Outside of a philosophy discussion, it’s not a genuinely good question because it is irrelevant to our daily lives. In any way that matters to society, a woman is a person who says they are a woman. It’s that complicated.
If the question is so irrelevant, why do you even try to answer it in the same comment? Not only answering it, but also making it a fact. As if your opinion is the only one that matters and suddenly it’s irrelevant when there’s a different opinion.
My opinion is not the only one that matters. I’m not sure where you got that impression unless you think people should automatically agree with you for no reason other than you want them to when they do not.
I base my opinion on my observations on how the world works. I could be wrong, so feel free explain to me how it negatively affects in our society in any significant way if you don’t define a woman as someone who calls themselves a woman.
You did not explain to me what I asked you to explain to me. I think you just want someone to fight with since you’re clearly not discussing this in good faith and I’m not particularly interested.
So long as society feels it necessary to provide protections for women, the distinction has real consequences. Drawing a line anywhere is a tradeoff between inclusivity and effectiveness.
Taking the party line “high ground” stance of either conclusive self-determination or dodging the question entirely is why this question is so effective.
That’s a terrible example. Gendered bathrooms would still fulfil their function if anybody could use them regardless of gender, causing no measurable harm to anyone.
Not the person who you were talking with, but I think it’s nuanced. Short term tradeoffs should be made for effectiveness, while long-term strategies should be relentlessly pursued for inclusivity.
E.g. as a man, I think that the women-only carriages in a lot of SEA countries are a necessary thing, but it has to be a short term solution with a healthier society should be always consistently pursued, for example with educational measures.
Honestly? I think that equal treatment should be afforded regardless of gender. I also know that opinion is wildly unpopular, and so long as society expects unequal treatment there has to be hard conversations and hard decisions made to support those structures. You can’t have it both ways, and no amount of party-line fingers in your ears "wouldn’t you like to know"ing makes that go away.
Women are treated different that men in many societies. In my country there are multiple laws that apply different to a person if it is a woman or a man.
If we are making legislative differentiation because those words, we ought to have them well defined and understand what we are meaning and why we say that a women gets X law applied that a man gets not.
If it is irrelevant it should be, at least, legislatively irrelevant. If it’s meaningful we should be clear on what we are defining by woman (or any other gender that gets particular legislation applied for all that matters).
That without talking about the social importance of being a gendered society. I don’t know any single society that is not gendered. Once again, if it is irrelevant then we should aim for genderless society. If it is relevant we should know and agree on what it is to be one gender or other.
I didn’t say I thought it was necessary. It exists, that’s just it.
Necessary or not, is, again. A very complex question.
I’m Spanish, from Spain/Europe. We have some laws made in favour of women. For instance, a special court of law that is only invoke in a case of a man hurting a woman he had a romantic relationship with. It’s called “Juzgados de la mujer”. We have also gender quota por power positions they have historically not being allowed to occupy.
This may seem logical, as there are thousands of women killed by their male partners
We also have, recently, a law that allows anyone to change their gender at any time, no questions, no prove requires to being trans to do so. You can just go to the civil office and change your gender.
This also may seem logical. As trans are usually prosecuted and can get denied a gender change if the civil official didn’t like them.
But with these two things in place we happened to had a big number of cis males, that are 100% cis, going to change their gender just to get “inmunity” to “Womens court”. Also several cases of cis males changing their gender to get into womens quota required for some positions (for instance here there’s benefits and sometimes is required that half of the directive positions are filled by women).
So we have a conflict here. At least I see a conflict. I don’t even have the answer on what to do, as two of both things seem right to me (supporting a positive discrimination for a historically discriminated group and helping trans to be what they truly are). But cis males being able to break positive discrimination and mocking trans at the same time feels wrong to me.
And the ultimate question to this topic is “What it is to be a woman”. For what I do not have the answer, but I would love to know.
And of course, in my book we all would be genderless, and there would be no discrimination. But my personal utopia is, sadly, not the world we live on.
This may seem logical, as there are thousands of women killed by their male partners
No, it doesn’t seem logical. Men can be killed by their women partners, men can be killed by their men partners, women can be killed by their women partners.
It’s only “logical” in a heteronormative patriarchal society.
This also may seem logical. As trans are usually prosecuted and can get denied a gender change if the civil official didn’t like them.
Again, this does not seem logical. Why do you need a law to allow you to change gender?
“Womens court”.
Something else that is not necessary.
(for instance here there’s benefits and sometimes is required that half of the directive positions are filled by women).
Benefits should not be gendered, but the quota thing is the closest you have gotten to something being necessary in terms of legal definitions. But even there, all you have to say is that gender discrimination in hiring practices is illegal and it doesn’t have to apply to any specific gender.
Also, you are acting like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are it and there is no such thing as a nonbinary gender. You are incorrect.
I literally never said anything against non binary, but ok.
I’m just explaining the legislation you asked me to explain.
Legislation on my country does not take non-binary as an option. So I didn’t talk about it. We could have talked about it if you asked about that, as I have lots to say as an non-binary person that really does not fit within my country own legislation on gender.
I feel like you are not really reading me. And I’m feeling more hostility towards my person that I want to feel. So I’m out.
Legislation on my country does not take non-binary as an option.
Which is also not logical.
No one is denying that gendered laws exist. We are talking about what is necessary. I am reading you. You just are not understanding that those laws are not necessary laws the way they are written and can be easily be rewritten to apply to all genders.
For instance, the “women’s court” I talked. Which is part of a law called “law against violence on women”.
I will give you the official explanation and the one with more consensus on the feminist movement. Even tho I don’t really understand it for reasons I will explain later.
The law defines violence against women as “violence that it is applied to women just for the matter of being women”. This assumes that this kind of violence only applies to women being hurt by man. This is the consensus, this is the slongan.
I do not understand it as I do not understand what it is to be a woman, to begin with, so I cannot understand that explanation.
But I understand that there’s a lot of people, that call themselves women, that are hurt by people that call themselves men. And some legislation that tried to specifically protect the group that is being targeted seems ok. Like really if this are the figures, if men are hurting women more than women are hurting men. And if we had had s “neutral” legislation that did not solve this issue before… It seems logical, at least to me, that maybe it is a problem that should be tacked on a gendered perspective. Maybe it is something gendered on that kind of violence. And thus maybe gender needs to come into place.
I don’t know if giving an example is the best way to go about this. And in whatever example I come up with I certainly won’t be comparing “women” with that example. I’m just trying to exemplify other cases when “neutral” legislation may not be the best approach.
For instance, different legislation on children and adults, or when adults hurt children, being different that when a kid hurts and adults. Again, and this is important, women are not children. It is just an example where differentiation may be needed to solve a problem.
You will notice that I didn’t brought the “women sports” example here. It is the classic issue on this matter. But for me sports are not important so really, I could just get rid of all professional sports and get done with it.
Though if I liked sports the question would be similar, as I get why some people want to have gendered segregated sports. I also get with a trans woman should be able to compete in women league. And I also get why if we just adhere to the “being a woman is just saying so” approach then there a place for fraud in cis males breaking the women league. I’m glad I just don’t like sports because it is a complex matter too
I don’t know. I’m not 100% on board with one opinion or other on the matter. I would really just want to do whatever leads to better society, with less violence. But I don’t know the better approach here.
Sure, the anatomical features we use to categorise people into genders have always existed, but the categories themselves are made up and there’s a rather large amount of overlap between them. The more strictly someone attempts to enforce a given set of criteria as the basis for this categorisation, the less practical utility their definition tends to have in terms of everyday use.
You cannot put down both or none on any government form that does not consider gender to be a non-biological thing.
Laws are not supposed to be selectively applied. If they can put down whichever one they choose, you are admitting your definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ do not apply to how society works.
I know “the exception that proves the rule” is a fun phrase, but it’s not actually how things work.
But this is a biological thing. It’s a medical condition. It’s not your gender if you were born with both sets of organs. The point of equality was to get rid of laws being selectively applied. By your philosophy, race also works similarly. Someone who is latino is whoever says they’re latino.
Again, laws are not supposed to be selectively applied. If they can put ‘man’ or ‘woman’ on any form, so can anyone else. Or do you think they need some sort of confirmation by a doctor before they’re allowed to fill out any sort of government forms?
Outside of a philosophy discussion, it’s not a genuinely good question because it is irrelevant to our daily lives. In any way that matters to society, a woman is a person who says they are a woman. It’s that complicated.
If the question is so irrelevant, why do you even try to answer it in the same comment? Not only answering it, but also making it a fact. As if your opinion is the only one that matters and suddenly it’s irrelevant when there’s a different opinion.
My opinion is not the only one that matters. I’m not sure where you got that impression unless you think people should automatically agree with you for no reason other than you want them to when they do not.
I base my opinion on my observations on how the world works. I could be wrong, so feel free explain to me how it negatively affects in our society in any significant way if you don’t define a woman as someone who calls themselves a woman.
If other opinions matter, then it is not an irrelevant question. Since it prompts people to tell their opinions.
You did not explain to me what I asked you to explain to me. I think you just want someone to fight with since you’re clearly not discussing this in good faith and I’m not particularly interested.
I didn’t answer your “request” because that has nothing to do with what I originally said.
If I wanted to get into an hours long conversation about gender I would’ve said something completely different. Got better things to waste my time on.
Then I have no idea even what your issue is? That I dare to think my opinion on something is correct? Isn’t that how opinions work?
Can you tell me about one of your incorrect opinions?
So long as society feels it necessary to provide protections for women, the distinction has real consequences. Drawing a line anywhere is a tradeoff between inclusivity and effectiveness.
Taking the party line “high ground” stance of either conclusive self-determination or dodging the question entirely is why this question is so effective.
I’m sorry, is “conclusive self-determination” the wrong answer? Why?
Assuming good faith on the part of those involved, I don’t see how inclusivity comes at the cost of effectiveness. Would you care to elaborate?
Assuming good faith, that’s a hell of an assumption
Assuming I’m a bicycle, I’d have wheels.
Protections presuppose bad faith.
What protections? Give me some concrete examples of what you’re talking about here.
Gendered bathrooms? It certainly does not require a lot of good faith to come up with this example.
That’s a terrible example. Gendered bathrooms would still fulfil their function if anybody could use them regardless of gender, causing no measurable harm to anyone.
And your solution is what?
Not the person who you were talking with, but I think it’s nuanced. Short term tradeoffs should be made for effectiveness, while long-term strategies should be relentlessly pursued for inclusivity.
E.g. as a man, I think that the women-only carriages in a lot of SEA countries are a necessary thing, but it has to be a short term solution with a healthier society should be always consistently pursued, for example with educational measures.
Honestly? I think that equal treatment should be afforded regardless of gender. I also know that opinion is wildly unpopular, and so long as society expects unequal treatment there has to be hard conversations and hard decisions made to support those structures. You can’t have it both ways, and no amount of party-line fingers in your ears "wouldn’t you like to know"ing makes that go away.
This would be nice if we lived in a vacuum an didn’t have thousands of years of patriarchy built up…
That was essentially what I was saying.
I don’t think it is that simple.
Women are treated different that men in many societies. In my country there are multiple laws that apply different to a person if it is a woman or a man.
If we are making legislative differentiation because those words, we ought to have them well defined and understand what we are meaning and why we say that a women gets X law applied that a man gets not.
If it is irrelevant it should be, at least, legislatively irrelevant. If it’s meaningful we should be clear on what we are defining by woman (or any other gender that gets particular legislation applied for all that matters).
That without talking about the social importance of being a gendered society. I don’t know any single society that is not gendered. Once again, if it is irrelevant then we should aim for genderless society. If it is relevant we should know and agree on what it is to be one gender or other.
Why do you think such legislation is necessary? In fact, what legislation are you talking about that requires gender to be taken into account?
I didn’t say I thought it was necessary. It exists, that’s just it.
Necessary or not, is, again. A very complex question.
I’m Spanish, from Spain/Europe. We have some laws made in favour of women. For instance, a special court of law that is only invoke in a case of a man hurting a woman he had a romantic relationship with. It’s called “Juzgados de la mujer”. We have also gender quota por power positions they have historically not being allowed to occupy.
This may seem logical, as there are thousands of women killed by their male partners
We also have, recently, a law that allows anyone to change their gender at any time, no questions, no prove requires to being trans to do so. You can just go to the civil office and change your gender.
This also may seem logical. As trans are usually prosecuted and can get denied a gender change if the civil official didn’t like them.
But with these two things in place we happened to had a big number of cis males, that are 100% cis, going to change their gender just to get “inmunity” to “Womens court”. Also several cases of cis males changing their gender to get into womens quota required for some positions (for instance here there’s benefits and sometimes is required that half of the directive positions are filled by women).
So we have a conflict here. At least I see a conflict. I don’t even have the answer on what to do, as two of both things seem right to me (supporting a positive discrimination for a historically discriminated group and helping trans to be what they truly are). But cis males being able to break positive discrimination and mocking trans at the same time feels wrong to me.
And the ultimate question to this topic is “What it is to be a woman”. For what I do not have the answer, but I would love to know.
And of course, in my book we all would be genderless, and there would be no discrimination. But my personal utopia is, sadly, not the world we live on.
No, it doesn’t seem logical. Men can be killed by their women partners, men can be killed by their men partners, women can be killed by their women partners.
It’s only “logical” in a heteronormative patriarchal society.
Again, this does not seem logical. Why do you need a law to allow you to change gender?
Something else that is not necessary.
Benefits should not be gendered, but the quota thing is the closest you have gotten to something being necessary in terms of legal definitions. But even there, all you have to say is that gender discrimination in hiring practices is illegal and it doesn’t have to apply to any specific gender.
Also, you are acting like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are it and there is no such thing as a nonbinary gender. You are incorrect.
I literally never said anything against non binary, but ok.
I’m just explaining the legislation you asked me to explain.
Legislation on my country does not take non-binary as an option. So I didn’t talk about it. We could have talked about it if you asked about that, as I have lots to say as an non-binary person that really does not fit within my country own legislation on gender.
I feel like you are not really reading me. And I’m feeling more hostility towards my person that I want to feel. So I’m out.
Have a good day.
Which is also not logical.
No one is denying that gendered laws exist. We are talking about what is necessary. I am reading you. You just are not understanding that those laws are not necessary laws the way they are written and can be easily be rewritten to apply to all genders.
For instance, the “women’s court” I talked. Which is part of a law called “law against violence on women”.
I will give you the official explanation and the one with more consensus on the feminist movement. Even tho I don’t really understand it for reasons I will explain later.
The law defines violence against women as “violence that it is applied to women just for the matter of being women”. This assumes that this kind of violence only applies to women being hurt by man. This is the consensus, this is the slongan.
I do not understand it as I do not understand what it is to be a woman, to begin with, so I cannot understand that explanation.
But I understand that there’s a lot of people, that call themselves women, that are hurt by people that call themselves men. And some legislation that tried to specifically protect the group that is being targeted seems ok. Like really if this are the figures, if men are hurting women more than women are hurting men. And if we had had s “neutral” legislation that did not solve this issue before… It seems logical, at least to me, that maybe it is a problem that should be tacked on a gendered perspective. Maybe it is something gendered on that kind of violence. And thus maybe gender needs to come into place.
I don’t know if giving an example is the best way to go about this. And in whatever example I come up with I certainly won’t be comparing “women” with that example. I’m just trying to exemplify other cases when “neutral” legislation may not be the best approach.
For instance, different legislation on children and adults, or when adults hurt children, being different that when a kid hurts and adults. Again, and this is important, women are not children. It is just an example where differentiation may be needed to solve a problem.
You will notice that I didn’t brought the “women sports” example here. It is the classic issue on this matter. But for me sports are not important so really, I could just get rid of all professional sports and get done with it. Though if I liked sports the question would be similar, as I get why some people want to have gendered segregated sports. I also get with a trans woman should be able to compete in women league. And I also get why if we just adhere to the “being a woman is just saying so” approach then there a place for fraud in cis males breaking the women league. I’m glad I just don’t like sports because it is a complex matter too
I don’t know. I’m not 100% on board with one opinion or other on the matter. I would really just want to do whatever leads to better society, with less violence. But I don’t know the better approach here.
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Sure, the anatomical features we use to categorise people into genders have always existed, but the categories themselves are made up and there’s a rather large amount of overlap between them. The more strictly someone attempts to enforce a given set of criteria as the basis for this categorisation, the less practical utility their definition tends to have in terms of everyday use.
What is an adult human with both sets of genitalia? They exist.
A hermaphrodite. What is any other genetic condition?
Intersex. And there are more of them than trans people per 100k, I believe. Yet somehow they’re never brought up.
Many (maybe most?) end up getting some type of gender-affirming surgery very early on, but not always. And who knows, going forward.
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I have never seen “hermaphrodite” on any government form. What do they put down?
It’s an edge case. Does a government form determine reality? They can put down one, both, none.
You cannot put down both or none on any government form that does not consider gender to be a non-biological thing.
Laws are not supposed to be selectively applied. If they can put down whichever one they choose, you are admitting your definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ do not apply to how society works.
I know “the exception that proves the rule” is a fun phrase, but it’s not actually how things work.
But this is a biological thing. It’s a medical condition. It’s not your gender if you were born with both sets of organs. The point of equality was to get rid of laws being selectively applied. By your philosophy, race also works similarly. Someone who is latino is whoever says they’re latino.
Again, laws are not supposed to be selectively applied. If they can put ‘man’ or ‘woman’ on any form, so can anyone else. Or do you think they need some sort of confirmation by a doctor before they’re allowed to fill out any sort of government forms?
If intersex people are an edge case, then so are trans people.
And yet…