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?

@RVN123

Well, we've had everything the OP can throw at the wall to see if it sticks.

1. Existence of intersex/DSDs
2. Infertile women
3. What are you going to do about it anyway?
4. Biology denying
5. Sex is a spectrum and sperm can morph into eggs somehow

Have I missed any?

You've missed "But what about penises?" Which was the whole point of the original post anyway.

Wombat poo is really interesting.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-46258616

PS if a wombat has a baby wombat in its pouch it's probably a lady wombat although as we all know it's very hard to tell these things for definite.

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo

It astounds me that the world can very easily define woman when:

• laws are being made to imprison women who choose not to continue a pregnancy
• decide which sex it is NOT illegal to rape in a marriage
• determine whether or not to mutilate their genitalia for cultural purity reasons
• determine which babies should be abandoned or killed because they're too much trouble and cost to raise
• setting pay rates, and identifying progression opportunities

......

But when it comes to defining whether or not a man should be allowed into a female only space, all of a sudden the definition of woman is an oblique and confusing thing.

This too!

Humans have evolved to be able to distinguish between adult male and female of our own species really easily, for blatantly obvious reasons.

One of the most ridiculous spectacles of this ridiculous ideology is that they need us all to pretend that telling male from female is like, really difficult.

When we all know from our lived lives that it is very, very easy.

Wombats Also Have Biofluorescent Fur!!!!!!

And just to add because this is irritating me, if trans activists genuinely thought you couldn't tell the difference between trans women and women, they wouldn't be always going on about 'cis' women.
They're literally putting us into a stereotypes category based the kind of biology we have while simultaneously telling us off for recognising that we have that biology but refusing the stereotype.

Yes, exactly.

What a time to be alive. This thread is truly a gift. As many have said, I’m posting for the lurkers.

Inability to carry a baby to term does not make any biological woman not a woman. I have said this before on other threads, but in the course of my fertility investigations and treatments I have never been more examined as a biological woman, an adult human female.

The experiences of women struggling with infertility often include: Oestrogen/progesterone/endless other blood tests, ultrasounds of uterus and ovaries, dye injected into your female reproductive organs, endometrium measurements, biopsies, IVF medications, egg collections, insemination (by the small wriggly gametes), complications from IVF, fibroid removal, miscarriage, to name but a few.

And for the avoidance of doubt, in my case a fucking karyotype to rule out translocations. Guess what? 46,XX.

So anyone using bad faith so-called arguments as an attempt at a gotcha by rolling out ‘infertile women prove ‘woman’ can’t be defined’ to try and include biological males in our sex class? We see you. You will fail.

I tell you . Wombats are cute (I had a t-shirt what told me so!) and cool animals. They should not have been used in the ridiculous fashion. And had combative tendencies attributed to them without first defining combative. It is not like they are tiger snakes which I would be very keen to avoid. I am not sure standing very still and breathing very slowly would deter a tiger snake from finding you.

Yes @TheGreatATuin it’s only ever TRA/bad faith posters who try the “aha! you’re saying women who haven’t given birth aren’t women” shtick.

No good faith posters on any part of mumsnet have every said that

yes! The cavalry has arrived!

@ool0n Please try again.

Women's spaces are not prizes to be won at a fair. Access to women and girls is not a prize to be won. Crafting any test to allow men into women's spaces is by definition a lack of respect for women's spaces. any test which needs to have the caveat of reassuring infertile women they are women should not exist and is definitely entering human rights denial territory.

It should not be up to women to kick men out of their space. if you are a man in women's single sex space then get yourself out. police your own self.

if you dispute that that space should not be single sex then have that debate. Maybe there is a club somewhere that should not be single sex. who knows. the toilets and sport aren't book clubs. we don't go there for pillow fights...

This is turning into an extreme version of FOMO on what the women are upto when we can't see them.

This is a lady wombat.
We know this because she has managed to find a Daddy wombat to mate with, which has produced a teeny baby wombat.
This does not mean that the lady wombats who cannot have baby wombats are NOT lady wombats though.
We don't know what sex the baby wombat is yet because they are raising it as wom-binary.

Strangely, the ONLY people who want the female sex category redefined are MALE. Each and every single time.

No female ever has to quibble about whether they are female. I would also suggest any female who has a difference of sex development would know quite well by the time they reach late adulthood that they are female if they are tested to diagnose their condition. They know.

There are many males who have differences of sex development who may have some female characteristics, but who be late adulthood will likely know they are male with some female characteristics caused by their body's coding.

But they will also acknowledge their material reality.

There seems to be many people who wish to politicise female's bodies for their own agenda. But that is nothing new and has been done for all time.

wom-binary

@ExtraPlinky

Wombats Also Have Biofluorescent Fur!!!!!!

Another fun fact to add to my list - every day is a school day!

What I’m asking is what exactly is an adult human male/female in raw biological terms? How exactly do you distinguish?

Everyone can see it. There's just a small group of people trying to (sometimes very violently) gaslight the rest of the world about it because they can't handle not being the other sex and just being treated as the preferred sex is not good enough.

Even my cat knows the difference between clothed males and clothed females,

@ool0n

There isn't one defn, the IoC have a defn by biology for women's and men's sports. At the moment Many women are "men" if they want to run 400m or more, but women if they are happy running 100/200 etc.

This defn by biology has a long and harmful history, which is why it's mostly been dumped.
www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html

People who seriously suggest a "biological" defn should be used for access to spaces need to explain how that could possibly ever work. It took years for instance to decide Caster Semenya was eligible for some women's sports but not others. Lots of invasive tests and humiliation. It would be a human rights disaster, although fortunately completely practically impossible.

You can tell through a mouth swab now, can't you?

And it only has to be done once. At the very beginning of your career.

@Barbarantia

The gametes need to be dressed up in long blond hair and say "hi girls!" then struggle to head off for a pillow fight before they are recognised as immotile i think.

either that or wombat is trying to tell us that we need to wait for everyone to have xRay vision before anyone can win the contest to get into the women's bathroom.

because women's things are always prizes to be hard fought for. which i think is the roundabout way of saying women are still prizes to be won in a fight. as long as you can compete, fight hard to pass, to beat the recognition machine, if you win, you should get access to women.

If it is impossible to test for an individual’s sex, as you seem to be implying, then how is it possible to enforce a single sex space? I know men are supposed to not go in there, but surely the fact you feel they are needed suggest that some will want to regardless, so you need a way to prevent it?

If it is impossible to test for an individual’s sex, as you seem to be implying, then how is it possible to enforce a single sex space? I know men are supposed to not go in there, but surely the fact you feel they are needed suggest that some will want to regardless, so you need a way to prevent it?

Men don't need to go into women's toilets.

But at least you acknowledge that the men who want to will be doing it despite the women's discomfort. Ignoring women's boundaries is not good look.

We just need to continue to make it socially unacceptable and stigmatise it.

Arghhhhhhhhhh

It ISN'T 'impossible' to test a persons sex.

I can tell you within a split second, with 99.9% accuracy whether the person in front of me is male or female. I do this based on the way they look, their body shape, their mannerisms and a whole load of other unconsciously observed signs.

Can I provide a print out with a genetic analysis or a measurement of their pelvis on it in that moment, no of course not, but I know if they are male or female, just like you do and like everyone else does.

In the same way that a male predator can walk up to a woman he has never seen before and know that she has the body parts necessary to suit his sexual deviances.

@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?

I understand the argument for biological definitions (albeit that I know it to be invalid), but just for the avoidance of any doubt, does anyone ( eg you, OP) have an exact, semantic definition of ‘definition’ that we can hold people to? If we want to enforce the idea of biological definitions, we will need an exact criterion to determine what is or is not a ‘real’ definition, so I was wondering if anyone ( eg you, OP) could tell me exactly what that is?

Or, well, perhaps … I know you think you are being clever, OP, but your posts on this thread indicate you have no clue. Go and have a think about it. (I have a hint: try to read L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §66 et seq. .)
[You may need a bit of help understanding what is going on; Marie McGinn’s Routledge Guide is good, for instance. But it is worth the effort, certainly if you are (contrary to the evidence here, I know) serious about getting to grips with issues of definition and related matters.]

For others than OP: fwiw (not much I know) I suspect – as many pp have suggested, indeed – that definition is a bit of a red herring here. Maybe ‘explanation’ is a more useful word. Can I explain what a woman is (or what ‘woman’ means)? Of course I can. But the explanation I give will depend on who I am explaining to. To someone who does not speak English, I might well explain by telling them the word in their language, supposing I know it, for instance. But for someone who speaks English … well, things get very strange if we try to think of someone who speaks English but claims to need the word ‘woman’ explained to them. No?

Of course in some cases, a definition might help someone understand the word – it might help in explaining what it means. But, as is often the case when we think of explaining, the context is all important: who am I explaining to, and what is the purpose of the explanation?

And – again, of course – some people pretend they do not understand what ‘woman’ means. (If the cap fits, OP?) In such cases, it would seem an appropriate response to say, ‘Do stop being so silly.’

There are none so deaf as those who will not hear. None so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

If it is impossible to test for an individual’s sex, as you seem to be implying, then how is it possible to enforce a single sex space? I know men are supposed to not go in there, but surely the fact you feel they are needed suggest that some will want to regardless, so you need a way to prevent it?

Of course it's not impossible to test and it's disingenuous of you to suggest anyone has said that. It's entirely possible and if you had any knowledge of biology at all you'd know that. What you are asking is whether you should expect people to be tested before they access female-only spaces to which the answer is no. Secondary sexual characteristics are a very clear indicator of a person's sex. We can see those. And no, a woman with facial hair does not look like a man and a man with no facial hair does not look like a woman as the secondary sexual characteristics work together to be a very, very reliable indicator of a person's biological sex.

@RVN123

Can I ask OP something?

If DSDs simply did NOT exist, would you be happy that the definition of a woman was someone with XX chromosomes, and a male was someone with XY chromosomes?

Because that's pretty damn specific and irrefutable.

If you take DSDs out of the equation, then the maths are really very simple.
If 100% of the time, XY led to male characteristics and production / equipment for sperm production, and XX led to female characteristics and production / equipment for ova production, would you be happy then?

Because in reality, that IS what happens.

Are you aware of the statistics that have been mentioned in this thread?
The above holds true for 99.9% of the ENTIRE POPULATION.
Can you tell me what is wrong with that definition?

If DSDs didn’t exist then I would be happy with that definition. However they do, and we can’t just ignore them simply because they are a tiny proportion. There are 79 countries in the world with a smaller population than that of intersex people - we don’t go round pretending they don’t exist because it’s inconvenient

I'm curious OP - if you think its so hard to tell the difference between men and women, when men decide they must actually be women, what is it that tells them that? What is it that they then do that enables them to 'become women'? And what is it about them that they then share with other women that they don't share with men? Or if it is in fact impossible to tell, and we're all just a spectrum of 'could be anything, who knows', what is it trans people are transing from/to?

If it is impossible to test for an individual’s sex, as you seem to be implying, then how is it possible to enforce a single sex space? I know men are supposed to not go in there, but surely the fact you feel they are needed suggest that some will want to regardless, so you need a way to prevent it?

yes, the way to prevent it in places like toilets (or reduce it as there will always be some men who get off on over-stepping women's boundaries) is to make is socially unacceptable. Which is why gender ideology is so dangerous. In places like prisons you can look at the secondary sexual characteristics and then people in the right prisons. There you go, solved that for you! You might want to go and read some biology GCSE textbooks now as I think a lot of your confusion stems back to a lack of some very basic knowledge.

"If it is impossible to test for an individual’s sex, as you seem to be implying, then how is it possible to enforce a single sex space?"

1. It isn't impossible
2. The implication is all yours

"I know men are supposed to not go in there, but surely the fact you feel they are needed suggest that some will want to regardless, so you need a way to prevent it?"
You're making even more implications here. The fact I feel single-sex spaces are needed does NOT suggest that some men will want to enter.

I feel single-sex spaces are needed. Some men will want to enter. These two statement are unconnected.

1. Men will want to enter regardless of my feeling single-sex spaces are needed. If I didn't feel that way, they'd still want to enter.
2. The fact that some men will want to enter is not why I feel there is a need for single-sex spaces. If no man wanted to enter, I'd still feel there were a need for single-sex spaces.