Women’s history stands as systemic recognition of women’s contributions to society, culture and history. As political forces aim to limit reproductive freedom and diversity initiatives that help put women in the public sphere are stripped away, recognizing the totality of the experience of women is necessary. 

Being a woman is a source of strength and beauty. Yet, womanhood, as a political and social construct, has often been reduced by those in power to narrow definitions centered on biology alone, as if pregnancy, menstruation and other bodily experiences were the only things that could define it. 

While these experiences are a part of many women’s lives, they do not capture the fullness of what being a woman means. There is no singular definition of what a woman is. Each woman must construct that for herself. 

Women have been defined by how they present themselves, the nuclear family being the primary designer of the presentation. As a result of these conversations, transgender women are too often pushed to the margins and, through ridicule and cruelty, are told they do not belong within womanhood.

On social media, it is not uncommon to see cisgender women use derogatory language to describe trans women and labeling themselves as the “blueprint.” Not only does this act exclude trans women, it also normalizes hate within spaces that should be grounded in solidarity. 

Trans women — and trans people as a whole — are not a new phenomenon; they have existed throughout history, dating back to around 5000 B.C., when they were included in the religious practices of Sumer, the world’s oldest known civilization. The gender binary was brought to the New World by Western settlers who stamped out Indigenous gender expansive identities. 

Before it was destroyed by the Nazi Party, German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sex Research performed early gender-affirming care. As evidenced by the destructive forces of colonialism and fascism, when trans people are under attack, it is an indicator of future oppressive action against other marginalized groups. 

People should be very afraid of the current anti-trans rhetoric in the United States and around the world. 

Kansas revoking the driver’s licenses of 1,700 transgender people and invalidating birth certificates for those who updated their gender identity, for example, should ring some alarm bells for how easily legislatures can invalidate people’s existences. This aligns with a massive immigration crackdown where the Kansas legislature is advancing a bill to increase the sheriff’s ability to detain people indefinitely without criminal charges.   

The effects of transphobia are not only verbally harmful but can be violent. A 2021 report by the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute found that trans people are four times as likely as cis people to experience violent crimes such as rape, sexual and aggravated assault. 

This reality makes it more urgent to challenge the casual transphobia that shows up in everyday conversations. For many trans women, social recognition must be earned. It is something that they have to fight for in their families, with their friends and in relationships. 

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists have played a major role in erasing these histories to fit their own exclusionary agenda. TERFs are, as described by Lark Lewis, in writing for the National Women’s Law Center, an “ideology via second-wave feminism that radicalized into the lie that trans people are a threat to women.” 

TERF activists have successfully lobbied for laws on both the state and national level banning gender-affirming care and forcing trans people to use the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth. 

These open up a whole host of contradictions, as well as ethical issues. Gender-affirming care is okay for cis women who want plastic surgery, but not for trans people who want the same procedure. Bills policing bathroom usage lead to a guarding of gender expression, where one must perform proper femininity to be allowed to use the bathroom. 

Anti-trans activists stating that trans women’s experiences are less authentic than cis women’s is not a small disagreement over terminology but rather a refusal to make room for women whose lives do not fit a narrow definition. 

This definition has been formalized at birth, where a child will be socialized based on their assigned sex. For cis women, this means growing up with expectations tied to femininity, from their appearance to their behavior. For trans women, the experience is often more complicated, as they may be assigned male at birth with male expectations but come to understand and live as women. 

Gender essentialism is limiting for everyone, as removing nuance makes it easier to police who counts as a woman and who does not.

If being a “woman” is a chromosomal imperative, where do intersex people who are socialized as women fit? If being a woman is determined purely by reproductive means, aren’t feminists committing to the same reductionism as misogynists? These ideas form a culture of rigidity in which exclusion is justified, and it is easier to define who is a “real” woman.

That kind of thinking does not make women safer — it makes all women vulnerable to division and control. During the 2024 Olympics in Paris, there was immense controversy over cis boxer Imane Khelif, who won the women’s welterweight gold medal, with people alleging that she was trans due to her strength and success. 

J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series and the queen of the TERF community, said that Khelif was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.” Imane Khelif is not a trans woman, just a cis woman who does not fit the typical norm. 

Clearly, transphobia is not just a trans issue, but a women’s rights issue. It questions whether women’s spaces are used to reinforce gendered stereotypes or to build solidarity. When cis women take part in transphobic behavior, they are participating in a system that teaches women to police one another instead of learning from and protecting one another. 

Hate holds no space in womanhood. To be a woman is not defined by pregnancy or a menstrual cycle. Those are only small factors of what has shaped a woman’s experience. The trajectory of the women’s movement has been one of expansion, shifting from a first wave focusing on legal rights to a more substantive second wave leading to an intersectional third wave. If the women’s movement teaches us anything, it is that exclusion weakens us, while recognition strengthens us.