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Ultimately I think it comes down to ‘biological determinism’ whereby folks that are self-described ‘gender critical’ see the terms man and woman as explicitly defined by biological sex, male and female respectively.
On the other hand, trans-inclusive folks see gender and biological sex as two different things (though doubt many/any would deny the general population-wide correlation between most people’s sex and gender).
Gender, then, is seen as something more ‘in the brain’/about how you feel.As an example, and to borrow from the video below, historically the term ‘parent’ has tied to someone who has had offspring, yet no-one would suggest someone who has adopted a child isn’t a real parent.
I am by no means authoritative on this topic, but a big fan of this youtube channel linked below (this one specific to pronouns but covers these ideas).
RE: defining the word ‘woman’, for trans-inclusive folks I feel like to some extent is has to be a bit of a circular reasoning approach (due to how gender has historically been tied to sex), and then assuming good faith in that anyone who says they’re a woman, is one.
Of course trans women will have different experiences to those assigned female at birth, but then again there’s massive variation between women AFAB too, and there’ll always be people fall outside particular definitions.
Also want to quickly note that I understand how on the surface/at first getting your head around the shift from sex-based to gender identity-based ideas of womanhood can seem counter-intuative or whatnot - but for me at least it just makes sense after you talk to (or watch youtube videos from) trans folks (also trans men, who often seem to be forgotten about when talking about sports or toilet access etc. etc.)
Sooooo much that’s been omitted here and/or could be expanded on!
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hvsds
grm
Without wanting to sound massively ignorant, the comments in this thread about TERF’s and mgtow are totally alien to me. It’s like reading another language.
Can anyone point me in the direction of websites where I can read up to get a better understanding of the gender debate?
I know Google’s the obvious answer but I thought it might be worth asking here first.