Definition of Woman

[Apollo440]

TRAs have constantly failed or refused to define the word woman so I have decided to do so on their behalf. A TRA definition of a woman is 'anyone who performs feminine gender stereotypes'. That will exclude any transmen and all of you non binaries in denial about your trans status leaving womanhood to the deserving.
When explaining the conflict to newbies I will explain that one side thinks that women are adult human females the other side think women are people who perform feminine gender stereotypes.

If that is putting words in their mouth I'll happily change it when you provide another definition. In the meantime I hope it doesn't make you seem a few sandwiches short of a picnic (note to mods - a common term in English parlance and hopefully not worthy of a deletion).

Fortunately, UK law defines woman and man in its Equality Act 2010.

Woman = a female of any age.

Man = a male of any age.

Oxford English Dictionary defines thus:

Woman = an adult human female.

Man = an adult human male.

The UK legal definition includes those who are minors, labelled as girls or boys, and takes precedence.

Ah but that is clearly transphobic!

Apollo440 Nit according to UK law.

The Equality Act recognises "transsexuals" as having the protected characteristic of "gender reassignment". The use of the term "transsexuals" relates back to the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004, which applies only to those who seek to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Thus, our UK Equality Act 2010 in conjunction with the GRA 2004 very specifically excludes the notion of anyone using "sex self-ID".

Finally, the term "transphobia" is not recognised in UK law.

💤

Fascinating stuff:

To decide when to update their definitions, lexicographers at Collins and elsewhere will rely on data drawn from books and periodicals that show how language is used in the world. Laypeople tend to see dictionaries as prescriptive arbiters of words’ true meanings. Lexicographers, on the other hand, say their function is descriptive; they seek only to reflect the language that we, the people, have made. This means, on the one hand, that a definition would never be jettisoned simply because readers find it offensive: As Oxford linguist Deborah Cameron wrote a few days after the melee on Twitter, Collins’ entry for woman includes “some secondary senses of ‘woman’ (e.g. ‘domestic servant’; ‘wife, mistress or girlfriend’) and some idioms containing the word (e.g. ‘little woman’, ‘woman of the streets’) which feminists might well find objectionable. But their inclusion is not a mark of the lexicographers’ sexism; it’s a reflection of the sexism of the community whose usage they’re describing.”

I think that you're right OP, that is exactly their definition and it's helpful to spell it out.

The question then becomes - is it a good or a bad idea to redefine the word along those lines? I think it's a daft idea, but I think it'd be worth spelling out why.

According to their version, I and most of the people I like are "non-binary" (I don't get on with hugely girly women or macho guys). Would we have our own prisons, sports, rape crisis shelters, statistics? Would such statistics tell you anything useful? Why would we want to segregate sports at all on the basis of how much make up people wear?

I think that one issue would be the rigidity of it. I mean, over time I've got a bit more gender conforming - nowadays I sometimes wear dresses, which I never used to do. So at which point do I get transferred out of the "non-binary" facilities and statistics into the "female" facilities and statistics?