all 17 comments

[–]Penultimate_Penance 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You can't just redefine words any which way you want and expect the rest of society to go along with it. That's why.

[–][deleted] 19 insightful - 1 fun19 insightful - 0 fun20 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The word man or woman is a gender, not a sex, and means someone who identifies as a man or a woman, while male and female mean sex.

Sex = empirical biological category.

Woman and Man = nouns denoting the adult state of each human biological category.

Female and Male = adjectives denoting each human biological category.

Gender = socially prescribed behavioral norms assigned to each sex (or not) by a given culture.

That is what those terms mean by precedent and official consensus. Maybe start with the established meanings, build your case as to why those meanings are false, and include supporting evidence or reasoning.

(clarity edits)

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 17 insightful - 4 fun17 insightful - 3 fun18 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

What about rainbow zebras? What about the fair folk? What about any other thing that doesn’t exist?

Redefining words to mean nothing is useless and stupid. Does the word green change meaning if I’m very insistent that green defines the colour pink?

Does a dog stop being a dog and start being scaly if I demand everyone who sees it call it a very good lizard?

[–]BiologyIsReal 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What does identifying as a man or a woman even mean? If I identify as a cake, am I really a cake? Please, define what is a woman and what is man without using circular definitions or relying on sexist stereotypes.

[–]kwallio 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Words mean things.

[–]grixitperson 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No. The words man and woman refer to sex. They are not social constructs.

[–]adungitit 14 insightful - 5 fun14 insightful - 4 fun15 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

Why do you think man and woman only mean adult human male and female?

Because we do not acknowledge gendersouls. We acknowledge actual biological reality of the mammalian sex, as well as the socialisation that is imprinted onto them.

[–]Spikygrasspod 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That doesn't work because words also have historical associations, not just current meanings. The redefinition of woman from 'female person' to 'feminine person' allows people to equivocate between both meanings. For example, athletes like Veronic Ivy/Rachel McKinnon say they deserve to play in women's sports (sports for female people) because they are women (feminine people). Even if we agreed to your redefinition, there'd be significant confusion due to all the remaining associations. And if we ever did manage to shift all the associations, then presumably 'male woman' would no longer satisfy male people who wish to be treated as women, precisely because 'woman' would have lost its association with female people.

[–][deleted] 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

In my main language, Dutch, we don't even have separate words for the two concepts. We just have 'man' (man) and 'vrouw' (woman), which refer to sex in humans, but also that of other species. For example, we'd say 'het is een vrouwtje' (it's a female) when talking about a dog. Talking about 'female women' and 'male women' simply doesn't work in most languages outside of English because there's no distinction possible.

On top of that, we already have the words for gender that aren't 'man' and 'woman'. It's 'masculine' and 'feminine'. The terms 'man' and 'woman' have always referred to sex as well, never gender.

[–]SnowAssMan 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Saying "woman doesn't mean adult human female, it just means woman" is erasing sex & replacing it with nothing. Define woman.

Gender is masculinity & femininity

Sex is male & female

Woman is adult human female, not a construct, not an adult human male with a feminine name & preferred pronouns.

Trans people give away that they think being a woman is about being female, whenever they try to pass as women: tucking, taking female hormones & blockers of male hormones, getting implants & amputations, all for the sake of altering their male anatomy into a mockery of female anatomy. Why else is it called "sex change"? Why else are they called "transsexuals"?

If 'woman' is feminine instead of female, then why so focused on altering the body? The names, pronouns, clothes & makeup should be enough if being a woman is a construct.

The word for: an adult who is female, is 'woman'.

A word for: an adult who is feminine, doesn't exist.

Come up with e new word & stop trying to appropriate sex terms.

[–]VioletRemihomosexual female (aka - lesbian) 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If "woman is just a social construct", that means that those things are imposed by socium on people. This means that transsexual/transgender people should never demand pronouns or special laws, this means that pronouns and other stuff should be happening naturally and forced upon them socially. So that big buffed "it's ma'am" guy would not be called "sir", but would be called "ma'am" by majority in society, which isn't the case and that's why that guy is demanding this.

So in either case any meaning of "woman" does not work for transgenders or transsexuals.

[–]Omina_SentenziosaSarcastic Ovalord 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That' s your opinion.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Lol

No.

[–]MarkJefferson 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What is gender other than societal expectations of the sexes? So, expectations of "femininity" for females, and "masculinity" for males. And men and women just means adult or mature human males/females. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that..

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

We need words for adult human female and adult human male, and we already have them. But definitions do follow use, so maybe you'll win. In that even I vote for returning to Old English wīfmann for adult human female and wēr for adult human male. "Mann" really was the word for human once! Why bother with womyn or wimmin when we can just call men wēr and give MRAs something to talk about for once?

I don't think it's the worst outcome. Though we would probably start all over again with transwīfmann are wīfmann and transwēr are wēr, it would be much harder to do twice.

[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have to stop you right there when you say "with these definitions". You provided no definitions. You did commit the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Can you say what they are identifying as without using the word you are trying to define? If you can't then you are unable to provide a definition. But, if you get past this hurdle, you are then stuck with the problem of having to answer this question: then, is it just imaginary?

Finally, in order to get reasonable people to use your non-definitions, you have to answer how your shifting of a meaning, from the observable and quantifiable to the imaginary, serves us, not you, better than the existing definitions where woman is an adult human female and man is an adult human male. It serves society to recognize that very nearly all humans have unambiguous body types that fulfill the needs of our sexual reproduction where two and only two sexes must be paired for reproduction. The two different body types are very different, and women (actual women, adult human females) are vulnerable to violence from men. Changing the definition puts women, actual women, at risk from men pretending to be women regardless of the nature of that pretending. Sex is about reproduction, and each of the two and only two sexes serves one and only one of the two and only two roles in reproduction. Your non-definition can not serve any real purpose for anyone outside of their own imaginations and trying to make others live in accordance to your imagination is, possibly by definition, delusional.