Help - a quote needed about not being ‘defined’ by our biology

[ScoldsBridal]

I’m not sure if it’s Kathleen Stock but it’s a really neat come back to all those nonsense ‘gotchas’ that say we are saying that real women are being reduced to/defined by our reproductive organs and it’s usually followed up by ‘what about infertile women, what about menopausal women etc..,’

It might have been on twitter and I’m sure I screen grabbed a succinct response but I can’t find it. It basically says something along the lines of ‘we’re not ‘reduced’ to our reproductive organs but we acknowledge that they impact us and set us apart and accommodations are needed etc..

I really should keep a journal!

Sex is "defined" by the reproductive role one's body is organised around, and is "determined" by chromosomes - that is, the chromosomes trigger which developmental pathway a person goes down.

That's it. There is no further baggage that needs to accompany this fact, and gender critical people are of the opinion that imposing suoerficial things on people because of their biology is harmful.

Being a woman (or man) is just a fact about someone, but it's not gender critical people imposing "meaning" on a person, or their biology.

Defined by not confined??

I can’t give you a quotation from anywhere, but the answer is that ensuring a group of people are protected via the law, there needs to be a clear and coherent definition.

Having a clear and coherent definition of what a woman is doesn’t reduce a woman to her body parts, any more than having a clear definition of a dog as having four legs and a tail reduces my lovely friendly pet to his appendages. It’s simply nonsense. Even if he only had three legs, he’d still be a dog and also wonderful.

Anyway, last time these arguments about women with hysterectomies and infertile women no longer being women did the rounds (or it might have been two rounds ago) the wonderful PeachYogurt made a helpful video.

For any more recently joined members of the Terven, she’s always worth a watch.

Yes, this. Anyone who wants to say that women are not defined by our biology needs to define not only "women" but "defined".

Our biology defines us as a sex class. That sex class is indeed relevant to many aspects of our lives - childbearing, periods, male oppression, not being as fast or strong as men so needing separate sports groups (with the obvious caveat that all women bear children or compete in sports.) And our sex class is relevant to our oppression.

But our sex class as "women" should have no relevance to educational or work opportunities, or how we are treated in law, or many other things.

Human beings are bipedal. That doesn’t mean we are “reduced to our legs”.

This particular argument infuriates me.

Trans people are the ones defined by biology - they are the ones trying to obtain the opposite sex's biological markers like breasts or no breasts. They take hormones, have surgery, wear fake boobs or manufacture a penis. They have facial sculpting.

This is all to ape biology. So telling us we are defined by our biology is rich!

On Twitter, this by Victoria Smith is useful

https://x.com/glosswitch/status/1912541921722970345?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Thanks all. I know the arguments but I remember reading something and going ‘that just sums it up so succinctly, I must remember it’ and I didn’t 😂

I’m going to go through all my screen shots and see if I can find it - if I do, I shall return!

I am no Kathleen Stock but my response would be that biology defines our sex, not our personality.

I’m not sure if this is exactly what I was looking for but it’s brilliant none the less:

“To acknowledge that on the basis of their biology, only one half of our species is potentially capable of conceiving and gestating live young, neither reduces female persons to that reproductive function, nor prescribes it as necessary for them.”

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, Sex and Gender: A Beginner's Guide 2015

Was it this from J.K. Rowling? [pic attached]

Exactly. I'd actually respect the position of "there is nothing female about a woman" slightly more if it wasn't accompanied by demands for female hormones and trying to make the body look female with surgery etc.

Like all words in the English language, the word woman has a clear definition: it refers to a human female.

Some dishonest actors accuse those who acknowledge this definition of “reducing” women to their body parts. But this reflects a misunderstanding of how definitions work. Defining a word is not the same as reducing the people it describes—it simply clarifies the term’s meaning.

But..... If there's no definition of woman, what is it trans women are trying to achieve in defining themselves as transing towards? Long hair? Liking flower arranging? And this isn't reductive?

This is one of my favorites. She's great 👍

I agree - the "reducing' is a bizarre and deliberately dishonest term. To define a word isn't to "define a person". If I say a blue-eyed person is someone whose eyes are blue, then when I use that term, I am describing one aspect of someone. They could also be rich, liberal, honest, clever, diabetic, tall, Aries...

That might have been it. Even if it wasn’t, it’s along the lines - thanks for that!

Ah and Peachyoghurt is a welcome blast from the past. She hasn’t posted anything on YT for a few years - can you find her anywhere else these days?

Yes I love Peachyogourt - her latest videos seem to be about 4 years ago - and YES, they do stand the test of time - So funny and apposite.

Anyone know what's happened to her? I imagine she just felt she'd said all she wanted to say and moved on to something else??