Is woman a gender?

[Everythingtastesbetterwithcheese]

Ive been having a "discussion" with someone on social media, who claims that the word "woman" is just a social construct and describes someone's gender which means it can be used to describe anyone who identifies as one as gender is just how someone feels . The scientific word is female. Im quite confused now. I asked him what the word for a group of adult human females that didnt include adult human males was, and his reply was ciswomen. Can someone explain this to me? Is "woman" a gender?

We are told that gender isn't related to sex but has some deeper significance, Flippersmum. I'd really love to know what it is.

Regardless of how they define woman, I would just focus on how one 'feels like a woman'. And then point out the sexist drivel that they list as evidence of 'women feelings'.

If you try and find logic and coherence to understand OP, you're just going to give yourself a headache. There isn't any.

All of this wangling and wiggling of words and linguistic gaming is to allow men to play with the new frontier of womanhood and herd females onto labelled reservations. Fuck that.

@AlecTrevelyan006

...thus we find ourselves having difficulty describing the group of people who are female.

Well, we don't, although a very small number, a highly vocal group of ideological loons do pretend that they find it difficult, so as to pretend that they have an excuse for a fit of the vapours, if any normal, rational person uses the word "women."

I agree :)

See, I am not sure they are saying people change sex. It’s hard to know what they say as their thinking is so illogical and incoherent and definition-free. But I think men who say they are female deny that sex is biological, so they can be female without ‘changing sex’. They are female because they are women and they are women because they say so. Their starting point is the thought-terminating cliche of TWAW and everything else has to follow from that.

Whereas the logical, rational starting point would be ‘what defines a woman’ and everything else flowing from that.

Or perhaps, ‘ I have gender dysphoria and what is the best way to manage that, taking into account the rights and interests of other groups in society’ ( as one would do in a true intersectional analysis).

But hosepipe connectors are also male and female, as are animals, plants, fish - nothing to do with human beings. Woman is the word for adult human female, like doe means female deer (or rabbit), ewe means female sheep, bitch means female dog.

This is not difficult.

In my mental dictionary "I identify as" means "I am pretending to be".

“A woman is anyone who identifies as a women” only seems to make sense because we all have a concept of what a women actually is.

If I said, “a snargledorft is anyone who identifies as a snargledoft” then asked you to tell me what are the characteristics of a snargledorft, you wouldn’t be able to because there’s nothing in that sentence that defines it. It’s a meaningless sentence.

Saying anyone who identifies as a women, only works because we actually know what a women is, even if people pretend not to.

First and foremost it is the name for an adult human female.

Just like in the song from The Sound of Music, “Doe, a deer, a female deer”.

A sow is a female pig.
A mare is a female horse.
A bitch is a female dog.

etc etc etc
’female’ is an adjective.

Incels and police talk about ‘females’ instead of women.

Thank the Goddess that someone else noticed! I was starting to think that I'd been getting it wrong all these years. Might have explained my atrocious result in A Level Biology.

Yes it’s been bugging me for many years when people used the word “females” as a noun. Female what used to be my response. Elephants? Kangaroos? Cats?

Always knew I was on a losing battle as language evolves but it just seemed so unnecessary even before I was peaked.

'Cisgender' is a gender identity term for someone who believes in an abstract gender identity and for whom this matches the gender rules, roles and stereotypes associated with the sex they actually are.

That group is not at all the same as all natal women, because many of us don't believe in the existence of abstract gender identity which just happens to match our sex. Either we don't have an identity at all, but just use 'women' and 'men' to refer to adults of the two sexes or the identity we have is based on living in a sexed body, both directly, and indirectly (how others treat us because of the sex of our bodies).

So 'cisgender' is not a way to replace the old definition of 'woman'. It erases sex and also demands that we all worship at the altar of this new secular religion. As I've written before, it's a little as if a religious sect called outsiders 'heathens', and then demanded that those outsiders use that label for themselves, as all it now supposedly supposedly means is someone not in the sect. It's still a total replacement of the older definition of 'woman' (and 'man' should someone one day be interested in colonising that one, too).

Many decades ago it was possible to argue that 'gender' was the way cultures 'did' biological sex by attaching certain forms of behaviour, roles, rules, and stereotypes to male and female people within the culture. This was really a combination of being an adult of either sex plus the cultural understanding of that. But this view is rarely seen today.

You're quite right.

I've used 'female' for some time when talking here to avoid some muppet telling me that if I say 'women' I'm referring to a mixed sex group and being clear who I'm actually talking about.

But yes. It's 'woman' meaning adult human female, and we really need to stop giving credence to all this by investing in it and engaging with it. It's an adult human female, end of. It has no other meaning. Transwoman is perfectly adequate to describe a male person with a chosen identity, and no woman can be a transwoman.

There is also a problem when you are left without a word to describe adult human females (and are not allowed to have one).

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn
@Theladyinluna

"but the whole transgender debate could be cleared up immediately if the words woman and man were abolished and replaced with female and male."

Wouldn't help at all. Apart from being a grammatical nonsense - as above - there are plenty of TRAs claiming 'female' as well as 'woman'.

++++

OK then how about clearing up the whole transgender debate by abolishing the words woman and man AND male and female and replacing them with "adult human in possession of XX (or XY) chromosomes".

It would make toilet door labelling interesting.

Interesting points, but 'no' is probably simpler.

Thanks so much for ‘time-wasting gerbils’. Spat my tea! 🤣

To quote Hannah Gadsby, ‘I identify as tired.’

It's 'woman' meaning adult human female

I agree 110% with the sentiment, but if we’re sticking with female being an adjective, then it’s female adult human surely (or adult female human?). I know I’m really pedantic but if we’re critiquing others on misuse and misappropriation of language, surely we need to get the grammar right. Meanings matter and all of that. The examples above weren’t adult dog female for bitch or adult deer female for doe.

@funnelfan think you're up for pedant of the week for that observation! Of course you are right, but think of KJK and all the t shirts that would have to be reprinted! I think we should keep this one quiet 🤫

funnelfan · Yesterday 22:24
It's 'woman' meaning adult human female

I agree 110% with the sentiment, but if we’re sticking with female being an adjective, then it’s female adult human surely (or adult female human?). I know I’m really pedantic but if we’re critiquing others on misuse and misappropriation of language, surely we need to get the grammar right. Meanings matter and all of that. The examples above weren’t adult dog female for bitch or adult deer female for doe.

Isn’t ( or wasn’t?)! ‘Adult human female’ the dictionary definition of a woman?

Imo, ‘A Female’ (noun) is correct in the context of the meaning, ‘One of the two sexes, male and female.’

‘Adult human female’ (noun) is correct as meaning a female, rather than a male, who is human - rather than a female, rather than a male, who is,say, a horse.

‘A female human’……emphasises that she is female, rather than male.
‘A human female’….emphasises that she is human.

It is unpleasant though to say something such as, ‘I like that female over there’.

This was not supposed to be italics. It was part of my answer:

Imo, ‘A Female’ (noun) is correct in the context of the meaning, ‘One of the two sexes, male and female.

I believe that when KJK first decided on what she was going to do, she consulted a dictionary and that was what was in there.

Because yes I was one of the ones that made a contribution to the original poster...talking of which...

This is the question to respond with. Perfect.

We never categorise people just by biology. If we did then all human females who have gone through puberty are adults and would be women. But we have the social constructed category of women from late teens onwards. Ten year olds can go through puberty but nobody wants to categorise them as women.

Humans can't be unique among mammals in that they aren't adult after puberty. Humans don't mature fully until later but that is the same for other mammals too.

If I worked with a transwoman I would treat her like a woman. I may well have worked with transwomen without realising that they are trans. If I found out I wouldn't stand in the doorway of the toilets saying "You're not allowed in here. You're a MAN!"

Sorry if that's too socially constructed for you but we all have our social constructions. Your social constructions are just as non-biological as mine.