Anti-trans activists, influencers, and journalists often seek to make their views more palatable to “normies” who may not be up to date on the grinding, seething minutia of the online gender discourse by framing their views as much more innocent than they really are.
A prime example of this is the claim that transphobes, meaning those who seek to roll back trans rights or otherwise harm trans people through official policy, will often claim that they merely “believe that biological sex is real,” and are thus persecuted for that view. But this is overly simplistic, and hides the sinister undertone that their beliefs carry.
Nobody really believes that“biological sex” isn’t real. I’ve been accused of being one of the most “radical” trans activists on the interwebs, despite being a journalist and not an activist, and even I don’t believe that biological sex isn’t real. I can see it in my own body. I see it in my wide shoulders, in my narrow hips, in my impossibly tall height. I’m all too aware of my biological roots, why do you think I sought a medical transition in the first place?
Transition wipes out a whole host of sexed traits, like body hair, and my initial lack of breasts. It changed the way fat was distributed across my body and face, and estrogen even changed the way I smell. I sought all of these changes with my transition. No one on earth is more aware of “biological sex” than trans people. We carry the scars of it on our bodies every day.
So it’s a mischaracterization to put the central tension of this bitter dispute as one group who “believes biological sex is real” and another who believes it is fake.
The true difference between the two groups is that one side, the transphobes, believes that biological sex should rule our organization of society, who uses what gendered space, who counts as one gender or another. They believe that once you are born into a sex, you should be permanently limited to that category for the rest of your lives, despite any risks or problems that may introduce.
It’s this belief that has led trans women to be the most chronically raped prison population on the planet and has led to the exclusion of trans victims of male violence from resources to help recover and deal with the resulting trauma. It has also led to the exclusion of trans men from needed reproductive health, as providers chase away male presenting people from their services under the assumption that no man could ever need such services.
It has led to widespread transphobic abuse in the workplace and on the street and pervasive intimate partner violence as men seek to hide their shame over their attraction to trans women often through murder.
This position, that biological sex should rule all, is a position shared by the most sexist of patriarchal powers and institutions, and trans exclusionary radical feminists are all too happy to take center stage to do the patriarchy’s dirty work. Both seek to create and maintain a two tiered system of oppression that keeps that sexes firmly separate.
In a gender critical world, trans people are allegedly free to dress themselves, but cannot change anything else about themselves. So if trans women continue to get raped in prison, oh well, too bad, can’t change because biological sex.
On the other hand, trans people, and trans inclusive feminists, think that biological sex shouldn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things. People should have the freedom and free will to choose the spaces and actions that gives themselves the most safety.
It may complicate language slightly, and present issues for those with bigoted feelings about trans people, but ultimately it trusts the humanity and dignity of trans people to self-determine their own destinies.
So the next time you hear some gender-critical talking head claiming to have been “canceled” for “believing in biological sex,” remember that this is not really what they’re catching heat for. It’s much much deeper than that.
