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There’s hormonal, chromosomal, and gamete definitions of biological woman/man and you’ll want to be specific about which youre referencing and why it is even relevent for the text.
Hormonal woman with XY (“male”) chromosomes and no eggs: Complete Androgen Insensitivity
Chromosomal woman with no eggs and low hormones: Swyer Syndrome (born without ovaries)
Men who have eggs: Chimeras, probably, and this guy: https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-man-shocked-learn-ovaries-202311718.html
There’s a deep insecurity in recognizing that there aren’t “objective right answers” to a lot of things. Language is not a law, it’s a negotiated thing. Being a trans man doesn’t sunder me completely from the existence of living as a girl, and there are contexts in which my “assigned” sec does matter. The fact that abortion is utterly illegal in my state is just as harmful and terrifying to me as it is to the cis women I know.
These are people who desperately want to feel in control of the world, and the idea that they would not be able to put a person into a category based on their immediate evaluation of their sex makes them feel a loss of control. It’s attacking something of their ways of knowing, it’s an epistemological challenge that sends them reeling.
With lesbians - it’s the gold star lesbian types. They find joy in their identities as lesbians, which is great, but they treat penis in vagina sex as a contagion. It almost “horseshoe theory”‘s back into sounding like conservative Christians. They squint at some actually good critiques of porn and the way that human sexuality is marketed, and turn into a Holy War against the Y chromosome. This is not common - but it’s a very marked type of pathology. The TERFs are the type to actually be manhaters - to post things like “it’s a girl or it’s an abortion.”
It’s funny, but it’s not really a rebuttal, since the claim is that it doesn’t exclude any cis women. A better rebuttal would be antinatalist women who are also born with defective ovaries. (I’m sure there’d be at least one person like that.)
at least one person
I recently learned that 1 in 5000 women are born entirely without a uterus.
Trying to categorize people into strict definitions for the purpose of determining their responsibilities without considering feedback from how the people themselves want to categorize themselves violates Kant’s categorical imperative, also known as Granny Weatherwax’s “[Don’t treat] people as things”:
The nature of sin
“There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example.” “And what do they think? Against it, are they?” “It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.” “Nope.” “Pardon?” “There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” “It’s a lot more complicated than that—” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—” “But they starts with thinking about people as things . . .”It is deeply confusing to me why people think they can define a word in a way that covers all it’s meaning and no additional ones and make fun of those who admit they can’t.
Challenge for anyone, define “to eat”. Remember, you have to cover eating soup but not drinking tea, or smoothie. But obviously, that isn’t everything.
That’s because historically what we call drinking has less to do with the contents and more to do with the container
It shouldn’t be that confusing, considering this is literally the challenge lawmakers (honest ones, as rare as they are) face.
There’s a great blog post by Neil Gaiman (despite recent revelations about his misconduct) that talks about “why we must defend icky speech”.
Long story short, the law is a blunt instrument. If you cannot clearly and accurately define the terms being used in the language of the law then you wind up with a law that can be applied beyond the intended scope. Like when you write laws about freedom of religion and then wind up with The Satanic Temple erecting statues of Baphomet in court houses. Or banning the Bible from library because it contains depictions of violence and sexual deviancy or promiscuity
These issues aren’t just academic. They have real-world consequences. Like, there have literally been legal rulings made based on the presence or absence of an Oxford comma
Is that kind of pedantry useful to the average conversation? No, of course not. But there are people trying to make laws that target women, or trans women, and if they can’t accurately define what a woman is then the law can be used to target people they didn’t want targeted.
Which is one of many reasons why trying to target trans folks with legal authority is a fool’s errand
What shouldn’t be confusing?
In this particular case the available words are easily found in a dictionary, and if it comes to law you can easily write about cisgender women and transgender women.
The problem is people that want the word women to not include trans women. They want to say trans women are not women, while also saying trans men aren’t women, and that’s why to them it is gets confusing talking about what gender is. Because once they realise they are basically saying trans people are not people, they subconsciously know they are morally wrong. And it’s confusing when you think you are doing something that is morally right, while knowing (maybe only subconsciously) you’re not.
Honestly, I don’t know what you are trying to tell me. I am not trying to be rude, I just don’t understand. But I have a point that I understood and disagree with.
Defining words isn’t the “challenge” of lawmakers. Most words used in most legal systems are undefined within it and the rest are defined by words which aren’t defined. E.g. the American legal system is built on that acknowledgement. That is why they work with case law. (Also I wasn’t talking about defining words in a legal setting. So not sure why we talk about it like this)
One internet search later:
https://patient.info/forums/discuss/born-without-ovaries-634173
There are cis women born without ovaries.
Thus Lea the bigot is disproven.
I think she already knew, why else would she mention the people born with the intent of holding eggs (whatever that means).
I find the phrase “Born with the intention” in itself worthy of head-scratching.
Born with the intention to chew bubblegum & Rock n’ Roll.
AND I’M ALL OUTTA BUBBLEGUM
I think its meant sort of as physical intention aka the body doesn’t have the ability to “hold eggs” (jfc) yet but will try to develop the capability in the future. A sneaky way to try and include infertile cis women but it still excludes many of them as there are various reasons for infertility. Interestingly the phrasing also excludes all women post menopause but that’s to be expected given the amount of representation those usually get (the amount being zero).
Also post-hysterectomy if it includes the ovaries. Sorry bitch, still a woman.
Personally my definition of a woman is anyone subject to misogyny.
I suppose it’s wrong, because attacks on transmen are also rooted in misogyny, but that’s the misogynists’ fault.
For the religious: “Sometimes God puts a soul into a body that doesn’t match. The soul is sacred, and until it can be released from the body permanently, we owe it to those souls to recognize and help them. God doesn’t make mistakes, it’s us He’s testing.”
I don’t agree with it, but the reason this religious argument (and most challenges of religion) falls flat, is because, to the true believer, their God is infallible, and so the idea of God making a mistake like that is on direct conflict with their core beliefs.
As I said, it’s not a mistake, it to test us, to be sure we’re following His edicts to love one another and judge not.
Of course to the false “believer,” hating and judging has become second nature and their “Christian” lives are the deepest blasphemy.
But to a decent person who’s already beginning to question the false doctrine in which they’ve been raised, it opens a chink in the wall.
Worthy of Diogenes
“capability of holding eggs” covers the vast majority of humankind. Hands are useful like that.
Welcome to the joke.
Is this the kind of picture millionaires take these days?
Or anyone from, you know, the rest of the world.
Diogenes would be proud here
My first thought too.
To anyone unaware, plato defined man as “a featherless biped” so Diogenes brought a plucked chicken
I wonder how Plato would have defined man if he knew kangaroos existed.
featherless tail-less biped? then we could have a story about Diogenes fighting a kangaroo to cut off its tail
Why does it always come back to chickens?
“It’s just business”
He was so much more polite after Amos.
You can’t spell genius without Diogenes
Diogenius
