i wrote this essay to apply for a merit scholarship, which i achieved! i thought it may be interesting for you readers. love you all.
nb: i have not disclosed any of my opinions in this essay and have remained as impartial as i could x
‘A trans woman isn’t a woman’ How would you respond if the principal of your school made this statement?
I would respond via letter – which I have drafted below.
Dear Principal,
Thank you very much for taking time to read my letter. I am writing to you regarding a statement you made which I would like to respond to. Although opinions are allowed and valid, I would like to also urge to consider not only the ramifications of what you have said but also the factual backing for it. In all honesty, I am still figuring out my own opinion here; I hope you will allow for my often clumsy explanations!
First, I would like to shine a light on the impact of the statement you have made. As a principal, I believe there is a level of ambiguity which must be upheld. Divulging your opinions on matters, especially as contentious as this one, allies you with one side of the argument and can alienate you from the other side. Especially issues such as this one, it is so polarising that you risk losing support from so many of the students and their parents. It is fairly upsetting as a student at your school to see the bias – it hurts that you have created a space that is not safe for trans women.
This brings me onto the second point regarding the impact of what you have said. I believe that although your statement itself may not have been very harmful, it allows for dangerous behaviour. By setting a standard across the school that trans women are not women, it allows for potential bullying and exclusion of trans women, students and teachers alike.
Furthermore, I wonder what I may feel like if I was a trans woman. My femininity is very important to me, and I treasure the experience of womanhood. To have that taken away in such a throwaway statement would break my heart – I feel it is entirely inappropriate for a principal to be making comments like these.
I would also like to appreciate what you’ve said. If you mean this in a biological, taxonomical sense, then this is absolutely correct. Doing research has led me to understand the basis behind sexual taxonomy and how sex is assigned. I found out that it relates to what gametes can be created in the body: large gametes (ie ovum) are created by females while smaller gametes (ie sperm) are created by males. Therefore, current technology does not allow for people who are not naturally born as females to be able to create the larger gamete cells and so cannot be females. In this way, you are correct; trans women cannot be women.
However, there are issues with this argument, and I think it’s important that I try and show you why your statement is problematic. The line exists between gender and taxonomical sex. Female is the more correct term relating to taxonomy, and that is where your argument would be correct. With the current state of scientific discovery, people who are born as male (producing smaller gametes) cannot ever be female (produce bigger gametes). But gender is not taxonomical sex – gender is a societal construct, and by using the word ‘woman’ it appears as though you are alluding to gender rather than sex.
Following through with this idea, your statement appears to be quite false. As gender is a construct, not a science like taxonomy, the classifications are more fluid. Generally, as society becomes more progressive, gender roles are deconstructed, and gender becomes a personal experience that each person goes through singularly. Therefore, generalised statements like the one you have made cannot be true. Trans women cannot be females, but they can be women.
One interesting thing which I would also like to bring to your attention is an interesting theory called gender accelerationism (g/acc). Accelerationism is a Marxist field of thought which points out how structures in society, like gender, are used by capitalist powers to control people and accrue more power. After acknowledging them, accelerationism suggests pushing them to the maximum until they collapse in on themselves. In terms of gender, this means endlessly creating genders until the very concept of gender loses its meaning and so cannot be used as a form of control by the state.
The reason I want to bring this theory to your attention is how fascinating I find it, and how fascinating I’m sure you would find it as well. As I read the g/acc manifesto and delved deeper into the theory, I truly began to wonder – how far does gender exist, and even more, how far does sex exist?
To question these is to question something I know is very inherent to society and upheld as a core value. However, I cannot help but ponder it!
Bear with me through this explanation – I'm about to bring in another one of my favourite abstract theories! As explained by the cybernetic culture research unit (a super cool think tank that worked out of Warwick university!) retro-causality is when cause and effect swap places due to the uncertain nature of time. In a Kantian way, we experience time as linear, but that does not mean that time is linear. Therefore, the assumed cause and effect cycle that we live our lives by is completely uncertain. You are probably wondering how retro-causality has anything to do with gender, and this is where I get very interested!
The g/acc manifesto makes interesting points that although sex and gender is separate (as I have based my whole argument around in this letter!), the power-hungry structures of gender themselves are what cause classifications of sex, and the classifications of sex would not be needed if not for the societal structures of gender. So, although intuitively I always believed that gender was a construct secondary to sex (especially genitalia) the g/acc manifesto argues the opposite.
I question so much about myself when faced with this view! Especially in the retro-causal sense; so much of what I am fits into the stereotypes of women and femininity. I like bows and I like pink, and I am left to wonder now if my fitting into these stereotypes is exactly what perpetuates them or if some part of me is almost hyperstitiously making these stereotypes come true – maybe I would hate bows if I had never known them to be so tied to femininity.
From here, I start wondering about what things may be like if the retro-causal nature of gender and sex was not the way that it is now. The gender accelerationist view would point out that the reason for this relationship is that the labour of reproduction is in fact the most important. The free market commodifies everything, and reproduction is the most important part of the self-sustaining capitalist machine. So, the capitalist machine assigns gender and sex to maximise the reproductive labour and ensure the roles are being sufficiently fulfilled.
If we didn’t live in a world where reproduction was viewed as such, what would gender and sex be? I wonder sometimes if it would be similar to congenital diseases – a simple medical fact.
Yet at the same time, even if reproduction is not needed in the capitalist machine as the next generation of productive workers, does that make it meaningless to us? I think the action of creating another life is so inherent and key to the human experience that we must be aware of the two different smaller and larger gametes needed for this. A male and female are both needed for creating life – a smaller and larger gamete. We need a way to classify this.
As I’m sure you can tell, gender and sex are complicated. I almost have a headache when I try to understand and explain it! In this letter, I have clearly explained why your statement could taxonomically be correct, but why it may also be viewed as incorrect.
Additionally, I believe I have explained well, using g/acc and retro-causal theory that gender and sex are far more complicated than they may seem at first glance. I will not discredit your opinion, but I hope you understand why such generalised and non-specific statements such as yours can be confusing and harmful, and easily misunderstood.
Above all, I hope I have appropriately expressed my concern for your actions as a principal. This statement does not safeguard students as should be your priority – this is what truly upsets me. To invalidate student in such a way is not what I want the principal of my school to be doing. I am sure that you can see why I and other students may be hurt by what you’ve said. I would never turn down a debate, and I’m sure you can see that this topic very much interests me (and I still don’t know where I stand!) but I am sure that you did not need to make such a certain statement at the risk of so many students.
Many kind regards,
A dedicated and concerned student,
Natasha Misra
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