If transwomen are women, they bear no obligation to show that trans-inclusive policy changes won’t be harmful to women or anyone.

There’s a reason we’ve been consistently fed that line above all others. If they can sell that one lie, they don’t have to prove anything else.

If transwomen are women, it doesn’t matter if they have an insurmountable advantage in sports. Women who are unusually good at sports aren’t prohibited from competing against other women.

If transwomen are women, it doesn’t matter if they pose a threat to women in hospitals, prisons, changing room, or anywhere. Dangerous women are still admitted to women’s spaces.

If transwomen are women, it doesn’t matter if their inclusion takes opportunity and achievement away from women. Women are allowed to achieve above other women.

If transwomen are women, then it doesn’t matter how many women are disadvantaged, hurt, degraded, or disrespected due to trans inclusion. If they’re women, they’re entitled to the opportunity to to do that.

Transwomen are men.

Whatever details we argue, that must be what we say first. Our rhetorical position is nonexistent if we let their assertion of womanhood stand.

The impact isn’t the leading argument. The leading argument is always that transwomen are MEN.

If transwomen are just one category of women, then we have no right to segregate them from us, compete from them separately in sports, or name their role on patriarchal oppression.

That is the point they’ve been making, and if TWAW were true, they’d be right.

Never underestimate the genius of this movement. They don’t have to convince us that sports will be fair, or prisons safe, or lesbians respected - not if they can just convince us that they’re women. Legally speaking, if they’re counted as women, the rights are already theirs.

This debate is crazy-making. It makes you ask, over and over, “How do people not see that these policies will be abused?”

They see it. They just know the abuses aren’t relevant to the debate. If TWAW, they have the right to such policies regardless of how much they’re abused.

When we support the rights of transwomen, we must support them as rights available to all men.

If all men aren’t entitled to a provision, then that provision must not be available to transwomen.

Freedom of gender expression, the right to change your name (in most cases), freedom of association (with people who also consent to associate with you) - these are rights everyone is entitled to.

Pronouns are a courtesy.

No one, ever, has the right to claim a different sex.

Transwomen are men.

If it feels difficult or scary to say, that’s no accident. You’ve been conditioned to be uncomfortable saying it.

But, if you care about ANY part of the debate, you have to be willing to say it, over and over, without apology:

Transwomen are men.

But that’s the thing. If we legally accept them as women, we lose any right to pick and choose when that status applies. In a legal sense, this is an all-or-nothing question.

Socially, your degree of participation in their preferred identity is up to you.