Science says there's no simple answer to define 'woman.' USA Today

[Whatamesssss]

Who are these Scientists and can I see their qualifications?

eu.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2022/03/24/marsha-blackburn-asked-ketanji-jackson-define-woman-science/7152439001/

If no one can define what a woman is, how can anyone identify as a woman?

If you cannot define something (and a 'feeling' is not a definition of a sexed body) clearly then would it not be impossible to identify as and then attempt to live as a nebulous concept?

I'm going to stop asking them to define 'woman' and see what they say when asked to define 'man' or male. Obviously can't say has a penis can they?...

I think as an answer it was pretty clever and carefully worked out.

Despite the fact that I'm on the 'GC side' of this 'issue', I do note that another answer to this question could be 'a woman is someone who gets this question in public as a punishment for having a successful career'.

They're sitting there alive and born and everything and they don't know what a woman is. Sure, Jan. They presumably sprang fully formed from Zeus' head or magic seafoam or something.

I wonder who gave birth to them

All their scientists appear to have “and gender studies” in the name of their field of expertise, as far as I can see.

I'm a biologist and I have no problems defining what a woman is, and neither has dp who is a fellow biologist. If USA Today wants to talk to me for a definiton they can PM me.

Why do we always have these articles and questions about how to define a woman? If it is so hard to define "woman" then it must be equally difficult to define "man".
Why aren't MPs and scientists scratching they heads trying to define what is a "man"?

They can’t define a woman but somehow agree there are billions of women on the planet?

Yeah, but you can bet your bottom dollar they'll know if a woman is a woman when they want to get them into bed.

"There are at least six different biological markers of “sex” in the body: genitals, chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive structures, hormone ratios and secondary sex characteristics. None of the six is strictly dichotomous, Jordan-Young said, and the different markers don’t always align*"
*
I'd be happy with 3/6 to be honest. If you have at least 50% of the 'female' characteristics this 'scientist' starts make it so hard to define a woman, you can come in my space.

So that's;

Vagina not penis
XX not XY
Ovaries not Testes
Uterus present
Oestrogen not Testosterone
Breasts and small feet and less muscle mass not beard and big feet and more muscle mass

Obviously the final category would be nebulous, maybe if it comes down to that the test should be 'can a panel of women pick them out of a lineup of confirmed women'. Basically the test we always used before.

I've been watching King Critical videos recently and he does make some interesting points about this whole definition question, when taken to the chromosomes detail level.

He basically points out that we have working definitions of things that work perfectly well with some exceptions. So people recognise that what a chair is, but if asked to give a definition that would distinguish a chair from any other thing with a seat it gets tricky pretty quickly.

That there are some people edge cases where chromosomes etc don't match up as expected doesn't detract from the fact that whether someone is male or female can usually be determined at a glance.

Science doesn't determine definitions.

It chooses definitions to help it determine facts.

Given well-chosen definitions you can come up with astounding predictions like "women can become pregnant" and "men cannot become pregnant".

With badly-chosen definitions... you can't.

Anyway, so much of this stuff is so boring. It's just a pointless game where you pretend you don't know how nouns and language work, but only for one very specific word, while retaining that knowledge to use all the other words to tear that one word down.

Paraphrasing someone else's comment from the other day, if they don't know what "woman" means, then we can take the rest of the article to read

Marsha Blackburn ug Ketanaji Brown Jackson ug ug 'ug.' Ug ug ug ug ug ug.

Alia E. Dastagir | Ug ug

Ug ug

* Ug Marsha Blackburn ug Ketanji Brown Jackson ug ug "ug", ug ug "ug ug ug ug".
* Blackburn ug ug, ug ug ug Jackson ug ug ug ug
* Ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug ug.

This is where it has gone off the rails. From the article:

But Jordan-Young said she sees Jackson's answer, particularly the second half, reflecting the necessity of nuance. While traditional notions of sex and gender suggest a simple binary – if you are born with a penis, you are male and identify as a man and if you are born with a vagina, you are female and identify as a woman – the reality, gender experts say, is more complex.

Again, a complete misrepresentation of the issue. Why is there any need to bring identity into it? This is still flailing.

Nobody knows what a woman is yet they are all so certain an adult male is one.

Funny that!

Anyway, so much of this stuff is so boring

It certainly is, we all know the obvious truth and yet we have to waste our valuable time trying to counteract this bollocks.

@OvaHere

Nobody knows what a woman is yet they are all so certain an adult male is one.

Funny that!

People who claim that 'woman' is difficult to define, or unclear, or whatever, clearly consider males to be the default humans, and 'woman' to be some sort of puzzling variance from the norm.

As others have stated, the problem is not that science has several different ways of defining a biological woman or that sometimes (but not usually) they don't all give the same results.

The problem is that a person whose biology satisfies all definitions of what a biological man is can now be treated as a member of the oppressed sex-class, women, if that person's gender identity is accepted as THE definition.

@JustSpeculation

This is where it has gone off the rails. From the article:

But Jordan-Young said she sees Jackson's answer, particularly the second half, reflecting the necessity of nuance. While traditional notions of sex and gender suggest a simple binary – if you are born with a penis, you are male and identify as a man and if you are born with a vagina, you are female and identify as a woman – the reality, gender experts say, is more complex.

Again, a complete misrepresentation of the issue. Why is there any need to bring identity into it? This is still flailing.

Because she is afraid of the rage of the TRAs? I have a book she wrote which is very feminist, so I am disappointed by this.

But it is of course true that the reality is more complex, not because biology has become more complex, but because identity is allowed to have a separate influence.

I wouldn't care about additional categories at all if the categories 'men' and 'women' were allowed to be about biological sex and if our language wasn't erased and our ability to mobilise impeded.

As things stand, I have no idea if I qualify as a woman under the new definitions. I base my gender on my biological sex, but not in the sense of some abstract identity.

If you can't identify what a woman is, how can you identify as a woman?

Every single one of us came from a woman, when people say they don't know what a woman is what they really mean is I have no respect for my mother and I am happy to shit all over her and everything she did and went through for me to be the person that I am.

But they're happy to do that for the cookies, so I guess the cookie taste nice.

Stock's book does discuss the biological definition of woman in some detail, including the long list of definitions. If I recall correctly, many use the rule that if someone's biology satisfies a certain number of those, then that person is female. So not all definitions need to be satisfied for biology to conclude on this.

Its time to start flipping this conversation and keep asking how do you define a male !

@Yirk

Its time to start flipping this conversation and keep asking how do you define a male !

The TRAs are utterly uninterested in addressing what a man might be. Utterly. They don't demand anything from men and the male sex doesn't carry any costs that come about because of the transgender rights demands.

When you spot that you realise how very much this whole endeavour is based on contempt towards bog-standard women and on the expectation that they hand over their hard-won seats at the table or be canceled.

Everyone knows exactly what a woman is. How fucking STUPID to think that we don't. Children KNOW.
The men who dress as women KNOW.
Rapists KNOW.

This bunch of clown scientists say they don't know?
Fuckwits.

I wonder what Emma Hilton would say here.