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.

That was a really good wall of text fermats...

However, I really do think it is as simple as;

What is being lobbied for is restructuring of society according to gender identity rather than sex. Is there any justification for this? IMO absolutely not. Would doing this improve society, in the context of human rights/discrimination? IMO absolutely not, in fact I believe, not only would it make things worse for women, but it would make things worse for trans people.

Should trans people benefit from protection from discrimination, be treated with dignity, have their trans status respected, benefit from concerted effort to be included equally in society? Absolutely yes. Are the current systems achieving this? I would say no.

However what is being proposed does not represent an advance in any of these areas IMO, what it represents is the replacement of sex with gender, something objectively measurable with something undefinable and individual, anyone who believes this will result in laws that better protect trans people is very naive.

Therefore (and here's the real sleight of hand in my books) the word is up for grabs to be redefined in what I personally see as a political power grab - people with power (middle class white males with a university education which gives them access to po-mo word salad) are now free to cut the word completely adrift from its reference to "pertaining to the class of humans capable of gestating and lactating" and leave only the extraneous political baggage of performance of femininity, submission, subordination.

EXACTLY.

Thank you.

Yep. Why is structuring society around gender considered "woke"?
Why is structuring society around sex considered bigoted?

Gender is the system of power that oppresses 50% of the population.

You don't dismantle systems of oppression by merely giving the illusion of rotating the axis of power around 90 degrees. Biological differences are an immovable feast. By adopting the language of gender ideology you at the same time remove the language that oppressed cohort have to talk about their oppression. It's rendered unspeakable, but it's still there, viscerally real, because it offends a tiny cohort among the oppressor class.

Because it is in the interests of those in power to dismantle systems which protect those who are vulnerable to abuses of power.

Because, IMO, many of the people and organisations lobbying for this are either blinkered or corrupt.

YY... it's a power-grab back of all the gains that women have made over the past couple of centuries. It's antithetical to women's rights.

I identify as a dandy highwayman so can’t help. Soz.

I identify as a Korean ferment, so I'm not even human, so I can help even less. Double soz

The tories have deliberately targeted women to shoulder the burden of austerity. How perfect it would be for them if they could define away women as a class...

Call me cynical if you wish but I do believe this is being supported because they have calculated that it is a way in which rights and protections can be dismantled, it will render sex discrimination useless unless it is direct discrimination, it will not result in an additional burden relating to trans people and it will give them political capital...

It is the perfect cause for the Tories...

Rat

I get the impression you are fit, strong, middle or upper middle class, financially secure, have excellent childcare and probably pay for housework. Your other half does their fair share.

You don’t work part-time, don’t expect to look after aging parents, expect and attain career progression and pay rises.

You are self-confident, secure in your looks.

You are an optimist, life is pretty good and you will be able to overcome any problems. You have 3 months salary in savings.

Yes Offred... it's like one of those invisible eye pictures... you look at the picture and see loads of tiny images of individuals and their sparkly gender identities. You look deeper into the picture, and you discern the word "neoliberalism" and you realise that is what, ultimately, this is all about.

Well that was unfortunate: I meant to delete the above but hey ho

argumentativefeminist You appear to be mixed up about the point about the arbitrariness of words/signs and meanings. Words/signs are only arbitrary in the sense that there's no particular reason to use the sequence of sounds (or letters) in 'dog' (English) to refer to that animal, vs. the sequence of sounds in 'chien' (French) to refer to it instead (and so on for other languages).

But once a word/sign exists and is accepted within a language or a community of speakers, then it is much more difficult to quickly, dramatically or arbitrarily change that word/sign’s meaning, because a large number of speakers in the language community need to go along with its new meaning (as you can see in the pushback here when trying to use 'woman' to refer to gender identity or male instead of the dictionary/biological sex definition, a.k.a. adult human female).

You can't identify yourself as Black, young, disabled or British because they all have a physical basis (where you're from, when you were born, the ways in which your body operates). Although, sometimes we do let people who /feel/ British despite having been born elsewhere or moved away for a long time identify as British. Nobody seems to get too het up about it.

The problem with identifying as black, young, or disabled, when you are not, are in part to do with the fact that those people are disadvantaged in our society currently. British people are not disadvantaged in Britain, so far less of an issue letting anybody identify as a British person. Although whether or not identifying as British actually gets around others' prejudice to bring a person all the advantages of being British is debatable.

In this analogy, British starnds for male humans, btw, and any of the other categories stand for female humans.

totally agree with your cynicism offred

And also what fermatstheorem and offred said!

Incidentally, on the topic of race, this is a fascinating observation from 'the world's first cyborg', Neil Harbisson (a colour-blind artist), about how similar different skin colours actually are, at a fundamental level: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdT4KZ-_-FM

If being a woman 'isn't grounded in physical reality' then why do trans women take female hormones, get breast implants and sometimes orchiectomies (removal of testicles) and vaginoplasty (construction of neo vagina from penis and other tissue)?

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?

And I'd add the question: what if someone is lying - "I am a woman" when they believe themselves to be a man? Are they then defined to be a woman without any further challenge?

(I'm wondering whether I should have a different username for posting on this board, so I can conveniently identify as a woman for five minutes while I post here).

I don't see why not DadDadDad. I'm declaring that dogs find me mysterious, regardless of whether they actually do or not.

Rat, you say that anyone who is inclined to raise their hand when asked if they are a woman is a woman. But this reduces 'woman' to nothing more than a shallow behavioural disposition. On your definition, if every male bodied person in the world suddenly began saying 'oh yeah, I'm a woman' then they would be women - but this is surely nonsense. As others have pointed out, if you change the definition of 'woman' such that it becomes unbuckled from reality then the category no longer exists.

It's quite obvious to me that trans individuals want to be seen and regarded as female - they want to be women. Normally we tell people 'well, tough - you aren't a member of that group so that's that. You can dream all you like." As a society we have absolutely no problem policing the boundaries of all kinds of social categories. Rachel Dolezal is now a pariah and is not accepted as black by the black community. We are disgusted at people who pretend to be disabled when they are really able bodied. If a 40 year old man declares he is really an 8 year old child we aren't rushing to organise play dates between him and our kids. In fact, for every social category I can think of, the response to people who 'identify' as a member of that category when they clearly are not is disgust and anger. Firm boundaries are set. "No, you are not black". "No, you are not a child." And yet, the one thing we aren't allowed to say is "no you aren't a woman". Isn't it quite weird that sex/gender is the only social category where self-identification is accepted? Why does every other social category have a criterion based in reality, but sex does not?

I'm almost at theach point when I want to finish with the words female and woman and just let them take them. Then us GC feminists could invent new words. We shouldn't have to but at least we'd know what we meant.

Furthering some other people's points - isn't the concept of 'identifying as' ableist? It assumes that someone has the mental capacity and cognitive ability to undertake the action of 'identifying as' something. There are people who are extremely mentally disabled, such that it's unclear they grasp even the most basic concepts (or they may even be in a semi-vegetative state, and are not fully conscious). If these people are incapable of 'identifying' as men or women, does this mean that they have no gender identity? Isn't it a bit messed up to say that because they are incapable of identifying as one gender or the other that certain disabled people are literally genderless?

I really can’t see how postmodern theory can be the deciding factor here?

I’ve read plenty of Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Baudrillard et al, but my likelihood of developing a woman’s cancer is still determined by which of my mum’s two X chromosomes I inherited

¯\(ツ)/¯

WeeBisom Wed 04-Jul-18 15:04:40

That actually happened, during a Green Party discussion hustings.
Chair says "right, we've had enough questions from the men, let's have a question from a woman now"
Normal bloke-ish looking bloke puts his hand up, and with no sense of irony or entitlement, states "I identify as a woman" and proceeds with his question.

If we were going to be truly inclusive wouldn’t it just be easier to scrap man, male, woman, female, and just reclassify us all as people? I mean it would be ridiculous and unworkable, and the queues at the gynae clinic would be massive confused affairs, but surely the only way to be fully inclusive of everyone is just to say that we‘re all people and have done with it.
Obviously we’d need words for those two body types involved in reproduction, you know, as a quick and easy way to do things like allocate healthcare. Maybe we could think of some? Oh wait…

I really can’t see how postmodern theory can be the deciding factor here?

I have decided that it is a function of being so privileged that you have nothing more pressing to do than contemplate your navel philosophy. This renders you oblivious to the needs of those dealing with the real world and thus makes you completely unsuitable to be anywhere near social policy.