Opinion
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See how this opinion breaks down by gender, political spectrum and generation — and who shares your view.
15 comments
If you’re not a man you’re not a man and if you’re not a women you’re not a woman
What an odd way to word your point.
Do you realise this could support both the pro-trans stance, and the anti-trans stance? Or was that on purpose?
TL;DR: Sex is biological and gender is a social construct and performance. Sex should not be the only thing that determines how one lives or presents themselves in the world.
When talking about sex, it is scientifically proven that all human eggs contain an X chromosome, but the combination of XX or XY chromosomes determines whether the fetus will be a female (XX chromosome combination) or a male (XY chromosome combination). Of course, there are other situations where a person may be born [intersex] (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm) and the combination of chromosomes is different. But overall, sex is a widely understood biological component of life. However, the legitimacy of sex is hardly ever what trans folks are trying to dispute.
Instead, transgender people are usually challenging the “normal" idea of gender. Gender and sex are not the same because gender is an outward performance of femininity, masculinity, or anything in between. It is less about adhering to the sex assigned at birth and more about the lived experience of that person. If a trans woman chooses to live her life as a woman, identifies as a woman, and feels affirmed as a woman, then yes, she is a woman. The same goes for trans men. There currently exists no to-do list for someone to “qualify” as a certain gender; the only thing that exists are societal expectations for the performance of gender.
While it is often argued that one should perform the traits usually associated with their assigned sex, there is no overarching reason why sex is the be-all-end-all of man or womanhood. If we look at animals that undergo sequential hermaphroditism, we can easily understand that animals adapt and even change their sex depending on environmental and evolutionary factors. It becomes obvious then that the concepts of manliness and womanliness are entirely man-made.
Sex should not be the component that determines how one must act, present themselves, or be viewed in the world. Instead, we should work harder to widen our perspectives on gender and perhaps even analyze how we outwardly perform ourselves just to appear “man” or “woman”.
That's all very well when it comes to "performing" gender, ie wearing a dress and carrying a purse. When it comes to how society treats you, that usually has to come down to sex, because if it didn't then we could treat men and women the same. Someone can pursue whatever lifestyle they want, without having to justify it to anyone else, and other people can be polite. But when someone can choose based on their identity to compete with biological women in a sport or even in a fight, or choose to enter a women's prison even if they are a male sex offender, that is not about their lifestyle or a social construct. The reasons that society treats women differently are biological sex related.
Conflicting opinions about transgender people are founded upon conflicting interpretations of sex and gender
• At birth, we are usually assigned a gender in correspondence to our biological sex. Transgender people are those who identify with a different gender to that which they were assigned with at birth.
• This debate is built upon interpretations of sex and gender. These terms are often used interchangeably, but many distinguish ‘sex’ as relating to our physical characteristics and ‘gender’ as relating to our identities and sociocultural roles in society.
• Some people interpret ‘woman’ and ‘man’ as sex categories and believe that sex cannot be changed. These people may argue that “transgender women are not women and transgender men are not men” because transgender people are not born with the physical attributes usually assigned to the gender that they identify with.
• Many disagree and condemn this point of view as transphobic because they believe it invalidates the lived experiences of transgender people.
• Those who believe that "transgender women are women and transgender men are men" may interpret ‘woman’ and ‘man’ as gender categories and believe that gender is a fluid social construct. Such people may also understand sex outside of the male-female binary, citing the existence of intersex people to argue that sex itself is a spectrum. However, this opinion is primarily based upon the lived experiences of transgender people. Proponents argue that if someone feels like a woman they are a woman, and if someone feels like a man they are a man.
"If someone feels like a woman. they are a woman, and if someone feels like a man they are a man"
this is a distorted way of thinking and it has a name: emotional reasoning. It is a common cognitive distortion where someone uses the emotions they feel towards a subject as evidence that the viewpoint they have on the subject is justified.
For more information, see this article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201706/what-s-emotional-reasoning-and-why-is-it-such-problem
I think it's fair to class trans women as 'trans women' etc - but not as plain 'women'. Otherwise, how do you distinguish between a biological woman and a trans woman? If women can have either male or female genitalia, what would even be the definition of 'woman' anymore?
Is genitalia the only thing that separates men from women? There are many other things that contribute to expressing womanhood, this is the distinction between biological sex and gender expression.
Make the case or invite a friend to comment!