In this page, I hope to describe how the scientific method actually works and how transphobes ignore and abuse it. The scientific method shows how transphobic arguments do not stand up to scrutiny.
The steps of the scientific method
There are several steps of the scientific method, and we’ll go through them all to show you how science actually works in a simple way that a lay person can understand.
Define a question
To give you an example, let’s define the question, “who is a woman?”12 In order for an answer to be successful, it would need to include as many people that are and exclude as many people who are not.
Gather information and resources
Thankfully, we have evidence to show the following are irrelevant to the definition:
- Gender presentation – There is no gender presentation that is common amongst all women or exclusive to women.
- Life experiences – This also differs among cultures, so there is no meaningful life experience that all women share. Any attempt to define one would exclude at least one group of women. Attempts at this have historically excluded women who do not have a Euro-centric life experience.
- Secondary sex characteristics – Not only are these not exclusive to women, there are some that are not shared among all women. A mastectomy doesn’t make a woman less of a woman nor does a breast augmentation make a woman more of a woman.
- Genitalia – There is no set of genitalia that is exclusive to or common among all members of one sex.
- Reproductive capability – There are infertile women, childfree women who have chosen sterilization, and men who have gotten pregnant.
- Hormones – There are wild swings in hormones within cis women as a group alone. As a result, hormones cannot be the defining characteristic of who a woman is.
- Chromosomes – Not all people who are women have XX chromosomes nor are all people who have XX chromosomes female.
- Age – All women are old enough to be considered “women”. Young women may be identified as such starting in puberty.
- Gender identity – All persons of sufficient age to be considered “women” and who are women have a feminine gender identity.
Form an explanatory hypothesis
Based on our observations, this appears to be the most reliable explanatory hypothesis supported by the information gathered:
A woman is an adult human with a feminine gender identity.
Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data in a reproducible manner & analyze the data
A definition can be tested the same way taxonomists test a species definition. We can apply it to the full population, including the hard edge cases, and check whether it sorts everyone into the right bucket. When we apply our candidate definition to the population, we get the following results:
- Cis women are women because they have a feminine gender identity, regardless of their gender expression.
- Trans women are women for the same reason.
- Trans women who transition and wind up detransitioning due to economic or familial pressure are still women for the same reason.
- Cis men pretending to be women are not women because they do not actually have a feminine gender identity.
- Cis men who try out transition and wind up detransitioning because they’re not actually trans are not women for the same reason.
So, that undercuts the notion that if we define women in such a way, cis men can abuse that definition to define themselves women.
Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for a new hypothesis
We can clearly see that this definition works and is scientific because it accurately defines who women are, including as many people who are women and excluding people who are not. It includes the following women who may be excluded by definitions that might include traits excluded through the observations above:
- Childfree women who have chosen to undergo sterilization.
- Infertile women.
- Women with chromosomes that are not XX.
- Women with hirsutism.
- Masculine presenting women.
- Women who have had mastectomies.
- Women who have not had much breast development.
- Non-binary people who identify as women to any significant degree.3
- Intersex women.
- Transgender women.
It also excludes people who are not women, such as:
- Men with XX chromosomes.
- Men with gynecomastia.
- Men without facial hair.
- Feminine presenting men.
- Non-binary people who do not identify as women to any significant degree.
- Girls.
- Men.
Publish results
I think I’ve done that here.
Re-test
I invite people to do so. However, I feel confident about this test.
… But that definition is circular!
It’s actually not. Sonja actually explains why it’s not in her defence of her definition but I’ll use it here to defend mine from such baseless accusations. Let’s break down each keyword in the definition, along with explaining what it’s doing.
- “Woman” refers to the whole category, the one we assumed from the beginning actually exists, and is the thing we were asked to define.
- “Adult” is essentially a scope operator, telling us what subset of all possible things in the universe this definition is relevant to: just adults. Whether this person is a young adult or a regular adult doesn’t matter. Don’t go trying to apply the definition of “woman” to girls.
- “Human” is also a scope operator to prevent us applying the definition to other non-human animals or inanimate objects.
- “Gender identity” names the attribute that’s relevant for any person being judged under this definition. We only want the people with feminine gender identities. Not the masculine ones, nor the non-binary ones, etc.
- Finally, “feminine” tells us what specific value that attribute should take in order to qualify a particular person for membership in the “woman” category.
Doesn’t this definition exclude butch women?
No. It uses a feminine gender identity as the defining factor, it does not attach to one particular form of gender expression.
Why transphobic claims fail to survive the scientific method
Transphobic claims rely on assumptions that break down under investigation and are contradicted by the evidence. Here’s an example of this fact:
Transphobes claim that only men have prostates, so trans women, who have prostates, must “really” be men. This gets the logic exactly backwards. Trans women are women, and trans women have prostates; therefore “only men have prostates” is simply false. The claim doesn’t demonstrate that trans women are men, it smuggles in the very trait-based definition refuted above, and then presents its own conclusion as evidence for itself. It’s an example of the circular argument inherent in a lot of transphobic argumentation.
However, misrepresentations like this ensure that women’s lived experiences remain unseen, resulting in misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, and delay in treatments.4 In short, not only does this have no predictive power, such assumptions result in negative outcomes with public health messaging.5 So, such a claim that only men have prostates and thus, trans women are men, not only fails to stand up to scrutiny, it also has negative predictive power.
All transphobic claims fail to survive the scientific method, as they rely on assumptions that are not based in evidence.
- I use “who is a woman?” because “what is a woman?” feels too much like objectification and I refuse to pull that shit. Matt Walsh is a misogynist but I’m not. [↩]
- Also, massive credit to Sonja Black’s article positing a definition of who women are that includes as many women as possible and excludes as many people who are not women as possible. [↩]
- I admit that I’m not as well-versed on non-binary issues. Please feel free to reach out with corrections on this. [↩]
- Chang, A. & Johnson, E., Confronting the systematic invisibility of women’s health, The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology & Women’s Health 2025 [↩]
- Goldberg, J. et al, 2026, Perspectives on gender-inclusive language in Canadian sexual and reproductive health care: findings from a modified Delphi survey, BMC Health Services Research [↩]