Merriam Webster changed definitions of female and male

[MondayYogurt]

Every word means any and every other word. All words mean the same thing? Word word word word word, word word.

• It would seem to be pretty important to have at least one pair of names for biologically male and female people. Covid-19, for instance, appears to affect them differently, and there are other uses for those terms, too. For instance, fighting against sexism requires a name for the people of a certain sex.

So yes, add the gender identity to 'woman' and 'man' if you wish, but not to 'female' and 'male.'*

They shouldn't be adding gender identity stuff to woman either, as that's the only term specific for human females. People who want words defined in terms of 'gender identity' have transman and transwoman .

What do you mean by 'people'?

People as in people (does people have another meaning now?) Whut

I thought that dictionaries were supposed to have clear definitions. That's the whole point.

Male = opposite of female and female = opposite of male is not a definition at all.

People aren't always human people though, linguistically.
To support my assertion I can cite the Husavik/Home Town song lyric from the recent Eurovision film:

"Where the whales can live cause they're gentle people."

"For instance, fighting against sexism requires a name for the people of a certain sex."
Well if I were being cynical...

@Quaagars

What do you mean by 'people'? People as in people (does people have another meaning now?) Whut

6: lower animals usually of a specified kind or situation

According to the MW dictionary, as it happens.

It's ridiculous.

Defining words only in relation to their opposite.

Risible.

No hope for Miriam Webster to be taken seriously now. As a PP said, that's their death warrant.

Errol, I'm rather staggered by that entry.

For a dictionary, they are very loose with definitions. Surely, they have The List? The one that lists the qualities that we have to possess to be a woman/female. The only one I've seen is the one where Northern Women are some kind of special case.

You can register a comment on a definition here.

www.merriam-webster.com/contact-us

@SallySeven

People aren't always human people though, linguistically. To support my assertion I can cite the Husavik/Home Town song lyric from the recent Eurovision film:

"Where the whales can live cause they're gentle people."

Indeed! The field of non human animal sentience is developing, while the subject of personhood and legal rights theories are still being explored. Many scientists are now arguing that the divide between intelligent species is not the chasm we imagine (or perhaps find convenient).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotioninn_animals

was-research.org/writing-by-others/legal-personhood-positive-rights-wild-animals/

Yes I heard this train of thought a while back.

It's odd how things that seemed rather unlikely thought experiments are having their moment.

You know there are editors within the organization who are silently shaking their heads.

I thought it was a basic of dictionaries to give clear definitions.

That's actually a really hard thing to do.

Defining a thing by saying it's not another thing. And then not defining the other thing either. Is useless in a dictionary.

Yet again something related to this is included even though it doesn't meet the basic criteria ie an actual definition.

I think Alice has got a new job. The coop must have given her a good reference. 😁

Do you know what though, it was stuff like this that pushed me over the edge from "but my nice trans friends" to full GC. I read debate after debate on MN of women asking quite simply "what is a woman?", "define woman", followed by endless TRA waffle about intersex people which, as someone with a medical science background, I knew just wasn't true. I'd worked in a clinic for adult transitioners at med school and spoken to numerous dysphoric transpeople and psychiatrists on the subject, but no one had ever suggested that we were meant to pretend they were literally the opposite sex. Everyone was perfectly clear that it was just a cosmetic change. So I thought, if we've moved on from that then surely someone must be able to define "woman" or "female gender identity" in a way that includes women and TW but excludes men and TM. Surely this wouldn't all be happening if they couldn't. So I went looking elsewhere, on official websites for medical bodies and government organisations and relevent charities. I read articles and blogs and watched YouTube videos by trans people. I even took a short course on gender identity through the open university to try and understand! And eventually I realised that no one has a definition of woman that meaningfully includes TW. There is no meaningful sense in which TW are women. There is no meaningful definition of gender or any explanation of how it can be female. It isn't real. And every time I see something like this, it just reminds me of that all over again. That it isn't real, it's all a big lie, a deliberatly deceitful piece of politically motivated sophistry. Every time I start to wonder "am I missing something? Does everyone actually understand something I don't?" I see things like this and I realise no I'm not, no they don't. No one can define woman without reference to female biology, it just doesn't exist. No one understands this shit because it isnt real. So in a funny way this is actually quite affirming for me. It's yet another reminder that I'm on the "right side", the only side in fact if you want to live with intellectual and moral integrity. Which obviously MW don't. And that's sad, but many others do and they'll read this and ask the same questions I asked, read the same debates I read, and reach the same conclusions I reached. You can't actually change reality by changing words. As James Lindsey says, reality bat's last.

And every time I see something like this, it just reminds me of that all over again. That it isn't real, it's all a big lie, a deliberatly deceitful piece of politically motivated sophistry.

Reminded me of this

mobile.twitter.com/itsnelsvy/status/1293707292140077059

‘Who gets “womaned” by society and subjected to misogynistic discrimination as a result, and who answers yes to the question, posed publicly or in the innermost realms of thought, as to whether they’re a woman or not? The intersection of those two conditions arguably marks the status of belonging to womanhood in ways that do not depend on reproductive biology.‘

Taken from this

time.com/5795626/what-womanhood-means/
What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? It's Complicated
BY SUSAN STRYKER
MARCH 5, 2020 7:11 AM EST

“... in the Jim Crow South, segregated public-toilet doors marked Men, Women and Colored underscored how the legal recognition of a gender binary has been a privilege of whiteness.”

“Labeling others contrary to how they have labeled themselves is an ethically loaded act, but “woman” remains a useful shorthand for the entanglement of femininity and social status regardless of biology—not as an identity, but as the name for an imagined community that honors the female, enacts the feminine and exceeds the limitations of a sexist society.“

“Why can’t womanhood jettison its biocentrism to expand its political horizons and include people like Marsha P. Johnson? After all, it’s we the living who say collectively what “woman” means, hopefully in ways that center the voices and experiences of all those who live as women, across all our other differences.”

This article is part of 100 Women of the Year, TIME’s list of the most influential women of the past century. Read more about the project, explore the 100 covers and sign up for our Inside TIME newsletter for more.

In relevance to the OP - we had a thread earlier this year on Merriam-Webster changing words willy nilly. I think they’ve now contradicted themselves 🤷🏼‍♀️

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3954690-Merriam-Webster-dictionary-changing-definition-of-woman-title-edited-at-requ-of-OP?

The new definition defines a transwoman - A transwoman is a woman who was identified as male at birth

Grabthar thank you for that post. I feel absolutely sick seeing a dictionary, a supposedly authoritative source, tell me that night means day, 2+2=5. It frightens me to see anyone doing such glib lying in public. I went to the dictionary to check whether this was fake news, it’s not. Merriam Webster dictionary have actually done this.
Your post was reassuring though. You’re right.

it isn't real, it's all a big lie, a deliberatly deceitful piece of politically motivated sophistry.

Yes and as you say You can't actually change reality by changing words.

That’s true. Perception is not reality. Reality is what reality is, however untruthfully it is described.
I really hope this inappropriately political sleight of hand and organisational capture gets the scrutiny it deserves. There are many other dictionaries available and this one has chucked away its own credibility. What other words will TRAs want to change next? How will Merriam Webster object to changing any other words according to what today’s Twitter wants, if they have already rewritten the terms for biological sex to now mean, a feeling in your mind? We know that the goalposts will change constantly..

I really hope the American media pick this up widely.

Bump. Still shocked that ‘gender identity’ ie sex role stereotypes in someone’s mind= ‘female’ in any dictionary

Why can’t womanhood jettison its biocentrism to expand its political horizons and include people like Marsha P. Johnson?

For God's sake. How much privilege do you need to think that 'woman' is a political club for people who call themselves 'progressive'?

"hopefully in ways that center the voices and experiences of all those who live as women"

You can't 'centre' everyone's voice.

What does it mean to 'live as a woman'? What if I don't want to 'live as a woman' but still need an abortion?

However, to be fair to the dictionary, dictionaries report how words are used by people, not necessarily scientific or legal definitions.

'Jewish penicillin' is in the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning chicken soup, but they aren't claiming that chicken soup has any particular curative properties.

I put off reading this thread, as I knew it would upset me. I wasn't wrong.
But thanks GrabtharsHammer your comment is exactly what I needed to reaffirm my sanity.

Marsha P Johnson was a cross dresser who saw himself as male.

Including him as a woman means we might as well get rid of any words for female full stop.

Non men? The dictionary would be ok with this I assume.