Debunking “Trans Women Are Not Women” Arguments

I was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170625075124/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/lgbt-julia-serano-transfeminist-trans-misogyny.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">recently interviewed</a> by the New York Times about my work and writings as a <a href="http://msmagazine.com/blog/2012/04/18/trans-feminism-theres-no-conundrum-about-it/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">trans feminist</a>. From pre-interview conversations we shared, I knew that my interviewer planned to ask me about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/13/womens-issues-are-different-from-trans-womens-issues-feminist-author-says-sparking-criticism" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">comments</a> from earlier this year wherein she claimed that trans women are not women. So in preparation for my interview, I decided to revisit my first book <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity</a> and create a list of all the arguments that I made there to counter such claims. I would go on to make some of these points during the interview, although only a few were included in the final article (as it was edited for length). But since these trans-women-are-not-women claims recur on a regular basis (and are often forwarded by people who self-identify as feminists), I thought that it would be worthwhile to compile all my relevant counterarguments in one essay. <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/debunking-trans-women-are-not-women-arguments-85fd5ab0e19c">Website</a>