What is a Woman?

Like I've said before, I am thrilled to be making friends and influencing people through this blog. Thank y'all for reading. I've noticed that this blog is serving as a point of introduction to trans issues for some of you; I've been frequently asked to explain terms like "trans man" and "cis."

So, first of all, I am not an expert in trans issues. Not not not. I hope to heck all of you read the book club book, because Wilchins is an authority on the topic. Nevertheless, I would like to say a few things on the subject, because

1. It's difficult to explain "trans" without defining "man" and "woman," and
2. People seem to want to rephrase what I do tell them in cissexist language.¹

It really is difficult to define "man" and "woman." Yes, many humans have either an XX or XY genotype. Many, not all. It is also possible to be XXX, XXY, XYY, one of several other variations, and to have mosaicism. Even if you fall into either the XX or XY category, these chromosomes may not necessarily determine your sex. For instance, individuals with androgen insensitivity may be XY yet develop a vagina and, later, breasts. Such individuals are usually raised as female and consider themselves women, so it makes little sense to call them "men." Physical characteristics are also not useful for creating a strict binary, as somewhere between a tenth of a percent and two percent of newborns (depending on what criteria you use) have so-called "ambiguous" genitalia (i.e., genitalia that do not fall neatly into one of the two favored categories) and may be considered intersex. These issues were highlighted recently by the ridiculous farce over Caster Semenya's "biological" sex; really, there is no medical test on Earth that can determine a person's sex.

Even if there were a perfect biological binary, we'd still run into trouble, because we've layered so much cultural meaning onto "man" and "woman" that nobody fits into either mold. I'd try to separate sex and gender, but the reason that evolutionary psychology studies are so damn popular with the media is that we are heavily invested in the idea that culturally constructed gender binaries (boys like trucks! girls like dolls!) are fundamental and important and purposeful. So, since nobody else wants to separate sex and gender, I'm not going to either. I think both binaries are bullshit.

"But," you may say, "this is a feminist blog! You talk about women's issues all the time. How can you do that if you don't have a definition for 'woman?'" As it turns out, I do have a definition for "woman." And it's actually really simple. It is "a person who calls themself a woman."²

Any attempt to label some of these women as "real women" or "bio women" is cissexist. We're all real women. If you're a woman you're a woman, and your body is your body: therefore, your body is a woman's body. Now, I'm not trying to tell people how to identify themselves and their bodies; if a someone identifies as both "woman" and "man" (or neither!) we should be able to deal with that, and if someone identifies as a "woman" but calls their body "male" that's their choice, too. But if someone identifies as a woman and you insist on calling their body "male," that is not okay.

We do sometimes distinguish cis women from trans women here at NWF, usually when we want to discuss transphobia in general or cite the experiences of a self-identified trans person. But when we say "women," we mean all women.

¹I am far from perfect in avoiding cissexist language myself. While I feel like I did a reasonable job in my post on birth control, I failed miserably in my post about matrilineage. For what it's worth, you have my apology and my assurance that I am working on it.

²This is admittedly a cyclic definition, but, as Jess quoted Judith Butler to me earlier today, "Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original." In this situation, what kind of definition but a cyclic one can possibly be given?