Let's Get Something Straight

By Bea Groves-McDaniel
Written April 2025 as a sketch for a much longer piece that was never completed.

There isn't a single transgender person out there (who warrants the term) who transitioned because the simply 'felt like' a woman or a man. None of us 'feel like' the gender that we are. We are what we are in the same way that we think what we think. Gender is a 'doing' thing, not a 'feeling' thing, however strong our emotions might be when we transition. If I do not 'do' (i.e. 'perform') my gender, what good is a feeling? I must be out there, in the world around me, being myself without self- consciousness or fear.

No transgender person transitions on a whim, or for ulterior motives. This is universally true. All transgender people have a past in which they have unhappily tried to live in their assigned-at-birth-gender, but constantly aspired for something better, something less at odds with their existence. The idea that someone can just claim to be trans' for the purposes of crime or to ameliorate punishment is plainly nonsense. Transgender folk are no different than any other group. We have 'bad 'uns' amongst us. But that is not indicative of us all. Any more than Lucy Letby, or Alison Firth, or Genene Jones are indicative of all women nurses. What amazes me is that there have been far more violent cisgender female offenders than trans’ offenders, but this obvious fact gets totally ignored in all the hysteria.

There is no transgender ideology. Trans' people are one of the most argumentative groups I have ever come across. There is no one single coherent belief on trans' politics, trans' philosophy, trans' care, etc. In fact, I'd say there are as many transgender ideologies as there are transgender people themselves.

There is no SUBSTANTIVE (NB!) evidence to show that transgender people are a threat to cisgender women. None of us (with any sense) would go where we're not welcome or where we feel threatened.

Most, though perhaps not all trans' women, use the word 'woman' about themselves as a shorthand for 'transgender woman'. I certainly do. We acknowledge that a very large number of us have a male history, and in acknowledging it, we will always be in a struggle between our present and our past. We can never be the same as a person born and raised with no dysphoria about their gender. It is an unavoidable truth. Perhaps the future will be different? However, that does not mean that we have no claim on the word 'woman' or cannot take part in a womanly life. The use of a word is never purely the proprietary ownership of a single group, however large it might be.

There is a difference between biological sex ( your body morphology, genes... ), and gender (the enactment of morphology-related characteristics and behaviours within a particular culture). Simone de Beauvoir, the founder of modern feminism, says as much. But some have perverted this idea into reductive fundamentalism. Fundamentalism as a tool not only eliminates transgender people but also dominates women by instilling anxiety and fear in them.