I am a woman-born woman. An adult female. I have two X chromosomes, a vagina and, until menopause, a menstrual cycle. I’m not unusual in this: in fact, there are roughly 3.52 billion of us in the world right now. These are not opinions; they are statements of biological fact. That biology may not define a woman in totality – she has a vagina, she is not a vagina – but it is fundamental to what a woman is. Our biology and our being female are intertwined. As is the biology of men with their being male: a penis and testicles are the biological markers of maleness.
These are neither new nor controversial statements, yet to the emergent trans community, giddy on its own sense of entitlement, they are blasphemous hate speech. Transwomen are particularly vociferous in their responses. They call women, like myself, bigots, haters, TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), homophobes, transphobes, and an entire roster of expletives. We’re threatened with assault and murder, and told transwomen can’t wait to rape us. Transwomen are calling for genocide and torture of women. (No, I’m not exaggerating. Here and here are just some examples.) Why? Because we told them about the biological basis to sex differentiation: women have two X chromosomes and a vagina; men have an X and a Y chromosome and a penis.
“But gender!” say the transwomen, as though feminists haven’t been deconstructing it since long before they were born. Yes, gender: the socio-sexual constructs we conflate with sex to inadequately explain our differences. The gender argument intrigues me because of the cherry-picking attitude transwomen take to it. They rapidly take on the prettiness of femininity – the shoes, the makeup, the clothes, and the hair – yet leave aside other traits commonly associated with the gender: empathy, compassion, nurturance, receptivity. Those aspects of the gentler sex are discarded because they don’t fit in with the behaviour of men (and transwomen are men) who’ve grown up and lived in a patriarchal society that tells them whatever they want, they should have. This is our cultural narrative: men demand and women defer. Just because they’re wearing dresses, they behave no differently.
Men want to have the right to choose the gender with which they identify and to be able to assert that right. For that is what transwomen’s rights are: men’s rights to identify and behave as they wish. To assume that this right is more worthy of support or more important than the rights of the women with whom transwomen say they identify is misogynist and demonstrates a lack of compassion and deep ignorance of what women deal with in their everyday lives – good and bad. It stems from a position of entitlement and assumption of superiority over women. Before declaring themselves transwomen and expecting to be welcomed by women, I wish they would think about what being a woman actually means. There is more embedded in gender than a change of outfit.
The most public demand is access to women-only spaces. This began – and continues – with transwomen’s demands to use women’s toilets. Women are expected to accept them – welcome them, even – or be vilified as anti, phobic, exclusionary deniers of rights. It’s an odd spot for a battleground, a public toilet. Or, perhaps not, given that it’s both public and private, representative of gender segregation, and a separation of the sexes that is a mass cultural norm to the point of invisibility. Only, now, it’s highly visible.
Transwomen want access to women-only domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centres, either blithely or willfully ignorant of the effect this may have on women using the facilities. Occasionally they want to work in them (a transwomen who wanted to volunteer at Vancouver Rape Relief forced them into a 12-year legal battle when they refused – time and money that could have been spent helping rape victims), but most want to know they can use them. The problem, as if it needs stating, is that these shelters are for women and transwomen are men. The women and children there are at their most vulnerable, many are terrified, and all have suffered abuse by men. A frightened child in a rape crisis centre isn’t going to look at a transwoman and see trans-inclusive ideology. She’s going to see a man in a dress and the last time she saw a man he raped her. If transwomen can’t see why that would be distressing and, therefore, why their presence isn’t welcome in facilities for vulnerable women – or, indeed, any women-only spaces – they’re demonstrating why women don’t want to share our spaces with them.
This encroachment on women’s spaces is coupled with a colonisation of our bodies. In a reduction of women to a set of holes that combines misogyny, porn and rape culture in one, trans terminology appropriates “vagina” for post-operative transsexuals while gifting “front hole” to women as a term for their vaginas. This dehumanising practice is backed by The Human Rights Campaign Foundation document, Safer Sex for Trans Bodies.
If women disagree with transwomen, they are told they are aggressive – violent, even. I’ve yet to see any evidence of violence against transwomen by women and, if we’re aggressive, it’s because we’re rightfully pissed off. The transwomen who attempt to silence us and claim our bodies and spaces as their own seek to remove us both discursively and literally. They attempt to both devalue and claim for themselves all that is female – be it the word “woman”, our bodies, or our spaces. We cannot concede to their demands because, by doing so, is to agree that all that we are is only worth what little value they attribute to it. Instead, we need to guard our bodies and lives against this new misogyny.
So clearly and beautifully written Kate – thank you – it’s simple, really, when you lay it out like this!
Thank you!
Exceptional article, beautifully written. Thank you!
Thank you!
Wonderfully written. I would just clarify one thing – the man who sued VRR wasn’t prohibited from working there, they just wouldn’t allow him the job of personally counselling female rape victims. *That* is what he was dragging them through a 12-year lawsuit over.
Thanks for letting me know Beedee!
Trans woman & men suffer enough hostility as is. Some very deep self analysis needs to be done there apparently to get over that .
Enough w/ this hate ,Eye for an Eye due to certain few NEVER works out.🙅 Watch a legit non-bias documentary on it ,or better yet go & meet these people that are so ignorantly villainized like ALL minorities ARE Universally. Break that bubble that compartmentalizes you.
Trans gender/sexuality is Nothing new…existed since beginning of civilization. Even while History has been manipulated by Patriarchal society, they couldn’t hide EVERY thing! So Research it..Greek ,Roman, Native American & Judeo-Christian have figures of ‘2 genders’ in scripture. In old Hollywood Marlene Dietrich & Ed Wood brought term to light back then as well. AGAIN nothing new or to be feared only fear itself.
Trans women DO NOT look like Men in a dresses😂they look better than most ‘natural born’ quite honestly! Clearly there’s no interactive evidence there. So that whole view as them being frightening to children is absurd.😃 Kids only mock what their elders teach them.So shame on them. My young daughter loves Rupaul for ex. & totally understands his trans sexuality in Drag. We love comedy along w/ fashion & that’s all there is to it.Try watching his show & you will hear how they have been traumatized by others hate ,even their family members. Smh😔
I have met those that have survived the rape & violence towards them simply due to how they were born. It’s especially hard for trans women due to male driven homophobia & many even have attempted self-mutilation in their desperation. Suicide is VERY common as is being assaulted. For ex. Take note in how they are being murdered in New Orleans for example. Google/Bing it. Videos of women violence against Trans women even on you tube. Truly disgusting & revolting.😟 Many in vids say they deserve it for trying to be competition in regards to attracting men. NOW THEY are Mysognist women. Which sadly,also common.
It’s very real & only worsened by women supporting such ignorance when we should help ALL afflicted by Patriarchal society as we have been. 👉Those women are reason Mysogny thrives for they advocate it themselves. Likewise w/ any ‘ism’ ,only around due to many cooperations in particular w/ in their own community.
As a Feminist ,I know that ideology of compartmentalizing the masses is created by 1% since middle/dark ages. Great way to keep us down & confused.🙈
Pink=Girl Blue=Boy is Bulls#$! 😬
Thanks to science we have seen how even color therapy has been manipulated to control & manipulate us. In MRI certain sections of brain activate w/ certain colors. Color triggers responses in our central nervous system, and affects our cerebral cortex. 📚For ex.Pink stimulates the frontal lobe which is in charge of emotion & memory. Whereas Blue stimulates the temporal lobe which is in charge of comprehension of language & information retrieval. No surprise that the 1% wants 2 keep us women submissive & emotional meanwhile keep men interested in intellectual pursuits. 😑They most notably exploit combination of red & yellow (that stimulates appetite) for commercial gain as seen in fast food chains & tourist restauranting. Many mean well if interested in a kind of justice but darkened by misinformation & assumption. This has to stop . We have to unte against the machine. For they Know all to well ,divided we Fall.
Open Mind= Open to Compassion & Understanding is key to living harmoniously in general. May we all be blessed w/ greater awareness & unity. We Shall Overcome✊
Take a hike, trans cult moron.
REDDIT/GENDERCRITICAL
Yeah, its weird how hostile people get when you tell them their very existence is blasphemy. Gee, never saw that coming. Yes, they are hostile to you because you are hostile to them. Its a two way street. I have not faced any hostility from trans-women. Would you like to know why? Because I dont treat them like crap. You deliberately exclude them. Im just a plain, ol woman, but if you treated me the way you treat them, believe me, I’d punch you, too. You made a few semi-valid points about battered women’s shelters, but we have common sense, all that stuff can be worked out. You lack the willingness to try. It sounds to me as though you see them as some kind of threat, though I cannot fathom why. Those tweets? Gimme a break, thats payback talk for the hurtful way you treat them. All I can say, is dont be a TERF.
As a cis male, I feel totally unqualified to figure out if transwomen are natural women who happen to have a penis or if they are misogynist men flaunting their privilege to choose to be women and go in women-only spaces and further traumatize rape victims etc. But just from knowing trans people I have come to take them at their word. I am definitely for dismantling the societal concepts of gender as much as possible but I also think it is important to listen to people with empathy and respect how they want to be treated. And how do trans men fit in to this picture? They are deluded women identifying with their oppressors? Nothing is so easy, so black and white.
Ms. Gould,A superb statement. It is true and I deplore this trend of entitlement they feel they are owed.
This is excellently written. I wish I was able to clearly express these ideas in a similar way. Though I find myself silent many times because I have been the center of the trans-activists attacks, received hate mail that included death and rape threats, was doxxed, and no longer have the energy to even engage on this topic.
I’m so sorry that you’ve been driven to the point of being silenced. I think women need to support each other so we can keep speaking out and resisting. Hang in there!
Fuck bigots and fuck you.
Thank you, Gabriel, for beautifully illustrating a couple of my points.
Good comeback, much logic. /s
The trans cult is a deranged, misogynist male supremacy movement in a dress.
GENDERTRENDER. WORDPRESS. COM
REDDIT/GENDERCRITICAL
What about transmen?
I don’t think that transmen pose any threat to women so don’t feel they need to be addressed as a subject in the way that transwomen do. Perhaps you could write about them from a man’s perspective? I’m curious to know what men think about transmen.
What a pathetic blog written by a very sad example of human being.
Aww, sorry about your sad little cult… lol
REDDIT/GENDERCRITICAL