Today I feel it is necessary to address a topic often called into question regarding the transgender community. More often than not, people seem to differentiate between cisgender (identifying as the same gender as was assigned at birth) and transgender women. Some of the most frequent arguments or questions brought up regarding this “difference” fall along the lines of:
- Menstrual cycles or lack thereof
- Uterus or lack thereof
- Ability or inability to get pregnant/give birth
- “XX” vs. “XY” chromosomes
- having “female” reproductive organs (at birth)
While these points seem reasonable to call into question at first, upon further analyzing and understanding the nature and circumstances relating to them, it will become clear as to why none of these are solid arguments.
As many transgender women have stated in the past (and are still speaking about today), a woman is a person who essentially experiences “womanhood”. What is womanhood, you might ask? One may initially think womanhood relates to the bulleted list above but, in short, womanhood doesn’t quite have a specific meaning to it. In other words, “womanhood” can be whatever a female individual deems it to be. This ideology stems from knocking the idea that women have to fit within a specific standard or role as deemed by society rather than the individual herself. But before I go into more detail on this, I think it is more important to first touch on each of the bullet points and why they do not equate to what defines a woman.
For starters, there are a large number of women, cisgender women for that matter, which do not have any of the first four qualities for biological or medical reasons. One may have simply been born without a uterus, breasts, the inability to give birth, etc. or may have had to get something removed for health reasons. As for the XX vs XY chromosome argument, it isn’t so simple. It turns out that people regardless of gender can have XX or XY chromosomes, or maybe neither (XXY, XXXY, you get the picture). In fact, no one can actually know their genotype unless they have a karyotype test done. (http://www.isna.org/faq/y_chromosome)
Lastly, it is important to note that the only “difference” between transgender women and cisgender women is that transgender women were simply “assigned male at birth”. Of course, there is still the question of “male genitalia” vs “female genitalia”. Essentially, the true definition of “male genitalia” is simply that–genitalia belonging to a male–with “female genitalia” being defined as genitalia belonging to a female. As trans women are nothing less than women, by analyzing the bigger picture and putting everything into perspective, there is not much of a difference between cisgender and transgender women.
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