Here's a poem. I call It "Show Your Receipts"
Show your receipts.
Support your claims.
Your biological essentialism
is scientifically inaccurate
empirically inaccurate
phenomenologically inaccurate.
Any biological criteria you employ
to designate who is female
(and thus a woman by your logic)
would exclude people who I suspect you would want to include
within the category of woman.
Likewise, it would include people who
you might want to exclude.
Chromosomes?
It's a shame that intersex people are more common then redheads.
Capacity to bear children?
Sorry, women who are unable to carry a child to labor, or who receive hysterectomies.
Absence of a penis? Presence of a vagina?
Aren't you just engaged
in the most egregiously
patriarchal and misogynistic activity
of letting someone's genitals determine their role in society?
No matter where you draw your arbitrary
line around female and male sex, you
will find yourself having to tell people that you
see as women that they aren't actually women,
and having to accept some people you
view as men within that category.
Any appeal to "biological reality" demands an arbitrarily
limited view of the biological diversity
that makes up our world. *
*Here's a peer reviewed article
from a cisgender scientist
(with no ideological agenda)
that refutes pretty much any claim you might make
about "biological females"
or "biological males".
It is published in Nature - one of the most respected venues for scientific research on the planet: https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943.
See I show my receipts.
But....here's the thing.
At the end of the day, your opinion about my gender and my sex is irrelevant.
I'm responding to you,
because there are trans people who
will read your ignorance and bigotry who
need to see your toxic ideas refused.
Trans and gender expansive people have been around for all of human history.
Our existence isn't for you to disagree with or agree with because you don't have to
live our lives.
You haven't had to risk what we risk
in order to be seen as ourselves
in the world.
You think you know toxic masculinity
but have you ever seen how some men act
and talk
when they don't think there's a woman around to hear them?
Have you ever had to laugh along with rape jokes
because if you don't
you are afraid the next rape joke
will be about you?
To grit your teeth and try to imagine yourself somewhere safe, while they laugh
and jeer,
and "bond"
and you are terrified they're going to sense
your fear
and come after you?
If it's suffering at the hands of men that makes a woman a woman in your eyes
then we are sisters in ways that you need to recognize.
You don't have to believe I'm a woman, but I still get mansplained to in meetings,
talked over, sexualized
by strangers against my will.
I still feel afraid walking through the parking lot on my way to my car at night.
I will bear the scars of my sexual assault
on my soul
for my whole life.
Don't you see that our commonalities
make us allies
and not enemies?
When the same fears and concerns that effect you, effect me?
Does it make you feel better, knowing that for girls like me
there is one more big fear?
One more source of anxiety?
That it's women like you who are making women like me afraid when we're out in the world?
When simple aspects of living our lives
are subjected to such scrutiny?
Gods forbid if we have to go pee!
Because women like you would rather shove us back into locker rooms
to be hurt, and abused,
rather than see us for who
we are telling you
we are.
