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transphobia :<
I have to ask because I live under a rock and can’t tell; Is this type of joke legitimately considered transphobic?
Nah, it's just a joke. Maybe a cisnormative joke, but as a trans woman myself I didn't think twice about it.
In my book, for something to be transphobic it has to intentionally discredit or attack trans people.
I don't think there were any bad intentions on OP's end, but the highlighted claim that a person is female and therefore has this or that genitalia is indeed transphobic.
Someone's probably going to show up and say "but it says 'female', not 'woman'!" Well, "female" as an adjective referring to people already means woman. A female doctor is a doctor who is a woman. And "female" as a noun (e.g., "the females") is a terrible way to refer to people, to begin with.
Also to mention this isn't the type of transphobia where people dehumanize or call trans people slurs and the like. It's the far more annoying subtle transphobia where our existence isn't aknowladged
Females don't have testicles, males do. That's just a fact. Trans women, as males, also do. (at least from birth)
To claim that such a statement is erasure of trans people carries with it the implication that sex and gender are the same thing (since you're interpreting "female" as a gender identity), which completely undermines the whole premise upon which the very idea of being "trans" relies (that is, that sex and gender identity are two distinct, independently-varying things).
You can't have it both ways. Either you accept that trans men/women are both men/women (gender identity) and female/male (sex), or you 're-combine' sex and gender by insisting that female/male also describe gender identity, adding a superfluous extra set of terms for gender identity, and simultaneously leaving sex with zero ways to be expressed linguistically.
And if the latter, how does a doctor, for example, know whether a patient has a prostate (which ideally is checked yearly above the age of 40) to check, if the "m" on their chart doesn't designate sex? Well, you'd have to have a checkbox on the chart that basically says 'do you have a prostate', and a similar one for every other homologous body part. But why have one box for each part when certain things always exist together (e.g. prostate and testes)? So we'll end up with two boxes, one for each such set of body parts, and look at that, we just went the long way around to invent the concept of "sex" all over again.
Identify however you like, but we need a way to make those kinds of distinctions between the two fundamental 'sets' of body parts sometimes. It doesn't take away from your gender identity at all to do so when appropriate. So stop trying to screw things up and confuse everyone for no reason, lol.
TL;DR: Having testicles has nothing to do with your gender identity one way or the other (according to trans activists themselves), so it makes no sense to condemn a statement as transphobic for mentioning a relationship between having testicles and something other than gender identity.
You can't have it both ways.
Except we do. Words mean different things in different contexts genius. Calling a kickflip sick doesn't invalidate using it to describe how your stomach feels to a doctor. Even within science, even within the same fucking field, operational definitions can differ. There is no objective essence of the term "female" out there.
we need a way to make those kinds of distinctions between the two fundamental 'sets' of body parts sometimes.
Just say "in reproductive terms, trans women may take the male role," or preface with your current operational definition of female. That encompasses the current reality accurately, as many people cannot take on either reproductive role, white humans may only be born with the ability to take on a specific role.
However, simply waltzing into a conversation and saying "um actually, you women aren't female because you don't produce large gametes" is both rude and wrong based on how terminology works. Even terms like MtF specify "male to female," not "male to woman, but not female." Language isn't some clean thing that has universal rules.
I'm not male in any real sense, as not only is that not my gender identity, but I probably can't serve that reproductive role, now or in the future.
Just say "in reproductive terms, trans women may take the male role,"
Don't hold your breath for any significant portion of the population to ever go along with something this ridiculously convoluted. By the way, "the male role" is sexist. It's always amusing to see horseshoe theory in action.
Fact is, the vast majority of people don't and won't use male/female
However, simply waltzing into a conversation and saying "um actually you're transphobic because you said the female body doesn't have testicles" is both rude and wrong.
This is what you lot are doing, and literally trying to turn it around to the exact opposite of what happened here, lol. Not gonna let you move that goalpost, sorry.
How can you not see the irony of making this big stink about how words can be used different ways, while simultaneously calling someone a transphobe/bigot for using a word in an accurate way, that happens to be not the way you want to use it? The telltale stench of "rules for thee, not for me".
The word use itself isn't as transphobic as you choosing to die on this hill. Your transphobia isn't just a statement out of context, but a consistent pattern of saying "trans women can't have a female body because words MUST have ridged definitions." That position states that the female body is the status of their gonads or chromosomes or something else we can't see. I don't know how you would categorize trans women who got rid of their gonads or cis women born without theirs, but it ultimately doesn't matter.
The fact that you don't realize that "the male reproductive role" is the most clinical way to describe things imaginable shows how little you know. I don't want most people to use that terminology because they should just refer to trans women as female, adding trans if it somehow matters for the conversation. Not gonna heed that request? Don't worry, I'm used to not getting support from people who embrace horseshoe theory.
If you're gonna cry about "the authoritarian left" every time we ask you not to be a stickler about language, you don't sit where you think on the left/right spectrum.
Well, "female" as an adjective referring to people already means woman.
No, it doesn't. Female is a sex, not a gender identity.
The whole idea of being trans is that one's sex and gender identity don't sync up in the way they typically do, right?
So if someone says they're trans, and you ask them how their sex and gender identity are out of sync, would you ever expect their reply to ever be "because I'm female and identify as a woman"?
Of course you wouldn't. That's how a woman who isn't trans would describe herself.
And "female" as a noun (e.g., "the females") is a terrible way to refer to people, to begin with.
Like it or not, there is no other single word in English that covers everyone of that sex, encompassing all ages. So it (along with the noun "male", of course) definitely has circumstances where it's perfectly appropriate to use.