OP, I don't know if you'll be back, and I don't know if you're posting in good faith or just goading for screenshots, but I'm posting my question anyway for the lurkers and fence sitters.
As an atheist, I've spent time studying religious apologetics and criticising those claims from the perspective of "burden of proof" and "falsifiable claims". Not meaning to patronise you, but I'm going to define these terms:
Burden of proof: The obligation of the person making a positive claim to prove that claim (as opposed to the obligation of the party rejecting that claim to disprove it). Philosophically this is usually the basis for the rejection of supernatural claims. Legally this is the basis of "innocent until proven guilty".
Falsifiable claim: A claim for which there is some observation (or set of observations) we could make that would show us that the claim is false. In order to hold a reasonable belief that a claim is true, we must be able to falsify it. By contrast an unfalsifiable claim might be true or it might be false, but there's no possible observational evidence we could turn to in order to demonstrate that the claim is false.
Taken together these two concepts underpin much of the scientific method. In addition, a crucial feature of the scientific method is the need to understand physical reality in terms which allow us to make consistently accurate predictive models. Without these things, humanities ability to make scientific progress crumbles.
OK, now to my questions.
- I make the assertion that a woman is an adult human with a female physical body and any combination of personality traits or appearances . You make the assertion that a woman is an adult human with a combination of female personality traits and appearances, and any physical body. I don't wish to straw-man you, so please correct me if this is not what you believe. We are both making a positive claim and therefore both have a burden of proof.
To meet my burden of proof I:
- define the term "female physical body" to mean a scientifically consistent and coherent collection of genotypical and phenotypical features, including chromosomes, reproductive organs, and secondary sex characteristics.
- present evidence that people with a female physical body can have a variety of personality traits and appearances (for example the numerous people on this thread who say they do not conform to sex role stereotypes).
- My claim is falsifiable. Using my definition of "woman" I can coherently test for and either confirm or reject someones claim to be a woman (i.e by performing a DNA test or using medial imaging to observe their reproductive organs).
- My claim can be consistently used for the basis of making predictive models (i.e. predicting how someone will react to medication, whether they are at risk of specific conditions like cervical cancer etc, which is necessary for the NHS to know who to send screening invitations to).
In return, please can you:
- explain how your assertion about what makes someone a woman is falsifiable?
- meet your burden of proof regarding why your positive claim about "being a woman" should be accepted.
- give an example of how your claim could form part of a consistent predictive model (i.e is there any medical prediction you could make about women, given your definition?).
For bonus points:
- please explain why the evidence I've presented for my claim does not meet the required burden of proof.
- if my claim is both falsifiable and supported by empirical evidence, whilst your claim is unfalsifiable and not supported by empirical evidence, why should your claim be considered a better basis for legislation than mine?
To conclude, in the same way as I reject the idea of a soul since this is a non falsifiable claim that has not yet had it's burden of proof met, I reject your claim of "innate woman essence". This is not the same as claiming it does not exist, in the same way that finding someone "not guilty" is not the same as being convinced that they are innocent. The burden of proof simply has not been met.
OP, I find you not guilty of being a woman. Convince me otherwise.