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Table of Contents
Common arguments by Anti-Trans folks:
What is the definition of (woman/man)?
The correct response is “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman”.
Sometimes, people reject this statement and claim it's a circular definition and not valid.
However, it isn't a circular definition, because of use-mention distinction in philosophy:
A woman (use case) is someone who identifies as a woman (mention case)
Some say sex is based on the gametes someone produces. However, there's people who do not produce them.
The counter-argument is that that someone should be male or female, based on what their body “should do”.
Bodies are not teleological however, are aren't “meant” to produce female or male gametes. They just are. There are people who produce both gametes too.
Thus, sex is not binary, and there isn't a way to group people into “man” and “woman”.
https://kim-hipwell.medium.com/why-gamete-production-does-not-define-sex-ae80eb67c379
"We can always tell when someone is transgender"
Not true. And it's up to a person to decide if they want to use the label transgender.
Trans people have already been using the bathroom! Transgender people existed for centuries.
Security guard kicked cis-women out of bathroom, as he thought she wasn't a women https://web.archive.org/web/20250506170851/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/boston-hotel-bathroom-same-sex-couple
It’s unsafe for trans women to use the women’s bathroom
No evidence was found that trans women using bathroom increases safety concerns.
More importantly, studies have reported trans and non-binary youth are at higher risk for sexual assault when not using the bathroom they identify with.
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Bathroom-Access-Feb-2025.pdf
If I have to allow people to identify as any gender, then I have to anyone to identify as animals/other objects
This is a known as a Slippery Slope fallacy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt4f7QrfRRc).
This is unrelated to addressing a person's preferred gender and name.
If you run the argument backwards to as “not allow”, then you can run into a bad conclusion too. While the argument is valid form, it's not sound.
There are no long term studies / not enough studies to prove hormones are effective
This is no true. What many anti-trans people are referring to are *High Power Studies using Randomized Controlled Trials.*
There isn't a possible way to do this with trans people for the following reasons:
- There is no placebo effect for medicine. Those who take hormones will notice their body change.
- It's unethical to not provide hormones to someone who wants to transtiion, and it's unethial to given them to someone who isn't transgender.
Infact, the tobacco industry made the same argument that smoking couldn't be proved to be dangerous because their aren't any RCTs. London also posted a satire article saying parachutes can not be proven since there hasn't been RCTs of people skydiving. Obviously, it would be unethical to have someone jump out of a plane without one.
What there IS lots of is observational studies. These are metrics of a persons mental health before, during, and after transitoning.
For instance, the paper “Clinical guidelines for children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria or incongruence: a systematic review of guideline quality” (https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/109/Suppl_2/s65.full.pdf?with-ds=yes) applies OQA3 grading system, which is meant for randomized control studies, to studies of hormone therapy. Since hormone studies are not randomized trials due to ethical concerns, the rating should not be applied to the studies.