Trans women are women. Full stop.
Bangladesh Feminist Archives is saying this clearly because after Narir Dake Maitree Jatra, a public feminist mobilization held on May 16, where thousands gathered on Manik Mia Avenue to demand justice, dignity, and equality across identities, we’ve witnessed a disturbing return of exclusionary discourse. In the days following the event, especially on social media, conversations have emerged attempting to pit “biological women” against trans women, as if their rights are in competition, as if trans women’s existence somehow threatens the legitimacy of cis women’s demands. That is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s dangerous.
Let’s be clear: biological sex and gender are not the same thing. “Biological sex” is itself a socially constructed category, chromosomes, genitals, and hormones do not line up neatly for everyone, and they never have. Intersex people exist. Bodies vary. And how we assign “sex” is not neutral; it’s shaped by social and medical power.
Gender is about identity, expression, roles, power, and lived experience. Trans women, like cis women, experience misogyny, gender-based violence, systemic exclusion, and state neglect. Often more violently, and more invisibly.
The kind of feminism that led the Maitree Jatra is not about shrinking the category of “woman” down to those who meet an anatomical checklist. It is not about protecting some imagined “purity” of womanhood. It is, and must be, about demanding justice, dignity, and liberation for all women: cis, trans, intersex, gender-diverse, hijra, Dalit, Indigenous, disabled, working-class, migrant, sex worker.
If feminism cannot hold all of us, then it is not feminism rooted in liberation. It becomes just another form of control.
Let’s not confuse discomfort with clarity. Trans women have always been part of these movements. They were in the march. They were holding banners. They were speaking truth. And they deserve more than erasure wrapped in academic jargon.
There is no equality built on exclusion. There is no justice in deciding who gets to count.
Enough.
Bangladesh Feminist Archives 