Trans Women Are Not Women. And That's Okay.

Jan 13th, 2024. India Willoughby, a reality TV-grade celebrity and trans woman, writes a (now deleted) tweet about kidnapping three women: Scottish MP Joanna Cherry, "gender critical" activist Maya Forstater, and JK Rowling.

This is fine.

Jan 22nd, 2023 - Mar 1st, 2024. Willoughby writes a series of tweets attacking women and their appearance including, but not limited to, unselfconsciously describing a female athlete as a “parody of a woman, definitely trans,” claiming to be “more of a woman than JK Rowling will ever be,” and calling several other women, “men.”

This, too, is fine.

Sep 27th, 2020 - Nov 28th, 2022. In several other tweets, Willoughby asks a gay man “what went wrong” with him because his body was “designed for sex with a vagina,” describes a black TV presenter as a “blackwoman” who wouldn’t be anywhere without “wokeness,” and, topically enough, says that “the sooner [fellow trans woman] Debbie Hayton pops his clogs the better.” (Emphasis mine.)

All perfectly fine. But then...

March 3rd, 2024. A Twitter user called Socialist Stanley sends JK Rowling a clip of Willoughby dancing, asking if she thinks “this woman” should be using the men's locker room. To which Rowling replies:

You’ve sent me the wrong video. There isn’t a lady in this one, just a man revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks ‘woman’ means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist.

And this was most certainly not fine.

Printing presses at Sky News, The Independent, and several others, roared into action to condemn Rowling’s “vile transphobia.” Celebrities and journalists from across the Twittersphere expressed their horror at Rowling's "disturbing comments," and Willoughby, who was “genuinely disgusted,” by Rowling’s tweet, confirmed that the police had been notified.

And look, I know the world would be a better place if we were all a bit kinder to each other. I know it’s hip and “progressive” to pretend Willoughby is “more of a woman than Rowling will ever be.”

But let's face it. The only reason anybody was attacking Rowling for the kind of comments Willoughby has been making for years is that we're all perfectly aware of which one is the woman.

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A few days after Rowling and Willoughby's spat, two women, in a different corner of Twitter, were having a similar clash about womanhood.

Hannah Barron, an "outdoors-lifestyle" influencer, brazenly posted a makeup-free video of herself talking about a house she was building with her own two unmanicured hands. And Sameera Khan, a smokey-eyed, lip-filled Kardashian clone, well, she wasn’t about to stand for that:

This accent needs to be illegal and women should be banned from doing manual labour like this. There is NOTHING feminine about American women. American women are literally men.

Khan’s tweet received over 330 times the traffic that Rowling’s did (64 million views vs Rowling’s 193,000), but instead of notifying the police or hurling abuse or “joking” about kidnapping anyone, Barron posted the following response:

…I grew up as the weird kid in high school who hunted and fished too much. Because back then it wasn’t cool for women to hunt or fish or [do] the whole country lifestyle. And I’m so proud of all the women in the outdoors now who are making that more “cool” or popular. So proud of us. I think we’re doing great […]

So don’t be scared to build your own box and don’t try to fit in anybody else’s. Be your own person and you’ll be happier in the long run because of that.

Defining womanhood (and manhood) as a collection of stereotypes is nothing new. Telling women what they can and can’t do certainly isn’t new. What’s new is the idea that refusing to indulge in this stupidity is hateful. What’s new is the idea that doing so is kind and inclusive instead of grossly misogynistic.

Because if you believe that womanhood is defined by hair and makeup and tottering through nature in high heels, then Khan is right about Barron. The fact that she hunts and wears trucker hats and wrestles catfish for fun automatically disqualifies her from the brand of "womanhood" that Khan and Willoughby are advocating.

But if you think Khan is wrong, if you recognise that her view of womanhood is shallow and regressive, then you have to acknowledge that Willoughby is wrong too.

It's wrong to claim boys are “literally girls” if they like playing with dolls or dancing ballet or wearing dresses.

It’s wrong to claim that women are “literally men” because they’re strong or capable or assertive.

It’s wrong to claim that a child was “born in the wrong body” because they’re drawn to the gendered stereotypes associated with the opposite sex.

And this wrongness, this failure to distinguish between the “identity” and the reality, has consequences.

Mistaking gender stereotypes for sex is why female athletes who are uncomfortable with long-haired males getting undressed in their locker rooms are being attacked by mobs demanding that they “reeducate themselves.”

It's why so-called LGBT organisations accuse lesbians of “sexual apartheid” instead of recognising that same-sex attracted women don't want to sleep with members of the opposite sex.

It's why female rape victims were instructed to “reframe their trauma” when they asked for female-only rape crisis centres and why judges forced them to refer to their male rapists as “she” in court.

But hey, if this all sounds evil and cult-like and dystopian, if you can see why women might object to being rendered meaningless in real-time, just remember, it’s a small price to pay to avoid offending India Willoughby.

As the radical notion that women are people clashes with the ridiculous notion that women are a “vibe,” it’s become common to see gender essentialists weaponising women's age and fertility issues and, of course, their breasts, to argue that women are just men with extra steps.

But thankfully, most people still understand that a woman is a woman regardless of whether she’s had her womb or breasts removed. She’s a woman whether or not she knows how to contour her cheekbones or enjoys building houses. A woman is a woman even if she’s been brainwashed into feeling “uncomfortable with the term ‘woman.’”

And in exactly the same way, a man is a man even if, as a boy, he preferred playing with dolls and ponies to trucks and robots. He’s a man even if he straps a set of Z-cup breasts to his chest. He’s a man even if he honestly and sincerely wishes he were born a woman.

Because while there’s no such thing as a “right way” to be a woman, there is such a thing as someone who isn't a woman.

Being a woman is not, and never has been, conditional on your voice or your job your gender-related hobbies. It is not a costume that can be put on with hormones or taken off with body modification. And the only reason it's necessary to state these painfully obvious facts is that, as Barron so eloquently put it, trans women like Willoughby have tried to redefine somebody else’s box instead of building their own.

Trans women are not women, they're trans women. It isn’t hate to admit we know the difference. It isn't “kind” to dismiss the dangers of ignoring this difference. It isn't “transphobic” to acknowledge the biological realities that trans people literally wouldn’t exist without.

Unless, it seems, you’re India Willoughby.

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