“Transgender women are not real women!” This is what a lot of people say.

But is it an entirely accurate statement? That depends on how we define “real woman.”

“A real woman is obviously someone who’s born female,” some will say. “A real woman is a genetic, biological female, with female chromosomes.”

Before taking that as the definitive and final word on the matter, consider the following, from the post Transgender: Ideology, Delusion, or Scientific Fact? –

Important new scientific research published in March 2018 indicates that transgender people literally have different brain structures than cisgender (i.e. not transgender) people, that their brain structure and function resembles that of the gender which they inwardly feel themselves to be, and that this different brain structure exists not only in people who have taken hormone treatment but even in those transgender people who have not even yet started any such treatment. This can be read about at https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/03/16/structural-brain-differences-for-transgender-people/133802.html.

Another team of scientists found the same thing at around the same time and this was reported in the news in May 2018. This can be read about at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm.

These reports need to become widely known, as they would do away with almost all prejudice, discrimination, and hatred towards transgender people. . . .

Anti-transgender people often say things such as “If a person is born with male chromosomes and male genitals, they’re a male, end of story. That’s a fact of science.”

Actually, science has moved on since the days when such statements were accepted as being the last word on gender matters. The people who make such arguments are behind the times and perhaps don’t even realise it.

Medical science now accepts the possibility that a foetus developing in the womb could form the basis of a female brain but that an unintended surge of testosterone within the mother’s body could cause the foetus to develop male genitals, thus resulting in the mismatch and dysphoria felt and experienced by transgender women from early childhood onwards.

This clearly corresponds to the brain structure discovery mentioned above.

The same principle is of course true, in reverse, for transgender men.

Hence why experts who have spent their lives studying and researching the transgender phenomenon unanimously affirm that counselling and psychological therapy will not properly treat a person’s gender dysphoria, nor will trying to ignore it, which is something that never works in a lasting way. The only real “cure” is gender transition through changing one’s hormones and appearance to match the gender one feels oneself to be.

“Sex” and “gender” used to be seen as synonymous terms. Medical science now acknowledges that they are different.

Medical professionals now say that gender is one’s inner sense of personal identity, and if an individual has a persistent, long term, fixed inner sense of definitely inwardly being a woman, then it is said that their gender is female, even though their bodily sex may be male.

The concept of sex and gender being the same thing is primitive, crude, and ignorant. If medical science and medical professionals are catching up, why can’t everyone else?

That seems clear enough but then there are some people who say that “transgender women are biological women.” That is a very specific statement and one which is generating a lot of controversy on both sides of the argument.

The idea that transwomen are biologically female sounds obviously erroneous to most intelligent people, who understandably think “to be biologically female means to be born female, hence not a transgender female.”

To a large extent that’s true but there is a subtlety that needs to be taken into consideration:

If a transgender woman is on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and the HRT is at the right dosage, she is hormonally female.

Her body has ceased to be powered, influenced, and energised, by the male sex hormone of testosterone and is now powered, influenced, and energised, by the female sex hormone of estrogen.

Her body may still have male characteristics and even male genitals but those features and genitals are no longer governed by the testosterone which contributed to their development; they are now governed by estrogen. This is probably the reasoning behind some pre-operative and non-operative transwomen saying that their penis is a female penis.

A transgender woman on HRT does not have male hormone levels anymore. She has female hormone levels and very often her testosterone levels are even lower than those of many natural born (or cisgender) women and her estrogen levels can also be higher.

In this sense, and this sense only, transgender women could be said to be biological women, due to the fact that their body’s biochemistry has been dramatically changed.

But that change is dependent solely on the hormone medication. If for whatever reason that is stopped, the transgender woman’s hormone levels will in time revert back to those of a male. When or if that happens, her physical appearance and body will also start to re-masculinise and revert back to its previous form. So a transgender woman is not a biological woman in the ordinary sense of the term.

As for the even more definitive and specific claim made by some that “transgender women are genetic women,” that is obviously and undeniably false, incorrect, and misleading.

No amount of hormone treatment nor surgery will ever change a transgender woman’s DNA and chromosomes from male to female. We may be psychologically as well as visually female but we will always be genetically male. That’s just a scientific fact of life and there’s no reason to feel bad about it or try to deny it, like some people do. Someone born male has XY chromosomes and someone born female has XX chromosomes. This literally cannot be altered.

But the point I was trying to make above is that although transgender women are genetically male we are still female hormonally and psychologically and to that extent – which is a very very big extent – we are women. Men do not have female hormone levels . . . men are not psychologically female . . . that should be clear.

But do we have the right to say that we are “real women”?

Here’s what Caitlyn Jenner, the most famous transgender woman in today’s world, has to say on p. 100 of her 2017 autobiography “The Secrets of My Life”:

“I am firmly on the side of womanhood now. But I am not a woman. Nor will I ever be.

“I am a trans woman. There is a difference.

“I never menstruated or had menopause. I obviously cannot give birth. I was never screwed out of a job because of the sexism that is still pervasive.

“Is my gender female? Yes. Has it always been female? Yes. I use the women’s restroom because I am a woman. I changed the gender on my birth certificate to female because I am a woman. But it’s a different kind of womanhood for me. And that will never change. I’m fine with that. It doesn’t diminish Caitlyn.”

Some people protest at that and say “But a trans woman is a real woman, there’s no difference!”

There obviously is a difference though. Caitlyn Jenner makes the point that she has always been inwardly a woman but that she has never been experientially a woman . . . or at least not until she made her transition and even then it is only a partial experience. She makes the point that she is not a genetic woman and that she can never and will never be a genetic woman.

But as we see, she doesn’t constantly attach the prefix of “trans” and that seems the most sensible way to do it, for the truth is that we are women even though we are transgender women, and we do not need to always identify ourselves as transgender in every single situation and circumstance.

On Facebook, some select “Transgender Woman” or “Transgender Female” as the gender to appear on their profile information. Doing this can indeed sometimes help the cause, by showing the world that we are not afraid or ashamed to be visible as what we are. But we also shouldn’t feel obligated to always reveal our transness. I personally just say “Female” on my Facebook profile but when it’s relevant and appropriate I have no issue with saying that I’m a transgender woman.

So, is a transgender woman a real woman?

It’s not straightforward enough to be able to answer either “yes” or “no.”

The true answer lies somewhere in the middle. You may not like that but such subtleties and unexpected depths are what add a touch of beauty to the experience of human life.