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@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr Bingo! That is the key question, and is so often missed - the difference between WHO one is (how one identifies one's SELF) and WHAT one is (what are the physical bits and arrangements that constitute my body). We appear to be "hard-wired" to know quite a lot about ourselves 1/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr and about the categories of "thing" in the world - biological vs non-biological; human vs non-human; self vs other. Or at least hard-wired with the capacity to acquire this knowledge very rapidly. It also appears that we are "hard-wired" to categorise other humans 2/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr into two gender categories, and to know, early on, which of those we have a special kind of attraction to, even before we know it as sexual attraction. And it also appears that, just as we know which of two apparent categories of human 3/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr we have this special attraction towards (and perhaps sometimes to both), we also know which of those two apparent categories of human we are ourselves. Mostly, it's the category we were told we were from an early age. Sometimes it isn't. 4/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr For most of us, we do not even question this knowledge - because we do not have to. I know I am a woman, but I don't know how I know I am a woman - because my womanhood has never been subject to question. It is "invisible" knowledge. 5/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr I know it the way I know what the colour "blue" is. I know what it is like to perceive blueness, but I cannot describe blueness to someone who cannot see colour. A woman whose gender identity matches her assigned gender does not have to describe how she knows she is a woman. 6/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr She probably does not even think of it as knowledge. She may be tempted to think she "knows" because she has a typical woman's anatomy. She may not think there is any other kind of woman-knowledge. But a transwoman has to confront 7/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr the weirdness of this knowledge that she is a woman, in the face of a world and a body that tells her she is a man. That knowledge is real. Her identification as a woman is real. It won't go away. It is as obvious to her as it is to me. 8/N
@EvaPoen @R_Sanders_SMH @sally_hines @DeborahJaneOrr THAT is what I mean by "woman" in that sentence - a human being who knows herself to be a woman.
