Hi Erica,

I may have misunderstood your meaning when you said you were trying to understand, and I am sorry if you felt my help with that deserved ‘quotes’!

You wrote a lot in response, and that means to me that you care about the subject. From your emphasis I think your experience as a woman has been made insecure by males, and now by transgender women, who you feel are males, interloping improperly in women’s spaces that need to be kept free of males for females.

Females who have been subject to male predation would understandably not trust men, and would assume that men are biologically predatory. And females wishing for safe spaces would rightly be incensed if anyone attacked them for that.

OK so far?

Backing up a moment- you open your letter by saying that ‘woman’ is a synonym for ‘adult female’, and we all learn that. I know that this labeling process is nearly universal. The justification seems clear- people usually have either male or female bodies, the paired sexes needed for reproduction when adults, with family forming critical to child-rearing and a well ordered society. In society we like to say man rather than male, etc.

Literally everything we do is structured around this idea and reinforced constantly. Childhood is full of being told what you must do because you are a girl or boy. The result is that reproductive sexual anatomy becomes conflated with all the cultural assignments we make for males and females, because of that anatomy. So, as in your letter, most people think of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as identical with ‘male’ and ‘female’.

Most of us stop questioning this. If you are male, then you are a boy and not a girl. You may not wear a princess dress - but you can beat up someone who deserves it. Even if you do insist that you feel like you would rather be a princesss, wearing a dress, you cannot be a girl, since ou are male.

I think the unspoken arguments of trans people run like this: “I feel like a woman, even though I am male physically. For the purpose of most social situations, I would like to be included in the cultural category of ‘woman’. This is their bid for inclusion.

Granted, the whole argument rests on the proposition that the actual meaning of ‘woman’ is so much more than ‘female’ that being ‘female’ doesn’t always have to be part of it.

The contrary position, which I think you hold, is that once a man, always a man. If you can be patient with me, I’l offer some ideas that justify their position as at least logical, if not desirable from your POV.l

For a large part of my life,it was seen as natural fact that males were the only ones who fight fires properly, or have the expertise to be a doctor, or the stamina and mechanical sense to be a fighter pilot. could lead a nation or be a doctor or fighter pilot. Males were not considered kind enough to be nurses, and so on.

There are norms laid out for males and females that cover every aspect of behavior,all rights, privileges, and exceptions. Kids are taught how to behave, and expected to grow up to be either a traditional ‘man’ or ‘woman’. I think you are speaking from this this point of view in your letter. However, if we make a distinction between the category of ‘woman’ and ‘female’