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Why is there a need for a single classification of sex that’s used in all instances? There’s clearly multiple concepts to which sex and associated words refer to: which gametes you produce, which chromosomes you have (karyotype), which morphology you have (phenotype), and which gender roles and social expectations you occupy. Why would you try to collapse all of the above into a single “real” binary classification instead of just using the appropriate concept for what you’re trying to communicate?
E.g., if you’re saying “look at that man over there” to refer to a passing trans woman, you will (at least initially) confuse your interlocutor, because as you said, humans categorise people as men or as women based off their appearance, and a passing trans woman gets put in the category “woman” for her social interactions by people who don’t know otherwise.
Or, if you, a straight man looking to date, ask me to introduce you to a woman your age, and I have you meet a (very good looking) 6’ bearded trans guy, will I have really fulfilled the request? What if I came with a very attractive woman with CAIS instead? Clearly, the words “man” or “woman” don’t refer to the person having XX or XY chromosomes in common usage.
At some level I guess this is an ontology debate - I’m firmly in the camp that believes categories aren’t real, but they can be useful, and they should always be understood as fuzzy. Take the “is a burrito a sandwich” debate - it’s clear that there is a property of “sandwichness”, which a burrito had less than a BLT but more than say, a soup.
There’s similarly a property of “‘maleness” and “femaleness” that trans men and trans women have different degrees of than cisgendered people, depending on their innate traits, how long they’ve been on hormones, what surgeries they had, etc, and that will impact what strangers refer to them as, and what gender-based expectations they get hassled with.
How many 6' bearded trans men who look like biological males are out there? The FTM photos I've seen range from "looks like a butch lesbian" to "is a short, dumpy, androgynously featured person who may or may not have a wispy goatee".
Is this the kind of woman you mean by "clearly the words 'man' or 'woman' doesn't refer to the person having XX or XY chromosomes in common usage"? Would you introduce Emily to your straight friend looking for a woman? For comparison purposes, when Emily was still Anthony.
Now, they've only been on HRT for a year. If they lose a ton of weight, get surgery, do the voice exercises to change how they sound, etc. then one day there may be "Emily passes sufficiently enough that you don't immediately go 'that's a guy'". But if you tell me that you'd uncritically introduce Emily to someone straight looking to date a woman, because "categories are fuzzy" and "we don't judge people on their chromosomes", I doubt it.
So yeah, we can tell men from women just by looking in the vast majority of cases. And just by looking, we're going to go "Emily is not a Real Woman in the sense of exactly the same as a cis woman". If "Trans women are real women" was happy to accept "but not the same thing as cis women", fine. Unhappily, there is a contingent who push for "exactly the same as a cis woman", citing "I have the biology of a cis woman; I'm on HRT, so are women who are post-menopausal; I may not have a uterus but neither do women who have undergone hysterectomies; they are accepted as women so should I be".
Surely you know how this game goes? You share non-passing trans people, I can share passing ones. What do you think about 6’3 Mitch Harrison who competed in the Titan Games? Sure not all trans men look like this (but most do eventually pass as short effeminate men), but they are out there - both me and gay men I know have dated trans guys who passed.
I wouldn’t introduce a passing trans woman to a straight man uncritically, because most straight men aren’t interested in trans women and many are downright threatened by the concept, genital preferences are a thing, and the cost-benefit ratio is too low. But, I could gently approach the subject and see if that particular person is interested - I have done so in the past, I’ve had straight friends say “if she’s hot and had bottom surgery, I don’t care”. And what do you think is more likely - that a straight man would be interested in a trans woman that looks like this, or for a trans man that looks like Laith Ashley? Which one do you think confuses gay men, and which one confuses straight men?
Trans women aren’t the exact same as cis women, and I’m happy to accept that. Both the “trans women are exactly the same as cis women” and the “trans women are just men in a dress and we can always tell” camps are wrong.
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I would think most straight men looking to date probably wouldn't be interested in dating someone who had transitioned in either direction.
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