A woman is...

[DryHeave]

“A woman is someone with a female body and any personality. Not a ‘female personality’ and any body.”

From @FoggyTrails on twitter and one of the most succinct, best-articulated statements I’ve read to date.

That's it, isn't it. Summed up in two sentences.

Totally.
It’s completely fucked up that a bunch of individuals have managed to change the meaning of a word.

Perhaps someone's mind is more important than their physical appearance in defining their identity? Just a thought.

Renata "Woman" is not an identity.

Identity is just personality. Male and female are biological definitions.

@MiladyRenata

Perhaps someone's mind is more important than their physical appearance in defining their identity? Just a thought.

So what is a 'female mind' then?

That's nice, Renata but to avoid stuffing female people into restrictive, stereotypical boxes, excluding female people from 'woman' who don't fit the stereotypical bits, and removing female sex based rights in a well meant but very thoughtless attempt to be kind to some male people, we need to talk straight about this.

The only thing every female on the planet has in common is their biology. It's the only thing that creates the class of female. This is a fact, it has always been a fact, and when talking about sex based rights and equality under law we need to stay away from foggy, kind and subjective definitions.

A female body is a lot more than 'physical appearance'.

Yep, OP.

And it's not 'appearance' - it's chromosomes, goes far deeper than bloody hairstyles.

Women is not an identity , hope that helps, it's just a fact

"Perhaps someone's mind is more important than their physical appearance in defining their identity?"

I actually think it's far more freeing to define 'woman' as someone who is female. 'Being female' doesn't imply anything about your personality, behaviour, likes , dislikes , or even appearance. But if we define 'women' by their mind? Well, what's a womanly mind?I have a female body. But I don't 'feel' like a woman. I'm also not particularly feminine in many regards. I work in a male dominated field. I don't like many typical feminine things. So if we go by minds, we would have to say that I'm not a woman. But this perturbs me because I don't think there should be any right or wrong way to be a woman!

If we say that women are female, literally the only people excluded from this definition are males. Women can come in all different races, classes, ethnicities, backgrounds, etc. But if we say that 'woman' is defined by the mind this will include males, sure, but it may also exclude many female bodied people who don't feel their mind is female.

Oh, and if we reduce 'woman' to just 'anyone who says they are a woman' then the category is utterly empty and pointless. You might as well not have it. It's a totally empty signifier.

I agree. Its someone whose existence is underlined by their biology that gives them unique physical and societal experiences such as pregnancy, fear of pregnancy, pmt, thrush, cystitis, childbirth, endometriosis, breast-feeding, fear of superior male physical strength, menstrual cramps, menstruation, FGM, the wage gap, manplaining, sexism, mastitis, breast pain, back pain due to breasts, etc etc etc. The rest is all just preference and personality, yes.

thank you

Xx chromosomes and born with a vagina.

thehelenjoyce.com/what-is-a-woman/amp/

Not sure of your point velancy. Have read the link it reads as anyone and everyone is a woman. That isn't so.

XX

@dialmformmmm

Not sure of your point velancy. Have read the link it reads as anyone and everyone is a woman. That isn't so.

Helen Joyce is senior at The Economist. She is GC.

She has done a huge amount to bring a GC view into the open. Over the last year or two it has become apparent that Helen Joyce is hard to cancel.

The Economist has always been a defender of free speech. They also like to look at what's really going on when you look deeper. It is not a shallow publication.

Helen made a collection of the ridiculous definitions of "woman" that are being bandied around, which is what velancy linked. It is funny. And exasperating. And enraging.

She's writing a book about it too.

I think this is one of my favourites

Millennia-old palimpsests of wildly different cultural values, medical knowledge, theology, politics etc. Frankenstein’s monster...If we imagine words as things that hurtle through time and space like cultural meteors, then woman is one that has passed through several debris fields along the way, so that it is so laden with history and importance and biology and legality that it is all but shapeless…drawing a line around the edges of “woman” is an impossible task. It is a term that leaves behind it a vibrant trail of meaning and value that is nevertheless hopelessly ragged at its farthest edges. We can never trace woman, merely trace a big circle around the space it occupies and say, “there it is, more or less.” (American transwoman and gender-studies doctoral student)

God knows how the pope, Weinstein and Trump manage to be so clear on what a woman is. How do they do it?

A woman - a human born female who made it to adulthood.

Two points - that’s all.

Many potential women are denied their rightful progression to womanhood due to - sex selected abortion, infanticide, FGM victim, child brides, child mothers, murdered girl etc just because they are female.

Anyone else denied their ‘womanhood’ can go jump.

Perhaps someone's mind is more important than their physical appearance in defining their identity? Just a thought.

They can identify how they like. What they can't do is force others to repeat a lie.

Perhaps someone's mind is more important than their physical appearance in defining their identity? Just a thought.

And perhaps someone’s potential reproductive role is important in defining their sex and the needs associated with that sex.

@ThinEndoftheWedge

A woman - a human born female who made it to adulthood.

Two points - that’s all.

Many potential women are denied their rightful progression to womanhood due to - sex selected abortion, infanticide, FGM victim, child brides, child mothers, murdered girl etc just because they are female.

Anyone else denied their ‘womanhood’ can go jump.

I’d say that about sums it up.

[quote ValancyRedfern]thehelenjoyce.com/what-is-a-woman/amp/[/quote]
Thats stunning isn't it?

Is there a word for that thing where someone pretends to be paying you a compliment to manipulate and dismiss you? Because thats how I feel when I hear and read a lot of these things. I feel like we're being toyed with.

Perhaps someone's mind is more important than their physical appearance in defining their identity? Just a thought.

Differences in sex have large and unavoidable consequences, that in some contexts can't be ignored, but do you want to define and categorise identity? Aren't we all just humans with different identities?