Maya Forstater

Currently, trans women face specific discrimination *as women*. They face misogyny, magnified tenfold. For example, trans women face more domestic violence than trans men do AND more than cis women do http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Intimate-Partner-Violence-and-Sexual-Abuse-among-LGBT-People.pdf …

the pernicious idea that trans women are not "real women" is thought to contribute both to this pattern and other aspects of transmisogyny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmisogyny …

holding onto a biologically-grounded notion of womanhood has little practical benefit in day to day life, and is regressive in that it ignores the psychological and social aspects of gender while harming a vulnerable community in the process.

Rachel - I think if we didn't have a word for adult human females we'd have to invent one. But let's say you are right and there is no information content in that word, its not a real thing. Let's get rid of it. Let's pretend the word never existed....

... But then you tell me there's a new word "woman". I've never heard it before. What does it mean? How do I know if I am one? Or if someone else is? What is the definition?

Why are definitions so important? Why do we need to put people on pens/ categories? Why not just empiricallly work out what makes people happy?

Alice I really don't how you can take this position as a researcher. If everything is meaningless and there are no useful categories or useful buckets how do you study anything?

I don’t shoehorn complexity into tight little stilettos that don’t quite fit. Instead of making up categories and stuffing the world into them, I study the world as it is. I reckon that makes me a better researcher but hey ho...