Some things I don't believe anymore

It really doesn't matter how sincerely you feel like something that's not a feeling

When I first waded into this issue six years ago, I did think "transwomen" were in some sense meaningfully different from other men (while not being in any sense women). I don't think this anymore.

Now I think they’re just men having a uniquely and inescapably male experience that involves projecting male ideas about what it would feel like to be a woman on women, and then relating to those projections (and insisting that we must relate to those projections, too).

These men may hold these feelings with absolute sincerity. But it really doesn't matter how sincerely you feel like something that's not a feeling.

What's going on here has nothing to do with actual women. It undermines women's rights to pretend it does. Identifying as a transwoman is a human experience we can approach with interest and curiosity and—depending on what's being asked of us in return—compassion and recognition. But whatever we do, we need to remember: “transwomen” are having an exclusively, inescapably male experience.

I can accept that—for some male people—the idea of ‘identifying as’ a woman is meaningful. But only as long as I am not expected to accept this as meaningful to me (it’s not), much less as the definition of what it means to be a woman—which is a rolling disaster for women’s rights.