I’ve been seeing some posts/debate recently about where various feminists stand on whether transwomen are women, so here is my opinion:

When Simone de Beauvoir observed that, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” she was talking about the process of socialization that girls go through for twenty years to become women. Surgery, hormones and fantasies are how you become a transwoman. Even in the realm of gender, transwomen are only like women in the sense that they are human beings. The socialization of both groups doesn’t even touch when it comes to life experience, except again as regards to being human. And yes, there are girlhood experiences that are universal. Lower status based on sex is one of them. Even aside from oppression, girls are born with the expectation that they will or may become mothers one day. That changes life experience in a profound way. You have to be extremely deluded not to see this.

Of course, transwomen are male, biologically, and I call them transwomen, not men, since they want to be different from men. I also refer to them by female pronouns. My views on this are evolving. I spend much more time than I would like learning about trans issues. I really don’t care very much; I just want them to stop oppressing me by demanding entry into women-only spaces and into feminist politics, which they are actively trying to sabotage to make themselves the center of things. But given the transgressions of transwomen toward women’s rights, I have had to become versed in their issues, their language, their reality. This is further proof, if any were needed, that they are my oppressors. In that sense, they are men.