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The concepts of "man" and "woman" are already doing a lot of work in language, society, law, etc. Redefining those terms would cause/is causing a lot of upheava
by pchristensen 5y ago
The concepts of "man" and "woman" are already doing a lot of work in language, society, law, etc. Redefining those terms would cause/is causing a lot of upheaval.
Think of the concepts of "citizen", "resident", "immigrant", "ex-pat", "DREAMer", etc - all terms related to where someone lives and what set of laws applies to them. Regardless of how the person feels, the label isn't just for their own sake. Someone can be a citizen and an immigrant if they are naturalized, saying someone is a resident implies (but not definitely) that they are not a citizen, ex-pats are assumed to be temporarily in the place where they reside.
Labelling trans women as women is a lossy translation that ignores a lot of societal edge cases.
- apocolyps6 5y agoDo you think that "labeling" black women as women is similarly lossy? Or female cancer survivors to pick another example
- pchristensen 5y agoI think for those two examples you listed, the modifier is orthogonal. While "black" or "cancer survivor" tell me more about them as a person, they don't help understand gender/sex. Gender and sex, or the residency words I listed, provide different information about the same attribute. Saying someone is a cancer surviving resident doesn't add anything to my knowledge of their medical history or which laws apply to them, but resident vs ex-pat tells me a lot.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- likeclockwork 5y agoWhere do you think black babies come from? Do you not think black people are human?