Why is the definition of a woman so confusing these days?

“definitions have to change sometimes, particularly when we realise they're insufficient“

Yes of course they do, if it’s something manmade, like “marriage”. But if it’s just something immutable like “dog” or “water” or “stone” or “woman” then no they don’t.

And it's about redefinition and muddying.

If you see a bunch of kids running around with no clothes on, you know which are girls and which are boys. Obviously.

These people say, no there is no way of telling, you would have to ask them all.

Clearly when talking about issues that affect say girls, as a group, in a certain country, like menstruation and education. You can't actually go and ask every girl whether they identify as a girl or not. Therefore, you cannot make statements like "girls in X country are routinely removed from education when they start their periods". You lose precision. You refer instead to menstruators, but how does the group of menstruators relate to this other group who are married off very young, that we are calling "young people at risk of child marriage" and is there any intersection with the group who are aborted disproportionately before they are born who we could call "pre-term internal sex organ feotii" and then does this relate to the ones who are at high risk of rape who we refer to as "those who wear veils" and so on and so on and so on.

The end point of this is that it becomes incredibly difficult to get the full picture. Because you can't say "girls in X are at high risk of being aborted before they are born, being excluded from education when they start their periods, early marriage and domestic violence". Have we lost something here ? I say yes very much so.

'Trans' is fine and why not? It indicates the difference in life experience, medical difference and prejudice they experience. I'm not being prejudiced by saying I am a woman and they are transwomen. Why can't trans be celebrated?

I like the way some people pretend that they don't actually know what man / woman / boy / girl / male / female mean.

99.999999% of the population know exactly what it means.

We have never had to give a precise definition because it has been the fundamental, first noticed, highly important for us as animals, categorisation.

We are mammals. All mammals know what male and what female is - they don't need words, it is a concept that goes back for as long as we've existed.

Anyone who says they struggle to understand what boy / girl means is telling whoppers.

Forgive me Ekphrasis but we still have words, do we not? We can still make ourselves understood, we can still express any distinctions we deem necessary, we're not losing that by expanding upon our definition of the word "woman" - are we?

Rat, it's clearly lost in much of the press and general population. If i'd heard or read much of this a couple of years ago I'd have been very confused as to what things actually meant, who was what, what did a TW actually mean.

I had no idea of the wider political and economic issues associated with my sex till I fulfilled my sex's purpose and had children and experienced the difference between my experiences, fellow mothers and those of my husband's becoming a father.

Semantics really matter in so many situations and all these words around this area have double meanings. IW said she was a 'real woman' - what it's real? What is truth? History has shown us that truth is in the eye of the recorder who is able to then bend it and change it at will.

Well, sure, if you reframe the issue to exclude all the areas in which the word "woman" not meaning what it's always meant is a problem then having that word mean something different isn't a problem. If you can't address the concerns that people keep bringing up, just ignore them!

I swear it's like trying to nail jelly to the table.

Let's see.

Suppose you have a qualification at work that relatively few others in your company have. It hasn't come cheap - getting that qualification means you haven't always been available, and you're pretty sure you've missed out on promotion and pay accordingly.

But there are certain positions in your company that demand the qualification you have, that has cost you so much, and you're pretty certain of getting one. You're happy: at last, an opportunity to show what you can do.

At the last minute, your employer re-defines the position. The qualification you earned at such cost has been adjusted so that other employees can 'earn' it with a few hours' self study. You know that as a result they can't offer nearly as much as you, but will be cheaper to promote.

Feel aggrieved at all?

Why must women give up the word that has described them for so long?

Woman has meant "adult human female" for centuries. It is our word, it is how we have described ourselves and our experiences. It is the word under which we have organized and campaigned for our rights and our spaces. Why must women give up that word, along with our rights and our spaces? Why do we not have the right to define ourselves in our terms? Why do we not have the right to even keep a word for ourselves, a word that has been used to specifically refer to us?

Transwomen are transwomen. We do not have the same experiences in life. Some of our issues overlap but not all of them. Why would anyone want to try to force two different populations, with different needs, under one label? This erases the needs and experiences of both women and transwomen.

Yes we are, RatPoly. We are losing out by expanding the definition of 'woman / women'.

Women's shelter
Women's health
Women's prison

All become problematic if you expand the definition of women to include 'men who self-identify as women'.

The problem with the change in language is that it removes and replaces the current well understood meanings of man/woman, male/female, girl/boy, making it very difficult to then talk about issues that affect one sex more than another.

I really feel it's a massive step backwards referring to girls around the world as "menstruators" or "non prostate havers" or any of the other terms that have been in circulation.

Framing by green party was "men" and "non men" which is handy as men are quite strict about guarding who is "one of them" and it means they can foist people who let's face it they've never liked much anyway, out of their group.

Many groups of males have been considered "not really men" - gay men, gender non conforming men, men who are very kind / like to work in childcare or whatever

Interestingly it's also men who tend to accuse women who are lesbian / GNC of not being "real women"

Much of the gatekeeping comes from men really - I mean men as a class across the world - lots of them like to have quite strict gender roles and dislike anyone who steps outside them .

RatPoly

Not really - it's inconsistent

Ireland have self ID but transmen not allowed to join priesthood
We have exception with current legislation for peers etc how they pass down to children

You have situations where TW are able to stay members of men only clubs, as these clubs are often entry by vote of current members I would suspect that they would not be keen on accepting transmen, not sure if it's happened yet

,,,

Forgive me Ekphrasis but we still have words, do we not? We can still make ourselves understood, we can still express any distinctions we deem necessary, we're not losing that by expanding upon our definition of the word "woman" - are we?

SEXism matters, and if we no longer have words to describe our SEX as a class of people, we have no words to describe our oppression and issues that discretely affect us. Women's rights and advocacy become erased when we lose our language of material commonality.

Absolutely. This is what Lily should have been told in response to "it's all women shortlist not all female shortlist".

It’s not - adult human female - simple!

Why do all your suggestions involve women giving way or women doing the emotional labour and campaigning?

They really don't, i didn't give that suggestion implying it was encumbent upon women. Merely that the fact that men are apparently being less legally obligated to accept the changes that women are being presented with does not mean it is the changes that are unreasonable - it is THE MEN!

shouldn't we rather be fighting for the transrights of transmen

That's great. Women have to spend their time fighting for the rights of transmen while trans rights activists seek to undermine women's spaces and identities.

Wouldn't it make sense for trans right activists to do the campaigning on behalf of transmen while leaving the women alone? Now, why is it that that won't happen?

If the greatest problem we have as women with being inclusive with our definition is that the act is not reciprocal, shouldn't we rather be fighting for the transrights of transmen? I really am just throwing this out there for discussion, it's not my entrenched viewpoint.

Why do women have to do that? Why don't the decent men fight for the rights of their "trans brothers"?

Why do all your suggestions involve women giving way or women doing the emotional labour and campaigning? Why can you not see this is Sexism 101?

I'm here for the W-O-M-E-N (which, by the way, includes transmen anyway, since they are gender-variant women). Why is that such a dreadful thing to be? Why must I be persuaded out of this?

The key thing is that women are being denied any sense of gatekeeping ability that men intrinsically have. We are being told that our basic ontology is being opened up, #nodebate, but the same obligation isn't being placed on men. It's men that the trans community need to take this up with. It's not up to women to sort out men's problems.

No transwoman is going to be dismissed for menstruating on their office chair after being denied toilet breaks.
No transwoman is going to be denied breastfeeding access at work.
No 25 year old newly married transwoman is going to be overlooked for appointment/promotion as a high maternity risk.
No transwoman in Bible Belt USA is being denied abortion access.

Absolutely, no transwoman will ever experience those things. There are other women who will also not experience those; women who are not mothers for example, or who are amenorrhoeic. What is certain is that the only group within which anyone will experience those issues is women.

Transmen will never be considered fully legally men.

If the greatest problem we have as women with being inclusive with our definition is that the act is not reciprocal, shouldn't we rather be fighting for the transrights of transmen? I really am just throwing this out there for discussion, it's not my entrenched viewpoint.

"My understanding is that the word "man" would undergo the same revision, no?"

Ha ha! No... the laws on primogeniture illustrate this vividly. The eldest child of an aristocrat, if born female but transitions to a transman, would be unable to inherit the title ahead of the younger brothers.

Men can transition to women fully in a legal sense. But it's not a two way street. (female) Transmen will never be considered fully legally men.

Funny how that reflects the assymetric power imbalance between the sexes. Which ever way up you stack gender, women as a sex class always seem to find themselves on the bottom of the sex hierarchy.

Ok, let's say the word "woman" may evolve. I'm saying we'll still need some crisp, discrete word for those with vaginas and the potential to be impregnated, who experience socialisation as that class of people and hence suffer structural disadvantage as a direct result of such characteristics.

No transwoman is going to be dismissed for menstruating on their office chair after being denied toilet breaks.
No transwoman is going to be denied breastfeeding access at work.
No 25 year old newly married transwoman is going to be overlooked for appointment/promotion as a high maternity risk.
No transwoman in Bible Belt USA is being denied abortion access.

SEXism matters, and if we no longer have words to describe our SEX as a class of people, we have no words to describe our oppression and issues that discretely affect us. Women's rights and advocacy become erased when we lose our language of material commonality.

Funny how the word "man" is tightly guarded, whereas "woman" is porous to appropriation.

My understanding is that the word "man" would undergo the same revision, no?