#askwoxxn

I hope you are doing great in bioscience!

There are millions (hundreds of thousands?) of things that distinguish a woman from... a man or “a transitioned woman who has had surgery, has the ‘same’ hormonal makeup as a ‘cis’ woman, and the sociological experiences that are similar to a woman’s as they are female presenting”. We are more than XX vs XY as for starters there have been other documented types such as XXY or XYY. Additionally, sex is immutable and over 99% of the time is clear at birth by viewing genitals. That less than 1% born intersex as generally designated a sex, leaving a very small portion of babies to grow up into intersex adults. Along with viewing this primary sex characteristic we all have secondary ones, women generally are shorter, have wider hips, have more breast tissue, and the list goes on. “Female presenting” has nothing to do with “female reality”. You can’t present as a sex unless you are that sex, you can perform stereotypes of that sex and that’s what men do when they say they are “female presenting”.

Biological males, or transitioned women as you might say, do not have the same sociological experience as women and girls. Your sociological experience is part based off how others view you. A man transitioning at the age of 40 has not had 40 years of female oppression. A boy transitioning at the age of 15 still has not been oppressed or regarded as female at every step of his life.

And even if this was just “reducing whole people to how their DNA bunches up” so what? That is one of the main ways we distinguish female and male.

The effect on society is not one that most people are seeing right now.

They are not seeing how putting trans girls on girls sports teams will physically and mentally harm the girls. Coed sports are very common for young children where their biological differences have not yet begun to emerge. But by the time they are teens it’s a clear difference. A 15 year old 5’4 125 pound girl who plays soccer is not going to fair too well up against a 15 year old biological male who is 6’2 and 225 who “identifies” as a girl. This is going to end girls and womens sports because all these second rate men are jumping ship and entering our spaces.

Women will no longer be the safest people. Did you mother ever tell you as a kid that if you are lost in public to always find a woman or a mother? Before transwomen began being lumped in with women the most current rates showed more arrests for sexual assault among boys aged 10-12 than for woman of all ages. Basically stating an 11 year old boy is more dangerous on average than any woman. Since that research the number for female violent crime has rapidly increased as men have always been the greatest perpetrators of violent crime.

This also removes hundreds of years of women overcoming oppression. Women in the early 1900s couldn’t just “identify” as men so that they could vote, file for divorce, own their own property, etc. so they worked hard to make sure future women didn’t have to deal with that. Worked hard to make sure women are heard and involved in politics. Worked to make sure there are minumums on how many women are involved. But now those spots are going to men who “identify” as women. And there is nothing groundbreaking about yet another male politician/ CEO/ or other area women are underrepresented.

Hello anon. I think the best think for a lesbian who thinks she might be trans is think critically about it. Keep asking yourself why. Why do you think you’re a man? And if the answer is because you don’t have fit xyz stereotype of what a woman should be, ask yourself why you are conflating sex with gendered stereotypes. Try to work on getting to the root of what makes you feel as though you are not a woman when you are.

Afterwards I do think you should speak with a therapist, many are affirm only ones, so if you can I would talk to one who is (common) and one who isn’t (rarer), to work on your body dysphoria.

I also urge you to seek out other GC or rad feminists who could maybe give you better resources. I also want you to know that you are not alone and there are women out there who have gone through the same. Many women go through varying degrees of not liking their bodies all the way from normal body issues such as weight gain and stretch marks to female exclusive issues such as disliking having breasts and a vagina.

*dusts off my sociology bachelor’s degree from a top ranked university and uses it for once*

Woman and man are not social classes, they are biological distinctions of female or male sex. Sex does not equal gender so let’s discuss that a little first.

Sex is your biology, for 99% of us that is easily distinguishable through looking at genitalia at birth, or you can go the more difficult route of a dna test revealing XX or XY chromosomes. It is rare that someone has ambiguous genitalia (intersex) or has a different set of chromosomes, but according to scientists, even one Y chromosome will put you in the ‘male’ category.

Gender is how your sex is shown as we don’t all run around naked or with dna tests. Women generally like pink and long hair and dresses while men generally like blue and buzz cuts and ties. No woman has to follow her gender’s stereotypes, (because that’s what they are, stereotypes) and no man has to follow his gender’s stereotypes. Therefore the only way to go from one gender group to another is through is performing those stereotypes. Taking hormones has never and will never affect someone’s gender.

Umm... okay. What is a “real woman” to you?

A woman is an adult human female and last I checked I’ve reached the age of majority so I’m an adult, I’ve passed every captcha question online so I’m human, and when I was born I was diagnosed as a Terf so I’m the realest woman out there.

Not sure why you’re yelling at me that “gender is a social construct” when I, and other “terfs”, have been saying that this is whole time...

Gender is a social construct. We as people decided what is feminine and what is masculine. And voila, gender was born.

Now, no one is assigned a gender at birth. Following your own logic it is a social construct therefore unassignable at birth. The only thing you can be “assigned” at birth is a sex. The doctor holds you up and pronounces you female/ girl or male/ boy. Very rare that the baby is intersex, but in the small chance that the baby is intersex (see how I said intersex and not “intergender”) the doctor and the parents usually assign the baby a sex, either female or male.

It’s not until we get older/ aka after the first day or year(s) of our lives that we fall into a gender’s stereotypes. I liked (still do) pink and flowers and dresses and princesses, you know the things girls are generally socialized to like, not something we are born liking. And before that, maybe through sonogram or maybe when I was born, but the doctor turned to my mother and said “It’s a girl!” because... you know... there is visibly a vagina. So that made me a feminine (gender/ identity) girl (sex/ biology). If I had liked blue and football and dirt I’d have been labeled a masculine (gender) girl (sex) (or simply a tomboy).

So I do agree with you, gender IS a social construct of stereotypes we try to attach to sexes.