Regarding Tony Giardina’s letter responding to Karen Bercovici’s guest column on gender identity: I take offense to this letter, beginning with being referred to as “cis.” I, for one, do not “identify” as “cis” or anything else for that matter. I don’t need to “identify” as anything because my grasp on reality is firm. Women are not a “cis” subset of our own sex class. We know our sex to be female because our experience as women is rooted in our biology.
Bercovici is correct in saying that it is impossible to change sex, and that nobody is born wrong. It is possible to be bummed out about the body we have, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to force other people to go along with a lie.
Women are frequently admonished to “be kind” but in my opinion there is nothing kind about lying to people and especially leading children to believe that they can change their sex (untrue) and the world will go along with the pretense (only true up to a point.)
Sex-realist women fighting for our basic rights are not taking rights away from trans-identifying people. They already have all the same rights as everyone else. But your right to punch the air ends where my nose begins. The “right” to use a bathroom “corresponding to one’s gender identity” depends on women giving up our hard-won rights to privacy, safety and dignity.
I, for one, am not going to give up my rights and it isn’t hateful (or in the letter writer’s parlence, “bloviating”) to say so. If trans women need access to spaces, sports, and prisons, take it up with the men whose problem it actually is. Unlike women, “trans women” are a subset, but they are a subset of men. Make men be “nice” to “transwomen” and open up their spaces.
Jenna Wikler
Gill