I will begin by asserting that
human beings are not assigned a sex at birth, but that our biological sex is observed and recorded.” So writes the British feminist, Karen Ingala Smith, in her new book, Defending Women’s Spaces.
“
Our biological sex is in reality determined by our chromosomes at fertilisation,” she continues, and “sex differentiation in an embryo begins after six to seven weeks of gestation.”
Such statements put her at odds with the British government, which has recently been in knots over how to define “woman”. It brings her in line with seminal feminist Germaine Greer, who expressed similar sentiments in 2015: “Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a woman. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a cocker spaniel.” And with JK Rowling, who has objected to the term “people who menstruate.” But what harm can there be in individuals aligning with, or in demanding to be acknowledged as, the opposite gender, and how does it affect the safety, status and wellbeing of women?
Ingala Smith, who is chief executive of a charity devoted to ending violence against women, presents a compelling argument that transgender women – 90 to 95 per cent of whom still have a penis – are not biological women.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/jk-rowling-and-the-trans-debate-wom...What is astonishing is that this has to be said and is still debated.
Perhaps this is an explanation from a commenter:
These feminist women seem to have forgotten just how much they have contributed to this problem. A
great many (though not all) feminists have been insisting for at least three decades now that women were "made, not born" and that gender was nothing to do with biology but merely a social construct. And heaven help anyone who dared to disagree with them.The trans lobby has taken this line of argument to its logical extreme. Now the feminists are trying to have it both ways, saying that sex/gender is biologically based when they want to exclude people and a social construct at all other times.