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

I find that when you read about transwomen/ trans women that there is no definition of what it means - whether it is someone who has had surgery and takes hormones, or someone who 'feels like a woman'.

That is confusing enough and I am sure there is intention that it should be.

However, when I first started reading about this, I thought a trans woman was a woman who dressed like a man etc (although I had no idea anyone took testosterone). Therefore, the 'transwomen are women' mantra made perfect sense to me, because however they presented, they are still women, and I thought that their needs were not being met.

Am I just daft?

I suppose it depends if you believe that Sex is independent to chromosomes. That it is inherent to your being in the way you can argue sexuality is. If that is true then your sex is different to gender and other nurturing influences and simply discovered when a discrepancy between this and your genitals arises.

In relation to sport this is interesting

They always mention Caster Semenyu, which pisses me off. There is a difference between an athlete who has always been considered to be female, but has varied hormone labels because of an intersex condition and an athlete who was a boy man for 20/30 years and now is allowed to compete against women.

Basically men who "feel" they are women are using the relaxation of rules for intesex women to their advantage. There are very few intersex athletes, but this ruling opens up the whole of women's sport to exploitation by much greater numbers of mtf transpeople.

Or do we? What's the current legal/moral obligation? Is there one? Does anyone know?

The current legal obligation can be found in the equality act/gender recognition act.

Only people with a Gender recognition certificate are recognised as having changed their legal gender. This can't be done under the age of 18.

A proposed consultation on changing this to a system of self identification has been delayed.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/justine-greening-delays-divisive-plan-for-easy-gender-swaps-gm77qd9gn

Since Greening has now left the cabinet, there is every possibility it will just be quietly shelved.

Pootles I'll happily sign your petition to have a tree preservation order granted on you. Trans trees are trees! Those cis trees can STFU, we need to get over the bigoted idea that trees don't have legs!

So anyone can be a woman then, depending how they're feeling at any given time?

Can I be a tree? I feel rooted and like my hair/leaves blowing in the wind. So therefore I will identify as a tree.

We have to acknowledge that a transwoman, born with male genitals, is a woman, always was and always will be.

Unless they detransistion and then they were never a woman at all, ever.

We are being told... By whom, one wonders?

If I asked some TRAs or “trans allies” why they consider me a woman, what would they say? That I am a woman because I “feel like” or “identify as” a woman?

Because personally I find that bloody offensive (like many people on this board). I don’t “feel” like a woman. I have spent more of my life feeling frustrated and confined by the expectations placed on me because of my gender than I have spent embracing them. My biology is just an accident of birth. I don’t “identify” with it - it is just what I have been born with and what I have dealt with through the potential for pregnancy, abortions, periods, feeling physically weaker and more vulnerable etc.

The definition is nonsensical for the vast majority of people if it is not about biology. It is why I get so frustrated with people parroting “transwomen are women” (and demanding we all declare our belief in that mantra) without ever explaining what is actually meant by it.

A woman is someone who is not a man, she is an adult female.

She has or has had a womb, ovaries, produced eggs, monthly periods, the constant battle between caring for children and having a career, been overlooked as she isn't a man, has not got and never has had a penis.

Think that covers it but there may be more...

Well we know little OJ doesn't actually believe it, because he totally threw his toys out the pram when someone suggested that if he really did believe it, as a gay man he would be prepared to go down on a pre-op transman's vulva. He screamed homophobia very loudly at that point.

Funnily enough, when lesbians object to lady penises, they are accused of being TERFs. When little OJ objects to manly-cunt, he remains a darling of the Graun-reading classes. Now, what could possibly be the salient difference between the two situations? Hmm, I wonder.

People have taken the word 'woman' and redefined it, given it a circular definition: anyone who identifies as a woman. They have then insisted that everyone else goes along with their meaningless 'definition'.

The shocking thing is that people in power (politicians, journalists etc) have gone along with this without question. Although perhaps it's not all that shocking as so many of the people in power are men.

We are really living in an Orwellian society and we (women) no longer have the right to define ourselves as a separate group.

Honestly, I'm not confused despite all the gaslighting.

Nor do I think that Owen Jones, Jeremy Corbyn, Wes Streeting et al. believe that men can become women, either. Heaven alone knows why they are going along with all this nonsense.

I was a Corbyn supporter until very recently. My God, have the scales fallen from my eyes!

Isn't it funny how the definition of 'man' gets to retain a tight parameter, yet the definition of 'woman' has to be opened up and determined nebulous, ethereal and ambiguous? It's almost as if that control were replicated in how those respective classes were treated in society and the political system...

Well, it's not illegal to say it. But it will be, which is why we are shouting about it so much.

Great tweet from HopePink (a gender critical transwoman who happily calls himself "he").