TRA understanding of 'what is a woman'?

[Jamdown123]

Hi all,

I'm really trying to understand this. Can anyone point me to a resource that explains what the TRA definition of what a woman is?

I've tried so hard to find one, and I can't.

Oooh, I want to know this one too.

There have been a few threads reported and deleted today so I am sure that some people are keeping a close eye on the boards. I am looking forward to their views.

Just in terms of the word woman, what I've seen of the evolution of the word (according to gender ideology anyway) -

Woman (original) = woman
|
Transwoman = transwoman
|
Transwoman = woman
|
Woman (original) = 'cis' woman

That accounts for the utter outrage when women (original) refuse to be rebranded as 'cis'

I can’t see the reddit thread without downloading the app. But the definition I usually see is “a woman is a person who identifies as a woman”. I’ve also seen “a woman is a person who uses female pronouns”, which sounds less circular, but isn’t really.

I would like to know too.

a woman is a person who uses female pronouns
According to Scotland, if someone else uses them to refer to you as one, that’s evidence too, except they kind of force you to use them, so that really annoys me.

A woman is a non-man. Simple.

(That's a definition used in a Green Party group at one point, anyway.)

Women exist but liars do not tell the truth.

I'd love to know the answer to this too. Perhaps all the TRAs are having a day off?

I’d like to know too.

The circular definitions are so dishonest. They depend on "woman" maintaining the meaning it always has (because it is the good old adult human females that men want to be grouped with and to ape) and yet they pretend not to want that so they can shoehorn themselves in.
If you make up a random word - a callowhump or something - and say a callowhump is anyone who says they are a callowhump... why would anyone want to identify as a callowhump if it has no meaning beyond that? What exactly would you be identifying with? The letters?

@Vanishun

The thing is, once you have the concept of gender instead of sex, it is logical that gender is just something identifiable by you in your own your head.

And because it's all tied up confusingly with the other kind of "sex", with puberty and feelings and attractions, it's a huge mental minefield when you take these things seriously.

Saying "I am a spoon" or "I am 93 years old" is demonstrably absurd. Saying "I am Chinese" is a little more tenuous (and most woke people would hesitate in case you are in a "gotcha" way) - but it's still usually something you can "see".

There's nothing else quite like "gender", except religion and political beliefs (because really, it's one of those).

But, you can get tests to work out your 'biological age' as opposed to chronological age. Years of severe chronic illness has left my body in terrible nick and I have conditions commonly only associated with someone twenty years older than me. I have been physically outclassed in fitness by pensioners since I was in my late thirties. I look a lot older than I am. I feel I have more in common with older people, since I'm not fit enough to relate to the things people my own age would generally be doing (age stereotypes or simply doing what your body will permit?) And yet I know my real age - and so does the pension office.

Didn't English Rugby describe us as people who have not gone through a testosterone puberty?

A female is a human adult with XY chromosomes. The term woman also historically refers to this as it’s generally pretty obvious to determine on sight, what adult humans belong to with XX or XY.

You can change the aesthetics of appearance but never the XY.

@TableFlowerss women have XX chromosomes not XY.....

[quote AssassinatedBeauty]@TableFlowerss women have XX chromosomes not XY.....[/quote]
😂😂 Yep, completely agree. I should pay more attention to my typing!!

@lazylinguist

The whole idea that the definition of a category could possibly be 'anyone who thinks they're in that category' is just mind-bogglingly stupid. I mean... for a start, it's just not even a definition. And secondly, does that mean that if I say I'm Chinese, or a giraffe, or a spoon, I actually am?

It is of course ridiculous. The answer to these kind of "well if I identity as x am I really x?" objections is always an accusation of flippancy. Because, so it is said, nobody truly and sincerely believes they are a spoon.

So sincerity apparently matters, as if the strength of human feeling could change reality (and as if nobody would ever lie about this particular identity).

But nobody will ever engage when you try to talk about other identities that are inarguably sincere. I accept that some people sincerely hold opposite sex identities just as I accept that some people sincerely believe in various deities and some people sincerely suffer from other forms of body dysmorphia. I don't accept that sincerity actually has anything to do with the objective truth.

The etymology of woman. From https://www.etymonline.com/word/woman

woman (n.)
"adult female human," late Old English wimman, wiman (plural wimmen), literally "woman-man," alteration of wifman (plural wifmen) "woman, female servant" (8c.), a compound of wif "woman" (see wifee) + man "human being" (in Old English used in reference to both sexes; see mann (n.)). Compare Dutch vrouwmens "wife," literally "woman-man."

So, hardly surprising the term woman is rooted in misogyny. Women being originally defined solely in terms of their relationship to men. They being deemed the servant class do not control language.

If trans women want to drop the trans this would involves losing control over how they define themselves.

Maybe we should start asking people that are biologically female how they wish to be defined?

Saying "I am Chinese" is a little more tenuous (and most woke people would hesitate in case you are in a "gotcha" way) - but it's still usually something you can "see".

Of course the irony of the woke brigade acting horrified at the idea of anyone being able to identify as another race but being fine with identifying as another sex is that unlike sex, race actually is on a spectrum, in that you can be mixed race. Nobody can be half woman half spoon !

@Anothernamechange3

Funnily enough, if I google ‘what is man?’ in a similar way to retrieved said Time article plus lots more, it doesn’t seem such a complex, unanswerable question…..

In the words of Flight of the Conchords:

What, what is wrong with the world today?
You gotta think about it, think, think about it
Good cops been framed, put into a can
All the money that we're making
It's going to the man

What man? Which man? Who’s the man?
When's a man a man? What makes a man a man?
Am I a man? Yes, technically I am

So

Transwoman = transitioned servant man ?

I'm not a biologist, but I gather there are circumstances in which a person could have XX chromosomes and be male. This is because very, very rarely the SRY gene which is normally found on the Y chromosome can end up on an X chromosome instead. In that case, a few weeks after conception, when every embryo, male or female, produces a huge amount of testosterone, the presence of the SRY gene means that the embryo would develop from that point on as male. Without the SRY gene, the testosterone just washes through and the embryo develops as female.

I find this kind of thing fascinating and it makes me wish I'd studied biology a bit longer.

[quote PandaParty]Have a look at this drivel, OP.

www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/qke4po/good_answers_to_gotcha_questions/[/quote]
Yes, quite. The word woman is absolutely meaningless, but also very important if that's what someone wants to be called, but also an ethereal essence with no objective criteria, but also a label that should certainly define important rights.

It's all so slippery and disingenuous. Not to mention extremely offensive.

It's a social construct, a concept or a feeling.

Just when you think they've been pinned down, they move the goalposts again

The 'definition' has become more and more submissive and pornified as we go along.

So the 'gender' of the female sex doesn't get to define the language. Accept gender and be a woman under those terms, then you lose the power to define yourself.

Or since gender is a cultural construct reject it. However, this does involve allowing the female sex to define themselves.

Oh, the dilemma!🤷‍♀️