Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Down is up.

This important statement details why a sex based approach to violence against women is problematic.

Anything other than a sex based approach to violence against women endangers women and girls you idiot. It’s only “problematic” if you insist on “including” people who don’t belong, i.e. men. A clear boundary is only a problem for those who wish to blur it in order to violate it. Why do you hate women so much, Sally? Why do you find it more important to placate men than protect women?

A girl or woman is anyone who has lived experience as a girl or woman, or identifies as a girl or woman.

How does this help women Sally? The only people who benefit from your expanded “definition” are men. Under your terms, women lose. All of the people who have ever had or will ever have “lived experience as a girl or woman” are female. Being female is a state of being such that those born into it will always accumulate “lived experience” as a woman with no effort whatsoever. All they have to do is exist and metabolize. The rest comes automatically. On the other hand there is no way at all for a male to ever have such “lived experience”, whatever the effort put into the attempt. Pretending to be a women can’t do it. Being mistaken for a woman can’t do it. “Identifying” as a woman can’t do it. No choice of wardrobe, accessories, comportment, hormones, or surgery can turn a man into a woman, a male into a female. You can’t get there from here.

However convincing my costume, no amount of time dressed as a furry will give me even a fraction of a second’s worth of “lived experience” as a lion, tiger, or bear. The only way I can “become” one of them is to be eaten by one of them. If I want to fly away as a bird, my only real option is a sky burial. But then I can’t write home about it, or enjoy any of the “lived experience” that my molecules are now having as the new species of which they’re now inhabitants and constituents. You can’t have your cake and be it too.

Womanhood isn’t something that can be won, acquired, or conferred. There’s no “gatekeeping”. It’s not a matter of some kind of evaluation or recognition of how well a given male “performs” femininity. Being female isn’t a performance. It’s not filling up a bingo card. It’s not like a coffee card where, instead of getting a free latte when the last entry is punched or stamped, you “become” a woman. That’s not how reality works. There is no authority “excluding” them, or a committee failing to admit them, it’s just life. It’s nobody’s fault or decision. No authority or pronouncement can change that. A GRC is not binding on the universe. It means nothing whatsoever. It gives its bearer no rights or privileges, or at least it shouldn’t. Appealing to argumentum ad clownfish won’t help you, though such appeals are not surprising coming from a movement owing more to postmodern literary criticism than it does to natural science. Never bring a metaphor to a biology fight. Obfuscatory word salad is no match for a gamete.