" Feminists have fought to remove the definition of what a woman is from... masculine institutions and develop their own understandings. Claims to the ‘right’ to self define ‘gender’, subject womanhood to men’s power to define once again.The major task of feminist theory was to bring women out from under the weight of men’s definitions and theories. Feminists developed what has been called ‘feminist standpoint theory’ to describe a new form of knowledge about women, that which is formed out of women’s experience as an oppressed group and refined through struggle and collective process (Harding (ed.), 2004). The very basis of feminism is this declaration of independence, the rejection of men’s ‘knowledge’ about women and the privileging of our own. Men’s ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men’s rule over them. They do not represent ‘truth’ but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology. "

― Sheila Jeffreys , Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism