What is a Woman?

and other questions that need to be retired

A couple of days after the UK Supreme Court issued its ruling that trans women are not women in the eyes of the law, The Times (of London) published the following letter:

Sir, One of the most puzzling aspects of the Supreme Court’s judgment is that a scientifically illiterate ideology became so entrenched it needed our highest court to state the obvious. If you are born with a Y (male) chromosome you will carry it with you all your days. No amount of surgery, drug treatment, self-identification, wishful thinking or shutting down of reasoned argument will change that settled biological fact. To claim otherwise is flat-Earth territory. How someone chooses to live their life and present themselves to the outside world is a personal decision that should be met with understanding, tolerance and respect, but not at the expense of common sense.
Sir Peter Rubin, London SW1

I’m not a subscriber to The Times, but my mother is, and she forwarded me the letter attached to an email from an old family friend, a man I last saw at the London launch of my latest book, Frighten the Horses. A sometimes tragic, occasionally funny, frequently ridiculous account of how I discovered I had an invisible penis, I would hazard a guess that trans memoirs such as this are not the usual reading material of an upper-class English octogenarian, but apparently he read it cover-to-cover in less than a week.

This letter in today’s Times is key, he wrote in his email to my mother. Oliver’s book, in essence, is about the experience of discovering he was born male in a female’s body. How does he deal with the Y chromosome statement in this letter?

My first reaction to his question was to shut my computer, go outside into the back garden and get some fresh air and sunlight on my face before I either broke something or broke down. My mother said she’d get back to him with an answer, but I’m afraid it’s not going to come from me. I won’t do it, I won’t get into this argument again, I’m done. I promised myself that I would be patient with people, that I would answer all questions put to me in good faith, that I would prioritize education over my own personal feelings, but I am so damn tired of trying to explain to people why we are who we say we are. My bookshelves are lined with books that address this subject in academic language, medical jargon and layman’s terms, I myself have exposed my darkest underbelly in two books (and countless essays) trying to help people understand trans identities, and still it comes back to this: I don’t have a Y chromosome, therefore I can’t be a man.

What is a woman? is a debate that’s been raging since we first crossed the trans tipping point, and I’ve discovered through personal experience—and to the detriment of my mental health—that there’s no answer that will satisfy the unbeliever. What is a woman? is a bad-faith question, one that’s almost exclusively asked by people who want to exclude trans women from public life, and at a time when authoritarianism is rising across the globe, the threat of war is everywhere, and the earth is being destroyed by fire, drought and flood, anyone who is genuinely still engaged in this irrelevant and pointless debate must have a disturbingly defective prioritization system.

Trans people exist because we do. That’s it. That should be enough. We exist because we do. And the minute you undermine that one basic fact with arguments about chromosomes, you legitimize the actions of any person who wants to discriminate against us for whatever random reason they choose. Our survival depends on people believing that we’re human, and that we’re real, and anyone who questions either of those things is enabling these full-blown attacks on our human rights, our human bodies, and our human dignity. My current act of resistance towards the heinous levels of transphobia directed at us from the US administration is to reject this question entirely. Forthwith, I bear it no tolerance. I denounce it as falsely asked. The time for patience has passed - we can’t afford to be patient anymore.

In 2020, a total of 100 anti-trans bills were introduced into American state legislatures: in 2025 there have been over 850 in the first few months alone. In her newsletter, trans journalist Erin Reed does the impossible by managing to compress the extent of these attacks into one paragraph: “As of 2025, a staggering 867 bills have been introduced targeting transgender people across the United States. Of these, 122 would ban gender-affirming care for some segment of the trans population. Another 77 seek to bar transgender people from certain bathrooms—a threat made more tangible as arrests for alleged “wrong bathroom” usage have begun to mount. 73 bills aim to eliminate legal recognition of transgender people entirely, often by revoking updated driver’s licenses, stripping correct gender markers, and invalidating identification documents. Others target drag (and transgender people dressed in the “wrong clothes”) or require schools to forcibly out transgender students. A newer, especially chilling category would classify gender-affirming care or even social transition as child abuse, opening the door for state-sanctioned removal of trans youth from supportive homes. So far, 51 anti-trans bills have been signed into law this year, with many more advancing through state legislatures.”

Yesterday a black SUV with smoked out windows was parked outside my house when I got home from the grocery store. It stayed for about five minutes after I went into the house and then left. Even though I don’t think (please God let me be right about this) that trans people are currently at risk of deportation just for being trans, the adrenaline rush I felt as I hurried into my house is an example of the constant feeling of anxiety and fear trans people are now living under. And this will almost certainly get worse as we approach the midterms, when we become part of Trump’s political strategy—the woke wedge-issue he hopes will help keep him in power. I am white, trans-masc and debt-free, with dual American/British citizenship and an army of friends who I hope would move mountains if I were to be detained, and yet I’m still afraid. So what in God’s name must any of the thousands of trans women of color in this country, immigrant or otherwise, be feeling right now? I’m not separate from my community, I feel them in my bones—not because I’m an empath or any woo-woo shit but because I’m a normal person with basic levels of empathy—and my fear for their safety is keeping me awake at night. Trump has proved there’s no line he won’t cross, and if you are a trans immigrant there seems to be a very thin line between seeing a black SUV on the street and ending up in a male gulag in El Salvador. And that’s not my hyperactive three-am imagination: it’s real and it’s happening now.

In response to the letter in The Times (because you don’t say no to my mother) I would say that while it’s demonstrably not scientifically illiterate to believe in trans identities, it might be willfully illiterate of Sir Peter Rubin, the author of the letter, not to pick up one of the thousands of books out there written by trans people and start expanding his knowledge about who we are and how we live our lives. If he sincerely wants to treat us with tolerance, understanding and respect—as he suggests—then maybe he should stop asking us to prove our existence, and start asking what he can do to help us live safely instead.

And to all of the good, decent people out there who continue to believe in us, and are doing their best to help us fight back on both sides of the Atlantic, thank you. We couldn’t do this without you.

Love, Oliver

I’d like to keep these posts free for everyone, but if you’d like to support my work as a writer, please consider upgrading to a paid membership, or buy a copy of my memoir, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES—an Oprah Daily Best Book of Fall—which is out now with Roxane Gay Books in the US and Grove Press in the UK. A valuable alternative narrative to the loss and pain that queer history has too often insisted on — New York Times; Humorous and heartwarming — LA Review of Books; It’s the voice that makes this memoir stand out. This is a writer who can capture any moment with a dazzling, insightful, at times musical phrase — Oprah Daily; This book is sharp as razors, but it also pulses with a passionate, desperate, human urgency for truth and liberation — Elizabeth Gilbert; The finest literary telling of the experience of gender transition that I’ve ever read — Kate Bornstein.