Cambridge dictionary drops new definition of the word ‘woman’

[Coconutmeg]

It’s quite long to get in a t -shirt though.

Yes, if a large proportion of people started referring to the colour of the sky as pink, it would get added to the dictionary. The comparative colour words between languages and the etymology of various colours even shows how such drift happens. The ancient Greeks described the sky as bronze. But your implication of course is that they are not describing something. The gender critical position is “the sky is always blue” when, in fact, sometimes the sky is pink.

it’s not slang, and “popular usage” is not a thing in dictionaries, it’s just a definition you don’t agree with. Slang is informal usage, usually spoken.

Definitions are entirely determined by usage, and petitions don’t change usage.

Definitions are entirely determined by usage
That's not true, especially in this case. The fact there is now a secondary usage being given is because of usage however the description given and the examples chosen as illustrations are up to the compiler. In some cases these are inaccurate or biased.

@DadJoke

The gender critical position is “the sky is always blue” when, in fact, sometimes the sky is pink.

The gender critical position is that sex exists and has a material impact on women (the original, female meaning)'s lives. Gender identity, if it does exist, is a different thing and should not, as the genderists like to imply, be seen as interchangeable with or superseding sex.

The sky is sometimes pink indeed.

However, a male person is not a female person.

Sex is not gender.

Sometimes, sex matters more than gender,

These are not matters of opinion, but matters of fact.

Changing the language may change how we express them, or even, in the case of totalitarian controls on language, remove our ability to express them at all, but they do not change the facts.

The problem with the sky is pink analogy is that that isn't really a dictionary issue - there's a definition of sky and a definition of pink neither of which would necessarily contain the other word. It might be there in the list of example sentences or something. The shark/kitten/dog analogy was bollocks too, come up with a better one.
I had an argument with my mum about pronouns, she said "so if I told you I didn't want you to call me Mum anymore, I wanted you to call me by my first name, would you do it??" and I said yes I would because in this made up situation presumably you'd have a good reason to want that. This is the problem with all of the comparison examples - they sound ridiculous because they're made up out of thin air and have no suggested reasons for the change in word usage. You can't make the change in definition of woman sound ridiculous by using made up examples like this.

Men aren't women. There is no point at which they become women. This is part of the endless gerrymandering to try and force women to accept men shamlessly doing whatever tf they feel like regardless of impact on women with no conscience whatsoever and enough word salad to drown Texas.

No. Enough now.

@nilsmousehammer earlier you said that repeating something endlessly doesn't make it true, I agree with you there.
I love how discussions like this just descend into "men aren't women, end of" when there are no more real points left to make.

What other points are left to make?

The whole point of politically manipulating every source with the word 'woman' in it, is in order to try to force men into the category of women.

The sophistry and burble is all about trying to make that sound reasonable and appropriate.

It's not. Reality exists. Sorry about that. And women are beyond fucked off now.

If you change the meaning of the word women to allow it to include men then of course "men" can be "women".

But you've not proved anything at all about the group formerly known as women or the one formerly known as men. That reality still exists. Those who were men under the old sense of the word still cannot be women under the old sense. The womanhood they can achieve is not the one they covet, it's just the same word slapped onto something different.

And by the same token you cannot(1) claim anything about the old definition - their spaces, their rights, their history - applies to the new.

That's what I object to. Not the possibility that language can change, but the cold hearted moral vacuum behind deliberately engineering that change to allow one group of people to land grab another's political and social resources without honest and open discussion about what they want and why they should have it.

(2) Well, morally, logically and coherently you cannot. In practice of course you can claim anything you want, and if you have enough arrogance, power, lack of decency and don't give a shit about actual women you can force people to live as if your lie is true. But it's still a lie.

It is odd to me that they've doubled-down on linking 'woman' to 'female' in the additional definition. Again, you can be a masculine trans man and they claim that is equivalent to being a woman because 'female' is the common factor. If that's acceptable usage then I've possibly misunderstood what trans men have been saying for many years.

and 'may have been said to have a different sex at birth' is not good, concise, clear writing when it means 'male'.

It is odd to me that they've doubled-down on linking 'woman' to 'female' in the additional definition.

That may be because their first definition of 'female' and 'male' are now about gender, with the biological definition second.
I do not believe this reflects in any way the balance of usage. The whole mass of scientific literature ... they must have ignored this, but even without that I very rarely see 'female' primarily relating to gender rather than sex.
Oh... and one of the example they use in definition 1 of male .... ^ he is one of the most prominent trans male athletes today^ .... wtf bubble do they live in where any 'trans male athletes' are remotely 'prominent'. (I suspect they've just copied the example they've put for 'female' rather than it being a genuine example)

Editorial bias, its political not accurate.

So female is "relating to women" and woman is "is or lives as female"?

And that's not circular?
It gets worse!

Waiting with bated breath for a response to this!

OK my pink sky analogy was a bit crap, I'll give you that (it was late and I was tired).

What I was trying to say was a dictionary isn't a list of how words are 'popularly understood '. It just isn't. And dadjoke saying it is doesn't make it so.

Even the Cambridge dictionary itself does not define it as such!

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dictionary?q=Dictionary

Adding a new word that has made its way into popular use e.g. "selfie" is completely different to changing the established meaning of an existing word.

It's like if they defined Jesus as "the way,
the truth and the life,
the only son of God, the saviour of humankind" instead of "Christians believe...."(No offence intended).
Belief is not fact, and this is the crux of the matter.

Lots of words gain additional and sometimes related meanings. That’s how language develops. Cf hardware and woke.

Gender identity is a well established scientific term, used in multiple scientific journals and peer-reviewed research. This gives the lie to the idea that it’s a religious concept. In fact, it’s disputing the idea on that basis rather than publishing rebuttals in peer-reviewed journals which has a pseudo-religious quality. You could put “scientists believe” in front of definitions, but I think that’s redundant.

Gender identity is nothing but personal expression and presentation with added sexist sex role stereotypes. There is nothing innate about it.

Men can never be women. No surgery, no hormones, no certificate of nonsense.
Saying the word women now includes some men still won't make those men women.

Gender identity is a well established scientific term

It's not a 'scientific term'. Scientists do study human phenomena, including unscientific ones e.g. religious traits, of course.

Gender identity is a well established scientific term, used in multiple scientific journals and peer-reviewed research.

Sure, to describe an observed phenomenon where someone believes they should have been, or internally really are, the opposite sex. It's a big, unevidenced jump to conclude this means they in reality ARE the opposite sex, and therefore that all hitherto assumptions about what sex is, and what each sex needs and the risks it may face or pose, are wrong (1)

There is, after all, plenty of scientific, peer reviewed literature about named mental states of mind where the subjective perception does not align with objective (or at least consensus) reality.

But that's rather beside the point. Gender identity may be as really real as a real thing can be, but it's not the same thing as sex, and the "accident" (ahem - deliberate manipulation) of language that has happened to land it with the same words as sex are not any sort of basis to claim sex - based rights and privileges.

(1) Except they don't, do they? They say is the one hand humanity has totally misunderstood what a man and a woman are, but on the other humanity miraculously managed to set the single sex things up just right anyway, all we need to do is swap sex for inner gender and it's all ticketyboo, no need to really think about it at all, we'll just take all this for the male women thank you. And no, female bodied people who are no longer the definition of women don't get to redefine themselves, what are you, crazy? You just carry on womaning like you always did, why on earth would entirely denying the basis on which you understood yourself to be a woman change any of that?

But the definition is circular. What is "lives and identifies as female"?

Scientists are not free of politics. Terms studied by scientist aren't universal truths. The term bipolar is a scientific term in your sense. It doesn't mean that everyone has it. Same way that 'gender identity' isn't something everyone has. Only those that believe in gender identity ideology do.

Some ‘scientists’ in the USA prescribe puberty blockers to children. It is their bread and butter.