Jeremy Stangroom

That is, I think it might help us to stop using 'womanhood' to mean 'the state of being female.' That is definitely one of the meanings inherent in it, but I don't thinks its the dominant one... and it allows them to muddy the water... because it is indeed possible to 'police

the boundary of who gets to perform femininity' (which we're not doing, but wilful miscomprehension is a speciality, and *many* people not fully versed in the arguments may be swayed by it.)

OTOH, it is not possible to 'police the boundaries of who is female.' Because that is a matter decided by nature... which OMG, does actually exist.

It is a pretty arbitrary assumption that I would understand womanhood via some sort of gender performance. It's an internal state of being, not some guide to living. Masculine trans women and feminine trans men are all over the place.

Please specify what this 'internal state of being' consists of? If this 'internal state of being' is to be accepted as 'womanhood' pls explain on what basis it has ANY relation to the actual being of women and why we should accept this 'internal state' to be 'womanhood'?

Please further specify why we should make laws on the basis of some ineffable internal state of being that has absolutely no conceptual or phenomenological content to MANY women and which they do not recognise as constitutive of their being as women?

Also, please explain why this internal ineffable state of being is not the most regressive essentialist bullshit we have ever seen?

I think there's a wide variety of ways people understand their womanhood, and that trying to create a single normative definition is itself regressive. Everyone comes by it differently.