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Fwiw I don’t think your wording here is particularly inflammatory, although can see why people would get their backs up over it
trans women do feel a mental femaleness, it’s true, I think it’s more expansive than that but, speaking candidly, one trans person can find it hard to explain how their transness feels to another trans person with a shared experience, I can’t imagine trying to write it down on a bike forum comment!
I know we have spoken last year about this stuff and you have vastly different views to me, but I’m sure we can both agree the article posted is not a representation of concerns in sport, we can also both agree when this is mentioned on the forum well intentioned or sometimes unhelpful individuals can inflame these discussions.
I echo @hoefla that voicing opinions here on this, or a variety of women’s issues can be hostile and undesirable for women. Before people jump in they should think to engage in good faith, and not to hook onto gotchyas as you point out.
We can discuss a vast majority of intricacies of expanding trans participation in sport, for trans women, trans men and non binary people. we can also discuss how the label of what women means to different women, trans women, black women, disabled women, mothers, daughters, all women, in a way which lifts us up. Patriarchal violence and structure affects us all, and every day is a fight not only to maintain those hard won concessions by women before us, but also to expand it in ways which are still under threat for women after us, abortion, reproductive health, gendered violence, access to healthcare, workplace discrimination to name a few.
But the discussion, from articles linked and circulating, about my friends and people who work hard to provide these events, the misgendering and hurtful slurs which are weaponised soley to hurt people , these things would not be ok even if they had done any hint of fact checking of the event, as all they seek to do is cause hurt. A fluff piece for the fringe social conservative who I’m sure would have views on issues we both, even with our different viewpoints on the place of trans women in woman hood, would find abhorrent.
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Maj
I'm sorry. That phrasing was carefully chosen to express what I genuinely understood was the basis on which trans women know themselves to be women.
If you have a better explanation I would welcome it.
But saying "she's a woman because she is a woman" doesn't really say anything.
I don't think I'm a woman because I'm a woman.
Before the word "woman" was expanded to include trans women, I thought I was a woman because I have a female body, and the women-only rights, protections and opportunities I had were shared with others who had the same body and therefore faced some common needs and challenges.
But if being female-bodied isn't especially part of the definition of woman, am I a woman? I genuinely don't know.
Because when you change the meaning of the word woman to accommodate trans women, it doesn't just change for trans women. It changes for every single woman in the world. And some of us may not meet the new definition. But we are still female and the reasons we needed support when women referred to female people haven't evaporated just because someone else wants to use our name.
If you want to change the meaning of the word woman upon which all the mitigation structures put in to support female-bodied people oppressed within patriarchy depend to apply to a different group of people it is not unreasonable to ask what the new meaning actually, well, means, and how the new meaning intersects with those support structures put in place under the old.
How can society assess whether those women-only rights, protections and opportunities are what women need if we can't say what a woman is?
These aren't supposed to be gotcha questions. They seem pretty fundamental to me, and yet, as you pointed out, I genuinely don't know.