What is a Woman: the Non-Woke Trans View
Let's focus on practical matters, not abstract philosophical disagreements
In recent years, there has been an emotional culture war being waged on the question of 'what is a woman'. As my regular audience would know, I generally take the view that emotionally charged, tribalist culture wars are not good for anyone, or for society in general. As someone who is looking to put the culture wars aside and find a practical way to move forward, I will be examining the issue from a practical perspective.
Firstly, let's not exaggerate the 'conflict' here: there is indeed strong agreement on what we roughly mean by 'woman'. The agreement is so strong that we agree on whether someone is a woman or not in at least 99% of cases. The level of agreement is actually much higher than in many situations of scientific or medical judgement. For example, absolutely nobody would disagree that Taylor Swift is a woman, while Kanye West is not. The disagreement only arises in relatively rare unusual cases, like trans people. In any classification system, it is also not unusual for there to be some disagreement on how borderline cases are to be classified. Indeed, it happens all the time in science and medicine, and we wouldn't say that there is a crisis in science or medicine as a result. The fact that people disagree on whether trans women are women is certainly not an insurmountable crisis in our civilization (particularly as less than 1% of the population is trans).
Let's look at what is actually the issue here. Given the aforementioned analysis that the disagreement is mainly about trans people, the issue is actually a disagreement about whether the social use of the word 'woman' (and presumably 'man' too) must be rigidly aligned with biological sex, or that there can be a bit of flexibility there. It is therefore a linguistic and philosophical disagreement, similar to the heated arguments about the 'definition of marriage' a decade ago. Polls show that roughly 55-60% of people in the English-speaking West believe that a person is always the gender they were born as, and 40-45% of people believe otherwise, meaning that they are more likely to agree with ideas like 'trans women are women'. History has taught us that linguistic and philosophical disagreements in the population, particularly where there is a 60/40 split, don't usually get resolved within one or two generations at least. Therefore, the only peaceful and practical solution would be to agree to disagree, and find a way to live together peacefully. The alternative would be a heated culture war, where those who don't believe that 'trans women are women' are automatically smeared as transphobic, and alternatively those who believe that 'trans women are women' are smeared as dangerous radicals intoxicated by queer theory. (Both which are not necessarily true, of course.)
My biggest worry is that such tribal polarization and smearing of those who hold different philosophical beliefs generally don't end well, as history has shown. More importantly, it prevents people from finding common ground to resolve practical issues. In fact, the tradition of classical liberalism, where people generally agree to disagree on philosophical matters and not let them dominate government and politics, arose because people were sick and tired of the religious wars in Europe. What I'm most concerned about is that the current fixation on this unresolvable philosophical difference is making it difficult for practical solutions to be found to resolve the current stalemate. This is very unfair for trans people who just want to alleviate their gender dysphoria and live their lives quietly.
The 'what is a woman' question is often raised in the context of how to accommodate trans people. However, the emphasis on this point of abstract philosophical disagreement has turned what should be a practical issue into a political football. In reality, questions around the practical accommodation of trans people do not depend on agreement on this matter of abstract philosophy. Even if you believe trans women are women (like I do), you can still acknowledge that there are very real biological differences between trans women and biological women, and this needs to be taken into account when it comes to how best to accommodate trans people. And even if you don't agree that trans women are women (which I totally respect), you could still agree that trans people deserve the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness just like everyone else, and hence society should provide reasonable accommodations for trans people. Indeed, polls suggest that, even though a narrow majority of people disagree with the 'trans women are women' philosophy, a strong majority still support the principle that trans people should not face discrimination in their lives. We should focus on the practical common ground here, i.e. the need to find good solutions to accommodate trans people while respecting the rights of other stakeholders, rather than focus on abstract philosophical disagreements, like the culture warriors on both sides want us to.
When it comes to accommodation, the concerns of all stakeholders need to be able to be heard and considered, without bias. This reflects a commitment to individual liberty, and specifically the equal right of all individuals to freedom. Trans individuals need to be accommodated so that they can have an equal opportunity in their life and their work. However, other individuals have an equal right here too, and their concerns should also be taken into account when deciding how best to accommodate trans people. Moreover, society's traditions and norms, and the reasons for those norms, including modesty and fairness, need to be respected. As I said, even those of us who believe that trans women are women need to acknowledge the very real biological differences here.
On the other hand, these issues would not generally make it impossible to accommodate trans people's needs in everyday life. Men and women co-exist in a mixed way in most everyday life situations, and there is no reason to think the existence of trans people would upset the current order in these situations. For the few exceptions, single-stall facilities can be provided where necessary, for example. The 'conflict' between the rights of trans people and biological women is hence not inevitable, as some far-right culture warriors and gender critical feminists like to claim. It all depends on us coming up with good solutions. I believe that we should work hard to come up with good solutions, so that anti-trans extremists can't continue to use the current 'conflict' as an excuse for their anti-trans behavior.
Next, I need to address an important issue: we need to be wary of the way certain far-right culture warriors are using the 'what is a woman' question to essentially launch an all-out culture war on trans people, with the aim of taking away basic trans rights, often as part of a wider agenda of 'regime change' towards a highly authoritarian 'postliberal' society. I'm not talking about those with genuine concerns about trans activism, I'm talking about those who openly say that they want to make it difficult for even trans adults to transition. It starts like this: a few extreme activists state that, because trans women are women, they need to be treated exactly like biological women for all purposes, no exceptions. This extreme stance would inevitably lead to conflicts between trans rights and women's rights. The anti-trans culture warriors like to give a big platform to these extremist voices, while shutting out reasonable trans people, so that they can pretend that trans accommodation is an 'all or none' thing. They can then proceed to paint trans people as a threat to women's rights and social norms, which they then use to justify a vehement opposition to any accommodation of trans people in public places. This, I believe, is what they mean by 'eradicating transgenderism' from public life. However, as I have analyzed, trans accommodation is not all or none, and there are indeed ways to make trans rights not in conflict with women's rights or long-standing social norms. This is true no matter if you agree with statements like 'trans women are women' or not. In painting trans people as an existential threat to society, the 'postliberal' culture warriors are just being dishonest, so they can justify their stance of essentially banishing trans people from society, which is often actually inspired by religious fundamentalism, or some other kind of ideological hostility to classical liberalism, that they won't admit publicly. We need to be wary of the motivations of these dishonest actors, who will only serve to make the debate more polarized and toxic.
There's another even more sinister side to the 'what is a woman' wars. Anti-trans activists are trying to paint being trans, particularly the choice to undergo medical transition, as based on a delusion that one can 'become the opposite sex', as in completely changing their biology. They are selling the idea that there is a dishonest industry trying to sell a lie to delusional patients, which they use to justify heavily restricting or even banning medical treatment for trans people, including adults. This is a completely dishonest strawman of the situation. As a trans person, I understand that my genetic sex cannot be changed, that it is coded in my genes, and no amount of hormones and surgery can change that. The problem is, trans people suffer from gender dysphoria, often with most of the dysphoria centered on the physical body, and in many cases, the only way to alleviate it is to have medical treatment to make the body resemble the opposite sex as much as possible. The availability of this treatment has improved many lives, and the culture warriors are wrong to demonize it. Again, I suspect the problem here is religious fundamentalism. Our society has freedom of religion, so you are free to disagree with trans people medically transitioning. You can even believe that we will go to hell for it. I totally respect your beliefs. What you can't do is to prevent us from making a choice, based on well informed consent, that we know will make our lives better. This would be literally fascist (and I don't use this word lightly).
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
You can also read and follow TaraElla's second substack, focused on political philosophy, here.
I think this article has a more accurate assessment: https://signsjournal.org/exploring-transgender-law-and-politics/
"Even if you believe trans women are women (like I do)..."
I was a bit disappointed you didn't address this (the title of the post) more directly. How all the practical complexities aside, how *would* you, as a non-woke trans woman, define woman? What is it that makes you a woman? (I'm not trying to be aggressive or ask a gotcha question or deny your identity or anything, this is genuine curiosity.)