No one, literally no one, is saying that AFAB and cisgender women do not exist.
> your entire argument is based on undermining the category of "biological women" by showing that it isn't "real".
If your criteria for the category of "biological women" is dependent on having a strict bright line distinction between AFAB/cisgender women and everyone else, then yeah, I am trying to get rid of that bright line, because the bright line doesn't exist and has never existed at any point in history, and it's silly and unscientific to say it exists.
However, if your criteria for "biological women" is not dependent on some kind of mythological bright line, then no, I am not trying to undermine anyone or anything. I'll say it again, no one is claiming that AFAB/cisgender women do not exist as a category, and no one is claiming that they do not have unique experiences within that category. No one wants to get rid of the category of cisgender women.
> In fact we are being asked this. Which is why trans women are competing with biological women in sports. How is that not dispensing with the category of "biological women"?
This is too large of a topic to get into right here and would be too long of an aside, but I do not see strong evidence that trans women are destroying the competitiveness of women's sports, I do see strong evidence that the blowback against trans women risks harming AFAB/cisgender women who naturally have unconventional levels of testosterone or unconventional body types. I'm also a little bit thrown by the idea that forcing trans men to play in women's sports is going to somehow be an improvement over what you're worried about.
This harm to non-conforming cisgender women is not only isolated to sports, by the way. A side-effect of transgender bathroom bills is often an increase in harassment towards masculine cisgender women who face harassment when they use bathrooms that match their birth sex. A general increase in acceptance of gender fluidity and gender expression has been (as far as I can tell) largely beneficial to cisgender non-conforming women.
> I don't define everything by "experiences" so this is all gibberish to me. But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women.
Arbitrary distinctions between women are less important than distinctions that affect their experiences and their fight for their rights. So if your position is that women should abandon shared experiences and solidarity over gender rights in favor of arbitrary biological distinctions, then guilty as charged, I am undermining that effort. Because it's an unhelpful effort that ought to be undermined.
However, outside of the TERF world, I do think that most women consider shared experiences and solidarity with other women to be important, and to be a part of their gender identity.
I don't think anyone is asserting that, at least not the way you say. You're sort of responding to a perceived strawman with another strawman.
What gender critical folks are saying is that the more radical arm of trans-activism (particularly the powerful Self-ID movement) looks at biological sex as superfluous and arbitrary, and thus any spaces, programs, or resources that have been reserved for women up to this point must be made available to men if they so much as declare themselves to be female. Any requirements to "commit" to a transition, in terms of time or physical/hormonal adjustment are attacked as transphobic.
And then there's the language policing that the self-ID'ers want to enact, wherein, for example, biological women would be referred to as "menstruators", and transphobic phrases such as "breastfeeding" would be prohibited.
And in fact, breastfeeding itself is under attack in some TRA circles as an inherently anti-trans behavior, because obviously it cannot be part of the "shared experience" of women and transwomen.
I know there's a lot of space in between the extremes for people who truly were "born in the wrong body" as Mermaids says, but I think it's understandable that many honest and well-intentioned folks perceive the more radical TRA stuff as a misogynistic male colonisation of femininity.
> biological women would be referred to as "menstruators"
> transphobic phrases such as "breastfeeding" would be prohibited.
> breastfeeding itself is under attack in some TRA circles
If you say there's a group of people out there who think this way I can't technically prove to you that group doesn't exist, but I have never personally met a trans person who would agree with those statements. At most, I have seen "menstruators" used as a shorthand for "women who menstruate" specifically in conversations about menstruation, which does not seem to me to be a particularly problematic use of the word.
I'll take you at your word that these people exist and are bothering you, and for whatever it's worth you have my permission/support if you ignore them. But I don't think it's accurate or fair to extrapolate from those people to make statements about what trans activists and trans people themselves believe overall. I am not trying to say that the experiences of cisgender woman are superfluous, and including trans women in feminine spaces or being conscientious of their experiences is not an attempt to erase anyone, it's an attempt to be inclusive.
I'm reminded of Hark, A Vagrant's Straw Feminists comic[0]. There's a pretty big difference between what the majority of trans community members are saying -- "Not all women breastfeed" (which is trivially true, even among cisgender groups of women) -- and "Breastfeeding is transphobic", which is nonsensical. While I totally understand why someone might look at straw trans-rights arguments and worry that this means trans people are "erasing" them, it is still important to understand that trans people by and large are not saying those things, it is a mischaracterization of the overall group.
If you let radicals define how you approach every social movements and how you characterize the people involved in that movement, then there are very few social movements that you won't begin to see as problematic, feminism included.
In fact we are being asked this. Which is why trans women are competing with biological women in sports. How is that not dispensing with the category of "biological women"?
You don't seem to realize it but your entire argument is based on undermining the category of "biological women" by showing that it isn't "real". You've typed a lot of words attempting to do that.
> I disagree that trans women mean that these political/philosophical goals can't be achieved. To me, this is just gatekeeping, I don't see a real motivating need for this kind of exclusion. Trans women do not have an agenda to take away women's rights, many of these people are feminists themselves.
All categories are "gatekeeping". To say X is X and not Y is "gatekeeping". This is why "gatekeeping" is such a dumb term.
> The absurdity is not that you have different opinions about the definition of a woman, the absurdity is your implication that acknowledging the womanhood of trans women is tantamount to saying that their experiences are completely identical to cisgender, AFAB women, or that it's destroying some kind of sacred bond. That position is absurd because cisgender, AFAB women do not have identical experiences with each other.
I don't define everything by "experiences" so this is all gibberish to me. But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women. This is very explicit. You're choosing to ignore it because it's inconvenient to your argument.