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To most people, such an answer would make you appear suspicious and dishonest, not unlike responding "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Which is to say, your definition of the word "woman" rests on unfalsifiable claims people make about their own inner experiences. And despite many of these people claiming that they viscerally feel that they ought to have female genitalia, the overwhelming majority of them choose not to undergo a surgical procedure which would give them an approximation (however crude) of said genitalia, even though many of them could presumably afford to do so.
It's also a strange definition in that you're using the exact same word for people who are X and people who wish that they were X, which is not how we define any other word in the English language. The word "billionaire" does not mean "a person with a net worth of at least 1 billion, or someone who wishes they had a net worth of least 1 billion": it only means the former. For the latter concept, we have "aspiring billionaire" or "wannabe billionaire".
This, again, makes you appear weird and dishonest.
Why would your answer change depending on whether a camera is being rudely shoved in your face? Does a word have a different meaning depending on whether the person defining it is being observed or not? Is "woman" an example of Schrödinger's word?
But not referring to female people as "menstruators", referring to mothers as "birthing parents", or referring to their genitals as their "front" or "bonus" hole. Curious.
A nonsensical categorisation. A bodybuilder is not "more male" than a nerdy coder.
I will reiterate that the vast majority of trans-identified males have not undergone bottom surgery. I genuinely don't know what "would have given the opportunity" means here. Many trans-identified males do have "the opportunity", and voluntarily pass it up. But this appears to have no impact on your opinion that they ought to be categorised as women.
This is not generally how I see the phrase "male/female presenting" being used. It's usually used to mean "this person is dressed in a conventionally feminine manner" without passing judgement on whether they successfully pass.
Some and some. I don't think Swinson's response to this question is remotely consistent with her "actually believing" that trans women are women. The purpose of this "gotcha" question, as I said, is designed to expose ideological rifts: separating the true believers in gender ideology from those who are merely pretending to endorse it out of convenience. I think Swinson falls into the latter category.
Even among those progressives who do actually believe that trans-women are women (and I acknowledge that such people do exist), the question is useful in exposing how many of these individuals are unable to provide a definition of the word "woman" which is coherent and non-circular, thereby demonstrating how fundamentally nonsensical gender ideology is. On some level you obviously know it's nonsensical, given that by your own admission you would refuse to define the word "woman" if you knew you were being filmed.
We're not comparing it to anything. I take the assertion "Islam is right about women" to mean "the collection of factual and normative assertions the Islamic faith makes about women are correct". If I say "the statement '2+2=4' is true", it's meaningless to ask "compared to what?": factual claims are true or they aren't ("directionally correct" notwithstanding). Likewise if I said "respecting people's preferred pronouns is the right thing to do", you would never ask "compared to what?"
And the Greek characters are such a pretentious affectation.
Which is why I elaborate on the various possible answers, the contexts in which each would be relevant, and possible terminology that would allow one to specify each unambiguously.
Yes, sometimes a question rests on a point of fact which cannot be empirically determined, and we face a choice between a non-zero rate of dishonest people getting away with it, and innocent people suffering burdens which are in our ability to ameliorate.
I was attempting to give an extensional definition, akin to Charles Sanders Peirce's proposed definition of lithium:
If you take all the people in the world, put everyone with convex genitals in a blue room and everyone with concave genitals in a pink room, there will be one gender identity that is more common among those in the blue room and another more common in the pink room. The one more common in the blue room is the 'man' identity; the one more common in the pink room is the 'woman' identity. A woman is someone with the 'woman' identity.
If you take everyone who feels that they have the wrong genitals and move them to the other room, the correlation will be even stronger.
Putting people with XY chromosomes in the blue room and people with XX chromosomes in the pink room, or people who produce small gametes in the blue room and people who produce large gametes in the pink room, would have the same gender identities more prevalent in the same rooms, and thus would not change the identity-based definition.
The operative word there is 'rudely'. If I am giving testimony before a governmental organ, or a scheduled interview on television, I will expound on the answer given above. If I am coming home from the shops, and am accosted by a less-respectable individual looking for a sound bite, I am likely to give a crankier answer carrying the message that I do not take him/her/them seriously.
These terms are not widely used by people who hold misogynist attitudes.
The former two are an attempt at rigorous disambiguation. 'People who menstruate' or 'menstruators' is pointing to a category that, in addition to including some trans-men, also excludes many cis-women, who do not menstruate due to age, removal of relevant parts, malnutrition.... 'Birthing parent' is probably an attempt to unambiguously indicate that, if trans-woman Alice and trans-man Bob have a baby, we are at this time referring to Bob rather than Alice; I would consider 'biological mother' or 'reproductive mother' to be acceptable in that instance. Re terminology for genitals, that area of the body has accumulated a vast array of less-than-formal nomenclature (cf. an annotated edition of Shakespeare).
I have previously questioned the use of the term 'chestfeeding'.
I was more gesturing at 'cis-men, trans-men on artificial hormones, and trans-women not on artificial hormones' versus 'cis-women, trans-women on artificial hormones, and trans-men not on artificial hormones', or 'on a graph with testosterone levels on one axis and estrogen levels on the other, someone in the part of the graph with natal-anatomical men/women'.
People who can't afford it. People who can't find a chirurgeon who does it. People who can't afford the time off work for recovery.
I don't know what the distribution of these or other reasons is, as the source previously cited did not divide the 'trans without bottom chirurgery' group by why have not gotten it; it didn't even separate out 'has bottom chirurgery scheduled' or 'in early phase of transition'.
Among the Kamilaroi of what is today New South Wales, Australia, women are divided into four groups: an Ippata is the daughter of a Buta, a Buta is the daughter of an Ippata, a Mata is the daughter of a Kapota, and a Kapota is the daughter of a Mata. (Men are similarly divided: a Kumbo, a Kubbi, a Murri, and an Ippai are, respectively, the sons of an Ippata, a Mata, a Kapota, and a Buta. Marriage is only permitted between a Kumbo and a Mata, a Kubbi and an Ippata, a Murri and a Buta, or an Ippai and a Kapota.) (S. Alexander, review of Arguments About Aborigines, July 2025)
No Kamilaroi could offer you a non-circular definition of Ippata; is their kinship system non-sensical?
Please refer back to the third section of my previous post.
Which still leads us to the same two questions.
١, Islam is not a monolithic hive-mind; the factual and normative assertions made by Saudi-funded Wahhabists are not the same as those made by Sufi mystics.
٢, outside the realm of formal logic, 'correctness' isn't black and white; things can be more or less correct.
The assertion "the collection of factual and normative assertions Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab made about women are more correct than the collection of factual and normative assertions the in-this-house-we-believe crowd make about women." is not the same as the assertion "the collection of factual and normative assertions Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd made about women are more correct than the collection of factual and normative assertions the ante-Islamic Hijazi society made about women.".
Only because I can't think of more than one obvious answer: "Compared to referring to people with the pronouns of their ASAB regardless of how many times they have asked you to stop."
And prexactly what has that got to do with the price of tea in China?
Supposing you meet a male person who is independently wealthy, doesn't need to work for a living, and lives in an area with numerous cosmetic surgeons experienced in vaginoplasties. The person claims to identify as a woman, but makes it perfectly clear that he has a penis which he has no desire to remove.
In your opinion, is such a person "really" trans?
This is not an armchair hypothetical. Consider the National Transgender Discrimination Survey from 2011, which polled over 6,000 people who describe themselves as transgender or gender non-conforming, of which 3,870 were male. Of these, only a quarter claimed to have undergone a penectomy, while 23% claimed to have undergone a vaginoplasty. 14% said they had no interest in undergoing either procedure (this finding is on the page numbered 79, or page 85 of the PDF). In your opinion, are these 14% "really" women? (The finding is even more striking among trans-identified females, 72% of which report no desire to undergo a phalloplasty.)
For a more recent source, consider the US Trans Survey from 2022, which surveyed over 30,000 trans-identified males. Only 11% had undergone an orchiectomy, and only 9% a vaginoplasty. 21% affirmatively said that they did not want either procedure, while 27% said they were "unsure" if they wanted the former and 25% the latter (pg 48).
One-in-five trans-identified males have not undergone a vaginoplasty and explicitly do not want to, while a further one-in-four have not undergone one and are unsure whether they want to. Someone who's on the fence about whether they want something can hardly be said to "viscerally feel they ought to have it". By the terms you specified, nearly half of all trans-identified males in the US are not women. I'll ask again: if you meet a trans-identified male who has not undergone a vaginoplasty and doesn't want one, do you consider that person a woman?
Well, I think quite a number of trans-identified males hold misogynistic attitudes. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the median autogynephiliac male is more misogynistic than the median cis man.
As I've argued repeatedly before, it sure is interesting that trans activists are so keen on "rigorously disambiguating" different categories of people and using maximally clear terminology
... right up to the point where someone points out that, regardless of how they identify, a male person remains male, with all that implies, at which point these trans activists throw a tantrum and call you a Nazi. Dora Moutot bent over backwards to avoid using language that trans-identified males might find offensive, insisting that women need to be wary of "people with penises", and she still got slapped with a €1,000 fine. Don't dare tell me these trans neologisms are just about maximally unambiguous language. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
Yeah, sounds like it.
Nothing, just that I find it annoying, along with many of your verbal tics (including "prexactly"). Even in the comment I'm replying to you used the term "chirurgeon" for no earthly reason I can discern.
Yes, I consider her a woman for any purpose that does not involve her genitals. Gender identity strongly correlates with genitals, which is why the major gender identities are 'man' and 'woman'. If you draw a teal circle around everyone with a penis, an orange circle around everyone with a vagina, and a provisionally non-coloured circle around each of the two gender-identity clusters, one of the colourless circles will mostly, but not entirely, overlap with the orange circle, and the other will mostly, but not entirely, overlap with the teal circle; thus we colour them respectively pink and blue. Anyone in the pink circle is a woman, even if she has no interest in leaving the teal circle, unless you are personally interacting with the parts between her legs.
The implications of which you speak are the objectionable part. I am not disputing the factual accuracy of the statement "A person born with testicules remains a person born with testicules."; I am disputing the claim "Alice having been born with testicules is more salient than any other characteristic, to such a degree that it deserves the one-or-two-syllable terminology.", and the claim "Because Alice was born with testicules, she should be treated as a delusional patient at best and a sex pest at worst.".
The issue as I understand it was not the language used, but the endorsement of the notion that individuals may rightfully be held to account for the misdeeds of those with whom they share features; i. e., discrimination not on the basis of individual conduct but on the basis of group membership.
A town in the Southern United States removing a sign saying "[Anagram of ginger], don't let the sun set on you in ______" with one that says "Persons with greater than x amount of melanin per square inch of skin...." has not absolved itself of racism.
Well, I find it annoying that you persistently refer to trans-women as 'trans-identified males'.
Cool, so your definition of "woman" is actually "a person who identifies as a woman". So all of this rubbish about "viscerally feeling they should have had concave genitalia" was just obfuscatory nonsense. Why not just come out and say "a woman is anyone who says they are a woman"? Why even bother mentioning the "viscerally feeling they should have had concave genitalia" thing if you then turn around and say that males who don't want concave genitalia are still women provided they "identify as" such?
My practical definition, for most, but not all, purposes, is 'a person who identifies as a woman'; all the references to genitals, whether actual or desired, are for the purpose of defining 'identifies as a woman'.
There are a narrow set of purposes for which trans-women are men, and another narrow set for which some trans-women are men and some are women.
The gender identity that is correlated with having been born with concave genitals is also, in those born with convex genitals, correlated with a feeling that those genitals are wrong; that is why I brought up genital dysphoria.
So, in practical terms, your definition of a woman boils down to "anyone who says they are". All of this talk about "visceral feeling that they should have had concave genitals" was just smoke and mirrors designed to distract me from noticing that your definition of the word "woman" is exactly as circular as that I ridiculed in the OP. I will reiterate that spending five or six comments pretending that of course your definition of the word "woman" isn't circular, only to then finally admit that in fact it is circular: this is hardly the most honest and forthright behaviour. Rather than rambling off on digressions which according to you are irrelevant for several hundred words, you could have just as easily said "for medical purposes, a woman is a person with concave genitals; for all other purposes, a woman is anyone who says they are". That's what your "definition" ultimately boils down to, right? Why not just come out and say that? I'm sure it couldn't possibly be because on some level you're aware of how vacuous and incoherent this worldview is, and want to dress it up as something more grounded.
I presume the "narrow set of purposes" to which you refer are those in which anatomy is especially salient e.g. for the purposes of a prostate exam, a trans-identified male is a man, not a woman. For every other purpose, you essentially treat trans-identified males as secular Oracles at Delphi, whose accounts of their inner lives can never be questioned by anyone under any circumstances, no matter how suspicious or laughable. Outside of gender ideology, there are many contexts in which we do not accept any individual's word at face value (e.g. a police officer who pulls someone over for speeding will demand to see their driver's license, even if they're a charity worker, a man of the cloth, or a former President), up to and including claims about one's inner experience (doctors must separate the patients who are legitimately in pain from the addicts seeking opiates). But as far as you're concerned, any male person who announces he's a woman instantly becomes one, no questions asked; no questions permitted to be asked; and anyone who so much as raises an eyebrow, points out the incongruity of this claim, or suggests that the male in question might have ulterior motives for so "identifying" has thereby outed themselves as a fascist Nazi bigot. As far as you're concerned, it is simply impossible for the declarative statements "I am a woman" or "I identify as a woman" to be untruthful or knowingly deceptive. These statements need not be vetted for accuracy: regardless of who speaks them, they are true by definition. I will note, again, that I cannot think of any other statements in the English language (or any language) to which this description applies, although I am open to suggestions. I am curious why gender ideology is so important that it requires us to completely overhaul our entire practice of epistemology, the philosophical assessment of what is true, what is false and how we tell one from another. "Because if we don't, some people will feel sad." Okay.
When this topic has come up in the past, I've asked you for what specific "purposes" treating a trans-identifed male as a woman provides better predictive power than treating them as a male person. I believe your answer was "none of your business". Which was, well, illustrative.
As an aside, you've been expounding on your personal interpretation of gender ideology (at great length) for several months now, and to my eyes it seems, if anything, even more incoherent than it seemed at first brush. I'm curious if anyone who's read any of the comments you've posted has had their mind changed on any sub-facet of this topic. If my experience is typical, it suggests that, regardless of whether you do "lack confidence in your own arguments to persuade people", you shouldn't have much confidence therein.
For practical purposes, if someone tells me that they identify as a woman, I am going to default to the assumption that she is being truthful, unless I have some indication, which does not function as a Fully General Counterargument To The Existence Of Transgender, that they are acting in bad faith.
No, it is an auxiliary point that, while there are counter-examples to the proposition "All womenidentity who are mennatal genitals are womenaspirational genitals", I have not heard of any counter-examples to the proposition "All mennatal genitals who are womenaspirational genitals are womenidentity".
That is an oversimplification. Different medical and biological contexts will see the same trans individual fall on different sides. There are also some cis individuals who, while being one sex in most medical contexts, would be the other in some narrow domain. (E. g. someone with androgen-insensitivity syndrome would be a man for genetic purposes and a woman for all other purposes; someone with Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome would be a man for most purposes, but a woman for the purpose of ovarian or uterine cancer screening. Both of these are often un-diagnosed for a substantial time-span post-birth.)
What might be an example of such an indication? (And why do I have the horrible feeling that it's "I suspect he's pretending to be trans for satiric purposes" and not "he's a convicted rapist"?)
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