What is the biological definition of a woman (and man)?

[Wombat2WombatCombat]

I understand the argument for single sex spaces, but just for the avoidance of any doubt, does anyone have an exact, biological definition of a woman (or man) that we can hold people to? If we want to enforce the idea of single-sex spaces, we will need an exact criteria to determine who is or isn’t a ‘real’ woman, so I was wondering if anyone could tell me exactly what that is?

That is because it is recognised that there is billions of diverse combinations. If you want ranges of measurements etc, go look them up.

I mean. Seriously, you have wasted all our time with this. You persistently have posted in bad faith. We are not about to compile a list of ranges of measurements etc for you to create an algorithm to describe a female body vs a male.

There are documents out there that do describe these things. Ranges, proportions, and other significant differences.

But to what end. It seems it will never be enough for you because you seem to believe that unless the last person that might have an extremely complex medical condition involving body parts with different dna, etc etc, you will not have the ultimate and accurate definition.

And for what?

You have never once addressed the numerous posts telling you that it shouldn’t matter what someone looks like, if they are male and know they are male, then they should not be in female single sex spaces. Even if they managed to fool 99% of women (very unlikely in real life) they should have the respect to stay out of that space.

But crack on. You obviously have your own agenda here. Telling women that we are not performing up to your expectations and delivering you a set of specifications that you can use for whatever is inconsequential.

We are not your service humans and never were. We are posting for an entirely different audience. And I suspect ‘tales of MNer’s failure to produce’ will play to a different media platform, soon enough.

I'm asking because there has been so much good scientific information shared on this thread and it's all such a waste of time and energy if the question you actually wanted to ask was; 'if a bloke uses the ladies, will he be shown up as a fraud and get thrown out?'

Posting is NEVER a waste of time. We post for the lurkers, who outnumber the posters by a good margin, not the OP or his ilk.

I'm not going to be conned into saying gatekeeping is inherently bad. It isn't. 'Gatekeeping' means 'screening' or 'filtering'. It is sometimes necesary because not everyone has good intentions.

The woman who calls out a flasher in the women's toilets is gatekeeping.
The role of a receptionist includes gatekeeping, screening visitors or phone calls.

given a list of important traits which are frequently differentiated between the sexes, but to my knowledge, nobody has explained which if any take precedence, and how to determine it when a characteristic fits into neither

It doesn't work like that. There is no hierarchy of reproductive system body parts which allow you to draw a line and say something like "This person has 2 male structures and 5 female structures, so they are female."

In theory, the type of gonads present are the most important factor as this determines the type of gamete made, and sex class is based on gamete type. But in practice, when dealing with a typically-developed reproductive system, there is no need to determine which characteristic takes precedence because they all cluster together.

In the case of a reproductive system where some anatomical components have been removed (e.g. via surgery) the yardstick is which reproductive system the individual was born with. Someone born with typical male reproductive system doesn't magically become less male because they have their prostate removed, or even if they undergo orchidectomy for, say, testicular cancer.

In the case of DSDs, the configuration of individual reproductive system components is less relevant as an end in itself, than as an indicator of the correct diagnosis, and since many DSDs are sex-specific, the diagnosis itself provides a marker of sex.

You seem to be envisaging a situation where most people's reproductive systems are a kind of random Mr. and Mrs Potato Head mix-and-match of anatomical components, and classifying sex is simply a matter of counting whether there are more ticks on the female or male body-part checklist...

and by We are posting for an entirely different audience. I mean we are posting for those reading this thread, other than you or any other poster.

i.warosu.org/data/ic/img/0016/16/1387923401810.jpg

OP - if your entire life savings depended on it, could you tell which of these human's has a penis and which doesn't?

Okay, I’m genuinely confused by this whole situation. So you find a ‘man’ in the woman’s bathroom, and say “They are a man”. Then what? What happens next?
Funny how only a couple of years ago, bearded blokes didn't dare go in the women's toilets. No one needed to challenge them, they didn't even dare try.

By the way, has "genuine" followed "literal" in meaning the exact opposite of what it actually means?

Summary to save anyone starting near the end from reading the full thread:
OP: Q, what is a woman and man?
Posters: clear answers
OP: same Q
this appears to be a wind up

The biological definition of woman (& man) is obvious.

The only question that is relevant is why some men feel so entitled to undermine these definitions, to claim their biological classification as male somehow doesn't apply to them.

Entering arguments over obvious, basic biology becomes like a shell game - sapping women of our energies, forcing us to endlessly justify why exist as our own separate sex, distracting us from the real issues.

It's not how to define female or male biologically that is the problem.

It's how to get males to stop forcing their way into female territory that they KNOW isn't theirs.

I’m asking for a defined set of characteristics such that it they are fulfilled, someone is one sex, and if they aren’t, they are another.

You. Have. Been. Given. This. Information.

Repeatedly.
Clearly.
Patiently.

You are choosing to ignore it.

@Cloudyz7

i.warosu.org/data/ic/img/0016/16/1387923401810.jpg

OP - if your entire life savings depended on it, could you tell which of these human's has a penis and which doesn't?

This. OP?

Gosh, that's good, @Cloudyz7.

@Wombat2WombatCombat I believe that in the UK the legal definition of sex is that which is recorded on the birth certificate.

@DrBlackbird

Anyone else getting the impression that the OP’s replies to everyone’s posts reads like they’re being made by an AI chatbot? A trolling AI chatbot? Ingenious.

Reading the thread, the thought had crossed my mind that someone was running a Turing Test. But I dismissed it because the phraseology is too clumsy.

Perhaps we could divert into establishing if there are any definitive objective measures that establish whether a poster is human, before we consider whether they're male or female?

OP....but nothing that nails it down to ‘if you have x you are male, if not you are female’

Everyone else
If you have small motile gametes you are male, if you have large immotile gametes you are female

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

Gosh, that's good, *@Cloudyz7*.

It really is. Almost identical. Yet it's obvious.

@Linguini

OP....but nothing that nails it down to ‘if you have x you are male, if not you are female’

Everyone else
If you have small motile gametes you are male, if you have large immotile gametes you are female

This.

@Linguini

OP....but nothing that nails it down to ‘if you have x you are male, if not you are female’

Everyone else
If you have small motile gametes you are male, if you have large immotile gametes you are female

People have said that repeatedly, but nobody has elaborated on what traits mean someone has large immotile gametes, and at what point do they become small motile gametes

Okay, here's a bit of an essay, going in a slightly different direction.

People have been kind enough to give many broad, subjective definitions, but nothing that nails it down to ‘if you have x you are male, if not you are female’

I’m asking for a defined set of characteristics such that it they are fulfilled, someone is one sex, and if they aren’t, they are another.

For the benefit of everyone apart from the OP, it is worth noting that "male" and "female" are, primarily, functions. Jane Clare Jones was writing about this the other day.

The quoted questions are a false binary. Female is a role. You don't become female by being "not male", you are female if you can perform the female reproductive role.

As it happens, in mammals, each species produces two distinct forms, each of which has one of those two functions. No individual mammal can perform both.

(In other lifeforms, one individual may be able to perform both functions, either simultaneously, or sequentially.)

Because of the nature of mammalian sex, we tend to use "male" and "female" as denoting the two forms ("phenotypes") of the species. The male-function form and the female-function form . Because despite function being the definitive trait, that's not what we usually care about. The actual fertility is not usually important. Sport, for example, doesn't care about your reproductive capability, but whether you have the male or female body type.

The correlation between body type and fertility is so strong, that it is more accurate, and of more benefit to more people, to classify people by sex as a strict binary.

Anyone who is (or was or will be) fertile will be male or female, because human reproduction is sexual. (If anyone comes across someone who is fertile but neither male nor female, or both, medical history will be made).

Fertility is sufficient to demonstrate sex, but not necessary. If you're producing sperm you're male. If you're not producing sperm, it doesn't mean you're not. (This is where the OP would be obtuse if they read this far - hopefully they got bored already and are skipping this essay).

Possible sex function ambiguity arises in people who are totally infertile. But, amazingly, fertility doctors manage to figure out whether they should be trying to get individuals to produce eggs or sperm, because they can see what body type they've got and what it is that isn't working. (We can tell the difference between a broken clock and broken chair.)

It's possible in theory an individual might be fertile one way, but have a different body type due to a disorder. But I believe in practice all the mechanisms in humans are so coupled, it can't really happen. It's not possible to develop a working reproductive system without the body ending up as clearly the corresponding form.

Certainly the athletics rules following Semenya only named DSDs that involve SRY genes producing fertile or infertile males, suggesting there aren't any male-bodied-but-female-reproductive DSDs.

Anyway, given the way humans are, it is overall more accurate to require all individuals to be classified as strictly male or female, based on phenotype at birth, with some provision for correction later through DSDs. The number of possibly-wrong classifications arising from that are miniscule compared to the mess arising from allowing voluntarily reclassification as the other sex (or neither) for anyone. A two-way classification may not be perfect, but it can still be more true and accurate than not being two-way.

(As an aside, I've mentioned before that trying to minimise the number of divisions is normally seen as a good thing. We perform the two-way classification because the benefits outweigh the costs. Any other split, or not splitting, would have a worse cost-benefit analysis).

Now, amusing little footnote. While typing this up, I happened to follow a Wikipedia link in a DSD article on the words "phenotypically female". This sent me to "Female body shape".

Okay, so we've got an article on that. So, do we have "Male body shape"? No, that redirects to "Body shape".

I think that tells us something about male perspective and views about women as the other. Feminists, go nuts.

I've been lurking and trying to figure out what the aim of this thread is from the OPs perspective but I'm finding it very difficult to understand.

OP you've been given the definition of female/male, woman/man on many occasions.

How do we tell without everyone having a mobile DNA tester in our bags? We process the information automatically, it's a combination of size, traits, behaviours, physical aspects like Adam's apple....very few people can 'pass' as the other sex.

If you want more then here's a bit about how an anthropologist can take a disembodied skull and tell if it belonged to a female or male without needing any DNA testing www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/forensic-archaeology-and-anthropology/0/steps/67883

The number of people born who cannot be assigned a sex because they do not fit into the definitions that exist, is tiny.

@Wombat2WombatCombat I think we did(?)

Put the motile gametes in a petri dish, they swim around for a bit.

Put the immotile gametes in a petri dish, they do not.

@Wombat2WombatCombat

Am I right to say you are looking for a set of characteristics which can be used to "gatekeep" womanhood? i.e. A set of visible markers you can use to know who can walk into a toilet?

Women do not owe anyone especially men a pathway to entry to single sex spaces.
Single sex spaces are not a prize to be won if you can beat the recognition machine.
If a man walks into a single sex space, it is up to the man to realise they have no respect for women. They hear no but think "I'm irresistible. She doesn't mean no" .
Women say no. We don't have to point out every single wrinkle on our foreheads and measure the relative size of tibias for you to listen. Women do not have to compensate for your altered vision.

Leave our spaces alone.

I'm going to paste in Jane Clare Jones' Twitter thread I mentioned above, because it's too good not to.

She was replying to a tweet saying:

So next time a TERF asks you about "biological sex", ask them what they mean: Genetics? Internal organs? External organs? Hormones? Neurology? And why are supposed feminists so focused on reducing people to their genitals and how they reproduce?

We mean 'reproductive function'

Which, oh look, you kind of admitted you understand at the end of your tweet.

And we're not reducing 'people' to their reproductive function. We're saying a person's sex is their reproductive function. Because um, that's what sex means.

It's true you can split the components which go together to make up someone's reproductive function into these different elements.

And it is true that in a very small number of cases not all those components go together.

But this idea that sex is all these different components, rather than sex being the function that all these different components enable is BATS.

And again, it's a product of a flat-headed essentialist idea that something's being is a list of properties... that in order to understand what something is we have to take it apart and identify all the bits and that the bits are what makes it what it is.

That's not how we identify and classify things. We don't walk into a room and think 'oh look, there is a object with four legs and a back it must be a chair.' We see the object we make for one person to sit on. We interact with it as 'the sitting on thing.'

That is, very often, we interact with and categorise objects by what they do. Not by lists of properties. The properties are of course related to what they do. Because Form -> Function. And difference in Form -> Function matter especially when distinguishing one object from another similar object that serves a similar function.

A mug is a vessel for drinking hot liquid. Hence, has a handle, made of stuff that holds hot liquid.

A glass is a vessel for drinking cold liquid. Hence, doesn't need a handle, can be made of stuff that sometimes shatters if you put hot stuff in it.

Things ARE NOT lists of properties. They are things which have evolved, or been made, with a particular arrangement of parts, to do certain things.

SEX IS A FUNCTION.

It's mad to me that people keep insisting on the 'list of properties' idea about how concepts work.

If you look in a dictionary it is really evident that we understand perfectly well that that is very often not how we classify, or not the primary thing we do when classifying.

(Definition screenshots: glass - 2. a drinking container made from glass. / chair - 1. a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs)

As in these definitions, the identification of properties is secondary to the identification of function.

We will notice is 'the sitting thing for one person' has a back or not, and then we divide those into 'chair' and 'stool.'

A glass will usually be made of glass, but sometimes not... and we might then end up saying something which might sound oxymoronic, but actually carries sense perfectly... like 'the plastic glass'... because we understand that 'glass' in this context actually means 'cold liquid drinking thing.'

That is, classifying things relies MASSIVELY on function, and on the fact that concepts are what we use to INTERACT with the world. And it is only when idiot philosophers sit in their 'one person sitting objects' and just stare at stuff without actually doing things with them that they come up with stupid ideas about how concepts work by us breaking things into parts and identifying all the properties.

GAH.

I've been lurking and trying to figure out what the aim of this thread is from the OPs perspective

I’m pretty sure I can clear that up for you

It involves tissues

What do you mean by "what traits mean you have large immobile gammates"

There is the definition of male and female

Then there is the fact that we don't use those definitions in day to day life because most people don't need to - physical observation is enough

So there doesn't need to be one single trait used at the normal observation level we know the basic measure but the simple approximations work really well

Because there is no evidence that we are lacking in accuracy.

It's like - we know if chicken is cooked if every bit gets above a certain temperature. Most people look at the chicken or wiggle a leg or do a spot temperature check o be really sure . No one measures every

We don't need a single trait . The single simple definition exists at the biological level but we can use s range of simpler observations for day to day life because they are accurate

Abs people have listed the traits
Abs you don't need them all

It's round it's bouncy it's in the toy section it's a ball . I don't actually know the unique definition of a ball but have never kicked an ornament or orange or fat ball by mistake