JACKIE: Hi. I’m Jackie Jackson, host of the Freedom Report, where every question is eternal. Should women be allowed to vote? Can black people do science? Is a cabal of Jewish elites colluding with the Trilateral Commission to turn Atlantis gay? I guess we’ll never know. The important thing is that we never stop debating.
Tonight we’ll be debating the question, are trans women women? My first guest is Tiffany Tumbles, host of the popular YouTube series, Trans Tips with Tiffany. Clarence, could we role a clip?

[Hey fam, welcome to trans tips with Tiffany, with new feminization secrets every week to help you unlock your inner woman. This week I’ll be demonstrating how women eat barbecued ribs. 

So you have your rack of ribs, and what men will do, is they hold the rib like this and they just dig right in. Now some guys like it if you do that, they like a girl who’s a little bit messy. But if you want to appear more feminine, what you should do is just kind of—[roar, utter chaos, smashing, eating, smearing bbq sauce, “Fuck! Shit it’s so good! Motherfucker!” crying, etc.]]

JACKIE: Wow, truly inspiring. My other guest tonight is Abigail Cockbane, feminist activist and author of “The Trans Menace: Lesbian Genocide and the Rape of Feminism.” So, tell me, Abigail, are trans women really women?

ABIGAIL: If by trans women you mean men who put on lipstick and invade women’s spaces, then no, men are not women.

JACKIE: Ok. And Tiffany, what do you say to that?

TIFFANY: Um, do I really have to respond to that?

JACKIE: Well, yes. Yes you do. You’re here to debate aren’t you? The debate must commence, Tiffany, the debate must commence!

TIFFANY: Well, I am a woman. I live my life as a woman, I wake up as a woman, I make love as a woman, I experience sexism as a woman, I’m treated like a woman in public —

ABIGAIL: No no no no no no. Females are oppressed under patriarchy because men want control of our wombs. Males impersonating women don’t have wombs, and they cannot be oppressed on that basis.

TIFFANY: Well, what about infertile cis women, men don’t want to control their wombs but they still experience sexism, don’t they?

ABIGAIL: Yes, because being female means you’re assumed to have female reproductive function. Men do not try to control the reproductive function of other men pretending to be women.

TIFFANY: I am not a man pretending to be a woman. When men catcall trans women, when they rape us, when they harass us, when they deny us employment, they don’t care that we don’t have wombs, they only care that we’re women.

ABIGAIL: Well, does any of that even happen, I mean I for one can always tell the difference between a real woman and a man in a wig, and I’m pretty sure so can men.

TIFFANY: Well you would know that it happens all the time if you were willing to listen to the experiences of trans women, but you’re not willing to do that because you are a TERF.

[sting]

ABIGAIL: What did you just call me.

JACKIE: Yeah what does that mean?

TIFFANY: A TERF. A trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

ABIGAIL: That is a vicious anti-female slur.

TIFFANY: You know, it’s really not. It’s just a fact that that’s what you are. If anything, it’s too generous, because there’s nothing radical or feminist about your view.

[sting]

ABIGAIL: What?

TIFFANY: You’re a bad feminist.

ABIGAIL: What did you say?

JACKIE: Aw yeah, this is a hot exchange of ideas. Keep it going girls!

TIFFANY: You’re a bad feminist. This is just reactionary gender essentialism with a radical veneer.

ABIGAIL: How dare you say that. I’ll teach you a thing or two about gender essentialism. Gender essentialism is the idea that wearing high heels and a miniskirt makes you a woman.

TIFFANY: I never wear high heels or miniskirts, why do you think trans women do this?

ABIGAIL: Well, Caitlyn Jenner—

TIFFANY: Not all trans women are Caitlyn Jenner. A lot of trans women are very feminine because we have to be in order for society to recognize us as women. But makeup and long hair are not what makes us women, that’s just one way of communicating a truth that comes from within.

ABIGAIL: Right, so any hairy man who decides he feels like a woman one day can strut around naked in a women’s locker room with his genitals flopping around, and women who have been abused by men are expected to just allow that in their safe space.

TIFFANY: Why is it always “hairy” and “flopping genitals”? Trans women, as a group, are the most devoted body hair removers I’ve ever met. They’re also some of the least likely to flop their genitals in public. 

ABIGAIL: That doesn’t matter. To a woman who has been abused the sight of male genitals is still triggering.

JACKIE: Wouldn’t a sexual assailant’s genitals be hard instead of flopping?

TIFFANY: I don’t know, but that’s not the point. Trans women are not hairy men who decide to wave their genitals at women. This is just a scenario you’ve made up to scare people into thinking trans women are really just predatory men—

ABIGAIL: I’m not making it up. It happens all the time. I can send you at least a dozen Daily Mail articles about it.

TIFFANY: Oh, the Daily Mail, that radical feminist publication we all love so much.

JACKIE: I’m sorry, can I interrupt here? It seems like the disagreement in this exchange is about what it means to be a woman. Abigail, it seems like the idea you’re bringing to the marketplace is that women are people with vaginas, and Tiffany, you’re trying to sell us on the idea that a woman is someone who fills the social role of a woman, is that right?

TIFFANY: Well, not exactly, I mean you can radically reject conventional social roles while still being a woman. This is why I emphasize psychology: what matters is that you feel at ease with female embodiment, and ill at ease with male embodiment.

ABIGAIL: Well, I’m not at ease with female embodiment.

TIFFANY: Well, would you rather be in a man’s body?

ABIGAIL: Ew, no. The problem isn’t my body, and I’m not going mutilate my body because I’m not delusional like you. The problem is the gendered assumptions that society projects onto female bodies. If we abolish gender, we’ll also abolish gender dysphoria.

TIFFANY: But gender dysphoria isn’t just dissatisfaction with gendered associations. I don’t like my body being viewed as a passive object anymore than you do, but that doesn’t mean I’m not dysphoric about my male characteristics or that I don’t prefer inhabiting a female body.

ABIGAIL: But this “preference” for a female body is nonsense. You are a male who wants to occupy a female body like a parasite, but you can’t, so you take pills that make you grow pectoral tissue, and you paint your face like a parody of exploited womanhood, and even if you do decide to mutilate your genitals, you’ll still have big hands, and wide shoulders, and you’ll tower over females like a monster. 

Society needs to stop enabling these ridiculous delusions right now and instead help you to get over the fact that no amount of surgery and makeup can make you into a woman.

[O magnum mysterium]

TIFFANY: [in deep pain]

JACKIE: [slow applaud] That was some good free speech right there. [at cam] I totally just came.

TIFFANY: Well hold on, aren’t you the one defining womanhood with stereotypes? If wearing high heels doesn’t make you a woman why does having small hands?

ABIGAIL: Because small hands are a result of the same biological features that engender the female reproductive role for which women—females—are oppressed under patriarchy.

TIFFANY: Well, even if reproductive control is the original reason patriarchy oppresses women, reproductive capacity is not the criterion society uses when it comes to treating people like women or men.

ABIGAIL: You think because you identify as a woman, society identifies you as one but you’re wrong. You can’t just argue from your feelings.

TIFFANY: If you were a good feminist then maybe you’d be willing to believe women’s accounts of their own experiences, but since you aren’t we can rely on data: trans women experience domestic violence and employment discrimination at rates even higher than cis women, and are less likely to get victim assistance.

ABIGAIL: Well even if trans survey data is to be trusted, being a victim still isn’t what makes you a woman.

TIFFANY: But you said that having a womb is the reason women are oppressed, which in many cases is demonstrably false.

ABIGAIL: Just because some men are victims of sexual violence doesn’t mean that they’re women.

TIFFANY: But if they feel like women, live like women, and experience misogyny like women, why is having a womb still more important?

ABIGAIL: Because that’s the original reason women are oppressed in the first place.

TIFFANY: Even if that’s true, it’s not always the reason women are oppressed now. What reason could you have to insist on this apart from pure transphobic prejudice?

ABIGAIL: The reason is that words have to mean something. I have a definition of womanhood that makes sense, and that everyone can understand. And you want to tell me that anyone who says they’re a woman is a woman, but that kind of postmodern nonsense makes it impossible to politically organize as women and as feminists, which leads to men taking over women’s movements and women’s spaces.

TIFFANY: Your assumption is still that transwomen are lying men pretending to be women for what purpose, to enjoy being potentially rejected by their families, evicted from their homes, abused by the police, and raped in prison? Why can’t you believe that other people are radically unhappy with their assigned gender or sex?

ABIGAIL: Because one minute you’re telling me severe mental illness is what makes someone transgender, and the next you’ll be asking me to accept that not all trans people transition, and that women with short hair are actually a third gender. This is counterrevolutionary, individualist nonsense that puts personal feelings over political structures.

TIFFANY: I’m not denying political structures, I’m telling you that individual people interact with those structures in complex ways that don’t always correspond to whether or not they have a womb.

ABIGAIL: Well give me a coherent definition of gender identity that doesn’t fall apart on examination then maybe I’ll be willing to reconsider.

JACKIE: (drunk) Yeah Tiffany can you explain gender identity, I don’t get it.

TIFFANY: Well if you’re expecting some ultimate definition that perfectly accounts for everyone you’ll never be satisfied. But Abigail has no room to talk. She just defined women as people with wombs. Well what about women who have hysterectomies?

ABIGAIL: They still have XX chromosomes.

TIFFANY: Well what about women with Swyer syndrome, who have a uterus but XY chromosomes?

ABIGAIL: That’s an aberration.

TIFFANY: Well goddamn it Abigail, every definition is perfect if you ignore everything that doesn’t fit the definition. And if this shitty argument is the only reason you can come up with to totally disregard the lived experiences of thousands of trans women, well, it’s hard for me to believe that’s anything but bigotry.

JACKIE: (drunk) well honey I don’t know if we need to be accusing anyone of bigotry, but Abigail if you’re so smart then how do you know that she’s not a woman?

[long silence, awkward editing]

ABIGAIL: [Palpatine voice] Dost thou bleed?

TIFFANY: What?

ABIGAIL: Dost thou bleed? [slams fist]

[#DostThouBleed]

TIFFANY: I do not menstruate out of my dick if that’s what you’re asking.

ABIGAIL: Infiltrator! Never canst thou enter the sisterhood of the blood.

TIFFANY: Good! I just want to pee, I don’t want to be part of your creepy vagina cult.

ABIGAIL: Oh, and now vaginas are creepy. This is exactly the kind of anti-female sentiment I’ve come to expect from male feminists. 

Jackie, I weary of this toilsome man. Shall we perform the ritual of the blood?

JACKIE: Oh, is it that time already? Yeah, yeah, sure. Let’s do it.

[Sits at piano, plays Moonlight Sonata]

TIFFANY: Um, what is going on?

ABIGAIL: [walking to door] If you were part of the true sisterhood, then maybe you’d know that. Farewell, thou who dost not bleed.

[Abigail walks to bathroom, strips to nightgown, gets in bath, bleeds in bath]

[full moon, wolves howling] [Tiffany confused]

TIFFANY: Okay, well, I’m going to leave now.