There’s some context that’s important to this whole argument that may clear things up for you a bit:
This whole thing started when TERFs claimed that trans women aren’t women by the definition of what a woman is, and people asked them to define a woman. The original answer by the person who started this merry-go-round was “an adult human capable of giving birth.”
It was immediately pointed out that this definition excluded a massive percentage of cis women, and TERFs have been in denial ever since and trying to come up with a new simple definition that excludes trans women from being women.
There is no intent to this other than saying that trans women aren’t women.
The question simply illustrates that there can’t be a definition that includes all edge cases.
Therefore, passing legislation that criminalizes people using a woman’s bathroom if they don’t fit the definition doesn’t make sense.
Unless your goal is to throw all women into a legal grey area, so you can better control them.
There absolute is a definition that includes all edge cases. From the Oxford dictionary:
female (adjective)
- of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes
There is no edge case that isn’t covered here. Women who cannot bear offspring or produce eggs are still of the sex that can.
A literal internet search of the word female gives you the answer that supposedly doesn’t exist lol.
Car is one of those repurposed words. It used to mean any wheeled vehicle until around 170 years or so ago. Automobile was used at first for cars. When I was young automobile or auto was the preferred term. Car or auto can be used for motorcycles or trains, there are just better words for those.
Human sexuality is a spectrum and not an either/or situation, and should be treated as such. That being said, a chromosome test would answer the question in over 95% of cases, I believe. I could be wrong about this, so anyone with a better understanding, please correct me.
definition doesn’t stop until the historical etymology bottoms out.
You are wrong about the percentige. https://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2010-intersexuality.html
chromosomes are like 1 of 5 gears in human biology that can end up with independantly different sayings.
Of course the real problem, as many fellows have indicated, is that the ‘common sense’ take is incomplete, and the entire platform is harmfully dehumanizing.
For the groundshow and layfolx:
**Not all intersex conditions are x/y chromosomal differences. Hormones do what they WANT. hair whereever. gonads? can be vague about themselves. boobie having? almost more of a cultural thing chromosomes? might as well be invisible.
we could just not treat people like shit bc karen and chet think they’re normal and wanna codify their cis breeder spanking/
Tap for spoiler
tranny snuff
kink in public spaces.
cw calling the transphobia by name. citations above. college degree in it so i can defend my existing. time for nap and a coffee, right?
You might be interested in this VSauce video on the philosophy of definitions, which isn’t specifically about the trans argument.
But, I also side strongly with wpb’s comment. The political advantage is to make them look silly, and not because we really care about the definition of “woman” any more than our simple “whoever wants to be one.”
No hate, but I love a good debate if you’re up for it.
Scenario 1:
Great points, honestly. However, even in this scenario where someone manages to cover all of the bases and managed to create an exact list of what it means to be a woman, it would be impossible to disqualify trans women.
Scenario 2:
I’ll get deeper into this one since it’s more realistic.
I bet you can’t define a car
Vehicles are defined by their frames, and the regulations that revolve around those. I can tell you with absolute certainty whether a vehicle is a car or a truck based off the frame. But this isn’t the point.
Does that mean we all just get to [define words ourselves]
Actually yes. Words gain their definition by how they are most commonly used. You learn a word based off its definition, but the word gains its definition from use. This is how Shakespeare managed to invent so many words in English. He just started using them, and when people asked what they meant he told them and they started using them. This is also why “literally” is defined as “not literally” by Webster dictionary, or at least it was around 2016 (may have changed).
As a matter of fact, entire languages have been built around this concept of redefining words. Most of German is just portmanteaus that were understandable enough to be considered a word.
In this particular case, the words “man” and “woman” is slowly being redefined by society to be more inclusive of trans people. Fighting against the progress of language, in this scenario, is nearly identical to fighting against the progress of trans people.
OK first I have no problem with language evolving. I have no problem with trans people using the word man, woman or whatever else for themselves as they feel comfortable. I have no problem with new words being defined or old words being redefined. That’s not really my issue.
My issue is making the argument that trans people should or shouldn’t be able to use the word on the basis that someone else can or can’t define it in such a way that would exclude them but not others. Can you really say with absolute certainty, with infinite time and space, such a definition could not theoretically exist? That it isn’t in the realm of possibility? And whether it can or can’t exist, should it really define whether they can or can’t use a word?
Also out of curiosity, because as you said it’s not really the point, but regarding the cars, is that really a certainty, including all cars throughout history, all custom home made and kit cars, all foreign cars, specialised race cars, electric cars, they will ALL definitely fit into a single neat set of regulations/definition?
I’m sure you could come up with a self consistent definition, but who says it would be “correct” (whatever that means)? If I define chair as an atom with 1 proton in the nucleus, that’s a pretty clear definition with little room for edge cases, but it’s also completely absurd.
You could also define “woman” by listing out everyone you feel counts as a woman, and that would technically be self consistent, but again, that’d be absurd. It’s all completely arbitrary, so why should I or anyone else care about that definition? Same goes for any hypothetical 20 page definition.
Out of curiosity
As long as it is legal, it can be defined as a car/truck/bike. Illegal vehicles get more complex, because as you mentioned the frame can be modified.
Such a definition could not theoretically exist
With infinite time, perhaps it could. I’ll give you that one for free, I did exaggerate by saying it was entirely impossible. But for the vast majority of people it is impossible within their lifetime to create such a definition.
Should it really define whether they can or can’t use a word?
Anyone can use any word, just not necessarily correctly. For example, “fish” are not real. There is no defining feature-set for a fish. However, when I say “fish” you think of a little, wet, scaley fella with silly eyes. And that’s fine because communication happens and meaning is understood, but there is no way to define a fish in a way that includes all of the little scaley fellas, jellyfish, sunfish, etc… The same logic is true for the argument about “women”, there is no defining feature-set which includes all AFAB people and zero AMAB people because the lines are too blurry in genetics. An androgen-insensitive XY person with a vagina would still be AFAB, for example.
I think you don’t fully understand the intention behind the argument. Rather than being part of some mathematical deeply logical proof, it is much more an appeal to someone’s common sense or feelings.
Generally, the conservatives like to portray themselves on trans issues as the common sense side. Think of when they extend LGBTQ with all sorts of weird letters, rolling their eyes. Or think of Dave Chappelle’s punching down specials. Or think of The One Joke. And this is a very successful starting point, because most people are not knowingly interacting with trans people, so to them trans issues are already a bit unfamiliar, or weird.
The idea behind the argument is to have the answerer realize that in fact their position is not the obvious one, and that their position is actually weird. And this is highly subjective. The point is not the answer, the point is the hoops they’ll have to jump through to get to a satisfactory trans-exlusionary answer.
It’s subjective of course, but it’s very hard for someone to write a 20 page definition of gender and then follow that up with “duh”. Or to write something like “producer of the large gametes” or whatever and feel like a normal person.
I’m not asking for my comment to be restored, I couldn’t care less, but I just want to say anyone that read it could clearly see it was not gatekeeping. I was saying it’s not a good argument that someone can’t use a word based on whether another person can define it a certain way, not the other way around. Basically the opposite of gatekeeping. My other comment makes this even clearer.
Sounds like a problem for their doctor or a scientist, there isnt anywhere else it would matter about their biological status. So a woman is someone that says they are a woman.
trans people who want to update their sex in their passport, birth certificate drivers license etc are wild to me!
…that’s an exaggeration; it’s a much more complex issue that often involves public safety in ways that don’t affect me as a FtNB. If I go into a women’s bathroom people mostly just squint at me and if I went into a men’s people would probably mostly do the same. And if they did accost me in the ladies’ my plan is to show them my vagina then cry and ask how many women with their breasts surgically removed and no hair do they plan to do this to?
but somewhere deep down I can’t help but to think gender markers should never have been on government documents to begin with. the government doesn’t need to know what genitals I had when I was born or anything about how that may or may not have to do with the life I’m living now. massive governmental overreach if you ask me (and the bathrooms wouldn’t be an issue if Americans had real bathroom walls and doors where you can’t access others peeing like that anyway.
“It’s complicated” is probably better for doctors and scientists. The other day I was filling out a “women only” medical form and about half of the questions were relevant to me.
And for a scientist, what exactly are they studying? For social science or psychology I’m an outlier no matter which gender or sex box you put me in; for reproductive stuff I’m closer to male but still somewhat of an outlier (because hormones); for various other medical things I’m closer to female (hormones again); neurologically idk, but there’s evidence trans people tend to not match their AGAB here.
But yeah, normal people shouldn’t care about any of that when just talking to me.
I didn’t know it was possible for everyone to simply intend for their body to engage or not engage in such a bodily function. Interesting. /s
Yeah, honestly, screw the meme reply, what the absolute holy hell is “the intention of holding eggs” in your body?
I mean, pretty sure that covers a whole bunch of trans women and decidedly not a whole bunch of cis women, but that’s besides the point. What did she mean?
I fear there is a whole pseudoscientific terfy rabbit hole behind this and I don’t want to fall down that hole, but I kinda need to know if it’s a slip of the tongue or what.
It’s just regular misogyny this time, in that they only see “real” women as capable of giving birth, and then tried to cover up medical problems that would get in the way of that with the word “intention”.
To me, it seems like she was going to only say “capability of holding eggs,” then thought about it and actually realized it would exclude some cis women, so she added “intention” as if it meant “would usually be capable of” but just used a bad word to imply that. I could be reading into it a bit much though.
Of course, that wouldn’t work either, since that could then include or exclude people with various assortments of chromosomes in which it’s undetermined as to if they would or would not typically have eggs, and would also just open a whole meta argument about how early in the developmental process there would or wouldn’t be “intention” for that to happen, which is entirely subjective.
Ew. Yeah. The implication for a normal person is that the woman would be doing the intenting.
That’s probably not the meaning or the implication. It’s probably some religious/iusnaturalist nonsense where the intent is God’s or nature’s or somesuch. Gross.
Like, “oh, you can’t have kids, but I meant you to, it’s just an accident. You’re just God’s little mistake, you”.
It really gets worse the more you think about it.
I’m very confused, isn’t the reply in support of trans people while the OP is clearly against them? Like why bother replying with that if you agree with the OP?
Because I thought there was more than one interesting thing about this so I pointed a different one out?
I mean, I know the Internet rewards polarization, but I didn’t realize it had gotten to the point where more than one concurrent observation was seen as controversial.
I guess you are misunderstanding “screw the meme” as implying I find the meme objectionable, maybe? I don’t, I mean “ignore the meme for a moment, what’s up with that other part of the response?”
What did she mean?
She meant god.
If you listen to some people talk about evolution or ancient mysteries of the body, they love describing things by their supposed purpose.
I had a long argument with somebody once, trying to convince them that sex wasn’t for babies, even though that’s what it often results in.
So like, evolutionarily, sex produces babies, that’s why “it” “cares.” But, a bird doesn’t need to know what sex is or why it should want a baby to be motivated to do the thing that makes one. Similarly, a bee doesn’t need to know that it’s spreading pollen around, it just wants that sweet little flower juice.
I don’t remember why this argument was important to have, but I do remember them just not getting the distinction between “does” and “meant to.”
Modern day Diogenese over here
