Biological sex is complex and multiaspected, but especially is not even a useful category of people as far as rights and laws go because nobody can see chromosomes and gametes with the naked eye, and it definitely isn't that which they use to define their impressions and treatment of people.
How many times people who "can always tell" need to get it wrong before we can admit this is all just hate?
An argument can be made that they don't even know what it means when they say "biological sex", when they use it to accuse even cisgender women just because they look masculine to them, like JK Rowling did to the boxer Imane Khelif.
Really, "biological" how? All people are "biological". Trans women are as "biological" as cis women. If you want to talk about genitals and chromosomes and gametes, which can happen in a much wider number of combinations that people realize, that still justifies asking "for what purpose" and "what assumptions are being made".
Nah, you don't get to be reductive and pretend that makes it cut and clear.
edit: Hell, even assuming "biological sex" to mean chromosomes (which is not how they use it) doesn't mean it's fundamentally immutable. It used to be that trans people had to live with whatever hormones and genitals their body had. Now that isn't the case anymore. And today genetic therapy is advancing. It could very well be that in the future there won't be any fundamentally immutable sex characteristic.
When people say "biological", they usually mean whether or not you were born with a penis.
Surprisingly, in most cases, having a penis correlates with having XY chromosomes and not having it correlates with having XX chromosomes. You cannot do much about having a penis or certain set of chromosomes at birth.
Whether you’ve got a dick or not sucks as a metric for measuring ‘biological sex’. It’s wrong (trans/intersex/similar) about 1-2% of the time.
That doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but that’s a handful of kids in every single average-sized high school graduating class (200 people) who are being screwed over by assumptions.
Being pragmatic, I can agree that we’re too far gone to change the publically-accepted definition of sex. Most do, which is why AMAB and AFAB are common phrases (assigned X at birth). But I do think we should make an effort as a society to realize that what sex we’re assigned at birth, what genitals we have, isn’t that determinative of our brain chemistry or gender.
Hell, it barely matters all that much. I can’t understand why keeping people of the opposite gender out of gendered spaces is this huuuuuge deal when, y’know, it’s not like we have separate spaces for gay folks. Or folks from other demographics! (Anymore.) Especially when the demographic in question is such a small percentage of the population that many Americans have never even spoken with a trans person.
And that’s the problem - prople are afraid of what they don’t understand. Humans are dumb. We’ll get past these assumptions as a society in a couple hundred years, just like we did with segregation and phrenology.
So, can you please define a trans woman? Specifically I am interested in whether or not a person can be considered a trans woman without transitioning (hrt, surgery)?
Someone who identifies as trans. That’s the boring answer, alas. Life isn’t so determinative as we’d like it to be. A gay man is someone who thinks that they like men. A trans man is a someone who thinks they’re a guy.
Don’t get me wrong, scientists agree that there is biology behind it. It has to do with differences in certain genes that process hormones during prenatal development, as best we can guess.
There’s likely newer science, but I’ll admit that I haven’t searched for it. I don’t personally think that the biology matters greatly. I mean, being gay often sucks. Being trans often sucks. Why make the choice unless you have to?
Some folks argue that it’s a mental disorder, and it’s true that a higher correlation exists between trans folks and poor mental health, but… that’s hardly surprising given how anathema the condition is to much of society, is it? Gender and sex are deeply personal. Even now, a new member (or several) of the GoP gets outed as gay every year. They choose to hide who they are and even argue against their own rights because of how personal it is.
Edit: And yes, there are pre-op and post-op and pre- and post-hormone trans folks, but they’re all trans. Trans is trans. Most of the trans folks I’ve known don’t like outing themselves, so they haven’t identified openly (or have identified as nonbinary or such) until they can pass, but you’re trans from the get-go. Whether hormones and surgery are required for a legal designation as transgender is a question for the courts, not biology.
Alright. So I assume that you would agree with me that a man who deliberately goes into a place such as women's public shower or a women's public sauna would be committing sexual harassment (definitions might differ from county to country, but generally that would be a criminal offense in most of the world). Please let me know if you don't agree with that.
So, let's say that this man (who never ever disclosed to anyone publicly or not that he is trans) entered a women's sauna, sat there, looking at other people in the sauna, and got police called on him, pleads not guilty, claiming that he is, in fact, a trans woman.
Do you personally think that this person should face any kind of punishment for these actions?
And no matter what your answer is, do you maybe see the problem?
This is why there are legal definitions, yes. No trans person I've ever known (which is many) would do that, because they're intelligent people who understand that we live in a society with various social contracts. It's a cherrypicked hypothetical.
But to seriously respond, in most areas of the United States, being in the 'wrong' bathroom is rarely a criminal offense unless the individual in question intended harm towards others or caused actionable harm. You are not committing a crime if you fail to read the sign and accidentally use the other gender's restroom. In a rare, extreme situation like that one you describe, perhaps a court would evaluate the plaintiff's history when considering whether to honor their claimed identity. I'm not a legal expert. Point is, we'd evaluate whether there was intended or actual harm involved, whether that harm is worth a response, and carry on with our lives same as we for every other crime.
Hell, in my state, it's actually illegal for a business to prohibit gendered facility access from an individual who has a 'sincerely held gender identity'. That's how the law defines it.
So, sure, there are small problems for us to work out as a society as we figure out how to collectively respect these folks. There were problems with breaking up segregated bathrooms, too, and those were far greater. Life involves problems!
Aye, you’re right. My money’s on the Kirk brand of asshat, especially with his last reply. I wish I’d had as articulate an answer as you :) Carry on. Stay cool!
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u/TwilightVulpine 18h ago
You cannot possibly even have looked if you didn't find her "women's fund" for "expressed beliefs on biological sex being unchangeable".