You do not get to police my body

How many times does being told that biology trumps identity is too many; one, two, three, none? Every conversation revolving around trans identities invariably comes back to the this core argument: trans women are men because of their genetics and bodies, same as why trans men are women and intersex folk are whatever sex they are assumed to have. This reductive reasoning is the singular reason most anti-trans laws are brought into effect, with the affect that the body essentially becomes a prison for the mind. The policing of bodies becomes the business of the whole village, to the point that even to be called trans is enough to set off transphobic abuse regardless of your personal identity. Policing bodies is as old as the bronze age, yet those advocating for it are essentially pushing up against first, second, and third wave feminism. It is not enough to be cisnormative, you need to be seen to behave and act cismormatively.

I can talk about personal dignity and bodily autonomy, but the reality is that trans bodies have always been policed, both in terms of biological reductive policies and enforced gender expression. Every single exclusionary argument rehashes patriarchal talking points, all the while accusing trans women of being walking parodies of womanhood simply for using their freedom of expression to dress as they wish. No-one has the right to police anyone else’s body, and while harm reduction laws have implemented dress codes, ultimately how we present ourselves to the world is based on personal perception and desired appearance rather than at the barrel of a gun. Yes, there are parts of the world where you can be killed for wearing the wrong thing, and this is the battle that feminists should be fighting, not the reductive anti-trans rhetoric that they keep peddling.

Strict gender and sex enforcement always blows back onto those who seek to enforce the rules, as no movement ever survives contact with its puritans. No ender expression will be good enough for the morality police, no sex based segregation complete enough for the purists. All movements eat their own in the end because someone will always be more revolutionary than thou. It does not take a Marxist scholar to point out the flaws in the gender critical belief system, the primary one being that enforcing sex from a young age is precisely what first and second wave feminists were fighting against.

Policing other people’s bodies, especially attempting to rigidly enforce sex, is a fool’s errand on two counts. First, it is impossible to assume or assess a person’s identity based on their biology, and any reasoning brought to sex along is utterly subjective on the part of the enforced. No woman will pass a ten item purity list, as essentially there are no true Scotswomen the more criteria you add beyond a woman is a woman because she understands herself to be one. Second, rooting the human condition in sex alone essentially means that life is demarcated at birth based on a set of societal assumptions around bodies. Enforcing sex at law means you create a tyranny of ordinary meaning, shackling predominantly women to second class status. No feminist should stand for such doggerel, least of those who want equity for women in wider society. Sports, same sex spaces, and other dog whistles serve to distract from the fact that sex segregation is an inherently right-wing fascistic belief system designed to ensure women are second class citizens.

You only police others when you are insecure about your own identity and your place in society. Women’s bodies have always be subject to the highest order of scrutiny because patriarchal systems fear women and what they are capable of should they achieve equity. Trans women are a threat because it highlights the absurdity in the barriers between the segregated sexes; if a trans woman is treated as badly as most women are then it is the system that is at fault, not women themselves. Women knowing their place is an age old trope, and transwomen shatter it because it highlights the farse it actually is.

That exclusionary feminists latch on to trans bodies as possible sites of trauma and abuse show how wild their imaginations are. No trans woman transitions to cause abuse or harm, indeed the whole point of transition is to slide back into society as a better functioning individual. It is the anti-trans body police who cause this ideal to be a pipedream for many trans folk, the policing of trans bodies flowing directly from the desire to control women rather than embrace all womanhood. Someone commented that the most hateful expression in all English law is her penis, highlighting that women’s bodies are rooted in reproductive essentialism, not a personal understanding of self. To be woman is to transcend your body, to not be held prisoner by the chromosomes you were born with, liberated to live your life as you wish.

This may seem an abstraction, but anti-trans rhetoric is tied to anti-abortion legislation, religious controls of women’s bodies, the fact that men are seen as the ideal and women something less, and that boy children are seen as the epitome of successful parenting. To be woman is assumed to be weak and in dire need of protection, to be prey for every predator, which is patently false. There is no denying that male bodies are convicted of more crimes, yet the reality is that society has woven a narrative that women are something less. Anti-trans narratives reinforce this, extolling a certain version of womanhood as the apotheosis of being a woman at the expense of all others. It is illogical when set against the inviolable equity that all women deserve, something which we can only escape when exclusionary beliefs are cut asunder. This is not to downplay the feminist cause, rather, it is a clarion call for equity for every woman who understands herself to be such regardless of biology.