Consul wrote: ↑July 16th, 2022, 8:10 am
What is described in the following quote is what I call postmodern gender theory:
QUOTE>
"
Gender as identity. There is no sex/gender distinction, there is only gender. Sex, the idea that humans can be sorted into two biological types, male and female, is an outdated concept. Sex is a spectrum; or there are many different sexes; or there is really no such thing as sex, just a set of bad ideas imposed onto arbitrary features of bodies. Whatever sex is or was, it doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is gender, in particular, gender understood as
identity. Every human person has a gender identity, at minimum ‘man’, ‘woman’, or ‘nonbinary’. This new way of sorting people into categories supersedes sex, but takes over the role that sex used to play, for example as the basis of romantic and sexual attractions between people, or as the trait determining which social spaces can be appropriately used. According to this view, transwomen are women, transmen are men, and nonbinary people are neither women nor men. A transwoman belongs on a women’s sports team, or in a women’s prison, or in a women’s domestic violence refuge. Same-sex attractions are ‘transphobic’. Women-centred language is ‘exclusionary’ if it refers to biological traits. Wearing pxssy hats and t-shirts with uteruses printed on them to the women’s march is bad; it suggests a connection between women and vulvas, women and uteruses. But some men have vulvas and uteruses (transmen), and some women don’t (transwomen).
(Lawford-Smith, Holly.
Gender-Critical Feminism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. p. x)
<QUOTE
It is nonsense like this that brings us to the question: then, what is a man or a woman? If "there is really no such thing as sex", then there's really no such thing as man, woman, male or female. By definition, trans binarism excludes trans non-binarism, so how can you reconcile both? What is the reference point from which the binary categories are assigned?
Anyway, we might ask advocacy groups involved in changing policies related to transgenderism, such as the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), what is all about being a woman or a man. In the
FAQ of their internet site they state:
When we're born, a doctor usually says that we're male or female based on what our bodies look like. Most people who were labeled male at birth turn out to actually identify as men, and most people who were labeled female at birth grow up to be women. But some people's gender identity – their innate knowledge of who they are – is different from what was initially expected when they were born. Most of these people describe themselves as transgender.
A transgender woman lives as a woman today, but was thought to be male when she was born. A transgender man lives as a man today, but was thought to be female when he was born. Some transgender people identify as neither male nor female, or as a combination of male and female.
To fully understand how can this statement be interpreted, we can make explicit some concepts that are implicit in the text by adding some clarifying words:
"When we're born, a doctor usually says (following a social convention) that we're male or female based on what our bodies look like. Most people who were labeled (in a social context) male at birth turn out to actually identify (in a social context) as men, and most people who were labeled (in a social context) female at birth grow up to be women (in a social context). But some people's gender identity – their innate knowledge of who they are – is different from what was initially expected (in a social context) when they were born. Most of these people describe themselves (in a social context) as (binary) transgender.
A (binary) transgender woman lives (in a social context) as a woman today, but was thought to be male when she was born (following a social convention that labeled males or females based on their bodies). A (binary) transgender man lives (in a social context) as a man today, but was thought to be female when he was born (following a social convention that labeled males or females based on their bodies). Some (non-binary) transgender people identify (in a social context) as neither male nor female, or as a combination of male and female."
So, if we were to answer the question in the OP (what is a woman or what is a man) using concepts consistent with the thought of binary transgender activists, we would have to say: the social convention of what is a woman (or a man), in any cultural context, is based on what our bodies look like (phenotypic sex, with its concurrent dimorphism and binarism). Individuals who find their biology (phenotypic sex, with its concurrent dimorphism and binarism) not matching their innate knowledge of who they are (gender identity) will want to be perceived and labeled in a way that matches the social convention of phenotypic male and female (based on what bodies look like and how people with those bodies typically behave), which can only be achieved adopting such social behaviors and transforming some secondary sex characteristics of their biology to match one of the dimorphic, binary states. Simple intuition explains then why binary trans people make efforts to appear in society as the typical phenotypic woman or man: biology is the key, because it is the only reference parameter. Otherwise, they would simply choose to declare their gender while conforming to the phenotypic traits they were born with. They would not need surgery, nor join the typical males or females in competitions, using bathrooms, etc., implicitly endorsing the binary based on phenotype.