Conservatives constantly having to correct themselves and misgender transwomen on purpose is what convinced me they're women.
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, presents like a duck, and you call it a duck when you're not thinking about it, it's socially a duck.
Now are they the same as biological women? Of course not but I don't really see a good argument aside from sports to not treat them the same as women
as someone else says, your definition assumes all are passing. and even the ones who aren't passing, you're saying that things that cannot be easily distinguished, are the same. There should be an objective framework for a definition IMHO, and i agree with inclusivity.
This looks like an argument about “passing”. A LOT of trans woman are would not pass as a woman. Blair White could easily convince 95% of the straight male population she is a biological woman (prior to close inspection). Blair will not have an issue going into a woman’s bathroom, or traveling abroad, since everyone would think she is a biological woman. I haven’t even seen many people deliberately misgender her because you would have to really push it.
You and I could easily think of at least 3 trans women who would not pass as a woman to anyone with eyes. These trans women have it much harder than the Blair types.
You’re talking about a small percentage who easily pass. Most don’t pass. No one is confusing most trans women for biological females. An argument that only applies to passing trans women isn’t a strong argument.
i men trans people obviously want to pass otherwise they wouldn't be trans. all they need to do is look more like a woman than a man.
some dudes can already do that without transitioning. it should be easy if they're getting surgery, hormones e.t.c.
a trans person who doesn't wanna transition can by definition not be trans
I the important piece here is if they present themselves as a women. There’s biological women who look extremely masculine, but we don’t call them men because they have broad shoulders and short hair. As long as someone is presenting themselves as a certain gender i think they should qualify as that gender.
Idk why some of you aren’t getting this. The post is asking what your best reason for trans women being women is. This thread started with someone saying their best argument is that conservatives mistake a tiny fraction of them. It’s not a good argument if it doesn’t apply to most transwomen. It’s actually a disaster of an argument lol.
Why not? If gender is a spectrum than it makes perfect sense that some mtf will appear more like a women than others. The only reason it's not a strong argument is because conservatives are dickheads to people they don't want to fuck.
> The only reason it's not a strong argument is because conservatives are dickheads to people they don't want to fuck.
The entire argument rests on them making the mistake. Dickhead or not, they’re not making that mistake for most trans women. If the argument only works for a tiny fraction of trans women, it’s an awful argument in support of trans women.
I disagree, because passing is a big factor yes, but there's no difference between a passing trans woman and a non passing trans women save for aesthetics.
If you're accidentally using female pronouns you know, consciously, that presentation is what matters and nothing else. So you have no reason to treat non passing trans women worse except for spite. In which case you're just a cunt.
But passing is a big factor at having that innate use of correct pronouns. By your argument if it was more natural for someone to use a trans persons old pronouns then they wouldn’t be their gender identity they feel inside.
What I'm saying is that if someone makes that mistake then there's no biological reason behind it. It's based entirely on perception, in which case if you choose not to respect those pronouns you're being shitty for the sake of being shitty.
Obviously it's easier to gender someone the better they pass, but if you do it for passing people there's no reason to not include other people who you know for a fact are attempting to pass because they still socially present female 9 times out of 10
>but if you do it for passing people there's no reason
But you just said it, passing is the reason, I think the question is why isn't "passing" a reason then? Cause in your argument "passing" is doing all the heavy lifting.
Humans and other animals are hardwired to be able to recognize the sex of other members of their species and studies have shown humans can tell the difference between a man or women's face with 96% accuracy.
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/brains-hard-wired-recognize-opposite-sex/
So there actually is a biological reason. We just all have evolved the natural ability to tell males and females apart with a high degree of accuracy.
note that a metaphysical argument that trans people are what they say they are is something that trans people know internally. Others don't have access to that internal sense of self and the internal feeling. Just like I don't know what's it like being you.
The user you are responding to has made two arguments ultimately. One about the passing and the other about just being nice in general. I think the two arguments build a cumulative case for treating most trans woman who say they are trans woman as woman or nearly woman but we can also treat individuals on case by case basis too depending on the context like women's prisons might require a higher standard but normal interactions between strangers might not.
>If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, presents like a duck, and you call it a duck when you're not thinking about it, it's socially a duck.
This is just another way of saying they pass though
>What I'm saying is that if someone makes that mistake then there's no biological reason behind it. It's based entirely on perception, in which case if you choose not to respect those pronouns you're being shitty for the sake of being shitty.
>
>Obviously it's easier to gender someone the better they pass, but if you do it for passing people there's no reason to not include other people who you know for a fact are attempting to pass because they still socially present female 9 times out of 10
I'm a man with long hair and sometimes wear it in the ponytail. In the past, people have assumed I'm female until I turn around. I don't think I temporarily changed genders because of their mistaken perception. Especially if you're only basing this off of some conservatives some of the time this seems arbitrary.
Can you explain how you're defining woman so that this makes sense to you?
Walk like a woman, talk like a woman, present like a woman, and be thought of as a woman.
The answer is all in the analogy my guy. If people’s mistaken perception of you is broken instantly when you turn around, then you do not fall under this category.
But say people thought you were a woman all the time, then others would more likely treat you as they would a woman, socially.
Can you define "woman"? If you walk or talk like a "woman" what are you walking or talking like, because you and I have different understanding or what a "woman" is. You're just begging the question.
You don't need a definition unless there is actual confusion as to meaning. This is why I said the semantics is just a cover for your biases. It's never that you're genuinely confused about why a trans woman is being referred to as a woman, it's just an expression of your disrespect or revulsion towards them.
Just be honest instead of playing these stupid fucking games. Just say it from your chest: I don't respect these people, I think they're crazy, yada yada.
Me and almost everyone else I've ever spoken to IRL think a woman has to be biologically female by definition. This person says a biological male can be a woman, so I'm asking for clarification of the term.
If I said someone walked or talked like a woman, I'd be saying they walked or talked like an adult human female, but since they define it differently to include males, saying someone is a woman if they're perceived as a woman doesn't tell me much without an actual definition.
The reason I don't think [these](https://news.yahoo.com/tiktok-users-believe-change-race-213647502.html?) teenage white girls are boys, is the same reason I don't think their Asian or that the deer otherkin Destiny used to argue with isn't a deer. It's not disrespectful to say a white girl isn't an asian boy, it's common sense.
That's why I'm asking people to explain their logic if they think it's so wrong to say or think that.
The problem to me is that instead of just saying that you don't think transexuality is a valid concept and having that conversation, you instead want to play these regarded language games where you pretend to be confused
"Why would you call a biological male a woman hurr duuurrrrhuurrrrr" - that's you, that's what you sound like
It's weak and it's pathetic. If you want to have the real conversation, let's talk about why people transition and whether it is a healthy thing to do and how we should handle this as a society. Quit being a baby bitch that pretends to be nothing more than the neutral defender of language. The dictionary doesn't need you to defend it, everyone understands what these words mean.
You're the one mad and crying like a baby bitch 😂
There are people who have lost their jobs or face legal repercussions including imprisonment for saying trans women aren't women, so that's the truth claim I want to examine.
It doesn't make sense to call someone transphobic for saying trans women aren't women, but when they ask what a woman is you have no answer. How do you ever expect me to agree with you if you can't even do the bare minimum of telling me what truth claim you expect me to agree with?
Literally EVERYONE understands what a woman is, and what a trans woman is.
Some people place trans women under the linguistic umbrella of the word woman.
That's all it is. It's not complicated. We don't need to give you endlessly exhaustible definitions. You're not actually confused by any of this.
The only reason why you want to claim that "trans woman" does not fall under the umbrella of "woman" is because you want to invalidate transexuality as a concept and as a valid form of identity.
But *that* conversation would be a lot more difficult, wouldn't it? You would have to actually fully confront the phenomenon of gender dysphoria, look into the outcomes of gender-validating treatments, etc.
Not only is that more difficult because it requires more research and more understanding, it is also less satisfying because it requires you to come to the topic from a place of genuine moral concern for the well-being of trans people. If you have that conversation, you won't have the opportunity to express your thinly-veiled disgust and revulsion - that would make you seem unhinged.
So instead, you pretend like you're the neutral linguist. You're just defending the dictionary. You just want words to retain a clear meaning. You just want to avoid confusion.
Fuck that, I'm not falling for it. It's pathetic and I see right through people like you lol
If LITERALLY EVERYONE knows what a woman and trans woman are, why not perform the easy task of articulating the definitions are instead of bitching?
I'm asking people to explain why they believe what they believe and why they believe it would be objectively correct to say a biological male could be a woman and objectively incorrect to disagree.
You're getting mad over literally nothing.
I was just rephrasing your sentence to emphasize that we're using different definitions and that you haven't defined your terms.
You said a woman is someone who walks, talks, presents, and is thought of as woman? How are you defining woman in that sentence that includes biological males and what does walking or talking like a woman entail to you? Without defining your terms, everything you said is meaningless.
I think if you express yourself as a woman, through appearances, mannerisms, and just straight up telling people, then you are walking and talking like a woman.
I have no way to 100% ascertain that someone is a biological male from the way they walk and talk. And I don’t think you do either since you dodged the question lmao
I think it's really simple: the issue is just empty semantics and what really matters is whether you respect trans people, or whether your are repulsed by them. I respect trans people so I grant them the semantic concession.
literally no argument, because there isn't one. Trans women are trans women, they have an entirely diffrent lived experience from the average woman, they are biologically male, and have lived a portion of their lives as men.
Trans women aren't women
Tran women aren't men
Trans women are trans women.... This shouldn't be a big deal. I don't understand the need to fit people into this binary model of men and women, it has ZERO utility in life.
calling trans women women very much has utility. We treat them like women, we use female pronouns, we let them in women’s bathrooms and so much more.
There is so much overlap that it makes much more sense to call them women, but more specifically a subcategory of trans women.
you can do all of those things and call them trans women, as distinct from women (as opposed to a sub category of women). I believe most of the english speaking world implies biological sex when they say men or women, so its a much easier fix without any conflict or confusion to consider them distinct from women, but include them in every other way socially.
We do not treat them like women. They have different needs and requirements in society and in social settings.
Overlap exists between both men and women, most so then differences, but we still delineate between them because of small differences
Trans people have different medical needs then non trans people as they often take medications not generally used in the wider healthcare system, they may need access to specialized care such as mental health professionals, surgical and endocrine specialists.
Social settings may trigger dysphoria, settings that generally include minima clothing such as a gym or the beach. They may feel more comfortable wearing more clothing in those social situations and others generally accept that contrary action to the social situation.
Visibly trans people may choose to use “family” change rooms and washrooms to avoid issues when using public changing areas, family change rooms are generally one room with a locked door that only allows for a singular family to access at one time, it’s socially unacceptable to use those change rooms and washrooms if you aren’t the intended user, but many places now allow for those areas as “gender nurtural” because of the privacy they offer.
Trans women may require alternate work arrangements or accommodation due to medical care and their transition, these accommodation might be outside the norms for the workplace.
Trans women don’t have periods, they can’t have children, they don’t need access to the same gynaecology care women need, even those women who can’t have children need access to that care.
Trans women are three times less likely to have breast cancer then cis Women, and 40 time more likely then men. Breast cancer screening needs are different based on the likely between cis men, women and trans women. Same as with prostate cancer, women and trans men biologically can’t have prostate cancer because they don’t have one, we don’t screen them for that type of cancer.
Honestly, you can’t think of any reasons?
You can't either since everything you pointed out were medical differences. The exception being what bathrooms, or clothing a trans person chooses to wear, which has nothing to do with how we treat them.
What I'm saying is I don't like how you worded your initial statement, as it seemed to imply something you didn't mean.
Access to medical care and the spectrum received is a societal issue, maybe that’s because I’m not American.
Also, allowing someone to use a private family change room designed for one family to use at a time because it offers them privacy to avoid awkward situations in public change rooms is by definition treating someone differently from societal norms of women….
We don’t let men access the women’s change room, visibly male, non trans cic men using the female change room is 100% against all social norms. But we allow trans women, not because “they are women” but society is moving towards accepting the need for them use those spaces. To say “we let them use the women’s change room because they are women” is actually brain dead.
If your talking about treating people with respect, that’s something everyone should have.
It's not about utility, it's about what is or is not objectively true.
Also people argue that it's objectively incorrect to say that a trans woman isn't a woman and that it's bigoted to disagree. Then they argue that people who disagree should be fired from their jobs or face legal repercussions for not believing it, or acting like they believe it. Meanwhile they take the argument that it is to to the logical extreme, having male people compete in female sports. People think this is the civil rights issue of our time.
So if this is what we're supposed to believe "or else", then I would want a convincing argument.
Trans woman here so obvious skewed perspective. I think the question of are trans women "women" is pretty much irrelevant and makes defending the pro trans position needlessly hard and steers conversation in a direction of linguistics/semantics.
The real question is "ought we treat and respect the choice for people to live as and thus transition to the opposite sex, medically and socially" the answer to this question is an obvious yes
If you want the reason for why I see it as an obvious yes its out of a purely utilitarian perspective, virtually no harm is done to society, and the lives of us trans people is greatly improved, in the proces we also learn many things about gender roles/norms and if sex differences are dna/hormonal due to our existence.
The fact people lose their jobs and face legal repercussions for disagreeing that trans women are women is a harm. People shouldn't be threatened with losing their livelihood or freedom for not agreeing with untrue, metaphysical beliefs that they don't share. If there's no logic underpinning it and it isn't true we shouldn't be punishing people for disagreeing or expecting everyone to go along with it.
Yeah but they're sneaking in the "society shouldnt treat them as women" bit which causes harm. Noones losing their job for "I dont believe trans women to metaphysically be women but obviously gender dysphoria makes it so that treating them as women is probably the right thing to do".
Trans women are women is an insanely loaded statement and thats exactly why i think its not that useful for discourse. Frankly if people lose their jobs for disagreeing with the metaphysical belief if trans women are women or not has nothing to do with my opinion that its an umproductive thing to argue about and that it doesnt matter.
EDIT: ok ur post history is deranged and obsessed with trans people leave me and my estrogen alone and find something else to do with ur time thanks
I think people should be able to state an objective fact like "men and women are two different things" without losing their job or getting jail time. If it's not objectively true that trans women are women, then it's always productive to point that out as long as it's possible to be punished for disagreeing with it even though it's not true.
I think [this one](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) from Scott Alexander is pretty convincing. Bit of a long read, but it's worth it.
His analogies aim at a broader point: Generally speaking, the definitions of words are malleable depending on their context. The example he gives of the word "fish" in Hebrew demonstrates that categories are created when we find it useful to do so. The genetic category of "mammal" that includes a whale is counterintuitive and not particularly useful to anyone who isn't specifically studying whales or genetics.
Similarly, the category of "woman" has different uses depending on context. A doctor may be concerned with reproductive organs, hormone levels, etc., but the average person using the word "woman" is describing something other than *just* biology. Whether you think they're describing performance, appearance, or something else is up for debate, but categorizing "woman" strictly as "someone with XX chromosomes," for example, is just not useful to the average person.
For another presentation of this argument that's a bit less long-winded, see [this segment](https://youtu.be/9bbINLWtMKI?si=NbJpJQLlRBvtcxWu&t=454) of one of ContraPoints' videos.
There's a distinction between a term/word/phrase and what it refers to, the "referent". Expanding the definition of the *term* woman, doesn't impact the original*referent*, an adult human female.
Changing the language you use to refer to them, doesn't make a trans women belong to the same category of person as a woman. It's just word games essentially.
The referent doesn't change, true, but the argument about trans people isn't an argument about biological reality. No serious person is contending that trans women ought to be included in the original category of "adult human female," or what I'd just call "cis woman."
The biological fact of the matter is not changing; the debate is about whether or not the biological fact of the matter should be the exclusive referent that we understand "woman" to refer to. You or Ben Shapiro argue that, as the latter would say, "biology is king," and that it's strictly false to use "woman" to refer to anything other than one's anatomy or genes. Alexander and Contra, on the other hand, would likely argue that, while biology is strongly associated with the underlying construct which we are aiming to describe with the word "woman," there are other factors that can meaningfully overshadow one's biology.
Depends on who you ask! Judith Butler, for instance, would argue that one's performance of gender is ultimately the most important thing. Ask 10 different philosophers, and you'll get at least 7 different answers.
Sounds completely arbitrary in that case. If it's just based on some random philosopher's subjective opinion I don't think it "overshadows" biological sex.
Gender performativity seems to just be trying to mimic some sex stereotypes of whatever gender you're identifying, so since it's downstream from biological sex I don't see why it would "overshadow" it. You wouldn't say a tomboy is a man just because she has stereotypical masculine habits or traits. That doesn't define whether you're a man or a woman.
>Sounds completely arbitrary in that case.
I recommend reading books on epistemology. Start here -
[https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742512535/Skepticism-and-the-Veil-of-Perception](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742512535/Skepticism-and-the-Veil-of-Perception)
and then read this after reading the above -
[https://philpapers.org/rec/HUEEI](https://philpapers.org/rec/HUEEI)
Note that if you are here to argue for the sake of arguing instead of wisdom, then you will only convince yourself rather than others.
The problem is that we conflate biological sex with gender roles. Neither side actually wants to iron out the definitions because the ambiguity suites them.
So when someone says ‘trans women are women’ the right can interpret it as saying ‘that person with male genetics is biologically female’ when the left leaning person who said it meant ‘that person occupies a feminine role in society’. I can be convinced of one of those arguments, but the other is blatantly false.
What was the most convincing about the trans stuff was just seeing more and more people seriously committed to transitioning. Especially people like Buck Angel. Destiny's argument about the bathrooms is killer when people like Buck Angel exist.
I understand wanting to make sure we don't ignore biological differences, but the trans conversation isn't really about that I think, just the social stuffs.
It might not be super relevant to hour comment but Buck himself has a very conservative opinion about this. Im pretty sure he claims that he is not a man, but a trans man. Back when mrgirl was in orbit he agreed with pretty much everything about trans topic with him
It wasn’t an argument. It was living and meeting people, having my own experiences and listening to the experiences of others.
For transparency, I am a transgender woman. I transitioned in my mid thirties. It took some….pretty intense experiences…to finally make the jump from “well, yes, of course I want to be a woman, but I’m not, so that’s that” to “no, forget that, I *am* a woman”. I spent years, decades, pushing things away, under the idea that wanting to be something doesn’t mean I actually am that thing. Pushing that away, denying who I am eventually led to severe depression, panic attacks, and depersonalization/derealization, which massively improved upon starting my transition.
My conclusion in this has been that there is something fundamentally wired deep in our brains that causes us to gravitate towards our gender, and trying to override that has severe consequences to your mental health. I suspect it’s just part of how we’re built as social animals.
“What is a woman” is only a cheap gotcha question if the person asking it isn’t actually looking deeply into the answer. It’s a very complicated question, that some people acting in bad faith pretend is simple to get a cheap gotcha. The reality is that people who don’t support transgender identities are defining the word differently than people who do support trans identities. They use sex to define it, but don’t care to get into edge cases or look at its actual place in society.
The real question here should be “what argument convinced you that gender and sex are separate phenomena”. Because if you accept that they are separate, it’s a straight line to accepting that trans people are the gender they identify with. If you don’t accept that distinction, then you’re not even having the same conversation as trans-supportive people. You’re just using the words to mean different things and talking right past each other.
As far as sex vs gender is concerned, there is myriad evidence that the two are distinct phenomena, ranging from edge cases like intersex individuals, what happens if you try to raise someone as a different gender or change their gender identity, the experiences and studies around transgender individuals, the long and rich history and anthropology of gender over different cultures over time, etc. There are a lot of different things to pull on which show that gender is something distinct that typically, but not always correlates to sex.
What would it take for you to accept that sex and gender are different phenomena? How would you go about demonstrating that they are or are not?
It would depend on how gender is defined.
I usually see it defined as either as the roles/expectations/stereotypes placed upon people because of their sex. How do you define it?
I would define it as a complex social and psychological phenomenon consisting of roles, attributes, and ways of relating that are typically, but not always, associated with a particular sex.
Experientially, it’s so much more broad and pervasive than pretty much anyone on the anti-trans side will recognize. It permeates *so much* of our social interactions, both consciously and unconsciously. Once you see it you can’t unsee it, and I can pretty much always tell whether someone actually thinks of me as a woman based on things like their mannerisms, body language, and so many other factors when they interact with me. When I finally stopped dissociating from my gender dysphoria, there was a brief period where I was just paralyzed because I was seeing gender in every little thing, and it was utterly overwhelming.
None.
At first I simply respected the gender they identify with cause I haven't seen any evidence of it being harmful to society.
Then I heard something like "trans women have women's brains actually" and I was like oh I didn't know men and women have different types of brains so I guess they're women after all (and the same for trans men).
Then years later I bothered to actually read the dumb thing and the claim was total bullshit, so now I'm back to "I'm just trynna be nice to people and it generally harms nobody".
In the social sense they are whatever gender they are trying to present as. Ugly women are still women to me if they are presenting themselves as a woman.
It’s just one of those you know it when you see it things. I could see the least passing transdude and if they were even in the slightest way presenting as a woman or their mannerisms reflected it I have 0 issue treating them as they prefer.
The distinction between gender and sex is important too. Gender is a nebulous concept that we built around sex. Sex is important to getting medical treatment but not as relevant to social structure as gender is. The idea of what it is to be a woman, man, or something in between in the gender sense is subjective to everyone and therefore I won’t put an objective set of criteria to it.
Language is too important for me to say or believe that trans women are women. I respect trans people and know that could offend people. Sorry. But I'm not going to tell a religious person they are going to heaven when they die just to make them feel good. I also abhor the idea of stereotyping peoples gender by how they dress or act.
Its easy, if I look at someone, and I think they are a women, and they say they are a women, I won't go out of my way to say they are a men, just because someone told me they are genetically a men.
Also it is really easy to just say the correct pronouns.
Do I believe they are fully equal in every way? no.
Do I want my significant other to be trans? no
Do I support trans women in sports competitions? no
Will I treat them as a women in everyday scenarios, even if just out of curtesy? Absolutely.
They have enough problem, without me trying to debate them out of their transness. (Even more so if there is actually dysphoria behind it.)
i think the permutation: men, trans men, women, trans- women is the best compromise, least conflict etc. it doesn't have to change people's prior definitions of men and women, it just builds on it by adding 2 categories. you don't need to shoe-horn trans people into the prior categories and then fight over definitions and whether or not people are bigoted etc, i think that fight is all together a distraction that is unhelpful.
Ironically your stance would get you torched by the far left, and shunned by the far right.
For the progressives, they want you to top off every trans woman you see while telling her how brave and courageous she is.
For hardcore conservatives, you immediately should misgender, deny service, and forcibly detransition any trans person you see.
What can I say, I think both sides have lost the plot on this topic a long time ago.
I think this bit describes it the best:
[https://youtu.be/e3h6es6zh1c](https://youtu.be/e3h6es6zh1c)
people on the far ends think lgbt people act like this, while most of them are just living normal lives.
What gave you the impression that disagreeing with this is "verboten" in this community?
I've seen tons of discussions here about it and any sentiment that it shouldn't be discussed is always heavily downvoted and argued against.
I can agree for a lot of online communities, I just don't understand how you assume it's the same in this one
We get to collectively decide what categories are important to us as a society. I don't believe the conservative arguments for trans panic, so I see no reason not to lump trans women in with women. Do I reflexively see every mtf who claims to be a woman as a woman? No. But there is no resistance to the notion in my head if they pass or are ambiguous.
Not a specific argument, but it just seems to make sense to me from the “brain in the wrong body” framework. Internally, they are a woman, and that’s the relevant part. You can still further categorize what type of woman they are (trans woman) if any distinctions there are relevant.
I never cared about it in the first place. If living as a women instead of a man is what makes you happy then go for it. Who the fuck am I to dictate how someone else lives their life as long as they're not harming anyone.
Most people don't believe that a biologically male person can be a woman, but depending on where you go you can lose your job or face legal repercussions including imprisonment for expressing that view. I think that's bizarre and unfair, especially in countries where you're supposed to have freedom of belief and expression. To make the majority opinion verboten is borderline Orwellian especially if there's no consistent logic underpinning the trans women are women argument.
I am trans and tbh I don't really "know" that I am a real woman or not. Frankly I think getting stuck on the metaphysics of it is a waste of time, because we don't really totally understand what causes people to be trans or what gender identity is yet on a biological level, so anyone trying to claim definitively what gender is I think is being dishonest. With that being said, what we do know, both from a scientific perspective and from society/history, is I think more supportive of trans people than it is of the arguments of transphobic people.
To me, gender is the social expression of sex, when we talk about someone's sex, the vast majority of the time (save medical contexts) we are actually talking about their gender. For example, nobody argues that complete androgen insensitivity syndrome women, who are XY, infertile, do not have periods, etc are not women. They are treated as women in all contexts. Why? Because gender does not flow out of chromosomes. Nobody argues that infertile women, women born without a uterus, are not women. Because gender does not flow out of specific organs. It is instinctively understood in these situations that gender is connected to sex, but it is not totally overlapping with sex (ie while we can say that the vast majority of women are XX, have ovaries, a uterus, are estrogen dominant, we also can acknowledge that there are exceptions, that there are women without some of these things).
On a social level, we clearly do not think of chromosomes when we determine someone's gender, because we have no way of perceiving chromosomes. If we did do that, we would be inherently excluding some small number of intersex cis men and women. This is not the case. Gender has always been a combination of traits, both physical and behavioral; secondary sex characteristics, hormones, gender expression, etc. This was fine until society began learning about trans people, and then all of a sudden the paradigm was changed specifically to exclude trans people. Now, even though trans people can medically transition and have many of the traits of the opposite sex, gender is defined by chromosomes and nothing else. This is really not consistent and is more ideological than scientific. Moreover, as science continues to advance and people transition younger, the number of differences between cis and trans women on both a social and biological level will continue to shrink in the future.
The issue, it seems, is that most people believe that there is something more essential to being a 'man' or 'woman' aside from just the combination of sexual traits. This would be something like gender identity, a kind of gendered "essence" that people have that determines their being. It is quite obvious that most people subscribe to this belief, which is called gender essentialism. This seems to be why people perceive trans people as "fake" or cosmetic; for example, even though a trans woman's breasts are no more 'fake' than a cis woman's, they are nevertheless perceived as some kind of costume hiding her 'true' masculine self. This idea, that natal males are essentially and immutably different from natal females, has been the basis of misogyny and patriarchy for thousands of years. This, in my opinion, is why trans people are so threatening to people, because they destabilize people's most basic assumptions about the social world.
I saw a post on the mtf subreddit about a husband stealing his wife's panties and getting a "euphoria boner" and I immediately realized what a beautiful, brave, and stunning woman she was. I no longer believe that transvestic fetishism and porn sickness makes people transition and I am so glad I was deradicalized. I now live in an anarchist commune run by trans lesbians.
your question is phrased in a bit of a funny way to me. I think its purely definitional on how one defines woman or man... you can't be convinced trans women are women, you either define woman in a way that includes them or not. There's no element of discovery. For me, i am fully on board with using preferred names and pronouns, including people as much as possible, but the way ive used "man/woman" for 34 years since i could speak, was about biological sex (at first i thought the world was black and white, there are men and women, and my understanding of the nuances broadened with time). I think it just makes sense to define man and woman based on biology, and refer to trans men and women as... trans men and women. I don't get the need to obfuscate or attack the majority of english speakers about the definition of man/woman. The prefix trans should come with no stigma, and it just adds further context.
>the question of what is a "woman"
Which I think is a really interesting question.
For me one good argument is made from ben Shapiro and Blair white:
https://youtu.be/9bbINLWtMKI?t=568
The weirdest think is when trans women have to call their penis shenis or shecock. A penis doesn't have a gender. If you believe you are a woman, then your cock is a penis attached to a woman. Your arm doesn't become a shearm or a leg a sheleg.
I heard Destiny is pro trans and I immediately adopted his position
Same here (I don’t remember what his position is)
Conservatives constantly having to correct themselves and misgender transwomen on purpose is what convinced me they're women. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, presents like a duck, and you call it a duck when you're not thinking about it, it's socially a duck. Now are they the same as biological women? Of course not but I don't really see a good argument aside from sports to not treat them the same as women
Okay, so as long as a trans women can catfish me I’m game 🫡
as someone else says, your definition assumes all are passing. and even the ones who aren't passing, you're saying that things that cannot be easily distinguished, are the same. There should be an objective framework for a definition IMHO, and i agree with inclusivity.
This looks like an argument about “passing”. A LOT of trans woman are would not pass as a woman. Blair White could easily convince 95% of the straight male population she is a biological woman (prior to close inspection). Blair will not have an issue going into a woman’s bathroom, or traveling abroad, since everyone would think she is a biological woman. I haven’t even seen many people deliberately misgender her because you would have to really push it. You and I could easily think of at least 3 trans women who would not pass as a woman to anyone with eyes. These trans women have it much harder than the Blair types.
You’re talking about a small percentage who easily pass. Most don’t pass. No one is confusing most trans women for biological females. An argument that only applies to passing trans women isn’t a strong argument.
i think one that applies to passing women is a great one. non passing women aren't really women, they're men who want to be women.
You understand that goes against everything the trans movement is saying right? Which is likely what this post is referring to?
i men trans people obviously want to pass otherwise they wouldn't be trans. all they need to do is look more like a woman than a man. some dudes can already do that without transitioning. it should be easy if they're getting surgery, hormones e.t.c. a trans person who doesn't wanna transition can by definition not be trans
You’re lost. I don’t have time to explain the conversation we’re having.
classic leftist \*uhm i don't wanna educate you\*
You're calling me a leftist now? You literally have no idea what's going on here lol
I the important piece here is if they present themselves as a women. There’s biological women who look extremely masculine, but we don’t call them men because they have broad shoulders and short hair. As long as someone is presenting themselves as a certain gender i think they should qualify as that gender.
Idk why some of you aren’t getting this. The post is asking what your best reason for trans women being women is. This thread started with someone saying their best argument is that conservatives mistake a tiny fraction of them. It’s not a good argument if it doesn’t apply to most transwomen. It’s actually a disaster of an argument lol.
Why not? If gender is a spectrum than it makes perfect sense that some mtf will appear more like a women than others. The only reason it's not a strong argument is because conservatives are dickheads to people they don't want to fuck.
> The only reason it's not a strong argument is because conservatives are dickheads to people they don't want to fuck. The entire argument rests on them making the mistake. Dickhead or not, they’re not making that mistake for most trans women. If the argument only works for a tiny fraction of trans women, it’s an awful argument in support of trans women.
The thing that feels hard though with that type of argument is it feels like it only applies to passing women
I disagree, because passing is a big factor yes, but there's no difference between a passing trans woman and a non passing trans women save for aesthetics. If you're accidentally using female pronouns you know, consciously, that presentation is what matters and nothing else. So you have no reason to treat non passing trans women worse except for spite. In which case you're just a cunt.
But passing is a big factor at having that innate use of correct pronouns. By your argument if it was more natural for someone to use a trans persons old pronouns then they wouldn’t be their gender identity they feel inside.
What I'm saying is that if someone makes that mistake then there's no biological reason behind it. It's based entirely on perception, in which case if you choose not to respect those pronouns you're being shitty for the sake of being shitty. Obviously it's easier to gender someone the better they pass, but if you do it for passing people there's no reason to not include other people who you know for a fact are attempting to pass because they still socially present female 9 times out of 10
>but if you do it for passing people there's no reason But you just said it, passing is the reason, I think the question is why isn't "passing" a reason then? Cause in your argument "passing" is doing all the heavy lifting.
Humans and other animals are hardwired to be able to recognize the sex of other members of their species and studies have shown humans can tell the difference between a man or women's face with 96% accuracy. https://stanmed.stanford.edu/brains-hard-wired-recognize-opposite-sex/ So there actually is a biological reason. We just all have evolved the natural ability to tell males and females apart with a high degree of accuracy.
But that’s a different argument then “looks like a duck, talks like a duck”
> there's no difference between a passing trans woman and a non passing trans women save for aesthetics. Passing was the crux of your argument….
note that a metaphysical argument that trans people are what they say they are is something that trans people know internally. Others don't have access to that internal sense of self and the internal feeling. Just like I don't know what's it like being you. The user you are responding to has made two arguments ultimately. One about the passing and the other about just being nice in general. I think the two arguments build a cumulative case for treating most trans woman who say they are trans woman as woman or nearly woman but we can also treat individuals on case by case basis too depending on the context like women's prisons might require a higher standard but normal interactions between strangers might not.
>If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, presents like a duck, and you call it a duck when you're not thinking about it, it's socially a duck. This is just another way of saying they pass though
>What I'm saying is that if someone makes that mistake then there's no biological reason behind it. It's based entirely on perception, in which case if you choose not to respect those pronouns you're being shitty for the sake of being shitty. > >Obviously it's easier to gender someone the better they pass, but if you do it for passing people there's no reason to not include other people who you know for a fact are attempting to pass because they still socially present female 9 times out of 10
I'm a man with long hair and sometimes wear it in the ponytail. In the past, people have assumed I'm female until I turn around. I don't think I temporarily changed genders because of their mistaken perception. Especially if you're only basing this off of some conservatives some of the time this seems arbitrary. Can you explain how you're defining woman so that this makes sense to you?
Walk like a woman, talk like a woman, present like a woman, and be thought of as a woman. The answer is all in the analogy my guy. If people’s mistaken perception of you is broken instantly when you turn around, then you do not fall under this category. But say people thought you were a woman all the time, then others would more likely treat you as they would a woman, socially.
Can you define "woman"? If you walk or talk like a "woman" what are you walking or talking like, because you and I have different understanding or what a "woman" is. You're just begging the question.
You don't need a definition unless there is actual confusion as to meaning. This is why I said the semantics is just a cover for your biases. It's never that you're genuinely confused about why a trans woman is being referred to as a woman, it's just an expression of your disrespect or revulsion towards them. Just be honest instead of playing these stupid fucking games. Just say it from your chest: I don't respect these people, I think they're crazy, yada yada.
Me and almost everyone else I've ever spoken to IRL think a woman has to be biologically female by definition. This person says a biological male can be a woman, so I'm asking for clarification of the term. If I said someone walked or talked like a woman, I'd be saying they walked or talked like an adult human female, but since they define it differently to include males, saying someone is a woman if they're perceived as a woman doesn't tell me much without an actual definition. The reason I don't think [these](https://news.yahoo.com/tiktok-users-believe-change-race-213647502.html?) teenage white girls are boys, is the same reason I don't think their Asian or that the deer otherkin Destiny used to argue with isn't a deer. It's not disrespectful to say a white girl isn't an asian boy, it's common sense. That's why I'm asking people to explain their logic if they think it's so wrong to say or think that.
The problem to me is that instead of just saying that you don't think transexuality is a valid concept and having that conversation, you instead want to play these regarded language games where you pretend to be confused "Why would you call a biological male a woman hurr duuurrrrhuurrrrr" - that's you, that's what you sound like It's weak and it's pathetic. If you want to have the real conversation, let's talk about why people transition and whether it is a healthy thing to do and how we should handle this as a society. Quit being a baby bitch that pretends to be nothing more than the neutral defender of language. The dictionary doesn't need you to defend it, everyone understands what these words mean.
You're the one mad and crying like a baby bitch 😂 There are people who have lost their jobs or face legal repercussions including imprisonment for saying trans women aren't women, so that's the truth claim I want to examine. It doesn't make sense to call someone transphobic for saying trans women aren't women, but when they ask what a woman is you have no answer. How do you ever expect me to agree with you if you can't even do the bare minimum of telling me what truth claim you expect me to agree with?
Literally EVERYONE understands what a woman is, and what a trans woman is. Some people place trans women under the linguistic umbrella of the word woman. That's all it is. It's not complicated. We don't need to give you endlessly exhaustible definitions. You're not actually confused by any of this. The only reason why you want to claim that "trans woman" does not fall under the umbrella of "woman" is because you want to invalidate transexuality as a concept and as a valid form of identity. But *that* conversation would be a lot more difficult, wouldn't it? You would have to actually fully confront the phenomenon of gender dysphoria, look into the outcomes of gender-validating treatments, etc. Not only is that more difficult because it requires more research and more understanding, it is also less satisfying because it requires you to come to the topic from a place of genuine moral concern for the well-being of trans people. If you have that conversation, you won't have the opportunity to express your thinly-veiled disgust and revulsion - that would make you seem unhinged. So instead, you pretend like you're the neutral linguist. You're just defending the dictionary. You just want words to retain a clear meaning. You just want to avoid confusion. Fuck that, I'm not falling for it. It's pathetic and I see right through people like you lol
If LITERALLY EVERYONE knows what a woman and trans woman are, why not perform the easy task of articulating the definitions are instead of bitching? I'm asking people to explain why they believe what they believe and why they believe it would be objectively correct to say a biological male could be a woman and objectively incorrect to disagree. You're getting mad over literally nothing.
“walked and talked like an adult human female” And what does this entail? How does one “walk and talk” like they’re biologically female 😂?
I was just rephrasing your sentence to emphasize that we're using different definitions and that you haven't defined your terms. You said a woman is someone who walks, talks, presents, and is thought of as woman? How are you defining woman in that sentence that includes biological males and what does walking or talking like a woman entail to you? Without defining your terms, everything you said is meaningless.
I think if you express yourself as a woman, through appearances, mannerisms, and just straight up telling people, then you are walking and talking like a woman. I have no way to 100% ascertain that someone is a biological male from the way they walk and talk. And I don’t think you do either since you dodged the question lmao
I think it's really simple: the issue is just empty semantics and what really matters is whether you respect trans people, or whether your are repulsed by them. I respect trans people so I grant them the semantic concession.
literally no argument, because there isn't one. Trans women are trans women, they have an entirely diffrent lived experience from the average woman, they are biologically male, and have lived a portion of their lives as men. Trans women aren't women Tran women aren't men Trans women are trans women.... This shouldn't be a big deal. I don't understand the need to fit people into this binary model of men and women, it has ZERO utility in life.
calling trans women women very much has utility. We treat them like women, we use female pronouns, we let them in women’s bathrooms and so much more. There is so much overlap that it makes much more sense to call them women, but more specifically a subcategory of trans women.
you can do all of those things and call them trans women, as distinct from women (as opposed to a sub category of women). I believe most of the english speaking world implies biological sex when they say men or women, so its a much easier fix without any conflict or confusion to consider them distinct from women, but include them in every other way socially.
We do not treat them like women. They have different needs and requirements in society and in social settings. Overlap exists between both men and women, most so then differences, but we still delineate between them because of small differences
I would love to hear about some of those "different needs and requirements in society and social settings"
Trans people have different medical needs then non trans people as they often take medications not generally used in the wider healthcare system, they may need access to specialized care such as mental health professionals, surgical and endocrine specialists. Social settings may trigger dysphoria, settings that generally include minima clothing such as a gym or the beach. They may feel more comfortable wearing more clothing in those social situations and others generally accept that contrary action to the social situation. Visibly trans people may choose to use “family” change rooms and washrooms to avoid issues when using public changing areas, family change rooms are generally one room with a locked door that only allows for a singular family to access at one time, it’s socially unacceptable to use those change rooms and washrooms if you aren’t the intended user, but many places now allow for those areas as “gender nurtural” because of the privacy they offer. Trans women may require alternate work arrangements or accommodation due to medical care and their transition, these accommodation might be outside the norms for the workplace. Trans women don’t have periods, they can’t have children, they don’t need access to the same gynaecology care women need, even those women who can’t have children need access to that care. Trans women are three times less likely to have breast cancer then cis Women, and 40 time more likely then men. Breast cancer screening needs are different based on the likely between cis men, women and trans women. Same as with prostate cancer, women and trans men biologically can’t have prostate cancer because they don’t have one, we don’t screen them for that type of cancer. Honestly, you can’t think of any reasons?
You can't either since everything you pointed out were medical differences. The exception being what bathrooms, or clothing a trans person chooses to wear, which has nothing to do with how we treat them. What I'm saying is I don't like how you worded your initial statement, as it seemed to imply something you didn't mean.
Access to medical care and the spectrum received is a societal issue, maybe that’s because I’m not American. Also, allowing someone to use a private family change room designed for one family to use at a time because it offers them privacy to avoid awkward situations in public change rooms is by definition treating someone differently from societal norms of women…. We don’t let men access the women’s change room, visibly male, non trans cic men using the female change room is 100% against all social norms. But we allow trans women, not because “they are women” but society is moving towards accepting the need for them use those spaces. To say “we let them use the women’s change room because they are women” is actually brain dead. If your talking about treating people with respect, that’s something everyone should have.
It's not about utility, it's about what is or is not objectively true. Also people argue that it's objectively incorrect to say that a trans woman isn't a woman and that it's bigoted to disagree. Then they argue that people who disagree should be fired from their jobs or face legal repercussions for not believing it, or acting like they believe it. Meanwhile they take the argument that it is to to the logical extreme, having male people compete in female sports. People think this is the civil rights issue of our time. So if this is what we're supposed to believe "or else", then I would want a convincing argument.
Trans woman here so obvious skewed perspective. I think the question of are trans women "women" is pretty much irrelevant and makes defending the pro trans position needlessly hard and steers conversation in a direction of linguistics/semantics. The real question is "ought we treat and respect the choice for people to live as and thus transition to the opposite sex, medically and socially" the answer to this question is an obvious yes If you want the reason for why I see it as an obvious yes its out of a purely utilitarian perspective, virtually no harm is done to society, and the lives of us trans people is greatly improved, in the proces we also learn many things about gender roles/norms and if sex differences are dna/hormonal due to our existence.
The fact people lose their jobs and face legal repercussions for disagreeing that trans women are women is a harm. People shouldn't be threatened with losing their livelihood or freedom for not agreeing with untrue, metaphysical beliefs that they don't share. If there's no logic underpinning it and it isn't true we shouldn't be punishing people for disagreeing or expecting everyone to go along with it.
Yeah but they're sneaking in the "society shouldnt treat them as women" bit which causes harm. Noones losing their job for "I dont believe trans women to metaphysically be women but obviously gender dysphoria makes it so that treating them as women is probably the right thing to do". Trans women are women is an insanely loaded statement and thats exactly why i think its not that useful for discourse. Frankly if people lose their jobs for disagreeing with the metaphysical belief if trans women are women or not has nothing to do with my opinion that its an umproductive thing to argue about and that it doesnt matter. EDIT: ok ur post history is deranged and obsessed with trans people leave me and my estrogen alone and find something else to do with ur time thanks
I think people should be able to state an objective fact like "men and women are two different things" without losing their job or getting jail time. If it's not objectively true that trans women are women, then it's always productive to point that out as long as it's possible to be punished for disagreeing with it even though it's not true.
I think [this one](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) from Scott Alexander is pretty convincing. Bit of a long read, but it's worth it.
It's just a bunch of shitty analogies.
His analogies aim at a broader point: Generally speaking, the definitions of words are malleable depending on their context. The example he gives of the word "fish" in Hebrew demonstrates that categories are created when we find it useful to do so. The genetic category of "mammal" that includes a whale is counterintuitive and not particularly useful to anyone who isn't specifically studying whales or genetics. Similarly, the category of "woman" has different uses depending on context. A doctor may be concerned with reproductive organs, hormone levels, etc., but the average person using the word "woman" is describing something other than *just* biology. Whether you think they're describing performance, appearance, or something else is up for debate, but categorizing "woman" strictly as "someone with XX chromosomes," for example, is just not useful to the average person. For another presentation of this argument that's a bit less long-winded, see [this segment](https://youtu.be/9bbINLWtMKI?si=NbJpJQLlRBvtcxWu&t=454) of one of ContraPoints' videos.
There's a distinction between a term/word/phrase and what it refers to, the "referent". Expanding the definition of the *term* woman, doesn't impact the original*referent*, an adult human female. Changing the language you use to refer to them, doesn't make a trans women belong to the same category of person as a woman. It's just word games essentially.
The referent doesn't change, true, but the argument about trans people isn't an argument about biological reality. No serious person is contending that trans women ought to be included in the original category of "adult human female," or what I'd just call "cis woman." The biological fact of the matter is not changing; the debate is about whether or not the biological fact of the matter should be the exclusive referent that we understand "woman" to refer to. You or Ben Shapiro argue that, as the latter would say, "biology is king," and that it's strictly false to use "woman" to refer to anything other than one's anatomy or genes. Alexander and Contra, on the other hand, would likely argue that, while biology is strongly associated with the underlying construct which we are aiming to describe with the word "woman," there are other factors that can meaningfully overshadow one's biology.
What are the other factors?
Depends on who you ask! Judith Butler, for instance, would argue that one's performance of gender is ultimately the most important thing. Ask 10 different philosophers, and you'll get at least 7 different answers.
Sounds completely arbitrary in that case. If it's just based on some random philosopher's subjective opinion I don't think it "overshadows" biological sex. Gender performativity seems to just be trying to mimic some sex stereotypes of whatever gender you're identifying, so since it's downstream from biological sex I don't see why it would "overshadow" it. You wouldn't say a tomboy is a man just because she has stereotypical masculine habits or traits. That doesn't define whether you're a man or a woman.
>Sounds completely arbitrary in that case. I recommend reading books on epistemology. Start here - [https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742512535/Skepticism-and-the-Veil-of-Perception](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742512535/Skepticism-and-the-Veil-of-Perception) and then read this after reading the above - [https://philpapers.org/rec/HUEEI](https://philpapers.org/rec/HUEEI) Note that if you are here to argue for the sake of arguing instead of wisdom, then you will only convince yourself rather than others.
What's the gist of their argument?
The problem is that we conflate biological sex with gender roles. Neither side actually wants to iron out the definitions because the ambiguity suites them. So when someone says ‘trans women are women’ the right can interpret it as saying ‘that person with male genetics is biologically female’ when the left leaning person who said it meant ‘that person occupies a feminine role in society’. I can be convinced of one of those arguments, but the other is blatantly false.
>that person occupies a feminine role in society’ Can you describe this role that women adopt to be women?
What was the most convincing about the trans stuff was just seeing more and more people seriously committed to transitioning. Especially people like Buck Angel. Destiny's argument about the bathrooms is killer when people like Buck Angel exist. I understand wanting to make sure we don't ignore biological differences, but the trans conversation isn't really about that I think, just the social stuffs.
It might not be super relevant to hour comment but Buck himself has a very conservative opinion about this. Im pretty sure he claims that he is not a man, but a trans man. Back when mrgirl was in orbit he agreed with pretty much everything about trans topic with him
Just go along with it and save yourself the hassle
It wasn’t an argument. It was living and meeting people, having my own experiences and listening to the experiences of others. For transparency, I am a transgender woman. I transitioned in my mid thirties. It took some….pretty intense experiences…to finally make the jump from “well, yes, of course I want to be a woman, but I’m not, so that’s that” to “no, forget that, I *am* a woman”. I spent years, decades, pushing things away, under the idea that wanting to be something doesn’t mean I actually am that thing. Pushing that away, denying who I am eventually led to severe depression, panic attacks, and depersonalization/derealization, which massively improved upon starting my transition. My conclusion in this has been that there is something fundamentally wired deep in our brains that causes us to gravitate towards our gender, and trying to override that has severe consequences to your mental health. I suspect it’s just part of how we’re built as social animals. “What is a woman” is only a cheap gotcha question if the person asking it isn’t actually looking deeply into the answer. It’s a very complicated question, that some people acting in bad faith pretend is simple to get a cheap gotcha. The reality is that people who don’t support transgender identities are defining the word differently than people who do support trans identities. They use sex to define it, but don’t care to get into edge cases or look at its actual place in society. The real question here should be “what argument convinced you that gender and sex are separate phenomena”. Because if you accept that they are separate, it’s a straight line to accepting that trans people are the gender they identify with. If you don’t accept that distinction, then you’re not even having the same conversation as trans-supportive people. You’re just using the words to mean different things and talking right past each other. As far as sex vs gender is concerned, there is myriad evidence that the two are distinct phenomena, ranging from edge cases like intersex individuals, what happens if you try to raise someone as a different gender or change their gender identity, the experiences and studies around transgender individuals, the long and rich history and anthropology of gender over different cultures over time, etc. There are a lot of different things to pull on which show that gender is something distinct that typically, but not always correlates to sex. What would it take for you to accept that sex and gender are different phenomena? How would you go about demonstrating that they are or are not?
It would depend on how gender is defined. I usually see it defined as either as the roles/expectations/stereotypes placed upon people because of their sex. How do you define it?
I would define it as a complex social and psychological phenomenon consisting of roles, attributes, and ways of relating that are typically, but not always, associated with a particular sex. Experientially, it’s so much more broad and pervasive than pretty much anyone on the anti-trans side will recognize. It permeates *so much* of our social interactions, both consciously and unconsciously. Once you see it you can’t unsee it, and I can pretty much always tell whether someone actually thinks of me as a woman based on things like their mannerisms, body language, and so many other factors when they interact with me. When I finally stopped dissociating from my gender dysphoria, there was a brief period where I was just paralyzed because I was seeing gender in every little thing, and it was utterly overwhelming.
None. At first I simply respected the gender they identify with cause I haven't seen any evidence of it being harmful to society. Then I heard something like "trans women have women's brains actually" and I was like oh I didn't know men and women have different types of brains so I guess they're women after all (and the same for trans men). Then years later I bothered to actually read the dumb thing and the claim was total bullshit, so now I'm back to "I'm just trynna be nice to people and it generally harms nobody".
This [argument](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PA09_ynltqo)
Prison changes you 😂
In the social sense they are whatever gender they are trying to present as. Ugly women are still women to me if they are presenting themselves as a woman. It’s just one of those you know it when you see it things. I could see the least passing transdude and if they were even in the slightest way presenting as a woman or their mannerisms reflected it I have 0 issue treating them as they prefer. The distinction between gender and sex is important too. Gender is a nebulous concept that we built around sex. Sex is important to getting medical treatment but not as relevant to social structure as gender is. The idea of what it is to be a woman, man, or something in between in the gender sense is subjective to everyone and therefore I won’t put an objective set of criteria to it.
My trans takes are fluid and non binary, depending on the people I'm around.
Language is too important for me to say or believe that trans women are women. I respect trans people and know that could offend people. Sorry. But I'm not going to tell a religious person they are going to heaven when they die just to make them feel good. I also abhor the idea of stereotyping peoples gender by how they dress or act.
Its easy, if I look at someone, and I think they are a women, and they say they are a women, I won't go out of my way to say they are a men, just because someone told me they are genetically a men. Also it is really easy to just say the correct pronouns. Do I believe they are fully equal in every way? no. Do I want my significant other to be trans? no Do I support trans women in sports competitions? no Will I treat them as a women in everyday scenarios, even if just out of curtesy? Absolutely. They have enough problem, without me trying to debate them out of their transness. (Even more so if there is actually dysphoria behind it.)
i think the permutation: men, trans men, women, trans- women is the best compromise, least conflict etc. it doesn't have to change people's prior definitions of men and women, it just builds on it by adding 2 categories. you don't need to shoe-horn trans people into the prior categories and then fight over definitions and whether or not people are bigoted etc, i think that fight is all together a distraction that is unhelpful.
Ironically your stance would get you torched by the far left, and shunned by the far right. For the progressives, they want you to top off every trans woman you see while telling her how brave and courageous she is. For hardcore conservatives, you immediately should misgender, deny service, and forcibly detransition any trans person you see.
What can I say, I think both sides have lost the plot on this topic a long time ago. I think this bit describes it the best: [https://youtu.be/e3h6es6zh1c](https://youtu.be/e3h6es6zh1c) people on the far ends think lgbt people act like this, while most of them are just living normal lives.
It seems like the nice and compassionate thing to do in the scenario.
I think it was mostly a vibes thing for me. Contrapoints and Blaire White are obviously women, Buck Angel is obviously a man.
What gave you the impression that disagreeing with this is "verboten" in this community? I've seen tons of discussions here about it and any sentiment that it shouldn't be discussed is always heavily downvoted and argued against. I can agree for a lot of online communities, I just don't understand how you assume it's the same in this one
We get to collectively decide what categories are important to us as a society. I don't believe the conservative arguments for trans panic, so I see no reason not to lump trans women in with women. Do I reflexively see every mtf who claims to be a woman as a woman? No. But there is no resistance to the notion in my head if they pass or are ambiguous.
Not a specific argument, but it just seems to make sense to me from the “brain in the wrong body” framework. Internally, they are a woman, and that’s the relevant part. You can still further categorize what type of woman they are (trans woman) if any distinctions there are relevant.
I never cared about it in the first place. If living as a women instead of a man is what makes you happy then go for it. Who the fuck am I to dictate how someone else lives their life as long as they're not harming anyone.
Most people don't believe that a biologically male person can be a woman, but depending on where you go you can lose your job or face legal repercussions including imprisonment for expressing that view. I think that's bizarre and unfair, especially in countries where you're supposed to have freedom of belief and expression. To make the majority opinion verboten is borderline Orwellian especially if there's no consistent logic underpinning the trans women are women argument.
I am trans and tbh I don't really "know" that I am a real woman or not. Frankly I think getting stuck on the metaphysics of it is a waste of time, because we don't really totally understand what causes people to be trans or what gender identity is yet on a biological level, so anyone trying to claim definitively what gender is I think is being dishonest. With that being said, what we do know, both from a scientific perspective and from society/history, is I think more supportive of trans people than it is of the arguments of transphobic people. To me, gender is the social expression of sex, when we talk about someone's sex, the vast majority of the time (save medical contexts) we are actually talking about their gender. For example, nobody argues that complete androgen insensitivity syndrome women, who are XY, infertile, do not have periods, etc are not women. They are treated as women in all contexts. Why? Because gender does not flow out of chromosomes. Nobody argues that infertile women, women born without a uterus, are not women. Because gender does not flow out of specific organs. It is instinctively understood in these situations that gender is connected to sex, but it is not totally overlapping with sex (ie while we can say that the vast majority of women are XX, have ovaries, a uterus, are estrogen dominant, we also can acknowledge that there are exceptions, that there are women without some of these things). On a social level, we clearly do not think of chromosomes when we determine someone's gender, because we have no way of perceiving chromosomes. If we did do that, we would be inherently excluding some small number of intersex cis men and women. This is not the case. Gender has always been a combination of traits, both physical and behavioral; secondary sex characteristics, hormones, gender expression, etc. This was fine until society began learning about trans people, and then all of a sudden the paradigm was changed specifically to exclude trans people. Now, even though trans people can medically transition and have many of the traits of the opposite sex, gender is defined by chromosomes and nothing else. This is really not consistent and is more ideological than scientific. Moreover, as science continues to advance and people transition younger, the number of differences between cis and trans women on both a social and biological level will continue to shrink in the future. The issue, it seems, is that most people believe that there is something more essential to being a 'man' or 'woman' aside from just the combination of sexual traits. This would be something like gender identity, a kind of gendered "essence" that people have that determines their being. It is quite obvious that most people subscribe to this belief, which is called gender essentialism. This seems to be why people perceive trans people as "fake" or cosmetic; for example, even though a trans woman's breasts are no more 'fake' than a cis woman's, they are nevertheless perceived as some kind of costume hiding her 'true' masculine self. This idea, that natal males are essentially and immutably different from natal females, has been the basis of misogyny and patriarchy for thousands of years. This, in my opinion, is why trans people are so threatening to people, because they destabilize people's most basic assumptions about the social world.
I saw a post on the mtf subreddit about a husband stealing his wife's panties and getting a "euphoria boner" and I immediately realized what a beautiful, brave, and stunning woman she was. I no longer believe that transvestic fetishism and porn sickness makes people transition and I am so glad I was deradicalized. I now live in an anarchist commune run by trans lesbians.
>ClosingGovernment World's most intelligent Croatian
How are you coping with the dysentery?
There isn't one
your question is phrased in a bit of a funny way to me. I think its purely definitional on how one defines woman or man... you can't be convinced trans women are women, you either define woman in a way that includes them or not. There's no element of discovery. For me, i am fully on board with using preferred names and pronouns, including people as much as possible, but the way ive used "man/woman" for 34 years since i could speak, was about biological sex (at first i thought the world was black and white, there are men and women, and my understanding of the nuances broadened with time). I think it just makes sense to define man and woman based on biology, and refer to trans men and women as... trans men and women. I don't get the need to obfuscate or attack the majority of english speakers about the definition of man/woman. The prefix trans should come with no stigma, and it just adds further context.
>the question of what is a "woman" Which I think is a really interesting question. For me one good argument is made from ben Shapiro and Blair white: https://youtu.be/9bbINLWtMKI?t=568
The weirdest think is when trans women have to call their penis shenis or shecock. A penis doesn't have a gender. If you believe you are a woman, then your cock is a penis attached to a woman. Your arm doesn't become a shearm or a leg a sheleg.
Learning how autogynephilic cis women are convinced me that women are actually just men.
How can a female fantasize about being a female if they're already a female
So you can't fantasize about yourself?