Acknowledging women

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 the main cisfeminist arguments from a Wittgensteinian perspective, taking into account (1) their plausible essentialism 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.

Keywords

• Woman
• Transfeminism
• Essentialism
• Private Language Argument
• Bedrock
• Blurred-edge Concept