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

[MagnificentDelurker]

Hi mumsnet
Long term lurker here. First started reading mumsnet for education boards and then got addicted. I always avoided feminist boards. The reasons need another thread. Then I came across trans threads and I clicked on them as I did not have strong views on trans rights and it seemed a safe topic to explore feminist chats. I was off course supportive of said rights in an inactive let live way. IN fact I had to avoid these threads as well because I found the anti trans opinions too strong. But a seed of discomfort stayed with me and I braved the boards every once in a while and then I got hooked. I joked to my DP that I am being radicalised.

I finally registered today to comment because of the thread telling women here that defining a woman by biology is reductionist. This phrase really gets to me. Biology is the only way to define women that can accommodate all women regardless of personality or particular experience. This is the starting point of telling women that they can be anything. The other option is defining by degree of femininity or just expanding the term. So unless we make the term woman meaningless we are reducing women to feminist. I can understand many people meaning this when they say transwomen are women. But experting feminists to do so is beyond pale.

I have nothing new to add as everything I have said has been said thousands of times but needed to rant.

Completely agree. The patronising tone of why are you reducing women to vagina really gets me.

It’s mostly done by males who desperately want to be women. Why they do it is a mystery.

Outy -thanks for your explanations. I think it is very likely that some people do have a sense of disconnect between what you describe as a physical and metaphysical self, and that when someone feels feminine but is male bodied then gender dysphoria arises. I also think that most people do not feel a sense of having a separate physical and metaphysical self.

Can I ask you to ponder this? What are the traits that make your metaphysical self feel feminine? If you lived in a society where traits such as being nurturing, taking care of your appearance, kindness and softness (or whatever traits you associate with your metaphysical femininity) were seen as masculine, and femininity was associated with strength, hardness, emotional repression etc, do you still think you would describe your metaphysical self as feminine?

I guess I am confused about the idea that a brain/mind can be separate from the body, which seems a modern conceit. We are one being and our experiences are as an embodied beings, we are hairy mammals not an "idea". There seems this obsession with wanting to escape and deny our bodies. It makes sense when to be a female person means to be sexualized and objectified but we are real physical beings taking up space. Denying the reality of our biology does not erase it. It seems a lack of joined-up thinking about political and philosophical ideas have got us to a place where a person with a penis can claim to be a woman and are trying to criminalize objective observations to the contrary.

Outy, I think I understand where you're coming from. I don't think this is an issue that is confined to sex/gender, but encompasses the whole of human experience and our desire not to be 'reduced' to a body. This comes back to the fact that we are self-conscious animals, who are in denial of the fact that we are ultimately animals.

Experiencing one's mind as separate from the body is a universal experience, I think. Hence why mind-body dualism is such a widespread and long-standing philosophical concept. Trans ideology is rooted in mind-body dualism (a self that doesn't 'match' the body) and that's why it makes so much instinctive sense to people, even though, looked at logically, it doesn't make any sense at all. How can someone be 'born in the wrong body'? You are born as a body; you are not a separate being from your body.

It reminds me of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, where a taxidermist is in love with a woman who refuses to marry him because she is repulsed by the nature of his work, which she finds offensive to her deepest sense of herself as more than just an animal, physical being:

Does she know the profits of it? "She knows the profits of it, but she don't appreciate the art of it, and she objects to it. 'I do not wish,' she writes in her own handwriting, 'to regard myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that bony light.' " Mr. Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an attitude of the deepest desolation.

I was brought up a Catholic and so very much with the idea of having a soul. But every experience I have ever had has used my body: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. I am aware of being in my body all the time, especially when it's not functioning very well. I've never been able to do that yoga thing when you disassociate from your body (in fact trying to meditate makes me hyper sensitive to my bodily sensations) and I find the idea of dualism very difficult to truly understand. My mind is my body and vice versa. There is no waking up in another body because out of my body there is no mind. My personality is a product of my brain, formed from raw genetics plus every experience of my body from conception to the second I write this and beyond. If I had been conceived male instead of female then I'd be someone else. You can't be 'born this way' in mind and not body, they are the same.

I'm not ashamed of my biology and thus don't find it offensive when people acknowledge that it exists.

I feel like with some of the more over to top "omg don't mention genitals that's intrusive and upsetting) people there may be a history of CSA that's contributing to their panicked response. There's a whole lot of trauma as a motivation for transition among girls that's being swept under the rug, I suspect. Problem is though, expecting the rest of the world not to acknowledge your or by extension their sex ever is not reasonable and isn't going to work. Individual coping mechanisms can't be imposed on the general population, it's just not a workable solution.

One the mystical unexplained feminine essence stuff though, sorry, not buying it. I think that we develop a sense of ourselves as female or male based on both our bodies and our life experiences. Children are aware of the distinction between girls and boys from a very young age. That has an impact on how we see ourselves and others, who we relate to, etc. The rest is veering in a religious or spiritual sort of direction and being an atheist is actually legal in the UK (and a lot of other countries).

Biology is the only way to define women that can accommodate all women regardless of personality or particular experience.

That is brilliantly put.

It's how we all, generally, understand it, but I've yet to see it described so succinctly.

OutyMcOutface

Your post interested me too.

Because I've given it a fair amount of thought myself.

When I first read the feminist theory that there is little difference between men and women apart from their biology, a part of me felt a little indignant.

Like you, I feel as though I 'get' women. Not on a massively profound, telepathic level, just generally.

And that, often recognised, common bond led me to the conclusion that there are differences other than physical.

But, after seeing many feminists' conviction, I began to challenge my own thinking. Partly to prove to myself that I was right.

And that's where I became unstuck.

Because, try as I might to analyse and articulate the differences, I struggled.

Every time I thought, yes but women are more...or women tend to... I realised that I could find any number of men who were 'more' or 'tended to', and any number of women who weren't.

So it wasn't an innate difference that all women shared, and all men didn't.

And simply can't be described as such.

I do agree, wholeheartedly, that men and women behave differently, often.

And on an anonymous online forum like this, it's incredibly interesting to see the difference in how men and women relate to the same topic. On the same thread.

It has become fairly obvious, to me, that it's lack of experience navigating life as a female, that will inform men's opinion. Not an innate difference in their thinking.

And that experience, will be something that an incredible number of women share, irrespective of their personalities or the way they think.

Human interaction only has two sections, men and women.

My shared experience with women has got nothing to do with my personality. Because there are very many women who simply don't have the same characteristics as me.
The only thing we have in common is biology, and yet that does inform our experience.

Not just the obviously biological one, but the way we interact with both other women and men. The way we are treated. The things that are expected of us. The things we expect of ourself.

I would be really interested, since I have tried to do it myself, whether you can describe the essence that you feel makes you a woman, that does not link directly to the fact that you are different, or are treated differently, because of your biology.

I don't understand the idea of the mind being separate from the body.

My mind is part of me - it is produced by neurons or whatever in the brain. My neurons, my brain, part of my body. I don't see how you can separate the two.

I am a woman. It is a biological label. I am also a mother, a daughter, a sister, a professional, a crocheter and many other things. None of these reduce me; they simply describe something about me. It is not necessary in all circumstances to give full details about every facet of my life, and not doing so is not reductive. It is normal and practical.

If 'woman' is not a biological label, then what is the point in it as a word?

Totally agree with you OP . And great username too!

Exactly, Lefkoskia. The brain is part of the body, and is shaped by experience. Who we are now is in very large part the result of the experiences we've had from birth until the present moment. Being biologically female has a huge impact on what those experiences were from when we were babies and are now. There's no way to separate these things out, because we are not brains in jars.

As yet, I have heard no reasonable explanation of how a person with male biology is in any meaningful way a woman.

I don't care about your appearance - it is irrelevant.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Quite a bit of feminist theory addresses the latter.

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

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.

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.

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??

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