Acknowledging women: some Wittgensteinian ideas to clarify the cis/trans debate

Abstract

My aim in this paper is to use some contents of the later Wittgenstein’s work, and some of its interpreters, to shed some light on the cis/trans debate, in which it is disputed what a woman is and who the subject of feminisms is. There is a stance, called cisfeminism, which do not acknowledge transgender women neither as women nor as subjects of feminisms. I analyse and criticise the main cisfeminist arguments from a Wittgensteinian perspective, taking into account (1) the plausible essentialism of these arguments and (2) the everyday uses of language and its changes. Finally (3), I make some considerations about the effect that theories have in human lives