Like many people who joined the gender critical movement, I was an originally a trans ally of sort. I know what it’s like to want to dress in a way that is more commonly associated with the opposite sex. I also know what it’s like to have discomfort with aspects of one’s body. How people dress did not bother me, the erasure of women’s rights bothered me. I believe that some people have severe dysphoria and body dysmorphia about their body, and like many people I once believed that allowing them to try to pass as the opposite sex was a harmless solution.
I still have sympathy for some dysphorics, however, having been doing gender critical work for several years, I come to firm conviction that framing diverse men and women as “trans” is a problem. Especially when “trans” is paired with the opposite sex identifier man or woman (ie. transman and transwoman).
There is debate in the gender critical community about whether or not “trans”
people should be a third category. Wherever you stand on that (I find it problematic and would prefer to move away from any 3rd category), there are reasons to reject the euphemism of “transman” and “transwoman” (or for that matter, the same words with a space between them-“trans man” and “trans woman.”)
First, these euphemisms are being taken literally and being used to replace (and thus erase) sex classes in language, law, and policy. Here is a politican arguing just that, that so-called “transwomen” are a subclass of women. That is in fact what the model of “trans” and “cis” women implies. And while older people can remember a time when nobody would ever be mistaken that male people were kinds of women, we now live at a time when that’s what is being taught in schools, repeated on social media, and enforced in sports, spaces, and “feminist” organizations. Things have changed, and those changes in social reality are changing law and policy in unacceptable ways.
The loss of female sports, spaces, and activism is tied to the fact that these men are being framed as women in language. If we were referring to them as male transsexuals, trans-identified-males, or some other term, people could not make the argument that they belonged in women’s sports or spaces. The language of “transwoman” hides the male sex of a person-which is the reason why we have he words man and women to begin with.
Man and women are words needed to specify sex class. The words boys and girls are needed to specify those member of our society who are juvenile (non-adult) males and females. These words have a use and we need them to refer to adult and juvenile females no matter how they feel, dress, vote, or work. Taking them to refer to feminine and masculine classes is not “language evolution.” It is designed to take the words and political autonomy away from females so that they can’t talk about their class without including men.
That’s the goal of the gender lobby, and it uses hijacked LGB orgs, women’s orgs, sympathy for dysphoric people, and the media to promote the idea that this erasure is progress.
It isn’t.
Supporting diverse men and women without the erasure of words and resources for their sex demographic is progress.
Many people, including gender critical people are sympathetic to dysphoric people. I would argue that we serve them better by normalizing diverse and dysphoric men and woman as diverse and dysphoric men and women. Framing them as “trans” is an illusion that harms both them and us. Recognizing and talking about dysphoric men and women takes the colonization out of it, and that takes the thrill of cross sex boundary transgressions out of it for those who get off on that (find out about AGPS if you don’t already know about them: Autogynephilia.)
It also normalizes gender non-conformity and talking about (and treating) dysphoria and body dysmorphia instead of promoting “solutions” that harm others and perhaps the dysphorics themselves.
While people are accustomed to viewing diverse men and women as trans, and we find the label trans easy to type and talk about, it really needs deconstructing. What does it mean? More importantly, what does it NOT mean but is used to imply. It is a linguistic sleight of hand designed to create a harmful, illusion. People are buying it. Other people who won’t take the time to debunk it or use alternative words prop it up.
It needs to be deconstructed and denounced.
These words create the illusion that is required to allow men the right to demand to be taken seriously as kinds of women in language and law-and the policies and laws HAVE been instituted on that basis.
Importantly, there was a time when “trans” meant “cross” or not. It carried a negation. We did not use the word “transwoman” we used the word transsexual or transvestite-and nobody was under the impression that these people actually changed sex class, or that the word woman referred to a “gender class.” Gender critical people who like the ease of use of the word TW will often cling to this, saying that people know it’s not literal.
Today, trans is no longer a harmless euphemism. In law, and increasingly in people’s minds, it means literal women. Appropriating the Latin words cis/trans (which referred to pairs of items that were similar enough to be categorized together), gender academics and lobbyists have have turned the “euphemism” it’s head and re-framed womanhood as a unisex gender class. Most GC people argue against this framing and are aware that it isn’t true, but they are not aware of the hold it has on growing numbers of people. I see GC people still using “transwoman” and arguing with trans supporters that the “trans” implies male and clearly is a euphemism. What they don’t see is that the trans supporters don’t care about sex class, they accept the lie of “gender” class, and they accept the re-framing of male sex as irrelevant to manhood-or-womanhood. That is, using language, the gender lobby has effectively convinced people that diverse males are not men, that womanhood is a gender role, that womanhood has cis women and transwomen. If you are calling some kinds of men transwomen, you may think it doesn’t matter because you are clear in your own head that they are not women. However, you are part of the movement that is allowing them to be seen increasingly as real women-first in language, then in sports, law, and policy. This is reshaping reality, disenfranchising women and erasing our ability to describe ourselves as demographic that excludes males. That removes our ability to be seen as the sexed based demographic that we are. It removes our right to name, talk about, and organize our demographic.
To be clear, women are a sex class. Our identifying terms (“women” and “girls”) are tied to our female specific political voice, sports, spaces, medicine and activism. As the identifier is eroded, our rights are eroded. Women’s sports now means cis/trans woman’s sports. That means men. Please reject both terms and help re-establish in language, culture, law and policy that diverse men are not a subclass of womanhood. While I understand the desire of some people to use a term that is easily understood or easy to type, they are helping to institutionalize the illusion that diverse men are really women. Terms such as male trans people, TiMs, or diverse men can be used. If your reader doesn’t not understand it, unpack it for them. Explain it: calling diverse males women has allowed them to demand access to our sports, spaces, and activism. It encourages some men, the men who don’t fit in, to alter themselves to be seen as women, instead of to be accepted as kinds of valid males or men. It popularizes it and encourages it.
In the end, this is the wrong model for gender non-conformity. If you support dysphoric people altering their sex traits (and I would suggest you realize that that is at best problematic for a number of reasons), the solution is not to call them transmen and transwomen, allowing them to erase sex classes in language and law for the rest of us.
Some memes for your consideration and use