Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

I have read many attempts to give trans-inclusionary definitions of woman some objective basis, and all fail. Some rely on weak analogies; others try so hard to include transwomen that they end up excluding some natal women (on grounds other than not identifying as women). For more details, see the further reading section for this chapter. But above all, in every case they fail to do what their proponents want, namely to include within womanhood all the males who want to be included. This isn’t really so surprising. The only thing that these self-identified women have in common is that they are male. The central doctrine of gender-identity ideology – that your gender identity is what you say it is – necessarily precludes any objective delineation. If you cannot see this, it is because you do in fact know what a woman is, and did not notice yourself calling on that knowledge as you read those flowery statements. Try ‘a squawm is anyone who identifies as a squawm,’ or ‘every lazap is a lazap.’ Now, can you say what a squawm or a lazap is?