[This post is a satirical reply to this article, written by transwoman Rachel Ann Williams].

Pro transgender feminism aka “liberal feminism” is the view that womanhood is best defined by reducing the category of “woman” down to gendered roles, characteristics, stereotypical behaviors, and the nebulous “feelings” shared by anyone who claims to “identify” as a woman.

Why do they define womanhood like this? Because it effectively obscures the definition of womanhood so that biological males who perform femininity can qualify as “women”.

But, what’s that you say? Not all women adhere to stereotypical notions of womanhood? Womanhood isn’t actually a set feeling, but rather simply the state of being a female adult? The concept of people having inherent gender identities is regressive and sexist, and women are a diverse group of people, and no one (male or female) actually fits cleanly into socially gendered boxes? Nonsense! Liberal feminists just ignore the messy diversity of real life social dynamics and human development and instead classify people as “cis”, or “trans”, ignoring of course that most women do not actually identify with the social role of womanhood and all its encompassing oppression, or that many people do not like being called “cis” period.

Btw, I’m using the laborious misnomer “liberal feminists” because if I called them by what they are, deluded handmaidens of patriarchy, they’d likely try to report this article and get it taken down because somehow they’ve convinced themselves that reinforcing gender roles and stereotypes is “progressive”.

Anyway, let’s do an exercise of the imagination. We don’t need to skip 1000 years in the future and give scientists some bullshit omnipotence, we can do it right here, right now. We have a baby female and a baby male raised in the same culture. The baby male will in time grow up to identify as a woman, and the baby female will grow up to identify as man. Oh wait, no she won’t, because she was aborted by her parents for being female. Whoops, let’s try that again.

Ok, so we have a baby male and a baby female who will both one day transition genders. The male grows up, loved, cherished, protected, he’s taught to be strong, he’s given a voice and taught how to use it, he’s given authority, he’s given power, he’s given privilege, and one day, he reaches adulthood. He is confused by his dysphoria, but nevertheless he’s equipped with a backbone, and for all the ways in which he struggles to relate to himself, the world has nevertheless been his oyster. The female, on the other hand, is restricted in where she can go and what she can do from birth. She cannot leave the house without her brother or father, she has to cover her hair and body from an early age, she cannot go to school, she’s never taught to drive, and she never reaches adulthood, because she died of an infection when she was pinned down and had her clitoris chopped off and her vagina stitched shut.

… Damnit, that didn’t work either. Ok, one more time.

Baby female, baby male. Transman and transwoman. Let’s call them Charlie and Sam. They’re raised in the same country, same city.

Age 3, Charlie grabs for her brother’s bionicle. “No, sweetie, that’s for boys,” her mother says.

Age 3, Sam grabs for his sister’s barbie. “Sam, no, that’s for girls.”

Age 5, Charlie rips around her backyard without a shirt on. “Charlotte, get your shirt back on right now!”

Age 5, Sam rips around his backyard without a shirt on. No one cares.

Age 7, Charlie wants to join peewee baseball. “I don’t want a dumb girl on my team!” the boys cry.

Age 7, Sam wants to join ballet. “Ew, what are you, a girl?“, his classmates tease.

Age 9, Charlie is hit by a boy at school. She cries. “It’s because he likes you!” she’s told.

Age 9, Sam is hit by a boy at school. He cries. “Don’t be such a girl!” he’s told.

Age 11, Charlie gets her first period.

Age 11, Sam does not.

Age 12, Charlie’s period is late. She worries how to tell her mom she’s pregnant, even though she’s never had sex before.

Age 12, Sam does not.

Age 13, a man leans out the window of his truck to tell Charlie what a nice body she has.

Age 13, a man slaps Sam on the back and tells him he’s growing up into a fine young man.

Age 14, a boy in gym class unclasps Charlie’s bra.

Age 14, Sam sneaks into his sister’s room to try on her bra.

Age 16, Charlie has her first pregnancy scare. She waits until her parents have gone to bed to take the test.

Age 16, Sam sneaks a bottle of nail polish into his room.

Age 17, Charlie goes to a party.

Age 17, Sam goes to a party.

Age 17, Charlie is drugged and raped.

Age 17, Sam is drugged and raped.

Age 17, Charlie later texts a friend, begging her to bring a pregnancy test over. The test comes back positive. A call is made. An appointment scheduled. She tells her parents she’s sleeping over for the weekend at Sarah’s house. Sarah drives her to the clinic. She gets an abortion.

Age 17, Sam went home and told his parents.

Age 19, Charlie comes out as trans.

Age 19, Sam comes out as trans.

Age 21, Charlie starts university.

Age 21, Sam starts university.

Age 21, Charlie is told they cannot speak on female matters because they have male privilege.

Age 21, Sam becomes a representative with the campus’ Women’s Office.

After viewing this timeline, would liberal feminists admit that transwomen do not understand what it is to be a woman? Of course not! Why? Because libfems have to deny the importance of biological reality and sex based oppression to validate their world view. So it looks then that the Ur-crutch of liberal feminism is neither social experience nor biology, but rather emotional subjectivity. The reliance on social roles and dynamics is merely a facade, and personal feelings are the fail-safe.

This thought experiment shows the essential arbitrariness of gender identity. And that’s what thought experiments are meant to do: bring out the incoherence or inconsistency of a philosophical position. Trans people and libfems simply want to have their cake and eat it too.

Why?

Because the entire philosophical movement starts with a desire to include transwomen into the class of women. That is the ENTIRE point of pro transgender feminism. Nothing else really matters to them (including making sure transmen have the same acceptance and inclusivity). The fundamental axiom of the entire worldview is that transwomen are WOMEN. It doesn’t matter how “sex” is defined, or how “gender” is defined, how “woman” is defined, or how “female” is defined.

It doesn’t matter that biological sex is proven and immutable, down to a cellular level, or that brain sex has been shown to not exist in any substantial manner. It doesn’t matter that women are an oppressed social class that biological males can never be a part of due to their position of male privilege and their male biology. It doesn’t matter that male and female are distinct scientific categories that have existed for all of human history. It doesn’t matter that gender as a social role is something done to us from birth based on our sex, something we are involuntarily indoctrinated into. It doesn’t matter that penises can never be vaginas, and vice versa.

None of that biological reality matters. Libfems don’t care about reality or biological or social distinctions, nor do they really care to engage seriously with critiques of their work that argue, quite convincingly, that transwomen are not women. Because it’s not up for debate.

Some Christian theologians use the same debate tactic: it’s called presuppositionalism. You grant the premise that every competing worldview has its own set of fundamental axioms. The axioms are self-evident to the adherents of the worldview and not up for debate. Everything else follows from those axioms. For Christians, these axioms includes the truthfulness of their religious experience.

Once you establish presuppositionalism, productive debate becomes impossible because you can’t debate axioms. You can only say “Well, that is not self-evident to you but it is self-evident to me.” It essentially becomes a fist-thumping session rather than an actual debate.

For libfems, their fundamental axiom is that transwomen are women, no ifs, ands, or buts.

So why even bother engaging with them? Well, it’s actually quite difficult to. They mostly live on Twitter, or internet forums, or low-bar blogging websites. Very few liberal feminists publish their work in mainstream academic venues, largely because they’re too busy muttering expletives to lesbians on Tumblr.

Why? Well their answer is that it’s not their job to educate you. My answer is that liberal feminism is a defunct and logically flawed ideology, fragile and hole-ridden like a slice of stale swiss cheese, that has already been bludgeoned and continues to be bludgeoned by brilliant critics, and is on the verge of death. Libfems know this and don’t want to risk their clearly flawed and misogynistic ideology crumbling to ruin.

But like any animal backed into a corner, pro trans feminism is angry and dangerous (literally, dangerous, they’re actively stalking, harassing, beating, and even killing people who disagree with them. Scary shit). It has minority status in our culture and so it attracts ideological extremists who like to think of themselves as glorious crusaders fighting the Evil TERFs.

But in the end, sanity will prevail. We have already come so far in getting the world to recognize that women are people, separate from all the sexist bullshit that used to define us. Clearly, we still have a long way to go. The battle still needs to be fought against general ignorance and bigotry, and your generic misogyny is still quite common. But libfems are a special sub-type of misogynist, and, in my opinion, they have already lost the philosophical battle.