%0 Journal Article
%A Imbrišević, Miroslav Imbrišević
%D 2024
%J Journal of Controversial Ideas

%@ 2694-5991

%V 4
%N 2
%P 16

%T Trapped in the Trans Experience: What Mary Couldn’t Know
%M doi:10.35995/jci04020016
%U https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/4/2/276
%X Trans women make claims about their sex and/or gender membership, but they also make various claims about their inner life: that they feel like a woman or that they are a woman inside. I will consider the hypothetical case of Marty, who is a scientist studying the embodied experience of women. After years of research Marty realises that he is trans and transitions to become ‘Mary’. Does Mary know what it is like to be a woman? Mary has all the scientific knowledge, but can only imagine what it is like to be a woman. After transitioning, she learns nothing new about being a woman, only about being a trans woman. In the second part I will assess Talia Mae Bettcher’s ‘first-person authority’ account of gender avowals and the ‘liberatory project’; this constitutes the strongest defence available for trans claims such as I feel like a woman or I am a woman inside.