Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to say no one can define female gender clearly

54 replies

cerilere · 11/09/2026 10:38

AIBU to think that no body has ever been able to explain what female gender is.
I recently heard a guy say, 'if a guy throws a ball badly (he did an impression of a 2 year throwing a ball), then that's female gender.'

If sex and gender are different things, then what is female gender.

Please only respond with a definition of female gender that does not rely on regressive stereotypes.

YABU = here’s a definition
YANBU = No one has ever given a definition without using sexist stereotypes.

OP posts:
Wadsworthy · 11/09/2026 16:58

cerilere · 11/09/2026 10:43

To the poster who voted YABU please define female gender, thanks.

It's basic Feminism 101.

Sex = biology. In mammals, there are 2 sexes, and sex is immutable.
There are differences or variations in sexual development (DSDs or VSDs) where some aspects of biological sex suffer from a mutation (because sexual reproduction). But anyone with a DSD has a baseline sex of male or female.

Gender = gender roles and/or stereotypes, better expressed as sex-based stereotypes.
These are historically and culturally contingent.

For example, 50 years ago, women were paid less than men, because they were not seen as the family breadwinners. THat is a sterertype and a role based on a person's SEX, not their ability, qualifications, or anything else about them.

RedToothBrush · 11/09/2026 17:06

Gender = sex based stereotypes

That IS the definition.

Which is why it can't hold up in law without falling foul of sex discrimination laws in the UK.

Ponderingwindow · 11/09/2026 17:17

Gender is a set of arbitrary social rules imposed on a person because of their sex that restrict an individual’s freedom of choice.

Millytante · 11/09/2026 17:44

cerilere · 11/09/2026 12:41

But why would that mean he was a woman?

I don't believe this is a good faith thread you’ve posted, but in case you really are terribly confused try:

Woman = female SEX (ie in every cell in her bod)
Needs no accoutrements of ‘femininity’ to be a woman. (Need not aspire to a cartoon Jessica Rabbit silhouette!)
Dressing and indeed living as a lumberjack doesnt lessen her womanhood. A girl with short hair, a film star eschewing ballgowns on Oscar night, a flat chested uncurvy woman, etc etc: ‘female’ is a vastly capacious sex, encompassing every conceivable iteration of woman there could be (exactly as ‘male’ is re men) and there is only one thing which excludes a person from one or the other sex, and I hardly need spell it out.

Trans man = feminine GENDER (ie in outward expression, or manifestation.
All a ‘costume’, whether worn by a woman or a man, just as ‘masculinity’ is an assumed vibe in men and in trans women)

Very often, or more than very often, trans gender is expressed according an extremely retrogressive binary well out of date by the early Seventies, which is pretty ironic

New posts on this thread. Refresh page