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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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

999 replies

Wombat2WombatCombat · 09/02/2022 21:50

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?

OP posts:
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Helleofabore · 11/02/2022 08:36

You know linguini, I much prefer the discussion on when Weetabix becomes Weetbix and which is superior.

EdithStourton · 11/02/2022 08:36

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Awiltu · 11/02/2022 08:41

The differences between the two gametes have been defined, but the exact, defining difference between a system designed to produce one vs another has not

Yes, it has. Multiple times. Repeated assertions to the contrary won't change that, no matter how disappointed you are that people were somehow able to answer your clever gotcha questions after all.

Likewise, a glass can be made of plastic because it doesn’t need to have the property of being made of glass, it only needs to have the property of being a ‘cold liquid drinking thing’?

This example only works because "glass" is a semantically ambiguous word - it has more than one distinct meaning in English. So the noun "glass" can either mean "transparent non-crystalline vitreous substance that is malleable when heated to high temperatures but solidifies at lower temperatures" or "drinking vessel, often with a tall shape and lacking a handle".

A glass can be made of glass, but not all glass objects are glasses.

In contrast, the words "female" and "male" are not semantically ambiguous, nor are "woman" or "man", despite strenuous woke efforts to pretend they are.

Helleofabore · 11/02/2022 08:46

This reply has been deleted

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Barbarantia · 11/02/2022 08:46

@Wombat2WombatCombat you think there's some other marker that shows that infertile women are women because their ability to have a baby is compromised?

Wombat2WombatCombat · 11/02/2022 08:47

@Awiltu

The differences between the two gametes have been defined, but the exact, defining difference between a system designed to produce one vs another has not

Yes, it has. Multiple times. Repeated assertions to the contrary won't change that, no matter how disappointed you are that people were somehow able to answer your clever gotcha questions after all.

Likewise, a glass can be made of plastic because it doesn’t need to have the property of being made of glass, it only needs to have the property of being a ‘cold liquid drinking thing’?

This example only works because "glass" is a semantically ambiguous word - it has more than one distinct meaning in English. So the noun "glass" can either mean "transparent non-crystalline vitreous substance that is malleable when heated to high temperatures but solidifies at lower temperatures" or "drinking vessel, often with a tall shape and lacking a handle".

A glass can be made of glass, but not all glass objects are glasses.

In contrast, the words "female" and "male" are not semantically ambiguous, nor are "woman" or "man", despite strenuous woke efforts to pretend they are.

Given I have obviously missed the precise definitions then, would you be able to link me back to the parts of the conversation that you feel has already answered my question adequately?
OP posts:
TheGreatATuin · 11/02/2022 08:51

I haven't RTFT but the question is pointless, and serves to do nothing other than muddy the waters.
We all know.
If you were to take any reception age class at random and ask them to identify whether the first 100 people they saw were men or women, they'd get it right with 99% accuracy.
The fact that there might be a 1% margin of error doesn't mean it's suddenly so confusing that no one can really tell.

Barbarantia · 11/02/2022 08:52

@Wombat2WombatCombat I really need to know if you believe that a woman whose ability to become pregnant is compromised needs to have some other defining feature to be recognised as female.

Wombat2WombatCombat · 11/02/2022 08:53

[quote Barbarantia]@Wombat2WombatCombat you think there's some other marker that shows that infertile women are women because their ability to have a baby is compromised?[/quote]
The existence of a trait that defines womanhood independently of someone’s fertility seems to be what the majority of the responses here are implying. The issue is, as far as I can tell, nobody is able to define it any more specifically than ‘reproductive system built to produce immotile gametes’

OP posts:
Helleofabore · 11/02/2022 08:54

Given I have obviously missed the precise definitions then, would you be able to link me back to the parts of the conversation that you feel has already answered my question adequately?

I think women of FWR have stopped being your service humans.

I think you can read for yourself.

Barbarantia · 11/02/2022 09:00

The existence of a trait that defines womanhood independently of someone’s fertility seems to be what the majority of the responses here are implying. The issue is, as far as I can tell, nobody is able to define it any more specifically than ‘reproductive system built to produce immotile gametes’ @Wombat2WombatCombat

Are you saying that the definition of the sexed body is decopulated from its fertility? And therfore you understand the definition of gametes as separate from the characteristic of fertility?

EarringsandLipstick · 11/02/2022 09:02

@TheGreatATuin

I haven't RTFT but the question is pointless, and serves to do nothing other than muddy the waters. We all know. If you were to take any reception age class at random and ask them to identify whether the first 100 people they saw were men or women, they'd get it right with 99% accuracy. The fact that there might be a 1% margin of error doesn't mean it's suddenly so confusing that no one can really tell.
Exactly this.

What a stupid thread. There is no need to be able to 'quantify' what a woman is.

It's not a scalable concept, that you are more or less woman, depending on what criteria are used to define this.

Awiltu · 11/02/2022 09:02

Given I have obviously missed the precise definitions then, would you be able to link me back to the parts of the conversation that you feel has already answered my question adequately?

You haven't missed it. You've quoted some of the relevant information in your own posts. And queried it. And received responses to your queries. As you well know.

NoThankYouPossom · 11/02/2022 09:03

"So I resist the urge to ask Storm /
Whether knowledge is so loose-weave of a morning when /
Deciding whether to leave her apartment by the front door /
Or the window on her second floor."

NecessaryScene · 11/02/2022 09:03

The issue is, as far as I can tell, nobody is able to define it any more specifically than ‘reproductive system built to produce immotile gametes’

And the problem with that is?

"I tried to get people to define 'even', but nobody is able to define it any more specifically than 'number divisible by two'".

Helleofabore · 11/02/2022 09:05

I have reported OP as they are so clearly not in good faith. But I hope that MNHQ let’s this thread stand for so many great answers.

DrBlackbird · 11/02/2022 09:09

Well, the sex of the OP is pretty clear Wink unless it’s a poorly designed bot.

On a more serious note, the people that beat 17 year old Neha to death for wearing jeans and hung her body from a bridge knew that she was a real woman. Seems they didn’t need an exact criteria to determine that she wasn’t allowed to wear jeans and needed to be brutally murdered for finding them comfortable.

It’s actually bloody insulting to constantly play and ask women to play word games and argue semantics about how to to determine who is a real woman when girls and women get attacked, mutilated and killed every single day for being female. And no man seems to need an exact criteria to determine who is or isn’t a ‘real’ woman when they rape or kill women.

Anyhow, we don’t even need to resort to biology. Just note the breathtaking entitlement and urge to control women and ergo, it’s a man.

Whatiswrongwithmyknee · 11/02/2022 09:09

OP IMO the definition of woman is clear to 99+% of the population. There are some who want to change it to include men for various reasons but that does not mean that they don't understand it - they just want it to serve them better and don't care whether that change costs women. The definition is clear enough for the taliban to be denying women education, for women to have been left with the majority of the home schooling during covid and for women to be paid less than men for the same work. I think the person who need to do some work here is you as everyone else understands how your sex chromosomes dictate your secondary sexual characteristics which usually make it very clear to others what genitals you have and what gametes you make.

Can you tell me why you think we need single sex spaces if you don't believe there really is a difference between the categories of 'men' and the categories of 'women'?

PonyPatter44 · 11/02/2022 09:10

There used to be an advert featuring tuna and banana pizza, presumably as it was the most disgusting concoction the advert makers could come up with.

DialSquare · 11/02/2022 09:10

Fuck me. All this bollocks just because you are bitterly jealous of women.

Datun · 11/02/2022 09:14

@NecessaryScene

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.

Really interesting.

And goes a long way to explain the massive divide between women whose lives are frequently dictated by their biological function and men who want to pretend it has nothing to do with the pretend 'womanhood' they covet.

Datun · 11/02/2022 09:16

The existence of a trait that defines womanhood independently of someone’s fertility seems to be what the majority of the responses here are implying. The issue is, as far as I can tell, nobody is able to define it any more specifically than ‘reproductive system built to produce immotile gametes’

That's correct.

flashpaper · 11/02/2022 09:19

I'm amazed that this has been going on for days and OP is still stubbornly refusing to grasp what they have been told over and over again.

No one has anything to add now because there is nothing else to add. It is not the fault of the women here that OP conveniently "doesn't understand".

Barbarantia · 11/02/2022 09:23

OP @Wombat2WombatCombat for clarity.
Women who can't have babies do not need any other trait, visible or not, to be women.

A man with "the feeling of woman" in his head should never be compared to an infertile woman. They both can't get pregnant and we know it is for very different reasons. No traits needed to figure it out. Ignoring the root causes and looking at only the visible outcome for both of these individuals is wilful blindness. And very hurtful to all women. We all know that could have been us.

Take your fight for definition to the men. Tell them that wearing whatever you like, with hairstyle you love and a body full of HRT did not change what gamete your body was primed to produce. Take your stand and tell them that bullying you for your choices is wrong. We will stand with you. But you won't do that. A word comes to mind but I want this post to stand.

Theeyeballsinthesky · 11/02/2022 09:27

Oh god I can’t be arsed to wage through yet more pages of performative obtuseness

Can I safely assume the OP has adopted the usual TRA of weaponising the infertility of women like me as some kind of gotcha implying that childless women are somehow like men (TW)? And that they haven’t stopped for one nano second to think how fucking offensive that is?