Who decides what a woman is?

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has ruled that, from a legal perspective, only people born with that biological sex are considered women. Since then, several conservative media outlets have seized the opportunity to advance their transphobic agenda. They have done so by using headlines that do not limit the issue to a strict legal definition but rather give it a general character. Compare, for example, the headline of the Daily Telegraph ("Trans women are not women") with that of theIndependent ("Coup to take trans rights, because judges do not consider them women.") Or the headline ofThe World ("The British Supreme Court rules that trans women are not women for biological reasons") with the much more precise and limitedAbc, according to another conservative outlet ("UK excludes trans women from legal definition of women").

The British Supreme Court's ruling is of paramount importance because it will affect many public policies and aspects such as the participation of transgender people in sports competitions. But the fundamental issue, that of identity, is not necessarily affected. If a portion of the population has chosen to identify with a gender different from the one assigned at birth based on their biological reality, the ruling does not change the decision each person must make about whether or not to respect and refer to these people in a manner consistent with their identity, bearing in mind that gender is fundamentally a social construct. The same applies to the media. The judges are not demanding that trans people stop being treated as women in newspapers. Those who do are merely playing in the culture war, using a discriminated and vulnerable group as cannon fodder.