Caster's case has nothing to do with trans people, it's more that she has rare biology (intersex) but happened to be raised as a woman.

Since her rare biology gives her some of the same advantages as men (elevated testosterone) the question is whether it's more fair for her to compete with men or with women.

She can easily beat many women, so some women feel it's unfair for her to compete with them.

My wider point though is that both sides seem to be failing to sufficiently take into the other side's perspective. The point about same-sex attraction in the second tweet you link is a good one IMO. I can't describe my sexuality without referring people's physiological attributes. Doesn't that make them socially relevant? A view on gender that completely eliminates the physical components of sex/gender is denying people's realities just as much as one that doesn't account for people's "feeling of gender".

Trans people are absolutely right that people like JK Rowling are treating them poorly. But they can't claim the moral high ground until they stop completely dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them, and labelling such people as transphobic. That's not very empathetic either.

Trans person: I feel (this way).

a non-equivalent statement from an anti-transness-person: You are wrong to feel that way; your feeling is false and what you are doing is wrong.

An equivalent statement for the non-trans-person here would be: I feel (this other way).

This business about trans people "dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them" is just bullshit. I've talked with and interacted with trans folks and really no one's gonna tell me that their experience growing up as a boy and transitioning into girlhood or womanhood is the same as my experience growing up as a girl. And none of them has ever said that my experience of my physical self is not important, or is transphobic. Like, what? Can you find me instances of this sort of behavior?

Ragging on "people who menstruate" instead of "woman" (pun intended) as Rowling does is not her saying "the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to me". Menstruation is not the definition of womanhood (you do know postmenopausal women exist, right?). If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation. Don't pretend it's equivalent to wearing nailpolish or getting catcalled or giving birth or trying to find pants with pockets that fit a cell phone. JK Rowling is trying to tell other people about how they should experience sex/gender, not just representing her experience. Beyond being not empathetic, it's intellectually lazy.

I mean... it is what being a man means to you, because that's what you "feel" being a man is.

You are a single cell in a culture. You can't decide for anyone other than yourself what it means to be, say, a Man, a (certain religion), a (I dunno, gamer?). These are identities and they're based on your feelings. Sometimes you'll bump into someone else that uses the same word to describe that identity. Say two "gamers" bump into eachother. Both would say "I am a gamer." One has never played Mario and the other has never played Halo. "You're not a gamer!" they say to eachother.

Of course, when we're talking about gender and sex, there's a lot more at stake, and a lot more historical and cultural tendrils to pick apart. Regardless, whatever it means to you to "be a man," is entirely on you. You don't get to decide for me what it means to "be a man," and therefore you don't get to decide for a trans man what it means either.

On that same note, my definition of what it is to "be a man" has no bearing whatsoever on your manliness or identity! You can feel safe in your identity regardless of what the rest of us are doing. What, are you not confident in your own identity? That's a separate issue, and it's not trans men's fault that you feel that way.

I don't know what trans men you've met, but this is laughably far from my near-universal experience of hearing them say things like "oh god what if the way I assert masculinity makes someone feel bad or invalidates someone else's feelings or experiences." I have no doubt people have said things akin to that (being trans is by no means an inoculation against horrifically bad takes) but basically every trans person I know explicitly has a model of gender that doesn't invalidate your experience of "I don't experience gender like that, but 'man' works well for me, not least because of my physical body."

People may point out that it could be good to pull on that thread and consider the possibility of being agender or otherwise non-binary, but no one I know would call you transphobic for critically engaging with your gender and coming to the conclusion "nope, still don't get anything new from considering this, 'man' it is". Quite the opposite in fact, as even attempting to do so should be a decent signal for empathy with trans people.

At the end of the day, the label is for you however that manifests; whether it's having a mental model of gender where you finally have a place instead of always being pushed to the side, or having a magic phrase that indicates to someone the broad strokes of how you'd prefer to be addressed, the label is only important insofar as it helps you.

>If we should [talk] about "people who menstruate" rather than "women"

Just to clarify, "people who menstruate" isn't woke code for cis women to make trans women more comfortable. It's explicitly inclusive of trans men since many do menstruate and strongly prefer not to be labeled women as a result of that.

This is what makes Rowling's take on "people who menstruate" as well as the strong chorus of "trans women are women" and much weaker echo of "trans men are men" in response to it that much more tone-deaf. Trans men were the people whose experiences Rowling aimed to invalidate, but as usual trans women became the public face of the issue.

>Taking the "feeling" of being a man/woman as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has such feelings just as taking physiology as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has the same gendered physiology.

For argument's sake, what if your subjective experience of being a man were just so ingrained in you that you never consciously engaged with it? That could manifest the same way ("i don't 'feel like a man', that isn't how being a man works for me"), but now would you have a place in the "feelings" model you've established as exclusionary.

It seems to me that the fundamental issue you describe comes down to the coexistence of "I'm a man because that's just what I am" and "I'm a man because I feel like a man", and the only conflict inherent to that comes when the former group feels pushed out by the latter. I personally fail to see any way that someone embracing masculinity, especially if it's something that's long been denied to them, invalidates the experience of a man who's comfortable enough being labeled a man even without subjective experience of his gender.

I have considered this quite extensively because this seems to be what most people assume my experience is like. But I'm pretty sure I really don't have such feelings. One of the key things that made me sure of this is seeing other (cis) men and women justify or explain things in terms of their gender. I have never felt like I wanted to do something because I'm a man. And I've always hated when someone describes me as man and implies that means anything more than I have a certain physiology, even if the implication is a positive one.

This is very different to for example my experience of sexuality. I'm heterosexual, and I can understand what it is like to be gay in reference to my own sexuality. I have feelings of attraction towards female people, and even though I don't experience such feelings towards male people, it's pretty easy for me to imagine what that would be like.

My experience of gender seems more like what I imagine asexual people's experience of sexuality must be like: something completely alien to them that they can only come to understand through others' descriptions and explanations.

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> I personally fail to see any way that someone embracing masculinity, especially if it's something that's long been denied to them, invalidates the experience of a man who's comfortable enough being labeled a man even without subjective experience of his gender.

Because it implies that "being a man" has something to with masculinity. I am very much not masculine (I do have a masculine side, but so do even the girliest of cis women so that doesn't mean much - but if anything I'm more feminine). I am comfortable being labeled a man only so long as it doesn't come with an implication of masculinity, which in my lifetime thus far it largely hasn't (I was born in the early 90s). Now if I describe myself as a man people start making assumptions about how I feel inside (as you did in your comment!)

What I want is a label that I can use to describe my cluster of male physiological traits without implying anything about my feelings, behaviour or personality. I'm not hung up on that being "man", but I would like there to be some word to describe that aspect of myself and others.

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> Just to clarify, "people who menstruate" isn't woke code for cis women to make trans women more comfortable

Sure, I get that. But "people who present as feminine" isn't code for "trans and cis women" either. It would include men (cis and trans) who present in a certain way, and exclude women (cis and trans) who don't. And the distinction can be important. For example, one of the arguments in the infamous "bathroom debate" is that trans women can be unsafe in men's bathroom. And I think this argument has a lot of merit: it's important that everyone is safe while they use the bathroom. However, the group of people who are at risk in men's bathrooms is not actually "trans women", but "people who are presenting as feminine": a trans woman who was presenting in a masculine way would be perfectly safe because nobody would suspect that they aren't a man, whereas a cis man presenting in a feminine way (say wearing a dress and makeup) would not be because there are prejudiced people who are violent towards males transgressing gender norms, and these people typically won't stop to check what someone's gender identity is before attacking.

I don't see how saying "women" when you mean "people presenting as female" is any less egregious than saying "women" when you mean "people who menstruate". I feel like we probably shouldn't use "women" in either situation, but my opinion on that is not super strong. What does really get to me is the hypocrisy of people who cry bloody murder when "women" is used in place of "people who menstruate" but will vigorously defend their right to use "women" in place of "people presenting as female".

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> I have no doubt people have said things akin to that (being trans is by no means an inoculation against horrifically bad takes) but basically every trans person I know explicitly has a model of gender that doesn't invalidate your experience of "I don't experience gender like that, but 'man' works well for me, not least because of my physical body."

I think the conflict tends to arise when I'm not that interested in their gender feelings / label, or ask them to clarify what that means to them (because they don't correspond to anything in my own experience and thus aren't really very meaningful to me) but I am still interested in things like their hormone levels (because they still have an impact on perception and behaviour), and I think that trans people ought to acknowledge their physiologies whatever they may be, even if they don't like them. I personally don't see how that invalidates their experience. I'm not denying that they have the gender they say they have. I'm just saying that that doesn't mean much to me.

I'm all on board with a "whatever label works for you" model right up until people start arguing that we ought to organise society on the basis of those labels, or start basing our laws on them. Surely at that point we need to be working with labels which have a single objective meaning rather than labels which everyone interprets differently to each other.

But I still feel you're making up conflict when you have this charge that trans people are telling you how you need to experience yourself. It seems awfully self-centered.

Last, I have particular feelings about "people who menstruate" etc because I live with a physician who gets dinged on quality metrics when he can't perform a prostate check on a person without a prostate or a Pap smear on a person without a cervix. As a math person who is pretty literal, my opinion is that we should be clear about the salient characteristic. You want to do something anatomical? Be clear about it, and I'll tell you if I have the requisite anatomy. You want to shop for curtains for your male partner because women born women automatically have better interior decorating sense? Be clear about that, and I can demonstrate you're wrong. Tell me I'm wrong about a math proof or my perception of politics because hormones? I'll show you what female aggression looks like. I don't like folks telling me what I am or what I think because of my hormones, and your last sentences in the second to last paragraph indicate you might do that to me.