Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

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theprestige said:
Earlier in the thread there was a lot of back and forth about terminology.
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Sure and it got nowhere. Had you a point?

theprestige said:
We'd more or less settled on the following distinction:

"Male" and "female" refer to biological sex. The chromosomes you're born with, the genitalia and organs that emerge from that genetic binary, etc. Things doctors need to know when triaging your symptoms. Things pro sports organizers need to know when setting up leagues and divisions in their sports. Stuff like that.
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It turns out you didn't. Oh well, not my problem.


theprestige said:
"Man" and "woman" refer to the social constructs of gender. How you perceive yourself. How you want others to perceive you. Which gender-segregated spaces you should get access to. Stuff like that.
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Yup. The stuff you seem not to understand.

theprestige said:
In the past couple days, Boudicca has started asserting that (a) she's not just a woman, she's also female and that (b) biological sex is not actually important to gender identity (or sexual identity? it's hard to tell, because she's erasing the distinction).
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Get it right. Boudicca is a person. Nothing else matters.

theprestige said:
I don't find it personally threatening,
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I don't buy that you do not find it threatening because you quite plainly do.

If one gets right down to the foundational, I am a straight male entirely comfortable in my own skin and with my own hetero nature. Interesting why you struggle with that. Doesn't bother me since I have no insecurities. You may need some introspection. What exactly is it that you fear? It is not apparent to me what that might be, can you help?

theprestige said:
but I do find it irrational, unscientific, and gratuitously obnoxious.
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I apologise. That is so deep in superstition that nobody could reply without breaking the rules.
 
Boudicca90 said:
I don't know what other direction you are taking my views, but I want male-free spaces to continue to be male-free. The distinction is no matter what gross term you decide to call biological females to separate them from us, it doesn't make us male.
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OK, this is a major problem on this thread.

In context of these threads, most have agreed that gender and sex are separate and are referred to with different terms.

For the purposes of this discussion the terms Woman/Man have been used to refer to gender. Not everyone likes it, but most grudgingly comply for the sake of clarity of discussion.

For the purposes of this discussion the terms male/female have been used to refer to sex.

Granted, there is sometimes some sloppiness of terms.

But the statements:

Blaire White is a woman.
Blaire White is male.
and Blaire White is not female.

are not contradictory in terms of this discussion.

Your statement that you want "male-free spaces to remain male free" makes no sense because under the terminology usage in this thread, male free would exclude trans women as it is sex exclusive not gender exclusive.

It would help if everyone tried to keep this in mind when making their posts and interpreting the posts of others.

It's hard to have a conversation when the definitions are constantly shifting.
 
To be fair, I don't think he's saying biological sex is a superstition. I think he's saying that biological sex as a meaningful distinction between male and female is a superstition.

But it's still pretty convenient that the superstition is so offensive that it absolves him of any responsibility to muster a rational counter-argument.
 
abaddon said:
Get it right. Boudicca is a person. Nothing else matters.
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It matters to doctors who treat people.

https://epmonthly.com/article/why-gender-specific-medicine-matters-in-the-emergency-department/

Confusingly, "gender" and "sex," are not used consistently by the person who wrote the article:
But as she began to appreciate significant gender differences in the molecular biology and cellular anatomy of cardiovascular disease her skepticism quickly faded.
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and
Dr. Legato began to wonder what other gender based differences had snuck under the medical radar;
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yet
it is important to clarify the terminology sex and gender
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and
most of the research referred to in this article pertains to the differences sex plays in health.
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theprestige said:
"Man" and "woman" refer to the social constructs of gender. How you perceive yourself. How you want others to perceive you. Which gender-segregated spaces you should get access to. Stuff like that.
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No, the words referring to gender are "masculine" and "feminine." From wikipedia: "Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity."

"Man" and "woman" refer to specific subsets of males/females, namely those that are 1) adult and 2) human. Male and female refer to sex. Sex is not gender.

If you want to use words with an alternative definition then you should provide and support that definition. Specifically, if you want to define the terms man or woman by reference to gender then you should also address the earlier failings of similar attempts, such as LondonJohn's attempts which failed against the "are you a type A or type B person" line of questioning.
 
TomB said:
For the purposes of this discussion the terms Woman/Man have been used to refer to gender. Not everyone likes it, but most grudgingly comply for the sake of clarity of discussion.
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No they haven't. Furthermore, if you want to change the established definitions of terms so they mean something else instead then you need a good reason. The reason you present is that it purportedly clarifies discussion. This reason can easily be seen to be nonsense by the following:

- Having 1 thread use different definitions for common terms than the standard ones will lead to a decrease in clarity as new participants to the thread, or old participants who failed to get the memo on the special in-thread definitions, will be using a different definition than those participants who did get the memo and use the special in-thread definitions instead.

- Even assuming that everyone is on board with these new definitions, it can hardly clarify a term for its definition to change from something precise and empirical (adult human male/female) to some vague wishy-washy (masculine/feminine gender).

Indeed, the best way to clarify a discussion would be to use 1) the standard definitions and not special in-thread redefinitions of common terms and 2) when deciding between multiple possible definitions, to pick the more precise ones. Which seems to be exactly the opposite from what you seem to be trying to do.
 
Emily's Cat said:
I was hoping that Abaddon had misread or misunderstood something.
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Nope. I have always been a man, and an unapologetic masculine hairy hunter.

But I can tell you something for nothing. I would not ever have the sheer gall to tell someone else what they may or may not be. I would simply accept them for what and who they are. End of.

You have a different view. You think you decide. And you are wrong. You don't get to decide. I don't get to decide. Every person makes their own path. As long as it's within the law, OK by me.

But that is not your way, is it? You want everyone to conform to a standard that you are actually ashamed to state out front.

Put up or shut up. State your standard. I stated mine. As far as I am concerned, we are all captains of our own ships so long as we break no laws.

Need me to state it again?

Or have you none? Have you not thought out where I know you are going with this? Because this is not my first rodeo. I had a daughter and now I have a son. Would that bother you? Didn't bother me. Why does it bother you so much? I'm wondering how you might explain that? Because I know you can't.

But feel free to try. I know from years of experience what you will present. Do your best.
 
theprestige said:
Heh. Just when I thought we'd finally settled on (wo)man/(fe)male to distinguish gender/sex, and we could advance the discussion without having to keep debating this terminology, Boudicca throws a monkey wrench in.

Since I do think the distinction is important, and since I do think the above terminology is a good solution, I'm going to keep using the terms, and I'm going to keep disagreeing with Boudicca when she insists that she's female.

I get that she thinks sex isn't (or shouldn't be) important to gender identity. But other people do think it's important. Not only that, but I think it's important not just to gender identity but to medical and scientific accuracy.

In terms of the thread title: Is a transwoman a woman? Sure, in pretty much every scenario where the social construct of gender matters, and the biological facts do not. But in scenarios where the biological facts matter... No they're not. Put it another way: Transwomen are women, but they're not females.
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I view female as relating to either sex or gender, depending on the context. My biological sex may be male, but that doesn't make ME male. And as far as I'm concerned, bio sex is only really relevant for things like medical issues, not when discussing areas that have more to do with gender or gender presentation than chromosomes or reproductive organs.

Transwomen are women and females, we just aren't biologically female.
 
caveman1917 said:
No they haven't. Furthermore, if you want to change the established definitions of terms so they mean something else instead then you need a good reason. The reason you present is that it purportedly clarifies discussion. This reason can easily be seen to be nonsense by the following:

- Having 1 thread use different definitions for common terms than the standard ones will lead to a decrease in clarity as new participants to the thread, or old participants who failed to get the memo on the special in-thread definitions, will be using a different definition than those participants who did get the memo and use the special in-thread definitions instead.

- Even assuming that everyone is on board with these new definitions, it can hardly clarify a term for its definition to change from something precise and empirical (adult human male/female) to some vague wishy-washy (masculine/feminine gender).

Indeed, the best way to clarify a discussion would be to use 1) the standard definitions and not special in-thread redefinitions of common terms and 2) when deciding between multiple possible definitions, to pick the more precise ones. Which seems to be exactly the opposite from what you seem to be trying to do.
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It's been the convention in these threads since before I started participating. Gender identity might be more accurate than gender, I'll concede. Trans men identify as men, trans women identify as woman. And yes, (at least) some women reject this.

It is a convention that is not exclusive to this forum.

Also, a man does not become trans at some stage of femininity. A woman does not become trans at some level of masculinity.
 
abaddon said:
Boudicca is a person. Nothing else matters.
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If true, then it shouldn't matter to her (or anyone) whether she goes into the ladies' restroom or the gentlemen's restroom, etc.

(FWIW - I seriously doubt she'll agree with this proposition.)
 
Emily's Cat said:
It would be useful if you told me what part of that you believe is a strawman first.
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Constantly bringing up a threat that doesn't exist except in your own mind.

Like I said before, none of those posts have anything to do with their gender and more to do with the frustration we feel towards transphobes. I've agreed with and made posts similar to the less extreme ones shown, does that make me a threat?

If a cisgender man presenting as he is tries to get into a women's shelter for example, the people in charge can see through his crap and deny him access. And that is perfectly fine.
 
Boudicca90 said:
I view female as relating to either sex or gender, depending on the context. My biological sex may be male, but that doesn't make ME male. And as far as I'm concerned, bio sex is only really relevant for things like medical issues, not when discussing areas that have more to do with gender or gender presentation than chromosomes or reproductive organs.

Transwomen are women and females, we just aren't biologically female.
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I think it's fair to acknowledge that biology plays a more overt part in the daily lives and internal identities of biological women than it does for biological men.

Also, as a biologist, I tend to think of male and female as terms for sex.
 
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