Defining a woman by her sex is not reducing her to her biology

I get what you're saying Outy and I think you've articulated it remarkably well. Interestingly I think your feelings may offer some insight into how trans people feel. This is entirely my interpretation of what you've said, so if it's all bunkum, feel free to tell me that!

From what you're saying it seems that you have a very contained, defined sense of being a girl/woman, that over the last few years, through adverse events (?) or trauma (?) become very separated in your mind from your body. Looking back you feel that that sense of being a girl/woman was always there, before you ever had conscious knowledge of it, and now that sense hasn't changed, even though your body has. So your feeling is that your body is actually superfluous to the sense of being a woman.

I think that your body once did very strongly represent your femininity to you, an outer expression of an inner feeling. But now it no longer express it, because it doesn't fit with how you feel inside, so you've rejected it from your sense of being a woman.

Why doesn't your body reflect how you feel? Is it because you have expectations of how a female/feminine body should be? Where did those expectations come from? If you are feminine, why would your body not be feminine, given that it's yours?

I'm curious to hear what you think.

'Metaphysical'....just quit with the faux-interlectual stuff. Its not complicated, its secondary school level biology

Its your personality which leads you to enjoy femininity

Agreed about being forced to argue defensively.

There was another interesting thread either yesterday or the day before where people had started talking about the current trend for thinking of the identity as fixed and the body as malleable - and the implications of that on ideas about gender. Before I even had chance to formulate my thinking and post on it it had got swamped by yet another load of goadiness where people have to explain for the gazillioneth time that they are not vile, bigoted or full of hatred, just because they question an ideology.

And it is a shame, because these things are interesting to me and part of feminist thought and discourse and it feels like no-one has time to talk about them because their all off fire-fighting the latest assault or accusation.

Also, it does not have to be 'metaphysical'. De Beauvoir wasn't metaphysical when she discussed the becoming of woman and nor were a lot of other second-wavers.

Woman/female is litetally a shorthand description of your anatomy and physiology.

Exactly. Someone told me that to define "woman" according to biology meant I must see all women as walking vaginas.

I know humans are vertebrates but it doesn't mean I see everyone as a walking spine...

OP I believe many people experience God in a very real manner. I am very interested in these experiences as they expand my view of the world we live in and I get angry when people ridicule these experiences. But I draw the line at using them to legislate our daily life.

I've been having one of those "I wish I said" moments... debate a while ago with brainwashed previously critical-thinking (male) friend ended up at basically asserting transwomen were women because he believed so. Wish I'd calmly said "that's fine to believe that, I'm glad you're aware you are taking an entirely faith-based position"... might have been the one thing to hit home. Sigh.

Nope, I really do think that "woman" means "adult human female" and don't believe in any of the metaphysical stuff

I guess I come at this from a different angle, which is as someone who was involved in the second wave and has a bookshelf full of feminist theory and was used to more open debate and less polarised positions in a different era.

I agree, and I can't help thinking that answers are very circumscribed by the need to maintain a particular 'definition' of woman in a way that circumscribes more interesting ontological debate.

Nope, I really do think that "woman" means "adult human female" and don't believe in any of the metaphysical stuff.

This is such a fascinating thread

I agree, and I can't help thinking that answers are very circumscribed by the need to maintain a particular 'definition' of woman in a way that circumscribes more interesting ontological debate.

That's something else that irritates me about this trans rubbish - we are being pushed into a corner and being forced to argue defensively instead of engaging in more creative projects.

A female body alone does not make a woman.

Huh? Even if a body is dead and has been dead for hundreds of years it is still possible to correctly identify whether that person was a man or woman.

My sense of being a girl developed before I really understood that there were physical differences between girls and boys (no brothers)

This is interesting - I don't think I ever developed a sense of being a girl or a woman - in fact, I spent most of my lift feeling that I didn't deserve to be a woman (even embarrassed to use the word to describe myself).

Whatever it is that made me that way, I passed some of it onto my sons (who at least aren't embarrassed) because neither of them make a big deal about being a boy, it doesn't seem to be something they think about much - DS1 didn't know the difference until he was about 5 (because he didn't care enough to retain the knowledge, not because I kept him ignorant).

BTW Altered Carbon is a load of male-centric, violent tripe - I really don't recommend it!

Femininity has nothing to do with being a woman outy....some of it is preference/personality and alot of it is social conditioning. This is proven by the gazillion non-feminine women and wimen who dont 'like lavender and lace'

Woman/female is litetally a shorthand description of your anatomy and physiology. Unaltered by you feeling dissociation from your own body. Many women feel dissociation from their bodies due to trauma/abuse and failing to meet societal expectations

This is such a fascinating thread.

DH and I watch a lot of sci-fi and I was thinking only the other day how common the whole 'minds/consciousness being stored and downloaded into bodies' thing is in sci-fi narratives and how this endorses the notion of separate minds and bodies and completely overlooks their interconnection.

Travelers, for example, has people's minds being sent back in time to inhabit the bodies of people just before they die. And we just tried Altered Carbon where everyone's consciousness is kept on a 'stack' which is downloaded into a 'sleeve'.

Does anyone know if there is any evidence that this would ever be even a remote possibility, or will this quickly join the ranks of outdated sci-fi cliches??

It wouldn't shock or surprise me if there were a world wide competition for femininity (should a world-wide criteria for the "feminine" be ever agreed upon) and it was won by a man.

It wouldn't make that man a woman.

Femininity does not equal woman.

I am not very feminine. My inner self doesn't exude any femininity and I'm not drawn to feminine things. I am female though.

If I woke up tomorrow, discovered my life so far had all been a dream and I had a penis and testicles I'd still be the same person inside in terms of feelings and preferences, but I would be a man.

I find the suggestion that it is me,or the deciding factor in what makes me me a bit insulting.

You're saying it's reductive. It's not, it's overarching. No one is saying that your female body makes you a certain way, that's exactly what we're not saying.

A woman is an adult himan female. That is her sex. Everything else is her personality

Are we talking about the difference between legal definitions and something more metaphysical or ontological?

Quite a bit of feminist theory addresses the latter.

You are your body. You were born into it, you grew up in it. All your experiences have been filtered through living in that body.

My body changed so much but I didn't change with it. It slowly just became a thing in my eyes, it's not me.

I get this. I'm disabled, I find it incredibly difficult to feel that this body is me. It's the cage I live in.

So I get the disconnect.

But that doesn't mean that my womanhood is separate from my body. It is integral to it. My body is what makes me a woman, but it isn't entirely what makes me - me.

It does impact to a large degree though, for example my experiences have helped form me into who I am, and many of them are related to my female body. Eg. how I've been treated differently to my brother and male peers.

unless being a woman means nothing

Mate, to me as a feet-of-clay atheist, your whole post is quasi-religious mumbo jumbo. I appreciate that sounds rude and I'm sorry about that, but it's how I see it.

Being a woman means being an adult human female.

It puts no more "womanly" obligations on your than does the colour of your eyes or the size of your feet. It's just a biological classification related to potential reproductive function.

You can be all of those things that you feel. And I wish you well in your self-actualisation. But none of those things are related to the fact that you are an adult human female.

A female body is not a corpse. That's a misogynistic and frankly rather alarming thing to say.

Rigjt, so let's start with body and mi d being separate. I only realised how separate they were after having children. My body changed so much but I didn't change with it. It slowly just became a thing in my eyes, it's not me. I find the suggestion that it is me,or the deciding factor in what makes me me a bit insulting. You cannot deny a separation, your mind may result from your body (although there is much philosophical and theological discussion to say otherwise but I'm not much of a philosopher and quite frankly don't care). Your intellect creates a world through which you experience the physical world. Your body is the bridge between the two providing sensory feedback through your brain to your mind and making your intentions into physical actions. My mind informs my physical experiences, not the other way around. My sense of being a girl developed before I really understood that there were physical differences between girls and boys (no brothers). Obviously my body is female but my intellectual self is also female. I'm not a person inside a woman's body I am a woman inside a woman's body.

As for finding it easier to understand women I suspect that that is largely due to somewhat similar experiences in contrast the men, I have no idea what it's like to be a man, I really cannot imagine it. But it's more of a general discord with masculinity in general. I have always just had an affinity with feminine things, even before finding out that they are considered so by others. And I commonly find femininity in most things, even masculine things. I see the femininity is things and people before I see the masculinity. This is very difficult to conceptualise because it has always just been intuitive form me.

Fundamentally let's put it this way. A female body alone does not make a woman. A female body alone is a corpse. A thing. It is the metaphysical elements of ourselves that make us anything, including women. To say someone is defined by their body or is their body is objectifying in that light. All generalisations about what makes women women are reductionist by nature but unless being a woman means nothing (which is not the case in my experience) then it isn't your body that makes you a woman. I can't rightly say what does, just what doesn't, what hasn't in my experience. I do ofvpurse accept that for many women it is something that they grow into through experiences of their female bodies but that is not true of all women. Maybe the your body makes you a woman is a good generalisation in that it is true for most women (this thread makes me think so) but I have always found womanhood to be inherent (before this I though it was the same for most people).

Honestly, I do find the suggestion that I am a woman just because I have XX chromosomes a bit insulting and reductionist. My body has informed my femininity to an extent and it has by far been the greatest factor in determining my experience of life (I'm a SAHM from a young age)

Leaving aside femininity (which I think is a social construct that is imposed on us from the outside and is oppressive), I'm wondering if you have read Simone de Beauvoir? She said 'one is not born a woman; rather one becomes one' and what you are saying reminds me rather of that. Simone talks about cultural inscription on the base of the body. Later pomo feminists and those who came from a cultural studies background (the sane ones and before they disappeared up Homer Simpson's backside) used a similar constructivist approach to explain how we internalised ideas of what 'being a woman' was all about. This was not so much about mind and body as about 'learning through doing to the point of feeling and being'. Without checking I think it was Rosalind Coward who wrote about femininity as being seductive because it is about provoking desire, which is something sensual and operates through the body. Who was it who wrote about how bodies remember? I'm wondering if this is what you are getting at?

I just fail to understand men the way that I can understand women

But 'women' aren't one collective hive mind that you understand or don't (same for men).

Do you mean you understand feminine women (& then what about all those women that aren't feminine?)

Or that you understand women because they go through the same biological processes and have the same societal pressures as you? Because those are external things rather than an internal sense of being.

I also regard dualism (separation of mind and body) as a religious belief and I do not share it.

And, personally, I think saying that certain personality types can only belong to one kind of body is the side that's being essentialist here.

As usual, the TRAs take a word, and completely change its meaning:

essentialism

the view that categories of people, such as women and men, or heterosexuals and homosexuals, or members of ethnic groups, have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or dispositions.

I sometimes think their vandalism of language is the most annoying thing about them.