Philosopher Thomas Nagel The arguments in philosopher Thomas Nagel’s seminal 1974 essay, What is it Like to be Bat? can help us answer the question of whether a human born with XY chromosomes and a male body can be, can become, or can know what it is like to be a woman, or can know what inhabiting the world is like for a woman. Nagel — who randomly chose bats from the list of mammals — began from the premise that if an organism has consciousness, then there is something that