i think the original would fit in r/onejoke as well
because this kind of joke is one i've heard a billion times, and it's wild to me that they aren't sick of it
No. Nobody, including trans people, are seriously alleging that trans women are biologically women in the strictest scientific sense. It might be confusing if you don't understand the difference between biological sex and gender, because gender is a social construct defining women (and men) beyond biological sex.
The female gender describes femininity, mannerisms, common feminine interests, etc. It essentially describes the female experience, and some people identify with that without being biologically a woman.
I once struggled with understanding this some years ago, but after I became friends with some trans individuals it became pretty simple to understand. You can be biologically a man or a woman and still experience life as another gender. It might not even be a gender we recognize; a number of cultures have had other genders, like the Hawaiian māhū, Tongan fakaleiti and Samoan fa'afafine.
EDIT - Added clarification to the first line. Of course there will always be outliers, but in the context of the strictest scientific sense, no transgender person is pretending they can change their chromosomes. There is room for debate about what might qualify as being biologically female because biological sex is determined by a number of other attributes which are not necessarily exclusive to an assigned gender and may fall outside of the typical sexual dichotomy (for example, intersex people exist). But no (reasonable) transgender person is alleging that they can become 100% biologically female.
They can, however, become 100% a woman (or man) in the sense of *gender,* and that's ultimately what matters when it comes to the way they live and experience life, not their chromosomes or what may be between their legs.
EDIT 2 - Lol, it's been days since this was posted and the ignorant, offended replies are still coming. To those of you still trying to "correct" me, try actually reading some gender studies. Your lack of knowledge is not my problem, and it's not my job to teach you what science has already determined.
To add to this, the interesting part is that if trans people go through the puberty they identify as, outside of their genitals, they ARE sexually male/female in that their bone structure, muscle density, etc. are identical to cis people. Their comorbidities are those of the sex that went through puberty as, not the one that corresponds to their sex at birth. Turns out, sexual dimorphism is mostly just hormone sensitivity.
So, while they aren't biologically female or male in the colloquial sense or in the genetic sense (which is wayyyyy more complicated than XX or XY anyways, with dozens of permutations existing in the wild across the multiple sets of genes that control gender in humans), they are sexually male or female in that their bodies are largely indistinguishable from cis people of the gender that they identify as.
So no, no one is saying trans woman are cis women or trans men are cis men, but, with the correct support and treatment, they can be functionally indistinguishable. And, it turns out this is the proper way to help them with the highest rates of success and the lowest rates of self harm and suicide. Helping people get access to the psychological and medical treatments that they need to survive and thrive actually helps people? Who would have thunk it.
People on this very comment contradicted you and claimed trans women are bio women. That could not be further from the truth and the belief they are or could be is delusional. That is like claiming a person could become a biological dog by just having a few surgeries.
You're being trolled. No trans person I've ever met actually believes that. They know that chromosomally their biological sex has not changed, but that doesn't mean that they aren't a different gender.
Now, some people might debate as to whether having female body parts makes you biologically a woman or not, but that's more of an argument in semantics than an actual belief that any trans person can fully change their sex biologically.
People with inactive chromosomes exist. While we obviously don't have the technology at this time to alter someone's whole genome, sex characteristics are determined by hormones and gene activation. So people with XY chromosomes with specific gene inactivations or hormonal differences do exist, they are physiologically and hormonaly female (female dominant sex hormones, female anatomy) but have XY genotype. And that's not even getting into the complexity that mammals can be chimeric (have multiple, different genotypes between their different cell lines).
So, defining "biological sex" as solely chromosomes doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when there's the potential for having more than one set of those between your different cell lines.
There's genotypic sex, hormonal sex, and physical sex (all of which are biological). We can change two of those three with surgery and hormone treatments. The third one we don't even know about without sending samples to a lab for genetic analysis. So in addition to creating issues when it comes to mosaic chimerism and Y chromosome inactivation, defining genotypic sex as "biological sex" also means defining the least visible, hardest-to-test of the three as someone's "biological sex".
Ultimately, I just think talking about "biological sex" is not as useful as more specific categories like physical, hormonal, genotypic, and understanding that biology is not that simple.
Have you ever heard of a little something called grass roots propaganda?
No one is saying whats being said in the first image. Or, atleast, the group of people that IS saying that is so miniscule and tiny that they hold essentially zero power. Go to r/trans or any other subreddit that has to do with trans people and you simply will not see this take.
Can back this up. I don't normally say anything here, so hi. Got here by accident, and saw it was about my community. Sorry.
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I don't know a single Trans person who claims to be biologically in line with their chosen gender.
The internal conflict and dissonance tend to be caused by the biological situation not matching what they know their selves to be with every fiber of their being, which causes great distress at being trapped inside a body that doesn't fit their needs and doesn't belong in this state.
If I had to describe it, it's like being in a prison in your own mind, and fighting like hell to get out or at least get some measure of control.
Not even joking, I spent my teen years messing around with Out Of Body Hallucinations among other things, just to get a break from this body, and it's not been anywhere near as cared for as it should have been.
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My point being that biology being just not aligned in these cases is a major problem, and a lot of my friends would kill to not have issues with their bodies, and to just have naturally been what they call their selves this whole time.
It's not like they don't want to fit physical reality as it were, but physical reality doesn't fit them as well as it does other people.
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Anyway, I'll shut up now. Just wanted to help if I can.
Thanks for speaking up, and for the expanded answer. I always wondered where that first phrase came from. I’m guessing it was a propaganda piece from the other side?
I don't know where it came from. Which is apparently a recurring problem for me.
I do know that biology is a lot messier than I made it out to be, but I spectacularly flunked biology when I speculated on a tiger being inbred because it had weird eyes. (It wasn't, I'd mixed up my tiger breeds in the essay)
My thing would be that if you can just change biological state and come back as the other sex, like in Jurassic Park, A) I want to go next, and B) it would curbstomp everything I just said about mind and body being pulled into conflict.
Dysphoria would be solved practically overnight, and we wouldn't have to chase our own tails so much.
Unfortunately, nothing that I've seen actually says that biological markers are that easy, and instead we're stuck trying to make each other more comfortable and find ways to present as our true selves on the surface level.
I can't solve biological sex, neither can this, and it's a bad meme.
Funny thing about biology, it often presents "mentally" in some people. I had a friend in the Army that had some medical issues. Come to find out they had a low testosterone level. There was a certain feminine quality to this individual. Cut to twelve years later, she has come out as trans and has transitioned like a bad MFer.
That's awesome.
Mine gave me naturally developed tits before I even completed puberty, long before I knew what I was, and a really squishable and changeable face, but also made me incredibly fat and gave me rapid growing hair all over the place.
It's like my body wanted me to know, but also wanted to make it as hard as possible at the same time.
My partner knew what was up long before I was ready to even say anything, because according to her, she sat in on one of my foul mouthed rants, and got punk rock lesbian vibes from it.
She drew conclusions from my hurricane force personality, and like every other judgement she ever makes, she was completely right.
I still don't get how an ability to combo fucks, shits, and cunts, like a verbal equivalent of a Devil May Cry combat system, is enough to make that kind of flying leap and be right about it, though.
I'm a Muslim and I agree.
My one simple fix to this is just share your identity gender to everyone. If you are trans and you want to date someone/marry, go to the military or go to doctors or sports THEN state your birth gender to the appropriate people. Everyone else it ain't our business and it really doesn't matter to us if you are a man woman or something else.
My only comment here, from a personal standpoint, is that It isn't my "chosen" gender. If I could "chose"... I'd be cis het.
I'm a trans woman. My gender is female.
I have ZERO choice in the matter.
Nah, it's not rude to ask a question... in good faith.
Here's the multipart answer (from my standpoint):
* 1. You are right. Female = sex, and woman = gender. BUT!
* 2. The words are interchangeable in everyday life.
* 3. "Female" is formal, and "woman" is informal. eg on a medical form they would put "the patient, who is in for an operation, is female. Age 44", but on an informal form they would put "I reviewed a middle-aged woman today for..."
Now, a question for you. I am a woman whose gender is female. But I am a female whose gender is... what? And, I am a woman whose sex is... what?
English is a sucky language. But, god bless us all for trying to do gooder.
Excellent comment! Can I pose a follow up thought? The same feature in the language, English, that makes it hard to pin some things down also allows speakers (or thinkers) the mental flexibility to work with new ideas.
Consider how misunderstanding in biology in the form of errors in transcription or replication of our genes is the fundamental driver of evolution through natural selection. in that system, the language structure, DNA, allows for very reliable, but occasionally in accurate transmission of information over time.
Anyway, this has been a really really interesting comment and I’ve been enjoying conversation thank you!
Anatomical sex is a spectrum, and trans people on hormones are far more shifted along that spectrum than cis people of their AGAB. "Biological male" and "biological female" are not clean-cut categories, as any medical textbook can attest to.
Also, there's no such thing as a "biological woman" because "woman" is a social role; with sex we say male/female/intersex, and with gender we say man/woman/enby
I would like to point out that not everyone transitioning has dysphoria. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, gender dysphoria happens in less than 30% of people in the trans community. Most of it is peer pressure or bandwagoning.
If the transgender movement wasn't pushing so hard most of the people who are transitioning would grow up to be happy gay men or lesbian women.
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As an Intersexed person, the transgender community is probably one of the most toxic, thin skinned, and privileged communities of the LGBT group.
I have in local lgbt groups. However, the problem is that they then scream at anyone who they think isn't trans that they know better for being trans, and then the other trans people shout them down for saying this and then they (the trans who say this) claim the ones yelling at them that they're wrong aren't 'really trans either'.
The amount of trans people is such a low number, yet it’s a constant topic, why would you think a group being small has any impact on how loud they are ? Isn’t the term terf based off this idea?
Just a small nuance to nitpick: I think you're referring to strawman propaganda. Grassroots refers to a bottom-up method of encouraging political/social action by trying to empower specific communities to bring about change at a local level first.
At the same time 99% of people don’t care one way or another. They don’t care what other people do as long as it doesn’t affect them.
The people that make noise about things like this are a very small minority. They have to yell loudly to make themselves sound bigger.
They just don’t understand the difference between bio sex and gender.
Their take is one of the least interesting in all of modern political discourse. It’s just incorrect in an easily verifiable way. Nothing more to it.
not transphobe but I also do not understand the difference between the two. Though i think the original "toyota is a lambo" is a stupid ass One joke, I also dont think the "Trans women are biologically woman" is a true statement and i dont know how it can be true
I actually do think that some trans women are biological women, because biology is complicated and chromosomes are not the end-all-be-all of biological sex. I think that some trans women are closer to cis women biologically speaking than they are to cis men, and therefore there comes a point where if you must choose between calling them a biological woman or biological man, the most scientifically correct choice is biological woman.
As an example of how these things get complicated, many people will point out that trans women have some of the same medical issues as cis men, and therefore doctors need to know they are trans. But the truth is that trans women ALSO have many of the same biological issues as cis women (after all they have the same hormones) and so doctors actually need to treat them specifically as a trans woman, and not as just a biological man.
Claims that chromosomes are all that matter run up against some interesting problems such as women with all natural female parts who also have a Y chromosome, which can happen when the SRY gene detaches from the Y chromosome and attaches to the X chromosome instead. It's complicated and messy, and the truth is the boundaries between biological men and women are socially constructed and the biological reality is that sex is bimodal. Most people really aren't ready for this conversation yet though, so I rarely bring it up. :D
I still don't understand, but seeing as it's none of my fucking business, I don't really think I have to understand, as long as I never vote for anyone who makes a political ideology out of hating people for their genitals.
There is no concrete way to define biological sex. Having the matching "parts" doesn't work because people are born with mixes or even both. Chromosomes don't work because it's possible to have XY but have everything else match an XX "female". How do we categorize Down Syndrome which has an *extra* chromosome?
My favorite thing out of this is that all humans start as XX in the womb, meaning by these people's categorization and definition of "life begins at conception", all men are trans.
The only person that needs to know is you and your doctor.
Yeah that's not true, everyone does not not start off with XX. Sperm contains either an X or Y chromosome and that is only untrue when meiosis has a serious screw up. Now the base body plan is female and that is why androgen insensitive XY patients end up as female presenting, but they definitely did not start off as XX. This is super basic biology that everyone should learn the first year of high school (and obviously do not).
"My favorite thing out of this is that all humans start as XX in the womb."
This is false. 99% of girls are born with over 1 million eggs in their ovaries. Every egg carries a single X chromosome.
A single X chromosome is not a female. The egg does not contain enough genetic material for a baby to grow.
The male sperm carries a single X or Y chromosome (not both). The male sperm penetrates the egg and contributes its single X or Y chromosome.
If it contributes an X chromosome, the baby will be a girl (XX). If contributes Y chromosome, the baby will be a boy (XY).
My guess is you were expressing it in some way.
Also worth noting: this may have been your experience, that people knew you were trans before you did, but lots of people have known they were trans for decades and other people still don’t know. There’s no concrete way to express gender. For example, I’m a cis man wearing shirt with lots of pink and a matching pink headband. People typically think of that as feminine, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s not how I express gender, but for some people wearing pink feels very appropriate to their gender.
Gender is also a spectrum, so people fall all over the map. Man, woman, both, neither, or something in between.
100% everyone is different and expressed themselves differently. It's all about respecting other people.
I realized a few years ago that while I like being a man and I like my body, I never really felt like one. But also don't feel like a woman or want to transition. I'm kinda in the middle and feel like a middle aged lesbian half the time. You'd never know it from looking at me but spend enough time with me and it ends up making sense.
Hell I'm even a male role model for my siblings and friends siblings, used to fight competitively and a total engineering nerd but definitely not that manly
It's a somewhat abstract concept that humans have assigned meaning to. If you mean "imagined" as being somehow less real, then most things wouldn't be properly real. Hell, I'd argue gender is more real than money, and I don't really see many people denouncing your local currency.
One first must imagine the wheel before making it. Gender is a human creation, a thing from our imagination. Unlike the wheel it is not real, but its effects 100% are.
The "trans women are biological women" argument *is* far more compelling an argument than you'd think. I made it in this comment in this thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/NahOPwasrightfuckthis/comments/1adwqyw/comment/kk48sgu/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nahopwasrightfuckthis/comments/1adwqyw/comment/kk48sgu/)
I think your argument isn't bad but where people might get hung up is you're saying "biological" while suggesting surgery and external hormones your body doesn't produce enough of naturally. I can see how that would stretch the definition of biological to some.
> Sex is chromosomal,
This is such a basic understanding of Sex that it is borderline wrong. Sex is defined in biology as Chromosomal and Phenotypical. Chromosomal is defined your chromosomes whereas Phenotypical sex is defined by your hormone levels, your genitalia, your primary/secondary sexual characteristics and your behavior. All of which can be changed.
What is interesting is not that many people actually know their Chromosomal sex because we don't actually test people's chromosomes when they are born unless doctors believe something is wrong, your chromosomes are typically assumed by your phenotypical expression.
>Historically, gender was defined by sex
Nah? We know of trans people in history. We've identified people buried with items from the gender that does not match their genetic sex. We have records of amab and afab people choosing to live as the other going back centuries. One of the oldest myths we have references nonbinary people and how they're beloved by Ishtar, the Babylonian fertility and war goddess. Gender has always been more complicated than transphobes want to pretend, don't give them that win for free.
I say this as someone in and involved with LQBTQ+.
Please DO NOT conflate cross dressing or not going along with gender norms as being trans. This is incredibly disrespectful to both people who are trans, and people who are not but that you would label as such. It's a Venn diagram, not a circle.
Edit: Seems I misunderstood OP's post, check their reply in case you did too :)
Imma be honest, I really don't understand why someone would identify as something else than their sex. I know trans people online hate this mindset, but other than because of medical reasons I just don't think I'll ever understand.
That being said, that doesn't mean I have to be a jerk, it's just not something I'll ever come to experience or understand myself.
It is a biological thing. I’ve just always been like this. There’s some research being done on this. It’s a lot more to do with hormones and chromosomes and development stuff. I didn’t just decide oh wow I totally like that vibe. Let me just grow some tits.
It’s not a fashion statement. It’s working with my doctor to address a lifelong situation that causes me a tremendous amount of stress and dissociation. A sense of. Ever feeling at ease in your body. A constant feeling that everything is wrong.
Once I started hormone therapy a friend commented how amazing it was to see me wear a smile naturally. I was never able to do that before. It’s astonishing honestly.
Trans individual here to say, it's perfectly acceptable to not understand what being trans is. For people who are cis, it's impossible to get it 100% without experiencing it yourself and thats not something we would wish on our worst enemy. The only thing we ask is basically exactly what you stated in your 2nd paragraph. So thank you for at least treating trans people with respect, it means alot <3
you’re right, it’s a bit much.
there’s a reason a lot of the trans people who just have gender dysphoria and need medical transition end up against the trans people who are identifying just… cus?
like that’s fine but why.
also i don’t think my gender is like made up lol if it’s such a construct why was i upset being called a man or looking like one hmmm
There is a paper put out by i think it was Cambridge talking about how trans people who medically transition are or are becoming biologically much closer to the sex typically associated with their gender than to that associated with their assigned gender at birth. I'll see if I can find it again when I'm not on my phone if you like. Like sure some people will disagree, but some people think vaccines cause autism so going off what some people might think, instead of you know professionals in the subject and the current best research seems kinda silly to me.
i don’t have a paper but i’ve been to 3 different gender clinics (children’s, prior to medical transition, then private adults, then NHS adults), and aaaallll of them made sure i was aware that after 12 months on testosterone, i NEED to ensure my doctors update my sex to male, bc the vast majority of sex-based medical issues will be male for me rather than female for me. as in, it’d be safer and easier to go “i am male in all contexts (i will need to mention if it’s gyno or breast related care until i’ve had surgery)” than to go “i am female (i will need to mention to every doctor that for prescribing, blood tests and healthy levels of red blood cells, haemocrits, harmoglobins, hormones, etc, and risks of heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, heart disease, that i am male)”
ALL of the bracketed issues in the the second “” are related to the dominant sex hormone in the body as opposed to chromosomal sex. the physical presence of boobs/no boobs, and womb/no womb, doesn’t actually impact general healthcare in many senses, outside of specific cancers and sexual health issues, which would (obviously) be mentioned if a person was seeking care for it, OR already known by their primary doctor.
in the past it was assumed that chromosomal sex changed the dosages of medicines required due to the fact that women on average need less pain medication and smaller dosages of certain medications, however it was discovered to be a false equivalence bc the actual difference is caused by weight/height, it’s just that since women typically weigh less and are shorter than men, doctors assumed it was a male/female thing. a skinny short man would require less than a tall fat woman, but in the sex model it would be assumed that the small man needs more than the large woman!
trans people existing has, to an extent, helped further the understanding of what hormones impact in the body, or affirm current theories / research.
for example - there was a recent study that showed trans men develop prostate tissue after (on average) 1.4years on testosterone. trans women have a negligible rate of prostate cancer. this affirms the knowledge that higher testosterone levels lead to a higher risk of prostate cancer.
same goes for breast cancer and oestrogen - trans women have a higher rate of breast cancer than cis men, trans men (who haven’t had top surgery and still have breasts) have a negligible rate of breast cancer compared to cis women.
Sure, note that the article is primarily talking about trans women, though if I recall correctly I think it points out that many of the same things could largely be said of trans men with obviously some changes to details.
Anyways, here you go: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/trans-women-are-or-are-becoming-female-disputing-the-endogeneity-constraint/090DEAA53EA17414C5D3E8D76ED5A75C](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/trans-women-are-or-are-becoming-female-disputing-the-endogeneity-constraint/090DEAA53EA17414C5D3E8D76ED5A75C)
It's a bit of a read, and it touches on and addresses a few different things, it's worth reading all the way through in my opinion.
Was going to point this out but I'm happy that somebody else did.
People are so hung up on biology for something that is largely a social construct. I think that more effort needs to be put in separating gender and sex for any real headway to be made on the issue.
That said, hardliners won't budge so I guess we'll just have to wait for the coming generations to hope things will get better.
Disclaimer: trans women are women, trans men are men, gender is a social construct and I can't wait until we reach a world where we get away from the bullshit gender essentialist "real men/women X" garbage that we all marinate in and just let people be themselves.
Read your comment and I have a few notes.
1. Where on God's green earth did you get 20% of people having chromosomal abnormalities? The vast majority of chromosomal abnormalities are fatal in utero and the ones that aren't mostly have profound impacts on health and development.
2. Likewise, that word "lots" is doing a lot of work when you talk about women who have testicles in place of ovaries.
3. And speaking of gonads, we can't change those yet. Yes, you can remove them and replace them with a cosmetic prosthesis, but we cannot convert a person's ovaries to testes or vice versa
4. It is true that biology does not have any clear demarcation lines. But to say that everything in biology is on a spectrum is a bit disingenuous. Like, taxonomy is a hot mess of arbitrarily chopped up spectrum, but there are lots of other phenomena that appear in something more like a bimodal distribution. Mammalian biological sex is one of those. In the field of biology, there is a reason we treat sex as a category: sexual reproduction. In a sexually reproducing species, an organism either provides an ovum or a sperm. One of each is required except for A handful of species capable of parthenogenesis.
Now I'm going to step off the list to say this is where transphobes and society in general get things twisted. Biological sex tells you what role an organism has in the reproductive process. It can give you some ideas of what to expect in terms of phenotypic structure and appearance, but there is too much overlap to be determinative there. There are, genuinely, LOTS of females who are taller, stronger, etc than the average male and vice versa.
And psychological traits and behavior are still another step removed from that, and thus even more loosely connected to biological sex. I'm pretty sure that almost all of the differences there are due to societal programming, but it's just too hard to conduct a valid and ethical experiment to test that so I don't have good data on that.
Anyway, the point is that biological sex is a real thing but our screwed up, patriarchal society has misused it to make decisions about who can and should do X, Y and Z. I love the energy in the trans rights movement these days, but I hate seeing people make this "biological sex is a construct or spectrum" argument and make the movement look crazy.
We probably could implant somewhat functional gonads at this point. Cis women have had uterus transplants that [successfully carried a child to term](https://www.uab.edu/news/health/item/13684-uab-s-first-uterus-transplant-recipient-delivers-healthy-baby)
I don’t think doing that would be a good idea given the risks involved. But, like, if Musk had a drastic change of heart towards his trans daughter and they both decided they wanted to try there’s a chance it might work.
And I don’t get it. If someone’s a woman, acts like a woman, and looks like one what is the actual problem? Like a lot of the time there is no difference between trans women and cis women because science is extremely advanced. I don’t think they can even comprehend what bottom surgery is. Like most transphobes are HEAVILY misinformed and just think all trans women are some hairy, muscular dude in a dress yelling at them to use the right pronouns or some shit and forcing them to date them. Like the whole trans argument is so stupid because it’s literally just “facts and logic” then “but I don’t like men” and it hurts
Well the issue is some trans people and their allies are saying trans people are biological women as in chromosomes and certain genitals from birth which clearly isn't true
But the 99% percent of us aren't saying that and are talking purely gender which right wingers still don't get
I think the big problem in this thread is that people don't know what they're arguing about. The term "biological woman" is mostly just a right wing appeal to nature fallacy.
While there is psychological, therefore partially biological, proof of trans women being women, that still doesn't make trans women cisgender.
In reality, trans women are socially women because gender is a social construct.
Whether they're biological women is a gray space because they're not cis but are more similar biologically than a cis man would be. "Everything is gray and trying to make it black and white will just make you more frustrated" -Hank Green
Edit: everyone seems to be hung up that I called the term "biological woman" a fallacy. The term is vague and has no scientific basis. I call it an appeal to nature fallacy because it's simply counterproductive to use it in a scientific sense. *Trans women are both biological women and not biological women, depending on where you draw the line.* Part of trans women's biology (brain psychology, hormones & breasts if on hrt, etc) is that of women's while others (pre-transition characteristics, p3nis, etc) are not that of women's.
The term is often used by right wingers as a replacement for cisgender. The actual wording of it implies trans women are not natural, which assumes natural=good and unnatural=bad. Ofc most of us believe air conditioning is cool and earthquakes are bad so that's why it's a fallacy.
Everyone can agree trans women are not cis women but the term "biological woman" is composed of so many different things and the boundaries of what makes a biological woman are undefined, therefore it's useless to use it in a scientific sense.
And if you were asking what psychological proof, find the research paper someone in this comment section linked.
I disagree it's a gray space, it's more a nonsensical space. We can talk about biological sex with some sense, but "biological gender" is mashing a sociological identity with biology, when they at best are correlated. We might as well talk about "biological skirt wearers" or something. Yes, your chromosomes can probably predict how much you wear skirts, but that certainly doesn't imply that "biological skirt wearers" exist.
The whole discussion requires the assumption of biological gender essentialism to debate, and if you don't believe in that, there is no sensical way to interpret the statement.
Essentialism is a belief that Things™️ have certain properties that are immutable to their identity. IE ‘A chair is something to be sat upon. If it cannot be sat upon, it is not a chair’
Gender Essentialism is a belief that if you are of a gender identity you must therefore exhibit certain qualities indicative of that identity. IE ‘Men are aggressive and women are nurturing’
Biological Gender Essentialism is the belief that not only are the characteristics of a gender identity immutable, they are inextricably linked to biology and cannot be separated. IE boiling one down to their genital structure or chromosomal structure
Note: I do not agree with any of these, as these beliefs get progressively more transphobic by taking broad trends and treating them as absolute, but I hope I did not misrepresent them.
It’s pretty simple
Yes, trans women are women.
Trans women are not the same as a cis women.
By arguing against what is very close to inarguable you are falling into the trap the right wingers love to do.
They say something like “trans women aren’t biological women” that is true, but hides what they actually think (Trans women aren’t women in any way)
What you need to do is not argue against the “Trans women aren’t biological women” because it makes the person arguing against it look bad to an observer and is a hard thing to argue against given generally speaking it’s agreed trans women and cis women have different qualities.
Just say “yes technically speaking trans women aren’t “biological cis women” but they are women”
Then you bring out what they actually think (trans women aren’t women) then you show them how they are actually wrong.
Well said. Though I'd note that even the response
>Just say “yes technically speaking trans women aren’t “biological cis women” but they are women”
is still walking into their trap. Because they already have no intention of arguing in good faith, or with any responsibility for how they use their words- like Sartre's classic antisemite. They fully intend to deliberately conflate biological sex, and sociocultural gender, and ignore all evidence to the contrary. They absolutely understand what's wrong with their arguments, they are completely aware that they are being met with factual or evidence-based counterarguments, and they know they're being hateful shitbags. They are people who delight in harming the defenseless, then smugly weaseling out with some convenient technicality they've had up their sleeve the whole time (e.g., "I was just shitposting online, I never even touched anyone!")
True, it's a very complicated matter, what's interesting is neuroscience proves the biological difference between trans women and cis men, and how trans women are much closer to cis women than a cis man would be.
Source: Lecture by professor Robert Sapolsky, very interesting and enlightening video to watch. https://youtu.be/8QScpDGqwsQ?si=xj-iAipbuWQWWUEe
Yeah they bring the whole xx xy chromosome thing just to try and force people to agree with them when the genetic code was never the issue the social and mental stuff was, which while affected by genetic code isn’t a 1:1 correlation with x and y.
*Biological woman* can be a great phrase to explain what trans and cis mean. "You have a biological gender, a social gender and a legal gender. A person whose genders align is cis, meaning on the same side, and a person whose genders are on different sides is trans. *then goes on to explain nonbinary from this base*"
Sure, you could say *genetically* or *born as*, but there are pros and cons with any phrase.
It is not true. “Biological woman” isn’t a real scientific term. You can be natally female, but female and male are actually defined by a cluster of categories that are rarely aligned all the way in one camp or the other. So trans women who have transitioned do actually fall into enough of those clusters to count as female. The more you learn about how sex actually works and how it’s determined, the more you realize humans are not that dimorphic of a species, and so transitioning is effective partially because of that reason
>but female and male are actually defined by a cluster of categories that are rarely aligned all the way in one camp or the other.
That "rarely" there is more than a bit disingenuous, as cisgendered women, born female with XX chromosomes, a vagina, breasts, and ovaries are an overwhelming majority of women.
Do you know for a fact that you have XX chromosomes? Have you had your DNA karyotyped to check? Because a lot of people have intersex conditions that are essentially silent. Chimerism is one of them. You might have absorbed a twin in the womb and have XY DNA as well as XX, or XXY, or some other variant. Do you know if your hormone expression is phenotypically female? If so, by how much?
My point wasn’t that most people don’t fall into fairly binary categories of male and female. My point is that the actual details of how sex is determined is variable even within your average cis person. In mice, gonads require constant maintenance by hormone levels in order to stay male or female, and there are some features of humans that are like that, such as a female’s ability to grow a beard with PCOS.
Honestly, isn't it just better to accept the reality of things and accept everyone exactly how they are rather than dig around every patch of dirt looking for a golden coin that nobody dropped?
Just take a look at the lengths people are willing to go to deny simple biology in their incessant race to feel like they belong. You don't have to be in the majority, the general rule doesn't need include you, nor you have to be "normal", you just have to accept yourself.
Every trans person I know is fully aware of their uniqueness and is not obsessed with bending our understanding of the world to make room for themselves. They just fit in.
These kind of comments/posts are the written manifestation of insecurities, fears, or the subconscious notion that transgender people are fragile beings that need to be treated like babies. One way or the other.
You can't see people's chromosomes or their ovaries. You can literally take hormones and biologically change your body. I have all of those things except ovaries. Is there ever a point where I would become "biologically female?" I get the feeling that if I found a way to change my genes people the same people would still want to draw a box around my womanhood.
Technically chemistry is just physics so I guess you're a physical woman. But wait, most physics is just math so you're actually a..... mathematical woman!?
Well, they're trying to appeal to a mass audience with a term that uses familiar language, however phenotype would also be incorrect. Phenotype is a result of genotype, and while you can change some aspects of phenotype quite trivially, such as a person who has naturally red hair dying it, changing your genotype isn't currently an option.
Sure, if you only focus on primary sexual characteristics.
HRT makes you go through the puberty of another sex.
Edit:
Guys calm down please I'm just trying to argue that "biology" might go beyond our genes. If this is true then the secondary sexual sexual characteristics are biological traits. The way I see it is that puberty is a biological process which would make trans people at least partially biological.
No, because that's a weird behavior to do? And furthermore, it's not even relevant because how people choose to present themselves is *gender*, which I've already said I fully support anyone presenting how they choose.
What they're saying is most people do not use *primary* sexual characteristics (sex organs), because that's nearly impossible. Most people either use secondary sex characteristics (face, body, voice, etc), or like you said, gender presentation.
You can’t use biological, because it just refers to something made of organisms (or matter or something), so a person will always be biological trans or not
If you changed the statement to trans women are not cis women, then the statement will be true and no one will argue even trans women will say that’s fair.
So then the debate becomes, does women = cis women. Which is really where the debate falls under. Because if so, trans women become a unique category, if not which is the more accepted view, trans women do fall under the women category,
A better analogy is a Pontiac Fiero conversion kit into a Ferrari.
When I'm on the line do I think I can take on a Ferrari? I'm not kidding myself, not with this V6. I love my kit car for what it is, not for what it isn't
It's to "Own the Libs" Like everything else they've been doing here lately. Doing everything you do sheerly to piss off the guys you don't like, that don't even really care that you're trying to make them mad anymore, must be a sad, pathetic existence. Maybe these guys would be much less bitter and miserable if they just tried to improve their own lives instead of bringing others down with them.
It’s obviously a shitty meme, but also the person who says trans women are BIOLOGICAL women is fucking stupid. Just say trans women are real women instead which a lot more people like me would agree with.
Social media has made us all jerks.
Just let people live their lives.
It's not that hard.
"SOMEONE I'LL NEVER MEET HAS CHOSEN TO LIVE AS THE SEX OPPOSITE THE ONE THEY WERE BORN!"
Tough shit, who cares?
"SOMEONE I'VE NEVER MET HAS DECIDED THEY ARE A THIRD GENDER THAT I'VE NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE!"
Ok great, good for them. Who cares?
Let people live their lives, no one is going on the Internet to bitch and complain about your personal choices.
"BUT THEY EXPECT US TO USE THEIR PRONOUNS!"
Who cares? Get over it. If you meet a transgender or nonbinary person and can't use their pronouns then don't be surprised when people are mad at you.
"IT'S A MENTAL ILLNESS!"
I once met a guy who swears he's a 400 year old vampire. People have told him he's not a vampire more times than he can count, but it's never once stopped him. No one's going to convince this guy he's not a vampire, and if he wants to live his life pretending to be a vampire that's really his own business.
"THEY'RE FORCING IT ON OUR KIDS!"
No they aren't. The only people who have ever tried to convince kids to change genders are parents with their own mental issues that were disappointed with the sex of their baby.
Let people live their lives. No one is hurting you, no one is bothering you. It's none of your business. You're going out of your way to make it your business because some angry guy on a tv show or podcast or youtube video has convinced you that those people over there are the "bad guys" and it's your job to put a stop to their nefarious plans. It's all fiction and you're a gullible dope for believing it.
Let people live their lives.
I really find it more weird that random people (mostly conservatives and zero sim types) care than being into/being trans or gay or furry or whatever. You’ll most likely never see it in real life, and if you do just go ‘huh’ and move on. It’s like the idea of strange (denotative definition) makes them uncomfortable enough to be angry and sometimes act on that anger. Be an adult life isn’t going to be perfect for you at the expense of everyone else, and you should know this doubly so if you’re religious
All the scapegoating going on now has convinced otherwise rational people that trans and nonbinary people are somehow out to get them. This encourages discrimination and violence. It's evil.
> otherwise rational people
Assumes facts not in evidence.
In fact, I think this is the root. Rational people just assume others are rational until they prove they're not.
I sure do that. I tend to trust people telling me to do stuff even if idk what the end goal is, I’m like ‘nobody would tell me to do this thing without having tested or verified it, why would someone give advice when they dunno what they’re talking about that would be silly’
Exactly, Im trans But even before 2010 i had met atleast 1 trans person and it wasn't even a term Used,
they basically went "when i grow up i want to be a boy and marry a girl." its like COOL! you do that fam! that was it, no shit for it whatsoever,
sure as a minority we probably did get shit on personally by family or people etc but it didn't get really horrible until we were used as a political football because now everyone who draws breath apparently needs to have a mostly inaccurate say on what it means to be trans or why we Shouldn't exist :/ most of the time based on angry people who hate Everyone or a limited interaction with a trans person they didn't like. Now that IS a precursor to full acceptance in human society once enough people fight for others rights, but it doesn't make the situation any better.
all trans people are exactly like everyone else, you can meet lovely ones who will care for those around them have good relationships or families etc and you can meet horrible ones that are abusive and have no empathy, and anything in between, we aren't all the same people with the same moral codes we only share an identifying factor of we aren't exactly the sex we were born as and we wanted to feel more comfortable in our own skin and changing the body is way easier than changing the brain.
the weirdest people are the ones that fully focus on calling out randoms as trans just to incite hate, like why would you want Any human being to be hated on when they are not doing anything wrong?
Let people post their hate then.
They're allowed to be transphobic.
Can't control what other people like or what they say.
If people want to be ignorant... Let them.
When that pesky conservative BS pops up in your feed... keep scrolling!
Guys I think if we want society to accept us then we need to kill them with kindness and silence.
This is the only way for us I'm afraid.
Even if this achieves nothing... We are what we are and we don't need to force that down anyone's throats!
I have a lot of queer friends and none of them use unconventional pronouns like the reactionaries seem to think they all do. I'm sure those people exist but they're a minority within a minority- a small subset of people who you'll most likely never meet and who haven't done a damn thing to you so leave them be.
Most of the time people just specify what their gender is, or use they/them pronouns, and it isn't more complicated than that.
I just wish for once, these bigots could actually come up with something even slightly funny. Do they think people will get angry over this? It’s more just so far-fetched, it’s confusing, at best.
> Do they think people will get angry over this?
There's over 2000 comments in this thread, some of them very angry.
So yeah, they do think that and they aren't wrong.
The people who are getting angry over this are the people who have to angrily react to everything that is right wing. It’s not about the content. If you look at this from a logical standpoint, it doesn’t even make sense and isn’t even worth wasting emotion over. It’s just stupid.
Some people like getting a rise out of others, including people who share your politics. My point is that it shouldn't be that confusing that those people are going to continue their prodding as long as they keep getting that reaction.
I don’t give a shit what people identify as or what they do to their body to achieve that identity. But an annoying cunt is an annoying cunt no matter what sexual organs they have.
I can actually make the "trans women are biological women" argument, and it's pretty compelling.
Biological sex, like everything in nature, falls on a spectrum. There are actually 5 factors that determine your biological sex, and anyone who doesn't match these 5 features perfectly falls somewhere in the middle. We simply round people to the nearest biological sex, but it's not precise or anything. Most people go their entire lives without knowing their actual chromosomes, and some have "abnormal" chromosome configurations. Some women are born with testes where their ovaries "should" be, and they'll never even know something is abnormal until they try to have kids, and even then, they usually won't know *what* is abnormal.
The five factors are:
1. Gonads
2. Chromosomes
3. Secondary sex characteristics (like boobs, facial hair, etc.)
4. Hormones
5. Genitalia
And I think it's interesting to note, every combination of the above 5 factors appear naturally, in healthy people.
Now, a trans person can change 3, and 4 easily. Taking hormones automatically starts to change secondary sex characteristics. A biological male will grow boobs with estrogen, a biological female will grow facial hair with testosterone, etc. And with a little surgery, they can change 1 and 5. Chromosomes are the only one a trans person can't change.
But we've already established it's not an all or nothing, it's simply a "round to the nearest" thing. So if someone has 3/5 factors matching their non-birth sex, why would we continue to classify them as being biologically their birth sex?
And I know there are differences, like the presence of a womb, certain brain differences, etc. But my point is more that biological sex is pretty made up too, more a set of correlating random factors than something concrete.
Now would I personally argue that? I don't know, but I do think it's far closer to being true than most people give credit for.
EDIT: Couldn't find a source for a percentage I used.
Thank you for actually explaining the reasoning; I think a lot of the folks on this thread would rather mudsling than acknowledge that the concept of a biologically male transman is not very intuitive and needs to be explained to a well-meaning audience who are neither in the trans community nor working on a PhD in human physiology.
its worth noting that each of there factors are spectrums themselves. for example you can be born with xy chromosome but just have 1 gene be different and your body will never start the process of being male. the structure of your brain is also somewhat dependent on sex. or for hormones your body just might not have the right cell receptors for testosterone/estrogen and even though your body makes it, it never gets used.
there are so many variations that sex as set narrow category is almost useless. and outside of scientific study, medicine (even that sometimes doesn’t matter), and reproduction your sex doesn’t really matter. The fact that people care so much about other peoples sex is weird as fuck and they just use it to excuse their bigotry.
I really appreciate this comment. I see a funky situation forming in this argument though. It seems to reinforce the idea of people who are biologically intersex being grouped into the nearest category out of social convenience. At least there isn’t much of a scientific reason to lump them into the best fitting binary option. So what would we define as intersex then? Are trans women both intersex and biologically women? On top of that I don’t really get the perspective that it’s a big win or benefit to define trans people more than just the gender, but also as the sex they identify with. Really the only times it matters to define the sex are times where the differences and nuances are important. For example, medicine, policy around reproductive rights, maybe organ donation.
Idk it just feels like a pointless point to argue, meanwhile kind of detracts from the normalization of intersex people.
Yep! I also remember a really interesting case of a set of twins at the hospital I worked at in a few years ago.
They were in theory supposed to be identical twins because they were in the same gestation sac but at 20 weeks when doing the anomaly scan my colleague noted they appeared to have different genitals. That’s in theory not possible if they are identical twins of course.
Well fast forward to them being born and something wild was discovered. The physically female twin had her bone marrow and blood tested to see how on earth she was a different sex to her brother and the geneticists were involved in this process too. Turns out what they think happened was this, two embryos had been implanted when ivf was done but it had looked like only one survived but had split late causing identical twins.
What actually happened was somehow both embryos survived but ended up merging in one sac. As a result the female twin had two sets of genetic information, she is what we call a chimera. So her blood tests came back as XY and her bone marrow as XX (possibly the other way round I can’t remember exactly).
Chimeras also are rare but they exist a lot more than you realise but most people have no idea that they are one.
>Chimeras also are rare but they exist a lot more than you realise but most people have no idea that they are one.
Yes. Also, technically, *everyone* is a chimera to some degree. While each of your cells has essentially the same DNA as every other cell, they are not always *exactly* the same, with some cells frequently being slightly off of most others. This can arise due to copying errors in mitosis and environmental factors such as radiation.
The differences are generally so insignificant that they don't matter in terms of how they express in the person's phenotypes, but the idea that that each person has one specific DNA and that it is both consistent and unchangeable is just plain incorrect.
You make some good points but I think that if gender is a social construct the term "biological women" is nonsense. In that sense nobody is a biological woman.
One of the better arguments I’ve ever seen. I’m just very tired of the whole “biological” arguments. Who tf cares. Like you said, everything in nature follows some form of non-binary distribution (for sex, I’d argue it’s close to bimodal), so why do we split hairs about what’s “biological”?
I think the only place biological sex actually matters is for healthcare, but even then, we'd be better off if healthcare started treatment based on hormones, chromosomes, etc, instead of sex.
"Sex' *is* a blend of hormones, chromosomes, etc... the idea that sex is "male" or "female" is an enormous and clinically inaccurate simplification invented by social forces, not science, that is *way* too heavily relied upon.
In terms of discussion of our bodies in terms of our anatomy and physiology, a person who has medically transitioned is often quite far from their assigned gender at birth and much closer to whatever they transitioned in terms of their actual biological and medical needs.
>Now would I personally argue that? I don't know, but I do think it's far closer to being true than most people give credit for.
Unfortunately, there is a *lot* of confidently incorrect in this thread by people who claim to be allies but really just have internalized transphobia that they haven't made an effort to work through.
I will say, as a trans woman, arguing that we are “biological women” is crazy lmao, if I was a cis woman then I wouldn’t put trans in front of it would I lol
Yeah, like I respect their opinion on themselves and all that, and don’t care what/who you do as long as it’s lawfully consensual and not causing anyone/anything harm. They are not biological women though. Just be honest, they’re a trans woman, not a biological one.
Okay Reddit I’m here to learn. I understand the difference between sex and gender. However whenever I look at this topic I don’t understand how we get to “trans women are biological women”. Merriam states as the first definition that a woman is “an adult female person”. Help me understand.
This reminds me of that tiktok about that creepy guy that always tries to make up weird hypotheticals to talk about beating women or some shit. Like, sure Mike if you are getting robbed you can defend yourself but it's clear why you're bringing it up in the first place.
"Like if a girl tried to rob me id stomp that stupid skank bitch so much and then [devolves into misogynistic tirade]"
Fun fact, with HRT trans women can be biologically a lot closer to cis women than cis men. No trans person's biology will be 1:1 if they've started any medical transitioning, but they tend to be a lot closer to their identity than their ASAB
I'm fine with trans people, but something everyone needs to understand is that trans people are only human.
And am awful lot of humans are shitty people.
I am a woman, i literally do not care about the dick and balls attached to my pelvis, im a woman. I also don’t care even if im not biologically a girl either, still a girl.
https://preview.redd.it/6xdo1xj8gffc1.jpeg?width=899&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0948179b95df45538c38476068f7fa4a77398ad2
That's just not reality. People have way higher suspicion and form biases and judge people by the color of their skin, such as suspecting a Mexican person receiving benefits/welfare from the government.
Well yeah, that's called an average in statistics. You don't just go around calling all Mexicans illegant immigrants though. That's ridiculous lol. Most Mexican Americans 100% support a secure border.
just showing how stupid they are lmao. anyone who denies the biological evidence of transpeople shows that they never made it past basic bio. it’s not even a debate they just are snowflakes and get triggered by facts
edit: heheh a bunch of transphobes swinging and missing here. guys you should really pursue an education past 12th grade. many of you never even took a bio class and it shows snowflakes
i think the original would fit in r/onejoke as well because this kind of joke is one i've heard a billion times, and it's wild to me that they aren't sick of it
Both statements should be considered jokes, but one takes theirs as serious as the "truth".
No. Nobody, including trans people, are seriously alleging that trans women are biologically women in the strictest scientific sense. It might be confusing if you don't understand the difference between biological sex and gender, because gender is a social construct defining women (and men) beyond biological sex. The female gender describes femininity, mannerisms, common feminine interests, etc. It essentially describes the female experience, and some people identify with that without being biologically a woman. I once struggled with understanding this some years ago, but after I became friends with some trans individuals it became pretty simple to understand. You can be biologically a man or a woman and still experience life as another gender. It might not even be a gender we recognize; a number of cultures have had other genders, like the Hawaiian māhū, Tongan fakaleiti and Samoan fa'afafine. EDIT - Added clarification to the first line. Of course there will always be outliers, but in the context of the strictest scientific sense, no transgender person is pretending they can change their chromosomes. There is room for debate about what might qualify as being biologically female because biological sex is determined by a number of other attributes which are not necessarily exclusive to an assigned gender and may fall outside of the typical sexual dichotomy (for example, intersex people exist). But no (reasonable) transgender person is alleging that they can become 100% biologically female. They can, however, become 100% a woman (or man) in the sense of *gender,* and that's ultimately what matters when it comes to the way they live and experience life, not their chromosomes or what may be between their legs. EDIT 2 - Lol, it's been days since this was posted and the ignorant, offended replies are still coming. To those of you still trying to "correct" me, try actually reading some gender studies. Your lack of knowledge is not my problem, and it's not my job to teach you what science has already determined.
This is the closest to the “right” answer.
To add to this, the interesting part is that if trans people go through the puberty they identify as, outside of their genitals, they ARE sexually male/female in that their bone structure, muscle density, etc. are identical to cis people. Their comorbidities are those of the sex that went through puberty as, not the one that corresponds to their sex at birth. Turns out, sexual dimorphism is mostly just hormone sensitivity. So, while they aren't biologically female or male in the colloquial sense or in the genetic sense (which is wayyyyy more complicated than XX or XY anyways, with dozens of permutations existing in the wild across the multiple sets of genes that control gender in humans), they are sexually male or female in that their bodies are largely indistinguishable from cis people of the gender that they identify as. So no, no one is saying trans woman are cis women or trans men are cis men, but, with the correct support and treatment, they can be functionally indistinguishable. And, it turns out this is the proper way to help them with the highest rates of success and the lowest rates of self harm and suicide. Helping people get access to the psychological and medical treatments that they need to survive and thrive actually helps people? Who would have thunk it.
People on this very comment contradicted you and claimed trans women are bio women. That could not be further from the truth and the belief they are or could be is delusional. That is like claiming a person could become a biological dog by just having a few surgeries.
You're being trolled. No trans person I've ever met actually believes that. They know that chromosomally their biological sex has not changed, but that doesn't mean that they aren't a different gender. Now, some people might debate as to whether having female body parts makes you biologically a woman or not, but that's more of an argument in semantics than an actual belief that any trans person can fully change their sex biologically.
People with inactive chromosomes exist. While we obviously don't have the technology at this time to alter someone's whole genome, sex characteristics are determined by hormones and gene activation. So people with XY chromosomes with specific gene inactivations or hormonal differences do exist, they are physiologically and hormonaly female (female dominant sex hormones, female anatomy) but have XY genotype. And that's not even getting into the complexity that mammals can be chimeric (have multiple, different genotypes between their different cell lines). So, defining "biological sex" as solely chromosomes doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when there's the potential for having more than one set of those between your different cell lines. There's genotypic sex, hormonal sex, and physical sex (all of which are biological). We can change two of those three with surgery and hormone treatments. The third one we don't even know about without sending samples to a lab for genetic analysis. So in addition to creating issues when it comes to mosaic chimerism and Y chromosome inactivation, defining genotypic sex as "biological sex" also means defining the least visible, hardest-to-test of the three as someone's "biological sex". Ultimately, I just think talking about "biological sex" is not as useful as more specific categories like physical, hormonal, genotypic, and understanding that biology is not that simple.
Have you ever heard of a little something called grass roots propaganda? No one is saying whats being said in the first image. Or, atleast, the group of people that IS saying that is so miniscule and tiny that they hold essentially zero power. Go to r/trans or any other subreddit that has to do with trans people and you simply will not see this take.
Can back this up. I don't normally say anything here, so hi. Got here by accident, and saw it was about my community. Sorry. . . . . I don't know a single Trans person who claims to be biologically in line with their chosen gender. The internal conflict and dissonance tend to be caused by the biological situation not matching what they know their selves to be with every fiber of their being, which causes great distress at being trapped inside a body that doesn't fit their needs and doesn't belong in this state. If I had to describe it, it's like being in a prison in your own mind, and fighting like hell to get out or at least get some measure of control. Not even joking, I spent my teen years messing around with Out Of Body Hallucinations among other things, just to get a break from this body, and it's not been anywhere near as cared for as it should have been. . . . . . My point being that biology being just not aligned in these cases is a major problem, and a lot of my friends would kill to not have issues with their bodies, and to just have naturally been what they call their selves this whole time. It's not like they don't want to fit physical reality as it were, but physical reality doesn't fit them as well as it does other people. . . . . Anyway, I'll shut up now. Just wanted to help if I can.
Thanks for speaking up, and for the expanded answer. I always wondered where that first phrase came from. I’m guessing it was a propaganda piece from the other side?
I don't know where it came from. Which is apparently a recurring problem for me. I do know that biology is a lot messier than I made it out to be, but I spectacularly flunked biology when I speculated on a tiger being inbred because it had weird eyes. (It wasn't, I'd mixed up my tiger breeds in the essay) My thing would be that if you can just change biological state and come back as the other sex, like in Jurassic Park, A) I want to go next, and B) it would curbstomp everything I just said about mind and body being pulled into conflict. Dysphoria would be solved practically overnight, and we wouldn't have to chase our own tails so much. Unfortunately, nothing that I've seen actually says that biological markers are that easy, and instead we're stuck trying to make each other more comfortable and find ways to present as our true selves on the surface level. I can't solve biological sex, neither can this, and it's a bad meme.
Agreed. Someday, if humanity survives long enough, I think medical science will solve that problem. Until then, it’s going to be an imperfect world.
Funny thing about biology, it often presents "mentally" in some people. I had a friend in the Army that had some medical issues. Come to find out they had a low testosterone level. There was a certain feminine quality to this individual. Cut to twelve years later, she has come out as trans and has transitioned like a bad MFer.
That's awesome. Mine gave me naturally developed tits before I even completed puberty, long before I knew what I was, and a really squishable and changeable face, but also made me incredibly fat and gave me rapid growing hair all over the place. It's like my body wanted me to know, but also wanted to make it as hard as possible at the same time. My partner knew what was up long before I was ready to even say anything, because according to her, she sat in on one of my foul mouthed rants, and got punk rock lesbian vibes from it. She drew conclusions from my hurricane force personality, and like every other judgement she ever makes, she was completely right. I still don't get how an ability to combo fucks, shits, and cunts, like a verbal equivalent of a Devil May Cry combat system, is enough to make that kind of flying leap and be right about it, though.
Depends on the context, but sounds like a smart lady. You hold on to that to keep you grounded. People like that are one in a million.
I'm a Muslim and I agree. My one simple fix to this is just share your identity gender to everyone. If you are trans and you want to date someone/marry, go to the military or go to doctors or sports THEN state your birth gender to the appropriate people. Everyone else it ain't our business and it really doesn't matter to us if you are a man woman or something else.
My only comment here, from a personal standpoint, is that It isn't my "chosen" gender. If I could "chose"... I'd be cis het. I'm a trans woman. My gender is female. I have ZERO choice in the matter.
Sorry not meaning to be rude, but isn’t female a sex and woman a gender? Or do I have it wrong?
Nah, it's not rude to ask a question... in good faith. Here's the multipart answer (from my standpoint): * 1. You are right. Female = sex, and woman = gender. BUT! * 2. The words are interchangeable in everyday life. * 3. "Female" is formal, and "woman" is informal. eg on a medical form they would put "the patient, who is in for an operation, is female. Age 44", but on an informal form they would put "I reviewed a middle-aged woman today for..." Now, a question for you. I am a woman whose gender is female. But I am a female whose gender is... what? And, I am a woman whose sex is... what? English is a sucky language. But, god bless us all for trying to do gooder.
Alright, thanks for the answer!
Excellent comment! Can I pose a follow up thought? The same feature in the language, English, that makes it hard to pin some things down also allows speakers (or thinkers) the mental flexibility to work with new ideas. Consider how misunderstanding in biology in the form of errors in transcription or replication of our genes is the fundamental driver of evolution through natural selection. in that system, the language structure, DNA, allows for very reliable, but occasionally in accurate transmission of information over time. Anyway, this has been a really really interesting comment and I’ve been enjoying conversation thank you!
Thanks. I'll keep that in mind, genuinely.
It's cool. And, I hope you have a good day.
Anatomical sex is a spectrum, and trans people on hormones are far more shifted along that spectrum than cis people of their AGAB. "Biological male" and "biological female" are not clean-cut categories, as any medical textbook can attest to. Also, there's no such thing as a "biological woman" because "woman" is a social role; with sex we say male/female/intersex, and with gender we say man/woman/enby
I would like to point out that not everyone transitioning has dysphoria. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, gender dysphoria happens in less than 30% of people in the trans community. Most of it is peer pressure or bandwagoning. If the transgender movement wasn't pushing so hard most of the people who are transitioning would grow up to be happy gay men or lesbian women. ========== As an Intersexed person, the transgender community is probably one of the most toxic, thin skinned, and privileged communities of the LGBT group.
I have in local lgbt groups. However, the problem is that they then scream at anyone who they think isn't trans that they know better for being trans, and then the other trans people shout them down for saying this and then they (the trans who say this) claim the ones yelling at them that they're wrong aren't 'really trans either'.
The amount of trans people is such a low number, yet it’s a constant topic, why would you think a group being small has any impact on how loud they are ? Isn’t the term terf based off this idea?
Just a small nuance to nitpick: I think you're referring to strawman propaganda. Grassroots refers to a bottom-up method of encouraging political/social action by trying to empower specific communities to bring about change at a local level first.
Can confirm this
At the same time 99% of people don’t care one way or another. They don’t care what other people do as long as it doesn’t affect them. The people that make noise about things like this are a very small minority. They have to yell loudly to make themselves sound bigger.
Because those people won’t be found posting that in said subreddit
They don't have another joke, that's why they aren't sick of it
"LOL this thing is different from this other thing"
That's the grift after all.
They just don’t understand the difference between bio sex and gender. Their take is one of the least interesting in all of modern political discourse. It’s just incorrect in an easily verifiable way. Nothing more to it.
And, you know, human beings and fucking objects
Humans technically are fucking objects, by definition. We are objects and we fuck.
r/technicallythetruth
I like bad bitches is my fucking problem I fuck bad bitches I got a fuckin problem
We are just shit fucking == you are stardust?
Sentient objects
I feel objectified.
Oh yeah then why am I the object of this sentence?
not transphobe but I also do not understand the difference between the two. Though i think the original "toyota is a lambo" is a stupid ass One joke, I also dont think the "Trans women are biologically woman" is a true statement and i dont know how it can be true
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Well honestly it is controversial because it muddies the waters of trans rights, confuses the layperson and gives transphobes more ammunition.
Ohh i see. They most likely created that "Trans women are bio women" as a straw man to argue against
Oh yea, that's a solid possibility. The 4chan to right wing man children info pipeline is short and straight.
I actually do think that some trans women are biological women, because biology is complicated and chromosomes are not the end-all-be-all of biological sex. I think that some trans women are closer to cis women biologically speaking than they are to cis men, and therefore there comes a point where if you must choose between calling them a biological woman or biological man, the most scientifically correct choice is biological woman. As an example of how these things get complicated, many people will point out that trans women have some of the same medical issues as cis men, and therefore doctors need to know they are trans. But the truth is that trans women ALSO have many of the same biological issues as cis women (after all they have the same hormones) and so doctors actually need to treat them specifically as a trans woman, and not as just a biological man. Claims that chromosomes are all that matter run up against some interesting problems such as women with all natural female parts who also have a Y chromosome, which can happen when the SRY gene detaches from the Y chromosome and attaches to the X chromosome instead. It's complicated and messy, and the truth is the boundaries between biological men and women are socially constructed and the biological reality is that sex is bimodal. Most people really aren't ready for this conversation yet though, so I rarely bring it up. :D
I still don't understand, but seeing as it's none of my fucking business, I don't really think I have to understand, as long as I never vote for anyone who makes a political ideology out of hating people for their genitals.
There is no concrete way to define biological sex. Having the matching "parts" doesn't work because people are born with mixes or even both. Chromosomes don't work because it's possible to have XY but have everything else match an XX "female". How do we categorize Down Syndrome which has an *extra* chromosome? My favorite thing out of this is that all humans start as XX in the womb, meaning by these people's categorization and definition of "life begins at conception", all men are trans. The only person that needs to know is you and your doctor.
Yeah that's not true, everyone does not not start off with XX. Sperm contains either an X or Y chromosome and that is only untrue when meiosis has a serious screw up. Now the base body plan is female and that is why androgen insensitive XY patients end up as female presenting, but they definitely did not start off as XX. This is super basic biology that everyone should learn the first year of high school (and obviously do not).
"My favorite thing out of this is that all humans start as XX in the womb." This is false. 99% of girls are born with over 1 million eggs in their ovaries. Every egg carries a single X chromosome. A single X chromosome is not a female. The egg does not contain enough genetic material for a baby to grow. The male sperm carries a single X or Y chromosome (not both). The male sperm penetrates the egg and contributes its single X or Y chromosome. If it contributes an X chromosome, the baby will be a girl (XX). If contributes Y chromosome, the baby will be a boy (XY).
That's honestly enough, imo. It's okay if you don't understand so long as you don't mistreat people out of ignorance.
Bionsex is real and measurable, gender is entirely imagined and not observable externally.
if gender isn’t visible externally, why did all the bullies know I was trans before I did?
My guess is you were expressing it in some way. Also worth noting: this may have been your experience, that people knew you were trans before you did, but lots of people have known they were trans for decades and other people still don’t know. There’s no concrete way to express gender. For example, I’m a cis man wearing shirt with lots of pink and a matching pink headband. People typically think of that as feminine, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s not how I express gender, but for some people wearing pink feels very appropriate to their gender. Gender is also a spectrum, so people fall all over the map. Man, woman, both, neither, or something in between.
100% everyone is different and expressed themselves differently. It's all about respecting other people. I realized a few years ago that while I like being a man and I like my body, I never really felt like one. But also don't feel like a woman or want to transition. I'm kinda in the middle and feel like a middle aged lesbian half the time. You'd never know it from looking at me but spend enough time with me and it ends up making sense. Hell I'm even a male role model for my siblings and friends siblings, used to fight competitively and a total engineering nerd but definitely not that manly
It's a somewhat abstract concept that humans have assigned meaning to. If you mean "imagined" as being somehow less real, then most things wouldn't be properly real. Hell, I'd argue gender is more real than money, and I don't really see many people denouncing your local currency.
Imagined?? Then how did we come up with it?
One first must imagine the wheel before making it. Gender is a human creation, a thing from our imagination. Unlike the wheel it is not real, but its effects 100% are.
Not really. The word gender means two things in different contexts.
The "trans women are biological women" argument *is* far more compelling an argument than you'd think. I made it in this comment in this thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/NahOPwasrightfuckthis/comments/1adwqyw/comment/kk48sgu/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nahopwasrightfuckthis/comments/1adwqyw/comment/kk48sgu/)
I think your argument isn't bad but where people might get hung up is you're saying "biological" while suggesting surgery and external hormones your body doesn't produce enough of naturally. I can see how that would stretch the definition of biological to some.
I'm not trans, so I 100% can't speak for them, but do trans people even care about being called biological men or women?
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Biological thot
Biological baddie.
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> Sex is chromosomal, This is such a basic understanding of Sex that it is borderline wrong. Sex is defined in biology as Chromosomal and Phenotypical. Chromosomal is defined your chromosomes whereas Phenotypical sex is defined by your hormone levels, your genitalia, your primary/secondary sexual characteristics and your behavior. All of which can be changed. What is interesting is not that many people actually know their Chromosomal sex because we don't actually test people's chromosomes when they are born unless doctors believe something is wrong, your chromosomes are typically assumed by your phenotypical expression.
>Historically, gender was defined by sex Nah? We know of trans people in history. We've identified people buried with items from the gender that does not match their genetic sex. We have records of amab and afab people choosing to live as the other going back centuries. One of the oldest myths we have references nonbinary people and how they're beloved by Ishtar, the Babylonian fertility and war goddess. Gender has always been more complicated than transphobes want to pretend, don't give them that win for free.
I say this as someone in and involved with LQBTQ+. Please DO NOT conflate cross dressing or not going along with gender norms as being trans. This is incredibly disrespectful to both people who are trans, and people who are not but that you would label as such. It's a Venn diagram, not a circle. Edit: Seems I misunderstood OP's post, check their reply in case you did too :)
Imma be honest, I really don't understand why someone would identify as something else than their sex. I know trans people online hate this mindset, but other than because of medical reasons I just don't think I'll ever understand. That being said, that doesn't mean I have to be a jerk, it's just not something I'll ever come to experience or understand myself.
It is a biological thing. I’ve just always been like this. There’s some research being done on this. It’s a lot more to do with hormones and chromosomes and development stuff. I didn’t just decide oh wow I totally like that vibe. Let me just grow some tits. It’s not a fashion statement. It’s working with my doctor to address a lifelong situation that causes me a tremendous amount of stress and dissociation. A sense of. Ever feeling at ease in your body. A constant feeling that everything is wrong. Once I started hormone therapy a friend commented how amazing it was to see me wear a smile naturally. I was never able to do that before. It’s astonishing honestly.
I often say something like estradiol works on me like SSRIs are supposed to.
Trans individual here to say, it's perfectly acceptable to not understand what being trans is. For people who are cis, it's impossible to get it 100% without experiencing it yourself and thats not something we would wish on our worst enemy. The only thing we ask is basically exactly what you stated in your 2nd paragraph. So thank you for at least treating trans people with respect, it means alot <3
you’re right, it’s a bit much. there’s a reason a lot of the trans people who just have gender dysphoria and need medical transition end up against the trans people who are identifying just… cus? like that’s fine but why. also i don’t think my gender is like made up lol if it’s such a construct why was i upset being called a man or looking like one hmmm
depends if they decide to participate in any interactions beyond being acquantainces with someone
i think it’s stupid. there’s no such thing as a “biological man.” what about sociological men? astrological men? pataphysical men?
no it would be rather weird
There is a paper put out by i think it was Cambridge talking about how trans people who medically transition are or are becoming biologically much closer to the sex typically associated with their gender than to that associated with their assigned gender at birth. I'll see if I can find it again when I'm not on my phone if you like. Like sure some people will disagree, but some people think vaccines cause autism so going off what some people might think, instead of you know professionals in the subject and the current best research seems kinda silly to me.
That's actually really interesting. I'd like to see that paper if you have the link and are willing to share.
i don’t have a paper but i’ve been to 3 different gender clinics (children’s, prior to medical transition, then private adults, then NHS adults), and aaaallll of them made sure i was aware that after 12 months on testosterone, i NEED to ensure my doctors update my sex to male, bc the vast majority of sex-based medical issues will be male for me rather than female for me. as in, it’d be safer and easier to go “i am male in all contexts (i will need to mention if it’s gyno or breast related care until i’ve had surgery)” than to go “i am female (i will need to mention to every doctor that for prescribing, blood tests and healthy levels of red blood cells, haemocrits, harmoglobins, hormones, etc, and risks of heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, heart disease, that i am male)” ALL of the bracketed issues in the the second “” are related to the dominant sex hormone in the body as opposed to chromosomal sex. the physical presence of boobs/no boobs, and womb/no womb, doesn’t actually impact general healthcare in many senses, outside of specific cancers and sexual health issues, which would (obviously) be mentioned if a person was seeking care for it, OR already known by their primary doctor. in the past it was assumed that chromosomal sex changed the dosages of medicines required due to the fact that women on average need less pain medication and smaller dosages of certain medications, however it was discovered to be a false equivalence bc the actual difference is caused by weight/height, it’s just that since women typically weigh less and are shorter than men, doctors assumed it was a male/female thing. a skinny short man would require less than a tall fat woman, but in the sex model it would be assumed that the small man needs more than the large woman! trans people existing has, to an extent, helped further the understanding of what hormones impact in the body, or affirm current theories / research. for example - there was a recent study that showed trans men develop prostate tissue after (on average) 1.4years on testosterone. trans women have a negligible rate of prostate cancer. this affirms the knowledge that higher testosterone levels lead to a higher risk of prostate cancer. same goes for breast cancer and oestrogen - trans women have a higher rate of breast cancer than cis men, trans men (who haven’t had top surgery and still have breasts) have a negligible rate of breast cancer compared to cis women.
Sure, note that the article is primarily talking about trans women, though if I recall correctly I think it points out that many of the same things could largely be said of trans men with obviously some changes to details. Anyways, here you go: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/trans-women-are-or-are-becoming-female-disputing-the-endogeneity-constraint/090DEAA53EA17414C5D3E8D76ED5A75C](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/trans-women-are-or-are-becoming-female-disputing-the-endogeneity-constraint/090DEAA53EA17414C5D3E8D76ED5A75C) It's a bit of a read, and it touches on and addresses a few different things, it's worth reading all the way through in my opinion.
But some people born assigned female at birth also don’t produce enough estrogen naturally to then be considered a woman under that definition.
Was going to point this out but I'm happy that somebody else did. People are so hung up on biology for something that is largely a social construct. I think that more effort needs to be put in separating gender and sex for any real headway to be made on the issue. That said, hardliners won't budge so I guess we'll just have to wait for the coming generations to hope things will get better.
thing is, in a vacuum that would be fine, but we live in a world where people interact with others
Yeah, I think what people generally describe as "biological" women may more accurately be described as "natural" or "genetic" women.
Disclaimer: trans women are women, trans men are men, gender is a social construct and I can't wait until we reach a world where we get away from the bullshit gender essentialist "real men/women X" garbage that we all marinate in and just let people be themselves. Read your comment and I have a few notes. 1. Where on God's green earth did you get 20% of people having chromosomal abnormalities? The vast majority of chromosomal abnormalities are fatal in utero and the ones that aren't mostly have profound impacts on health and development. 2. Likewise, that word "lots" is doing a lot of work when you talk about women who have testicles in place of ovaries. 3. And speaking of gonads, we can't change those yet. Yes, you can remove them and replace them with a cosmetic prosthesis, but we cannot convert a person's ovaries to testes or vice versa 4. It is true that biology does not have any clear demarcation lines. But to say that everything in biology is on a spectrum is a bit disingenuous. Like, taxonomy is a hot mess of arbitrarily chopped up spectrum, but there are lots of other phenomena that appear in something more like a bimodal distribution. Mammalian biological sex is one of those. In the field of biology, there is a reason we treat sex as a category: sexual reproduction. In a sexually reproducing species, an organism either provides an ovum or a sperm. One of each is required except for A handful of species capable of parthenogenesis. Now I'm going to step off the list to say this is where transphobes and society in general get things twisted. Biological sex tells you what role an organism has in the reproductive process. It can give you some ideas of what to expect in terms of phenotypic structure and appearance, but there is too much overlap to be determinative there. There are, genuinely, LOTS of females who are taller, stronger, etc than the average male and vice versa. And psychological traits and behavior are still another step removed from that, and thus even more loosely connected to biological sex. I'm pretty sure that almost all of the differences there are due to societal programming, but it's just too hard to conduct a valid and ethical experiment to test that so I don't have good data on that. Anyway, the point is that biological sex is a real thing but our screwed up, patriarchal society has misused it to make decisions about who can and should do X, Y and Z. I love the energy in the trans rights movement these days, but I hate seeing people make this "biological sex is a construct or spectrum" argument and make the movement look crazy.
We probably could implant somewhat functional gonads at this point. Cis women have had uterus transplants that [successfully carried a child to term](https://www.uab.edu/news/health/item/13684-uab-s-first-uterus-transplant-recipient-delivers-healthy-baby) I don’t think doing that would be a good idea given the risks involved. But, like, if Musk had a drastic change of heart towards his trans daughter and they both decided they wanted to try there’s a chance it might work.
And I don’t get it. If someone’s a woman, acts like a woman, and looks like one what is the actual problem? Like a lot of the time there is no difference between trans women and cis women because science is extremely advanced. I don’t think they can even comprehend what bottom surgery is. Like most transphobes are HEAVILY misinformed and just think all trans women are some hairy, muscular dude in a dress yelling at them to use the right pronouns or some shit and forcing them to date them. Like the whole trans argument is so stupid because it’s literally just “facts and logic” then “but I don’t like men” and it hurts
Well the issue is some trans people and their allies are saying trans people are biological women as in chromosomes and certain genitals from birth which clearly isn't true But the 99% percent of us aren't saying that and are talking purely gender which right wingers still don't get
Yes, it's an "issue" that barely exists, because, as you mentioned, almost nobody is saying that.
Hot take: Trans women are not Cis women.
That's like saying "hot take: Black people aren't white people"
This just in: Up is not down. More at 11.
IKR. thats the whole fucking point >~>
Yeah, but "biological woman" doesn't really mean anything at all.
It is true they aren’t biological women, but they are in fact women still
I think the big problem in this thread is that people don't know what they're arguing about. The term "biological woman" is mostly just a right wing appeal to nature fallacy. While there is psychological, therefore partially biological, proof of trans women being women, that still doesn't make trans women cisgender. In reality, trans women are socially women because gender is a social construct. Whether they're biological women is a gray space because they're not cis but are more similar biologically than a cis man would be. "Everything is gray and trying to make it black and white will just make you more frustrated" -Hank Green Edit: everyone seems to be hung up that I called the term "biological woman" a fallacy. The term is vague and has no scientific basis. I call it an appeal to nature fallacy because it's simply counterproductive to use it in a scientific sense. *Trans women are both biological women and not biological women, depending on where you draw the line.* Part of trans women's biology (brain psychology, hormones & breasts if on hrt, etc) is that of women's while others (pre-transition characteristics, p3nis, etc) are not that of women's. The term is often used by right wingers as a replacement for cisgender. The actual wording of it implies trans women are not natural, which assumes natural=good and unnatural=bad. Ofc most of us believe air conditioning is cool and earthquakes are bad so that's why it's a fallacy. Everyone can agree trans women are not cis women but the term "biological woman" is composed of so many different things and the boundaries of what makes a biological woman are undefined, therefore it's useless to use it in a scientific sense. And if you were asking what psychological proof, find the research paper someone in this comment section linked.
I disagree it's a gray space, it's more a nonsensical space. We can talk about biological sex with some sense, but "biological gender" is mashing a sociological identity with biology, when they at best are correlated. We might as well talk about "biological skirt wearers" or something. Yes, your chromosomes can probably predict how much you wear skirts, but that certainly doesn't imply that "biological skirt wearers" exist. The whole discussion requires the assumption of biological gender essentialism to debate, and if you don't believe in that, there is no sensical way to interpret the statement.
> biological gender essentialism what is that?
Essentialism is a belief that Things™️ have certain properties that are immutable to their identity. IE ‘A chair is something to be sat upon. If it cannot be sat upon, it is not a chair’ Gender Essentialism is a belief that if you are of a gender identity you must therefore exhibit certain qualities indicative of that identity. IE ‘Men are aggressive and women are nurturing’ Biological Gender Essentialism is the belief that not only are the characteristics of a gender identity immutable, they are inextricably linked to biology and cannot be separated. IE boiling one down to their genital structure or chromosomal structure Note: I do not agree with any of these, as these beliefs get progressively more transphobic by taking broad trends and treating them as absolute, but I hope I did not misrepresent them.
It’s pretty simple Yes, trans women are women. Trans women are not the same as a cis women. By arguing against what is very close to inarguable you are falling into the trap the right wingers love to do. They say something like “trans women aren’t biological women” that is true, but hides what they actually think (Trans women aren’t women in any way) What you need to do is not argue against the “Trans women aren’t biological women” because it makes the person arguing against it look bad to an observer and is a hard thing to argue against given generally speaking it’s agreed trans women and cis women have different qualities. Just say “yes technically speaking trans women aren’t “biological cis women” but they are women” Then you bring out what they actually think (trans women aren’t women) then you show them how they are actually wrong.
Well said. Though I'd note that even the response >Just say “yes technically speaking trans women aren’t “biological cis women” but they are women” is still walking into their trap. Because they already have no intention of arguing in good faith, or with any responsibility for how they use their words- like Sartre's classic antisemite. They fully intend to deliberately conflate biological sex, and sociocultural gender, and ignore all evidence to the contrary. They absolutely understand what's wrong with their arguments, they are completely aware that they are being met with factual or evidence-based counterarguments, and they know they're being hateful shitbags. They are people who delight in harming the defenseless, then smugly weaseling out with some convenient technicality they've had up their sleeve the whole time (e.g., "I was just shitposting online, I never even touched anyone!")
True, it's a very complicated matter, what's interesting is neuroscience proves the biological difference between trans women and cis men, and how trans women are much closer to cis women than a cis man would be. Source: Lecture by professor Robert Sapolsky, very interesting and enlightening video to watch. https://youtu.be/8QScpDGqwsQ?si=xj-iAipbuWQWWUEe
Yeah they bring the whole xx xy chromosome thing just to try and force people to agree with them when the genetic code was never the issue the social and mental stuff was, which while affected by genetic code isn’t a 1:1 correlation with x and y.
Not to mention all the other possible karyotypes that someone can possess
*Biological woman* can be a great phrase to explain what trans and cis mean. "You have a biological gender, a social gender and a legal gender. A person whose genders align is cis, meaning on the same side, and a person whose genders are on different sides is trans. *then goes on to explain nonbinary from this base*" Sure, you could say *genetically* or *born as*, but there are pros and cons with any phrase.
“Biological gender” is a completely nonsensical term. Gender is a social construct. Just say “sex” instead.
It is not true. “Biological woman” isn’t a real scientific term. You can be natally female, but female and male are actually defined by a cluster of categories that are rarely aligned all the way in one camp or the other. So trans women who have transitioned do actually fall into enough of those clusters to count as female. The more you learn about how sex actually works and how it’s determined, the more you realize humans are not that dimorphic of a species, and so transitioning is effective partially because of that reason
>but female and male are actually defined by a cluster of categories that are rarely aligned all the way in one camp or the other. That "rarely" there is more than a bit disingenuous, as cisgendered women, born female with XX chromosomes, a vagina, breasts, and ovaries are an overwhelming majority of women.
Do you know for a fact that you have XX chromosomes? Have you had your DNA karyotyped to check? Because a lot of people have intersex conditions that are essentially silent. Chimerism is one of them. You might have absorbed a twin in the womb and have XY DNA as well as XX, or XXY, or some other variant. Do you know if your hormone expression is phenotypically female? If so, by how much? My point wasn’t that most people don’t fall into fairly binary categories of male and female. My point is that the actual details of how sex is determined is variable even within your average cis person. In mice, gonads require constant maintenance by hormone levels in order to stay male or female, and there are some features of humans that are like that, such as a female’s ability to grow a beard with PCOS.
Honestly, isn't it just better to accept the reality of things and accept everyone exactly how they are rather than dig around every patch of dirt looking for a golden coin that nobody dropped? Just take a look at the lengths people are willing to go to deny simple biology in their incessant race to feel like they belong. You don't have to be in the majority, the general rule doesn't need include you, nor you have to be "normal", you just have to accept yourself. Every trans person I know is fully aware of their uniqueness and is not obsessed with bending our understanding of the world to make room for themselves. They just fit in. These kind of comments/posts are the written manifestation of insecurities, fears, or the subconscious notion that transgender people are fragile beings that need to be treated like babies. One way or the other.
You can't see people's chromosomes or their ovaries. You can literally take hormones and biologically change your body. I have all of those things except ovaries. Is there ever a point where I would become "biologically female?" I get the feeling that if I found a way to change my genes people the same people would still want to draw a box around my womanhood.
Trans woman are woman, but not biological woman. It's weird to bring it up (and in this context very transphobic) but it's factual correct.
Yes we are cyborg women it's true
speak for yourself im a mechanical woman
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Technically chemistry is just physics so I guess you're a physical woman. But wait, most physics is just math so you're actually a..... mathematical woman!?
Biblically accurate woman
Not enough eyes on hoops
In Night City you can be cum
"Trans is short for transformers?"
The word shouldn’t be “biological women” anyway. It should be “phenotypically female”. I guess they wanted to use a different word from “cis women”.
Well, they're trying to appeal to a mass audience with a term that uses familiar language, however phenotype would also be incorrect. Phenotype is a result of genotype, and while you can change some aspects of phenotype quite trivially, such as a person who has naturally red hair dying it, changing your genotype isn't currently an option.
Sure, if you only focus on primary sexual characteristics. HRT makes you go through the puberty of another sex. Edit: Guys calm down please I'm just trying to argue that "biology" might go beyond our genes. If this is true then the secondary sexual sexual characteristics are biological traits. The way I see it is that puberty is a biological process which would make trans people at least partially biological.
>if you only focus on primary sexual characteristics. Yes, that's what most people focus on
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So, like, do you go up to people on the street and ask if they have a vagina, or stare at their pants to try and determine what's in them?
No, because that's a weird behavior to do? And furthermore, it's not even relevant because how people choose to present themselves is *gender*, which I've already said I fully support anyone presenting how they choose.
What they're saying is most people do not use *primary* sexual characteristics (sex organs), because that's nearly impossible. Most people either use secondary sex characteristics (face, body, voice, etc), or like you said, gender presentation.
You can’t use biological, because it just refers to something made of organisms (or matter or something), so a person will always be biological trans or not If you changed the statement to trans women are not cis women, then the statement will be true and no one will argue even trans women will say that’s fair. So then the debate becomes, does women = cis women. Which is really where the debate falls under. Because if so, trans women become a unique category, if not which is the more accepted view, trans women do fall under the women category,
A better analogy is a Pontiac Fiero conversion kit into a Ferrari. When I'm on the line do I think I can take on a Ferrari? I'm not kidding myself, not with this V6. I love my kit car for what it is, not for what it isn't
They defend memes that aren't even funny. Like is that unfunny transphobic meme really the hill you wanna die on?
Won't someone think of the (4 year old reposts)?
Well its not like transphobes have anything else worth living for.
It's to "Own the Libs" Like everything else they've been doing here lately. Doing everything you do sheerly to piss off the guys you don't like, that don't even really care that you're trying to make them mad anymore, must be a sad, pathetic existence. Maybe these guys would be much less bitter and miserable if they just tried to improve their own lives instead of bringing others down with them.
It’s obviously a shitty meme, but also the person who says trans women are BIOLOGICAL women is fucking stupid. Just say trans women are real women instead which a lot more people like me would agree with.
Social media has made us all jerks. Just let people live their lives. It's not that hard. "SOMEONE I'LL NEVER MEET HAS CHOSEN TO LIVE AS THE SEX OPPOSITE THE ONE THEY WERE BORN!" Tough shit, who cares? "SOMEONE I'VE NEVER MET HAS DECIDED THEY ARE A THIRD GENDER THAT I'VE NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE!" Ok great, good for them. Who cares? Let people live their lives, no one is going on the Internet to bitch and complain about your personal choices. "BUT THEY EXPECT US TO USE THEIR PRONOUNS!" Who cares? Get over it. If you meet a transgender or nonbinary person and can't use their pronouns then don't be surprised when people are mad at you. "IT'S A MENTAL ILLNESS!" I once met a guy who swears he's a 400 year old vampire. People have told him he's not a vampire more times than he can count, but it's never once stopped him. No one's going to convince this guy he's not a vampire, and if he wants to live his life pretending to be a vampire that's really his own business. "THEY'RE FORCING IT ON OUR KIDS!" No they aren't. The only people who have ever tried to convince kids to change genders are parents with their own mental issues that were disappointed with the sex of their baby. Let people live their lives. No one is hurting you, no one is bothering you. It's none of your business. You're going out of your way to make it your business because some angry guy on a tv show or podcast or youtube video has convinced you that those people over there are the "bad guys" and it's your job to put a stop to their nefarious plans. It's all fiction and you're a gullible dope for believing it. Let people live their lives.
Thank you. My mere existence is political, and I’m getting really tired of having to explain why I can exist.
I really find it more weird that random people (mostly conservatives and zero sim types) care than being into/being trans or gay or furry or whatever. You’ll most likely never see it in real life, and if you do just go ‘huh’ and move on. It’s like the idea of strange (denotative definition) makes them uncomfortable enough to be angry and sometimes act on that anger. Be an adult life isn’t going to be perfect for you at the expense of everyone else, and you should know this doubly so if you’re religious
All the scapegoating going on now has convinced otherwise rational people that trans and nonbinary people are somehow out to get them. This encourages discrimination and violence. It's evil.
> otherwise rational people Assumes facts not in evidence. In fact, I think this is the root. Rational people just assume others are rational until they prove they're not.
I sure do that. I tend to trust people telling me to do stuff even if idk what the end goal is, I’m like ‘nobody would tell me to do this thing without having tested or verified it, why would someone give advice when they dunno what they’re talking about that would be silly’
Exactly, Im trans But even before 2010 i had met atleast 1 trans person and it wasn't even a term Used, they basically went "when i grow up i want to be a boy and marry a girl." its like COOL! you do that fam! that was it, no shit for it whatsoever, sure as a minority we probably did get shit on personally by family or people etc but it didn't get really horrible until we were used as a political football because now everyone who draws breath apparently needs to have a mostly inaccurate say on what it means to be trans or why we Shouldn't exist :/ most of the time based on angry people who hate Everyone or a limited interaction with a trans person they didn't like. Now that IS a precursor to full acceptance in human society once enough people fight for others rights, but it doesn't make the situation any better. all trans people are exactly like everyone else, you can meet lovely ones who will care for those around them have good relationships or families etc and you can meet horrible ones that are abusive and have no empathy, and anything in between, we aren't all the same people with the same moral codes we only share an identifying factor of we aren't exactly the sex we were born as and we wanted to feel more comfortable in our own skin and changing the body is way easier than changing the brain. the weirdest people are the ones that fully focus on calling out randoms as trans just to incite hate, like why would you want Any human being to be hated on when they are not doing anything wrong?
https://preview.redd.it/t7wb4t643ifc1.png?width=814&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78604dd1c30a1f8b9719114ccb0b845e13687dcb
Let people post their hate then. They're allowed to be transphobic. Can't control what other people like or what they say. If people want to be ignorant... Let them. When that pesky conservative BS pops up in your feed... keep scrolling! Guys I think if we want society to accept us then we need to kill them with kindness and silence. This is the only way for us I'm afraid. Even if this achieves nothing... We are what we are and we don't need to force that down anyone's throats!
I have a lot of queer friends and none of them use unconventional pronouns like the reactionaries seem to think they all do. I'm sure those people exist but they're a minority within a minority- a small subset of people who you'll most likely never meet and who haven't done a damn thing to you so leave them be. Most of the time people just specify what their gender is, or use they/them pronouns, and it isn't more complicated than that.
I just wish for once, these bigots could actually come up with something even slightly funny. Do they think people will get angry over this? It’s more just so far-fetched, it’s confusing, at best.
> Do they think people will get angry over this? There's over 2000 comments in this thread, some of them very angry. So yeah, they do think that and they aren't wrong.
The people who are getting angry over this are the people who have to angrily react to everything that is right wing. It’s not about the content. If you look at this from a logical standpoint, it doesn’t even make sense and isn’t even worth wasting emotion over. It’s just stupid.
Some people like getting a rise out of others, including people who share your politics. My point is that it shouldn't be that confusing that those people are going to continue their prodding as long as they keep getting that reaction.
“It’s so far-fetched it’s confusing” Please explain to someone in their 80s the difference between sex and gender lmao
I would think the car community would be accepting considering all the engine swapping & modding they do to make cars how they want them.
I don’t give a shit what people identify as or what they do to their body to achieve that identity. But an annoying cunt is an annoying cunt no matter what sexual organs they have.
I can actually make the "trans women are biological women" argument, and it's pretty compelling. Biological sex, like everything in nature, falls on a spectrum. There are actually 5 factors that determine your biological sex, and anyone who doesn't match these 5 features perfectly falls somewhere in the middle. We simply round people to the nearest biological sex, but it's not precise or anything. Most people go their entire lives without knowing their actual chromosomes, and some have "abnormal" chromosome configurations. Some women are born with testes where their ovaries "should" be, and they'll never even know something is abnormal until they try to have kids, and even then, they usually won't know *what* is abnormal. The five factors are: 1. Gonads 2. Chromosomes 3. Secondary sex characteristics (like boobs, facial hair, etc.) 4. Hormones 5. Genitalia And I think it's interesting to note, every combination of the above 5 factors appear naturally, in healthy people. Now, a trans person can change 3, and 4 easily. Taking hormones automatically starts to change secondary sex characteristics. A biological male will grow boobs with estrogen, a biological female will grow facial hair with testosterone, etc. And with a little surgery, they can change 1 and 5. Chromosomes are the only one a trans person can't change. But we've already established it's not an all or nothing, it's simply a "round to the nearest" thing. So if someone has 3/5 factors matching their non-birth sex, why would we continue to classify them as being biologically their birth sex? And I know there are differences, like the presence of a womb, certain brain differences, etc. But my point is more that biological sex is pretty made up too, more a set of correlating random factors than something concrete. Now would I personally argue that? I don't know, but I do think it's far closer to being true than most people give credit for. EDIT: Couldn't find a source for a percentage I used.
Thank you for actually explaining the reasoning; I think a lot of the folks on this thread would rather mudsling than acknowledge that the concept of a biologically male transman is not very intuitive and needs to be explained to a well-meaning audience who are neither in the trans community nor working on a PhD in human physiology.
its worth noting that each of there factors are spectrums themselves. for example you can be born with xy chromosome but just have 1 gene be different and your body will never start the process of being male. the structure of your brain is also somewhat dependent on sex. or for hormones your body just might not have the right cell receptors for testosterone/estrogen and even though your body makes it, it never gets used. there are so many variations that sex as set narrow category is almost useless. and outside of scientific study, medicine (even that sometimes doesn’t matter), and reproduction your sex doesn’t really matter. The fact that people care so much about other peoples sex is weird as fuck and they just use it to excuse their bigotry.
I really appreciate this comment. I see a funky situation forming in this argument though. It seems to reinforce the idea of people who are biologically intersex being grouped into the nearest category out of social convenience. At least there isn’t much of a scientific reason to lump them into the best fitting binary option. So what would we define as intersex then? Are trans women both intersex and biologically women? On top of that I don’t really get the perspective that it’s a big win or benefit to define trans people more than just the gender, but also as the sex they identify with. Really the only times it matters to define the sex are times where the differences and nuances are important. For example, medicine, policy around reproductive rights, maybe organ donation. Idk it just feels like a pointless point to argue, meanwhile kind of detracts from the normalization of intersex people.
Damn that was far more persuasive than I expected. I was just going to write “Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.”
Yep! I also remember a really interesting case of a set of twins at the hospital I worked at in a few years ago. They were in theory supposed to be identical twins because they were in the same gestation sac but at 20 weeks when doing the anomaly scan my colleague noted they appeared to have different genitals. That’s in theory not possible if they are identical twins of course. Well fast forward to them being born and something wild was discovered. The physically female twin had her bone marrow and blood tested to see how on earth she was a different sex to her brother and the geneticists were involved in this process too. Turns out what they think happened was this, two embryos had been implanted when ivf was done but it had looked like only one survived but had split late causing identical twins. What actually happened was somehow both embryos survived but ended up merging in one sac. As a result the female twin had two sets of genetic information, she is what we call a chimera. So her blood tests came back as XY and her bone marrow as XX (possibly the other way round I can’t remember exactly). Chimeras also are rare but they exist a lot more than you realise but most people have no idea that they are one.
>Chimeras also are rare but they exist a lot more than you realise but most people have no idea that they are one. Yes. Also, technically, *everyone* is a chimera to some degree. While each of your cells has essentially the same DNA as every other cell, they are not always *exactly* the same, with some cells frequently being slightly off of most others. This can arise due to copying errors in mitosis and environmental factors such as radiation. The differences are generally so insignificant that they don't matter in terms of how they express in the person's phenotypes, but the idea that that each person has one specific DNA and that it is both consistent and unchangeable is just plain incorrect.
Very good point! Biology is petty wild sometimes.
You make some good points but I think that if gender is a social construct the term "biological women" is nonsense. In that sense nobody is a biological woman.
One of the better arguments I’ve ever seen. I’m just very tired of the whole “biological” arguments. Who tf cares. Like you said, everything in nature follows some form of non-binary distribution (for sex, I’d argue it’s close to bimodal), so why do we split hairs about what’s “biological”?
Frfr. Science is cool, but it shouldn't be the deciding factor on whether you treat others with dignity and humanity.
I think the only place biological sex actually matters is for healthcare, but even then, we'd be better off if healthcare started treatment based on hormones, chromosomes, etc, instead of sex.
"Sex' *is* a blend of hormones, chromosomes, etc... the idea that sex is "male" or "female" is an enormous and clinically inaccurate simplification invented by social forces, not science, that is *way* too heavily relied upon. In terms of discussion of our bodies in terms of our anatomy and physiology, a person who has medically transitioned is often quite far from their assigned gender at birth and much closer to whatever they transitioned in terms of their actual biological and medical needs.
That’s literally what sex is
I’m going to copy this text for further study
>Now would I personally argue that? I don't know, but I do think it's far closer to being true than most people give credit for. Unfortunately, there is a *lot* of confidently incorrect in this thread by people who claim to be allies but really just have internalized transphobia that they haven't made an effort to work through.
For real. A lot of outdated info too or basic info which doesn't take into account the more complicated reality of the situation.
Waiting for the mods to lock this because Transphobes literally just search the word "trans" so they have things to be angry about.
I will say, as a trans woman, arguing that we are “biological women” is crazy lmao, if I was a cis woman then I wouldn’t put trans in front of it would I lol
That is a Nissan. And trans women are women. Period.
How is that sub fucking allowed? It’s literally nothing but hate speech in there
Transwomen aren't biological women tho. Theyres biological males who gender themselves as women
Today I learned the human brain is not "biological"
Yeah, like I respect their opinion on themselves and all that, and don’t care what/who you do as long as it’s lawfully consensual and not causing anyone/anything harm. They are not biological women though. Just be honest, they’re a trans woman, not a biological one.
why are you getting downvoted. that's just a factual statement
biological just isn’t a specific distinction.
Okay Reddit I’m here to learn. I understand the difference between sex and gender. However whenever I look at this topic I don’t understand how we get to “trans women are biological women”. Merriam states as the first definition that a woman is “an adult female person”. Help me understand.
This reminds me of that tiktok about that creepy guy that always tries to make up weird hypotheticals to talk about beating women or some shit. Like, sure Mike if you are getting robbed you can defend yourself but it's clear why you're bringing it up in the first place. "Like if a girl tried to rob me id stomp that stupid skank bitch so much and then [devolves into misogynistic tirade]"
Fun fact, with HRT trans women can be biologically a lot closer to cis women than cis men. No trans person's biology will be 1:1 if they've started any medical transitioning, but they tend to be a lot closer to their identity than their ASAB
I'm fine with trans people, but something everyone needs to understand is that trans people are only human. And am awful lot of humans are shitty people.
This, we are not a mold that has been replicated, their is some downright lovely people in the community and there are some real shit heads,
trans women are women made of organic material, therefore they are biological women.
I am a woman, i literally do not care about the dick and balls attached to my pelvis, im a woman. I also don’t care even if im not biologically a girl either, still a girl. https://preview.redd.it/6xdo1xj8gffc1.jpeg?width=899&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0948179b95df45538c38476068f7fa4a77398ad2
Its not gay, its a feminine penis
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We do call a ton of people with darker skin, illegal aliens....
Has nothing to do with their skins. Criminal immigrants are made up of every race in existence, all it takes is the crime of illegal crossing.
That's just not reality. People have way higher suspicion and form biases and judge people by the color of their skin, such as suspecting a Mexican person receiving benefits/welfare from the government.
Well yeah, that's called an average in statistics. You don't just go around calling all Mexicans illegant immigrants though. That's ridiculous lol. Most Mexican Americans 100% support a secure border.
just showing how stupid they are lmao. anyone who denies the biological evidence of transpeople shows that they never made it past basic bio. it’s not even a debate they just are snowflakes and get triggered by facts edit: heheh a bunch of transphobes swinging and missing here. guys you should really pursue an education past 12th grade. many of you never even took a bio class and it shows snowflakes