doing so.
I believe deeply in allowing people to shape their outer lives in a way that best matches their inner life. Only by living lives that make sense to us do we emerge healthy and whole. The problem with tightly defined gender identities is that hey harm us all: from the "bossy girl" to the "sissy boy" and everything in between.
Luckily, I see a difference in rhetoric in young people so this is a matter that will resolve over time. Progress always marches forward.
13
@Gwe I see a lot of 'society" this and that in this article..but aren't we all society?
1
@Gwe
Tell the women in Iran or Afghanistan that progress always marches forward.
6
@Gwe The existence of disorders of sexual development does not negate the existence of biological sex.
Women are discriminated against because of their sex. Otherwise you are telling women that they are choosing to be oppressed!
3
Every time I read articles on this topic, it makes me feel like I’ve gone through the looking glass. I was born female in a male-dominated world and subject to discrimination, harassment, and the threat of sexual violence just because I was a girl and now a woman. I had no more choice being born female than My partner did being born African-American.
I have fought my whole life to be heard in the workplace and to be seen as more than a pretty face or female body. But now I have to once again sit down and shut up because some men now want to be women and need to explain to me via academic proxy that if I talk about topics such as my female anatomy or menstruation I am being non-inclusive. Sorry, this is nonsense and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
I do not wish transgender people any ill will, live and let live. Just don’t tell me what it is really like to ge a woman, ok?
883
@TechTech
No one is denying you the right to talk about your experience and background as a woman, the key idea of this article is that women come from a variety of experiences, a woman who can't menstruate may not know what having a period is like, but she is still a woman; a woman who grows up in an upper middle class white family has a very different experience than a woman who grows up in a non white family that is working class, but both are women. What this piece is talking about is the idea that something like menstruation defines what a women is, or the ability to have children, since many women can't do either, any more than being a woman means having gone to the senior prom or having a sweet 16 party or whatnot.
And yes, you are biased, and it shows, by saying transgender women are an academic curiosity, it is saying transgender women are not real, or worse, that they are some made up thing. Transgender women are not men who decided they wanted to be a woman, they are people who were born fighting themselves, knowing they weren't right (the way many gay people do), trying to fit in, and then often after years of struggle, face losing everything to be themselves, they face job loss, costly treatment (mostly still not paid by insurance), they face loss of family and friends, and yes, they face assault and violence and economic insecurity, you think someone would do that to play dress up?
33
@TechTech THANK. YOU. EXACTLY. Well-said.
90
@TechTech YES. This. Exactly.
83
Science continues to demonstrate that, while there are differences, it is an overstatement to refer to "female" and "male" brains. In reality, there is a spectrum of brain characteristics on which virtually all males and females exist, rather than a discreet category through which one could identify brains as male or female.
And yet we now have trans people claiming, with utter certainty, "Oh, I have an A brain and a B body," or vice versa (avoiding X and Y to forestall confusion re chromosomes).
But the very idea that there are "male" and "female" brains is inherently retrogressive, misogynistic and anti-gay. In some (though far from all) cases, under larger society's current formulation, trans people who might in fact be gay are given the message that it would be better to "become" the other sex/gender than to live as someone with a same-sex orientation.
Trans people deserve respect and decent people will treat them as they wish to be treated, up to and including referring to them by chosen names and pronouns.
But when trans activists *insist* that a trans person born biologically A is — and always has been — B, they wildly overplay their hands and alienate many would-be allies who refuse to play their Orwellian games.
158
@CB Evans
The ‘born in the wrong body’ explanation comes from a time when the trait was misunderstood medically. It was a short-hand way for gender-variant people to describe to cisgender people their self-perceptions and lived experiences. What they are not doing is promoting some sort of regressive ‘gender ideology’, just as LGB folk do not have an ‘agenda’.
Science has come around to the view that nature plays a role in gender variance, and that it is reflected in brain structure and some neurological mechanisms. An article a while ago in Scientific American positing that gender variant folk don’t have actual brains of the non-natal sex, but in fact ‘transsexual’ brains— brains that have features of both sexes, regardless of what the sex chromosomes and hormone status may indicate. Sometimes differences, while few, can have big consequences, such as the case of people with autism, schizophrenia, and same-sex orientation. Do you think these categories are Orwellian, too?
There was a time when doctors in the US considered ‘sex-change’ surgeries for people who were same-sex oriented, when everyone made the mistake that sexual and gender were the same thing— they are not, they are independent. No US physicians would make such a recommendation today. Have you found otherwise?
We are not a consequence of culture, politics, or religion. No amount of hysteria will change the fact that gender-variant people exist, have existed, and will always exist.
1
@CB Evans
All medical science indicates the trans brain is different and develops with more aspects of the opposite sex brain than typical. Doctors are only concerned now with how it happens, not if. If the brain doesn't match the chromosomes, what it this person?
Does brain not matter, only outward appearances to determine sexuality? The brain directs everything, and I default to the brain. The rest is reconstructive surgery.
Here's the Big Reveal: There are so few trans people that no cis person need ever fear them changing the world. Its inborn and your kids can't catch it. Give all people their civil rights if you want yours too.
3
@CB Evans
The whole “brain sex” notion is doubly bizarre because as far as I’m aware, absolutely nobody is saying that transgender should be defined by a brain scan. It’s all about self-declaration.
So, it seems like transgender philosophy has two views which stand in opposition to each other. Either “brain sex” is real and matters, in which case the argument should be that we should start categorizing babies by brain scan instead of genitalia. Or, “brain sex” is irrelevant because self-declaration is what counts and nobody’s declared gender should be invalidated by a brain scan. There are far too many contradictions, not to mention the outright misogyny.
38
People who have XX chromosomes are women.
People who have XY chromosomes are men.
There is a small percentage of people who do not fit those categories just as there is a small chance that a flipped coin will land on its edge instead of one side or the other.
A person can call themselves whatever they like and live as they please. It's still a free country. But they can't require anyone else to agree with their delusions.
I don't understand how a war on biological reality has suddenly become the cause of the day. But whatever. Reality isn't going away.
371
@Lilo
Last comment. I am trans. I rarely get involved in arguing/discussing trans with cis people recognizing its like the Dutch boy plugging the endless dike, a waste, because not a person changes their outlook.
-All science shows trans is inborn. Research is only how.
-Biology/gender are not binary but on a spectrum.
-Biology includes brain and body; they don't match, but one doesn't discount what one cannot see or you'd argue molecules don't exist.
-Read a science book about this before forming an opinion.
-Default to give all people their rights.
7
@Lilo
Once upon a time people thought race was a biological reality, it wasn't, and science has basically blown away the concept of race, despite what Trump Nation believes. The religious right and other bigots still claim that being gay is a 'choice', that being straight is 'biological' and 'reality', because 'only heterosexual couples can have a baby together', but science has shown that to be untrue (among other things, that homosexuality is prevalent among mammals and birds, among other evidence)
It is a biological fact that all fetuses are female, until several months into the process, and it is a biological fact that the differentiation happens based on a series of events prenatally, and there is strong evidence gender identity forms there as well, and that it can vary, and this has been confirmed by studies and experiments, the same science that determined sexual orientation varies naturally. So no, transgender folk are real, they are not made up, any more than whites are not genetically superior or gays are unnatural, science has shown this.
11
@Lilo
Within some of the exceptions to XX and XY are XO (Turner’s Syndrome) which masculinizes a female and makes her sterile, and XYY men who show more aggression and make up an unexpectedly large percentage of men in prison.
I used to run a research lab at UCLA studying nature vs. nurture in XO girls from ages 3-10. Biology is destiny.
7
This essay is philosophically confused, ideologically challenged and detrimental to feminism. First, when you label ideas you disagree with “hate speech”, you have already lost my respect. If you have no argument except “I am offended”, why should I listen to you? Second, while I am very sympathetic to Butler’s notion that gender is performative, on the level of practical policy it is not much help. If the issue is wages inequality, for example, you have to designate a category that is being discriminated against, even if its edges are blurry. And finally, I have no problem with people calling themselves whatever they want and behaving in whatever way they want, but trans-people’s insistence on their “authentic” womanhood (or manhood) reifies the very categories they are trying to deconstruct. Just be yourself, and if “yourself” means performing as a feminine man or masculine woman, more power to you. But don’t tell me that your experience of adopting a child is the same as mine in giving birth.
213
@Mor
"But don’t tell me that your experience of adopting a child is the same as mine in giving birth."
You are missing the point. The whole point is that women's experiences are different, that is what the author is talking about. A woman who has given birth to a child and a woman who has adopted have two different experiences, but they are a woman, and outside some idiots, they both are mothers. In a sense, what you wrote is offensive, because it implies that a woman who has adopted is any less a mother or woman, and that is ridiculous. A woman who grows up in Saudi Arabia faces a lot worse treatment in terms of equality than a woman growing up in the US, she is definitely a lot more oppressed, does that means she is 'more authentic' than a white woman growing up in the US?
No one, especially a transgender person, would claim their experience makes them 'more authentic' than a women with a different experience, most transgender women will tell you that their experience is different, that they didn't grow up the same way, but that doesn't mean they aren't a woman. As much as CIS women face in society, transgender women face their own travails, they sadly face not just the rage and hate of the ill educated bigots, they face the wrath of those who should know better, they face the wrath of people like yourself who define being a woman based on something like giving birth or menstruating or facing discrimination from the time they are born.
4
@music observer Actually yes, I do believe that a woman who adopts a child is a different kind of mother than me. The fact that you find it offensive is not an argument. Gender is defined by cultural expectations, biology and personal experience. Being a woman in Saudi Arabia is not the same as being a woman in the US. Being a trans-person is not the same as being a biological female. I share biological experience with a woman in Saudi Arabia but I share nothing at all with a trans-woman, not least because I don’t understand why she wants to be a woman in the first place if it involves painful and unpleasant medical procedures. I have no problem with her calling herself whatever she wants but I am not willing to compromise my intellectual integrity to accommodate trans-people’s feelings.
27
@Mor, I work as a lactation consultant and have worked with many women and men who have adopted or had surrogates for their children, I am deeply saddened by your attitudes towards them.
5
No. The person may look like a woman, act like a woman, dress like a woman, but every cell in a transwoman's body has an xy chromosome. Further, the person does not have the experience, from childhood, of life as a socially inferior person. Also, the person has not experienced the physicality of femaleness. For all these important reasons, a transwoman is no more a woman than I am a robot when I dress as one for Halloween. Some things in life are just not possible. Live with it and prosper.
239
@Sharon WEll said Sharon!!!
12
I am a woman, born a woman. I have always been a bit of an outlier, not in gender identity, but because many of the so-called "women's issues" have anything to do with my life. I am single & childless, so while I care about many women whose life experience includes marriage and kids, issues like child care, abortion, domestic abuse, parental leave, and the schools are not MY personal issues. I care because I care about other women.
As to what it means to be a woman, I just do my own thing. I have never been a girly-girl, think that most "fashion" looks silly (especially in recent years - what average woman looks good in skin-tight tops and pants which top off around her tummy?), and can do my hair and makeup in less than 5 minutes. I currently do not even own one skirt or dress. If Catelyn Jenner is so very focused on her clothes, well that's her thing, not mine.
Imagine how much we women could do for this world, if we focused upon health instead of weight & our figures. Imagine a world where we simply accepted anyone into the club of womanhood who felt she belonged and wanted to work together to build a better society. Imagine if we stopped talking about "trans" and "cis" (a label I reject because it is foisted on me) and just came together as women.
19
@Anne-Marie Hislop you sound like a nice person but unfortunately, most women are not like you. Women are competing against other women for men, (if straight) and that's just nature and evolution. Sorry kid, the world isn't always fair.
@Anne-Marie Hislop
Some of us have daughters and granddaughters. I don't want them losing to male athletes in sports competitions for college scholarships. I don't want them to be forced to undress in locker rooms in front of boys. I don't want them to have to sit in some guy's urine on a toilet seat because all bathrooms have to be unisex, or to have to clean up first. I don't want them embarrassed when their periods happen, with snickering boys in the next stall listening to tampon wrappers.
5
The author is being a bit coy regarding the term "TERF," given that it is regularly applied to women who are not radical feminists. I don't think it's a slur, but its usage has become for women who are anti-trans bigots and as such it's usually delivered with contempt. It might be useful to simply call such women "anti-trans bigots."
13
@Birdy TERF is most definitely a misogynist slur. It's used to direct people with hateful or violent impulses toward women who disagree with the more controversial claims of transactivism (e.g., sexual dimorphism doesn't exist), even though those women are for trans rights and are not radical feminists.
6
Why is it acceptable, even commendable, for one philosophy professor to write this article but unacceptable for another philosophy professor like Rebecca Tuvel TO EVEN ASK the question whether transgender and transracial issues are comparable? Why did the journal Hypatia have to issue a profound apology and state, “clearly, the article should never have been published.” See the 2017 NYT article about the issue: https://nyti.ms/2rB6BmT
In the 2017 NYT article fellow academics state they found Rebecca Tuvel's work was "offensive" on several levels including for just being "false" and for "insufficient engagement with work by transgender and nonwhite scholars."
Yet in today's article the author could be challenged on similar grounds. Can't the following statement by Carol Hay be accused of failing to engage with a lot of science: "surely we don’t want to go back to the days of defining women by their hormones or even their chromosomes — if for no other reason than we’d leave out the estimated 1.7 percent of women who are intersex."
91
@Pantagruel
Easy answer, there is a difference between an op ed in the NY Times and an academic journal. When you publish in an academic journal, you are not writing opinion, you are supposed to be writing something that can be backed up with facts and logical arguments (and I don't know Hypathia from a hole in the wall, though from its title I can imagine what it is about). Put it this way, people have been called out in academic journals for being biased and haters when they publish papers supposedly showing that race is tied to intelligence and the like. This piece is not an academic piece written for a journal it is an op ed piece which is about opinion.
2
@music observer
Except for cases of deliberate fraud, academic journals are supposed to only allow other academics to refute what you wrote, and are not supposed to respond to an orchestrated campaign to take you and your article down because it offends their sensibilities and allows the others to signal their virtue.
The truth, however unpleasant, is the goal of scholarship not the preservation of hurt feelings.
15
Their DNA:
That's who counts as a woman.
Transgender can do what they want, call themselves what they want, dress the way they want even have sex change operations and that will NOT change the fact that they are something other than a woman.
Men will always be stronger than women.
And I do not want a man who has not had a sex change operation in my locker room. My privacy is as important as his.
118
@esp
"Men will always be stronger than women."
A man at his physical peak may have more physical strength than the average woman, but Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs at tennis.
3
@esp I work in a hospital. What is amusing is when you have transgender women - who are often not adhering to their hormonal regimens and who could certainly never afford nor meet the psychological criterion for surgery, not in a million years - being admitted to the hospital and DEMANDING to be cohorted in a room with a biological female. They will insist. Now we don't cohort them with men, because plainly they are vulnerable to men and that would be wrong, but many if not most women do not want to be cohorted with intact males. If you try to force the issue, they [the women] will usually leave AMA, as they feel their rights are being violate and they don't feel safe.
So, we place the transgender person in a private room. Nice and safe, everyone happy right? Nope!! Its got to be with an actual woman or the transgender is going to file a grievance.
30
@Medusa one example out of millions. if that's the case, how come women and men don't compete together in sports? Your logic is flawed and biology shows you're wrong.
7
Why use cis-trans? Can a man or woman be a woman or man merely by saying so? What relevance is there in the fact that most trans people are queer? I agree about the asymmetry in the issues raised about trans males vs trans females.
7
@Kevin M Ross
Most trans people are heterosexual males, just like Bruce Jenner.
6
As cis-woman who was a tomboy as a kid and is still not terribly "feminine" by traditional standards, I still don't accept that being a woman has nothing to do with biology.
Of course there is a huge amount of variation across cultures and classes in how the norm is defined, but it is silly to argue that if a category has fuzzy borders, it doesn't exist. "healthy" is a fuzzy class, "rich" and "poor" as well. Even animal species have fuzzy borders. Does not mean those aren't meaningful categorieslem for most social purposes.
Most women have no problem identifying as women because their natural inclinations fall well within the limits of their society's female norms, because most societies have norms that accord with what most women's natural inclinations are.
That the smaller number of us who have inclinations different from the majority experience some difficulty, says nothing about the existence of the general category
I can well accept that those at the more extreme limits may identify more with the other gender, and may wish to formally be accepted as being of that gender, and having some procedure for making that happen legally is fine. Just don't claim you ARE that gender just as much as someone who is biologically of that gender since birth.
And stop calling anyone who disagrees with you a "hater", that is projection: since Progressives seem to be unable to not hate those they disagree with, they assume the same about others.
113
@AG
Your post was a nice synthesis of one facet of belief in this multifaceted argument —it's not mine, but I'm grateful for your cogent presentation.
I'm disappointed, then, that you had to sour it in your last lines by saying "... since Progressives seem to be unable to not hate those they disagree with, they assume the same about others."
Why make such a mean-spirited generalisation in a forum where the entirety of the discussion is founded on combating those same sort of reflexive judgements?
10
Now, here's what I will NEVER get.
I don't get men who want to be women.
I DO get why a woman would want to be a man - but why would any man want to be a woman?
Now, if we were all equal within the Constitution, then I wouldn't give a fig. Why would I?
But we are not all equal within the Constitution. Are these men simply ignorant of that fact? I know that many women are, that someone told them that the 14th had that covered, but any anatomical woman who must be aware of pregnancy, should, by now, be painfully aware that's men's reproduction is NOT regulated - but a woman's is.
The 14th Amendment is not 'one size fits all'.
Until the Equal Rights Amendment is passed - one more state needed! - males and females in this country are NOT legally equal.
Now, as for that 'draft'.
Tell your Congress that you will never sign up for the draft until the ERA is passed.
No equality?
No signing up.
And, if it were me, then the only reason I would sign up would be to have a draft card to burn in the Boston Commons. I don't fight 'corporate wars'.
What else is there in the 'comments'?
Oh, make-up, hair and clothes.
I haven't changed a thing in 50 years.
Work shirts, jeans, cowboy boots, a snarly top-knot, only lipstick and lots of silver and gold.
Even for funerals and weddings.
I don't care if anyone is masc2fem or fem2masc.
Not my business.
My business is legal equality.
Pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
27
How peculiar that many of the same people who champion the intense feelings of transgender people simultaneously deny that biological gender differences exist.
88
I’ll admit, I struggle to reconcile my views on feminism with my views on trans-issues. I accept a transwoman as a woman, but I do create a separate space for them apart from woman, or perhaps not apart from, but aside to. I like to think, however, that it is no different than the distinctions I mentally make between say a woman who has broken her body to bear and birth a child and a woman who has embraced another’s child as her own and climbed the steep hill of adoption. Both are mothers, absolutely, and while raising that child their experiences may converge into identical strands. Their love for their children is real, absolutely. But their origins to motherhood and their physical experiences are different. And I do not know how great a difference that difference means to their experiences as a mother. I only know that there is a difference. (And within that, I realize that differences exist from one birth story to the next, but nonetheless, each birth story contains certain fundamentals of a physical experience that cannot be mimicked outside of the physical realm.)
16
The overwhelming takeaway I get from this article is: Run away from all human beings to the greatest extent possible.
45
There is nothing more encouraging in the doctrinal wars than having one group of committed believers take on another that is equally fervent.
Then the multitudes of those who yearn for a return to cultural moderation can enjoy a respite in which they are able just to sit on the sidelines and observe.
14
@ERP
Biological sex is not a matter of belief.
8
I was the tallest kid in my grade school class. My shoulders are broad and I am physically strong. I loathe makeup, fingernail polish, fragile, revealing clothing, and I am this close to sending anyone involved in high fashion to a re-education camp in the rice paddies. I sometimes carry a deer-skinning knife, a snake-bite kit, and I pretty much always carry binoculars. I scroll right past Facebook baby photos and linger over photos of dogs and nature scenes. Most of my long-term friends are male. I read and write books and I am unabashedly opinionated.
I am XX. And that makes me a woman. I have had to fight to say this. Fight against those who would dress me in frills and heels. Fight against those who called me "The Female Hulk" and "He-she." Fight against men who told me I was unworthy of marriage because I was "unfeminine."
Now trans activists are even more shrill, more empowered, more punitive in their attack on me and other women like me. They want to strip away my identity as a woman, and replace it with Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair: tens of thousands of dollars in plastic surgery, cleavage, near nudity, and hands planted firmly behind the back, signalling helplessness. The concept of a "female brain," a concept that crushed me in my youth when it meant no math or rationality. That, suddenly is a woman. If I object, I am an oppressor, and must be punished.
595
What trans activists have attacked you, and why?
How about being a little more explicit?
8
Jer, huh. I would ask: Which trans activists do not attack women who feel as Danusha does?
52
@Jerry Engelbach
Don't be obtuse, Jerry.
47
One advantage of being a non-plausible trans woman is men tend to leave me alone. And advantage most cis women don't have. Further, I am proud to have crossed over as they say, too.
However, I have issue with those trans who claim to have known they were women at 5 years. Also, I have issue with mid-life trans who know what it's like to be female and a woman. Regardless, transwomen have no idea what it's like to be a genetic female and never will. OTOH, I am a transsexual and proud of the improvement in my life since transition. Fortunately, there's been tremendous change and acceptance of the gender and orientation variant persons, We manage to survive and thrive where once we were marginalized and murdered--not everyone considering the number of transwomen murdered every year.
36
27 transwomen were murdered last year in the United States.
3,895 women were also murdered.
By men they knew, loved and trusted.
9
TERF is hate speech and I am almost surprised this paper published this essay. This essay is also completely disingenuous, as there is a difference between biological sex and gender. Biological sex cannot be changed; gender is a construct. As for the question " Is there some set of core experiences distinctive of womanhood, some shared set of adventures and exploits that every woman will encounter on her journey from diapers to the grave?" Absolutely. We encounter discrimination from birth to grave, often before birth. This does not happen to biological males. Someone who experienced the ubiquitous discrimination as a female from birth to age 18 then decides to live as a woman, without menstruation, without fear of unwanted pregnancy, without fear of being physically overwhelmed by a partner who is five inches taller and 30 lbs heavier on average....such a person cannot claim to be a woman. I am willing to call such persons Lisa or Jill because those are just names, but I am not willing to deny factual reality and diminish my own suffering and those of the more than 3 billion actual women who inhabit the planet.
336
@Anne
Excellent comment. This is one male who is deeply disturbed by what I perceive as misogynistic and anti-gay currents running through the "trans activist" community and its Orwellian insistence that all others must deny their sense of reality to conform to theirs.
I think calling "TERF" hate speech might be going too far — not a huge fan of the concept — but "TERF" is an absurdly concocted insult to women who simply want to prevent men from intruding (yet again) on their issues and spaces.
57
@Anne,
I would have more sympathy for what you call your suffering if you showed an ounce of sympathy for the torture that is experienced by transgenders who have had to lead furtive lives or been subject to ostracism and abuse as a result of revealing who they are.
Your self-characterization of female-as-victim may have some truth to it, but that does not diminish the suffering of others nor excuse your callous dismissal of it.
9
@Anne
TERF is not hate speech, it is an accurate acronym to describe exactly what you are. A Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Just because you want it to be a slur doesn't mean it is one.
7
I learned much from reading Kristin Beck's "Warrior Princess." I laughed when Caitlyn Jenner said she was concerned that her new physiology would affect her ability to drive a golf ball 300 yards. And, years ago, I cringed when Chas Bono told NPR that after getting testosterone, he felt more male, more emotionally controlled and more technology and gadget oriented. I'm a 65 year old, gadget oriented, athletic-oriented woman (cis?) who feels more today like the person I was and wanted to be when, in the 1960's, in Catholic grammar school, I naively told some women in our parish that I wanted to play with and play like the boys. I meant basketball. I ended up being played "with" and impregnated before sixth grade, an experience from which I emerged having my one and only born child taken from me, left with a scarred and well, demolished, reproductive system and following that part of the left hemisphere of my brain removed. I came only in my fifties to remember what had happened to me and I suggest that few people have been left as physically carved up and compartmentalized by other peoples' gender assumptions and proscriptions than I have been. Working class females suffer the worst gender bias - much of it originating from academia. Ms. Hay writes, "If we don’t like what we see when trans women turn the mirror of femininity toward us, we have only ourselves to blame." Who is this "we" she speaks of? I've often heard, "well, you're different." Aren't we all?
88
@Debra Merryweather
I am so sorry.
19
We dedicate too much complexity to this simplicity.
It is not who counts as a woman.
Outside of the recognition of gravidity, there should be no legal distinctions between
a woman and a man in any form whatsoever.
Get the ERA improved, ratified and go forward.
We are afraid to submit to our true human animal nature.
But science continues to confirm it and beneath the societal/ religious frivolities we know it to be true as well, even if some prefer the "Mom and apple pie" role.
After menopause and andropause and all of the hormonal complications that afflict and enrich our early lives,
what differences remain?
It's not a philosophical question
as much as a limited, biological question.
Beyond reproduction we are the same beasts.
Our laws should recognize no distinctions.
And beyond that, it should be just like like Jenner's quip for all of us, "...figuring out what to wear."
7
Unlawful discrimination inheres in treating similarly situated people differently. The oppression inflicted on trans women and natal women is often similar; however, this is not always the case. Sex (not gender expression, but the fact of being born in a body that is presumed to be capable of child-bearing) is a discrete axis of oppression: trans-girls are not married off at 11 years old, will never need an abortion, do not have to bear the humiliation of period issues or the exclusion from activities girls experience in many cultures, and do not experience the same rates of domestic violence. Trans women obviously need protection and accommodation, but natal women should not be expected to forego the accommodations they have fought for that address the above-referenced issues. Trans women should be addressing those demands for space and accommodation to the power structure. Not to another marginalized group of people.
Where trans women's needs can be addressed without compromising the needs and safety of their natal female sisters, space and accommodations can and should be shared. However, in any circumstance where accommodating trans women compromises the space and legal protection of natal women, the two groups are per se not "similarly situated," and preserving the natal women's sex-segregated accommodation does not constitute unlawful discrimination.
125
Sounds like a red herring to me.
Under what circumstances would a cis woman be sacrificing her own needs for those of a trans woman?
5
@Jerry Engelbach
When trans women and girls claim spots on women's sports teams, on advisory boards seeking a woman's viewpoint, in women's shelters, etc., they are taking accommodations that natal women have fought for and need to address sex-based oppression. When they claim funding intended to address women's health issues or selective abortions in other countries, they are taking natal women's set asides. It would be one thing if funding and representation and space out there in the world were roughly equal with that of men, but it isn't. Since men have the greater share of the resources, trans women should be insisting that men cede power and space to them where trans interests diverge from those of natal women.
44
@Jerry Engelbach
Female privacy, buddy.
There's barely one corner of the planet where men and boys do not invade the privacy of girls and women. Keep it in your pants and out of the few spaces females can escape to, which is usually a bathroom. Let that roll around for a moment inside your head - above the shoulders: A bathroom is all females have.
34
If a trans woman expects me to think of him/her as a "non-trans" woman I'm afraid I can't do that. It's too disruptive of the way I think about women, a way I believe to be justified, having history, culture, and biology in mind. I don't know what else I should have in mind. There is a difference.
75
That really has nothing to do with the point of the article.
You are free to think about people in whatever way you like.
It's how you treat them that matters.
3
Adichie's criticism of a person who at one time lived as a man, with all the privileges of a man, and then became a woman, has a familiar ring to it: It brings to mind the third person in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son. It's the other brother, the one who was always there for the father, who didn't run off and do wild things before returning. That other son's jealous rage at how the returning son is treated is understandable, of course. But it is also wrong.
4
You can't have it both ways. Either sex is a cultural construct or it's not. If it is, enlightenment for the trans-gendered - and all of us - would be an identity not dependent on stereotypical male and female attributes. If it isn't purely a social construct, enlightenment would be acceptance of those attributes which which are gender specific while pushing and exploring the boundaries. In either case, true acceptance of the trans gendered would include acknowledgement of their biology and their behavior, not just the latter.
19
I don't see any argument that gender is a cultural construct, except from bigots.
A trans person feels like they are the opposite sex than that into which they were born.
That's innate, not cultural.
1
@Jerry Engelbach
"Feels like", not "is"
Just because the feelings are innate, doesnt mean the feelings are an accurate reflection of biological fact.
2
One can only listen and try to understand how it feels to have a gender-identity problem -- if one of the more fortunate who were very clear about our gender identity from early childhood. It is good that they who have that orientation speak out and explain themselves. Otherwise the rest of us simply have no way of knowing or understanding.
6
I think that we're perfectly capable of knowing and understanding without having it spelled out for us.
Human beings can be pretty perceptive and accepting, unless they wall themselves off out of fear of "The Other."
2
@Penseur It's not "more fortunate" to be clear about gender identity from birth. It's called being normal. Trans is not normal. It's out of the norm. Most people are not trans. Why are we sooooo into this right now when the relative percentage of this type of a person is so small?
6
"And surely we don’t want to go back to the days of defining women by their hormones or even their chromosomes — if for no other reason than we’d leave out the estimated 1.7 percent of women who are intersex."
Ms. Hay briefly mentions the most logical, scientific, and consistent way to define womanhood, and then she dismisses it as outdated because it leaves out a tiny minority. Why? If a child is born with only one leg, we don't suddenly say that humans aren't bipeds. If I say that humans can see and hear, I'm not disrespecting the blind or deaf. Transgender and intersex people deserve to be treated with respect, but disorders of sexual development don't negate sexual dimorphism. Neither does gender dysphoria.
691
I think it's clear that the phrase you cite left out the word "only."
2
@Jay Gill thank you.
27
@Jay Gill Also, intersex people have a sex. They are not transgender. They just have disorders of sexual development. They are not some new sex.
56
I have XX chromosomes, physically developed as a woman, have female hormones and a female body. I have been harassed for being a woman and disapproved of, in part because I have never been particularly interested in wearing makeup or fixing my hair the right way or all that interested in fashion as women are stereotypically supposed to do. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that I am a woman down to the most minute cell.
149
And transgender women feel the same way.
4
@Bookworm8571 you speak for me.
9
@Jerry Engelbach How, exactly, does someone know he feels like a woman when he wasn’t born in a woman’s body and hasn’t had experiences as a female? It’s not possible for me to know what it’s like to be a man because I was not born male. I can try to imagine it or try to imitate it but it would be acting and probably based on stereotypes and outside observations.
It may well be that some small percentage of people are exposed to more of the opposite sex’s hormones I never utero and something goes awry that causes the brain to be more like the other sex. That seems to be the biological cause of same sex attractions. But that doesn’t make someone a woman or a man — it makes them trans. I don’t particularly want to change in an open locker room with a person who has male body parts, regardless of how he identifies. They should use private stalls. He or she should not be competing in sports against biological men or women either if It puts girls a ton a physical disadvantage.
18
I think the problem lies in what most people are willing to do for a civil society.
I truly believe that everyone has the right to not be abused, as long as they are not abusive.
What I don't believe is that everyone has a right to be accepted.
When I see an article about a pregnant man, my inside voice says "men don't get pregnant, they don't have a uterus". My outside voice (especially to my daughter!) says I hope all goes well for him.
What I say and do are often different than what I think and feel. That is true for most of us, if we are honest.
We need to get along. Sexual confusion has been around since Adam and Eve, whoever and whatever they identified as!
28
I think everyone does have a right to be accepted.
And most of your post actually says that as well, despite your disclaimer.
1
@Jerry Engelbach
I appreciate your comment, Jerry. My point was that whether or not I accept the premise that someone can become something they are not does not entitle me to treat them without decency. It's when I am told that I have to believe something (gender fluidity comes to mind), that I draw a line. I will call someone anything they want to be called, but I do not accept that they are who they want to be.
3
Like so much of this variety of Philosophy - there is no argument here other than using pejorative terms like 'terfs'.
The contention that being a woman is a lived experience put forward by the terfs is at least some sort of an argument.
Philosophy of language has much to say about this as it addresses what is a 'woman'.
If I had one wish in the world it would be that 'feminist' philosophers read a bit of Wittgenstein: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
31
@SteveRR
Agreed. But ...
We have arrived at meta-philosophy, the philosophical examination of philosophy.
What is the proper larger analytical framework?
Is it ontological or epistemological? Something else?
There are so many assumptions, historical traditions, terms, processes and aims to deal with in both areas.
I certainly am not up to the task of comparing and resolving the complexities involved.
Wittgenstein's linguistic reductionism failed to acknowledge Poppers' questions that led to the development of the philosophy of science.
Wittgenstein, a meta-philosopher, believed that he had reached the very end of philosophical discourse, a point where there nothing left fo philosophers to do.
He stubbed is toe on Popper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Poker
But then, who of us lives in the rarified world of meta -philosophy?
3
@Meta1
Thanks for taking the time to read and engage with my comment.
But no - Wittgenstein is not a meta-philosopher.... nor have I ever heard him called a reductionist. The famous Poker incident (of film and play and literature) is apocryphal.
A simple perusal of On Certainty and Philosophical Investigations and the mountain of literature produced on him suggests that he is both: a meta-philo and a philo of meaning.
Here is a well argued paper by David Stern
https://goo.gl/LNcffd
2
@SteveRR
Thank you too for the discussion.
I do have a question for you.
In one paragraph you say that "Wittgenstein is not a meta-philosopher." In the same paragraph, you say that, " the mountain of literature produced on him suggests that he is both: a meta-philo and a philo of meaning."
The philosophy of meaning is a sub-category of meta-philosophy. Is it not?
Need I say more?
Please note, I am enjoying our conversation tremendously.
2
"Is it menstruation or childbirth? Nope — lots of women don’t experience those, either by fate or by choice."
This is disingeneous. It's not whether you give birth or not, it's that the possibility exists that you can get pregnant for a large chunk of your life. For better or worse.
512
@rtjExcuse me. I am infertile. I never had the possibility of getting pregnant. I am still a woman.
15
@rtj I don't understand this. Many women can't get pregnant.
5
@rtj. Sure, lots of women don’t give birth, but I have never heard of lots of women not menstruating.
13
The perceived threat seems to be regarding femininity and privilege and feeling YOU have a right to say who someone else knows themselves to be. Whether TERFs get it or not trans women are women. Some transitioned at such a young age that they have no experience in the world as men, some transitioned so long ago, many have lived a seamless a female experience for decades.
They aren't stereotypes femininity, they're themselves, as with all women, some are more feminine than others. Rude comments rarely discuss trans men because culturally it's expected that people might WANT that privilege. Ironically, it has nothing to do with wanting male privilege or female privilege, it is merely about accepting who you are even when society is too bigoted or short-sighted to see that (or believe it).
As for trans athletes, the IOC and USATF have medical requirements to compete. An advantage, really? So why didn't they win ALL the medals at the last Olympics? They didn't win ANY. Trans women can't have testosterone in their systems for more than a year, even at normal female levels. If you don't think it makes a difference then try it. Yes, a six-foot runner has a longer stride, but there are plenty of six-foot tall cis-women (and women with high T levels) and we're not asking to ban them. Trans people are more than 0.6% of the population. How many marathons and other competitions are there a year? One out of 200 should be won by a trans person just based on random distribution.
11
@Joanna
The high school level is where the controversy is, giving young women a chance to compete fairly. I do not understand how so called feminists could insist that young women must compete against bigger and stronger biological men.
146
@Joanna. Dishonest much? "They" didn't win any medals because the Olympics is clinging to some semblance of sanity, as are most countries, which do not permit non-females from entering the ranks of their female athletes at the games.
When we lose that, we lose opportunities for real women everywhere. This is 99% sick predatory virtue signalling by non-trans activists looking to gain raw political power. It needs to be confronted as a power game.
28
@William,
You're erroneously assuming that every male is bigger, stronger, and has more athletic ability than every woman.
2
It's unspeakably disheartening how the great civil rights movements of the 20th century have devolved from the aspiration to make race, gender & sexual orientation irrelevant to the demand that they be determinative. Instead of fighting the laws & practices that constrain people, we now expend our energies navel-gazing, endlessly analyzing & policing attitudes that people don't know they have, and definitions that should not matter.
Not only is it "difficult to equate" the experience of a cis woman and a transgender woman, it's difficult, rather impossible, to equate the experiences of any two human beings. The point is not to decide who or what other people are. The point is to fight against the laws & practices that tell us who or what we may be. For Glamour magazine to honor Caitlin Jenner is insulting not because she's trans, but because her politics & morality are atrocious. Actions & character define a person, not identity. Fights over identity and definitions no longer liberate anyone except the politicians and pundits who cash in on the battle.
189
@Martin
No, the magazine making a celebrity poseur man "Woman of the Year" WAS insulting and, equally, stupid.
They couldn't find even ONE woman out of 3.5 billion females.
24
Thanks for opening a doorway to conversation in this space. What our grandchildren (if life survives on this planet) will think about this we cannot yet imagine. I move through the world as a man-person. Inside I have always been a girl and a woman, one who happens to be comfortable in the anatomy I was born into. Who and what am I? What are my labels, titles? We don't yet have the words for the likes of me. But our grandchildren probably will.
5
The difficulties of discussing this issue are compounded by the confusion around the terms 'sex' and 'gender'. It used to be that 'gender is a social construct' and 'sex is biological'. Now the terms seem to be used interchangeably. Not helpful.
62
I think people are smart enough (those who use their smarts) to understand the terminology in context.
@Cavatina
In fact, the terms seemed to have been reversed. “Biological sex” is now supposedly a social construct, and “gender identity” is apparently an innate/biological fact. This is deeply troubling given how feminists have long argued AGAINST gender roles and stereotypes, and FOR sex-based protections like reproductive justice. We are in the upside down.
69
I find pieces like this extremely puzzling. The author uses "female" and "woman" often quite casually as if we are all supposed to know what those words mean, yet also seems to be claiming that these categories don't share any essential defining characteristics in her attempt to rid these identities of the sin of "exclusion." If the author wants to include "trans women" in some group identity she is referring to as "women," maybe she should start by explaining what exactly she means by "women" instead of assuming we all agree on what that is.
210
@J. And if there is no meaning to being male or female, a man or a woman, why bother to identify as either? What it means to “feel female” is often rife with stereotypes.
53
Love the conclusion of this article. As I read I immediately was drawing comparisons to what MY experience as a woman has been, whereas it is certainly true that other women's experiences have been extremely different from my own.
As the director of an art gallery with a show called Photographing The Female opening Friday, I have been consistently confronted with this concept of "the female experience" - we are showing short films and photographs from around the world, and one thing is clear: the diversity of these experiences - here in the United States and around the world - cannot be summed up into one essential "female" experience.
It is also worth noting that trans women have always felt female but were forced to "play the part" of men before they finally! - finally! - felt comfortable enough to come out as the women they always knew themselves to be. Who are we to tell them their experiences are not worthy?
I hope that, in the future, society will permit us to define the female experience for ourselves in as an inclusive manner as possible.
(And, regarding Ms. Jenner, we've all had the misfortune to say poorly thought out things aloud from time to time - most of us are just lucky enough not to have them repeated back at us through eternity in the echo chamber of the media!)
15
@Christine O'Donnell Define "feeling female" without using sex stereotypes or circular logic.
5
Trans people might do better to get on with it and stop trying to mold all thinking/expresssion on the subject by others who perceive things in a different way. If you did not give a fig about changing society, would you live the same way? The idea that you need to get other people to agree that your way of life is the "same" or "equal" is a powerful spur to controversy. Americans do not agree on which lifestyle is best and never will. The idea that you must establish new principles of political correctness regarding the trans life is felt by many to be coercive. This is not say that trans people do not have equal rights before the law which is untenable.
87
The comments in this space and just about anywhere one sees anything about trans people, especially trans women, show exactly why education and legal protections are necessary. Trans women (in particular) are endangered by the attitudes I see in the comments here. Most of them really do just want to get on with their lives, without being pointed at, called out, pushed, beaten, and murdered at a much higher rate than other women. But then you probably don’t care that much, since your use of the term “political correctness” suggests that you think it would be much better to go back to the days when the kinds of insults our current leader spews were just normal, back to the days when trans people kept their identities secret, lived on the margins of society, and died by their own hands or from the anger of others (still excused as ‘trans panic’).
9
@WJF
Such a lovely sentiment from your cushy position of privilege. I know you think you mean well, but your tough love is misdirected.
Do you know that by the time they are 20, 40% of transgender youth have ACTIVELY tried to commit suicide?
Do you know that the rate of suicide decreased significantly for gay and lesbian youths after marriage equality?
Do you know the sort of abuse that trans people get physically, emotionally and in the workplace?
Essentially, we need to make room in society for people who don't neatly fall into the buckets of binary sexual orientation and gender identity. Period, full stop.
And that means that people like you and me, unaffected but still sharing an earth with them, must stand up for their rights. To not do so is to be okay with the message of intolerance that drives so many young people to want to off themselves. And for what? Because they don't fall into a prescribed mode of behavior? For that reason, they are to choose between a life of derision and abuse or doing something to harm themselves? Might we not create some room for them? What will it cost you?
My answer: nothing. It costs nothing to be nice, to be inclusive and to be empathetic. It not only costs nothing, it yields rewards because by understanding another, we oft better get ourselves.
9
@Anne Stanton I would never say or do anything against a trans person. But commenting on an article is not "spewing hate"- it's respectful disagreement. And frankly, as a woman, I do have a right to be offended by the idea that someone who was born a man thinks they are the same as me. They're not. They have different struggles and can form their own rights organizations- not hitch on to the feminist movement, which is about women's rights.
81
The article takes the position that "woman" is a normative category of identity that no individual woman can actually fulfill. In philosophy, this is a "nominalist" position, which is that "names" (in this case "woman") are just conventional labels that enable us to group individual entities (in this case individual people) into a single category. The label itself does not suggest that the individual entity itself contains some "essence" that makes it what it is.
The opposing position, the "realist" position, argues that the entity to which a name is applied contains something essential that makes it what it is. So in this case, a "realist" would say that the name "woman" is only applied to an entity which contains something "essential," in its substance, that makes them a woman.
It seems that the answer must be somewhere in between and that the two sides will never agree. How do "nominalists" address the issues related to chromosomes and biology? Why do realists (in this case "TERFS") have an investment in defining "real women"? I don't think the nominalist/realist debate has ever been or ever will be settled.
Pragmatically speaking, people should be able to construct their identities how they choose and be considered full human beings, living their lives, without all of us being obsessed by what they "ARE." We need to strive for mutual acceptance and respect, not perfect philosophical agreement. You can't force someone to believe something they don't believe.
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@Clarice
Excellent delineation of the underlying terrain of the topic.
For those of us amused by fantasy literature, it is interesting to note that in many cases one of the key tenets of magic is the idea that a name IS the object. Hence, by learning the "true" name allows you some degree of control of it. Realist to the max!
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Are there authors out there who are thinking and writing on “Who Counts as a Man”? Why is the trans movement being centered on women, and their acceptance (or not) of trans people? I do not see balance in the way trans issues are discussed, and the imbalance obscures the conversation. In the meanwhile, issues which affect many many more women are left to languish.
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@Pat - Yes! I agree it is disheartening that the main "battleground" for the transgender movement seems to be forcing women to give up on being able to compete against other women in female sports, or using single sex bathrooms, or even being allowed to define being a woman as having been born with female reproductive parts. It feels less a civil rights issue and more just plain about misogyny. Even some of the arguments are designed to totally let men off the hook - for instance we are told that transgender people should get to use women bathrooms in part so they feel safe - come again, so the issue is not changing men's attitudes that it is not alright to beat up someone who is different, no instead we should focus on getting women to accommodate this
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@Pat because patriarchy. see also how the violence men transact against women is every day and routine but the violence men transact against trans women is exceptional
the problem in the world is the violence of men
trans women are committing violence against women by declaring themselves other than trans women
also, TERF is a slur
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@Pat Very good point. The media strongly prioritizes the narratives of trans women over trans men. A man's experience of transitioning, and inhabiting womanhood, is what defines the discourse. Peel off the layers and It's the same old gender imbalance. This is just the 21st century version of it.
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My issue with trans women is that many seem to reduce being female to wearing makeup, dresses, heels, painting fingernails, and being vulnerable. These are presented as necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman.
If gender is defined by clothing-- then I am a trans male. I wear no make-up, I do not paint my fingernails, and I wear pants (I love wearing a suit). And I do not feel vulnerable when I walk down the street.
People can dress however they want. But please do not tell me that wearing a dress and makeup defines being a woman. It is that reductionism that I find demeaning, and that is what the feminists I know object to.
I understand the need to have a public presentation of an essential part of being that has been hidden away. There is common ground of shared experiences between cis and trans women, as the author points out. That gets lost in the overriding emphasis by many trans women and the media on the "trappings" of being a woman, which reduces being a woman to hair, makeup and clothes.
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@JBM They like to claim that the hormones "confirm"their gender identity, which is entirely based on an internal feeling. If true that would mean that all women past menopause are actually men.
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@JBM
As a trans-women myself you are absolutely right, wearing makeup, dresses, and wearing nail polish do not make me or any other trans person, a women. Very few trans-women claim that. I havent painted my nails in months, I often just wear my hair in a pony tail, and I haven't worn a dress in.....6 months maybe.
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@JBM: "... seem to reduce being female to wearing makeup, dresses, heels, painting fingernails, and being vulnerable."
I don't think this is necessarily true. And I think you are confusing cross-dressing with being trans.
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A certain strain of Feminism is starting to repeatedly smash against the cold, hard rocks of what real equality means.
We saw it recently in their reactions to the American court decision that *OF COURSE* women must be subject to the same draft ("Selective Service") regulations as men and we're seeing it again here in their reactions to trans-women. Recently, in Vancouver (BC), a group that provides social services tried to ban trans-women from access to the services that they were providing; the Vancouver City Council decided that, if indeed, trans people have equal rights, you don''t get to discriminate against them because they're not woman enough for your tastes and as a result, they defunded that group.
The striving for equality will continue, but it's likely to be a bumpy road for a while longer yet.
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@Atlant Schmidt It would perhaps be fair to explain that the Vancouver-based association was a shelter for rape victims, raising questions about why a rape victim should be housed in the same quarters, sometimes even sharing a room, with a trans person, who may be male-bodied. After such a harrowing experience, a woman will always be inclined to fear being in the same quarters with anyone who is male-bodied, however female they present. There are certain areas in life where some women just feel more comfortable in women-only spaces. I myself have a male ob/gyn for example, but many of my friends insist on going to a woman for their pap smear.
While I have absolutely no issue with trans people, I do worry about the implications of people who falsely present as trans people, not always with the best intentions (voyeurism, rape, assault, ...). There is a well-known case of such a person in BC...
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@April Mayo
Thanks for making my point clear: "A certain strain of Feminism is starting to repeatedly smash against the cold, hard rocks of what real equality means."
You seem to believe that discrimination is okay as long as it's discrimination that you approve of; that you believe has valid reasons. The Vancouver City Council, as a public body bound by a very clear non-discrimination law, had no such option.
As I say, it's going to be a bumpy road for a while longer.
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@Atlant Schmidt You didn't mention that the social service being provided was a rape-crisis centre, whose traumatised women didn't want to share their rooms with men, even men who are now women. This is the fundamental problem. Only one side is allowed to have feelings about this. For the women who choose not to share their room or therapy groups with men are deemed wrong and even more traumatized. Same with another lawsuit currently in Canada, about the pre-op trans woman demanding access to women-only bikini waxing shops. The women in these places should be forced to shave male genitalia? According to your logic, yes they have to.
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We are who we feel we are. No one else can decide if we are legitimate. It's that simple but very difficult for some people to accept.
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@BSR Feelings don't trump reality. Feelings can change from moment to moment or day to day. Like it or not there are objective truths in this world.
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@Mandrake,
Feelings are reality. And just as objective as physical objects.
Not all feelings ae permanent, but that doesn't negate those that are.
Your psychology is less mutable than you may think. The rigidity of your post alone suggests that.
If I feel I am the King of England does that mean people should people accept that I am the King of England? @BSR
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Why do we separate sports by gender in the first place? Women can’t compete and win against men. It’s a biological fact, inconvenient though it may be. If transgender women are able to compete against cisgender women, then what’s the point of separating by gender in the first place?
It’s not fair. Period.
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@Jennifer
Agree. And concern for women's sports is not just about recreation: the reluctance of many teenage and older women to engage in athletic activity is a public health issue. Anything that makes it harder or more difficult for girls and women to play sports is an attack on women's health.
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@Jennifer Olympic equestrian sports are not separated by gender. They are divided into a number of disciplines, and all are populated by many women as well as men. The horse sports also boast the oldest competitors across the olympic spectrum: the average age of the human half of the equation is 39, and there have been riders in their 70s competing. Last year the top three dressage riders were women, and the top two dressage horses in the world were mares.
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I would call sports a special case. How many trans people really get involved? Do you define a whole place of being because of a few?
Also from what I've seen the hormones and treatments on both sides render people who would also be out of place competing with those of their birth sex.
Oh, and I don't accept "Women can’t compete and win against men" as an absolute fact. It depends on the sport and the who. The Boston Marathon is coming up and while the fasted man will undoubtedly finish ahead of the fastest woman there will be thousands of women who will finish with better times than men.
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This opinion piece completely fails to deal with an overriding issue. Within the last week, it was reported that in a women's marathon (pehaps CT?), first and second place was won by a biological man. I have no problem with biological men who want to live their life as women, but if you pretend that they are biological women, despite the obvious differences between the sexes, you are giving an unfair edge in athletic competitions.
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@skeptic
It was a HS girls sprint race (100 & 200 Meter Ste champs in CT) and 2 dudes took the top 2 spaces, and the (actual) girl who finished 3rd was made to feel bad because her initial reaction was that I won the girls race because the 2 dudes who beat me are dudes - I saw the photos, they look like dudes, biceps, mustaches, etc.
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@stan - yes and what makes that case even more alarming is that the 2 transgender people competed as boys during the indoor track season, but did not win. They switched to the girls teams for outdoor track and won their races - making me wonder is it really about being included, or is it about being able to dominate.
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@VJO,
What makes this case alarming is that there are several posters here who are determined to generalize about a whole group of people — who are actually a tiny part of the population — based on one anomalous incident.
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Women's locker rooms, women's sports and girls' sports are not called "women's" because they are for people of female gender; both locker rooms and sports are separated on the basis of sex. The separation has its justification in the differences between male and female anatomy, not "gender perception."
It is likely people who can afford to get degrees from soi-disant elite institutions in subjects like gender studies are not familiar with the locker rooms most of hoi polloi use. In my Y, gang showers and common changing areas were built in a hundred years ago and changing them is impossible.
One way to tell whether you really have a "female brain" is to check whether it is instinctively modest about being in the presence of male anatomy. A normal woman usually feels threatened and insulted by the proximity of a male organ, unless it is her husband's or son's. If you want people to believe you're female, try respecting other women's modesty and safety.
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@Woofy How about respecting everyone's modesty with individual, uni-sex facilities? Focus on people as people, not by gender, race or any number of other categories.
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@JR
So here's the problem: the Y where I work out can afford to either (1) convert our nineteenth century locker rooms to "individual unisex facilities" or (2) teach a few thousand low-income kids to swim at no cost; many of them children of non-swimming parents; kids who live two miles from the ocean in a state full of rivers and ponds.
I vote: Keep kids safe from drowning. That's one of the things the Y is for. Not building solutions to gender studies thought experiments.
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@Woofy,
Your definition of a "normal woman" is a cultural stereotype, revealing less about women than about your own ingrained prejudices.
There are many societies in which nudity is not taken as a threat or an insult.
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Women go through specific hormonal changes. Maybe some of us don't menstruate, but we're designed to, many of us don't give birth, but we're designed to do so. All of us go through menopause -- (although I'm sure a vanishingly small number might be found). THAT is what separates women from trans-women. So yes, I would argue that those ARE things women have in common, in spite of the attempt to downplay these three very important stages of female life.
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@RJM
Yes. And no.
I had trouble getting pregnant. I went through menopause in my 30s. At the time, I was very alone in my experiences. Does that make me less female? Where do you draw the line at what constitutes a female experience? Does the fact I was "designed" a certain way enough of an explanation or was that just another way to invalidate my personal experiences?
I am not denying your point; I am asking you to widen your lens. Our experiences as women are not as uniform nor are we all "designed" the same way.
You also fail to talk about intersex people. Are they then to be rendered invisible because their experiences don't fall into a prescribed bucket?
I think the answer may fall in a world where we ultimately don't focus so much on sexual function or gender identity but on just being whole human beings with a wide array of potential experiences. That means that a mother bonding with her child should receive the same affirmation as a transgender man going through his own milestones. Perhaps if we spent less time telling people who they need to be, or what their milestones should mean for and about them, perhaps then we will all be just a little bit freer and a whole lot happier.
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@RJM Females on average have smaller hearts than men, and are often shorter too. Males at maturity are also 40 percent stronger than women. I know hormones do a lot but it doesn't shrink your heart, take away all your muscle mass or your strength either.
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@RJM,
Yes, biology trumps philosophy. And always will.
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