1. sex and gender are different things.

2. Trans women were biological males. But sex is determined by a lot of factors, including hormones. Trans folks often use man made chemicals to trigger sexual development into the sex they wanted.

Think of sex like a slider bar on a screen, with “male” on one side and “female” on the other. You start somewhere on the scale. With hormones you can put your finger on the slider and schwoop that lil sucker anywhere you want. It’s not just for trans folks though! Straights use the slider too. Wanna be more butch than you already are as a guy? Add testosterone! Going through menopause? Add estrogen!

The impact of opposite sex hormones to a trans person’s already developed sex organs is mostly to render them useless, but that’s fine, straights do that too, mostly on purpose. That’s what adoption is for. If a trans person wants to go all in on the change, they can get the reverse-that-thang surgery and turn that outie into an innie.

At that point, there’s like… Zero difference between a “natural born” woman who had a hysterectomy for some reason, and a trans woman.

It’s all very science fiction when you get into the details.

1. Typically, but not always. Some trans women are biologically intersex. (This also depends on how you define “biologically male” which is not totally straightforward.)
2. It matters in some contexts, not in others. Their physician should know, because various hormone treatments cause different effects in people’s bodies, and certain health conditions effect biologically male or female people differently too. That’s nobody else’s business but the patient and their trusted medical providers. As far as their dignity, opportunities, and general acceptance, it doesn’t matter. Trans folks deserve the exact same rights, opportunities, and acceptance as anybody else.
3. Usually people who bring this up aren’t acting in good faith, so I don’t engage with them. On the rare occasion where somebody is genuinely curious and wants to learn, I answer them in the same way as I am doing right now.
4. Because the word “woman” denotes multiple concepts, like the word “parent”. If a child is adopted at birth and is raised by a couple, the child and their community will refer to those people as the child’s parents. This is not a false statement, because the word “parent” doesn’t only mean the direct biological progenitors of a person. Parent also is a social role, hence the verb form “to parent somebody.” This is also why we have the terms, “biological parent” and “adoptive parent” to add additional information when it’s necessary.

Trans women are women in the sense that they are filling their society’s sociological role that surrounds the expected concept of a woman. That will be different depending on many factors, and will have many different aspects including their pronouns, fashion and clothing, voice, makeup, hair, activities, and so forth.

Just like any other woman, they will chose which social roles they desire to fit into, and which ones they don’t, and all of that is completely acceptable.

Try responding with shut the fuck up, or i don’t care

1. Yes
2. It matters if you want clear definitions. People here will probably get mad over my definitions if I further lay them out.
3. You know those movies/cartoons/web comics where the main character guy wakes up as a girl one day and then starts freaking out like a freaky friday? Or perhaps he immediately starts checking out his own body naked in the mirror? Well that person just became a trans man/boy.
4. Trans refers to the brain. ‘biologically male/female’ refers to reproductive organs.

It’s a statement. It needs no response.

1. Maybe.
2. No. Because biology is not a black/white science. There are shades of gray. If you define male as “XY” , then what is a person born “XXY”? What if that person is born with both a penis and vagina?
3. It’s not a logical statement to begin with, it’s a statement of taxonomy, a classification. It’s like saying “How do you argue with someone who thinks red and pink are the same color?” You don’t. They see what they see.
4. “woman” is a gender (a sociological term, not a biological classification).

And, of course, I have MUCH more to say on the subject. But, ya know, gotta start the conversation somewhere…

Good questions, keep 'em coming!

I don’t care, trans women are hot.

Don’t debate with idiots. They drag you down at their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain

Seriously, complex question usually requires complex answers, the type that doesn’t fit in a 10 words meme. If I learned anything, it’s that you won’t convinced people who don’t care about the truth. People won’t change their mind unless they are personally affected by something. They don’t deserve the tolerance they refuse to others.

The only way that trans people make sense is if gender and sex are two separate things.

How is it that I, a straight man, am attracted to trans women if they’re actually men? Does that mean that I’m bisexual? No, because I’m not attracted to cis men. (Or trans men, for that matter.) Think about the pretzel logic you have to get into if you have a worldview like JK Rowling. “Bisexual for femininity” isn’t a thing. Straight men are attracted to women. Cis women, trans women. Women. Period.

Now, I know that it’s about more than attraction, but this is what got me to start thinking about this. Another was this thought experiment somebody gave me: “If your dick got chopped off, would you instantly turn into a woman?” No, of course not.

At this point a gender essentialist would probably start talking about chromosomes. Chromosomes determine what your gender is! Nobody uses this as a definition for gender in any practical way, though. When you’re looking at somebody from across the room, you don’t know what their chromosomes are. How many of your friends do you have chromosomal data on? How about the people you’ve dated? Are they going to use chromosomes to determine which bathroom you can use? Or which team you can play on? This is incoherent. It’s like basing gender upon whether you have an even or odd number of atoms in your body.

I had one person tell me that a trans woman would be unsuitable for marriage because she couldn’t give birth. I’m not interested in having children, but setting that aside…would they say the same thing about a cis woman who’s infertile? Every single one of these arguments is incoherent.

In addition to what others have said, I’d like to add a little more information.

Hormones work by changing your gene expression. Every one of us has all the DNA for both typically male and typically female traits. Hormones play a part in deciding what parts of your DNA are active within your cells and what parts aren’t. There’s a complicated set of interactions that decides what hormones you produce naturally and how your body responds to them. Sometimes something happens in an atypical way with that complex set of interactions and that’s how intersex people exist.

(There are examples of people with XY chromosomes who have internal testes but are insensitive to testosterone and grow up female, and even examples of people with XY chromosomes who have functioning uteruses and have given birth naturally. It can get very complicated)

When you go on HRT as part of a medical transition, the instructions your cells are following in your DNA switch to the instructions tied to those hormones. That’s how trans people’s bodies change. Their cells are actually functioning differently.

A trans women on estrogen for a long enough time will eventually have their blood proteins go to a more typically female profile. They’ll also see their risk factor for certain diseases switch. The risk of cardiovascular disease goes down (typically something that affects more males) and their risk for autoimmune disease go up (typically something that affects more females).

So are trans woman biologically men? Eh, not quite. Saying somebody is biologically male/female is a little reductive. It can be complicated.

who cares

if someone asks to be called she/her/susan then just do it. it doesn’t need to be so complicated

conservatives ranting about biology are attacking a straw man. nobody actually gives a shit

1. It depends on what you’re referring to. Sex and gender are two different things. “Biology” is unfortunately a common talking point for transphobes who inexorably link the two, so it immediately makes lots of people doubt a good-faith conversation. Transphobes like to use “biology” to try to prove that sex and gender are hard binaries. In reality, biology is all kinds of messy. But that’s an entirely different tangent. From a biological sex perspective, it would (likely) be factually correct. They have XY chromosomes, were AMAB, etc… (Not every trans woman will fit that description, because of situations like intersex people who don’t fit into nice neat little male/female checkboxes. Again, biology is messy and imprecise. But for the purpose of this conversation, I think we can agree that it is generally correct.) But again, transphobes will often try to pounce on that to falsely exclaim that you believe trans women are really men.
2. Not really, because of the whole “gender isn’t sex” thing. Biologically speaking, they could be a half-male-crab-half-female-porcupine abomination for all I care. It still wouldn’t affect their gender, and I still wouldn’t give a fuck which restroom they used.
3. I think I just did. Biology doesn’t determine gender. Simply make sure to cover the whole “gender isn’t sex” thing, to stave off the transphobes who think I’m agreeing with them. In reality, the best response is usually a half-hearted “yeah, so?” Because the people making statements like this usually aren’t doing so in good faith. At best, they’re sorely uneducated about sex, gender, society’s effect on the two, etc… And at worst they’re trying to bait an argument or set up some kind of gotcha moment. Sometimes the best response is to simply not take the bait, because we have better things to spend our time on.
4. Because gender isn’t sex. Trans women are women, because genetics or hormones don’t determine your gender. Someone can simultaneously be both biologically male and identify as a woman. It’s not a zero-sum game where one negates or overrules the other, because they’re not linked.

1: Yes. 2: Not really. It’s more about self image and social presentation. 3: Best response I have is, “And?” Covers a lot of bases. 4: Same way you get any title like Doctor, or Fam, you need to be accepted into the community by peers, and not necessarily universally.

It’s extremely hairy messy to define biological sex. Whoever wants to argue has a middle school level understanding of biology, refuse to learn and completely ignores the science.

See

You should base your response on the basis of civil liberties: a trans persons’ preferred identity should accepted because they’re within their right to do so. We, in return, should respect their decision.

Biological sex (male, female, intersex) refers to the physical aspects of your body, such as primary sex characteristics (reproductive organs), secondary sex characteristics (body hair, breasts, fat distribution, etc), hormone levels (estrogen, testosterone), and chromosomes.

Gender (man, woman, nonbinary, other terms) is more about an internal sense of self, how you see yourself and how you want your body to be, as well as what social category you belong in.

A trans woman is a person who was biologically male at birth, but sees herself as a woman/wants her body to align with her gender (woman). Not all trans women medically transition, and that’s ok, but for those who do, it can change various aspects of their biological sex, such as hormone levels and secondary sex characteristics, so it may not be entirely true to say that trans women (post transition) are biologically male either.