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  • To establish as a social horizon the idea that a man can really become a woman and a woman a man is to assert something that is biologically impossible, it is to deny the reality of the world, it is to assert the false.

    I'm immensely sick of transphobes framing this discussion as one that has to do with biology rather than linguistics.

    I always dust off this incredibly basic example. Imagine a conversation that goes like this:

    Transphobe: "Trans women are not women because they do not have XX chromosomes!"

    Trans Ally: "I disagree with that viewpoint."

    Let me ask you this: when the trans ally affirms his disagreement, do you think he is saying that he actually believes that trans women have a genetic tendency to have XX chromosomes or that he just merely thinks using XX chromosomes as a metric to define womanhood is nonsensical?

    Very clearly, it's the latter.

    This is so simple to understand that it seems insanely disingenuous when conservatives use the whole "denying biology" as a talking point, like they simply want to give a half-assed attempt at justifying their hate and appeal to the masses by framing their viewpoint as a "It'S Just COmMOn SENSe, DuH!" kind of position, and those who only know middle school biology will eat it up.

    • I'm immensely sick of transphobes framing this discussion as one that has to do with biology rather than linguistics.

      It's because transphobes can't get out of the mindset that men and women are basically different species. They're not just transphobes, they're usually also misogynists who believe women first and foremost are responsible for a certain biological role. Transphobes can't ever conceptualize what a transwoman is because they haven't even figured out what women are. They only perceive things in very strict, antiquated gender roles as dictated by genetics. It's a refusal to admit gender roles could perhaps be dictated culturally, by shifting material conditions and social norms. It's also a refusal to admit women are fully human.

      Transphobes of both the chud and TERF variety talk about womanhood like it's a disability.

    • As someone who has studied biology and intends to do so a good bit more in the future, I would like to point out that the whole biology argument is even more bullshit than you've laid out here.

      See, a trans friend of mine once linked me to a Nature article about how cells express sex characteristics, and it was pretty mind-blowing for me, being at the time still kinda transphobic. Cells, it turns out, can be relatively easily convinced to switch sexes by way of chemical signals, and in fact cell sex is not a constant state but more of an equilibrium whose balance can be shifted at any time. Chromosomes, it turns out, are basically irrelevant (which makes sense when you think about it, XY and XX both have copies of the necessary X-linked genes, and there isn't much of anything necessary encoded on the Y chromosome at all--it's mostly for male sexual development, aka growing the male sexual parts in utero).

      So the next time a transphobe tries to lean on biology, you can let them know that the field very much does not stand with them and their babybrained view of how this stuff works.

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