RTing from tweet directed at a TERFy-Lesbian:

'm feeling a bit saucy today, so Imma walk y'all through it:

When considering the question of how definitively "sexed" the penis is, it's not sufficient to simply say it's "common sense" or "just a scientific fact". This doesn't fly anymore than someone providing "common sense" or "just a scientific fact" for their belief that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. We have to look at whys.

WHY would we consider a penis somehow exceptional, relative to other aspects of the body? It's not even the foundational distinction of "biological"/reproductive sex... that's the gonads. Are breasts, for instance, definitively and by "common sense" a FEMALE organ? What then of trans women, and your insistence on gendering them by their parts? What then of men with gynocomastia? What then of women who never developed breasts, or have has masectomies?

We might say that one isn't born with breasts, whereas one is born with a penis. But babies aren't conceived fully-formed, and the development of reproductive organs (with the exception of ovaries vs. testes) is itself, just like secondary sex characteristics, an incremental process, dictated by hormonal signals. It simply occurs in utero rather than during adolescence.

We might say sense of self doesn't exist until actual birth, but... well, sense and experience of self is what most trans people have been arguing takes precedence all along, isn't it?

So what makes a penis exceptionally sexed, relative to other parts of the body?

We know from medicine, biology, other natural sciences, and human experience that sex is neither binary nor absolute. And, indeed, sexual organs themselves (again with the relative exception of gonads... unless chimerically "mismatched") exist on a continuum. A labia is formed from the same tissues as a scotum, the vaginal canal is formed from the same opening as the inguinal canal, and a penis is formed of precisely the same tissues as a clitoris, and it's hard to say where the exact distinction between those latter two lies. It's a matter of size and whether or not it's been fused with the urethra, but these aren't absolutes: What of hypospadias? What of megaclitoris and micropenis? What of women whose clitoris has been partially fused with the urethra? These are all common and clear examples of "grey areas" between what we tend to think of as absolutely gendered organs.

Think of a haystack, and imagine removing one straw one at a time, until eventually there's only one straw left. Clearly, at the end, it's no longer a haystack, but there's no exact point at which the removal of a single straw made the difference between it being a "stack" and not being a "stack". Similarly you can replace parts on a car one by one over many years, then eventually rebuild the original from the replaced parts, and end up with two cars that are, "technically", the "same car".

These aren't very good paradoxes, because they're really just issues of language, perspective and conceptualization. It's a matter of how we SEE things, not what things ARE.

The degree to which bodies, or parts of bodies, are similar. Given that neither sex, nor any particular ASPECT of what constitutes sex, is an absolute, and all of it exists along multiple lines of gradiation, there IS NO SUCH THING AS EMPIRICAL SEX. It is, therefore, only meaningful as a question of how we SEE sex and gender, and what terms we use to describe, communicate and negotiate them (much as gender is, itself, only a system of systems, rules, symbols, language, signs, codes of dress, modes of behaviour, etc. we use to communicate and express sexual difference to one another).

I'm not one to say something is "only subjective" or "only language". Language and subjectivity mean a great deal. And language is imprecise at the best of times... "grey areas" and room for interpretation don't nullify its value. So just because "penis" and "clitoris" don't have an ABSOLUTE dividing point between them doesn't mean we can't say with confidence that one thingy is a penis and another thingy is a clitoris. We can. It's just that we need to consider this as matter of INTERPRETING a genital CONFIGURATION.

But the questions do become different: what do we mean when we say a body part is "male" or "female"? What value is there in those distinctions? What do we mean to accomplish by gendering individual body parts, especially where this in contrast to the gender of the individual as a whole?

We might for instance come to the conclusion that we say a penis is "male" just because this is the part most common to PEOPLE who are "male"... but if it's about the relationship between the part and the individual, why wouldn't a penis belonging to a woman be an exception from the term based on an inaccurate generalization?

Imagine, for instance, if people referred to gynephilia, attraction-to-women, as "male sexuality", and then insisted this was empirically true, and that to describe it as a woman's sexuality where it belongs to a woman was "delusional".

This is where the "conflict" is. But it's a conflict of fabricated political and sub-cultural interests, NOT a conflict of "realities" vs. "delusions", and we need to recognize the degree to which what we're talking about here, when we talk about sex and gender, is a matter of trying to find a system of language that meets diverse needs in relation to sexuality and identity.

It's silly to describe a penis as somehow ABSOLUTELY or DEFINITIVELY or EMPIRICALLY sexed male, just as it would be silly to say trousers are EMPRICALLY male and skirts are EMPIRICALLY female. But it's absurd, hostile and combative to politicize this imagined empiricism to such an extent that one considers ANY OTHER POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION OF THESE TERMS as an "abusive" affront on lesbianism itself (and rather shitty also to politicize lesbianism as being so fundamentally opposed to transgender experience... shitty not only to the queer trans women who identify as such (I, myself, do NOT), but also shitty to those cis lesbians who don't want to be roped into your fabricated conflict).

Be assured: the "conflict" that exists between Political-Lesbianism and trangender women (and, to a lesser extent, trans men and genderqueers) was initiated, constructed and sustained by YOU LOT. We only want, and have only EVER wanted, to work together with you. We certainly aren't the straw-trans-women version of us from your fevered, "delusional" paranoia that plans an agenda whereby any woman uninterested in sex-with-penises will be branded a transphobe and cast out to the Far North Woods to be preyed upon by Dire Wolves.

Personally, I would NEVER want to sleep with someone who's disgusted, or uninterested, in my body to that degree (though I would be willing to sleep with someone who's attracted to me, but just doesn't want anything to do with my penis, as long as they were, like, not obsessing over it. In less than 8 months time this will be all be moot for me personally, though, cos Yay Canadian Medical Coverage).

I mean, I guess there probably ARE some really awful, entitled, selfish trans women who have chalked every single rejection they've ever had up to "transphobia" when there were quite understandable reasons they got turned down. I've certainly met my fair share of really awful, entitled, selfish trans women. But I've heard COUNTLESS stories of times where someone will be flirted with by a woman at a queer women's event and then IMMEDIATELY and HOSTILELY rejected the SECOND they disclose being trans... long before the question of genital configuration has even been broached.

And I should also add that yes, you have the right to turn ANYONE down for sex for ANY reason. Even transphobic reasons. But sexual preference is not uniquely sacrosanct or above analysis. Just like we can talk about the ableism of people who consider PWD totally sexless, or the sizeism and misogyny of "NO FAT CHICKS" remarks, or the racism of people who's OKC profiles say "Asians are so sweet and feminine" or "I don't like Indian guys smell. No Offense".

Question what you actually mean by "male"/"female", why that definition is useful or more useful than others, how that definition works differently in different contexts (like describing a body part instead of a person), and what values, politics, goals, ethics and biases underlie your choice of definitions and terms. THEN we can talk about, and negotiate, the "conflict".