“We want gas and air to be available for women and….”

[AnyFucker]

You guessed it… “birthing people”

Morning telly, right there 🤢

I think this is the real problem:

Some people ... want to be regarded as belonging to the other category, or neither category, or both

They may want to. But it's not possible to actually belong to a different category. Sex is immutable. It's also impossible to control how other people regard you. They may be taught/pressured to pretend to regard you a certain way. But deep down we all know that a transwoman is male.

The problem is teaching children that a 'transwoman is a woman'.

If you are actually pushing this (and many people are), then how do you teach reproduction?

There are now quite a few of us who believe that the nature of your reproductive system doesn’t dictate what sort of person you are
No, that's very true.

It absolutely does, however, dictate whether you are male or female, man or woman.
Maybe have some semblance of an argument under your belt before you try to "educate" women, eh? It'll help you look less like one of the usual suspects.

Are we setting the criteria for entering spaces to 'the right sort of person' and the 'wrong sort of person' then?

Seriously?

Thanks for reading and engaging with what I said sensibly.

To address the last part of your post first, I did set out (admittedly a while ago) how I would explain to my child where babies come from. I wouldn’t say “a man has sex with a woman” because that wouldn’t be how my child was made. But I think the explanation I set out above was sufficiently clear. And obviously, I would also explain how pregnancy occurs in the case of couples who conceive by sex - and make sure that, certainly by the time my child was nearing an age where they could get pregnant, or cause a pregnancy, they understood the implications of that for them.

on the first part, I agree the explanation would need to be adapted for the specific age of the child, and as I’m not yet a parent, I don’t have a very good sense of precisely what would be right at what age (and presumably it would vary quite a lot between children).

And on the rest, the main point on which I disagree with you is whether categorisation by sex, and the implications of that for people’s lives, really just boils down to ‘stereotypes’. I think it goes much deeper than that, and has a much more profound effect. It’s not about wearing make up or heels, it’s about the fact that people’s sense of themselves and other people’s personhood is closely bound up with their gender. People say to their children ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’ and often say that they themselves - rather than wanting to be a ‘good person’ - want to be ‘a good man’ or ‘a good woman’.

It’s not possible to become a person with xx chromosomes if you have XY chromosomes, or vice versa. It’s not possible to have a uterus or ovaries if you weren’t born with them, or testicles, or a ‘genuine’ penis. It’s not possible to change the fact that you were born with a penis, or a vagina.

but what we’re really arguing about here is language. I just disagree that the only possible coherent meaning of “woman” is “a person whose body developed down the pathway that normally results in the type of body that produces large gametes”.

The question here is how do we explain reproduction to young children.

just disagree that the only possible coherent meaning of “woman” is “a person whose body developed down the pathway that normally results in the type of body that produces large gametes”.

Because this is not helpful for a six year old.

As for this point: 'I just disagree that the only possible coherent meaning of “woman” is “a person whose body developed down the pathway that normally results in the type of body that produces large gametes”.'

The only possible coherent meaning of “a person whose body developed down the pathway that normally results in the type of body that produces large gametes” is 'woman'.

I think there are two slightly separate but related questions - one is about how babies are made (you mix together a seed from a male body and an egg from a female body and then grow the baby in the tummy of a person with a female body), and one is about language and how we talk about people.

The terms girl/woman and boy/man usually relate to whether a person has a male body or female body, but for reasons that a child might not yet understand (but which relate to all the baggage those terms come with, and the expectations and assumptions that are often placed on people as a result), some people don’t feel comfortable with the words that normally apply to people with their type of body.

some people don’t feel comfortable with the words that normally apply to people with their type of body
Which doesn't prevent those bodies being either male or female 🤷🏻‍♀️
Some extra large people don't like their body being referred to as fat, but whilst it may sound rude, it's the literal truth and we don't change the meaning of the word to spare anyone's hurt feelings.
Reality matters, not the world as we know it being changed to suit people with fragile mental health; to the detriment of everyone else.

@ReadersD1gest Your final paragraph is 👌.

@aseriesofstillimages Why use such contorted language when explaining reproduction to young children? “..in the tummy of a person with a female body” is odd and potentially confusing for a child. Far easier to say “.. in the woman’s womb” (may as well use the correct anatomical term).

This is also the bare scientific facts of reproduction.

This ^^ Exactly.

Why are we twisting words frantically in all directions to obfusticate this?

So that less than 1% of the population can avoid the reality that their biological sex remains a fixed fact.

Their distress may be very real, but trying to force the world into lying to disguise that reality for their benefit has had massive consequences for women's rights. There need to be other and better ways.

And yes, I was quite willing to be nice about women and, however the agenda has now gone too far and done too much damage for nice to be possible. It's totally unreciprocated.

The word woman was already inclusive of any person who might give birth.

The people who broke that were the people who decided "woman" is a state of mind not a physical reality. If trans and non binary people wanted words to describe their gender identities they should have coined new ones not broken the important ones we already had. I have no sympathy for people who demanded we redefine the word to exclude them and then complain about being excluded. It's farcical.

The concept of Woman as a mentality is sexist, regressive and exclusionary. It denies female reality, obscures female abuse and marginalisation and politically disempowers female people.

I reject it utterly, and I despise anyone who promotes it.

Just this ^

bravo AF, as ever bang on.

The solution to the discomfort is not to enforce unnecessary linguistic change on everyone else; but to deal with the root cause of that discomfort.

It is is not the word that is the issue, it is what you are associating with it.

Woman is a perfectly apt and serviceable word for an adult human female.

You do seem to believe you are onto something really rather radical and new. Have you really no awareness of the history of the women's movement or the gay liberation movement or the ways in which people have challenged gender stereotypes in the past?

What we cannot deny, though, is that there are two sexes; and sex is more than just a matter of different chromosomes and different types of bodily parts. On one level we are no different to any other creature: we are subject to a greater or lesser extent to the same drives and instinctive patterns and responses - and that includes those which have been conditioned by the fact of our sex.

This doesn't mean, though, that we are reducible as human beings purely to the facts of our sex ( that would be gender stereotyping - which is what I see you doing); we are all individuals with our own characteristics, personal history, talents, skills, and personal preferences.

I think what is going on with genderism is conditioned by the same desire that many people feel - that they'd love to transcend human nature; the limits of the body; and of the facts of natural life on earth. People have been trying to conquer nature forever. To live forever; to cheat death; to fly without wings......

As a child I used to repeatedly jump off a brick wall holding an umbrella, really believeing that the wind might carry me away a bit like Mary Poppins. It tended not to work out that well, though. Young people tend to believe they are the first people to ever realise certain truths; to pose certain questions; to struggle with certain realities. That is the nature of youth - to believe that all is still possible. Realising that life is by nature limited and that are certain boundaries which we cannot transcend or overcome without great personal cost.

...can come as a great disappointment. Some people never lose their idealism; whilst others develop more realistic sense of life and its possibilities; and with that can come a greater appreciation and even some wisdom.

@aseriesofstillimages

but what we’re really arguing about here is language. I just disagree that the only possible coherent meaning of “woman” is “a person whose body developed down the pathway that normally results in the type of body that produces large gametes”.

To the degree that any collection of sounds can be used as a word that labels any concept as long as enough people agree to make it understood, yes there's no inherent reason the sound "woman" needs to label the physical group that is Adult Human Female rather than the collection of concepts you want to draw an arbitrary line round and call "Woman".

(I may personally disagree with the claim that this arbitrary group of concepts somehow characterises a coherent and meaningful type of human, certainly to the degree it is more socially, physically and politically significant than sex, but that's not relevant to my point here).

But that neutral argument only works if the sound Woman was previously unassigned. It doesn't work if Woman already has a meaning.

Because now you are not just labelling your concept, you are unavoidably also unlabelling a previous, pre-existing concept. And more than that, although by redefining an existing word you are superficially positioning yourself as rejecting the pre-existing meaning, by using the existing name, you are still claiming some coherence with it.

And indeed this is exactly the trick that the gender ideologists are playing. By appropriating the name Woman from the name for the group of people who are adult human females to label their entirely different concept which encompasses a different group of people, they create the false perception that the rights, spaces and history of the former are somehow rightly and properly due to the latter. But a moment's thinking is all it takes to see that no, these are entirely separate concepts and there is no logical coherence to on the one hand changing the definition of woman while on the other laying claim rights and protections that can only be justified by that previous definition.

In short, the issue is not with the concept you want to recognise, it's with the appropriation and enforcement redefinition of a pre-existing word to do it, because that has a serious negative effect on the marginalised group that word was already in use by and for.