GC: What would you say are the harms that come with defining "man", "male", "woman", and "female" to mean "gender" instead of only one's sex?

submitted by AllInOne from self.GCdebatesQT

TQs argue 'man' and 'woman' are defined as "gender" and social roles instead of sex and are totally separate from 'adult human male' or 'adult human female'. But it doesn't stop there, every TQ I have seen says a "trans man" is a male and a "trans woman" is a female, that words such as 'woman', 'female', 'man' and 'male' describe "gender" instead of sex out in the wider world.

Which then leads to either TQs saying that "a male can be a woman", "a female can be a man", "a male can be a man" or "a female can be a woman" ... in short it's the "male men, female men, male women and female women" that they think is descriptive enough and makes the distinction between sex and "gender".

What would you say are the harms that come with defining "man", "male", "woman", and "female" to mean "gender" instead of only one's sex?

Because I feel like the next time TQs are going to steal the word sex too and say "a trans man's sex is male" and "a trans woman's sex is female" instead of using "gender". Or maybe they have already done that ...

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[–]DistantGlimmer 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

From a feminist standpoint it is harmful because it means you can not talk about common experiences women have under patriarchy as an oppressed class. You can not make laws to protect women as a group (that excludes males), you cannot have women-only spaces or groups which exclude males. Crime statistics are not recorded properly. We have violent males committing crimes and being reported in the media as "woman violently rapes someone" because said males are trans-identified.

What exactly does it mean to saay that man and woman refer to "gender"? I am only actually familiar with "gender" as a set of roles that enforce a hierarchy? They claim they have a gender identity but what exactly are they identifying with?. They can never answer this often-used GC argument that the way they define man and woman as a gender always comes down to just being circular and meaningless or reinforcing sexist stereotypes about the way women are "supposed to act in society" and gender essentialism.

Because I feel like the next time TQs are going to steal the word sex too and say "a trans man's sex is male" and "a trans woman's sex is female" instead of using "gender". Or maybe they have already done that ...

They have

[–]DogeWalker 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

More confusion than harm. I don't think TQ's impact on language as a whole has been as large as it seems in some corners of the internet.

But, saying that, I think the most harm is being done to TQ and TQ-aligned young people, who are repeating back the chants and mantras without thinking... they are in for a rude awakening as they realize the mindset of "words dont have to mean things if you dont feel like it uwu" is incompatible with reality.

[–]worried19 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I just saw a post over on the LGB sub where a 21 year old trans man walked into a gay sex party after two months on testosterone, having had no surgeries, and was shocked and upset that the men there didn't want to have sex with him. I feel bad for the poor person, but he put it down to transphobia that no one there wanted to have sex with a natal female person. These are gay men we're talking about. I feel like these kids are definitely being led down a path that is incompatible with reality.

[–]theblackfleet 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The reason why we don't define man and woman according to gender is because gender=sex role stereotypes and those stereotypes are NOT what makes a man a man or a woman a woman. What makes a man and a woman is their testable, immutable, and material sexed bodies.

The harm that occurs is a total erasure of women and girls as a sexed class, unable to organize as a class, unable to name and address issues of our sexed class. IOW, there is no feminist movement for the liberation of females if there is no female sex class/category.

Males and females are treated differently in our society due to our sex class. Men know WHO they're violating, and that's FEMALES. The oppression females have faced throughout our history as a species is due to SEX CLASS, not gender stereotypes.

If I flick my obligatory long hair, wear high heels, mini skirts and fishnet tights, it doesn't make me a woman. That's femininity, NOT FEMALE.

Anyone can perform the sex role stereotypes of femininity but it doesn't make them female.

There is only one way to BE female, and that's to be born female.

[–]SilverSlippers 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Until stumbling into the more radical TQ groups, I was under the impression that "man" and "woman" referred to gender and that "male" and "female" referred to biological sex. I think its confusing to keep changing what words mean. I'm fine with having different words for sex and gender but these need to be clear and not change every few months. We need to be able to talk about biological sex without using awkward and dehumanizing language like "menstruators" or "people with uteruses".

[–]worried19 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What would you say are the harms that come with defining "man", "male", "woman", and "female" to mean "gender" instead of only one's sex?

Primarily it encourages the mindset that the way one looks or behaves affects whether or not they are a valid man or woman. This is especially harmful to girls and young women who may be resistant to female stereotypes. They are encouraged to believe they are not women if they don't "feel like" women and that having strong (or even slight) masculine expression or masculine interests is a sign that they are really men instead. It's directly contrary to what feminism has been trying for decades to impart, the idea that there is no "real" way to be a woman. Femininity is not womanhood.

Or maybe they have already done that ...

I'm an extremely moderate person, but this is going to peak most moderates and liberals. For a trans man to say, "I am male, I have always been male, I was born male" is just nonsensical. I can understand being transsexual. I support adults who transition if they have given it due consideration and have determined it is the only way they can live a happy life. But I can't understand this rewriting of history and the complete denial of people's pasts. Every trans man was once a baby girl, then a little girl, then a teenage girl. They may not have wanted to be, but they were. There's no sense in denying it.

[–]SnowAssMan 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think the main problem is they've changed the definition of gender into something that is innate. In the feminist sense women are manufactured, trouble is trans-women were manufactured into men. So the whole gender vs. sex thing to uphold transgender ideology was just as off-topic as bringing intersex into the debate was. Neither a trans-woman's sex nor her gender is that of a woman. They should have come up with a different term, because whatever it is they are referring to it's not gender.

From a purely biological perspective women wouldn't stop existing if gender was abolished. The same way that female goats are nannies is the same way that female humans would still be women.

People say female & male as adjectives for trans-women & trans-men respectively out of convenience. The alternative AMAB & AFAB is probably inconvenient by design. The 'assigned' part is totally unnecessary, as well as the 'at birth' part. After the excess is discarded all that's left of the acronyms are male & female, which run contrary to the more common substitutes.

It's in every definition "...whose gender is female" – it should obviously read 'feminine' not "female", plus it's not a gender. It contradicts feminist theory, as well as biology, sociology & even linguistics, one wonders where it comes from, what theory it's actually concordant with.

[–]divingrightintowork 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So what are the "social roles" of a woman, divorced completely from biology? As well as those of men?
What does a given female woman fundamentally share with a given male woman? How do we know this male woman is really a male woman, as opposed to a male man? How do we know a female woman is really a female woman as opposed to a male man?

Why should society care if someone is a female man or a male woman, or for that matter a female woman or a male man?

[–]emptiedriver 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

For one, it's homophobic. When I was young and started to realize I was bisexual a few decades ago, I went through a period of vaguely applying my experience to everyone, and believing that "everyone was bisexual" in some sense - that if they just opened up and explored themselves they'd see potential attractions to some members of both sexes. But once I became involved in the LGB movement, I met more people who had truly struggled with what were considered perverse attractions at the time, and had done their best to find ways to have straight relationships for years. They weren't bisexual. They felt clear and strong attraction to one sex, and no sexual interest in the other, end of story. I accepted that we're all different. It was obvious there were mono sexual gay people and it seemed likely that there are straight people like that too, who just don't have to face social struggle so are not tested in the same way. Maybe bisexuality is more common than it is (or was) expressed, but probably something like the Kinsey scale was true. If we ditch awareness of sex, we are rejecting that some people are attracted to one sex. It would mean everyone was bisexual, or attracted by gender.

Then, of course, is the issue of feminism and women's rights. If there is no category of biological women, then the issue of women's oppression becomes illusory - there is no reason for it, no history of it, no struggle through it and simply no meaning to the claim. All it becomes is some kind of disagreement over fashion.

All of this is connected to the fundamental concern that I have with this shift - what a lot of pro-trans people will call some kind of "obsession with genitalia" but what I think of as a healthy awareness of one's body. I was brought up by hippies who let us skinny dip and encouraged an "our bodies, our selves" sense of who we were. The difference between male and female was evident but not a big deal when we were kids, more important when we became sexually mature, never personally defining but always an aspect to embrace. To reject one's own body for a typical mental image, or to reject the expected type and endorse a different mental expectation, or any of the non-empirical ways of talking about sex that people seem to want to choose, is confusing to me and should be specific to people with certain psychological needs, not to the general population. I'm not "obsessed" with bodies, but I think bodies are real and should be understood positively while stereotypes are mostly superficial and weak. [edit - correction & extra sentence]

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Men are not women.

I am not a uterus-haver, menstruator, ovaries and Fallopian tubes haver.

I am a female. I am a woman.

All the estrogen in the world cannot give men xx chromosomes. Biology matters.

Estrogen may give men gynecomastia but that is about it.

Gender is a social construct.