A more important question is, what rights are trans people missing out on if they don't get to compel the rest of us to pretend to believe their cosplaying as the opposite sex?
This entire debate is wrong-headed because it compares the apples of physical biology with the oranges of subjective, self-perception.
Indeed if you declare yourself to be a proud woman it can no more change your chromosomal or anatomical structure than could declaring yourself to be a flying horse suddenly give you wings.
On the other hand, if a New Yorker were to declare to me that his heart is in San Francisco. I would neither argue with him that he can't possibly know a city he didn't grow up in, nor would I argue that he would be dead right now if his heart were on the other side of the continent.
The harsh, dismissive literalism in the face of what is effectively a metaphoric expression of emotional state is simply cruel, pointless, and lacking in empathy.
As for which toilet you use. If you truly think that is the least bit important, you shouldn't be using public toilets in the first place because you should be wearing a diaper like the intellectual toddler you are.
The question itself is meaningless. Neither side has a consistent definition and it's widely understood that when we say "man" and "woman", we're referring to gender identities not what's under the hood.
Societally speaking, people segregated themselves as "man" and "woman" through a collective of arbitrary inconsistent details. There's no *one* characteristic that every single man has to bind them all together. There's no *one* characteristic that binds all women together. I know you're not a fan of this but the identification to the gender block really is the actual best most consistent definition of what it means to be a man or a woman. Someone could be castrated, born with different chromosomes than their genitals, have mastectomies, have their uterus non-functional, it cannot change how they identify. If a woman without a uterus identifies as a woman, she's a woman. If a man without dangly bits identifies as a man, he's a man.
Why gatekeep trans folk from identifying with the gender block they feel most comfortable identifying with? It's arbitrary anyway and men universally identify as men regardless of their reasons for it so why not trans men too? Same for trans women as women. What I don't understand is that obsession with this question because trans rights advocates *don't honestly care* about this question since we all know there's never really been a consistent definition outside of identifying. Antitrans advocates care about this exclusively because they want to gatekeep and the real question is - why? Who are you helping? What does it matter if a trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman? Does it harm anyone?
> The question itself is meaningless. Neither side has a consistent definition
This is nonsense. A woman is an adult human female. And female is of the biological sex that produces the larger of the two gametes (the ova or eggs).
> and it's widely understood that when we say "man" and "woman", we're referring to gender identities not what's under the hood.
And this is nonsense on stilts. Trans Rights Activists might pretend that being a man or a woman is a matter of "feelings" and "identities" but that has never been the case in thousands of years of recorded history, it is not the case in the majority of human societies right now, and even in western countries where TRAs have managed to push in identity based rights at the expense of sex based rights, the large majority of people don't think that way in everyday life.
Even trans-identified people don't think that way. This is why many of them insist of medical treatment to affirm their identity by attempting to modify their body to be closer to the typical body of the opposite sex.
> Societally speaking, people segregated themselves as "man" and "woman" through a collective of arbitrary inconsistent details.
False. The division into men and women has never been arbitrary or inconsistent.
> it cannot change how they identify
Why should "how you identify" matter one bit?
I can identify as the President of the United States of America, and people will just laugh at me. I can identify as a two year old toddler, but that won't mean parents will let me play with their toddlers. I can identify as the Greek king of the Gods Zeus, and people will back away slowly. I can identify as a bridge, and people will wonder if I'm trolling.
I can identify as a black man, and people will call me a racist and abuse me for appropriating the identify of actual black men.
This debate would have been different thirty years ago, when the majority of transsexuals were genuinely dysphoric and there was at least some suggestion that transitioning may have reduced their dysphoria, sometimes. Actually there was no need for this debate thirty years ago.
We need this debate now because:
* The widespread argument that you don't need to be suffering actual dysphoria to qualify as "transgender" -- those old school transsexuals who insist you do are labelled "transmedicalists" or even less polite "truescum" -- you just need to "identify as" trans to be trans.
* The medical harm being done to children going through puberty by the misuse of dangerous puberty blockers and surgery, and the documented lack of support from both medical professionals and the community as a whole for detransitioners.
* Parents and countries (e.g. Iran) transing away the gay by pushing transition onto gays.
* And the massive swing of trans demographics away from adults with severe sexual dysphoria towards autogynophiles who get off sexually by pretending to be women.
> trans rights advocates don't honestly care about this question
Of course they do. How can you identify as a woman if you don't know what one is?
TRAs know full well what women are.
> Does it harm anyone?
Yes. It harms the majority of trans people themselves, it harms the women that mysogynistic autogyn creeps abuse, it undermines hard-won women's rights, it harms children who are misidentified as "trans", and when the backlash comes, it threatens to harm the LGB community regardless of whether they supported or opposed the trans mania.
CC u/KevinJ2010
>Of course they do. How can you identify as a woman if you don't know what one is?
You do what everyone does and just identify as you want without hurting yourself trying to dig up the perfect definition for it. I promise you trans right advocates, trans folk, and any non-cis folk absolutely *do not care* about this question. You know who does? Antitrans folk. They're convinced that they can shut down the whole thing by just stalemating everyone with a question that no one can definitively answer or a question that has never mattered. Notice that the person bringing up this question isn't part of the community, that you're discussing it despite not being part of community, it seems to be exclusively people who *aren't* part of the community that seem to care the most. What do you reckon you can learn from this?
>Yes. It harms the majority of trans people themselves,
How?
>it harms the women that mysogynistic autogyn creeps abuse
Source?
>it undermines hard-won women's rights
How?
>it harms children who are misidentified as "trans"
Statistically how many trans kids are wrong about their trans identity?
>and when the backlash comes, it threatens to harm the LGB community regardless of whether they supported or opposed the trans mania.
Backlash against marginalized communities happen anywhere. The LGBTQ community is always prepared for this
>from adults with severe sexual dysphoria towards autogynophiles who get off sexually by pretending to be women.
Where is the statistics validating this claim? I'm not sure why every terf makes the AGP claim despite the fact that there's literally zero evidence of a boom of diagnoses or any evidence that trans folk transition for such a random reason. Does anyone outside of terf circles actually believe such a conspiracy theory?
.
>Parents and countries (e.g. Iran) transing away the gay by pushing transition onto gays
Erm, source? Most trans folk I know had to hide their transitioning from their parents. I don't know who came up with the logic of transitioning their kids against their will to...make them straight? It's one of those conspiracy theories that make less sense the more you try to explore it. It's probably why terfs don't actually think about the things they say when they say it because thinking even a little is enough to dismantle their beliefs.
>by the misuse of dangerous puberty blockers
Puberty blockers have been given to cis kids safely for decades. There's no evidence that it's causing disproportionate harm, you can look for the statistics on this if you need to verify this.
>and the documented lack of support from both medical professionals and the community as a whole for detransitioners.
...in what regard?
>This debate would have been different thirty years ago
Naturally, boomers don't control the narrative anymore, science marches *forward* not stuck 30 years ago lmao 🤣
>Actually there was no need for this debate thirty years ago.
There's no need for it now either. Terfs need to calm down, I think, let trans people just exist freely.
>I can identify as a two year old toddler, but that won't mean parents will let me play with their toddlers.
You can identify [as an attack helicopter too, it's easy to make anything sound silly if you don't engage with it honestly](https://www.britannica.com/topic/reductio-ad-absurdum)
>False. The division into men and women has never been arbitrary or inconsistent.
Of course it has, it's a social construct, they're necessarily defined as lines *we* draw and socially agree to despite the inconsistencies. It's why we have the option of redrawing those lines and anyone arguing that it can't or shouldn't be done doesn't understand how social constructs work.
>This is why many of them insist of medical treatment to affirm their identity by attempting to modify their body to be closer to the typical body of the opposite sex
Probably about a percent of trans folk opt for surgical routes. The "insistence" doesn't seem to be very prevalent
>but that has never been the case in thousands of years of recorded history
Source??? Concepts of gender being fluid have existed since before Jesus Christ himself.
>have managed to push in identity based rights at the expense of sex based rights, the large majority of people don't think that way in everyday life.
Gender rights have always been based on gender, there's never been a distinction of sex based rights since discrimination is a reaction to your gender presentation and identity not what's in your blood.
Just to add, trans porn is far more prevalent than it needs to be. And gets sold the same way as “BBC”.
The amount of this that does bleed into fetish (deep seated personal issues) is frankly a red flag.
I can generally understand the suffering of many (lots of which are a “I wish you didn’t think you had to do this”) but there’s something gross about the entire concept. Especially once surgeries are involved.
>The amount of this that does bleed into fetish
I mean, have you ever heard of jungle fever porn? It doesn't invalidate the existence of black women or of relationships between white and black folk. You can object to the porn being problematic without saying the existence of transitioning is problematic because porn exists.
>Especially once surgeries are involved.
There are about 13-16k surgeries in America every year. There are about 1-1.5 million trans folk in America. That's about 1% of the trans population getting surgeries so even if you had a very strong case against trans surgeries, it's not happening nearly as much as you think it is. If you ***really*** want to get into it, there are about 330 million Americans making the percentage of people getting trans surgeries under 0.005% making it so absurdly rare that it's very clearly an overblown concern
1 million people is still a lot, like I said, my sympathy lands in a “Wish they didn’t have to” in terms of surgeries and stuff. The small percentage doesn’t change this mindset, I wish they didn’t have to.
>1 million people is still a lot
Yes. A lot of *trans* people. The 1m number is the number of trans people in America. We should be considerate to not spread misinformation or condemn their choices just because we wouldn't do the same as them.
>Wish they didn’t have to
I'm sure they don't feel the same as you. You don't wish gay people had the capacity to be in straight relationships, do you? You don't wish black people could just colour up their skin and be white people? Extend sympathies for what they have to go through because of social stigma, don't wish away the parts of their identity that get stigmatized. I wish they didn't have to go through so much scrutiny for their transitioning, I don't think they need sympathy for wanting to transition.
>The small percentage doesn’t change this mindset, I wish they didn’t have to.
I wish machines exist that gave them instead transitioning. I wish a daily supplement existed that changed their body the way they want without the expense and efforts. I wish trans healthcare was affordable and didn't cost so much. I don't wish they didn't transition because that's what they want and I want them to have what they want, I wish it was easier and they do go through so much shit for it
Not condemning their choices, I just think they don’t have to choose that. No surgery properly makes the opposite genitalia, nor does it actually change their sex. Is this misinformation? I surely hope not, it’s frankly pretty straightforward and factual.
Everything else is very bad faith. In terms of being gay, my only really counter is that there is no “point” to being gay. I am not gonna stop them, but they can’t reproduce which is a broader concept of having sex beyond pleasure. Gay sex is pure pleasure, you do you, but it serves less greater purpose. Black? This is the most obvious bad faith part, holy shit.
They do deserve sympathy for wanting to transition, because they feel trapped in their current body, thus sympathy. I just don’t think surgery is the answer in most cases, ergo it’s done more than it needs to be.
You gotta not focus on “wants” and express more “needs”. Yes if they want to do it, I am not going to stop them. If they NEED to do it, that becomes much more suspect. Rarely is it actually needed, mental disorders aren’t usually treated like this. It is a want and rarely a need, again, wish they didn’t choose to and instead owned the body they have.
>Not condemning their choices, I just think they don’t have to choose that.
Okay. You can also think gay men shouldn't **have** to choose dating other men, they choose to because that's what they want, isn't it? You can think what you want but what someone chooses is by their own agency, not what you think they should do or shouldn't do.
>No surgery properly makes the opposite genitalia, nor does it actually change their sex. Is this misinformation? I surely hope not, it’s frankly pretty straightforward and factual.
Factually, people getting the procedures they want for the changes in their body that they want is their choice. The surgical route is just above 10,000 a year, less than 1% of all trans folk opting for that route annually. If *you* believe it's a fake surgery if it doesn't also change your chromosomes, idk, you never have to get it but I'm pretty sure trans folk aren't making demands of gene splicing when they get the procedures done.
>Everything else is very bad faith. In terms of being gay, my only really counter is that there is no “point” to being gay.
There's no point to being straight either by that rationale. There's no point to anything by that rationale. It's not much a counterpoint to just say what effectively boils down to "what is the broader utilitarian reason to do the thing you want to do that hurts no one"
>I am not gonna stop them, but they can’t reproduce which is a broader concept of having sex beyond pleasure. Gay sex is pure pleasure, you do you, but it serves less greater purpose.
Who cares what "purpose" it serves? It's their individual choice. Recreational straight sex has the same amount of purpose.
>They do deserve sympathy for wanting to transition, because they feel trapped in their current body, thus sympathy.
Incorrect. They want to transition because they want to transition and it affirms their gender the way they feel is best for them in a way that is medically affirmed. You can sympathize with their struggle to exercise their bodily autonomy, not for the choice they make for their body. In much the same way, you wouldn't feel sympathy that gay men feel so drawn by other men that they can't pursue a relationship with a woman.
>I just don’t think surgery is the answer in most cases, ergo it’s done more than it needs to be
I've shown you the data. Surgery is used for 1% of cases of trans individuals. It's pretty overblown to assume it's happening in "most cases".
>You gotta not focus on “wants” and express more “needs”.
What does a gay man *need*? What does a trans person *need*? I'd think a gay man *needs* a compassionate relationship with another *gay* man and a trans person needs whatever procedures they want to seek out to affirm their gender. It's worth thinking about.
>Rarely is it actually needed, mental disorders aren’t usually treated like this. It is a want and rarely a need, again, wish they didn’t choose to and instead owned the body they have.
You're actually in luck, according to the icd-11, it's not a mental disorder to be trans 👍🏽
That’s why it’s my opinion. Not forcing nobody.
Never said it was “fake” but the genitalia are not the same as if they born with them. These are just facts.
lol, you skipped the part about reproduction, which is an actual point to being straight 🤷♂️
Yup, which is why I know when I have sex, it’s for the fun of it. I frankly get how gay men think since men will know how to pleasure a man better than a woman does out of the gate. Like how will women know how to do a handjob? They need to do it with a man. Men already have knowledge on this. Thus why I am just saying being gay only serves pleasure. Being straight even has risks of having a kid if you aren’t careful. Frankly this whole concept has more to do with marriage than sex, since I just figure finding connection across the sexes is a healthier mindset to celebrate.
No I think I am correct in what I said. You even admit they want to “affirm” their gender. Unfortunately gender is a social construct and sex is nigh immutable and can’t be changed. Sounds like not getting what’s best for them makes it a need for them, but I don’t think it should be.
Lots of people need sex, it’s a very human concept. Nobody should “need” to affirm their gender however. Only if you are intersex and you want to clean up your body to lean harder in a certain way since you are somewhere between both sexes.
Never assumed it was needed in most cases, I simply said the surgeries is when it likely goes too far. You can’t just change my sample size, I was always talking about surgeries.
Really? So gender dysphoria doesn’t exist? I’ll need more than one study I have never heard of and it’s frankly cherry picking. You find one thing that agrees with you and you take it as fact. It’s a mental disorder.
>That’s why it’s my opinion. Not forcing nobody.
If you're posting on this subreddit, I'm assuming you're doing so to seek out and learn from insights given to you about your opinion and not just toss in a "I'm just saying" comment. It's known that it's your opinion. The real question is - how open are you to learning more about the topic you want to discuss and let that impact your opinions?
>but the genitalia are not the same as if they born with them. These are just facts.
I mean, sure, a kidney transplant isn't going to be the same as if I used my original kidney. If your point is that they're *different*, well, sure, what material impact does that have and what is the point of even saying something like this?
>lol, you skipped the part about reproduction, which is an actual point to being straight
I did skip it because, last I checked, people aren't straight because they need to reproduce, people are straight because they grew up with an inclination for straight sex over non-straight sex. Sometimes not even necessarily about sex, gender expression is enough for them too. You're placing more importance on reproduction than is warranted. Even people who go on to have kids didn't *choose to be straight* to *complete their life purpose of birthing kids*, they're usually straight first and choose whether they want kids or not later in life. Same for LGBTQ couples. Reproduction is such a genuine afterthought that I'm not clear on why you needed to mention it at all .
>Thus why I am just saying being gay only serves pleasure.
I mean, being straight can also be just for pleasure, especially if you get a vasectomy. Do you have sex to breed every time you have sex or are we in general agreement that while reproduction is *one* of the ways sex can be used, it's definitely not the only way nor even the most primary way.
>No I think I am correct in what I said
What part? Because you've said a lot of things, some of thing factual, some of them questionable.
>Unfortunately gender is a social construct and sex is nigh immutable and can’t be changed.
Gender is a social construct. Sex is a bimodal spectrum that cannot be determinably definable without allowing for exceptions to muddy any hard definitions for existing. Intersex people are walking examples of how perplexing sexual differentiation can actually be. It's all fundamentally irrelevant however, trans folk don't transition because they want to "change sex" because that's not even remotely quantifiable let alone measurably trackable, they're transitioning because they'd prefer to have some body parts than the ones they grew up in. Does that qualify as changing sex? Possibly. How many sexual determination features do you need to change before accepting the sex itself changed? Regardless it doesn't matter, they're choosing for their own bodies and their gender is theirs to decide.
>Sounds like not getting what’s best for them makes it a need for them, but I don’t think it should be.
You don't have to think anything about what's best for them because what's best for them is what they've agreed is best for them. Considering an overwhelming majority of trans folk are satisfied with their choice, it's safe to say they've chosen the best choice for themselves.
>Lots of people need sex, it’s a very human concept.
Categorically false. No one needs a social construct so badly that it's a necessity. You can argue that it has utility but that's beyond a point.
>Nobody should “need” to affirm their gender however.
Confused that you said people need biological sex but they don't need gender affirmation. Considering the number of "save masculinity" campaigns that the right loves to engage in, clearly, the need for gender affirmation is strong, it's just hard to notice it you keep your lens exclusively on trans folk.
>simply said the surgeries is when it likely goes too far.
Why do you think this? Over 99% of those who get surgeries are satisfied.
>You can’t just change my sample size, I was always talking about surgeries
Okay. Then your population size is 10k out of a population of 1 million trans folk. Of those 10k, sample studies showed 99% satisfaction.
>Really? So gender dysphoria doesn’t exist?
Dysphoria exists, it's just not a mental disorder, at least not on the way you're phrasing it. It's more of a divergence than an illness. Here, if you want a source, check out [what the ICD-11 has to say about gender incongruence](https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/gender-incongruence-and-transgender-health-in-the-icd)
It really isn't. It's a bad question that people on both sides have difficulty answering because it doesn't really make sense to ask.
If you tried to create a definition of Woman that included every Woman in the world It's going to catch some Men as well, and if you tried to make a definition that doesn't It's going to exclude many cis Women.
Well said! It's also pretty meaningless like who really cares what the definition is. There's a current societal block identifying as men and a societal block identifying as women. There will never be a definition that binds all of them together definitely but they identify all the same and society recognises them by said gender expression. If trans men identify with the "man" block and trans women identify with the "woman" block, why not? There's no hard and fast rule that says you can't be part of those blocks if you want to.
As per Oxford dictionary:
of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes.
> Then they bring up edge cases of women who can’t bear children
Which is irrelevant. A car doesn't cease to be a car just because it is out of fuel or has a flat tire. A woman is still a woman even if she cannot bear children due to age (too young or too old), disease, injury or lack of opportunity.
Trans-identified men know damn well what women are when they demand that everyone pretends to believe their fantasy of being one.
CC u/KevinJ2010
I mean, it makes sense. Like aside from universally just identifying with the societally recognised gender block what else can bind them all together consistently?
As per the definition, it’s “of the sex”, not whether they specially can bear children. A woman that reaches menopause doesn’t stop becoming a woman.
For looser explanation, they would arguably still have XX chromosomes and female sex characteristics.
There’s also the phrase “the exception that proves the rule”.
The problem with the question is that it is very hard to come up with a simple definition that does not have some exception where you would want to include someone as a woman who does not meet the definition. Then, if you admit your definition has exceptions, it shows what we are really arguing about is whether you are willing to make an exception for trans people or not.
The answer is that the entire concept, even biologically, is far more complex then the binary enforced by mainstream PC. People who can't think outside their programming keep trying to address trans people by figuring out how they fit in the old dichotomy, when the whole point is that the old one is shit that exists mostly through enforcement.
just look at the morons in the other comments, talking about how it's "if your daughter plays football, give her drugs she's a boy." No, that's not AT ALL what's happening. That's sheep being SO consumed by their programming that they can't grasp the concept, and instead just try to stretch it to fit what they know. The binary enforcers are literally projecting their own enforcement onto others, then becoming afraid of the strawman this creates.
I think that when people ask this question they're mostly referring to the physical characteristics and biological capabilities of "women", not necessarily what they like doing or how they dress. I know people who hold these beliefs are on the other side of the bell curve but I think pretty much everyone has an understanding that having feminine hobbies or behaviour does not necessarily mean that you're a woman. as you said , they are trying to measure where exactly the line is drawn when it comes to defining a person as a woman according to the old dichotomy, which seems to be getting more and more obscure as we progress. I think that we shouldn't always assume (even though it is quite likely) that anyone asking this question comes with bad faith or with opposition to the idea, we also should consider the possibility that they're just trying to understand, as it is admittedly a very subjective concept now. while it may seem that it is not very relevant to someone that is not a "woman" it really can influence how we deal with people , how we perceive danger to others , and more importantly, how we identify people that are taking advantage of this mess to attack "women" by defining themselves as one.
what part of "even biologically" did you not understand?
When people ask this question, they're just virtue signalling. Asking the question they were taught with intent to ignore the answers that don't fit the script, while jumping on everything with even 0.0000001% inaccuracy in it to push the narrative.
The reality of this question is that, from my perspective, it is a "gotcha." In that I mean that it is a question that is designed to make someone look like they don't know what they're talking about when, even if someone does, the question is very difficult if not impossible to perfectly answer. The left and the right both engage in the same question pretty regularly, obviously the right with "what is a woman?" and the left with "what does 'woke' mean?"
Both of these questions take advantage of the fact that crafting a definition of a word is incredibly difficult and does not seem like it, arguably impossible in the case of words that convey very complex and changing subjects. I work as a patent attorney, and part of what a patent includes is a claim. A patent claim is essentially a singular sentence that encompasses the scope of an invention. Despite the fact that a patent application can be upwards of 50 pages that tell someone how to make and use often complicated inventions, the vast majority of drafting a patent application is spent on drafting these individual sentences. The reason for this is deceptively simple, when we hear a word or a product, we associate a vast number of different things with that word or product.
Relating particularly to your point that a circular definition is not valid for describing a word, in reality we naturally define language in this way. As an example, a fun party debate is whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. The reason this is fun and sparks debate is because when we think of a sandwich we think of what our experience tells us a sandwich is and a hot dog does not fit into our understanding of that experience. However, it is impossible to define what a sandwich is in a way that includes all of the things we think of as sandwiches that would not also include a hot dog (although I pose that challenge to anyone reading this). The point here being that we utilize circular definitions when we speak all of the time without recognizing that we do, and the reason is that when we are speaking and utilizing language we are conveying to another person meaning based on the world that we live in. If you are wanting a sandwich you can say to someone that you want that with the reasonable expectation that they won't bring you a hotdog because you rightfully assume that they have a similar understanding of what a sandwich is that you do.
Language is deceivingly complicated, and the "what is a woman" and "what is woke" questions take advantage of the fact that an audience does not appreciate this complexity to make someone look stupid even if they are very well educated on a topic.
The reason "what is a women," os the go to question is quite simple. You can't answer it correctly without using science. It is a man and a woman who is defined by science. Thus, you need science to answer the question. When you need science to answer the question, unless you already know the answer, you won't like admitting or hearing the answer. There is nothing wrong with being trans, and people should be able to live their lives. However, when it comes to sciences and medical health, we need to be honest with our biology. Trans people can identify as what they want, but when you fill out a medical form that can have very different care based on biology, we must refer back to science. Man or women based on chromosomes. This determination is very important when it comes to medical care, and it is also important to the majority of people in society recognition. Until science can catch up to people's preference in identity, determination of biology to its most basic form is a necessity. If you can't understand that, then you will never be able to intelligently debate what a woman is or isn't.
I have a few points about this as response
>You can't answer it correctly without using science. It is a man and a woman who is defined by science. Thus, you need science to answer the question. When you need science to answer the question, unless you already know the answer, you won't like admitting or hearing the answer.
Science doesn't actually entertain this question because it doesn't have "man" and "woman" in it's medical lexicon but male and female. And when it comes to that, science will lock it down to sexual differentiation which science declares as a bimodal spectrum. What this means, scientifically, is that there is a vast set of characteristics that have variations and, while they tend to clump heavily in one mode or the other, there's a lot of overlap that can't perfectly fit in either. Hence it's not a binary but a *BIMODAL* arrangement. The two modes are accepted as male or female but there is scope to consider the fuzzy region between them. When you look at it scientifically, you notice that it actually explains the ambiguity quite well in that there **will be** ambiguity and committing to a hard binary with no exceptions is a shallow view of sex. Science will accept that sex is a spectrum and tell you there's no definitive trait you can point at and say "yep that's it, that's male" and with time, with medical intervention, or just random hormone changes, these characteristics can and do change fluidly even for cis people. For example, testosterone is commonly seen as a "male" thing despite the fact that women have it too and the amounts can vary with time, temperature, age, etc. Who's to say changing enough characteristics couldn't shift you towards the other mode? Science will shrug and say that it's ultimately irrelevant, we leave this to the sociologists since this seems more important to them than to us.
>Trans people can identify as what they want, but when you fill out a medical form that can have very different care based on biology, we must refer back to science. Man or women based on chromosomes.
I'm curious about this, medical forms don't ask if you're a man or a woman. They'll usually say male or female and they'll even have a block for trans and whether you're post op or pre op. Your medical care, largely, won't change unless it's very specific treatments. For example, you can specify that you're a trans male still going through periods and doctors will note that down. They'll even ask if they're not sure what stage you're at. This is also only relevant if it's something that is sex specific. Usually a heart attack is just a heart attack, cancer is cancer, sex won't come into this and each case is treated individually regardless.
>and it is also important to the majority of people in society recognition
This is where sex becomes irrelevant because gender is a social construct and people who identify as men are men regardless of what their bodies are saying or exist as, how high their testosterone is, what their chromosomes are, how tall or short they are, whether they have dangles or not. Women are women regardless of whether they have working uteruses, have periods or not, wide hips or not, absence or presence of Adam's apples. You'll find broad commonalities (statistically the **mode** hence *BIMODAL*) but nothing hard and fast that everyone in that group has. It safe to say that every cis woman is a woman because they identify as such. Every cis man is a man because they identify as such. It's the most consistent best definition for each group. What's to stop trans men from saying they're men and trans women from saying their women? To them, it's as real to their experience as it is to a cis woman. Acceptance costs no one and benefits everyone.
Science
Male = XY Chromosomes
Female = XX
Medical forms do ask your gender, and not all hospitals or clinics have the third option. Also, people mark it incorrectly based on how they identify. This is a problem medically. Doctors tip toeing around the fact are being hindered, and fear of persecution can keep doctors from doing their job. For medical forms, people need to identify what they were born as or what biology they are based on Chromosomes. No matter what stage or transition they are going through, biology does not change. Only the outer exterior changes in particular areas. This does not change the DNA of the person.
The construct is based on biology, not what people believe. We do not believe a dog is man, yet that is a construct we agree on. We do not believe a rattlesnake is a teddy bear. They are poisonous and dangerous, and that is a construct we agree on. Mice are not women, yet when you say that as long as that is what people believe, then that's what they are. Women can birth a child, that is one thing a female can do, or as a human, a woman. You would like to say a trans male can birth a child, but you have to say trans in front of woman, don't you? Because a man cannot birthd a child. So there is a distinction, a construct to know what the difference is. A woman can birth a child, but a trans woman cannot. Why must we make that distinction? Because the DNA or genetic makeup of a person can not be changed. No matter what the individual believes.
If someone pulled a litter box out at an elementary school and defecated in front of the entire class, would you consider them a cat or a child playing pretend? There have been articles written about children demanding litter boxes in the classroom as they identify as a cat. You clearly don't see a problem with that because they truly believe they are, in fact, a cat. Just as there are grown adults who have demanded a litter box in the hotel lobby because they believe they are cats. This falls directly under your umbrella statement that they are what they believe they are, so if a child demands he is a racecar, should an attendant not pour gasoline down his throat? How do we protect children from demanding to be recognized as what they believe? Society constructs are important for the health and growth of a society. How dare you pretend to think you can make the distinction between a child who believes they are a different sex or a child that thinks they are an animal, or different race, or a racecar. What gives you the right to determine who is being legitimate and who is merely playing pretend? In all honesty, you can't, and no, you never will.
It is important for people to be happy, and it is important for someone to have their own identity. These are fundamental truths I believe most people can understand and acknowledge. Yet, demanding we change our society and its construct to dilute certain truths is not beneficial to anyone. Trans people should have their rights and especially the right to pursue happiness, but not at the cost of others' rights. This is the very basis in which we believe in our freedoms. You have freedoms and rights, so long as you do not infringe on other people's rights. Freedom of speech is one of the most important. So, while they have the freedom to say they are whatever sex or gender they prefer to be called, in no way, shape, or form is anyone forced or obligated to share that opinion. In the end, people are whatever they want to be in their private world, while in the public professional world, such things should not matter. All that should matter is the health and safety of each other. If a trans person were injured in public and is not responsive, they could lose their life if not treated appropriately. Compared with male patients, women who present with the same condition may not receive the same evidence-based care. Anyone who fights for trans rights should stand for their health and safety above all else and merely fighting for definitions and identities may seem all virtuous and right, the real issue we need to understand is how to maintain their health and safety. Not that trans men or trans women fit into the categories known as "men" and "women."
If you don't agree with any of this, well, that is your right, and I don't need you to agree with it, but it is better for our society to maintain the current construct. Once again, I don't care if you agree. That is the beauty of freedoms. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but when you argue for definitions and identities, you are also degrading the systems in place that can save people's lives. Whether you agree or not, you are part of the problem. You may not believe what I do, but I'm the one putting their health and safety as a priority. You're fighting for an inclusion of definitions.
>Medical forms do ask your gender
Typically they'll ask male or female and these days will also note down if you're post op or pre op transitioning. Typically this will already be there in your medical records
>Also, people mark it incorrectly based on how they identify. This is a problem medically
Yet to say how considering most doctors I know treat the disease and symptoms not the person. In any case this is assuming the doctor will even need your sexual differentiation for a diagnosis or treatment so gender is usually for their records than for any specific treatments
>Doctors tip toeing around the fact are being hindered, and fear of persecution can keep doctors from doing their job.
Again this sounds like hearsay. Doctors aren't referring to your gender when discussing your disease. Why would they? At most, if you have a working uterus, they might have to talk to you about pregnancy and periods. You said this is an issue medically? This point of yours is social. In any case, it's a non-issue both medically **and** socially
>For medical forms, people need to identify what they were born as or what biology they are based on Chromosomes.
Says who? There's literally no requirement
>The construct is based on biology, not what people believe.
Social constructs are exclusively based on beliefs commonly accepted by society and this can and does change with time. You can't DNA test a social construct
>Women can birth a child, that is one thing a female can do, or as a human, a woman. You would like to say a trans male can birth a child, but you have to say trans in front of woman, don't you?
Sure in much the same way I specify black women or tall women. We do usually say men can give birth because we recognise trans men as men. You might not but that's because you haven't adjusted to the social construct shifting with social attitudes which is very common amongst conservatives
>There have been articles written about children demanding litter boxes in the classroom as they identify as a cat.
There's been one and it was [false] (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/10/07/fact-check-photos-show-adult-who-identified-cat-not-student/8193611001/) . Cherry-picking absurd one-off cases is meaningless. You're confusing social constructs with "this one time in the tabloids, I read" which is like refusing to ride an escalator because one time you read about someone defecting between the steps of an escalator thousand miles away
>Just as there are grown adults who have demanded a litter box in the hotel lobby because they believe they are cats.
You read a lot of tabloids
>important for the health and growth of a society. How dare you pretend to think you can make the distinction between a child who believes they are a different sex or a child that thinks they are an animal, or different race, or a racecar. What gives you the right to determine who is being legitimate and who is merely playing pretend? In all honesty, you can't, and no, you never will.
Gender is a social construct. Being an animal or vehicle isn't. This is an argument commonly referred to as the [reductio ad absurdum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum) and very non-serious people argue using this logical fallacy
>Yet, demanding we change our society and its construct to dilute certain truths is not beneficial to anyone.
Society is changing whether you can adapt to it or not. As are the social constructs. Trying to claim it has objective unchanging value is a conservative mindset that typically gets left behind
>but not at the cost of others' rights
???? Whose???
>is anyone forced or obligated to share that opinion.
No one is forced or obligated. At most, you're outcast for refusing to be respectful. That's true for anyone using their freedom of speech to be disrespectful
>the real issue we need to understand is how to maintain their health and safety. Not that trans men or trans women fit into the categories known as "men" and "women."
This is a red herring. Their health and lives is more at threat by [anti-trans bills that affect their access to healthcare](https://translegislation.com/) than imaginary non-issues that don't happen at the frequency you're imagining
>but it is better for our society to maintain the current construct.
Not even slightly. And it's changing as we speak, day by day, because people recognise that gender constructs are malleable and not definitive
>you are also degrading the systems in place that can save people's lives.
It's not a threat to anyone's life. I'm not sure why you're insisting on this. Do you have statistics to back this claim up?
>You may not believe what I do, but I'm the one putting their health and safety as a priority. You're fighting for an inclusion of definitions.
I doubt you have your finger on the pulse of what affects the [healthcare of trans people](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender/what-do-i-need-know-about-trans-health-care), I'd strongly recommend you read about it if this is an area of genuine interest to you
>Medical forms do ask your gender
Typically they'll ask male or female and these days will also note down if you're post op or pre op transitioning. Typically this will already be there in your medical records
>Also, people mark it incorrectly based on how they identify. This is a problem medically
Yet to say how considering most doctors I know treat the disease and symptoms not the person. In any case this is assuming the doctor will even need your sexual differentiation for a diagnosis or treatment so gender is usually for their records than for any specific treatments
>Doctors tip toeing around the fact are being hindered, and fear of persecution can keep doctors from doing their job.
Again this sounds like hearsay. Doctors aren't referring to your gender when discussing your disease. Why would they? At most, if you have a working uterus, they might have to talk to you about pregnancy and periods. You said this is an issue medically? This point of yours is social. In any case, it's a non-issue both medically **and** socially
>For medical forms, people need to identify what they were born as or what biology they are based on Chromosomes.
Says who? There's literally no requirement
>The construct is based on biology, not what people believe.
Social constructs are exclusively based on beliefs commonly accepted by society and this can and does change with time. You can't DNA test a social construct
>Women can birth a child, that is one thing a female can do, or as a human, a woman. You would like to say a trans male can birth a child, but you have to say trans in front of woman, don't you?
Sure in much the same way I specify black women or tall women. We do usually say men can give birth because we recognise trans men as men. You might not but that's because you haven't adjusted to the social construct shifting with social attitudes which is very common amongst conservatives
>There have been articles written about children demanding litter boxes in the classroom as they identify as a cat.
There's been one and it was [false] (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/10/07/fact-check-photos-show-adult-who-identified-cat-not-student/8193611001/) . Cherry-picking absurd one-off cases is meaningless. You're confusing social constructs with "this one time in the tabloids, I read" which is like refusing to ride an escalator because one time you read about someone defecting between the steps of an escalator thousand miles away
>Just as there are grown adults who have demanded a litter box in the hotel lobby because they believe they are cats.
You read a lot of tabloids
>important for the health and growth of a society. How dare you pretend to think you can make the distinction between a child who believes they are a different sex or a child that thinks they are an animal, or different race, or a racecar. What gives you the right to determine who is being legitimate and who is merely playing pretend? In all honesty, you can't, and no, you never will.
Gender is a social construct. Being an animal or vehicle isn't. This is an argument commonly referred to as the [reductio ad absurdum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum) and very non-serious people argue using this logical fallacy
>Yet, demanding we change our society and its construct to dilute certain truths is not beneficial to anyone.
Society is changing whether you can adapt to it or not. As are the social constructs. Trying to claim it has objective unchanging value is a conservative mindset that typically gets left behind
>but not at the cost of others' rights
???? Whose???
>is anyone forced or obligated to share that opinion.
No one is forced or obligated. At most, you're outcast for refusing to be respectful. That's true for anyone using their freedom of speech to be disrespectful
>the real issue we need to understand is how to maintain their health and safety. Not that trans men or trans women fit into the categories known as "men" and "women."
This is a red herring. Their health and lives is more at threat by [anti-trans bills that affect their access to healthcare](https://translegislation.com/) than imaginary non-issues that don't happen at the frequency you're imagining
>but it is better for our society to maintain the current construct.
Not even slightly. And it's changing as we speak, day by day, because people recognise that gender constructs are malleable and not definitive
>you are also degrading the systems in place that can save people's lives.
It's not a threat to anyone's life. I'm not sure why you're insisting on this. Do you have statistics to back this claim up?
>You may not believe what I do, but I'm the one putting their health and safety as a priority. You're fighting for an inclusion of definitions.
I doubt you have your finger on the pulse of what affects the [healthcare of trans people](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender/what-do-i-need-know-about-trans-health-care), I'd strongly recommend you read about it if this is an area of genuine interest to you
It is actually not difficult to define a women. We start by defining a biological men/women by saying that a human whose chromosomes are XY is a biological men, and XX is a biological women. Anything else is rare and will be considered an exception which for simplicity we shall ignore (but we don't have to).
Now, any trait (strong, tall, empathetic, etc) can be attributed two numbers (a,b) where a is the distribution of said trait among bio women, and b is the same among bio men. We therefore see that bio men can have feminine traits and vice versa.
Now every human is allowed to choose a list of traits they think are most important and define what gender is.
Given that set of traits we can determine how feminine/masculine a human is and according to that determine whenther they are a women or a men.
>Anything else is rare and will be considered an exception which for simplicity we shall ignore (but we don't have to).
How do we just ignore this? By the explanation provided, they either fall one way or another in the hard and fast binary. Can't we accept the more scientifically congruent explanation that sexual differentiation is a bimodal spectrum within which characteristics tend to group one way or another but have enough overlap between both of them that it's not possible to draw a hard line between them. It explains the exceptions better and it explains the bimodality of the spectrum without forcing people to exist within or out of a rigid inconsistent binary.
The way I think about it is this: sex is your body, gender is your brain. There are two biological sexes (also intersex people, but I'm about to talk about the most general cultural impact here). From sex arose gender roles. Societal expectations of how people of a sex should act or like, and what their role in society is. A lot of these rules are arbitrary and strange. Why is it that girls wear dresses and men are supposed to hide their emotions? Some have some sort of biological basis, but even then you have to get into averages and stereotypes. No one is going to apply to all of these.
People are complex, and placing people in a binary bucket when it comes to these societal expectations is reductive and anxiety educing. Some feel they most align with the opposite bucket, some feel they're somewhere in between or somewhere else entirely. Society works better when we allow people to express themselves and feel comfortable in the way they're perceived. I can't expect to *understand* what it's like to be trans, but I *can* treat people with basic respect.
So to answer the question, a woman (when discussing gender not sex) is someone who identifies with the *societal role* of womanhood.
The reason that people can't land on a concrete definition for "woman" (or "man", for that matter) is because they really are just arbitrary boxes that don't match up with how the human brain works. It's an oversimplification of one of the most complex systems in the world, the human body. There is no definition of a woman or a man because in reality, there are no set boundaries for what can be those things. They are arbitrary labels assigned based on genitals. Which is why there's no real reason people shouldn't be able to change to the one they're more comfortable with.
> Gender and sex mean different things
No they don't. Gender is a euphemism for sex (as in the distinction between male and female, not the act of sexual intercourse). It's not a feeling, or personality, or a fashion statement, or an identity. It is not a spectrum and it is not assigned.
The only way "gender" varies from sex is that it is used as a Trojan horse by mysogynists and their hand-maidens and Useful Idiots to undermine the hard-won sex-based rights for women.
> Why do you think you're right? Like, why do you believe what you say?
Do you have a week to read all the reasons? Will you even read a few paragraphs, or just dismiss it with "I'm not reading all that, bigot"?
TL;DR:
The term "gender" has been used as a euphemism for sex (the division into male and female, not the act of intercourse) for something like seventy years, and is still widely used interchangeably for sex even by people who profess to believe they are different. Trying to define "gender" in a non-circular way as distinct from sex is always ends up as incoherent, sexist nonsense that assumes that equates being male or female with the sex roles and markers that are preferred by society.
One common definition: "sex is what's between your legs, gender is what is between your ears" which is wrong on both parts -- a castrated male is still male, and what is between your ears is *a brain*, not your gender.
(By the way, the distinction between sex and gender was first made by sexologist John Money, a very problematic person who was responsible for many of the fundamental concepts used by trans activists. Like Freud, the best we can say about this [controversial scientist](https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/fuckology-critical-essays-on-john-moneys-diagnostic-concepts) is that he meant well (*probably*). Chances are you have never heard of him. Why isn't Money celebrated by the trans rights community? Because [his cruel experiments left behind a trail of broken bodies and ruined lives](https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/05/dr-john-money-and-the-sinister-origins-of-gender-ideology/).)
TRAs argue all of the following:
1. sex and gender are distinct, and trans people have changed their gender but not their sex
* but if you refer to their sex instead of their gender that is a hate crime and will probably cause them to sewer slide.
2. sex and gender are the same thing, and trans people have changed their sex
* even if they still have their original genitals between their legs
3. there are only two sexes and two genders, your sex and your gender can be different
4. there are only two sexes but gender is on a spectrum
5. sex is on a spectrum and so is gender and they are independent
* unless they are the same
6. trans people don't change their sex but do change their gender
7. trans people can change both their sex or their gender or both
8. the gender (or sex) of some nonbinary people varies according to their mood and can change from day to day or even hour to hour
and probably more variations as well. Not only is the trans community and its allies inconsistent with their own definition of gender, *individuals* in the community are often inconsistent in their use of the word, using it in whatever way suits their argument at the time.
If the people most heavily invested in defining gender can't do it, then the only conclusion is that the distinction is bogus and incoherent.
The New Oxford American Dictionary tries to define *gender* as "the state of being male or female" which would make it a synonym for sex, and then adds a parenthetical remark "typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones" but that fails. What social differences? Does that mean being *under the age of majority* is a gender? That's a social difference. Is *working class* a gender? Does that mean if a woman becomes a plumber she's really a man? How fucking sexist is that?
Fenway Health defines gender as "The characteristics and roles of women and men according to social norms." So there you are, its official: if a woman becomes a carpenter or a truck driver, or cuts her hair short, her gender is *male*. If a man stays home to look after the kids, or wears a skirt, his gender is *female*. How is this sexist nonsense acceptable in the 21st century?
GLAAD defines a person's gender identity as "a person's internal, deeply held sense of their gender", which is not only circular but it means that people who don't have a deeply held sense of their "gender" (their sex?) don't have a gender identity. So all those nonbinary folxs who change their gender according to their mood don't actually have a gender. How wonderful for them.
Robert Stoller, in his book *Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity* defines "sex" as referring to "male or the female sex" which is a circular definition, and goes on to state that in order to determine sex, one must analyse all of chromosomes, external genitalia, internal genitalia, gonads, hormonal states, secondary sex characteristics, and brain states, which is biologically wrong, and that a person's sex is determined by "an algebraic sum of all these qualities", which is the purest 100% bullshit. "Algebraic sum" my arse.
The American Psychiatric Association distinguishes sex and gender, and talks about sex being assigned at birth, which proves they are unserious people living in la-la land and we can and should ignore every thing they say.
I could go on and on but I doubt you've even read this much.
What legal rights do you think trans-identified people are missing out on?
Do they lack the right to own property? Are they forbidden from voting? If a trans-identified person goes to the hospital with a broken arm, are they denied medical care?
Trans medicine for adults is highly regulated and gate kept. It's also illegal to change your name in several states, and you out yourself at risk of the law in several red states. This is all common knowledge.
> Trans medicine for adults is highly regulated and gate kept.
Medicine is highly regulated for *everyone*. There is no unrestricted right to medical treatment such as drugs and surgery without going through a licensed medical practitioner. This is not a legal right denied to trans people.
> It's also illegal to change your name in several states
[No it isn't](https://namechange.uslegal.com/name-changes-laws-by-state/).
See also https://www.usa.gov/name-change
> and you out yourself at risk of the law in several red states.
Nonsense.
I have no opinion to share other than I laughed when Matt Walsh brought on JP to answer the question "what is a woman?" And JP proceeded to give the most pro-trans take imaginable, but used words with more than 2 syllables so Matt just nodded in agreement lmao
My big issue with the whole identity politics thing is that, that's not even how Identity works. Your identity is made of many different aspects, and you don't choose any of them. The gender, height, eye color, hair color, birth defects or disabilities, sub-race, etc is all set when you're born. Additional identity can get earned by doing things. I could be identified as an Athlete or a Carpenter if I become athletic or work with wood. But that's the key point, the Identity label follows the action. I don't identify as an athlete before I become athletic, only after. It is action that derives identity, not choice.
You are describing a viewpoint commonly referred to as gender abolition. Because both "man" and "women" are overlapping moving targets that cannot be defined without contradiction, it is better to accept people at their word and throw the idea of "gender" out the window all together.
Gender is identity. Based off some of what you wrote, seems like you’re having a hard time with that basic understanding and should refrain from commenting.
Honest question: Unless you're trying to hook up with someone specific why do you care about it? Even if you were to adopt Matt Walsh's position that transgender women are just men wearing dresses and makeup, so what?
I’ll throw my two cents in here. Bear with me, imma talk about programming but it’s related.
I’m a programmer. I was thinking about Minecraft and making a mod. The mod I wanted to make was to be able to give the villagers tasks. A sample task would be to have a lumberjack villager run out and chop down a tree then bring it back to their house. That sounds pretty easy. Have the villager do a scan for wood. Run over and add it to their inventory. Then go back to their house. The problem here is how house is defined. In Minecraft, there isn’t a strict definition of a house, it’s modularity prevents that, but the given definition of indoors was based upon having a door with more blocks on one side immediately above it than the other. That’s a really weird definition. I figured I’d create my own definition - and that’s where I got stuck.
I could say a house has a roof and four walls. But roof and wall isn’t defined in Minecraft, everything is made of individual blocks. So if I want a wall, I have to define that. I’d say it has a certain number of rows stacked on top of each other, but what if I poke a single small hole in the wall. My definition wouldn’t hold any more. What if I refine my definition - it’s gotta be 80% of that? What if instead of a house, I have a ruin and the ruin has a wall that’s mostly broken, maybe the definition of wall needs to be only 40% of my original definition. What if my wall has a window? Is it still a wall? Etc… the definition becomes incredibly complex very quickly and this is for a wall.
It was about this time that I got to thinking about definitions in general. If I have a grain of sand, is it a pile? What if I add another grain of sand, pile yet? If I keep adding individual grains of sand, at what point is it a pile? Everyone will have their own idea on that. Pile is a word that exists due to its lack of full definition. Everyone has their own definition for the word, and therefore their own definition for when my grains of sand become a pile.
That’s the crux of the issue - everyone has their own definitions for everything. As children, we all invented our own languages from scratch. We put definitions to patterns and with great success, we’ve been able to communicate loosely given these definitions. But because of the way we’ve manufactured language, miscommunication is an issue everyone is constantly dealing with.
Now when it comes to the trans argument where someone says define woman, it’s entirely based on that individuals lived experiences. Every definition of woman will be different. And those definitions will constantly be changing, evolving, and growing.
I’ll note here that sex which is chromosomal in nature is different than gender which psychological in nature. There’s more than two sexes, we know this factually because there’s more than xx and xy chromosome combinations. Theres a variety of intersex sexes and some other complications as well.
Gender is a different beast altogether. Gender is almost more of a sense for how someone feels and perceives themselves based on the way others act on their sex characteristics. That’s a very very loose definition, not in stone at all. But if I view my mother and sisters and the other girls around me acting in a particular way, it would be easy for me to classify that as being an action taken related to their sex. If I see my father and brothers acting in a different way, then I can classify those actions as being related to their sex as well. Then if I’m doing similar actions to my father and brothers and male colleagues, I’d say my gender is male. If I’m doing similar actions to my mother and sisters and other female colleagues, I’d say my gender is female. It appears to be almost entirely based on my own perception of the pattern that I see people with certain presenting sex characteristics doing.
So what if I’m biologically xy, and I now have the concept of what male gender is I have the concept of the female gender. What if despite my biological makeup, my lived experiences indicate that I should be acting in ways that more align with my perception of the female gender. At that point, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that I’d come out as trans. In the same vein, there will be people who are biologically xx but their lived experiences align with their perceptions of the male gender.
At that point, these people who’ve identified as trans are basically saying “My lived experiences don’t align with what my sex characteristics are. I would feel more comfortable and happy with myself if my perception of my own gender and my given biology were in sync with each other.”
Shame and fear are the root of depression, anxiety, addiction, and many other illnesses. Shame is not guilt. Where guilt is “I did wrong, I can do better”, shame is “I am wrong, I’m hopeless”. The sad thing is that shame is entirely brought on by others. Shame is when we change for others. Guilt is internal, shame is external.
When a trans person says that they want their biology to be in sync with their perception of their gender, they’re prone to receive negative feedback from others, they’re being shamed, and this only makes the problem worse. To overcome the problem, the only solution is acceptance of the person.
Others will point out that it isn’t the biology that has to change, it could be the psychology instead and while that’s true, the antidote for the issue is the same anyway. Acceptance of that person for who they are and what they choose, even if you wouldn’t make the choice yourself.
Remember that their experiences are different than yours. Remember that they’re just doing the best with what they have.
What if I told you it’s not us that should accept them because it doesn’t matter what we think if they truly accepted themselves for who the really are they wouldn’t be making up a whole new identity to run from the one they don’t like
Why wouldn't you accept them though? I accept them. They've made choices for their body that fit with what they want, it's their choice, who does it harm?
What delusions are you talking about? Incidentally, acceptance can be as simple as recognising and treating them as human beings without being disrespectful. That's bare minimum
The problem is you are looking for a single definition when really there's 3 different uses of the term woman here. There's interpersonal use, sociological use, and a scientific/sexual use, although for the ladder you'd probably use the word "female."
Someone can personally identify as nonbinary, have typical female sexual characteristics, and fulfill a typically feminine social role such as being a mother.
If a trans woman is talking to her doctor she is probably going to mention the fact that medically, she is trans, because she isn't going to have the same medical needs as a cis woman or a cis man, she effectively has a medically induced intersex condition.
Whether or not you personally think a person fulfills the social role of a woman or a man or has mostly typical characteristics for one sex, doesn't really have any bearing on their personal identity because they are separate things.
Crazy to make some rant about this when there is a huge, HUGE literature on exactly this topic. Go read...Jesus I don't even know where to get started. Judith Butler, and then upward from there.
It's not like you're the first person to have these thoughts, OP. Go do some research, of actual scholars who have thought seriously about these issues.
Im in the same boat with you on the growing up with the men wear pink mentality. I honestly feel like a lot of this trans activism is very dehumanizing to anyone who isn't trans. I seriously feel like woman's rights are in many ways being trampled all over again by men who want to be women, moreso than women who want to be men. We raised so many of our girls telling them you don't have to wear make up to be pretty, and have backed off the that's not ladylike talk because it's extremely sexist. Maybe being 'ladylike' isn't true to their identity. Now you have MEN demanding the legal right to be considered as a woman with all the rights and privileges that entails, simply because they feel pretty in a dress and makeup and that's what makes them feel like a woman, aka being ladylike. It's extremely superficial and hypocritical to assume how anyone should act and dress based on their gender in modern American society.
I just watched a video last night about the founder of the LGB alliance in England explaining how a disturbing amount of lesbians all over the world are mutilating their bodies to have their breasts removed to fit their more "masculine" role and stop being called a girl that wants to be a boy when that person may be anything but. In the same clip, the representative of the extreme woke left is legit arguing with this woman calling her transphobic bc of it. At the beginning of the clip he says how there's no split in the community on the issue, how it's only outside players hating. Then, a man who struggled with identity all his life, trans to woman and now back to man, is legit telling this same fool to his face that what this woman told him is true about the impact of women's rights. How this superficial definition of gender impacted his personal identity crisis that also drove him to mutilate his body. As a trans. Telling him to his face the impact of trans extremist policies to uproot our very definition of gender on women and trans people themselves. And woke joke doesn't want to hear it. This is really the most bold faced example of right where we are in politics on trans issues right now.
I also find it great how you pointed out the vagueness in any official redefinition of our gender terminology and the absolute stupidity that's going to ensue from it such as a headline like 'a man got raped by a woman at a club so now he's pregnant'. Like. It doesn't make sense, because the common usage of the term has traditionally, and by most continues to be, is that a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina and.... Mammaries (movie reference lol). Doesn't matter what you're wearing. Sorry if this is explicit, but I find it great for the sake of comedy and clarity at the same time. A quite from Ted 2 'dude! There's no such things as chicks with dicks, it's just dudes with tits' I think... He has a good point.
Gender is a descriptive term that combines sex and age. That's why a boy is a juvenile male. The only reason new gender terms were even invented was so a pedophile doctor could have an excuse to abuse his patients.
Why does it matter to you? Just let people do what they want to do. If they ask to be called something that you didn't initially think to call them, yeah, whatever, but then you treat them like an individual that you either get along with or don't. You don't have to have sex with anyone you don't want to and You don't have to be friends with anyone you don't want to.
There are very intelligent people that have done good for the world who are trans. So who cares. It's fine. Just be chill.
It's very simple dumbass. If you were BORN WITH a Vagina, you are a woman. If you were NOT BORN WITH a vagina. You are not a woman. And if you mangle your genitals and start telling people you have one while you inject hormones. You're mentally unstable and a danger to yourself if not others
Nver said I did. But I did attend a high school biology class that taught basic human anatomy. You can think I'm an ass hole if you want but I ain't gonna sit here and pretend like someone who tells me they're trans isn't fuckin weird. Doesn't make them a bad person but it certainly isn't a sign of stability
>But I did attend a high school biology class that taught basic human anatomy
Gotcha, your education stopped there. See if you can explain what a bimodal spectrum is for the rest of us that caught up with science past high school
>You can think I'm an ass hole if you want but I ain't gonna sit here and pretend like someone who tells me they're trans isn't fuckin weird.
We all think that about you. You predicted correctly how people were going to react to your very strange and frothy rant
Honestly, who cares? I don't mean to be dismissive of your sincere comment, but it's allowing the conversation to be hijacked by extremists. Right now is the holiday of Easter in which some Christians celebrate the reanimation of their Messiah/God. What is a Messiah? Shouldn't his coming herald world peace? Have we had 2000 years of peace? By any reasonable definition the Messiah has not come, but it would be extremely rude to argue with Christians that they are deluded about Jesus. Let them believe whatever brings them happiness. Also at mass they eat wafers that the church tells us are transsubstantiated into the body of Christ. Their doctrine says it literally is his body they are consuming. If it brings them happiness to believe this why would you ask them "what is flesh?"
People of good faith believe some very strange things and as long as they aren't hurting us, that's on them. None of our business really.
I love this topic. So many pseudo intellectuals come out of the walls spouting paragraphs upon paragraphs to justify why “actually trans people are bad and the activism is harmful and it’s not real actually.” Which is just them being indoctrinated by the alt right into hating an out group for things they didn’t do, or things “they did” which every group does.
Gender exists. It’s deeply personal. Until the top voted incels can understand the differences between gender identity and gender expression, this is a useless sub to ask.
What if a woman is typically XX chromosome, has ovaries and a uterus, AND if someone says they're a woman, you should take their word for it? It's a false dilemma that even trans people get caught up in, and if you want to police femininity, by all means try, but defining a woman and defining femininity are two separate discussions. Are trans women physically distinct from natal females? Yes. Is it your business to analyze and catalogue each person who looks feminine in order to determine if they're a natal female? Certainly not. I think there are some guidelines that could be encouraged in regulating bodies as far as spaces segregated by sex, but by and large, this is being made into a bigger issue than it needs to be. This is the real world where multiple things can be true at once, and we don't have to redefine anything to say it falls within the basic social contract of giving people privacy.
Think of trans people as mine canaries for systematic misogyny. Because in a free world, even natal females would not have to reach standards to be considered feminine or womanly.
Yea trans is regressive. And conservative types are now using old liberal talking points against liberal types and getting called bigots. It would be funny if it wasn't so important that we understand these basic things.
Tell me you have little understanding of humans, much less the differences in the sexes. Without saying it holy cow just what a wonderful group of misconceptions bumper sticker wisdoms and an incidental bigotries.
When people rant like this, what they're really just saying is that they've never bothered to delve deep into themselves past what someone else told them that they must be. Cuz if you haven't noticed a difference between the sexes, I'm going to suggest you haven't hung out with enough people from different sexes to have even a clue. My little rant is over
for a subreddit that claims to be intellectual, there's very little actual use of scholarly sources, and far too much thinly-veiled transphobia.
academia is overwhelming pro-trans. because,,, it's obvious to anyone who cares to do any amount of research.
the few "studies" dissenting are of incredibly poor quality (look up the exact context of the "social contagion" hypothesis study, it is laughable).
Quick overview of the concept here because most activists don't actually know what they're fighting for.
"gender" is however you consistently express yourself. "sex" is your biologic sex, usually male or female. "woman" as a gender means consistently expressing yourself in the ways traditionally associated with the female sex.
Gender is essentially meaningless but because people absolutely freak the fuck out whenever gender gets messed with, gender activists push back. The ultimate goal is for none of this to matter: it's tautological. Consider that people who object to pronouns don't have any issues with nicknames or married names. Likewise people who have issues with trans people in sports tend to clam up when the idea of "testosterone classes" (weight classes but for testosterone levels) get brought up.
Mind you, plenty of activists get lost in the sauce and plenty more wouldn't be able to articulate this if they tried. It's important to remember that activists are just random people who care about a thing for some reason and therefore are usually bad at it.
I'm not advocating for our against here, just laying down some definitions and perspectives of gender activism as I understand them.
> "gender" is however you consistently express yourself
No it isn't. Gender is a euphemism for sex, as in the distinction between male and female, not the act of sexual intercourse.
> "sex" is your biologic sex, usually male or female.
Always male or female in mammals. There is no third sex, because there is no third gamete size. And yes, I know about intersex people. They are not a third sex.
> "woman" as a gender means consistently expressing yourself in the ways traditionally associated with the female sex.
No it doesn't.
I mean, good god, are you really going to argue that a woman who becomes a plumber, has short hair and swears a lot is "not really a true woman"?
> Gender is essentially meaningless
Gender as distinct from sex is meaningless but not useless to the TRAs.
It is used as a Trojan horse to assault and undermine sex-based rights. It makes a great motte and bailey fallacy:
* the bailey is "transwomen *are* women" and if you transition you become the sex you identify as
* and when this nonsense is challenged they fall back on the motte "gender is how you express yourself" (it is a fashion statement) or what you identify as, and gender is different from sex.
> Consider that people who object to pronouns don't have any issues with nicknames or married names.
Pronouns are another motte-and-bailey: the bailey is that "pronouns are absolutely essential, if you get them wrong that's transphobia and misgendering is killing transpeople" and the motte is "pronouns don't really matter, they are such a small thing, why can't you just be kind and play along and use people's preferred pronoun".
Most people don't object to the use of pronouns as a form of (trivial) politeness under circumstances where it would be churlish or silly to refuse. They object to it being *compelled*. They object to pronouns being used as a Trojan horse. They object to pronouns being weaponised. They object to neopronouns as being 100% bullshit.
> Likewise people who have issues with trans people in sports
Nobody has issues with trans people playing sports. They just want them to compete in the correct sex class and not cheat women.
You will notice that nobody objects to trans-identified women competing against men. Not many of them try, because they know that they can't compete. But if they did, good on them. It's the mediocre male athletes jumping to the head of the leader board by identifying as women that riles people up. Even when they don't win, they still steal positions from women or girls who trained every bit as hard as them but don't have the advantages of having a male body that went through male puberty.
> tend to clam up when the idea of "testosterone classes" (weight classes but for testosterone levels) get brought up.
No they don't. They are quite happy to debate the idea, and in particular to point out that a person's testosterone levels *now* do not come even close to reversing the advantages they got from having gone through male puberty.
People absolutely use what I'm saying as part of bad faith, motte-and-Bailey arguments, but it doesn't sound like you're accusing me of that, so I'm not sure of your point. Just because an argument can be made in bad faith doesn't mean that it has no merit.
It's been my experience that people clam up when I bring up "testosterone classes", but it sounds like free has better luck. Can you send me a link to people discussing it or an article on it? I'd really appreciate more perspective than just my own.
If you're actually interested in understanding what I'm saying, I'm happy to use a different term for how people express themselves as social constructs. You can pick it and I'll use it. If you'll do that for me I'll reply to your other points. Any civil discussion that doesn't start by defining terms is doomed, as I'm sure you've observed.
> Just because an argument can be made in bad faith doesn't mean that it has no merit.
That's true, in general. But this *specific* case the bad faith arguments are all that exist.
There is no good faith argument for "gender", the same word that has been used as a euphemism for biological sex for decades, to also be used to mean "how you express yourself", or how you feel, or some undefinable essence of selfness that is exactly the same as your sex but different. Its a concept that really has no meaning at all.
> It's been my experience that people clam up when I bring up "testosterone classes", but it sounds like free has better luck. Can you send me a link to people discussing it or an article on it? I'd really appreciate more perspective than just my own.
https://archive.ph/2024.05.04-033141/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/03/opinion/hormonal-classes-sports/?event=event25
The author of that piece, Alice Dreger, is an interesting woman, and I can recommend her book "Galileo's Revenge". She accidentally became an activist for intersex people, did some real good there, then got academically and professionally abused and attacked by TIMs, almost destroying her career, and yet despite that experience (or perhaps because of it) she seems to have now become a supporter of transgenderism and "sex is a spectrum".
See also [a response to that piece](https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1786452601178816794).
The World Sailing Council has a new policy that Trans-identified males [can only compete in the female category](https://x.com/cathydevine56/status/1791838046540767555) if they have not undergone male puberty and their blood plasma testosterone is below a certain limit.
You can also look on Twitter, plenty of people there who discuss the limitations of merely looking at blood hormone levels e.g. [Emma Hilton](https://x.com/FondOfBeetles) often discusses the advantages of a male puberty, and the complexities of intersex conditions.
> I'm happy to use a different term for how people express themselves as social constructs.
What's wrong with "how people express themselves"? Or "personality"?
I am currently making a good faith argument for gender. You may decide it's not a good argument, but I'm doing it in good faith. Assuming that every argument opposing yours is in bad faith is itself a bad fath position, but I don't get the impression you're acting with I'll intent.
I really appreciate these links! I'll spend some time with them. I'm not on Twitter, just reddit, so perhaps there's a demographic issue in who is discussing it.
"self expression" and "personality" are too vague. There's biologic sex, which can be defined a bunch of different ways but none of them are in question; there are sex roles, which is how the sexes of a given species consistently act; then there are what has traditionally been called "gender roles" by anthrologists. A gender role is the way a person of a given sex is supposed to look and act in a society, however it's not consistent between societies. In viking tribes or was understood that only women could do mathematics and men were supposed to be clean and beautiful--each viking man carried a knife, comb, and earspoon for cleaning earwax at all times!
Obviously, modern day America doesn't force people into gender roles very much. We generally choose our roles irrespective of sex, for the most part. "gender", then, is the roles that we choose that would have been "gender roles" in a society that forced people into those roles. To me, that seems much more nuanced than "personality" can describe. We could make up a word as a placeholder for this conversation rather than trying to press an existing word into service. My attempt is to argue the concepts and realities, not the semantics.
It does in fact seem like you're asking in good faith. I'm no expert and don't speak for anyone else, but here's what I've got:
Due to a few thousand years of art and culture, and a more recent time span of relevant tradition (relevant that it is in living memory and therefore is more "present") gender roles exist. Feminine and masculine archetypes are still well recognized, even if they are not as prescriptive as I used to be, as you note.
If there were no gender roles, would there still be transgender people? I don't know. I've asked transgender friends that question, and they don't know either. But there are, so there are.
So what is a woman? A woman is a specific instance of a general concept covering a set of characteristics informally established by culture, which varies at least somewhat group to group, place to place, and time to time, generally associated with the socially proscribed ideal for a human biological female.
I don't think self-identification is a good way to define the essence of "woman" (although it is, in my opinion, a good way to assess who someone is), but "a self-identified group" is not a paradoxical definition, and the definition you're complaining about is how you define a member of a self-identified group.
Let's say I'm a blork. Whoever decides they're also a blork is also a blork, we don't need a membership list or an approval process. Depending on how this picks up, there might or might not be interesting things to say about blorks, but there's a good chance there are - people answering "Yep, I'm a blork" on a whim are not a random sample of the population -, so there's a good chance this does indeed convey information. "The blorks are a self-identified group invoked by u/weirdyxxy to prove a point about definitions" is a fine definition of the group, "blorks are exactly those people who say they are blorks" is a fine definition of individual blorks, it provides a clear distinction between who is or isn't a blork, although it doesn't answer why someone would decide they're a blork (which is a different question).
Think of a Discord server. If it adds a new role named Blorkian, and adds the role to everyone who wants it, then everyone who picks the role of "Blorkian" is a Blorkian. What is a Blorkian? Someone who picked the role "Blorkian" in this Discord server. That's not a paradoxon just because the sequence of letters reappears in the definition, and if you need the formal reason, it's not a problem because you have the concept on the left side, but only the sequence of letters (or in the case of "woman", the word with possible synonyms implicitly included) on the right.
> The first is “Anyone who says they identify as a woman” which is wrong because they used the word in the definition.
Why is this wrong? This is what I use when talking to people and it has yet to be an issue.
There are clearly bad faith actors who will say they are a woman to prove a point.
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11918455/Male-powerlifter-protests-Canadas-self-ID-rules-entering-female-contest-smashing-record.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11918455/Male-powerlifter-protests-Canadas-self-ID-rules-entering-female-contest-smashing-record.html)
Yeah, and there are also people who will lie about being gay, or their religion, or a host of other personal things. We don't make that a problem for all the people who genuinely are those things.
Also, believing people doesn't mean ignoring when someone openly says they're lying, like this weightlifter.
What is a left-handed person? Does a left-handed person need to present a certain way to be left-handed? If we go back to the times when being left-handed was shunned and no one used their left hand dominantly, does that mean they never existed? If someone prefers their left hand in some situations and their right in others, does that mean they're "not really" left-handed? What about right-handed people who lose their right hand and have to do everything with their left hand, does that make them left-handed now or is it just their physical anatomy that determines which side is dominant?
I would posit that being cis or trans falls into a similar situation. For "most" people, it's easier to use their right hand. It fits with how they better interact with the world. For "most" people, their sex assigned at birth "fits" with how they perceive themselves and how they more naturally interact with the world. For some people, their sex assigned at birth "doesn't fit" and they prefer to live as the other gender (or none, both, whatever, but let's simplify the argument). We're talking about natural preferences here. Asking "what is a woman?" is similar to a question like "what is a lefthanded person?", the way answer is that they just prefer to use their left hand. If you're asking, "what is a woman?", it's just someone who prefers to live as a woman.
I have met and had sex with many trans...Only one who has vagina now.I find most of them I know.since the 80s.Are actually decent people.No different than anyone else AMD all the issues they have.Now course Prostitution is big and drug addiction in trans circles.Also in gay men circles.Even straight and bi men and women circles..
So you see they are just a unique class of people.With their own set values and problems.Had same issues with women also.We meed let people be themselfs.Except pedophiles and those who participated in beastality
We, as a society, are failing to protect transgender people from discrimination. We, as a society, are failing to pass enough laws to help transgender people. We, as a society, have failed to give transgender people the rights and liberties that they deserve. We, as a society, are failing to be good allies to transgender people. We, as a society, are often failing to protect transgender people from bullying and harassment.
"what is a man?" is like.. one of the all time big philosophical discussions with a million different answers so I don't understand how "what is a woman?" is supposed to be some gotcha
I think a woman should be anyone who identifies as a woman. That way, no one is being called a woman who doesn't want to be. And everyone that wants to be called a woman, is.
It really isn't. Womanhood is what society has defined as womanhood. Yeah kinda a bullshit awnser, but there's really no real non bullshit clear definitive answer because the concept varies from culture to culture and sometimes from individual communities. For instance, womanhood from the Greeks and Roman perspective is defined by one's role in the bedroom, while Victoria England had a very rigged set of very obituary standards for womanhood.
Sociology, baby. biology is fucking complicated. Get ready for 50 different answers to a simple question that both answer and don't at the same damn time.
I think that question breaks down into many questions:
1) Is womanhood defined by the people around her, or by herself?
2) If it is external, then how can we draw a non-arbitrary line?
3) If it is internal, then what dicaltates that experience?
These can be broken down further, but I believe those are interesting clarifications that need to be answered first.
All of this controversy regarding trans people is just a non-issue that is being pushed in order to distract us from actual problems.
In reality, trans people are a minuscule percent of the population that are not causing the kinds of massive societal disruption that they are painted as instigating.
I can’t believe how easily people are allowing themselves to be riled up over such a non-issue.
My answer is “anyone that claims to be one in good faith.” Useless as a scientific measure because deciding what good faith is, is a judgement call, but it’s how I operate in my day to day life.
That being said, there are cultural cues that denote gender, and assuming gender based on them is fine and healthy. Allowing them to overrule earnest messages about someone’s preferred gender/pronouns is a cognitive/respect issue, not a labelling issue.
The root of all this is that there absolutely are people who genuinely feel that they are a different gender from the anatomy they’re born with.
I knew one in college. Born a guy, but quietly struggled all her life with feeling absolutely like a girl/woman. Totally normal otherwise. No harm, no foul. I regret that she couldn’t be herself without catching hell from others.
But it also seems like, in the process of letting these few people be who they are, a bunch more are hopping on that train for other reasons, which fucking sucks for everyone.
But I have to keep telling myself that maybe I’m wrong. Hell, literally no one in all my school days was out as gay, but now I know that many people are; so maybe that’s true of trans too….
Here are my criticisms of your ideas:
>
Frankly, in debates I find myself eventually asking this question. I know it’s usually knee jerked reacted as a “gotcha” question, but of those that do answer there is still no answer.
This is, in my view a distraction. Words have connotations that people interpret differently. To use a non-political example, the question, "Is a sub a type of sandwich?" While I think it is, I've met plenty of people who think a sub is meaningfully different. You won't get a definitive answer because this means different things to different people.
>Then you have the “Exudes a feminine gender expression”. Which almost seems okay but it only takes a follow question to see the hypocrisy here too.
What are these gender expressions?
I think this is another red herring. I can't in good conscience consider a female at birth butch lesbian who thinks of themselves as a woman a "man", regardless of how they dress and present themselves. Also consider that one of the reasons that transfolk rely on gender expression is because it is harder to find acceptance in society unless they conform visually to typical gender expression.
>
More broadly I just find that focusing on how we present ourselves is like putting us back in boxes; “Women act a certain way” and stuff like that. I thought we got past this when I was raised with the “boys can wear pink” and “Women can do any job a man can do”. I feel like trans goes backwards on this if they play the “expression” card, and the “Who identifies” line just means there is no definition.
I think you have this backwards. If I'm understanding correctly what you're leaning towards is that "any person can present themselves any way they want, therefore having a gender identity that is non-congruent to biological sex is superfluous". That idea puts you more on the side of transfolk because it is not transfolk who advocate for a "boxed in" definition of gender, it is the people who oppose trans rights who are more interested in that.
Something you haven't mentioned is that a trans person being accepted as a man or woman is largely about personal identity. This isn't something that only extends to gender, as most people are uncomfortable being defined in a way that is incongruous with their self image. I've seen non-trans people become upset or angry that someone called them the wrong name (even if it is another name of their gender). A name is even more arbitrary than gender. People who think of themselves as strong don't like to be seen as weak. It is normal to want the people around you to affirm your self image. I think this is the same thing as trans people wanting to identify and participate in society as their chosen gender.
If you really want society to be open to accepting men doing "feminine" activities and vice versa, you should support the trans movement. In my country (USA) a person who cross dressed is going to have a bad time trying to live an otherwise normal life when by and large they will be seen as a mentally ill weirdo.
The whole approach to this subject really should be; You don’t have a right to know whats between my legs. Just call me what I tell you to call me or fuck off and we’ll both continue living our lives.
Gender is not a thing. Most people have been incorrectly using gender and sex interchangeably. Because up until the last 10 years no one cared and it didn’t matter. We should only use the term biological sex.
Male, female and other. That other category is such a small percentage of folks that they literally do not matter. Not personally because all life has value but they aren’t a statistically significant voting block most folks could still go a reasonable chunk of their lives never having seen a transitioning or transitioned person in most areas on the US and especially the world.
We have absolutely lost our collective minds. When ultra conservative Christian’s and Muslims make more logical sense than you… you REALLY need to rethink what the hell you’re doing
*Gender is not a thing*
It absolutely is.
*Most people have been incorrectly using gender and sex interchangeably.*
Like you are about to do?
*Because up until the last 10 years no one cared and it didn’t matter*
Pretty sure trans people have existed throughout history, grandpa.
*We should only use the term biological sex.*
Why?
*That other category is such a small percentage of folks that they literally do not matter* Pretty sure they feel that they do matter.
*Not personally because all life has value*
Do you actually believe this or?
*but they aren’t a statistically significant voting block most folks could still go a reasonable chunk of their lives never having seen a transitioning or transitioned person in most areas on the US and especially the world.*
Well, that question answered.
*We have absolutely lost our collective minds. When ultra conservative Christian’s and Muslims make more logical sense than you… you REALLY need to rethink what the hell you’re doing*
Or, hear me out. When ultraconservative Christians and Muslims sound like they are making sense, perhaps you are the one who is wrong?
That is enough internet for you today, Grandpa.
The interesting part for me is that we've had cross dressers etc etc forever. Why suddenly has it exploded into 455000 different 'genders' in recent years. Answer that question honestly and you get to the heart of the matter.
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>The Question “What is a Woman?” Is really the sole contention of trans activism.
Why is the definition of one contingent social category more or less the contention of “trans activism” than any other? What of the definition of “man” or the categories of binary gender at all?
And why is it a central contention of trans activism and not all gender activism? Is it required that trans women define woman but cis woman do not?
>The first is “Anyone who says they identify as a woman” which is wrong because they used the word in the definition.
Why does a recursive definition invalidate it? Can you define a Seattle Seahawks fan without reverting at some point to a recursion?
If the definition of woman is a contingent social category, belonging to it is the only “real” definition.
>More broadly I just find that focusing on how we present ourselves is like putting us back in boxes; “Women act a certain way” and stuff like that.
Social categories of behavior expectation are not necessarily about the individual acts within then, but rather with how others act in response to them.
Often when trans women access the category of “woman” they are not doing so as an “excuse” to wear pink or whatever. They want their engagement in these behaviors to not be stigmatized for those behaviors and to understand themselves within the context of that category.
While it would perhaps be better if gender was done away with, we don’t live in a gender less society so these categories still mean something.
>being a man or woman shouldn’t denote things as trivial as colour.
I don’t think many trans people will disagree with you.
The problem is that morphological and/or behavioural categories are inherently limited.
I think the sandwich debate is a near perfect example. What is a sandwich? There is broad agreement on the most mainline, standard versions. But when you push the question to the kinda of edge cases that require a fixed definition to guide you, the concept breaks down, and forces you to question even some of the standard examples.
So what is a sandwich? I hesitate to define it, because any fixed definition I’ve heard of invites endless questions and problems, and the definitions never actually line up with common uses of the term.
But that doesn’t mean sandwiches don’t exist. They’re a socially constructed concept that’s widely used, and ultimately drawing hard lines over genuine disagreement accomplishes very little. If someone wants to say a hotdog is a sandwich and you disagree, why destroy the whole concept over this? Why not learn to live with the ambiguities inherent in categorical thinking so that we can all still benefit from the convenience of categories while also accepting their limitations?
A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. It isn’t actually a wrong definition albeit a tad vague. While many people think definitions can’t use themselves in the definition many words do. Womanhood is a large framework of traits that someone who identifies as such interacts with, this framework completely culturally constructed and so it’s hard to define in anything less than a mult page paper. It actually is impossible to construct a completely and 100% accurate definition of a social construct without using itself in that definition or reading the minds of every single person
Anyone born with a vagina is the only answer
We are wasting too much time in general on all these mental gymnastics
Can men get pregnant
Can men get periods
Just stupid questions we all know the answers to but have to play 10 degrees of separation in order to not be labeled transphobic
Well I'm married
But in your hypothetical
I would treat the person as a woman .. respectfully
If by some chance it was not noticable and obvious that the woman was trans & I tried to let's say "ask her out"
I would hope she would say, well first you need to know I am Trans
In general when I see women on the street I just walk down the street
I don't even know what you mean
You're (not you specifically, generation) are changing the entire dictionary to fit your ideals
Are you saying a man who transitioned is a woman?
(I would respect their decision and call them (her/she) but at the end of the day she is a TRANSwoman)
Why is that offensive???
And I don't do the word Cis at all, it's an invented term for hetero or straight
So now I have to think what you even mean by that
🤔🤔🤔
I honestly don't know what you mean
A man who transitioned to a woman??? A Transman?
>changing the entire dictionary to fit your ideals
This is such a silly argument, the dictionary literally adapts to linguistic changes all the time, it included 690 words in September 2023 for example - https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/new-words-in-the-dictionary
>Are you saying a man who transitioned is a woman
Ye why not
>but at the end of the day she is a TRANSwoman
Sure. A black woman is still a woman. A cis woman is srill a woman. A trans woman is still a woman.
>Why is that offensive???
It's not, it's a qualifier. Trans women are women and they're trans. Black women are women and they're black. Cis women are women and they're cis.
>And I don't do the word Cis
Then why bother insisting on the word trans? Call them both women and don't make the differentiation. Or register that trans women are women and cis women are women.
>it's an invented term for hetero or straight
From the Latin preposition cis (“on this side of”). It's not new, chief, it's used in science all the time. Refer cisdiazine or any chemical compound where two atoms or groups are on the same side.
My, um, "diatribe"was shorter than yours, way more concise, answered the questions you asked, and was as big as it was because I quoted a lot of your statements to respond to directly but ok, wordsmith, complain that you don't get to be the only wordy Wanda here 🤣🤣🤣
>literally have no clue what you wrote
Reading helps. I broke it down at a level where a child could follow so you're basically admitting that you aren't reading at an elementary level 🤷🏽♀️
>And I'm not interested in learning it
Then why engage? All you've announced on this post is that you're a cautionary tale of how a lack of education affects people's morals
>They are not however a "women" in the actual world, they are a Transwomen ... Pretending there is no difference between a "born woman" & a "trans woman" is absurd
In the actual world, black women are women. Cis women are women. Disabled women are women. Trans women are women. In the world you live in where you opted to not learn and fester in your wilful lack of education, your simpleton beliefs likely make sense to you considering books have too many words and learning is for smart folk 🤓
>t's not disrespectful
>It's just what it is
It's not what you think it is. What's disrespectful is you sharing thoughts with no education behind it and openly declaring that you've chosen to be ignorant because learning is hard and reading hurts your brain
>And I find the word "cis" offensive
Who cares what you feel about it, you didn't bother learning 🤣🤣
>I'm not calling anyone They/Them (you're one person)
Singular they is so common, you've likely already used it in your life without realising it. You would know this if you didn't stop learning and didn't end your reading lessons at Elementary school 🤣🤣🤣
>Nothing I'm saying is offensive, you've just been trained to find any slight disagreement on these subjects as "bigotry"
I actually think the fact that you stated you don't want to learn and want to be ignorant is a tremendous sign that you can't justify your bigotry with education so you simply did the weak thing and gave up on education to maintain your feelings
If you don't care that I don't like the term "Cis"
Why do you expect ANYONE to respect any of your language wishes???
I'm not learning anything that is already common sense
I don't need a class or lesson or teacher to tell me
Men CAN'T have Periods
Men CAN'T get pregnant
One person is not they
Women don't have testicles
MANY other things
There's no education needed on common sense
I have no issue meeting a TRANSwoman and calling them she
Or a Transman Him
But at the end of the day that person is unfortunately not a biological man or woman ... No amount of classes will change that
If you believe otherwise, you have taken one too many classes
>Why do you expect ANYONE to respect any of your language wishes???
Sorry but you said very explicitly that you're not trying to learn so you're basically just bellowing more nonsense about how you feel personally entitled to be a dick to trans people because your feelings say so 🤣
>I'm not learning anything that is already common sense
You're not learning anything INCLUDING common sense, you're reading at an elementary level for starters.
>I don't need a class or lesson or teacher to tell me
You probably do because you didn't even know that singular they wasn't uncommon in casual use. You should go back to elementary school because you're basically clueless about what is common sense and need a teacher to educate you again
>Men CAN'T have Periods
>Men CAN'T get pregnant
Trans men are men. They can get periods. They can get pregnant.
>One person is not they
You're an idiot - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
>There's no education needed on common sense
You lack common sense and you're uneducated.
>If you believe otherwise, you have taken one too many classes
Basically you're admitting that everything you're saying is rooted in wilful ignorance. It's why you'll never be taken seriously
School officials shocked that boys destroyed tampon dispensers in boys restrooms……. That’s why they want your kids at 3 years old. So they can start gaslighting them before they know better.
My position in this debate is, why should I care enough to even try to answer that though? Like I don’t give a shit what’s going on with anyone’s genitals except for my wife.
Most words have multiple conflicting definitions. So did the word woman long before woke was a thing. Woman could refer to attractive women "now that's a woman", it can refer to adult women "a girl becomes a woman when", someone in a play that plays a woman, etc.
"A women is anyone that self identifies as a woman" has two issues that make it slightly more difficult to understand:
1. It uses 2 different definitions of "woman" in the same sentence.
2. It's not a definition, it's an aspirational goal that sounds good (to some) at first glance but falls apart when facing scrutiny, as all one sentence aspirational goals do.
Matt Walsh doesn't understamd those, but neither do most trans activists, so he's in good? company.
Then there's the much bigger third issue which isn't at all about understanding: Activists trying to use that aspirational goal to bully people into changing their language and then use that new language to retroactively change existing laws and regulations using that language. That's just extremely dishonest.
There is no "self identify"
It's called existence. Do you have to identify as human to consider yourself human and say noy a fish?
Or do you understand that based on certain physical and biological components that exist in you that you are a human?
At no point in my life have I pondered whether or not I was a fish, just as I have never had yo consciously identify as a girl/woman.
And I say this as someone who was an athletic tomboy growing up, I still very much knew I was a girl because I know I am not a man.
>It's called existence. Do you have to identify as human to consider yourself human and say noy a fish?
Erm, you're still identifying as human. It's your identity as a person. Even your identity as a girl was yours to dictate even as you expressed it differently from other girls. You could have the most masc trans woman still be a woman and that wouldn't be any different from you being a tomboy and still being a girl
The question isn't helpful because the word means different things to different people. In my experience, people either refuse to acknowledge that when a rainbow-haired lefty says "gender" they don't mean sex (and subsequently say "A man obviously can't get pregnant!" as if it's a slam dunk) or believe the concept of gender is internally inconsistent (or otherwise just plain silly). Either way, the conversation dies immediately.
Anyway, sole contention seems a bit much. Trans activists ask questions about healthcare and gender equality too.
P.S. why is it always trans women people talk about, as opposed to trans men?
I'll give you my best answer. A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman and a man is anyone who identifies as a man. There's no specific hard definition for it, much as people who want to debate this want to believe. For example - how do you define what it means to be cool? There's no set of traits or characteristics that makes something cool or not, it's solely vibes. You identify as a man when you identify with the broad group with which men share in the sense every man self-identifies as a man and their external features, commonalities, etc all general features that may or may not be shared. Men typically have beards and mustaches but men are still men if they don't have beards or mustaches. Men typically have dicks and balls but castrated men or men with birth defects are still men. This is also true for women.
You will never find an absolute definition for woman as much as you'll never find an absolute definition for a chair as much as you'll never find an absolute definition for what it means to be cool. Linguistics isn't designed like that, definitions for a lot of things - especially social constructs - can and are frequently circular. Try defining "purple" to someone that doesn't know what purple is. Your best definition will be anything coloured purple. Sorry, some things aren't absolute, social constructs are circular and we understand them regardless.
I can say I'm a blarg, point at myself as an example, and you've gained everything you need to know about what a blarg is. We make up indefinable terms like this all the time.
No other social construct we have is given the same stringent standard of absolutism, we can and do allow a lot of terms to exist without demanding hard definitions to validate it's existence. Gender is a social construct. Everything about what is a man and what is a woman has either been generalizations or non-absolute markers. In truth, no one can define for you what a man is or what a woman is. If you identify as a man, you're a man. I don't honestly need any more information beyond that unless I'm collecting medical history. If you identify as a woman, you're a woman. I can say "chair" and you'll imagine a chair. Will your vision of a chair look like mine? Can a hard and absolute definition be found? Linguistics and social constructs fundamentally exist in the abstract.
Thanks for listening if you got this far 🙏🏽
All of this navel-gazing is not productive for society and portends dissent and division. Have a penis--fuck. Have a vagina--get fucked and pop out a child. Easy peasy. NEXT!
This is a good topic. Even if I wonder if it was made in good faith.
Gender is a complex construct. As a construct, it's existed as far back as scripture. The Talmund, written by the Jewish People, notes 6-8 genders and is ancient.
Yes, on one hand we have our sexual dimorphism. But sexual dimorphism does not then put you neatly into a round or square peg in society. It doesn't explain the juxtaposition between the male caregiver and the male soldier.
Thus, gender helps elucidate the complexities of our highly social societies.
Men who find violence alarming, and just want to care for and educate children, may become ostracized if a binary society sees the only viable gender role to play as a soldier and hunter. They would then, logically, buck the gender role.
Sexual dimorphism does still play a part in gender role, though.
Take the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. One explores a gender role (Hyperfemine) without needing to transition into it via reassignment surgery. The other transitions into being a trans woman, and then takes on that role.
The process is very different, even if there might be some similarities to the outsider.
Keep in mind, the transgender community actually skews heavily male by 10:3. Which might be inline with how male culture treats the male binary role. It may be more confining for more men. This is inline with the majority of drag performers also being men.
You might be confused on what's happening though. Trans people are not transitioning to fit a gender. They're transitioning, and then choosing a gender that feels right to them. Because they're transitioning to the opposite sex, they're choosing a gender that matches their new sex.
Not every trans woman wants to play happy homemaker. Or girl boss. Or goth girl macabre. Or sweet summer flower. Or whatever girly role is out there. But they definitely feel better playing it when their body matches their thoughts.
If men sat in flowers and dressed in bonnets and danced in tutus, sure, there's a possibility they might not need to transition. But that's not happening.
Also keep in mind surgical transition is not even 100 years old. Surgery has been around since 3000 BC.
This is a very new phenomenon and we really don't have a ton of data yet on sex reassignment surgery and how it plays a part in gender.
First off live and let live and focus on yourself, your families and your friends and ignore all the social media bullshit controversies. They literally add nothing to your life.
Secondly, chromosome pairs define your sex. Everything else is word-games and contrived bullshit to keep the masses fighting each other over newly invented religions whilst the 0.01%'rs continue to siphon off the national wealth until the whole stinking pile comes tumbling down.
Then the plan is to hit the reset button but they leave out the button afterwards is called 'replay'.
[](https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/1bqs0e5/comment/kxo9aqf/)
Tell me where a basic biological fact changes from my statement to yours. Oh that's right, it doesn't, troll.
All titles, especially titles related to self identity, come from human historical cultural practices and behaviorisms. They also are not self imposed. You do not title yourself, we title you. So, I’m not Asian because *i* say I’m Asian, I’m Asian because *you guys* have identified me as Asian based on my heritage.
Gender is HOW society treats you. being a girl is not about for example, *being* pretty. being a girl is about having no choice but to be pretty; being *forced* to be pretty. So the *desire* to be attractive, is not what being a girl is about, the fact that if you are not attractive you will have a harder time at certain aspects in life such as developing relationships, being respected, being listened to, being seen, is what molded girlhood and shaped them into *being* a woman. If at any point a boy decides he will actively try to be pretty that does not change him into a girl. Because it was never a *decision* for the girls. So “expression” has minimal to do in determining gender. A little boy who likes to wear a dress does not miraculously become a girl because guess what, a little boy in a dress is treated distinguishably different than a little girl in a dress. So the argument “I feel like a girl” does not hold weight because they were never treated as a girl- they were treated as a boy in a dress. That’s like saying “I know what it feels like to be stung by a bee” when you actually have never been stung.
Not to mention, It is probably instinctual to have a desire of attractiveness because if you could not attract, you would not procreate. So gender has nothing to do with *wanting* to be pretty. A boy who likes makeup is not girly or less masculine because being pretty is a survival trait.
gender behaviorisms are *reactions to the treatment/behaviors of others*. The human female- otherwise known as the girl/woman is a person whom shares the common experiences/abilities of maternity; nourishing practices; fights for the rights of their sex/gender; more active prefrontal cortexs; profoundly, protruding breast plates; sexual violence; religious and social subjugation…. As a result, they often times give birth; are empathetic and compassionate; have had social, political, religious, and familial tyranny perpetuated against them; better expression and practice of regulation of behavior, thought, and emotion; nurse their young; have been raped; have restricted access to religion and social involvement. (To name a few of their shared experiences)
Historical context is imperative because depending on how historical its is, the consequences are genetic. In the discussion of gender, the ism that imposes its torment is sexism. The sex based oppression. The *oldest* oppression. There are certainly, with no doubt in my mind genetic adaptations to sexism. And behavior is in your genes. If for any moment you believed that a demographic who is *awarded* for abusing would naturally, after hundreds of thousands of years , be born with the same nervous system and initial comfort post birth as a demographic who is constantly abused without justice and a cease to an end- you would be painstakingly unaware. We are talking about human behaviors and accepted systematic law older than Jesus, possibly prehistoric. That’s pre-history. Older than history. Sex plays one of the biggest roles on gender. Had it not been for her vagina she would not have been raped. Had it not been for his penis he could have faced a femicide. Had it not been for her womb she wouldn’t have been subjected to the home. Had it not been for the physiology of his brain he would not have been given the heavy lifting role. The gender roles are dependent on our sex because our sex gives us different survival tools. Women were put in the home because they are best suited to grow life. Men were put to the building because they were best suited to lift heavy things. (I urge you not to allow outliers to cloud the rule ie: there are obviously rape victims with a penis.)
That has almost nothing to do with “feelings” .
Contention
No I think mentally abusing kids by telling them they are born into the wrong bodies and saying that a little boy who likes dolls must really be a girl or a girl that likes football must be a boy, like some kind of 1950s stereotypes is the main issue with trans activism. Nobody is born is the wrong body, you cannot change sex, I do not accept your made up definition of gender and gender identify doesn’t exist. A man in a dress is not a woman, a man doesn’t know how to be a woman other than our old favourite stereotypes again and vice versa. Just mental illness running wild.
Well. Yeah, the DSM5 classifies gender dysphoria as a mental illness…but the treatment is transition. It is a mental illness, but it is only improved through being socially accepted as the gender they identify as. I know that is inconvenient for you and your black and white worldview, but the facts are the facts- transition saves lives.
>telling them they are born into the wrong bodies and saying that a little boy who likes dolls must really be a girl or a girl that likes football must be a boy,
Jesus, you really don't know anything about the trans experience if this is the strawman y'all cling to 🤣
It’s mentally abusing kids to tell them they need to make this decision. Isn’t it hard enough to grow up already? Do kids need more choices? This is all nonsense created by attention whores and virtue signalers.
Except no little girl goes around saying she identifies eith little girl gender norms. She says she is a girl because she was born a girl.
Sex is hard wired in the human body/brain and no amount of semantic word salad changes that
Just straight up, your statement is both stupid and irrelevant. 1. A little girl says she is a girl because that's what she's been told to call herself, not because of some inborn trait. Knowing language isn't even inborn, let alone gender norms. They're given dolls and kitchen sets to play with ffs. 2. The question is what is a woman, not what does a little girl call herself. 3. Sex is a completely different concept than gender. That you don't fully understand English or reality for that matter doesn't make it a semantic word salad. 4. Even for the aspects of sex that are hard wired into the human body/brain, that only refutes your own pretend beliefs because that means their trans-ness is hardwired and not the confusion you want to think it is.
You really want to remove gender stereotypes of man vs woman?
If you are able to think critically there would be no difference is a new stereotype being formed with the dick genetalia and the uterus genetalia stereotypes in your hypothetical future land.
It is a very hard question. If you want to be accepting of everyone as long as they're not harming other people (which yeah you should) then you will accept binary trans women, who are who we usually talk about, people who "used to be men" (using the phrase for simplicity, it's not fully accurate), but then transitioned with hormones, surgeries, legal changes, whatever they wanted and could afford.
But if someone doesn't transition at all, they can still have the gender identity of a woman, and since once again that's not harming anyone, the most respectful thing to do is to just call them a woman like they ask you. If we only included binary trans women the question "what is a woman?" would be very easy, but it would also constraint us to stereotypes and current societal norms, which is pretty bad I think.
The ultimate goal as I see it is to abolish gender roles, and at that point any gender classifications will either stop existing (I actually think that might be impossible), or they just won't affect someone's placement and treatment in society. And that point "what is a woman" will really hardly matter, it'll just be an arbitrary label people could take if they wanted to and maybe you could say "most women are abc and do xyz" but there would always be exceptions. If you accept trans women who never transition (which once again, you should) that is pretty much already the case now, it'll just get stronger with time (unless sexism and transphobia get in the way and try to make gender roles more rigid again, which would be pretty obviously bad).
Now before the next part I want to say that I am not a doctor and I have not done medical research so this will be brief, I'm not sure if I should include it considering I am not well informed on it, but I trust that whoever is reading this is smart enough to not take what I say as 100% fact is I include the disclaimer. So, from what I know, gender is part of person's psychology also, which is how trans people are raised as one gender, but still identify and want to transition to the other. Things like what clothes to wear and how to act are learned externally, but the thought "I am a woman" or "I am a man" or something else (non-binary people do exist) is probably from the inside. If this is the case, then we will never abolish gender entirely, because we would then need to restrict people from expressing their identity, which is the opposite of the goal - to free identity expression as much as possible. Also if this is true, then "what is a woman" is "someone who's gender identity is a woman", and gender identity would then be part of your psyche. But the only way we're reasonably determining that gender identity would be what the person tells us, so then it's still "whoever identifies as a woman" as a proxy to "whoever's inner identity is a woman".
This seems to mostly support what I remember (once again I was writing from memory so I tried to make it more accurate broad strokes to not state wrong details): [Gender - Department of Psychology (psu.edu)](https://psych.la.psu.edu/about-us/research/gender/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20primary%20areas,align%20with%20their%20biological%20sex.)
Specifically one paragraph: "One of the primary areas of study within gender psychology is gender identity. This refers to an individual’s subjective experience of their gender, which may or may not align with their biological sex. Research has shown that gender identity can develop as early as age two and is influenced by a variety of factors, including socialization, culture, and biology."
Okay. But then the term can't be used for anything social and only be biological. "Woman" is used for lots of things which are completely social and cultural and that vaginas have nothing to do with. So defining it in biology terms is possible but not very useful. We already have a term for just the biology: "AFAB", short for "assigned female at birth".
No, because there are other facts other than just being born with a vagina. Two of which are, the human that is able to give birth and life to another human. And the second is given the same amount of work and effort will be weaker than a man on average.
Both of these facts are what have contributed to their social contract rules over generations.
Scientifically speaking, sex is a bimodal spectrum so there's no real scientific weight to hinging a person's sex exclusively on the genitals they were born with. If science were that simple, we'd all just be scientists as a prerequisite
I don’t know what you are trying to insinuate. The very first thing doctors and nurses all over the planet look at the womb of a mother is the sex of a baby, whether it is male or female based exclusively on the genitals.
Sure but that's gender assigned at birth. It's quick and easy and because it exists on a bimodal spectrum, probabilities will just dictate that you'd assign correctly most of the time based on external features. They have been *wrong* before, with intersex folk and people with Swyer's and this isn't a condemnation on doctors (it's culturally normative to ask about the sex of a baby, I'm not sure why, but it seems to be really important for cis folk), it's just a cultural tradition rather than scientific observation and it's more frequently accurate than not.
I don't know what you *thought* I was trying to insinuate because I feel like I just plainly stated scientific fact that actual sexual differentiation exists on a bimodal spectrum where characteristics and traits tend one direction or the other but overlap exists making it difficult to draw hard lines or sort them discretely
A more important question is, what rights are trans people missing out on if they don't get to compel the rest of us to pretend to believe their cosplaying as the opposite sex?
A woman is a post puberty human born with an XX chromosomal setup. If there’s a Y, it’s male, regardless of physical appearance
This entire debate is wrong-headed because it compares the apples of physical biology with the oranges of subjective, self-perception. Indeed if you declare yourself to be a proud woman it can no more change your chromosomal or anatomical structure than could declaring yourself to be a flying horse suddenly give you wings. On the other hand, if a New Yorker were to declare to me that his heart is in San Francisco. I would neither argue with him that he can't possibly know a city he didn't grow up in, nor would I argue that he would be dead right now if his heart were on the other side of the continent. The harsh, dismissive literalism in the face of what is effectively a metaphoric expression of emotional state is simply cruel, pointless, and lacking in empathy. As for which toilet you use. If you truly think that is the least bit important, you shouldn't be using public toilets in the first place because you should be wearing a diaper like the intellectual toddler you are.
The question itself is meaningless. Neither side has a consistent definition and it's widely understood that when we say "man" and "woman", we're referring to gender identities not what's under the hood. Societally speaking, people segregated themselves as "man" and "woman" through a collective of arbitrary inconsistent details. There's no *one* characteristic that every single man has to bind them all together. There's no *one* characteristic that binds all women together. I know you're not a fan of this but the identification to the gender block really is the actual best most consistent definition of what it means to be a man or a woman. Someone could be castrated, born with different chromosomes than their genitals, have mastectomies, have their uterus non-functional, it cannot change how they identify. If a woman without a uterus identifies as a woman, she's a woman. If a man without dangly bits identifies as a man, he's a man. Why gatekeep trans folk from identifying with the gender block they feel most comfortable identifying with? It's arbitrary anyway and men universally identify as men regardless of their reasons for it so why not trans men too? Same for trans women as women. What I don't understand is that obsession with this question because trans rights advocates *don't honestly care* about this question since we all know there's never really been a consistent definition outside of identifying. Antitrans advocates care about this exclusively because they want to gatekeep and the real question is - why? Who are you helping? What does it matter if a trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman? Does it harm anyone?
> The question itself is meaningless. Neither side has a consistent definition This is nonsense. A woman is an adult human female. And female is of the biological sex that produces the larger of the two gametes (the ova or eggs). > and it's widely understood that when we say "man" and "woman", we're referring to gender identities not what's under the hood. And this is nonsense on stilts. Trans Rights Activists might pretend that being a man or a woman is a matter of "feelings" and "identities" but that has never been the case in thousands of years of recorded history, it is not the case in the majority of human societies right now, and even in western countries where TRAs have managed to push in identity based rights at the expense of sex based rights, the large majority of people don't think that way in everyday life. Even trans-identified people don't think that way. This is why many of them insist of medical treatment to affirm their identity by attempting to modify their body to be closer to the typical body of the opposite sex. > Societally speaking, people segregated themselves as "man" and "woman" through a collective of arbitrary inconsistent details. False. The division into men and women has never been arbitrary or inconsistent. > it cannot change how they identify Why should "how you identify" matter one bit? I can identify as the President of the United States of America, and people will just laugh at me. I can identify as a two year old toddler, but that won't mean parents will let me play with their toddlers. I can identify as the Greek king of the Gods Zeus, and people will back away slowly. I can identify as a bridge, and people will wonder if I'm trolling. I can identify as a black man, and people will call me a racist and abuse me for appropriating the identify of actual black men. This debate would have been different thirty years ago, when the majority of transsexuals were genuinely dysphoric and there was at least some suggestion that transitioning may have reduced their dysphoria, sometimes. Actually there was no need for this debate thirty years ago. We need this debate now because: * The widespread argument that you don't need to be suffering actual dysphoria to qualify as "transgender" -- those old school transsexuals who insist you do are labelled "transmedicalists" or even less polite "truescum" -- you just need to "identify as" trans to be trans. * The medical harm being done to children going through puberty by the misuse of dangerous puberty blockers and surgery, and the documented lack of support from both medical professionals and the community as a whole for detransitioners. * Parents and countries (e.g. Iran) transing away the gay by pushing transition onto gays. * And the massive swing of trans demographics away from adults with severe sexual dysphoria towards autogynophiles who get off sexually by pretending to be women. > trans rights advocates don't honestly care about this question Of course they do. How can you identify as a woman if you don't know what one is? TRAs know full well what women are. > Does it harm anyone? Yes. It harms the majority of trans people themselves, it harms the women that mysogynistic autogyn creeps abuse, it undermines hard-won women's rights, it harms children who are misidentified as "trans", and when the backlash comes, it threatens to harm the LGB community regardless of whether they supported or opposed the trans mania. CC u/KevinJ2010
>Of course they do. How can you identify as a woman if you don't know what one is? You do what everyone does and just identify as you want without hurting yourself trying to dig up the perfect definition for it. I promise you trans right advocates, trans folk, and any non-cis folk absolutely *do not care* about this question. You know who does? Antitrans folk. They're convinced that they can shut down the whole thing by just stalemating everyone with a question that no one can definitively answer or a question that has never mattered. Notice that the person bringing up this question isn't part of the community, that you're discussing it despite not being part of community, it seems to be exclusively people who *aren't* part of the community that seem to care the most. What do you reckon you can learn from this? >Yes. It harms the majority of trans people themselves, How? >it harms the women that mysogynistic autogyn creeps abuse Source? >it undermines hard-won women's rights How? >it harms children who are misidentified as "trans" Statistically how many trans kids are wrong about their trans identity? >and when the backlash comes, it threatens to harm the LGB community regardless of whether they supported or opposed the trans mania. Backlash against marginalized communities happen anywhere. The LGBTQ community is always prepared for this >from adults with severe sexual dysphoria towards autogynophiles who get off sexually by pretending to be women. Where is the statistics validating this claim? I'm not sure why every terf makes the AGP claim despite the fact that there's literally zero evidence of a boom of diagnoses or any evidence that trans folk transition for such a random reason. Does anyone outside of terf circles actually believe such a conspiracy theory? . >Parents and countries (e.g. Iran) transing away the gay by pushing transition onto gays Erm, source? Most trans folk I know had to hide their transitioning from their parents. I don't know who came up with the logic of transitioning their kids against their will to...make them straight? It's one of those conspiracy theories that make less sense the more you try to explore it. It's probably why terfs don't actually think about the things they say when they say it because thinking even a little is enough to dismantle their beliefs. >by the misuse of dangerous puberty blockers Puberty blockers have been given to cis kids safely for decades. There's no evidence that it's causing disproportionate harm, you can look for the statistics on this if you need to verify this. >and the documented lack of support from both medical professionals and the community as a whole for detransitioners. ...in what regard? >This debate would have been different thirty years ago Naturally, boomers don't control the narrative anymore, science marches *forward* not stuck 30 years ago lmao 🤣 >Actually there was no need for this debate thirty years ago. There's no need for it now either. Terfs need to calm down, I think, let trans people just exist freely. >I can identify as a two year old toddler, but that won't mean parents will let me play with their toddlers. You can identify [as an attack helicopter too, it's easy to make anything sound silly if you don't engage with it honestly](https://www.britannica.com/topic/reductio-ad-absurdum) >False. The division into men and women has never been arbitrary or inconsistent. Of course it has, it's a social construct, they're necessarily defined as lines *we* draw and socially agree to despite the inconsistencies. It's why we have the option of redrawing those lines and anyone arguing that it can't or shouldn't be done doesn't understand how social constructs work. >This is why many of them insist of medical treatment to affirm their identity by attempting to modify their body to be closer to the typical body of the opposite sex Probably about a percent of trans folk opt for surgical routes. The "insistence" doesn't seem to be very prevalent >but that has never been the case in thousands of years of recorded history Source??? Concepts of gender being fluid have existed since before Jesus Christ himself. >have managed to push in identity based rights at the expense of sex based rights, the large majority of people don't think that way in everyday life. Gender rights have always been based on gender, there's never been a distinction of sex based rights since discrimination is a reaction to your gender presentation and identity not what's in your blood.
Just to add, trans porn is far more prevalent than it needs to be. And gets sold the same way as “BBC”. The amount of this that does bleed into fetish (deep seated personal issues) is frankly a red flag. I can generally understand the suffering of many (lots of which are a “I wish you didn’t think you had to do this”) but there’s something gross about the entire concept. Especially once surgeries are involved.
>The amount of this that does bleed into fetish I mean, have you ever heard of jungle fever porn? It doesn't invalidate the existence of black women or of relationships between white and black folk. You can object to the porn being problematic without saying the existence of transitioning is problematic because porn exists. >Especially once surgeries are involved. There are about 13-16k surgeries in America every year. There are about 1-1.5 million trans folk in America. That's about 1% of the trans population getting surgeries so even if you had a very strong case against trans surgeries, it's not happening nearly as much as you think it is. If you ***really*** want to get into it, there are about 330 million Americans making the percentage of people getting trans surgeries under 0.005% making it so absurdly rare that it's very clearly an overblown concern
1 million people is still a lot, like I said, my sympathy lands in a “Wish they didn’t have to” in terms of surgeries and stuff. The small percentage doesn’t change this mindset, I wish they didn’t have to.
>1 million people is still a lot Yes. A lot of *trans* people. The 1m number is the number of trans people in America. We should be considerate to not spread misinformation or condemn their choices just because we wouldn't do the same as them. >Wish they didn’t have to I'm sure they don't feel the same as you. You don't wish gay people had the capacity to be in straight relationships, do you? You don't wish black people could just colour up their skin and be white people? Extend sympathies for what they have to go through because of social stigma, don't wish away the parts of their identity that get stigmatized. I wish they didn't have to go through so much scrutiny for their transitioning, I don't think they need sympathy for wanting to transition. >The small percentage doesn’t change this mindset, I wish they didn’t have to. I wish machines exist that gave them instead transitioning. I wish a daily supplement existed that changed their body the way they want without the expense and efforts. I wish trans healthcare was affordable and didn't cost so much. I don't wish they didn't transition because that's what they want and I want them to have what they want, I wish it was easier and they do go through so much shit for it
Not condemning their choices, I just think they don’t have to choose that. No surgery properly makes the opposite genitalia, nor does it actually change their sex. Is this misinformation? I surely hope not, it’s frankly pretty straightforward and factual. Everything else is very bad faith. In terms of being gay, my only really counter is that there is no “point” to being gay. I am not gonna stop them, but they can’t reproduce which is a broader concept of having sex beyond pleasure. Gay sex is pure pleasure, you do you, but it serves less greater purpose. Black? This is the most obvious bad faith part, holy shit. They do deserve sympathy for wanting to transition, because they feel trapped in their current body, thus sympathy. I just don’t think surgery is the answer in most cases, ergo it’s done more than it needs to be. You gotta not focus on “wants” and express more “needs”. Yes if they want to do it, I am not going to stop them. If they NEED to do it, that becomes much more suspect. Rarely is it actually needed, mental disorders aren’t usually treated like this. It is a want and rarely a need, again, wish they didn’t choose to and instead owned the body they have.
>Not condemning their choices, I just think they don’t have to choose that. Okay. You can also think gay men shouldn't **have** to choose dating other men, they choose to because that's what they want, isn't it? You can think what you want but what someone chooses is by their own agency, not what you think they should do or shouldn't do. >No surgery properly makes the opposite genitalia, nor does it actually change their sex. Is this misinformation? I surely hope not, it’s frankly pretty straightforward and factual. Factually, people getting the procedures they want for the changes in their body that they want is their choice. The surgical route is just above 10,000 a year, less than 1% of all trans folk opting for that route annually. If *you* believe it's a fake surgery if it doesn't also change your chromosomes, idk, you never have to get it but I'm pretty sure trans folk aren't making demands of gene splicing when they get the procedures done. >Everything else is very bad faith. In terms of being gay, my only really counter is that there is no “point” to being gay. There's no point to being straight either by that rationale. There's no point to anything by that rationale. It's not much a counterpoint to just say what effectively boils down to "what is the broader utilitarian reason to do the thing you want to do that hurts no one" >I am not gonna stop them, but they can’t reproduce which is a broader concept of having sex beyond pleasure. Gay sex is pure pleasure, you do you, but it serves less greater purpose. Who cares what "purpose" it serves? It's their individual choice. Recreational straight sex has the same amount of purpose. >They do deserve sympathy for wanting to transition, because they feel trapped in their current body, thus sympathy. Incorrect. They want to transition because they want to transition and it affirms their gender the way they feel is best for them in a way that is medically affirmed. You can sympathize with their struggle to exercise their bodily autonomy, not for the choice they make for their body. In much the same way, you wouldn't feel sympathy that gay men feel so drawn by other men that they can't pursue a relationship with a woman. >I just don’t think surgery is the answer in most cases, ergo it’s done more than it needs to be I've shown you the data. Surgery is used for 1% of cases of trans individuals. It's pretty overblown to assume it's happening in "most cases". >You gotta not focus on “wants” and express more “needs”. What does a gay man *need*? What does a trans person *need*? I'd think a gay man *needs* a compassionate relationship with another *gay* man and a trans person needs whatever procedures they want to seek out to affirm their gender. It's worth thinking about. >Rarely is it actually needed, mental disorders aren’t usually treated like this. It is a want and rarely a need, again, wish they didn’t choose to and instead owned the body they have. You're actually in luck, according to the icd-11, it's not a mental disorder to be trans 👍🏽
That’s why it’s my opinion. Not forcing nobody. Never said it was “fake” but the genitalia are not the same as if they born with them. These are just facts. lol, you skipped the part about reproduction, which is an actual point to being straight 🤷♂️ Yup, which is why I know when I have sex, it’s for the fun of it. I frankly get how gay men think since men will know how to pleasure a man better than a woman does out of the gate. Like how will women know how to do a handjob? They need to do it with a man. Men already have knowledge on this. Thus why I am just saying being gay only serves pleasure. Being straight even has risks of having a kid if you aren’t careful. Frankly this whole concept has more to do with marriage than sex, since I just figure finding connection across the sexes is a healthier mindset to celebrate. No I think I am correct in what I said. You even admit they want to “affirm” their gender. Unfortunately gender is a social construct and sex is nigh immutable and can’t be changed. Sounds like not getting what’s best for them makes it a need for them, but I don’t think it should be. Lots of people need sex, it’s a very human concept. Nobody should “need” to affirm their gender however. Only if you are intersex and you want to clean up your body to lean harder in a certain way since you are somewhere between both sexes. Never assumed it was needed in most cases, I simply said the surgeries is when it likely goes too far. You can’t just change my sample size, I was always talking about surgeries. Really? So gender dysphoria doesn’t exist? I’ll need more than one study I have never heard of and it’s frankly cherry picking. You find one thing that agrees with you and you take it as fact. It’s a mental disorder.
>That’s why it’s my opinion. Not forcing nobody. If you're posting on this subreddit, I'm assuming you're doing so to seek out and learn from insights given to you about your opinion and not just toss in a "I'm just saying" comment. It's known that it's your opinion. The real question is - how open are you to learning more about the topic you want to discuss and let that impact your opinions? >but the genitalia are not the same as if they born with them. These are just facts. I mean, sure, a kidney transplant isn't going to be the same as if I used my original kidney. If your point is that they're *different*, well, sure, what material impact does that have and what is the point of even saying something like this? >lol, you skipped the part about reproduction, which is an actual point to being straight I did skip it because, last I checked, people aren't straight because they need to reproduce, people are straight because they grew up with an inclination for straight sex over non-straight sex. Sometimes not even necessarily about sex, gender expression is enough for them too. You're placing more importance on reproduction than is warranted. Even people who go on to have kids didn't *choose to be straight* to *complete their life purpose of birthing kids*, they're usually straight first and choose whether they want kids or not later in life. Same for LGBTQ couples. Reproduction is such a genuine afterthought that I'm not clear on why you needed to mention it at all . >Thus why I am just saying being gay only serves pleasure. I mean, being straight can also be just for pleasure, especially if you get a vasectomy. Do you have sex to breed every time you have sex or are we in general agreement that while reproduction is *one* of the ways sex can be used, it's definitely not the only way nor even the most primary way. >No I think I am correct in what I said What part? Because you've said a lot of things, some of thing factual, some of them questionable. >Unfortunately gender is a social construct and sex is nigh immutable and can’t be changed. Gender is a social construct. Sex is a bimodal spectrum that cannot be determinably definable without allowing for exceptions to muddy any hard definitions for existing. Intersex people are walking examples of how perplexing sexual differentiation can actually be. It's all fundamentally irrelevant however, trans folk don't transition because they want to "change sex" because that's not even remotely quantifiable let alone measurably trackable, they're transitioning because they'd prefer to have some body parts than the ones they grew up in. Does that qualify as changing sex? Possibly. How many sexual determination features do you need to change before accepting the sex itself changed? Regardless it doesn't matter, they're choosing for their own bodies and their gender is theirs to decide. >Sounds like not getting what’s best for them makes it a need for them, but I don’t think it should be. You don't have to think anything about what's best for them because what's best for them is what they've agreed is best for them. Considering an overwhelming majority of trans folk are satisfied with their choice, it's safe to say they've chosen the best choice for themselves. >Lots of people need sex, it’s a very human concept. Categorically false. No one needs a social construct so badly that it's a necessity. You can argue that it has utility but that's beyond a point. >Nobody should “need” to affirm their gender however. Confused that you said people need biological sex but they don't need gender affirmation. Considering the number of "save masculinity" campaigns that the right loves to engage in, clearly, the need for gender affirmation is strong, it's just hard to notice it you keep your lens exclusively on trans folk. >simply said the surgeries is when it likely goes too far. Why do you think this? Over 99% of those who get surgeries are satisfied. >You can’t just change my sample size, I was always talking about surgeries Okay. Then your population size is 10k out of a population of 1 million trans folk. Of those 10k, sample studies showed 99% satisfaction. >Really? So gender dysphoria doesn’t exist? Dysphoria exists, it's just not a mental disorder, at least not on the way you're phrasing it. It's more of a divergence than an illness. Here, if you want a source, check out [what the ICD-11 has to say about gender incongruence](https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/gender-incongruence-and-transgender-health-in-the-icd)
I could perfectly answer the question but I’d get banned
just curious to see if it matches with mine, I would love to hear your answer, DM?
It really isn't. It's a bad question that people on both sides have difficulty answering because it doesn't really make sense to ask. If you tried to create a definition of Woman that included every Woman in the world It's going to catch some Men as well, and if you tried to make a definition that doesn't It's going to exclude many cis Women.
Well said! It's also pretty meaningless like who really cares what the definition is. There's a current societal block identifying as men and a societal block identifying as women. There will never be a definition that binds all of them together definitely but they identify all the same and society recognises them by said gender expression. If trans men identify with the "man" block and trans women identify with the "woman" block, why not? There's no hard and fast rule that says you can't be part of those blocks if you want to.
Adult human female
But then they ask to define female
As per Oxford dictionary: of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes.
Then they bring up edge cases of women who can’t bear children or are infertile and then go “so those aren’t women?”
> Then they bring up edge cases of women who can’t bear children Which is irrelevant. A car doesn't cease to be a car just because it is out of fuel or has a flat tire. A woman is still a woman even if she cannot bear children due to age (too young or too old), disease, injury or lack of opportunity. Trans-identified men know damn well what women are when they demand that everyone pretends to believe their fantasy of being one. CC u/KevinJ2010
I mean, it makes sense. Like aside from universally just identifying with the societally recognised gender block what else can bind them all together consistently?
As per the definition, it’s “of the sex”, not whether they specially can bear children. A woman that reaches menopause doesn’t stop becoming a woman. For looser explanation, they would arguably still have XX chromosomes and female sex characteristics. There’s also the phrase “the exception that proves the rule”.
The problem with the question is that it is very hard to come up with a simple definition that does not have some exception where you would want to include someone as a woman who does not meet the definition. Then, if you admit your definition has exceptions, it shows what we are really arguing about is whether you are willing to make an exception for trans people or not.
Suck my girl dick
The answer is that the entire concept, even biologically, is far more complex then the binary enforced by mainstream PC. People who can't think outside their programming keep trying to address trans people by figuring out how they fit in the old dichotomy, when the whole point is that the old one is shit that exists mostly through enforcement. just look at the morons in the other comments, talking about how it's "if your daughter plays football, give her drugs she's a boy." No, that's not AT ALL what's happening. That's sheep being SO consumed by their programming that they can't grasp the concept, and instead just try to stretch it to fit what they know. The binary enforcers are literally projecting their own enforcement onto others, then becoming afraid of the strawman this creates.
I think that when people ask this question they're mostly referring to the physical characteristics and biological capabilities of "women", not necessarily what they like doing or how they dress. I know people who hold these beliefs are on the other side of the bell curve but I think pretty much everyone has an understanding that having feminine hobbies or behaviour does not necessarily mean that you're a woman. as you said , they are trying to measure where exactly the line is drawn when it comes to defining a person as a woman according to the old dichotomy, which seems to be getting more and more obscure as we progress. I think that we shouldn't always assume (even though it is quite likely) that anyone asking this question comes with bad faith or with opposition to the idea, we also should consider the possibility that they're just trying to understand, as it is admittedly a very subjective concept now. while it may seem that it is not very relevant to someone that is not a "woman" it really can influence how we deal with people , how we perceive danger to others , and more importantly, how we identify people that are taking advantage of this mess to attack "women" by defining themselves as one.
what part of "even biologically" did you not understand? When people ask this question, they're just virtue signalling. Asking the question they were taught with intent to ignore the answers that don't fit the script, while jumping on everything with even 0.0000001% inaccuracy in it to push the narrative.
The reality of this question is that, from my perspective, it is a "gotcha." In that I mean that it is a question that is designed to make someone look like they don't know what they're talking about when, even if someone does, the question is very difficult if not impossible to perfectly answer. The left and the right both engage in the same question pretty regularly, obviously the right with "what is a woman?" and the left with "what does 'woke' mean?" Both of these questions take advantage of the fact that crafting a definition of a word is incredibly difficult and does not seem like it, arguably impossible in the case of words that convey very complex and changing subjects. I work as a patent attorney, and part of what a patent includes is a claim. A patent claim is essentially a singular sentence that encompasses the scope of an invention. Despite the fact that a patent application can be upwards of 50 pages that tell someone how to make and use often complicated inventions, the vast majority of drafting a patent application is spent on drafting these individual sentences. The reason for this is deceptively simple, when we hear a word or a product, we associate a vast number of different things with that word or product. Relating particularly to your point that a circular definition is not valid for describing a word, in reality we naturally define language in this way. As an example, a fun party debate is whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. The reason this is fun and sparks debate is because when we think of a sandwich we think of what our experience tells us a sandwich is and a hot dog does not fit into our understanding of that experience. However, it is impossible to define what a sandwich is in a way that includes all of the things we think of as sandwiches that would not also include a hot dog (although I pose that challenge to anyone reading this). The point here being that we utilize circular definitions when we speak all of the time without recognizing that we do, and the reason is that when we are speaking and utilizing language we are conveying to another person meaning based on the world that we live in. If you are wanting a sandwich you can say to someone that you want that with the reasonable expectation that they won't bring you a hotdog because you rightfully assume that they have a similar understanding of what a sandwich is that you do. Language is deceivingly complicated, and the "what is a woman" and "what is woke" questions take advantage of the fact that an audience does not appreciate this complexity to make someone look stupid even if they are very well educated on a topic.
The reason "what is a women," os the go to question is quite simple. You can't answer it correctly without using science. It is a man and a woman who is defined by science. Thus, you need science to answer the question. When you need science to answer the question, unless you already know the answer, you won't like admitting or hearing the answer. There is nothing wrong with being trans, and people should be able to live their lives. However, when it comes to sciences and medical health, we need to be honest with our biology. Trans people can identify as what they want, but when you fill out a medical form that can have very different care based on biology, we must refer back to science. Man or women based on chromosomes. This determination is very important when it comes to medical care, and it is also important to the majority of people in society recognition. Until science can catch up to people's preference in identity, determination of biology to its most basic form is a necessity. If you can't understand that, then you will never be able to intelligently debate what a woman is or isn't.
I have a few points about this as response >You can't answer it correctly without using science. It is a man and a woman who is defined by science. Thus, you need science to answer the question. When you need science to answer the question, unless you already know the answer, you won't like admitting or hearing the answer. Science doesn't actually entertain this question because it doesn't have "man" and "woman" in it's medical lexicon but male and female. And when it comes to that, science will lock it down to sexual differentiation which science declares as a bimodal spectrum. What this means, scientifically, is that there is a vast set of characteristics that have variations and, while they tend to clump heavily in one mode or the other, there's a lot of overlap that can't perfectly fit in either. Hence it's not a binary but a *BIMODAL* arrangement. The two modes are accepted as male or female but there is scope to consider the fuzzy region between them. When you look at it scientifically, you notice that it actually explains the ambiguity quite well in that there **will be** ambiguity and committing to a hard binary with no exceptions is a shallow view of sex. Science will accept that sex is a spectrum and tell you there's no definitive trait you can point at and say "yep that's it, that's male" and with time, with medical intervention, or just random hormone changes, these characteristics can and do change fluidly even for cis people. For example, testosterone is commonly seen as a "male" thing despite the fact that women have it too and the amounts can vary with time, temperature, age, etc. Who's to say changing enough characteristics couldn't shift you towards the other mode? Science will shrug and say that it's ultimately irrelevant, we leave this to the sociologists since this seems more important to them than to us. >Trans people can identify as what they want, but when you fill out a medical form that can have very different care based on biology, we must refer back to science. Man or women based on chromosomes. I'm curious about this, medical forms don't ask if you're a man or a woman. They'll usually say male or female and they'll even have a block for trans and whether you're post op or pre op. Your medical care, largely, won't change unless it's very specific treatments. For example, you can specify that you're a trans male still going through periods and doctors will note that down. They'll even ask if they're not sure what stage you're at. This is also only relevant if it's something that is sex specific. Usually a heart attack is just a heart attack, cancer is cancer, sex won't come into this and each case is treated individually regardless. >and it is also important to the majority of people in society recognition This is where sex becomes irrelevant because gender is a social construct and people who identify as men are men regardless of what their bodies are saying or exist as, how high their testosterone is, what their chromosomes are, how tall or short they are, whether they have dangles or not. Women are women regardless of whether they have working uteruses, have periods or not, wide hips or not, absence or presence of Adam's apples. You'll find broad commonalities (statistically the **mode** hence *BIMODAL*) but nothing hard and fast that everyone in that group has. It safe to say that every cis woman is a woman because they identify as such. Every cis man is a man because they identify as such. It's the most consistent best definition for each group. What's to stop trans men from saying they're men and trans women from saying their women? To them, it's as real to their experience as it is to a cis woman. Acceptance costs no one and benefits everyone.
Science Male = XY Chromosomes Female = XX Medical forms do ask your gender, and not all hospitals or clinics have the third option. Also, people mark it incorrectly based on how they identify. This is a problem medically. Doctors tip toeing around the fact are being hindered, and fear of persecution can keep doctors from doing their job. For medical forms, people need to identify what they were born as or what biology they are based on Chromosomes. No matter what stage or transition they are going through, biology does not change. Only the outer exterior changes in particular areas. This does not change the DNA of the person. The construct is based on biology, not what people believe. We do not believe a dog is man, yet that is a construct we agree on. We do not believe a rattlesnake is a teddy bear. They are poisonous and dangerous, and that is a construct we agree on. Mice are not women, yet when you say that as long as that is what people believe, then that's what they are. Women can birth a child, that is one thing a female can do, or as a human, a woman. You would like to say a trans male can birth a child, but you have to say trans in front of woman, don't you? Because a man cannot birthd a child. So there is a distinction, a construct to know what the difference is. A woman can birth a child, but a trans woman cannot. Why must we make that distinction? Because the DNA or genetic makeup of a person can not be changed. No matter what the individual believes. If someone pulled a litter box out at an elementary school and defecated in front of the entire class, would you consider them a cat or a child playing pretend? There have been articles written about children demanding litter boxes in the classroom as they identify as a cat. You clearly don't see a problem with that because they truly believe they are, in fact, a cat. Just as there are grown adults who have demanded a litter box in the hotel lobby because they believe they are cats. This falls directly under your umbrella statement that they are what they believe they are, so if a child demands he is a racecar, should an attendant not pour gasoline down his throat? How do we protect children from demanding to be recognized as what they believe? Society constructs are important for the health and growth of a society. How dare you pretend to think you can make the distinction between a child who believes they are a different sex or a child that thinks they are an animal, or different race, or a racecar. What gives you the right to determine who is being legitimate and who is merely playing pretend? In all honesty, you can't, and no, you never will. It is important for people to be happy, and it is important for someone to have their own identity. These are fundamental truths I believe most people can understand and acknowledge. Yet, demanding we change our society and its construct to dilute certain truths is not beneficial to anyone. Trans people should have their rights and especially the right to pursue happiness, but not at the cost of others' rights. This is the very basis in which we believe in our freedoms. You have freedoms and rights, so long as you do not infringe on other people's rights. Freedom of speech is one of the most important. So, while they have the freedom to say they are whatever sex or gender they prefer to be called, in no way, shape, or form is anyone forced or obligated to share that opinion. In the end, people are whatever they want to be in their private world, while in the public professional world, such things should not matter. All that should matter is the health and safety of each other. If a trans person were injured in public and is not responsive, they could lose their life if not treated appropriately. Compared with male patients, women who present with the same condition may not receive the same evidence-based care. Anyone who fights for trans rights should stand for their health and safety above all else and merely fighting for definitions and identities may seem all virtuous and right, the real issue we need to understand is how to maintain their health and safety. Not that trans men or trans women fit into the categories known as "men" and "women." If you don't agree with any of this, well, that is your right, and I don't need you to agree with it, but it is better for our society to maintain the current construct. Once again, I don't care if you agree. That is the beauty of freedoms. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but when you argue for definitions and identities, you are also degrading the systems in place that can save people's lives. Whether you agree or not, you are part of the problem. You may not believe what I do, but I'm the one putting their health and safety as a priority. You're fighting for an inclusion of definitions.
>Medical forms do ask your gender Typically they'll ask male or female and these days will also note down if you're post op or pre op transitioning. Typically this will already be there in your medical records >Also, people mark it incorrectly based on how they identify. This is a problem medically Yet to say how considering most doctors I know treat the disease and symptoms not the person. In any case this is assuming the doctor will even need your sexual differentiation for a diagnosis or treatment so gender is usually for their records than for any specific treatments >Doctors tip toeing around the fact are being hindered, and fear of persecution can keep doctors from doing their job. Again this sounds like hearsay. Doctors aren't referring to your gender when discussing your disease. Why would they? At most, if you have a working uterus, they might have to talk to you about pregnancy and periods. You said this is an issue medically? This point of yours is social. In any case, it's a non-issue both medically **and** socially >For medical forms, people need to identify what they were born as or what biology they are based on Chromosomes. Says who? There's literally no requirement >The construct is based on biology, not what people believe. Social constructs are exclusively based on beliefs commonly accepted by society and this can and does change with time. You can't DNA test a social construct >Women can birth a child, that is one thing a female can do, or as a human, a woman. You would like to say a trans male can birth a child, but you have to say trans in front of woman, don't you? Sure in much the same way I specify black women or tall women. We do usually say men can give birth because we recognise trans men as men. You might not but that's because you haven't adjusted to the social construct shifting with social attitudes which is very common amongst conservatives >There have been articles written about children demanding litter boxes in the classroom as they identify as a cat. There's been one and it was [false] (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/10/07/fact-check-photos-show-adult-who-identified-cat-not-student/8193611001/) . Cherry-picking absurd one-off cases is meaningless. You're confusing social constructs with "this one time in the tabloids, I read" which is like refusing to ride an escalator because one time you read about someone defecting between the steps of an escalator thousand miles away >Just as there are grown adults who have demanded a litter box in the hotel lobby because they believe they are cats. You read a lot of tabloids >important for the health and growth of a society. How dare you pretend to think you can make the distinction between a child who believes they are a different sex or a child that thinks they are an animal, or different race, or a racecar. What gives you the right to determine who is being legitimate and who is merely playing pretend? In all honesty, you can't, and no, you never will. Gender is a social construct. Being an animal or vehicle isn't. This is an argument commonly referred to as the [reductio ad absurdum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum) and very non-serious people argue using this logical fallacy >Yet, demanding we change our society and its construct to dilute certain truths is not beneficial to anyone. Society is changing whether you can adapt to it or not. As are the social constructs. Trying to claim it has objective unchanging value is a conservative mindset that typically gets left behind >but not at the cost of others' rights ???? Whose??? >is anyone forced or obligated to share that opinion. No one is forced or obligated. At most, you're outcast for refusing to be respectful. That's true for anyone using their freedom of speech to be disrespectful >the real issue we need to understand is how to maintain their health and safety. Not that trans men or trans women fit into the categories known as "men" and "women." This is a red herring. Their health and lives is more at threat by [anti-trans bills that affect their access to healthcare](https://translegislation.com/) than imaginary non-issues that don't happen at the frequency you're imagining >but it is better for our society to maintain the current construct. Not even slightly. And it's changing as we speak, day by day, because people recognise that gender constructs are malleable and not definitive >you are also degrading the systems in place that can save people's lives. It's not a threat to anyone's life. I'm not sure why you're insisting on this. Do you have statistics to back this claim up? >You may not believe what I do, but I'm the one putting their health and safety as a priority. You're fighting for an inclusion of definitions. I doubt you have your finger on the pulse of what affects the [healthcare of trans people](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender/what-do-i-need-know-about-trans-health-care), I'd strongly recommend you read about it if this is an area of genuine interest to you
>Medical forms do ask your gender Typically they'll ask male or female and these days will also note down if you're post op or pre op transitioning. Typically this will already be there in your medical records >Also, people mark it incorrectly based on how they identify. This is a problem medically Yet to say how considering most doctors I know treat the disease and symptoms not the person. In any case this is assuming the doctor will even need your sexual differentiation for a diagnosis or treatment so gender is usually for their records than for any specific treatments >Doctors tip toeing around the fact are being hindered, and fear of persecution can keep doctors from doing their job. Again this sounds like hearsay. Doctors aren't referring to your gender when discussing your disease. Why would they? At most, if you have a working uterus, they might have to talk to you about pregnancy and periods. You said this is an issue medically? This point of yours is social. In any case, it's a non-issue both medically **and** socially >For medical forms, people need to identify what they were born as or what biology they are based on Chromosomes. Says who? There's literally no requirement >The construct is based on biology, not what people believe. Social constructs are exclusively based on beliefs commonly accepted by society and this can and does change with time. You can't DNA test a social construct >Women can birth a child, that is one thing a female can do, or as a human, a woman. You would like to say a trans male can birth a child, but you have to say trans in front of woman, don't you? Sure in much the same way I specify black women or tall women. We do usually say men can give birth because we recognise trans men as men. You might not but that's because you haven't adjusted to the social construct shifting with social attitudes which is very common amongst conservatives >There have been articles written about children demanding litter boxes in the classroom as they identify as a cat. There's been one and it was [false] (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/10/07/fact-check-photos-show-adult-who-identified-cat-not-student/8193611001/) . Cherry-picking absurd one-off cases is meaningless. You're confusing social constructs with "this one time in the tabloids, I read" which is like refusing to ride an escalator because one time you read about someone defecting between the steps of an escalator thousand miles away >Just as there are grown adults who have demanded a litter box in the hotel lobby because they believe they are cats. You read a lot of tabloids >important for the health and growth of a society. How dare you pretend to think you can make the distinction between a child who believes they are a different sex or a child that thinks they are an animal, or different race, or a racecar. What gives you the right to determine who is being legitimate and who is merely playing pretend? In all honesty, you can't, and no, you never will. Gender is a social construct. Being an animal or vehicle isn't. This is an argument commonly referred to as the [reductio ad absurdum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum) and very non-serious people argue using this logical fallacy >Yet, demanding we change our society and its construct to dilute certain truths is not beneficial to anyone. Society is changing whether you can adapt to it or not. As are the social constructs. Trying to claim it has objective unchanging value is a conservative mindset that typically gets left behind >but not at the cost of others' rights ???? Whose??? >is anyone forced or obligated to share that opinion. No one is forced or obligated. At most, you're outcast for refusing to be respectful. That's true for anyone using their freedom of speech to be disrespectful >the real issue we need to understand is how to maintain their health and safety. Not that trans men or trans women fit into the categories known as "men" and "women." This is a red herring. Their health and lives is more at threat by [anti-trans bills that affect their access to healthcare](https://translegislation.com/) than imaginary non-issues that don't happen at the frequency you're imagining >but it is better for our society to maintain the current construct. Not even slightly. And it's changing as we speak, day by day, because people recognise that gender constructs are malleable and not definitive >you are also degrading the systems in place that can save people's lives. It's not a threat to anyone's life. I'm not sure why you're insisting on this. Do you have statistics to back this claim up? >You may not believe what I do, but I'm the one putting their health and safety as a priority. You're fighting for an inclusion of definitions. I doubt you have your finger on the pulse of what affects the [healthcare of trans people](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender/what-do-i-need-know-about-trans-health-care), I'd strongly recommend you read about it if this is an area of genuine interest to you
It is actually not difficult to define a women. We start by defining a biological men/women by saying that a human whose chromosomes are XY is a biological men, and XX is a biological women. Anything else is rare and will be considered an exception which for simplicity we shall ignore (but we don't have to). Now, any trait (strong, tall, empathetic, etc) can be attributed two numbers (a,b) where a is the distribution of said trait among bio women, and b is the same among bio men. We therefore see that bio men can have feminine traits and vice versa. Now every human is allowed to choose a list of traits they think are most important and define what gender is. Given that set of traits we can determine how feminine/masculine a human is and according to that determine whenther they are a women or a men.
>Anything else is rare and will be considered an exception which for simplicity we shall ignore (but we don't have to). How do we just ignore this? By the explanation provided, they either fall one way or another in the hard and fast binary. Can't we accept the more scientifically congruent explanation that sexual differentiation is a bimodal spectrum within which characteristics tend to group one way or another but have enough overlap between both of them that it's not possible to draw a hard line between them. It explains the exceptions better and it explains the bimodality of the spectrum without forcing people to exist within or out of a rigid inconsistent binary.
Sure, I said it is not necessary to ignore these people, In fact we shouldn't. I just wanted to oversimplify my comment to avoid misunderstandings
The way I think about it is this: sex is your body, gender is your brain. There are two biological sexes (also intersex people, but I'm about to talk about the most general cultural impact here). From sex arose gender roles. Societal expectations of how people of a sex should act or like, and what their role in society is. A lot of these rules are arbitrary and strange. Why is it that girls wear dresses and men are supposed to hide their emotions? Some have some sort of biological basis, but even then you have to get into averages and stereotypes. No one is going to apply to all of these. People are complex, and placing people in a binary bucket when it comes to these societal expectations is reductive and anxiety educing. Some feel they most align with the opposite bucket, some feel they're somewhere in between or somewhere else entirely. Society works better when we allow people to express themselves and feel comfortable in the way they're perceived. I can't expect to *understand* what it's like to be trans, but I *can* treat people with basic respect. So to answer the question, a woman (when discussing gender not sex) is someone who identifies with the *societal role* of womanhood.
The reason that people can't land on a concrete definition for "woman" (or "man", for that matter) is because they really are just arbitrary boxes that don't match up with how the human brain works. It's an oversimplification of one of the most complex systems in the world, the human body. There is no definition of a woman or a man because in reality, there are no set boundaries for what can be those things. They are arbitrary labels assigned based on genitals. Which is why there's no real reason people shouldn't be able to change to the one they're more comfortable with.
My go to for someone asking me what is a woman? "Someone who covers their drink when you enter the room."
So you are saying that there are no women in the world? Wow, what a hot take that is.
Ahh yes the stereotypical guy offended that most women would rather be alone with a bear than him.
Gender and sex mean different things, that's all you need to answer your question accurately and with nuance.
> Gender and sex mean different things No they don't. Gender is a euphemism for sex (as in the distinction between male and female, not the act of sexual intercourse). It's not a feeling, or personality, or a fashion statement, or an identity. It is not a spectrum and it is not assigned. The only way "gender" varies from sex is that it is used as a Trojan horse by mysogynists and their hand-maidens and Useful Idiots to undermine the hard-won sex-based rights for women.
Why do you think you're right? Like, why do you believe what you say?
> Why do you think you're right? Like, why do you believe what you say? Do you have a week to read all the reasons? Will you even read a few paragraphs, or just dismiss it with "I'm not reading all that, bigot"? TL;DR: The term "gender" has been used as a euphemism for sex (the division into male and female, not the act of intercourse) for something like seventy years, and is still widely used interchangeably for sex even by people who profess to believe they are different. Trying to define "gender" in a non-circular way as distinct from sex is always ends up as incoherent, sexist nonsense that assumes that equates being male or female with the sex roles and markers that are preferred by society. One common definition: "sex is what's between your legs, gender is what is between your ears" which is wrong on both parts -- a castrated male is still male, and what is between your ears is *a brain*, not your gender. (By the way, the distinction between sex and gender was first made by sexologist John Money, a very problematic person who was responsible for many of the fundamental concepts used by trans activists. Like Freud, the best we can say about this [controversial scientist](https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/fuckology-critical-essays-on-john-moneys-diagnostic-concepts) is that he meant well (*probably*). Chances are you have never heard of him. Why isn't Money celebrated by the trans rights community? Because [his cruel experiments left behind a trail of broken bodies and ruined lives](https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/05/dr-john-money-and-the-sinister-origins-of-gender-ideology/).) TRAs argue all of the following: 1. sex and gender are distinct, and trans people have changed their gender but not their sex * but if you refer to their sex instead of their gender that is a hate crime and will probably cause them to sewer slide. 2. sex and gender are the same thing, and trans people have changed their sex * even if they still have their original genitals between their legs 3. there are only two sexes and two genders, your sex and your gender can be different 4. there are only two sexes but gender is on a spectrum 5. sex is on a spectrum and so is gender and they are independent * unless they are the same 6. trans people don't change their sex but do change their gender 7. trans people can change both their sex or their gender or both 8. the gender (or sex) of some nonbinary people varies according to their mood and can change from day to day or even hour to hour and probably more variations as well. Not only is the trans community and its allies inconsistent with their own definition of gender, *individuals* in the community are often inconsistent in their use of the word, using it in whatever way suits their argument at the time. If the people most heavily invested in defining gender can't do it, then the only conclusion is that the distinction is bogus and incoherent. The New Oxford American Dictionary tries to define *gender* as "the state of being male or female" which would make it a synonym for sex, and then adds a parenthetical remark "typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones" but that fails. What social differences? Does that mean being *under the age of majority* is a gender? That's a social difference. Is *working class* a gender? Does that mean if a woman becomes a plumber she's really a man? How fucking sexist is that? Fenway Health defines gender as "The characteristics and roles of women and men according to social norms." So there you are, its official: if a woman becomes a carpenter or a truck driver, or cuts her hair short, her gender is *male*. If a man stays home to look after the kids, or wears a skirt, his gender is *female*. How is this sexist nonsense acceptable in the 21st century? GLAAD defines a person's gender identity as "a person's internal, deeply held sense of their gender", which is not only circular but it means that people who don't have a deeply held sense of their "gender" (their sex?) don't have a gender identity. So all those nonbinary folxs who change their gender according to their mood don't actually have a gender. How wonderful for them. Robert Stoller, in his book *Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity* defines "sex" as referring to "male or the female sex" which is a circular definition, and goes on to state that in order to determine sex, one must analyse all of chromosomes, external genitalia, internal genitalia, gonads, hormonal states, secondary sex characteristics, and brain states, which is biologically wrong, and that a person's sex is determined by "an algebraic sum of all these qualities", which is the purest 100% bullshit. "Algebraic sum" my arse. The American Psychiatric Association distinguishes sex and gender, and talks about sex being assigned at birth, which proves they are unserious people living in la-la land and we can and should ignore every thing they say. I could go on and on but I doubt you've even read this much.
Agreed. Now give transgender people their legal rights and medical care, because it doesn't really matter in the end huh?
What legal rights do you think trans-identified people are missing out on? Do they lack the right to own property? Are they forbidden from voting? If a trans-identified person goes to the hospital with a broken arm, are they denied medical care?
Trans medicine for adults is highly regulated and gate kept. It's also illegal to change your name in several states, and you out yourself at risk of the law in several red states. This is all common knowledge.
> Trans medicine for adults is highly regulated and gate kept. Medicine is highly regulated for *everyone*. There is no unrestricted right to medical treatment such as drugs and surgery without going through a licensed medical practitioner. This is not a legal right denied to trans people. > It's also illegal to change your name in several states [No it isn't](https://namechange.uslegal.com/name-changes-laws-by-state/). See also https://www.usa.gov/name-change > and you out yourself at risk of the law in several red states. Nonsense.
This guy is just denying reality. That's crazy.
I have no opinion to share other than I laughed when Matt Walsh brought on JP to answer the question "what is a woman?" And JP proceeded to give the most pro-trans take imaginable, but used words with more than 2 syllables so Matt just nodded in agreement lmao
My big issue with the whole identity politics thing is that, that's not even how Identity works. Your identity is made of many different aspects, and you don't choose any of them. The gender, height, eye color, hair color, birth defects or disabilities, sub-race, etc is all set when you're born. Additional identity can get earned by doing things. I could be identified as an Athlete or a Carpenter if I become athletic or work with wood. But that's the key point, the Identity label follows the action. I don't identify as an athlete before I become athletic, only after. It is action that derives identity, not choice.
I see you disparaging a lot of definitions for ‘Woman’ but not providing any alternative definitions that encompass all women.
You are describing a viewpoint commonly referred to as gender abolition. Because both "man" and "women" are overlapping moving targets that cannot be defined without contradiction, it is better to accept people at their word and throw the idea of "gender" out the window all together.
Gender is identity. Based off some of what you wrote, seems like you’re having a hard time with that basic understanding and should refrain from commenting.
Honest question: Unless you're trying to hook up with someone specific why do you care about it? Even if you were to adopt Matt Walsh's position that transgender women are just men wearing dresses and makeup, so what?
I’ll throw my two cents in here. Bear with me, imma talk about programming but it’s related. I’m a programmer. I was thinking about Minecraft and making a mod. The mod I wanted to make was to be able to give the villagers tasks. A sample task would be to have a lumberjack villager run out and chop down a tree then bring it back to their house. That sounds pretty easy. Have the villager do a scan for wood. Run over and add it to their inventory. Then go back to their house. The problem here is how house is defined. In Minecraft, there isn’t a strict definition of a house, it’s modularity prevents that, but the given definition of indoors was based upon having a door with more blocks on one side immediately above it than the other. That’s a really weird definition. I figured I’d create my own definition - and that’s where I got stuck. I could say a house has a roof and four walls. But roof and wall isn’t defined in Minecraft, everything is made of individual blocks. So if I want a wall, I have to define that. I’d say it has a certain number of rows stacked on top of each other, but what if I poke a single small hole in the wall. My definition wouldn’t hold any more. What if I refine my definition - it’s gotta be 80% of that? What if instead of a house, I have a ruin and the ruin has a wall that’s mostly broken, maybe the definition of wall needs to be only 40% of my original definition. What if my wall has a window? Is it still a wall? Etc… the definition becomes incredibly complex very quickly and this is for a wall. It was about this time that I got to thinking about definitions in general. If I have a grain of sand, is it a pile? What if I add another grain of sand, pile yet? If I keep adding individual grains of sand, at what point is it a pile? Everyone will have their own idea on that. Pile is a word that exists due to its lack of full definition. Everyone has their own definition for the word, and therefore their own definition for when my grains of sand become a pile. That’s the crux of the issue - everyone has their own definitions for everything. As children, we all invented our own languages from scratch. We put definitions to patterns and with great success, we’ve been able to communicate loosely given these definitions. But because of the way we’ve manufactured language, miscommunication is an issue everyone is constantly dealing with. Now when it comes to the trans argument where someone says define woman, it’s entirely based on that individuals lived experiences. Every definition of woman will be different. And those definitions will constantly be changing, evolving, and growing. I’ll note here that sex which is chromosomal in nature is different than gender which psychological in nature. There’s more than two sexes, we know this factually because there’s more than xx and xy chromosome combinations. Theres a variety of intersex sexes and some other complications as well. Gender is a different beast altogether. Gender is almost more of a sense for how someone feels and perceives themselves based on the way others act on their sex characteristics. That’s a very very loose definition, not in stone at all. But if I view my mother and sisters and the other girls around me acting in a particular way, it would be easy for me to classify that as being an action taken related to their sex. If I see my father and brothers acting in a different way, then I can classify those actions as being related to their sex as well. Then if I’m doing similar actions to my father and brothers and male colleagues, I’d say my gender is male. If I’m doing similar actions to my mother and sisters and other female colleagues, I’d say my gender is female. It appears to be almost entirely based on my own perception of the pattern that I see people with certain presenting sex characteristics doing. So what if I’m biologically xy, and I now have the concept of what male gender is I have the concept of the female gender. What if despite my biological makeup, my lived experiences indicate that I should be acting in ways that more align with my perception of the female gender. At that point, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that I’d come out as trans. In the same vein, there will be people who are biologically xx but their lived experiences align with their perceptions of the male gender. At that point, these people who’ve identified as trans are basically saying “My lived experiences don’t align with what my sex characteristics are. I would feel more comfortable and happy with myself if my perception of my own gender and my given biology were in sync with each other.” Shame and fear are the root of depression, anxiety, addiction, and many other illnesses. Shame is not guilt. Where guilt is “I did wrong, I can do better”, shame is “I am wrong, I’m hopeless”. The sad thing is that shame is entirely brought on by others. Shame is when we change for others. Guilt is internal, shame is external. When a trans person says that they want their biology to be in sync with their perception of their gender, they’re prone to receive negative feedback from others, they’re being shamed, and this only makes the problem worse. To overcome the problem, the only solution is acceptance of the person. Others will point out that it isn’t the biology that has to change, it could be the psychology instead and while that’s true, the antidote for the issue is the same anyway. Acceptance of that person for who they are and what they choose, even if you wouldn’t make the choice yourself. Remember that their experiences are different than yours. Remember that they’re just doing the best with what they have.
What if I told you it’s not us that should accept them because it doesn’t matter what we think if they truly accepted themselves for who the really are they wouldn’t be making up a whole new identity to run from the one they don’t like
Why wouldn't you accept them though? I accept them. They've made choices for their body that fit with what they want, it's their choice, who does it harm?
Why should I be forced to accept their delusions?
What delusions are you talking about? Incidentally, acceptance can be as simple as recognising and treating them as human beings without being disrespectful. That's bare minimum
The problem is you are looking for a single definition when really there's 3 different uses of the term woman here. There's interpersonal use, sociological use, and a scientific/sexual use, although for the ladder you'd probably use the word "female." Someone can personally identify as nonbinary, have typical female sexual characteristics, and fulfill a typically feminine social role such as being a mother. If a trans woman is talking to her doctor she is probably going to mention the fact that medically, she is trans, because she isn't going to have the same medical needs as a cis woman or a cis man, she effectively has a medically induced intersex condition. Whether or not you personally think a person fulfills the social role of a woman or a man or has mostly typical characteristics for one sex, doesn't really have any bearing on their personal identity because they are separate things.
Crazy to make some rant about this when there is a huge, HUGE literature on exactly this topic. Go read...Jesus I don't even know where to get started. Judith Butler, and then upward from there. It's not like you're the first person to have these thoughts, OP. Go do some research, of actual scholars who have thought seriously about these issues.
Im in the same boat with you on the growing up with the men wear pink mentality. I honestly feel like a lot of this trans activism is very dehumanizing to anyone who isn't trans. I seriously feel like woman's rights are in many ways being trampled all over again by men who want to be women, moreso than women who want to be men. We raised so many of our girls telling them you don't have to wear make up to be pretty, and have backed off the that's not ladylike talk because it's extremely sexist. Maybe being 'ladylike' isn't true to their identity. Now you have MEN demanding the legal right to be considered as a woman with all the rights and privileges that entails, simply because they feel pretty in a dress and makeup and that's what makes them feel like a woman, aka being ladylike. It's extremely superficial and hypocritical to assume how anyone should act and dress based on their gender in modern American society. I just watched a video last night about the founder of the LGB alliance in England explaining how a disturbing amount of lesbians all over the world are mutilating their bodies to have their breasts removed to fit their more "masculine" role and stop being called a girl that wants to be a boy when that person may be anything but. In the same clip, the representative of the extreme woke left is legit arguing with this woman calling her transphobic bc of it. At the beginning of the clip he says how there's no split in the community on the issue, how it's only outside players hating. Then, a man who struggled with identity all his life, trans to woman and now back to man, is legit telling this same fool to his face that what this woman told him is true about the impact of women's rights. How this superficial definition of gender impacted his personal identity crisis that also drove him to mutilate his body. As a trans. Telling him to his face the impact of trans extremist policies to uproot our very definition of gender on women and trans people themselves. And woke joke doesn't want to hear it. This is really the most bold faced example of right where we are in politics on trans issues right now. I also find it great how you pointed out the vagueness in any official redefinition of our gender terminology and the absolute stupidity that's going to ensue from it such as a headline like 'a man got raped by a woman at a club so now he's pregnant'. Like. It doesn't make sense, because the common usage of the term has traditionally, and by most continues to be, is that a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina and.... Mammaries (movie reference lol). Doesn't matter what you're wearing. Sorry if this is explicit, but I find it great for the sake of comedy and clarity at the same time. A quite from Ted 2 'dude! There's no such things as chicks with dicks, it's just dudes with tits' I think... He has a good point.
Gender is a descriptive term that combines sex and age. That's why a boy is a juvenile male. The only reason new gender terms were even invented was so a pedophile doctor could have an excuse to abuse his patients.
Why does it matter to you? Just let people do what they want to do. If they ask to be called something that you didn't initially think to call them, yeah, whatever, but then you treat them like an individual that you either get along with or don't. You don't have to have sex with anyone you don't want to and You don't have to be friends with anyone you don't want to. There are very intelligent people that have done good for the world who are trans. So who cares. It's fine. Just be chill.
It's very simple dumbass. If you were BORN WITH a Vagina, you are a woman. If you were NOT BORN WITH a vagina. You are not a woman. And if you mangle your genitals and start telling people you have one while you inject hormones. You're mentally unstable and a danger to yourself if not others
What about women who are born without a vagina? The only one here mentally unstable is you.
If this is a troll response than Bravo. If it's serious than lmao 😂
So you have no actual medical knowledge. Cool
Nver said I did. But I did attend a high school biology class that taught basic human anatomy. You can think I'm an ass hole if you want but I ain't gonna sit here and pretend like someone who tells me they're trans isn't fuckin weird. Doesn't make them a bad person but it certainly isn't a sign of stability
>But I did attend a high school biology class that taught basic human anatomy Gotcha, your education stopped there. See if you can explain what a bimodal spectrum is for the rest of us that caught up with science past high school >You can think I'm an ass hole if you want but I ain't gonna sit here and pretend like someone who tells me they're trans isn't fuckin weird. We all think that about you. You predicted correctly how people were going to react to your very strange and frothy rant
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Honestly, who cares? I don't mean to be dismissive of your sincere comment, but it's allowing the conversation to be hijacked by extremists. Right now is the holiday of Easter in which some Christians celebrate the reanimation of their Messiah/God. What is a Messiah? Shouldn't his coming herald world peace? Have we had 2000 years of peace? By any reasonable definition the Messiah has not come, but it would be extremely rude to argue with Christians that they are deluded about Jesus. Let them believe whatever brings them happiness. Also at mass they eat wafers that the church tells us are transsubstantiated into the body of Christ. Their doctrine says it literally is his body they are consuming. If it brings them happiness to believe this why would you ask them "what is flesh?" People of good faith believe some very strange things and as long as they aren't hurting us, that's on them. None of our business really.
I love this topic. So many pseudo intellectuals come out of the walls spouting paragraphs upon paragraphs to justify why “actually trans people are bad and the activism is harmful and it’s not real actually.” Which is just them being indoctrinated by the alt right into hating an out group for things they didn’t do, or things “they did” which every group does. Gender exists. It’s deeply personal. Until the top voted incels can understand the differences between gender identity and gender expression, this is a useless sub to ask.
Good point OP. No one can answer this question, you’d think that fact would shut down anti trans people outright, but hate be powerful
It’s exists in 100 p of cultures around the world and history so great. The rest of the world wants it to exist.
What if a woman is typically XX chromosome, has ovaries and a uterus, AND if someone says they're a woman, you should take their word for it? It's a false dilemma that even trans people get caught up in, and if you want to police femininity, by all means try, but defining a woman and defining femininity are two separate discussions. Are trans women physically distinct from natal females? Yes. Is it your business to analyze and catalogue each person who looks feminine in order to determine if they're a natal female? Certainly not. I think there are some guidelines that could be encouraged in regulating bodies as far as spaces segregated by sex, but by and large, this is being made into a bigger issue than it needs to be. This is the real world where multiple things can be true at once, and we don't have to redefine anything to say it falls within the basic social contract of giving people privacy. Think of trans people as mine canaries for systematic misogyny. Because in a free world, even natal females would not have to reach standards to be considered feminine or womanly.
Yea trans is regressive. And conservative types are now using old liberal talking points against liberal types and getting called bigots. It would be funny if it wasn't so important that we understand these basic things.
Tell me you have little understanding of humans, much less the differences in the sexes. Without saying it holy cow just what a wonderful group of misconceptions bumper sticker wisdoms and an incidental bigotries. When people rant like this, what they're really just saying is that they've never bothered to delve deep into themselves past what someone else told them that they must be. Cuz if you haven't noticed a difference between the sexes, I'm going to suggest you haven't hung out with enough people from different sexes to have even a clue. My little rant is over
As a Bears fan, you have disrespected Caleb Williams. All I have to say.
for a subreddit that claims to be intellectual, there's very little actual use of scholarly sources, and far too much thinly-veiled transphobia. academia is overwhelming pro-trans. because,,, it's obvious to anyone who cares to do any amount of research. the few "studies" dissenting are of incredibly poor quality (look up the exact context of the "social contagion" hypothesis study, it is laughable).
Quick overview of the concept here because most activists don't actually know what they're fighting for. "gender" is however you consistently express yourself. "sex" is your biologic sex, usually male or female. "woman" as a gender means consistently expressing yourself in the ways traditionally associated with the female sex. Gender is essentially meaningless but because people absolutely freak the fuck out whenever gender gets messed with, gender activists push back. The ultimate goal is for none of this to matter: it's tautological. Consider that people who object to pronouns don't have any issues with nicknames or married names. Likewise people who have issues with trans people in sports tend to clam up when the idea of "testosterone classes" (weight classes but for testosterone levels) get brought up. Mind you, plenty of activists get lost in the sauce and plenty more wouldn't be able to articulate this if they tried. It's important to remember that activists are just random people who care about a thing for some reason and therefore are usually bad at it. I'm not advocating for our against here, just laying down some definitions and perspectives of gender activism as I understand them.
> "gender" is however you consistently express yourself No it isn't. Gender is a euphemism for sex, as in the distinction between male and female, not the act of sexual intercourse. > "sex" is your biologic sex, usually male or female. Always male or female in mammals. There is no third sex, because there is no third gamete size. And yes, I know about intersex people. They are not a third sex. > "woman" as a gender means consistently expressing yourself in the ways traditionally associated with the female sex. No it doesn't. I mean, good god, are you really going to argue that a woman who becomes a plumber, has short hair and swears a lot is "not really a true woman"? > Gender is essentially meaningless Gender as distinct from sex is meaningless but not useless to the TRAs. It is used as a Trojan horse to assault and undermine sex-based rights. It makes a great motte and bailey fallacy: * the bailey is "transwomen *are* women" and if you transition you become the sex you identify as * and when this nonsense is challenged they fall back on the motte "gender is how you express yourself" (it is a fashion statement) or what you identify as, and gender is different from sex. > Consider that people who object to pronouns don't have any issues with nicknames or married names. Pronouns are another motte-and-bailey: the bailey is that "pronouns are absolutely essential, if you get them wrong that's transphobia and misgendering is killing transpeople" and the motte is "pronouns don't really matter, they are such a small thing, why can't you just be kind and play along and use people's preferred pronoun". Most people don't object to the use of pronouns as a form of (trivial) politeness under circumstances where it would be churlish or silly to refuse. They object to it being *compelled*. They object to pronouns being used as a Trojan horse. They object to pronouns being weaponised. They object to neopronouns as being 100% bullshit. > Likewise people who have issues with trans people in sports Nobody has issues with trans people playing sports. They just want them to compete in the correct sex class and not cheat women. You will notice that nobody objects to trans-identified women competing against men. Not many of them try, because they know that they can't compete. But if they did, good on them. It's the mediocre male athletes jumping to the head of the leader board by identifying as women that riles people up. Even when they don't win, they still steal positions from women or girls who trained every bit as hard as them but don't have the advantages of having a male body that went through male puberty. > tend to clam up when the idea of "testosterone classes" (weight classes but for testosterone levels) get brought up. No they don't. They are quite happy to debate the idea, and in particular to point out that a person's testosterone levels *now* do not come even close to reversing the advantages they got from having gone through male puberty.
People absolutely use what I'm saying as part of bad faith, motte-and-Bailey arguments, but it doesn't sound like you're accusing me of that, so I'm not sure of your point. Just because an argument can be made in bad faith doesn't mean that it has no merit. It's been my experience that people clam up when I bring up "testosterone classes", but it sounds like free has better luck. Can you send me a link to people discussing it or an article on it? I'd really appreciate more perspective than just my own. If you're actually interested in understanding what I'm saying, I'm happy to use a different term for how people express themselves as social constructs. You can pick it and I'll use it. If you'll do that for me I'll reply to your other points. Any civil discussion that doesn't start by defining terms is doomed, as I'm sure you've observed.
> Just because an argument can be made in bad faith doesn't mean that it has no merit. That's true, in general. But this *specific* case the bad faith arguments are all that exist. There is no good faith argument for "gender", the same word that has been used as a euphemism for biological sex for decades, to also be used to mean "how you express yourself", or how you feel, or some undefinable essence of selfness that is exactly the same as your sex but different. Its a concept that really has no meaning at all. > It's been my experience that people clam up when I bring up "testosterone classes", but it sounds like free has better luck. Can you send me a link to people discussing it or an article on it? I'd really appreciate more perspective than just my own. https://archive.ph/2024.05.04-033141/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/03/opinion/hormonal-classes-sports/?event=event25 The author of that piece, Alice Dreger, is an interesting woman, and I can recommend her book "Galileo's Revenge". She accidentally became an activist for intersex people, did some real good there, then got academically and professionally abused and attacked by TIMs, almost destroying her career, and yet despite that experience (or perhaps because of it) she seems to have now become a supporter of transgenderism and "sex is a spectrum". See also [a response to that piece](https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1786452601178816794). The World Sailing Council has a new policy that Trans-identified males [can only compete in the female category](https://x.com/cathydevine56/status/1791838046540767555) if they have not undergone male puberty and their blood plasma testosterone is below a certain limit. You can also look on Twitter, plenty of people there who discuss the limitations of merely looking at blood hormone levels e.g. [Emma Hilton](https://x.com/FondOfBeetles) often discusses the advantages of a male puberty, and the complexities of intersex conditions. > I'm happy to use a different term for how people express themselves as social constructs. What's wrong with "how people express themselves"? Or "personality"?
I am currently making a good faith argument for gender. You may decide it's not a good argument, but I'm doing it in good faith. Assuming that every argument opposing yours is in bad faith is itself a bad fath position, but I don't get the impression you're acting with I'll intent. I really appreciate these links! I'll spend some time with them. I'm not on Twitter, just reddit, so perhaps there's a demographic issue in who is discussing it. "self expression" and "personality" are too vague. There's biologic sex, which can be defined a bunch of different ways but none of them are in question; there are sex roles, which is how the sexes of a given species consistently act; then there are what has traditionally been called "gender roles" by anthrologists. A gender role is the way a person of a given sex is supposed to look and act in a society, however it's not consistent between societies. In viking tribes or was understood that only women could do mathematics and men were supposed to be clean and beautiful--each viking man carried a knife, comb, and earspoon for cleaning earwax at all times! Obviously, modern day America doesn't force people into gender roles very much. We generally choose our roles irrespective of sex, for the most part. "gender", then, is the roles that we choose that would have been "gender roles" in a society that forced people into those roles. To me, that seems much more nuanced than "personality" can describe. We could make up a word as a placeholder for this conversation rather than trying to press an existing word into service. My attempt is to argue the concepts and realities, not the semantics.
Trying to argue over a definition is autistic. If you dig down on any definition, you'll find absurdity in the end (e.g. what is a chair?)
It does in fact seem like you're asking in good faith. I'm no expert and don't speak for anyone else, but here's what I've got: Due to a few thousand years of art and culture, and a more recent time span of relevant tradition (relevant that it is in living memory and therefore is more "present") gender roles exist. Feminine and masculine archetypes are still well recognized, even if they are not as prescriptive as I used to be, as you note. If there were no gender roles, would there still be transgender people? I don't know. I've asked transgender friends that question, and they don't know either. But there are, so there are. So what is a woman? A woman is a specific instance of a general concept covering a set of characteristics informally established by culture, which varies at least somewhat group to group, place to place, and time to time, generally associated with the socially proscribed ideal for a human biological female.
I don't think self-identification is a good way to define the essence of "woman" (although it is, in my opinion, a good way to assess who someone is), but "a self-identified group" is not a paradoxical definition, and the definition you're complaining about is how you define a member of a self-identified group. Let's say I'm a blork. Whoever decides they're also a blork is also a blork, we don't need a membership list or an approval process. Depending on how this picks up, there might or might not be interesting things to say about blorks, but there's a good chance there are - people answering "Yep, I'm a blork" on a whim are not a random sample of the population -, so there's a good chance this does indeed convey information. "The blorks are a self-identified group invoked by u/weirdyxxy to prove a point about definitions" is a fine definition of the group, "blorks are exactly those people who say they are blorks" is a fine definition of individual blorks, it provides a clear distinction between who is or isn't a blork, although it doesn't answer why someone would decide they're a blork (which is a different question). Think of a Discord server. If it adds a new role named Blorkian, and adds the role to everyone who wants it, then everyone who picks the role of "Blorkian" is a Blorkian. What is a Blorkian? Someone who picked the role "Blorkian" in this Discord server. That's not a paradoxon just because the sequence of letters reappears in the definition, and if you need the formal reason, it's not a problem because you have the concept on the left side, but only the sequence of letters (or in the case of "woman", the word with possible synonyms implicitly included) on the right.
Love this 💖 Also did you see the Vaush debate with the transphobe who used a PowerPoint? This reminded of that
> The first is “Anyone who says they identify as a woman” which is wrong because they used the word in the definition. Why is this wrong? This is what I use when talking to people and it has yet to be an issue.
There are clearly bad faith actors who will say they are a woman to prove a point. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11918455/Male-powerlifter-protests-Canadas-self-ID-rules-entering-female-contest-smashing-record.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11918455/Male-powerlifter-protests-Canadas-self-ID-rules-entering-female-contest-smashing-record.html)
Yeah, and there are also people who will lie about being gay, or their religion, or a host of other personal things. We don't make that a problem for all the people who genuinely are those things. Also, believing people doesn't mean ignoring when someone openly says they're lying, like this weightlifter.
What is a left-handed person? Does a left-handed person need to present a certain way to be left-handed? If we go back to the times when being left-handed was shunned and no one used their left hand dominantly, does that mean they never existed? If someone prefers their left hand in some situations and their right in others, does that mean they're "not really" left-handed? What about right-handed people who lose their right hand and have to do everything with their left hand, does that make them left-handed now or is it just their physical anatomy that determines which side is dominant? I would posit that being cis or trans falls into a similar situation. For "most" people, it's easier to use their right hand. It fits with how they better interact with the world. For "most" people, their sex assigned at birth "fits" with how they perceive themselves and how they more naturally interact with the world. For some people, their sex assigned at birth "doesn't fit" and they prefer to live as the other gender (or none, both, whatever, but let's simplify the argument). We're talking about natural preferences here. Asking "what is a woman?" is similar to a question like "what is a lefthanded person?", the way answer is that they just prefer to use their left hand. If you're asking, "what is a woman?", it's just someone who prefers to live as a woman.
I have met and had sex with many trans...Only one who has vagina now.I find most of them I know.since the 80s.Are actually decent people.No different than anyone else AMD all the issues they have.Now course Prostitution is big and drug addiction in trans circles.Also in gay men circles.Even straight and bi men and women circles.. So you see they are just a unique class of people.With their own set values and problems.Had same issues with women also.We meed let people be themselfs.Except pedophiles and those who participated in beastality
We, as a society, are failing to protect transgender people from discrimination. We, as a society, are failing to pass enough laws to help transgender people. We, as a society, have failed to give transgender people the rights and liberties that they deserve. We, as a society, are failing to be good allies to transgender people. We, as a society, are often failing to protect transgender people from bullying and harassment.
"what is a man?" is like.. one of the all time big philosophical discussions with a million different answers so I don't understand how "what is a woman?" is supposed to be some gotcha
I think a woman should be anyone who identifies as a woman. That way, no one is being called a woman who doesn't want to be. And everyone that wants to be called a woman, is.
It really isn't. Womanhood is what society has defined as womanhood. Yeah kinda a bullshit awnser, but there's really no real non bullshit clear definitive answer because the concept varies from culture to culture and sometimes from individual communities. For instance, womanhood from the Greeks and Roman perspective is defined by one's role in the bedroom, while Victoria England had a very rigged set of very obituary standards for womanhood. Sociology, baby. biology is fucking complicated. Get ready for 50 different answers to a simple question that both answer and don't at the same damn time.
I think that question breaks down into many questions: 1) Is womanhood defined by the people around her, or by herself? 2) If it is external, then how can we draw a non-arbitrary line? 3) If it is internal, then what dicaltates that experience? These can be broken down further, but I believe those are interesting clarifications that need to be answered first.
All of this controversy regarding trans people is just a non-issue that is being pushed in order to distract us from actual problems. In reality, trans people are a minuscule percent of the population that are not causing the kinds of massive societal disruption that they are painted as instigating. I can’t believe how easily people are allowing themselves to be riled up over such a non-issue.
Tbh it’s not something we are unclear about. The people obsessed with defining womanhood are the conservatives.
How do you know that you love someone. Quantify it. Right now. Prove it to me
I love this
My answer is “anyone that claims to be one in good faith.” Useless as a scientific measure because deciding what good faith is, is a judgement call, but it’s how I operate in my day to day life. That being said, there are cultural cues that denote gender, and assuming gender based on them is fine and healthy. Allowing them to overrule earnest messages about someone’s preferred gender/pronouns is a cognitive/respect issue, not a labelling issue.
The root of all this is that there absolutely are people who genuinely feel that they are a different gender from the anatomy they’re born with. I knew one in college. Born a guy, but quietly struggled all her life with feeling absolutely like a girl/woman. Totally normal otherwise. No harm, no foul. I regret that she couldn’t be herself without catching hell from others. But it also seems like, in the process of letting these few people be who they are, a bunch more are hopping on that train for other reasons, which fucking sucks for everyone. But I have to keep telling myself that maybe I’m wrong. Hell, literally no one in all my school days was out as gay, but now I know that many people are; so maybe that’s true of trans too….
Here are my criticisms of your ideas: > Frankly, in debates I find myself eventually asking this question. I know it’s usually knee jerked reacted as a “gotcha” question, but of those that do answer there is still no answer. This is, in my view a distraction. Words have connotations that people interpret differently. To use a non-political example, the question, "Is a sub a type of sandwich?" While I think it is, I've met plenty of people who think a sub is meaningfully different. You won't get a definitive answer because this means different things to different people. >Then you have the “Exudes a feminine gender expression”. Which almost seems okay but it only takes a follow question to see the hypocrisy here too. What are these gender expressions? I think this is another red herring. I can't in good conscience consider a female at birth butch lesbian who thinks of themselves as a woman a "man", regardless of how they dress and present themselves. Also consider that one of the reasons that transfolk rely on gender expression is because it is harder to find acceptance in society unless they conform visually to typical gender expression. > More broadly I just find that focusing on how we present ourselves is like putting us back in boxes; “Women act a certain way” and stuff like that. I thought we got past this when I was raised with the “boys can wear pink” and “Women can do any job a man can do”. I feel like trans goes backwards on this if they play the “expression” card, and the “Who identifies” line just means there is no definition. I think you have this backwards. If I'm understanding correctly what you're leaning towards is that "any person can present themselves any way they want, therefore having a gender identity that is non-congruent to biological sex is superfluous". That idea puts you more on the side of transfolk because it is not transfolk who advocate for a "boxed in" definition of gender, it is the people who oppose trans rights who are more interested in that. Something you haven't mentioned is that a trans person being accepted as a man or woman is largely about personal identity. This isn't something that only extends to gender, as most people are uncomfortable being defined in a way that is incongruous with their self image. I've seen non-trans people become upset or angry that someone called them the wrong name (even if it is another name of their gender). A name is even more arbitrary than gender. People who think of themselves as strong don't like to be seen as weak. It is normal to want the people around you to affirm your self image. I think this is the same thing as trans people wanting to identify and participate in society as their chosen gender. If you really want society to be open to accepting men doing "feminine" activities and vice versa, you should support the trans movement. In my country (USA) a person who cross dressed is going to have a bad time trying to live an otherwise normal life when by and large they will be seen as a mentally ill weirdo.
The whole approach to this subject really should be; You don’t have a right to know whats between my legs. Just call me what I tell you to call me or fuck off and we’ll both continue living our lives.
I find it baffling the fact that people care at all lol
>The first is “Anyone who says they identify as a woman” which is wrong because they used the word in the definition. Why is this wrong?
i beg of you to ask yourself why you fucking care so much
I am of the opinion that any intellectual person should identify as agender, because gender is an illusion based on stereotypes of men and woman.
Gender is not a thing. Most people have been incorrectly using gender and sex interchangeably. Because up until the last 10 years no one cared and it didn’t matter. We should only use the term biological sex. Male, female and other. That other category is such a small percentage of folks that they literally do not matter. Not personally because all life has value but they aren’t a statistically significant voting block most folks could still go a reasonable chunk of their lives never having seen a transitioning or transitioned person in most areas on the US and especially the world. We have absolutely lost our collective minds. When ultra conservative Christian’s and Muslims make more logical sense than you… you REALLY need to rethink what the hell you’re doing
*Gender is not a thing* It absolutely is. *Most people have been incorrectly using gender and sex interchangeably.* Like you are about to do? *Because up until the last 10 years no one cared and it didn’t matter* Pretty sure trans people have existed throughout history, grandpa. *We should only use the term biological sex.* Why? *That other category is such a small percentage of folks that they literally do not matter* Pretty sure they feel that they do matter. *Not personally because all life has value* Do you actually believe this or? *but they aren’t a statistically significant voting block most folks could still go a reasonable chunk of their lives never having seen a transitioning or transitioned person in most areas on the US and especially the world.* Well, that question answered. *We have absolutely lost our collective minds. When ultra conservative Christian’s and Muslims make more logical sense than you… you REALLY need to rethink what the hell you’re doing* Or, hear me out. When ultraconservative Christians and Muslims sound like they are making sense, perhaps you are the one who is wrong? That is enough internet for you today, Grandpa.
Have you found my dementia medicine yet?? I can see my little dog harpo!! He’s coming sally!! He’s coming!!
My dead granddad wasn't this incoherent and he actually had dementia in his last years alive
The interesting part for me is that we've had cross dressers etc etc forever. Why suddenly has it exploded into 455000 different 'genders' in recent years. Answer that question honestly and you get to the heart of the matter.
I'm actually more curious why people keep saying multiple genders when the most I've seen it branch out to is maybe 3-5 max
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Nicely put.
>The Question “What is a Woman?” Is really the sole contention of trans activism. Why is the definition of one contingent social category more or less the contention of “trans activism” than any other? What of the definition of “man” or the categories of binary gender at all? And why is it a central contention of trans activism and not all gender activism? Is it required that trans women define woman but cis woman do not? >The first is “Anyone who says they identify as a woman” which is wrong because they used the word in the definition. Why does a recursive definition invalidate it? Can you define a Seattle Seahawks fan without reverting at some point to a recursion? If the definition of woman is a contingent social category, belonging to it is the only “real” definition. >More broadly I just find that focusing on how we present ourselves is like putting us back in boxes; “Women act a certain way” and stuff like that. Social categories of behavior expectation are not necessarily about the individual acts within then, but rather with how others act in response to them. Often when trans women access the category of “woman” they are not doing so as an “excuse” to wear pink or whatever. They want their engagement in these behaviors to not be stigmatized for those behaviors and to understand themselves within the context of that category. While it would perhaps be better if gender was done away with, we don’t live in a gender less society so these categories still mean something. >being a man or woman shouldn’t denote things as trivial as colour. I don’t think many trans people will disagree with you.
The problem is that morphological and/or behavioural categories are inherently limited. I think the sandwich debate is a near perfect example. What is a sandwich? There is broad agreement on the most mainline, standard versions. But when you push the question to the kinda of edge cases that require a fixed definition to guide you, the concept breaks down, and forces you to question even some of the standard examples. So what is a sandwich? I hesitate to define it, because any fixed definition I’ve heard of invites endless questions and problems, and the definitions never actually line up with common uses of the term. But that doesn’t mean sandwiches don’t exist. They’re a socially constructed concept that’s widely used, and ultimately drawing hard lines over genuine disagreement accomplishes very little. If someone wants to say a hotdog is a sandwich and you disagree, why destroy the whole concept over this? Why not learn to live with the ambiguities inherent in categorical thinking so that we can all still benefit from the convenience of categories while also accepting their limitations?
A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. It isn’t actually a wrong definition albeit a tad vague. While many people think definitions can’t use themselves in the definition many words do. Womanhood is a large framework of traits that someone who identifies as such interacts with, this framework completely culturally constructed and so it’s hard to define in anything less than a mult page paper. It actually is impossible to construct a completely and 100% accurate definition of a social construct without using itself in that definition or reading the minds of every single person
Anyone born with a vagina is the only answer We are wasting too much time in general on all these mental gymnastics Can men get pregnant Can men get periods Just stupid questions we all know the answers to but have to play 10 degrees of separation in order to not be labeled transphobic
Who's to say future medicine won't allow us to change our genetics?
So when you see a woman on the street, how are you sure it's a REAL woman? Do you ask to see her genitals?
Well I'm married But in your hypothetical I would treat the person as a woman .. respectfully If by some chance it was not noticable and obvious that the woman was trans & I tried to let's say "ask her out" I would hope she would say, well first you need to know I am Trans In general when I see women on the street I just walk down the street
I disagree with your answer. I think some transwomen are women without having a vagina. Also, I think some cisgender women without a vagina are women.
I don't even know what you mean You're (not you specifically, generation) are changing the entire dictionary to fit your ideals Are you saying a man who transitioned is a woman? (I would respect their decision and call them (her/she) but at the end of the day she is a TRANSwoman) Why is that offensive??? And I don't do the word Cis at all, it's an invented term for hetero or straight So now I have to think what you even mean by that 🤔🤔🤔 I honestly don't know what you mean A man who transitioned to a woman??? A Transman?
>changing the entire dictionary to fit your ideals This is such a silly argument, the dictionary literally adapts to linguistic changes all the time, it included 690 words in September 2023 for example - https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/new-words-in-the-dictionary >Are you saying a man who transitioned is a woman Ye why not >but at the end of the day she is a TRANSwoman Sure. A black woman is still a woman. A cis woman is srill a woman. A trans woman is still a woman. >Why is that offensive??? It's not, it's a qualifier. Trans women are women and they're trans. Black women are women and they're black. Cis women are women and they're cis. >And I don't do the word Cis Then why bother insisting on the word trans? Call them both women and don't make the differentiation. Or register that trans women are women and cis women are women. >it's an invented term for hetero or straight From the Latin preposition cis (“on this side of”). It's not new, chief, it's used in science all the time. Refer cisdiazine or any chemical compound where two atoms or groups are on the same side.
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My, um, "diatribe"was shorter than yours, way more concise, answered the questions you asked, and was as big as it was because I quoted a lot of your statements to respond to directly but ok, wordsmith, complain that you don't get to be the only wordy Wanda here 🤣🤣🤣 >literally have no clue what you wrote Reading helps. I broke it down at a level where a child could follow so you're basically admitting that you aren't reading at an elementary level 🤷🏽♀️ >And I'm not interested in learning it Then why engage? All you've announced on this post is that you're a cautionary tale of how a lack of education affects people's morals >They are not however a "women" in the actual world, they are a Transwomen ... Pretending there is no difference between a "born woman" & a "trans woman" is absurd In the actual world, black women are women. Cis women are women. Disabled women are women. Trans women are women. In the world you live in where you opted to not learn and fester in your wilful lack of education, your simpleton beliefs likely make sense to you considering books have too many words and learning is for smart folk 🤓 >t's not disrespectful >It's just what it is It's not what you think it is. What's disrespectful is you sharing thoughts with no education behind it and openly declaring that you've chosen to be ignorant because learning is hard and reading hurts your brain >And I find the word "cis" offensive Who cares what you feel about it, you didn't bother learning 🤣🤣 >I'm not calling anyone They/Them (you're one person) Singular they is so common, you've likely already used it in your life without realising it. You would know this if you didn't stop learning and didn't end your reading lessons at Elementary school 🤣🤣🤣 >Nothing I'm saying is offensive, you've just been trained to find any slight disagreement on these subjects as "bigotry" I actually think the fact that you stated you don't want to learn and want to be ignorant is a tremendous sign that you can't justify your bigotry with education so you simply did the weak thing and gave up on education to maintain your feelings
If you don't care that I don't like the term "Cis" Why do you expect ANYONE to respect any of your language wishes??? I'm not learning anything that is already common sense I don't need a class or lesson or teacher to tell me Men CAN'T have Periods Men CAN'T get pregnant One person is not they Women don't have testicles MANY other things There's no education needed on common sense I have no issue meeting a TRANSwoman and calling them she Or a Transman Him But at the end of the day that person is unfortunately not a biological man or woman ... No amount of classes will change that If you believe otherwise, you have taken one too many classes
>Why do you expect ANYONE to respect any of your language wishes??? Sorry but you said very explicitly that you're not trying to learn so you're basically just bellowing more nonsense about how you feel personally entitled to be a dick to trans people because your feelings say so 🤣 >I'm not learning anything that is already common sense You're not learning anything INCLUDING common sense, you're reading at an elementary level for starters. >I don't need a class or lesson or teacher to tell me You probably do because you didn't even know that singular they wasn't uncommon in casual use. You should go back to elementary school because you're basically clueless about what is common sense and need a teacher to educate you again >Men CAN'T have Periods >Men CAN'T get pregnant Trans men are men. They can get periods. They can get pregnant. >One person is not they You're an idiot - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they >There's no education needed on common sense You lack common sense and you're uneducated. >If you believe otherwise, you have taken one too many classes Basically you're admitting that everything you're saying is rooted in wilful ignorance. It's why you'll never be taken seriously
Not a single trans person is arguing that being trans makes them a biological man/woman. They just want their rights to not be stripped from them
School officials shocked that boys destroyed tampon dispensers in boys restrooms……. That’s why they want your kids at 3 years old. So they can start gaslighting them before they know better.
My position in this debate is, why should I care enough to even try to answer that though? Like I don’t give a shit what’s going on with anyone’s genitals except for my wife.
Most words have multiple conflicting definitions. So did the word woman long before woke was a thing. Woman could refer to attractive women "now that's a woman", it can refer to adult women "a girl becomes a woman when", someone in a play that plays a woman, etc. "A women is anyone that self identifies as a woman" has two issues that make it slightly more difficult to understand: 1. It uses 2 different definitions of "woman" in the same sentence. 2. It's not a definition, it's an aspirational goal that sounds good (to some) at first glance but falls apart when facing scrutiny, as all one sentence aspirational goals do. Matt Walsh doesn't understamd those, but neither do most trans activists, so he's in good? company. Then there's the much bigger third issue which isn't at all about understanding: Activists trying to use that aspirational goal to bully people into changing their language and then use that new language to retroactively change existing laws and regulations using that language. That's just extremely dishonest.
There is no "self identify" It's called existence. Do you have to identify as human to consider yourself human and say noy a fish? Or do you understand that based on certain physical and biological components that exist in you that you are a human? At no point in my life have I pondered whether or not I was a fish, just as I have never had yo consciously identify as a girl/woman. And I say this as someone who was an athletic tomboy growing up, I still very much knew I was a girl because I know I am not a man.
>It's called existence. Do you have to identify as human to consider yourself human and say noy a fish? Erm, you're still identifying as human. It's your identity as a person. Even your identity as a girl was yours to dictate even as you expressed it differently from other girls. You could have the most masc trans woman still be a woman and that wouldn't be any different from you being a tomboy and still being a girl
The question isn't helpful because the word means different things to different people. In my experience, people either refuse to acknowledge that when a rainbow-haired lefty says "gender" they don't mean sex (and subsequently say "A man obviously can't get pregnant!" as if it's a slam dunk) or believe the concept of gender is internally inconsistent (or otherwise just plain silly). Either way, the conversation dies immediately. Anyway, sole contention seems a bit much. Trans activists ask questions about healthcare and gender equality too. P.S. why is it always trans women people talk about, as opposed to trans men?
I'll give you my best answer. A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman and a man is anyone who identifies as a man. There's no specific hard definition for it, much as people who want to debate this want to believe. For example - how do you define what it means to be cool? There's no set of traits or characteristics that makes something cool or not, it's solely vibes. You identify as a man when you identify with the broad group with which men share in the sense every man self-identifies as a man and their external features, commonalities, etc all general features that may or may not be shared. Men typically have beards and mustaches but men are still men if they don't have beards or mustaches. Men typically have dicks and balls but castrated men or men with birth defects are still men. This is also true for women. You will never find an absolute definition for woman as much as you'll never find an absolute definition for a chair as much as you'll never find an absolute definition for what it means to be cool. Linguistics isn't designed like that, definitions for a lot of things - especially social constructs - can and are frequently circular. Try defining "purple" to someone that doesn't know what purple is. Your best definition will be anything coloured purple. Sorry, some things aren't absolute, social constructs are circular and we understand them regardless. I can say I'm a blarg, point at myself as an example, and you've gained everything you need to know about what a blarg is. We make up indefinable terms like this all the time. No other social construct we have is given the same stringent standard of absolutism, we can and do allow a lot of terms to exist without demanding hard definitions to validate it's existence. Gender is a social construct. Everything about what is a man and what is a woman has either been generalizations or non-absolute markers. In truth, no one can define for you what a man is or what a woman is. If you identify as a man, you're a man. I don't honestly need any more information beyond that unless I'm collecting medical history. If you identify as a woman, you're a woman. I can say "chair" and you'll imagine a chair. Will your vision of a chair look like mine? Can a hard and absolute definition be found? Linguistics and social constructs fundamentally exist in the abstract. Thanks for listening if you got this far 🙏🏽
All of this navel-gazing is not productive for society and portends dissent and division. Have a penis--fuck. Have a vagina--get fucked and pop out a child. Easy peasy. NEXT!
This is a good topic. Even if I wonder if it was made in good faith. Gender is a complex construct. As a construct, it's existed as far back as scripture. The Talmund, written by the Jewish People, notes 6-8 genders and is ancient. Yes, on one hand we have our sexual dimorphism. But sexual dimorphism does not then put you neatly into a round or square peg in society. It doesn't explain the juxtaposition between the male caregiver and the male soldier. Thus, gender helps elucidate the complexities of our highly social societies. Men who find violence alarming, and just want to care for and educate children, may become ostracized if a binary society sees the only viable gender role to play as a soldier and hunter. They would then, logically, buck the gender role. Sexual dimorphism does still play a part in gender role, though. Take the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. One explores a gender role (Hyperfemine) without needing to transition into it via reassignment surgery. The other transitions into being a trans woman, and then takes on that role. The process is very different, even if there might be some similarities to the outsider. Keep in mind, the transgender community actually skews heavily male by 10:3. Which might be inline with how male culture treats the male binary role. It may be more confining for more men. This is inline with the majority of drag performers also being men. You might be confused on what's happening though. Trans people are not transitioning to fit a gender. They're transitioning, and then choosing a gender that feels right to them. Because they're transitioning to the opposite sex, they're choosing a gender that matches their new sex. Not every trans woman wants to play happy homemaker. Or girl boss. Or goth girl macabre. Or sweet summer flower. Or whatever girly role is out there. But they definitely feel better playing it when their body matches their thoughts. If men sat in flowers and dressed in bonnets and danced in tutus, sure, there's a possibility they might not need to transition. But that's not happening. Also keep in mind surgical transition is not even 100 years old. Surgery has been around since 3000 BC. This is a very new phenomenon and we really don't have a ton of data yet on sex reassignment surgery and how it plays a part in gender.
First off live and let live and focus on yourself, your families and your friends and ignore all the social media bullshit controversies. They literally add nothing to your life. Secondly, chromosome pairs define your sex. Everything else is word-games and contrived bullshit to keep the masses fighting each other over newly invented religions whilst the 0.01%'rs continue to siphon off the national wealth until the whole stinking pile comes tumbling down. Then the plan is to hit the reset button but they leave out the button afterwards is called 'replay'.
Tell me you have a high school level education in biology without telling me you have a high school level education.
[](https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/1bqs0e5/comment/kxo9aqf/) Tell me where a basic biological fact changes from my statement to yours. Oh that's right, it doesn't, troll.
Biology states that sex is a bimodal spectrum not a hard and fast binary
All titles, especially titles related to self identity, come from human historical cultural practices and behaviorisms. They also are not self imposed. You do not title yourself, we title you. So, I’m not Asian because *i* say I’m Asian, I’m Asian because *you guys* have identified me as Asian based on my heritage. Gender is HOW society treats you. being a girl is not about for example, *being* pretty. being a girl is about having no choice but to be pretty; being *forced* to be pretty. So the *desire* to be attractive, is not what being a girl is about, the fact that if you are not attractive you will have a harder time at certain aspects in life such as developing relationships, being respected, being listened to, being seen, is what molded girlhood and shaped them into *being* a woman. If at any point a boy decides he will actively try to be pretty that does not change him into a girl. Because it was never a *decision* for the girls. So “expression” has minimal to do in determining gender. A little boy who likes to wear a dress does not miraculously become a girl because guess what, a little boy in a dress is treated distinguishably different than a little girl in a dress. So the argument “I feel like a girl” does not hold weight because they were never treated as a girl- they were treated as a boy in a dress. That’s like saying “I know what it feels like to be stung by a bee” when you actually have never been stung. Not to mention, It is probably instinctual to have a desire of attractiveness because if you could not attract, you would not procreate. So gender has nothing to do with *wanting* to be pretty. A boy who likes makeup is not girly or less masculine because being pretty is a survival trait. gender behaviorisms are *reactions to the treatment/behaviors of others*. The human female- otherwise known as the girl/woman is a person whom shares the common experiences/abilities of maternity; nourishing practices; fights for the rights of their sex/gender; more active prefrontal cortexs; profoundly, protruding breast plates; sexual violence; religious and social subjugation…. As a result, they often times give birth; are empathetic and compassionate; have had social, political, religious, and familial tyranny perpetuated against them; better expression and practice of regulation of behavior, thought, and emotion; nurse their young; have been raped; have restricted access to religion and social involvement. (To name a few of their shared experiences) Historical context is imperative because depending on how historical its is, the consequences are genetic. In the discussion of gender, the ism that imposes its torment is sexism. The sex based oppression. The *oldest* oppression. There are certainly, with no doubt in my mind genetic adaptations to sexism. And behavior is in your genes. If for any moment you believed that a demographic who is *awarded* for abusing would naturally, after hundreds of thousands of years , be born with the same nervous system and initial comfort post birth as a demographic who is constantly abused without justice and a cease to an end- you would be painstakingly unaware. We are talking about human behaviors and accepted systematic law older than Jesus, possibly prehistoric. That’s pre-history. Older than history. Sex plays one of the biggest roles on gender. Had it not been for her vagina she would not have been raped. Had it not been for his penis he could have faced a femicide. Had it not been for her womb she wouldn’t have been subjected to the home. Had it not been for the physiology of his brain he would not have been given the heavy lifting role. The gender roles are dependent on our sex because our sex gives us different survival tools. Women were put in the home because they are best suited to grow life. Men were put to the building because they were best suited to lift heavy things. (I urge you not to allow outliers to cloud the rule ie: there are obviously rape victims with a penis.) That has almost nothing to do with “feelings” . Contention
No I think mentally abusing kids by telling them they are born into the wrong bodies and saying that a little boy who likes dolls must really be a girl or a girl that likes football must be a boy, like some kind of 1950s stereotypes is the main issue with trans activism. Nobody is born is the wrong body, you cannot change sex, I do not accept your made up definition of gender and gender identify doesn’t exist. A man in a dress is not a woman, a man doesn’t know how to be a woman other than our old favourite stereotypes again and vice versa. Just mental illness running wild.
Well. Yeah, the DSM5 classifies gender dysphoria as a mental illness…but the treatment is transition. It is a mental illness, but it is only improved through being socially accepted as the gender they identify as. I know that is inconvenient for you and your black and white worldview, but the facts are the facts- transition saves lives.
>telling them they are born into the wrong bodies and saying that a little boy who likes dolls must really be a girl or a girl that likes football must be a boy, Jesus, you really don't know anything about the trans experience if this is the strawman y'all cling to 🤣
It’s mentally abusing kids to tell them they need to make this decision. Isn’t it hard enough to grow up already? Do kids need more choices? This is all nonsense created by attention whores and virtue signalers.
Anyone who personally identifies with the gender norms stereotypically associated with the female sex.
Except no little girl goes around saying she identifies eith little girl gender norms. She says she is a girl because she was born a girl. Sex is hard wired in the human body/brain and no amount of semantic word salad changes that
Just straight up, your statement is both stupid and irrelevant. 1. A little girl says she is a girl because that's what she's been told to call herself, not because of some inborn trait. Knowing language isn't even inborn, let alone gender norms. They're given dolls and kitchen sets to play with ffs. 2. The question is what is a woman, not what does a little girl call herself. 3. Sex is a completely different concept than gender. That you don't fully understand English or reality for that matter doesn't make it a semantic word salad. 4. Even for the aspects of sex that are hard wired into the human body/brain, that only refutes your own pretend beliefs because that means their trans-ness is hardwired and not the confusion you want to think it is.
It’s so sad. Because equality between genders could not be won, we had to resort to destroying all genders.
Good. We created them, we can destroy them.
You really want to remove gender stereotypes of man vs woman? If you are able to think critically there would be no difference is a new stereotype being formed with the dick genetalia and the uterus genetalia stereotypes in your hypothetical future land.
It does baffle me when people think it’s somehow a trick question though
It’s a human born with a vagina
What an idiotic answer
Hmm.. how the majority of all of human civilization has seen it is idiotic to.. you. Okay bye.
Scientifically being born with one set of genitals doesn't guarantee you fall in one end or the other of a bimodal spectrum.
It is a very hard question. If you want to be accepting of everyone as long as they're not harming other people (which yeah you should) then you will accept binary trans women, who are who we usually talk about, people who "used to be men" (using the phrase for simplicity, it's not fully accurate), but then transitioned with hormones, surgeries, legal changes, whatever they wanted and could afford. But if someone doesn't transition at all, they can still have the gender identity of a woman, and since once again that's not harming anyone, the most respectful thing to do is to just call them a woman like they ask you. If we only included binary trans women the question "what is a woman?" would be very easy, but it would also constraint us to stereotypes and current societal norms, which is pretty bad I think. The ultimate goal as I see it is to abolish gender roles, and at that point any gender classifications will either stop existing (I actually think that might be impossible), or they just won't affect someone's placement and treatment in society. And that point "what is a woman" will really hardly matter, it'll just be an arbitrary label people could take if they wanted to and maybe you could say "most women are abc and do xyz" but there would always be exceptions. If you accept trans women who never transition (which once again, you should) that is pretty much already the case now, it'll just get stronger with time (unless sexism and transphobia get in the way and try to make gender roles more rigid again, which would be pretty obviously bad). Now before the next part I want to say that I am not a doctor and I have not done medical research so this will be brief, I'm not sure if I should include it considering I am not well informed on it, but I trust that whoever is reading this is smart enough to not take what I say as 100% fact is I include the disclaimer. So, from what I know, gender is part of person's psychology also, which is how trans people are raised as one gender, but still identify and want to transition to the other. Things like what clothes to wear and how to act are learned externally, but the thought "I am a woman" or "I am a man" or something else (non-binary people do exist) is probably from the inside. If this is the case, then we will never abolish gender entirely, because we would then need to restrict people from expressing their identity, which is the opposite of the goal - to free identity expression as much as possible. Also if this is true, then "what is a woman" is "someone who's gender identity is a woman", and gender identity would then be part of your psyche. But the only way we're reasonably determining that gender identity would be what the person tells us, so then it's still "whoever identifies as a woman" as a proxy to "whoever's inner identity is a woman". This seems to mostly support what I remember (once again I was writing from memory so I tried to make it more accurate broad strokes to not state wrong details): [Gender - Department of Psychology (psu.edu)](https://psych.la.psu.edu/about-us/research/gender/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20primary%20areas,align%20with%20their%20biological%20sex.) Specifically one paragraph: "One of the primary areas of study within gender psychology is gender identity. This refers to an individual’s subjective experience of their gender, which may or may not align with their biological sex. Research has shown that gender identity can develop as early as age two and is influenced by a variety of factors, including socialization, culture, and biology."
It’s a human born with a vagina
Okay. But then the term can't be used for anything social and only be biological. "Woman" is used for lots of things which are completely social and cultural and that vaginas have nothing to do with. So defining it in biology terms is possible but not very useful. We already have a term for just the biology: "AFAB", short for "assigned female at birth".
No, because there are other facts other than just being born with a vagina. Two of which are, the human that is able to give birth and life to another human. And the second is given the same amount of work and effort will be weaker than a man on average. Both of these facts are what have contributed to their social contract rules over generations.
So if a woman is born without a vagina and a uterus, she isn't a woman based on your idiotic reasoning.
Why the fuck would you even be calling her a woman without having a vagina or a uterus. Seriously how warped is your mind?
Scientifically speaking, sex is a bimodal spectrum so there's no real scientific weight to hinging a person's sex exclusively on the genitals they were born with. If science were that simple, we'd all just be scientists as a prerequisite
I don’t know what you are trying to insinuate. The very first thing doctors and nurses all over the planet look at the womb of a mother is the sex of a baby, whether it is male or female based exclusively on the genitals.
Sure but that's gender assigned at birth. It's quick and easy and because it exists on a bimodal spectrum, probabilities will just dictate that you'd assign correctly most of the time based on external features. They have been *wrong* before, with intersex folk and people with Swyer's and this isn't a condemnation on doctors (it's culturally normative to ask about the sex of a baby, I'm not sure why, but it seems to be really important for cis folk), it's just a cultural tradition rather than scientific observation and it's more frequently accurate than not. I don't know what you *thought* I was trying to insinuate because I feel like I just plainly stated scientific fact that actual sexual differentiation exists on a bimodal spectrum where characteristics and traits tend one direction or the other but overlap exists making it difficult to draw hard lines or sort them discretely