3. TERF Claim: “Womanhood is based on biology and shared female experience (menstruation, childbirth, etc.).”

Counter-Argument:

This argument defines womanhood by reproductive functions—but that definition excludes many cisgender women too: those who don’t menstruate, who can’t or don’t have children, or who don’t have the “typical” female anatomy due to medical conditions or surgeries.

Womanhood isn’t a checklist of bodily processes. It’s an identity shaped by how we understand ourselves, how society perceives and treats us, and how we navigate the world. Reducing womanhood to biology not only erases trans women—it also reinforces patriarchal ideas that women are nothing more than their reproductive capacities.

Many trans women do not share certain biological experiences, but they do share experiences of misogyny, gendered violence, body scrutiny, and exclusion. These are deeply real aspects of womanhood too. If feminism is about freeing people from being defined by their bodies, then defining womanhood only in biological terms is moving backwards.

Shared experience should be about solidarity in struggle—not about gatekeeping identity.

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