Maya Forstater

When I started tweeting about this I was surprised by how many economists, researchers and development professionals: empirically minded people, not shy of serious debate thought this debate too unimportant or too controversial to get into

Or they thought it was settled: women are not defined as people with female bodies anymore (thats exclusionary, unkind and old-fashioned). Women are people with a deeply held feminine identity, often expressed visually through clothes, hair and makeup.

Except I don't think they really believe that.

In our work we look at populations segmented by *sex* to study outcomes in education, employment, poverty, health, etc… and to look at violence against women, the burden of household work & etc...

None of this is based on people having a personality at the ‘feminine end of the spectrum’. It is based on the way societies treat people who are male or female. Where women are treated as second class citizens its not something they can opt out of by dressing differently.

Of course there can be different definitions for things. Being a woman is a social identity based on other people reading you as female, and being a woman is also a function of being female: chromosomes, gametes, genitalia

We can use both definitions. Usually they align. When they don’t its polite and kind to treat people the way they want to be treated, even when they don’t ‘pass’ as the sex they’d like to be seen as.

But here is the thing. Sometimes the interests of the female people (who may get pregnant, who tend to be physically less powerful, who face sex discrimination & violence from men) diverge from the interests of people who are male but would like to be treated as women socially.