This is an email I tossed off to my sister, a researcher for a consulting firm in Alberta.  Her background is in biology, for which she has a PhD from the University of Alberta.  I'm copy-pasting the text here. I never got a reply, but this seems to be all the things I said in a phone conversation with her where she agreed with me, so preaching to the choir and all that. She is also very supportive and has helped me frame and word my trans identity for other purposes. See what you make of it.

"Richard Dawkins said that my identity as a woman is based on "semantics." Aren't defining chromosomes "male" and "female" based on semantics also?  When you get right down to it, isn't Dawkins field of evolutionary biology just the breakdown of the evolution of sex traits into smaller and smaller parts until "male" and "female" become irrelevant terms?

Saying "man" and "woman" are the only choices because of chromosomes also denies the vast potential of gender variation in human lives to enrich our culture.  Humans have the opportunity to understand things he clearly cannot.  If denying I'm a woman because of the semantics of molecules were put into legally enforced practice, I would be in terrible danger in men's spaces.  Many people remark I am more feminine, and allegedly more vulnerable to violent and misogynist attacks, than many cis women.  But I think all women are equally in danger if there aren't social safeguards that protect us equally.  I cannot help being who I am any more than very feminine, or masculine, cis women.  As a woman I need to be in women's spaces.

He is just reinforcing the privilege of people who identify with their birth gender to define "man" and "woman" both scientifically and socially for others like me who do not have that privilege.  That should not be his place and he should know better as an evolutionary biologist.

He should also know his words will enable hate speech and hate crimes because he is a public figure. I don't want his courtesy because he is clearly masking transphobia the same way he tries to mask Islamophobia in his criticism of Ahmed Mohamed (the boy with the homemade clock.)  I feel bad because I once defended him and supported him during the evolution-over-creationism days of the four horsemen.  Now I feel like an enabler of his public visibility.  I want nothing to do with his social persona because of his views of sexual harassment, Muslim teenage boys, and transgender people like me.

Something about the very things I read in his books say to me he's wrong about saying chromosome pairs and combinations can be "male" and "female", especially if he wants to say my identity as a woman is semantics.  Then, as weird as this may sound, shouldn't your identity as a woman be semantics as well?  That seems contradictory, and dangerous.

He is defining sex and gender as something that may come from a predestined divine source, and that goes against everything I have ever read in his books.

As evolved humans and not divinely-created images of God, we have this seemingly beautiful thing called gender.  That means variation, right? That should also mean, according to his logic, gender should not be determined by molecules and their pairs and combinations.  In my opinion his view is the same as creationism.

He is proving that some people contradict the accomplishments of their younger years because they cannot adapt to progressively changing realities.  I hope we don't end up that way!

P.S. Sorry, this turned into a blog post instead of a tossed-off email.

Love you and appreciate you! ❤️❤️❤️”

I could interpret Dawkins’ tweet to mean he fully intends to respect the identity of trans people and that he concedes that his field of study has been flawed in its assignment of human gender traits, qualities and labels where they do not exist. I might as well expect a certain ‘feminist’ (and to be honest, I think her writing is now irrelevant) to change her view of me as a castrated male who thinks I’m female.