Alternative Definitions of 'Woman'?

[Dragoncake]

Do you disagree with the definition of 'woman' as 'adult human female'?

If you disagree, what is your own definition of the word?

A woman is....what exactly?

Is there even a definition? Or is 'woman' simply indefinable in your view?

On the 'A Woman is an Adult Human Female' thread I asked those who disagree to provide their alternative definition of the word.

Several people engaged, but nobody seemed able to do this.

If you have one, please post your alternative definition here. Thanks.

RatRolyPoly
I'm struck that your opinion seems firmly based in your academic experience. Would you mind telling me which subject this was? Or general field if that feels too outing?

fwiw, I agree with Rat that if I announce I identify as a man then ipso facto I identify as a man.

Where we disagree (I think) is that I'm not a man no matter how much I identify as one or have a surgically.

And then some clever dick comes along and recognises the pattern in the algorithm's new numbers and voila, the whole thing is a pattern again, and has always been, even when it wasn't, and will continue to be until someone recognises that in fact Mrs. Clever Dick made an error in her calculations and the whole thing doesn't exist any more.

This is silly.

There either is or there isn't a pattern. It is objective and independent of whether someone made a mistake in their judgement.

The person should say 'I think I see a pattern, but I could be mistaken'. That would be correct.
The fact that people can easily fool themselves and believe what they want to believe doesn't mean that objective reality doesn't exist.

You are conflating:

1. A pattern
2. 'It looked so promisingly like a pattern I was mistaken' and
3. 'Even though it wasn't really a pattern it served a purpose for a while'.

rat and argumentative feminist

Can I just ask, why do you feel the word woman should be redefined from 'adult human female' to 'adult human female and anyone who identified as such' rather than using another word such as feminine?

If I thought it would make a difference, I would say, have the word woman to mean "social presentation typically associated with female sex" . If we can have the word female. And if we can organise politically and socially around being female. Including in sex segregated spaces. But I'm not sure that is the end goal.

Why don't those arguing for self id ask Stonewall whether they will give full support to sex segregated spaces if we support self id (ie loss of the word woman to define ourselves). I think I know what their answer would be.

so Bacon thought knowledge is power and foucault thought power is knowledge?

I'm rather staggered that someone with a first is prattling about patterns with no reference to correlation or causation tbh.

If you see a pattern you need to properly understand what the pattern is actually showing.

But still I know nothing. I only got a 2:2. Inspite the best efforts of my then boyfriend.

I think I'm starting to get this.

There's a spectrum from stuff that's all about how we see it (niceness, attractiveness) to stuff that just happens whether we agree with it or not (death).

And until recently one thing we were all sure of was Woman/Man and that's why Shakespeare was able to write so much about what happens when women pretend to be men and vice versa.

But sometimes immutable things become more mutable because of changes to technology. Distance has changed from immutable to relative because of telecommunications.

And medical advances have moved sex differences along the spectrum from immutable to "a bit less immutable".

All very philosophically interesting. But the job of government is to stop the big strong people taking everything from the less big strong people.

Is "pattern" a good subject to discuss though? I think patterns are made in the head of the perceiver aren't they?

Red: what I find deeply offensive is his/her clear assumption that we are all so stupid that we will be blinded and over-awed by a wall of pomo text and a swamp of relativistic waffle.

It's profoundly offensive actually. Nobody is impressed.

But the job of government is to stop the big strong people taking everything from the less big strong people

Totally agree. It's an interesting discussion. But one with material consequences for women and girls if the government get their definitions wrong.

Interesting update OP. The second sex and all that.

"Just coming in quickly to catch up.

Thanks to someonesrealname who posted their definition at 0940. It seems to have been overlooked:

Woman: "any adult human whose behaviour and appearance do not satisfy contemporary cultural and social notions of what makes one 'a real man'"

We now have three alternative definitions in total:

RatRolyPoly:
"Woman = an adult human female, or one who identifies as such"

Argumentativefeminist at 0852
"Woman" is basically a social construct (Massive paraphrase there, which I hope you don't feel misrepresents your views. See AF's posts for more detail.)"

Prize to the first person to go around St Helens town centre on a Saturday afternoon after quoting Focault to the masses as an argument over how we should redefine the word women.

exactly Dragoncake.

Take pain, for instance. There are far more powerful arguments for treating pain as a social construct open for grabs than for treating "woman" as a social construct. After all, pain really is just a feeling.

But everyone knows there are material consequences to denying or redefining pain. So we rarely do it. We stop at the point of saying labouring women deserve to be in pain because Eve stole an apple so she deserved it. We don't say childbirth is painfree even though an undergrad could easily construct an argument to that effect.

Kevin Schofield @ polhomeeditor
A UK-wide Bank Holiday should be called if England win the World Cup, a spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn has said.

a) he doesn't think we will win
B) this is in no way controversial in Wales, Scotland or ni
C) little Englanders will love it

As I say, if we win, there will be a national outbreak of stupidity and brains turning to jelly.

But I might be amused at Corbyn trying to promote this idea in Dundee.

So Rat rapists and sex offenders that identify as women, are women in your eyes?

Same for autogynephilic males?

That's probably the most awkward instance in which I have ever missed a comma out.

Sorry wrong thread

to be fair to Rat, I think a lot of the response along the lines of "So you think this then!" to her are unfair.

She can make a philosophical point about how language works and hurt my feelings. She isn't stabbing me in the stomach.

It seems to me that what the majority of transwomen and transmen have in common is that they feel compelled to appear and act in a feminine/masculine way (hair, makeup, clothes) and none of the advocates on here want to admit that is their definition of woman/man because they know how superficial it is.

Like the comma fail. But an excellent question.

Also, what do you think about sport? Self identifying transwomen are already beating natal women at many sports and in some cases, getting sports scholarships intended for women. What is the "you're a woman if you think you're one"view on this?

Woman = an adult human female, or one who identifies as such"

That doesn't really work because it includes transmen, who are adult human females but identify as adult human males.

What you really mean is just 'anyone who identifies as an adult human female'... which is a nonsense definition unless sex is a purely social construct that can be freely adopted. For instance, I can identify as a socialist (social costruct) but I can't identify as half my age (biological reality).

Yourmajesty, if we're doing undergrad philosophy stuff, it's irrelevant whether the people identifying as women are nice or nasty.....

You're leaping ahead to the real world consequences too soon. It's another "so Rat you think Stalin was justified in XYZ" thing.

Rat is propagating a baseless ideology that hurts women and girls, and has been unable to defend or justify it.

Or explain it.

Since "identifies" is the present form of the verb, does one constantly have to identify as such or is once or once a day/week/month/year enough? Does one identify as such when sleeping or unconscious?

If definitions of women and men are solely boiled down to social constructs, are people who lack the capacity to identify with these constructs no longer men or women?