So, What IS a Woman?

XX; everything else is politics.

Woman/female is rooted in biology, XX chromosome. We are a sex-based class.

Someone born male who has undergone the hormone treatment and surgery is a transwoman, and personally I don't care about such folk using women's toilets and changing rooms, and calling them women (just for convenience, instead of transwomen). The current debacle must be horrendous for them, but the problem is some men just deciding they are women and people being compelled to agree that they are. They are a million miles away from the transwomen I described first, who have undergone a long, difficult, costly journey.

One of several definitions of "female" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is

"having a gender identity that is the opposite of male"

That definition is less than helpful if clarity is what you're after. Why? Because the corresponding definition of "male" is

"having a gender identity that is the opposite of female"

That's the adjective. The definition of the noun "female" is a bit vague, referring to "a female person: a woman or a girl"

There seems to be a lot taken for granted or taken as read when talking about this stuff.

As a woman, I find it really frustrating when that is resorted to. It's so disingenuous. We use the words woman, adult, human etc every day, knowing what they mean.

That minimizes the impact of the question.

It may not affect you, but 50% of the population are women. If politicians are walking on eggshells to define it, and passing legislation that undermines women's rights, then this is not a small issue at all.

Live and let live is fine. When ideology is translated into legislation, that's when that principle crosses the line.

That probably had more meaning when you thought it than when you typed it. But do elaborate if you feel like it.

Post-modernism is about deconstruction.

Destroy the meaning of everything, so that everything has no meaning. Then, you have the foundation upon which to build a new reality that reflects "the Facts" you believe.

This is an insidious, anti-scientific ideology that has gone too far. It's a religion; a cult.

And most importantly of all many, many trans- people agree with our side of the argument. Blaire White, a trans woman with over 1 million subscribers, says that she isn't a woman at all. That's why she had to transition to begin with. Amazingly, many trans activists call her transphobic!

I've been speaking the English language a long time, and I'm being, pardon the pun, straight as an arrow. Your simple definition of "woman" relies on the definition of three other words. I didn't rely on those words; that was you. So I didn't create the problem for you; you created it for yourself, and all I'm doing is pointing at it and saying "look at that".

So you can tell us the clear definition of those words - or you can hold your manhood cheap. It's all the same to me.

So...

What IS an adult?

What IS a female?

All yours. 😁

As a parent, I think that's nonsense. As a middle-class person, I also think that if I'd registered for membership of boards I'd have dozens of posts behind me before diving into this topic. As a former IT expert, who cares what I think? And as a dog owner, does it really matter what personal characteristic informs your view?

Right. Good man (or woman) yourself.

That's a common tactic used by trans activists. Water down the meaning of every word, until nothing has any real meaning.

You're absolutely right that an adult is not scientifically definable. It's like the question of when a baby turns into a "toddler". We don't really have any concrete definition, as it's not provable. It's also like the question of when was the first human born? It wasn't, it was a process within evolution over time. But we know that an adult is generally considered a person who has fully developed. We come up with a general view that this happens around 18 years, but it's not cast in stone. A 2-year old isn't a woman, for example.

A human, well, we know about Homo sapiens.

A female has XX chromosomes.

So yeah, an adult human female is a fully grown person of the Homo sapiens species with XX chromosomes.

The question you didn't ask, conveniently: is it possible for an adult female to become an adult male?

The answer to that question is, and always will be, no (and vice versa).

And this remains true no matter what time and hour we define a teenager becoming an adult.

You're very hostile and snarky towards me for no reason, which tends to indicate not having much of an argument. Why not respond without the belligerence?

Of course all words have been randomly assigned. There wasn't some sort of formal process followed to e.g. give a table the name "table".

"As a woman" - because I dislike the pretence that people can't define what a woman is. It feels quite dehumanising.

100% agreed. I have nothing to do with those hypocrites though. The very right-wing ones just don't want there to be trans people full stop, and they couch this in concern for women.