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I Am Not Taking Complaints About My Face
Why the term ‘womanface’ is wrong
Madeleine Kearns published an April 16, 2023 opinion in the National Review. This is a transphobic article targeting trans women. (It doesn’t mention trans men. All the same, I’m not taking complaints about my face, either.)
I want people to understand what transphobes mean when they say “womanface” and why it is nonsense. I can get at a large part of it just by dismantling this one brief opinion column.
Starting from biological essentialism
Kearns sets out the definition of “woman” as someone who has “female anatomy.” Then she refers to a broad category of “female impersonation,” i.e., “men who impersonate women.” How does the impersonation happen? By pretending to have anatomy they don’t have, or what? Well, she doesn’t say, so no one can know what she’s talking about. She refers to one trans woman in this article, and she misgenders her as “he.”
Regarding biology, she says she doesn’t believe “essentialism” (the idea that personality and ability is “all predetermined by sex”) but instead she wants “realism” (the idea that “women and men are sexually distinct” and “one sex cannot become the other”). But what does she think the difference is between essentialism and realism? Why should we care about pointing out how we’re “sexually distinct” if these sexual characteristics don’t define us? And by the way, if it’s biologically impossible to change sexes, we don’t need a new -ism to forbid us from doing it.
The reason she doesn’t want to be called “essentialist” is that she’s aware it’s an unpopular word and she doesn’t want to sound bad. “In the late 20th century, feminists argued against” it, she acknowledges. I’m sorry if she thinks her words sound bad. She is in fact making an essentialist claim.
All trans people are ‘impersonators’
She uses the term “female impersonation” to include the everyday lives of trans people (people with “gender dysphoria”), “ironic and humorous” stage performances, as well as…
