What makes a Woman a Woman? (Or a Man a Man)

elephant, maybe establishing a baby's sex isn't so easy after all then.

I'm bowing out of this discussion now coz all the trans and queer phobia has made me feel somewhat nauseous.

Hullygully wrote "I am a woman who feels like a person"

Please could you

Define I.
Define am.
Define a.
Define woman.
Define who.
Define feels.
Define like.
Define a. (again, because it might have changed since last time)
Define person.

It reminds me of that quote
"Define the meaning of life. A better question is define the meaning of meaning."

Maybe SeaHouses. The DSM is a socially constructed document though and has a history of being shaped by society's prejudices.

Agree seahouses. Words have meaning and we know they do.

vesuvia - I think sex is a biological reality, not a feeling. I could feel for example I was a cat, but I would be wrong.

Alexander - I really don't know what I would do to be honest. I would probably read the research and talk to intersex feminists before doing anything.

Just 1 point, psychological research has shown that although most TRansgender people who have surgery (and lots don't) are glad they had it (and some do sadly regret it), there is no over all increase in happiness or psychological well being and that the suicide rate is still massively high.

In fact I have seen it argued on this basis that surgery for Transgender people is a medieval medical tool and that medicine should be doing more to research treatment that will actually make Transgender people happier.

Perhaps it could be definitive by doing what is done in the DSM with various psychological conditions.

Do you have at least 5 of the following? List range of female characteristics.
Do you have the absence of all of the following definitely listed male characteristics.
If so, you are female.

You could never group anybody if you said they all had to be identical. It doesn't mean that groups have no definition whatsover.

elephantscantski - "unless someone is intersex ... If you have a child, how did you decide they were a girl or a boy as a baby?"

I suppose it is usually done by adults looking at the baby's genitals for few seconds and saying penis for a boy, vulva for a girl. From that moment onwards social influences reinforce that decision. It's possibly the biggest decision of a person's life, and one in which the baby had absolutely no say.

That method of deciding "boy or girl" upsets and annoys the people who, in later life, do not accept being defined by their genitals, as well as the people who say they refuse to judge other people in that way.

elephant, but how would you decide which sex your child was in the hypothetical scenario I laid out above? Or are you saying you'd wait until the child was old enough and let them decide?

I don't think there can ever be a definitive answer to this one. On another forum I used to frequent, from time to time someone would start a thread asking for definitions of Britishness. This rather reminds me of that - there just can't be a cast iron, copper bottomed, universally agreed definition. There are definitions laid out in law for both concepts, so far as this can be done, but that's it really.

I agree that there should be more definitions. It would really resolve a lot of issues if there were more than two genders.

Hullygully - Yes it would be interesting to know the differences hormones made to how we feel as individuals. Chastity bono reports for example that taking hormones for her sex chnage made her feel more aggressive.

But of course transexuals do have to take hormones as part of their sex change. Transgender is not a hormonal imbalance disorder.

Alexander - From what I have read about intersex and forgive me I am hardly an expert, there is a strong argument for not doing surgery on genitals at least until the child is old enough to consent. Much of the surgery has left intersex people with low sexual feelings for example. So I would probably not allow any surgery at a young age.

In terms of feeling like neither a boy or a girl, it is hard to know how much of that is because of the biology of intersex and how much is the fact that a child doesn't want to identify with any of teh acceptable gender roles presented to them.

There are plenty of girls who don't feel like girls growing up, but as women they will say thsi is not because they were Transgender, but because they didn't fot into acceptable gender roles.

Worryingly I have read of young women and men complaining of pressure to see themselves as transgender as teenagers because they so clearly did not fit into acceptable gender roles for their sex, even though they say they never felt that they were the other sex. There is also a growing minority of Transgender peoplw who regret surgery and some actually have surgery to return their body back to the sex they were born in.

I'm sorry. I must be not following your argument and be getting confused.

I thought, at the beginning of the thread, you were agreeing with a poster who said gender should be based on what somebody feels their gender is.

So why, if you were a man for a day, would you have a penis and male hormones?

Some men have a penis and some men have a vulva, if gender is based on what people say, not their bodies.

But how would you know Hully? How would you know that men feel differently to women? You would merely be comparing yourself as one woman to yourself as one man.

A hypothetical question for you elephant - if one of your children had been born with ambiguous genitals how would you have decided if they were a boy or a girl? I'm genuinely interested to know.

I read an in-depth interview with an intersex person who had found it very traumatic to be forced to live as a girl when they actually felt like neither a girl or a boy.

Most intersex people are brought up as girls, purely because lopping off their genitals is surgically easier than building them up. That makes me feel very uneasy, it instinctively feels wrong.

I read that as well Hullygully. What I meant was that giving birth, breast feeding, periods are intrinsically female experiences and this difference can never be the same between the sexes. But for most of our life the socialisation of how men and women are expected to behave and feel is I think a much bigger difference.

I find this kind of discussion a bit strange. Some of you are saying you're not women; you are people. Well define a person or a human being in the same way that people are attempting to define woman. What makes a human a human and a bird a bird. Well a human has two arms and a bird doesn't. So am I now prejudiced? Am I saying that a child born with two arms is a bird? It just gets ridiculous.

We know, when a child is born, almost always, if it is male or female by looking at their genitalia. In the few cases where it is unclear, experts try work it out by gathering further information that would not be obvious at first sight. Is anybody really suggesting that mothers don't know, most of the time, what sex their baby is, and are waiting for the child to be able to speak so they can express an opinion on the matter?

Now, it may be imperfect. There are many differences between males and females, particularly in the face. But sometimes there are women who have a male type tilted forehead, but then they might have other female features. It is an overall combination of outward features, so no, somebody who has a hysterectomy is still a woman because they have lots of other female features. You can't base it on one physical feature alone. There is no perfect way of doing it, but there are a wide range of different features, that when combined together make men and women different.

Pointing out the imperfections in defining women by biological sex isn't in itself a justification for saying we should define it based on people's gender. You need to show that the characteristics of gender identity are more reliable than the biological characteristics.

But nobody is prepared to do that. I can't come along and critique the idea that gender identity makes women rather than biological sex because nobody will say what the characteristics are. I can't say that your concept is wrong because I am a woman and I don't feel X,Y and Z. You may as well be saying what makes a woman is if they feel warmly towards snorles or not. And then refuse to tell anybody what a snorle is. It is an absurd argument.

If you cannot define what gender identity is, then I cannot say if I am a woman or a man, or if my children are male or female, because you are arguing for imposing on everyone group identities that have no defining characteristics whatsoever. What is even the point of it? If gender has nothing to do with biological sex, you may as well say that you are going to set up segregated prisons, segregated changing rooms and segregated wards based on everyone individually deciding if they are in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor.

I think as feminists we all argue and fight against women and men being forced into specific roles. Although sardine is right, we will always have physical differences in terms of ability to have children and that does mean that even without patriarchy, there would be some differences between the sexes.

Although without patriarchy any differences could be significantly less than at present.