Maya Forstater

I'm sympathetic to concerns about safety in prisons, less so about panels. Trans people are such a tiny minority (c.0.5% of US pop.), I struggle to see how they might usurp women's voices/ participation in business/ society.

I certainly would not twitter-shame a panel if it included four men and a trans-woman. That would seem nasty, punitive, and hurtful to her identity (and other trans people). Without much gain. I would of course prefer it if every panel had more than one woman.

Maya, are you saying that trans women are not women? I’m a bit confused...

Yes I think that male people are not women. I dont think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology. People of either sex should not be constrained (or discriminated against) if they dont conform to traditional gender expectations

this is really disappointing. trans women are women. In fact trans women face much more discrimination than cis women do, and we should be elevating their voices. (PS "biology" is as complex as economics and there is no use trying to apply high school bio to the real world.)

Many groups of people face more discrimination than women as a broad group. Elevating their voices does not require that we call all of those people 'women'. Smashing stereotypes is great. Erasing the category of female people is not.

trans women are particularly vulnerable women, and since the push to include women on panels is about supporting the voices of women as a group, and trans women's voices actually need particular support, we should be specifically championing their inclusion.

Hi Rachael - obviously there are much broader societal questions in play than the #manels scenario (I asked it as a practical example to see what people think is definition of women, & whether commitments made specifically to women as a group include men who identify as trans)..