Thread by @lisaquestions

"Define woman" is not a simple question, and not even a fair one. The person asking is usually waiting to gotcha any answer you give. The reality is there is no fixed definition for womanhood that can be easily proven or disproven. Womanhood is too many things.

Not all women can give birth, not all women menstruate, not all women have cleavage, not all women look traditionally feminine, not all women are traditionally feminine, not all women are straight, not all women are mothers, not all women have breastfed their children,

not all women produce eggs, not all women have XX chromosomes, not all women were assigned female at birth, not all women have vulva, not all women are dyadic, not all women are cis, not all women are white, not all women are abled, not all women are anything. Except women.

Anyone trying to exclude isn't doing so because they care about the group itself. If they did, they wouldn't feel such an intense urge to reject those they've deemed outsiders. Outsiders have over time been Black women, lesbian women, disabled women, and trans women.

The only possible reason to exclude some women from the category of woman is to preserve a mythical sense of purity for the category. Much as white supremacists want to expel or kill all people of color from their ethnostates, terfs want to expel all outsiders from womanhood.

They do this by trying to destroy any sense of womanhood that trans women have. That's the purpose of insisting trans women are really men, are really rapists, are really violent, are really pedophiles while also insisting that cis women are incapable of all of these things.

Of course cis women *are* capable of these things and terfs have at least one member/ally who had sex with a teen in her care, and have no issues with that. They only talk about the alleged threat trans women represent to cis girls and women, because the purity of cis women and

girls must be preserved. There are two versions of the white supremacist 14 words, and the second seems extremely relevant here: "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth." I'm not saying terfs adhere to the 14 words, although they've said

similar things in the past. Rather, I'm pointing to a strong point of similarity between terfism (or cis supremacy) and white supremacy. Both are about defending the manufactured/perceived purity of a category considered unsullied by unworthy outsiders from those outsiders.

That's all their rhetoric is. Do they even believe it? Some do, probably, but I think most are simply pushing hateful rhetoric as loudly as possible - such as #StickerWoman nonsense and published op eds - to normalize and even enforce the view that trans women cannot be women.

When they say things like "woman isn't a feeling" it's not about addressing what womanhood *is* at all, or even whether anyone can genuinely feel like a woman (yes, one can - there's even a song about it by a cis woman). It's about trivializing trans women's membership in

womanhood and refuting it. The assertion itself is painfully simplistic and doesn't even constitute a legitimate argument. It's simply an emotive declaration to exclude trans women and establish solidarity with other terfs.

Other evidence that this isn't about what terfs say it's about is the fact that terfs frequently welcome and encourage cis men into their ranks, and those cis men absolutely *delight* in expressing virulent misogyny and transphobia at trans women and cis allies, especially with

the apparent blessings of terf women who reassure them they're white knighting for them in a good cause. Even cis *gay* men get caught up in this, letting themselves be led by the nose straight to outright misogyny and homophobia as long as it's against women.

I don't mean that the men are any more sincere than the women. The foundational rule for terfs is that they lie. Constantly. About everything. They'll manufacture controversy if they can't find one. The insistence that trans women are violent male rapist pedophiles is a lie.

How could it be otherwise? But they hope to get an emotive response: The purity of womanhood under attack from unsavory men! This is similar to the rhetoric that white women in the American South used to get Black men and boys like Emmett Till killed for literally no reason.

Mobilizing the cis men against the perceived outsider/aggressor/threat to protect the presumably vulnerable cis women, who in the real world spend much of their time on private and public forums strategizing how they're going to turn the entire world against trans women.

My point is that asking for a definition of womanhood, or asserting one, are attempts to assert that trans women must know our proper place as "non-women." They call us men but they do not treat us like men. It's not about us being men, it's about us being seen as interlopers.

And the reality is if they gave up their hateful crusade, decided to live and let live, nothing bad would happen. Nothing bad *has* happened. Trans women have been doing our business alongside cis women for decades and this looming threat has not materialized. And one improperly

vetted prisoner is simply not a sign of the anti-woman apocalypse that they insist it is. It stands out because it is very unusual, not because it's the normal expectation. This is also why so many latched onto the tabloid rumors that Ian Huntley is a trans woman.

Because someone like him declaring himself a woman and transitioning is seen to them as "proof" that trans women are dangerous. Never mind that there are two different stories about Ian that disagree on major points, never mind that if Ian does transition and is treated like a

woman, prisoners as dangerous as Ian of either gender are housed in men's prisons in the UK. Or in other words, it really doesn't matter. But terfs would have you believe that every trans woman is Ian Huntley or Karen White, but reality shows that trans women are far more likely

to be victims of any kind of violence - including sexual violence - than they are to be perpetrators, and one would hope any reasonable person could conclude that a marginalized group should not be judged as a whole by the actions of its worst members. In truth, terf rhetoric

holding all trans women responsible for the crimes of a very few bears a strong resemblance to something else white supremacists have done. Not just Nazis, of course. It's not dissimilar from how white supremacists insist Sweden is the "rape capital" of the world, in fact.

when you see a terf tweeting that trans women are men, or talking about trans women's genitals as if they have a life of their own and will independently start raping of their own volition, keep in mind that this isn't something they believe literally. It's simply propaganda.

@threadreaderapp unroll please