5 ms·

The definition of woman is the "adult female human", and a someone who gives birth is by definition female. That's the female sex of mammals and other animals,

The definition of woman is the "adult female human", and a someone who gives birth is by definition female. That's the female sex of mammals and other animals, including human. The other sex is male (who provides the sperm for procreating offspring). No third or fourth sex exists. BUT there are people who cannot be clearly assigned to either, but that doesn't change the definition. And unfortunately it doesn't go by personal choice. Life sucks, we must accept our biology.

socialismisok 4y ago
Definitions change. Language isn't static. Science isn't static. Woman (and man) as terms are evolving in their use to mean "the roles we expect people to fill based on their sex". You might disagree with this evolution of the language, by all means, I am not the arbiter of how language should change. But I do believe saying a word has a fixed, unchanging definition (and adding that your definition is the only correct one) is not a useful position to hold. I believe that even if you disagree with the use, you should acknowledge that a significant number of people have different definitions from you.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  Language also needs to be useful. Having to use translation/dictionary for my native language means it failed in a big way. And all languages are rooted on some level in reality.
- throwawaywu 4y ago
  Definitions change indeed. We also have the right to push back on changing them. I come from a culture that is thousands of years old, and don't wish to change the definition of "Mom" just yet without good reason.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I agree that you shouldn't treat word definitions as fixed. That being said, I believe that people who have been using "woman" to mean "adult female human" their entire lives but can no longer do this while having their meaning understood have a legitimate grievance. > Woman (and man) as terms are evolving in their use to mean "the roles we expect people to fill based on their sex". It is for example by no means universal that we do expect people of a certain sex to fulfil a certain role. And many people explicitly reject that definition of gender for themselves because they have no intention of fulfilling the role. For these people to then be told that it is the definitional meaning of their gender identity seems... no better than telling trans people they aren't the gender they identify as.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Of course, you are correct that this usage implies gender varies based on location, culture, context, time, etc. In fact, this is why it's so useful to have a term for the idea that what's "feminine" in Saudi Arabia is not the same as what's feminine in Inuit culture. I believe that people should be able to evaluate the gender roles of where they are and accept, reject, or define them. If a cis woman wants to shave her head, get buff, wear flannel, get into fights, and call herself a woman then awesome. She's rejected the "traditional" gender roles for herself and made her own way. I would never tell someone the way they experience their own gender is wrong. But I think it's absolutely reasonable to discuss generalizations about gender roles in context and invite people to think about whether they feel like they identify with that role or not.
- origin_path 4y ago
  When definitions change organically over long periods of time, due to the masses of people concluding they like the new definition better, that's one thing. It may be disruptive but it's usually a slow process so there's plenty of time to adjust. But here it's a small minority of exceptionally aggressive people with nothing better to do, trying to change language by forceful tactics. They need to receive strong pushback and possibly exclusion. Words exist purely to communicate, they have no other purpose. Once bored over-educated people are allowed to start redefining the language it's open season and they won't ever stop. See: newspeak, inspired by the Soviet Union. Given your username you should know all about that. This verbal game-playing has already caused immense damage with the effort to redefine words like racism to mean "discrimination based on skin color that's bad unless it's against white people", an effort that now means accusations of racism no longer carry any weight. Ditto for the attempt to redefine fascism to mean "anything that isn't far left". Words have meanings and people may not simply try to blow their way through to a new meaning by viciously attacking everyone who uses the normal definition until they concede through exhaustion. It's anti-social behavior to do that regardless of whether you like the idea or not. Come up with new words if you care so much.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Do you believe that's what I'm doing? Are my comments "exceptionally aggressive"? I'd like to think I'm rather the opposite - firm in my convictions but willing to walk anyone through my reasoning. You may not agree with my conclusions and you may walk away thinking I'm out of touch. But I feel I'm watching a situation where both sides are painting with over broad brushes - you accuse everyone of being exceptionally aggressive, many folks in my camp accuse everyone of being a bigot. It's the same pattern, imo, and we'd get a lot farther if we all avoided such generalizations. (Imo)
    - origin_path 4y ago
      No, see my other comment. You're doing fine - same as in the other thread, I'm making a general comment about the notion of language "evolving". Evolution is a natural and emergent phenomena. In this case the language is not evolving so much as being forced into strange new forms through a kind of epistemic eugenics programme. But let me ask, do you really argue that the people arguing that women shouldn't be called women, are not exceptionally aggressive? These are people who routinely throw around accusations of "phobias" and "isms", publicly demand people be fired and often succeed for using language in ways that are entirely normal, routinely destroy people's entire lives overnight and are widely regarded as people you want to stay away from at all costs. There are views being expressed in this thread that are just flat out crazy, like the idea that if you go on a date with someone you should immediately ask them what genitals they have as a matter of course and if you don't and are then caught by surprise, the problem is you! "you accuse everyone of being exceptionally aggressive, many folks in my camp accuse everyone of being a bigot" That's exactly the point. Do you see the connection here? Accusing everyone of being a bigot is exceptionally aggressive behavior. There isn't some equivalence here. People who engage in those tactics will be described as aggressive as a consequence, they can't then say "well I think you're a bigot so we're even", that's not how it works. Aggression is about concrete, objective acts.
- HyperSane 4y ago
- brigandish 4y ago
  > Science isn't static. Very true, but what was claimed in the comment you replied to is the current scientific position, has been for some time, and hasn't changed. The idea that mammalian zoology will suddenly find a third sex at any point in the future also seems fanciful, regardless of any theoretical possibility that it could change.
dillondoyle 4y ago
- concordDance 4y ago
  https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries Women and men can still be "real" in the sense of being strongly correlated trait clusters. And indeed, these are the only two clusters of significance.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Tens or hundreds of millions of people are trans or non-binary. While I agree that there are two primary clusters, I strongly object to the idea that so many lives are of no significance.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      Got a citation for tens or hundreds of millions? That's about an order of magnitude higher than what I would expect (note that the trans and non binary rates are much higher in the West likely due to different chemical exposure).
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I am glad I am not alone in noticing this. The number of bad takes on HN regarding gender issues is grand and mighty. Even the belief that “trans-ness” is something new or “modern” is erasure and possibly even revisionism [1], to claim that there isn’t even science on this is absurd as the topic has been studied since Freud. The worst of all is that the perpetrators of the bigotry end up causing mass hysteria and reactionary measures that actually harm innocent people. People like any of us who just happened to draw a bad card at birth. Why is it this difficult to show compassion? We show compassion for rarer diseases. Why is it this difficult for people to imagine that they could have been in the shows of the people they spill vitriol against? Occam’s razor says the dehumanisation employed by Fox and the likes is the cause. Dehumanisation has always been used to justify atrocities and attacks since the Dawn of time. We should have been better at this point. > Sumerian and Akkadian texts from 4,500 years ago document priests known as gala who may have been transgender. Likely depictions occur in art around the Mediterranean from 9,000 to 3,700 years ago. In Ancient Greece, Phrygia, and Rome, there were galli priests that some scholars believe to have been trans women. Roman emperor Elagabalus (d. 222 AD) preferred to be called a lady (rather than a lord) and sought sex reassignment surgery, and in the modern day has been seen as a trans figure. Hijras on the Indian subcontinent and kathoeys in Thailand have formed trans-feminine third gender social and spiritual communities since ancient times, with their presence documented for thousands of years in texts which also mention trans male figures. Today, at least half a million hijras live in India and another half million in Bangladesh, legally recognized as a third gender, and many trans people are accepted in Thailand. In Arabia, khanith today (like earlier mukhannathun) fulfill a third gender role attested since the AD 600s. In Africa, many societies have traditional roles for trans women and trans men, some of which survive in the modern era. In the Americas prior to European colonization, as well as in some contemporary North American Indigenous cultures, there are social and ceremonial roles for third gender people, or those whose gender expression transforms, such as the Navajo nádleehi or the Zuni lhamana. > In the Middle Ages, accounts around Europe document transgender people. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus's lament for being born a man instead of a woman has been seen as an early account of gender dysphoria. Eleanor Rykener, a male-bodied Briton arrested in 1394 while living and doing sex work dressed as a woman, has been seen as a trans woman. In the Balkans since the 1400s, female-assigned people have transitioned to live as men called sworn virgins. In Japan, accounts of trans people go back to the Edo period. In Indonesia, there are millions of trans-/third-gender waria, and the bugis of Sulawesi recognize five genders. In Oceania, trans-/third-gender roles like the akava'ine, fa'afafine and fakaleiti exist among the Cook Island Maori, Samoans, and Tongans. > In colonial America, Thomas(ine) Hall in the 1600s adopted clothes and roles of both men and women, while in 1776 the genderless Public Universal Friend refused both birth name and gendered pronouns. During the 1800s, some people began new lives as men and served in the military, including Albert Cashier and James Barry, or otherwise transitioned, like Joseph Lobdell; trans women like Frances Thompson also transitioned. In 1895, trans autobiographer Jennie June and others organized the Cercle Hermaphroditos; in the 1900s, musician Billy Tipton lived as a man, while Lucy Hicks Anderson was supported by her parents and community in being a woman. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history

socialismisok 4y ago

Definitions change. Language isn't static. Science isn't static. Woman (and man) as terms are evolving in their use to mean "the roles we expect people to fill based on their sex". You might disagree with this evolution of the language, by all means, I am not the arbiter of how language should change. But I do believe saying a word has a fixed, unchanging definition (and adding that your definition is the only correct one) is not a useful position to hold. I believe that even if you disagree with the use, you should acknowledge that a significant number of people have different definitions from you.

Ygg2 4y ago
Language also needs to be useful. Having to use translation/dictionary for my native language means it failed in a big way. And all languages are rooted on some level in reality.
throwawaywu 4y ago
Definitions change indeed. We also have the right to push back on changing them. I come from a culture that is thousands of years old, and don't wish to change the definition of "Mom" just yet without good reason.
nicoburns 4y ago
I agree that you shouldn't treat word definitions as fixed. That being said, I believe that people who have been using "woman" to mean "adult female human" their entire lives but can no longer do this while having their meaning understood have a legitimate grievance. > Woman (and man) as terms are evolving in their use to mean "the roles we expect people to fill based on their sex". It is for example by no means universal that we do expect people of a certain sex to fulfil a certain role. And many people explicitly reject that definition of gender for themselves because they have no intention of fulfilling the role. For these people to then be told that it is the definitional meaning of their gender identity seems... no better than telling trans people they aren't the gender they identify as.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Of course, you are correct that this usage implies gender varies based on location, culture, context, time, etc. In fact, this is why it's so useful to have a term for the idea that what's "feminine" in Saudi Arabia is not the same as what's feminine in Inuit culture. I believe that people should be able to evaluate the gender roles of where they are and accept, reject, or define them. If a cis woman wants to shave her head, get buff, wear flannel, get into fights, and call herself a woman then awesome. She's rejected the "traditional" gender roles for herself and made her own way. I would never tell someone the way they experience their own gender is wrong. But I think it's absolutely reasonable to discuss generalizations about gender roles in context and invite people to think about whether they feel like they identify with that role or not.
origin_path 4y ago
When definitions change organically over long periods of time, due to the masses of people concluding they like the new definition better, that's one thing. It may be disruptive but it's usually a slow process so there's plenty of time to adjust. But here it's a small minority of exceptionally aggressive people with nothing better to do, trying to change language by forceful tactics. They need to receive strong pushback and possibly exclusion. Words exist purely to communicate, they have no other purpose. Once bored over-educated people are allowed to start redefining the language it's open season and they won't ever stop. See: newspeak, inspired by the Soviet Union. Given your username you should know all about that. This verbal game-playing has already caused immense damage with the effort to redefine words like racism to mean "discrimination based on skin color that's bad unless it's against white people", an effort that now means accusations of racism no longer carry any weight. Ditto for the attempt to redefine fascism to mean "anything that isn't far left". Words have meanings and people may not simply try to blow their way through to a new meaning by viciously attacking everyone who uses the normal definition until they concede through exhaustion. It's anti-social behavior to do that regardless of whether you like the idea or not. Come up with new words if you care so much.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Do you believe that's what I'm doing? Are my comments "exceptionally aggressive"? I'd like to think I'm rather the opposite - firm in my convictions but willing to walk anyone through my reasoning. You may not agree with my conclusions and you may walk away thinking I'm out of touch. But I feel I'm watching a situation where both sides are painting with over broad brushes - you accuse everyone of being exceptionally aggressive, many folks in my camp accuse everyone of being a bigot. It's the same pattern, imo, and we'd get a lot farther if we all avoided such generalizations. (Imo)
  - origin_path 4y ago
    No, see my other comment. You're doing fine - same as in the other thread, I'm making a general comment about the notion of language "evolving". Evolution is a natural and emergent phenomena. In this case the language is not evolving so much as being forced into strange new forms through a kind of epistemic eugenics programme. But let me ask, do you really argue that the people arguing that women shouldn't be called women, are not exceptionally aggressive? These are people who routinely throw around accusations of "phobias" and "isms", publicly demand people be fired and often succeed for using language in ways that are entirely normal, routinely destroy people's entire lives overnight and are widely regarded as people you want to stay away from at all costs. There are views being expressed in this thread that are just flat out crazy, like the idea that if you go on a date with someone you should immediately ask them what genitals they have as a matter of course and if you don't and are then caught by surprise, the problem is you! "you accuse everyone of being exceptionally aggressive, many folks in my camp accuse everyone of being a bigot" That's exactly the point. Do you see the connection here? Accusing everyone of being a bigot is exceptionally aggressive behavior. There isn't some equivalence here. People who engage in those tactics will be described as aggressive as a consequence, they can't then say "well I think you're a bigot so we're even", that's not how it works. Aggression is about concrete, objective acts.
HyperSane 4y ago
brigandish 4y ago
> Science isn't static. Very true, but what was claimed in the comment you replied to is the current scientific position, has been for some time, and hasn't changed. The idea that mammalian zoology will suddenly find a third sex at any point in the future also seems fanciful, regardless of any theoretical possibility that it could change.

dillondoyle 4y ago

concordDance 4y ago
https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries Women and men can still be "real" in the sense of being strongly correlated trait clusters. And indeed, these are the only two clusters of significance.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Tens or hundreds of millions of people are trans or non-binary. While I agree that there are two primary clusters, I strongly object to the idea that so many lives are of no significance.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    Got a citation for tens or hundreds of millions? That's about an order of magnitude higher than what I would expect (note that the trans and non binary rates are much higher in the West likely due to different chemical exposure).
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I am glad I am not alone in noticing this. The number of bad takes on HN regarding gender issues is grand and mighty. Even the belief that “trans-ness” is something new or “modern” is erasure and possibly even revisionism [1], to claim that there isn’t even science on this is absurd as the topic has been studied since Freud. The worst of all is that the perpetrators of the bigotry end up causing mass hysteria and reactionary measures that actually harm innocent people. People like any of us who just happened to draw a bad card at birth. Why is it this difficult to show compassion? We show compassion for rarer diseases. Why is it this difficult for people to imagine that they could have been in the shows of the people they spill vitriol against? Occam’s razor says the dehumanisation employed by Fox and the likes is the cause. Dehumanisation has always been used to justify atrocities and attacks since the Dawn of time. We should have been better at this point. > Sumerian and Akkadian texts from 4,500 years ago document priests known as gala who may have been transgender. Likely depictions occur in art around the Mediterranean from 9,000 to 3,700 years ago. In Ancient Greece, Phrygia, and Rome, there were galli priests that some scholars believe to have been trans women. Roman emperor Elagabalus (d. 222 AD) preferred to be called a lady (rather than a lord) and sought sex reassignment surgery, and in the modern day has been seen as a trans figure. Hijras on the Indian subcontinent and kathoeys in Thailand have formed trans-feminine third gender social and spiritual communities since ancient times, with their presence documented for thousands of years in texts which also mention trans male figures. Today, at least half a million hijras live in India and another half million in Bangladesh, legally recognized as a third gender, and many trans people are accepted in Thailand. In Arabia, khanith today (like earlier mukhannathun) fulfill a third gender role attested since the AD 600s. In Africa, many societies have traditional roles for trans women and trans men, some of which survive in the modern era. In the Americas prior to European colonization, as well as in some contemporary North American Indigenous cultures, there are social and ceremonial roles for third gender people, or those whose gender expression transforms, such as the Navajo nádleehi or the Zuni lhamana. > In the Middle Ages, accounts around Europe document transgender people. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus's lament for being born a man instead of a woman has been seen as an early account of gender dysphoria. Eleanor Rykener, a male-bodied Briton arrested in 1394 while living and doing sex work dressed as a woman, has been seen as a trans woman. In the Balkans since the 1400s, female-assigned people have transitioned to live as men called sworn virgins. In Japan, accounts of trans people go back to the Edo period. In Indonesia, there are millions of trans-/third-gender waria, and the bugis of Sulawesi recognize five genders. In Oceania, trans-/third-gender roles like the akava'ine, fa'afafine and fakaleiti exist among the Cook Island Maori, Samoans, and Tongans. > In colonial America, Thomas(ine) Hall in the 1600s adopted clothes and roles of both men and women, while in 1776 the genderless Public Universal Friend refused both birth name and gendered pronouns. During the 1800s, some people began new lives as men and served in the military, including Albert Cashier and James Barry, or otherwise transitioned, like Joseph Lobdell; trans women like Frances Thompson also transitioned. In 1895, trans autobiographer Jennie June and others organized the Cercle Hermaphroditos; in the 1900s, musician Billy Tipton lived as a man, while Lucy Hicks Anderson was supported by her parents and community in being a woman. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history