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As best I can tell, there are about eight people who regularly post messages in this forum, and I suspect half are slightly-aging left-of-center heterosexual males. Like most men, we can be a little clueless about women's concerns. We want to do the right thing and support the right causes, because we're generally good people. We have good intentions, but sometimes we miss the mark.
There have been a lot of conversations in this forum over the past year on transgender issues, whether male bodies have a place in women's spaces (sports teams, prisons, restrooms, etc.).
Here's what bothers me -- There aren't any women's voices in these conversations. Unless I'm mistaken, almost everybody in this forum was born male and speaks from a typically male perspective. Even those who claim to identify as women don't necessarily sound like women. When we're discussing changes that will mostly impact natural-born women, shouldn't we consider their perspectives?
So when I ran across this Quora post, I thought I would share it with the rest of you. There's no sneering contempt, like you might hear from right-wing activists. Instead, this is the voice of a woman who explains what it means to be a woman, the struggles and fears she and other of her sex have endured, and why women need spaces apart from men (especially those men who identify as female).
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It is a biological fact that half of the humans on the planet are female, we have female reproductive systems and female bodies, which are different in many ways from male bodies.
Because we share a body type, we have many experiences in common that no man will ever have.
Because of our shared body type, we are weaker and vulnerable to males, who are stronger and more aggressive. We need spaces apart from men when we are in situations when we may be particularly vulnerable or not fully clothed, e.g. toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards and prisons. We need sports apart from men, as we cannot fairly compete with their stronger bodies.
We are entitled to a word that describes us a group -- that word is "woman".
American women, Chinese women, Afghan women, black women, white women, rich women, poor women -- we may all have very different lives, but we all share our biology. We are all women.
No male can be a woman. Women and transwomen have no more in common than women and men. The idea that a man can be a women because he has a "female mind" is offensive and sexist. Women can have any kind of mind, but only one kind of body.
There is a very moving video here made by a group of Irish women, about how the lives of real women in Ireland have been affected by their biology, and why the word "woman" is so important to them.
Transwomen should be able to live their lives in peace and without discrimination or harassment. But they are all males, and should stop claiming the word "woman" -- it is not their word.
