Some of the disconnect between liberal feminists and radical feminists seems to be on the basis of the supposed immutability of the fact that transwomen are women. I’ve seen transwomen and libfems use the very dismissive (but understandable if you know where they are coming from) claim that ‘transwomen are women, end of story.’



I don’t think the story ends there.



If transwomen are women, then transwomen would understand why women would not want to be in the presence of people with penises in places where women are vulnerable, like changerooms or washrooms where some level of vulnerability or nudity is present. Transwomen face alarming violence at the hands of males. I can absolutely understand why transwomen would not want to walk into a men’s room while presenting as female. Men are violent. We all KNOW that.



This isn’t an issue of education, in my opinion. This is an issue of experience. I have experienced violence against me by men multiple times in my life. I do not trust men. This is not for anyone else to deny or try to educate me against. So many women experiences triggers because of PTSD they suffer because of the violence against them, perpetuated by men. I would even venture to say that a great amount of these violations occured in places women had previously considered safe. Their bedroom, their dormroom, a parent’s room, a car, etc. We are used to having our safe places violated and used against us, as women. If I were alone in a changeroom with a person I perceived as male–since, without the trappings of femininity, our naked bodies appear to have no gender–I would indeed be afraid and upset.



If transwomen were women, they would understand this. They would be able to see through the lens of womanhood and understand exactly why women are so afraid. Why we consider women-only spaces to be safe spaces. Why we need these safe spaces to gather ourselves, duck away from unwanted attention, or even just pee in peace with the innate knowledge that no males are around. Transwomen undoubtedly need their own spaces as well, as from what I’ve gathered they find a lot of female biology discussion to be triggering or hurtful or non-inclusive. Frankly, I find some trans discussion of female bodies to be horrifically misogynistic, appropriative, dismissive of reality, and distinctly un-feminist. In their own spaces, they have a history of attempting to convince women to have sex with them. In women-only spaces, be assured, we would have no such conversations. I daresay we have more important things to discuss than how to get laid by people who don’t want to have sex with us.



If transwomen were feminists, which I think even libfems are beginning to realize they are mostly NOT, they would fight for spaces for female-bodied women. They really would. As I would fight for WOC to have their own spaces if such a fight were being waylaid by white people; as I would fight for any category of woman who needed to come together to talk about the specific oppressions that group faces.



I think part of the reason transwomen are so intent on dissolving born-woman spaces is because they feel it’s the last bastion of womanhood. If they can get into these spaces, then they are indeed women, exactly the same as women who had girlhoods, who went through female puberty and have periods and deal with birth control and fear pregnancy (or welcome it) and the myriad other things females deal with daily. But we are not the same. I have continually seen the valid and experience-based concerns of women being dismissed as unimportant (or not as important as trans issues), denial of male privilege or socialization, even though in light of the Roseanne Barr attacks I think we can all conclude that many transwomen are raging misogynists.



The truth is, not every transwoman even claims to be a feminist at all. Many seem to hate women, which they show through their vile language and abuses thrown at us every time our concerns are raised, and their caricaturization of what it means to be a woman.



If transwomen were women, they would listen to women. They would respect women and our PLEAS to have some places to ourselves. If they were women, they would fight for women. But if you follow their rhetoric, it become scarily clear. Transwomen are not only not women, they don’t even want to be anymore. They hate women even as they emulate us. They make rabid claims of being the most oppressed group, the group with the highest incidence of death by suicide and murder. But here’s where intersectionality they claim to pride themselves on gets left behind. Many transwomen are sex workers, many of these sex workers are POC, and WOC sex workers face indescribable male violence. Most transwomen are not killed or harassed by men for being trans. They are killed or harassed by men because they are gender non-conforming, perceived as homosexual, or because they are sex workers, or because they are POC. In our white patriarchy, your disposability is multiplied by how many oppressions you face.



It’s dangerous to appear female. It’s dangerous to be female. That is what womanhood is. I’m not saying anything so condescending as ‘welcome to being a woman’ because I think that’s callous. But what I am saying is, if we’re in this thing called womanhood together, transwomen need to learn what sisterhood is really about. It isn’t about the individual, it’s about the group. So either transpeople fight for their own spaces, free of non-trans people, or they fight with born females to protect safe spaces for their sisters.



So my question is, if transwomen are women, why do they hate women so much?

