Journalist Megyn Kelly is taking issue with a tweet from The Women’s March about transgender women.
On Thursday, The Women’s March tweeted a series of claims, some of which seemed as though they were designed merely to provoke outrage, such as, “Abortion is safer than giving birth. Just saying.”
Another tweet that garnered a lot of outrage read, “Trans women are women. That’s it. That’s the tweet.”
Trans women are women. That's it. That's the tweet.
— Women's March (@womensmarch) July 20, 2022
Kelly took issue with the tweet as she wrote, “No they aren’t. There are massive differences between women and trans women. We can be respectful to trans people while not abandoning reality.”
No they aren’t. There are massive differences between women and trans women. We can be respectful to trans people while not abandoning reality. https://t.co/TsxE3Y56Cx
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) July 21, 2022
Kelly is correct. There are differences between people who are biological females, people who were born female, who have two X chromosomes, and those who identified as and transitioned to a woman.
She’s also right that there is a way to be respectful of transgender people without adopting the view that someone who identifies as a particular gender and underwent surgery — or not — is, in fact, a different gender than when they were born.
In America, a core part of our values is that people should be able to live and pursue happiness. And people who believe they are a different gender they were born as are no different.
They shouldn’t be discriminated against or judged because no one has a right to judge anyone else.
But not judging people and trying to be loving to transgender people does not mean that the world needs to abandon thousands of years of views about sex and gender.
There simply are physical differences between men and women that can’t be changed with surgery.
And as even the liberal outlet Vox notes, some trans people identify as a different gender but don’t undergo surgery because they “simply don’t want to go through the surgeries” or “perhaps because they’re satisfied with their bodies despite their gender identity.”
The whitest white person simply cannot declare that they are Black and expect people to call them Black. And a person cannot declare that they are an actual woman when they have all the physical features of a man.
Even if someone does undergo gender reassignment surgery, there are still differences between a biological female and a transgender woman.
To say otherwise would really be abandoning reality and would eliminate the meaning of words. And if words have no meaning, there can’t be a shared reality. And if there can’t be a shared reality, there can’t be any kind of coherent society.
And aside from the larger scale issues, asserting that the whole of society has to uphold your belief or else they are transphobic bigots is not helpful.
In fact, it leads people who might even consider themselves liberals or progressives to say, “This is just going too far.” And that’s something that we’ve been seeing for a while.