It’s a popular slogan with activists, but is it true? In his “Are women adult human females?” philosopher Alex Byrne quotes philosopher Jennifer Saul asserting a thesis which Byrne calls “TW”:
TW: [All] Trans women are women, even if they have not had ‘reassignment’ surgery or hormonal treatments.
If TW is true, then Byrne’s thesis about women AHF is false.
TW is a fashionable thesis to be sure, but also a bold one. Surely there are a number of strong arguments in its favour.
Right?
Surprisingly, a number of authors endorsing TW simply assume TW. Thus philosopher Katherine Jenkins announces,
The proposition that trans gender identities are entirely valid—that trans women are women and trans men are men—is a foundational premise of my argument, which I will not discuss further.
Of course, arguments must start somewhere. But Byrne points out that this is odd choice for a starting point. TW is hardly obviously true or self-evident, but is instead a very controversial claim, and not just among various sorts of traditionalists or conservatives. Byrne notes that
Many notable feminist philosophers and theorists have either explicitly rejected TW or else endorsed views that evidently conflict with it.
And then he gives some examples.
But if there’s no plausible argument to be found in favor of TW, why then does anyone believe it? That’s a good question! One may think: testimony. Don’t “trans women” say they are in fact women? Byrne considers this is part 2 of this post.
