What Makes A Woman?

[MxJackMonroe]

Hi MNers,

A couple of days ago I did an informal webchat ...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2693127-Im-Jack-Monroe-Ask-me-anything

...and it seemed to go quite well. One of the questions that came up was 'What Is A Woman'?

I'm throwing this one open to the floor - as I am interested to hear your opinions on it.

Please try to not railroad the thread with trans-bashing; it is a wider question than that, so keep responses respectful please.

Jx

I was actually asking in the material sense.

How are we going to grow plants for food or create more animals for meat, dairy and traction if we don't know what sex is?

Because knowing what sex an organism is is essential to that happening.

We will all starve to death without it.

Medically it's vital, I'd say.
Plus, also, sex education. I think it's important people know the difference and definition between sexes in order to reduce the risk of one of said sexes getting pregnant.......

(When I say reduce the risk, I'm talking teenagers/unwanted pregnancies etc....we obviously do need women to be able to get pregnant if they want to!)

When we don't have sex as category, how are we going to stop domestic pets reproducing so that we're over run with strays?

Or should I put pants on my dogs?

Because I'm worried that otherwise small children might notice that male cats and dogs have a penis and make a connection to human beings, and re invent the notion that there male and female humans.

"if they can prove a man is biologically female then they are female"

If they are biologically female, then they are a woman, not a man.

Really, it's like being down the effing rabbit hole talking to people who have decided that the word book means table now.

Ignoring the fact that women are oppressed because of their sex - or that there even are sexes - does not magic away the oppression.

Do Marxists get this kind of thing? Just pretend class doesn't exist - poof and the oppression is gone!

Yes, Crayon.

If we stop pointing out that some people work fifteen hours a day picking cotton while others purchase multi million dollar arms to threaten them, the cotton just picks itself!

Physical exertion doesn't exist if you make it no longer a category, just like childbirth and pregnancy!

How are we going to grow plants for food or create more animals for meat, dairy and traction if we don't know what sex is?

True. And to what extent do you believe that knowing the sex of a plant is a problem for feminism?

Medically it's vital, I'd say.

Indeed. And therefore of political significance, though not necessarily philosophical significance in terms of the question of what is 'woman'.

And I'm also really interested in how these questions skirt around heteronormativity, because as soon as 'woman' is centred around reproductive categories, I worry that we can too easily lose sight of non-heterosexual ways of being women. Just to press the point, unless I'm mistaken, no one has yet used the word 'clitoris' in their definition of 'woman' in this thread. Why is that?

Knowing the sex of both plants and animals is what makes the survival of our species possible.

It is completely impossible for feminism to exist in a world without the category 'sex' because human beings cannot survive without such a category.

It is literally as simple as chromosomes. XX = female XY = male. Anything else falls into genetic 'abnormalities' (horrible word) but are incredibly rare.

"we can too easily lose sight of non-heterosexual ways of being women"

Woman = Adult human female.

Who she finds attractive and whether that person has a penis or a clitoris has nothing to do with the definition of a woman.

what about Alex Drummond and Daniel Muscato? Both identify as women. Both are biologically male and look biologically male. Daniel Muscato makes no effort to present as feminine. Do you consider those to he men or women? I don't know them and I Have just googled who they are. I have read about them on Mn.
From how I have presented my argument. By looking at them, we would say that they are men based on the characteristics we associate with what they look like , i.e , The physical form of a man. However, if there is a scientific test that is agreed upon the state they are females ( not just chromosome but hormones) then they would be females. If they want me to call them a women then I would because it has no basis in what a female is because this can be changed and it has happened probably since the human race began as way of telling who is man and woman for mating.

I would say that because of physical appearance and how men and women make the effort in looking differently and conforming to the stereotypes of what each gender is meant be, dress, act and look like it has made it easier for women be oppressed. Reason being, it easier to see and pick a woman out of the crowd. Even if you are not their in person, your name is a big giveaway. So when feminist fight for equal rights they are fighting against the stenotypes associated with both being a female and a woman. The physical form and biological. What you can see and what you can't see including how people view women's intelligence, what they should want, like and should be.

It's the reproductive capabilities that cause the oppression in the first place. Along with the physical differences between the sexes that make those doing the oppressing generally physically bigger and stronger because their sex determines how much bone, muscle, fat etc is laid down.

The point being, that the reproductive capabilities set us apart because of the whole purpose of sexual dimorphism. It shouldn't define how we are treated. Except it does. And we need protections on that basis - those things which set us apart and define the source of why we are treated less fairly. We can't just magic away those differences in order to not be treated less fairly. Those differences need to be celebrated in order to oppose oppression, and prove that different doesn't mean less. Or in this case, "Woman" doesn't mean "Not a man". I'm sure others will say this way better than I am.

What makes is woman is any of the myriad of personal characteristics that women have. It might be being tall, it might be loving snoopy cartoons but if you were born a woman then you are a women.

quencher I'm so confused by your post? Are you saying people can change sex by using hormones?

Abortion, FGM I would consider this a feminist issue because it deals with issues that are being tackled under the ism of feminism. Which is a topic in female body and her physical appearance ( woman ) and how it's mistreated by society for the benefit of men.

For most of the time human beings have existed, they knew all of their potential reproductive mates.

They didn't need to guess who was who, or pick them out of a crowd.

People lived in small groups interacting with other known groups.

There is a massive difference between sex and gender.
We can still have sexes and that would not affect reproduction in both humans and other living things.

Quencher, your definitions do not make it impossible to make sense of your posts.

Female can refer to dogs, cats, horses etc. The only way we know you mean adult humans is because you keep saying the word woman after the word female, and we all know a woman is an adult human female.

Without us all knowing that, your posts would not make sense.

It's like if I said a fopia is the physical form of a female. Unless people know that a fopia is the adult of a particular species, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

And yes, we can have sex without gender. That's the point for many feminists.

It's the reproductive capabilities that cause the oppression in the first place.

I sort of agree, except that I'd say that the reproductive capabilities are the focus of the oppression in the first place, even though this 'first place' is prehistoric and therefore inaccessible. Still, making a biological distinction between men and women has, historically, had the principal purpose of oppressing women. As humans, I think men and women are more similar than they are different.

Politically, however, it is important to me to distinguish between men and women in order to protest against the oppression of women. But I still think that 'woman' is a social construct rather than a biological fact. And biological observations have not always been interpreted in ways that affirm women's equality to men. But I've droned on about feminist epistemology before.

I'm so confused by your post? Are you saying people can change sex by using hormones? I think if it's a naturally occurring, it should be considered. Am not too sure on my view when its artificial hormones

Female can refer to dogs, cats, horses etc. The only way we know you mean adult humans is because you keep saying the word woman after the word female, and we all know a woman is an adult human female. All the word "woman or women " I have mentioned have had its own context.
The woman is the form or appearance. The female is the real science term. It's what we are as half of the human sex and if we consider those who are born with both sexes, we could easily say one of three sexes. The case with the third sex is that they are usually grouped with the other two groups depending on where they best fit the category on the continuum of sex description.

The female is the real science term for what quencher?

The female is the real science term for what
For the half of the human race and other living things. The half that reproduces with the male. Yes, there are some people who can't and but they would still be female. It's not having all of the reproductive system that makes you a female. So, if a female was born with ovaries and no womb, she would still be a female. If human chromosomes is xx then she is a female.

Then a woman is not the physical form of a female, by your definition of female.

Because otherwise, by your definition, we would have to assume that cows and bitches and two day old baby girls were all women.

Which of course they are not, because a woman is an adult human female.