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

[Hullygully]

Spin off from TAATAAT.

Beyond the focus of mtf trans and "born-women" only spaces.

Why do you have to be defined in that way?

Why can't you just "be"?

I don't know. Why not indeed?

I prefer to call myself a person

I wrote a paper on this when I was at uni. Basically, no matter how you define men and women you can always find one exception to the rule (for example, if you define women as people with XX chromosomes and men as people with XY chromosomes where does that leave people who are born with XY chromosomes but have the external appearance of a woman and are raised as one?). The only meaningful definition of gender/sex is one that people arrive at for themselves. Therefore if MTF transsexuals wish to define themselves as female who are we to tell them that they're not?

I'm a woman because I identify with that social construct. And I have the female genitals and bosoms. But I don't internally put 'woman' above 'me' iyswim.

Socialisation?

I was thinking about those people who've been in the news recently who chose not to tell their child what gender they were and the big hoohah that caused.

I agree Alexander.

Yy DH, people were terribly threatened by it.

The Jesuit St Francis Xavier said "Give me the boy until her is seven and I'll show you a man."

Simone de Beauvoir said "A woman is made, not born."

What makes women, women and men, men, is societal insistence that, at whatever the cost to the individual, the gender binary exists.

Dowager Yes, I was going to add about the fuss and nonsense over the families who chose to raise their children without gender. The usual response was that poor boy will be bullied at school, because he wears 'girly' clothes and has a ponytail. (only middle aged men, with the whiff of a midlife crisis about them, can get away with a ponytail - joke).

How do you "identify with that social construct"? I'm genuinely interested - how does that work?

I agree there will always be exceptions, but:

-Women have XX chromosomes; men XY
-Women's bodies therefore have the reproductive system we recognize as female (ovaries, uterus, external genitalia) and men have the reproductive system we recognize as male.

• Women's bodies therefore produce some of their hormones in different concentrations/combinations from men's bodies.

And - this last one is important in our society, but I would really hope one day it would stop mattering -

• From birth (ie., before we knew about it or could choose), the visible signs of the things I mention above are used to categorize us into genders. Gender is not the same as biological sex, but the experience of growing up and living in a society that uses male and female as its most important distinguishing categories is central to what we're like as people. I wish this were not so.

But how can we judge which exceptions are acceptable and which aren't LRD?

I'm not sure I agree with experimenting on children but it is interesting.

As a single mother of a son and a feminist, I've deliberately not tried to push his down a path of gender-specific toys but it has definitely happened to him the more he's been exposed to wider society. He now has very firm views on girls' toys and boys' toys and what he should and shouldn't be interested in as a boy and that is entirely down to things other people (teachers, carers, other children) have said to him.

LRD - it isn't that straightforward tho, see prior chromosomal egs given (above or poss on other thread).

Alexander, above, indeed

-Women have XX chromosomes; men XY
-Women's bodies therefore have the reproductive system we recognize as female (ovaries, uterus, external genitalia) and men have the reproductive system we recognize as male.

• Women's bodies therefore produce some of their hormones in different concentrations/combinations from men's bodies.

Those 3 don't always go together in the "correct" combinations though.

So my friend's daughter who was born without ovaries and uterus, by that definition she fails the woman test?

Because if you're going to say no she's a woman, then if one of the 3 criteria can be missing or wrong, so can the others.

I'm not too sure about experimenting with children either, but in the case of a genderless family, the perceived 'harm' by observers was really only because it went against the societal insistence of a gender binary. Heaven help you if you cross that line as you will be seen as abusive parents who deserve to lose their child.

On the other hand (and please I'm not being transphobic when I write this but I feel it needs to be addressed in this context), it's perfectly ok to put a child through sex reassignment surgery, or to give them hormones pre teens to prevent puberty (which renders the child sterile), and this is because it fits perfectly into societal insistence that the gender binary exists.

Hmm. I just do. I tend to lean towards the 'feminine'. I feel comfortable adopting that role. Whether that is due to something inate or a lifetime of conditioning is open for debate. Social constructs of gender can be comforting, like putting on old slippers. That's not to say that they aren't damaging. But there is comfort in what we know.

Just to clarify, the first line of my post above isn't invisible, is it?

No, LRD I saw it - that's why I asked how we judge what exceptions are acceptable and which aren't

Is it okay to give children hormones to prevent puberty? I'm not sure that it is. I have friends with a very severely disabled daughter and I know it's something they have thought about but they feel very conflicted about it. Is there any other reason people give their children hormones to prevent puberty?

perhaps it's just that everything needs to be addressed on a case by case basis

Sorry, hathor, I know you saw it. I don't see why we have to judge.

To clarify, I guess I'd say that if you have none of the things on my list, I want to know, what do you have that defines your sex? I can't think what it would be, but if you do have something, I assume this thread is the place to say what it is, right?