Women tend
He’s an anthropologist so he must know.
[Editing to add: Actually, after a bit of googling, I suspect he’s not an anthropologist but a guy with a BA in anthropology. Maybe he’s filling or playing or performing the role of anthropologist and therefore, according to him, he is one.]
Innnnteresting. I suppose this is a special anthropological use of the word “fill”? I suppose “filling” a role is not the same as playing a role? We’re to understand it as not-fictional, not-pretend, truthy-true?
Not exactly. He does seem to mean performance – the acting kind, not just the doing the job kind.
Ahhhh. All that’s required is consistency. That does make things simple. So we could all put on a lab coat and ask medical questions and write “Dr.” in front of our names, and we’d be filling the role of doctor, and thus we would actually be doctors.
Uh oh. Is he evading the question? I think he’s evading the question. I think he’s fleeing the interview.
And there you go. “Woman” isn’t a real, material category, it’s a set of stage directions.
I never go toTwitter. If this is the result of a random selection, I can see that I have not missed out on much. But I suspect that OB has a secret search engine all of her own designed to pinpoint this stuff and let the user zero in on it. Could be modified for all sorts of uses, I’m sure. Give me a couple of days, and I might think of one.
Exit, pursued by a bear…in a dress.
No it’s not random, Omar, it’s via a comment of Jane Clare Jones’s. I followed it up because I’m interested in the thinking (or not-thinking) behind it.
I may be missing something here. The critique in the OP seems to me to suffer from the same flaw as the argument that trans rights advocates use against gender critical feminists when they ask “well, what about intersex people? Or XXY chromosomes? Etc.” The implication being that if biological sex classification is a little fuzzy around the edges at times, then it’s meaningless and can’t possibly shed any light on the categories “male” and “female.”
But obviously, the lack of precise boundaries or a definite checklist or score doesn’t mean a category is invalid.
For example, I would bet that you can’t give me a rigorous, bright-line definition of what it means to be a “conservative” or a “liberal” in the context of (let’s say) U.S. politics. You can’t go strictly by voting behavior: there were people who voted for Clinton in ’16 who were not liberals, and Trump voters who weren’t conservatives. Nor can a list of issue positions provide a rigorous, definitive basis. There is no one specific litmus-test ideological issue that would be commonly accepted as definitive, and there are people who have conventionally “liberal” views on every issue except one or two. But none of that makes the categories of “liberal” and “conservative” meaningless or useless or phony.
Which OP? This post, or the first tweet, or one of the other tweets?
In case it’s this post…my objection here isn’t about the vagueness of dresses or no dresses but how much Daniel Goldman admits by talking about filling roles and then collapsing into that final absurd insulting summary.
And about the conservative / liberal analogy – the whole gender critical point is that the category “woman” is not fuzzy in that way, even with intersex people taken into account, because it’s not social or cultural but material and physical. It’s not a Sorites type of thing.
I hate to break it to Mr. Goldman, but butch lesbians are actually women.
And gender-nonconforming women are women.
Well, some opinionated dipshit with less than 1000 followers can’t be that important.
“Women tend to wear dresses. They tend to wear makeup. They tend to have long hair. Their speech tends to be more formal and polite”
And dipshits tend to generalize according to stereotype.
To say what a woman actually is would get you in dutch with the wokesters. A woman = an adult human female. A female = an individual with a particular set of biological characters that include two X chromosomes, ovaries, uterus, possibly enlarged mammary glands, lower levels of testosterone – some combination thereof will work. You may not look like a stereotyped female, but female you are.
So when pressed on what a woman is, you can be circular: “A woman is anyone who says they are a woman” or you can be vague: “A woman is an unknowable enigma that man is constantly trying to understand” or you can be stereotyped: “A woman is someone who tends to wear dresses and make up, have long hair, talk more formally and more polite, and makes me a sandwich” – which sort of gives the game away, doesn’t it? Because that really is what they are saying when they feel like a woman. They want to do the things women do (stereotypically). The problem is, they don’t really want to feel like a woman in the sense of being paid less, being respected less, being beaten more, being raped more, or being talked over, condescended to, ogled, ignored, and in general regarded as a piece of meat designed for male consumption. Until, of course, said piece of meat is middle aged. Then it is to be discarded, other than the obvious benefits of sandwich making and cookie baking, as well as doing laundry, shopping, and all the other niceties of life that have long been titled “women’s work”.
OB @6:
I’m not sure I follow you. I get that the gender critical view is that we should define “woman” according to “material and physical” criteria (what is sometimes called “sex”) as opposed to “social or cultural” criteria (“gender”).
But are you asserting that “material and physical” things can’t be fuzzy (in the sense I used it, of having imprecise boundaries)? I would probably agree that they tend to be LESS fuzzy, but I wouldn’t agree with not fuzzy at all, starting with the example of intersex people. I mean, iknklast@8 defines “female = an individual with a particular set of biological characters that include two X chromosomes, ovaries, uterus, possibly enlarged mammary glands, lower levels of testosterone – some combination thereof will work.” There’s some fuzziness for you right there in terms of what constitutes “enlarged” or “lower,” and more significantly, what “combination” suffices. I realize that’s not your comment, and iknklast wasn’t attempting to provide a rigorous medical definition, but point me to whatever definition you like — has anyone come up with one that doesn’t have some ambiguity or gray areas?
(As aside: how many of us even know for sure what our sex chromosomes are? I mean, I assume I’m XY, but I’ve never been tested specifically for that as far as I know, unless they do it as part of a standard blood panel.)
Having re-read the post, and the comments, I think that your main point is that the things being cited as constituting gender are so superficial — they can be cast on and off at whim. And, as iknklast points out, trans women are arguably opting into only the things they like about the social role of “woman.” Which I think is an interesting point. I think I have some… quibbles? Maybe just reactions… to that, but this comment is long enough, so perhaps I’ll come back to that later.
I think the biological definition is inarguable, lest we redefine the whole concept. The secondary qualities, or what we would attribute to “womanness” is the gray area, including gender identity, but in most areas of life, the biological definition is the most relevant one in all but the most innocuous of circumstances, despite what the gender deniers would have us think. Medical help? Biological definition. Bathroom choice? Whatever.
Ah, yes. The crucial social roles of makeup wearer and long hair haver.
Screechy @ 11 – no, I was saying the gender critical point is that the category “woman” is not fuzzy the way “liberal” and “conservative” are. Not “not fuzzy in any sense” but “not fuzzy like ‘liberal’.”
Yes. Superficial, and stereotypical.
And just what is the “role played by women in society”? Helpmeet? Nurturing mom? Fucktoy? Angel in the house? Whore? Feminism is about questioning and challenging the role(s) of women in society. As women and feminists we have some stake in refusing to be identified by said role(s).
What’s left is costume and, as O said, stage direction.
I will be ever so glad when trans advocates stop using intersex people as rhetorical props. (Note: I am not saying that Screechy is a trans advocate.) Trans people aren’t intersex. (Indeed, since TRAs are determined either to claim sex is a “spectrum” (it’s not) or deny that it’s a meaningful category, they really can’t exist in TransWorld.)
But, yes, biological boundaries are fuzzy. Biological processes are imperfect and sexual differentiation is complex. Disorders of sexual development occur.
Quite rarely, as it happens.
https://www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response-to-anne-fausto-sterling/
Exactly, the category “woman” is firmly rooted in the biological definition and fairly inarguable. How fuzzy you want to make it after that depends on your gender politics, but the biology is indisputable.
“Women tend to wear dresses. They tend to wear makeup. They tend to have long hair. Their speech tends to be more formal and polite.”
Strange, this is the exact reasoning given as to why the sexes aren’t discrete categories at all. ‘The penis *tends* to be a part of a man’s body,’ so the reasoning goes, ‘and likewise a woman *tends* to have a vagina, but it is not 1 to 1 and therefore sex is not even a consistently defined and rigorous category.’
And then usually it goes ‘since sex is not a good category, mumble mumble gender is a more useful guide as to what a man or woman is than sex.’
It is very interesting to see the same reasoning be used to arrive at opposing conclusions.
No I don’t think so Holms. It is a matter of primary biological categories, in which there are only 2 possible in regards to sex, male/female. It’s binary whether anyone likes it or not. The thing people argue about is the secondary qualities, like gender identity, gender stereotypes, womanliness, manliness, etc. It’s not as confusing as all that. Biology is not just reasoning, it’s part of the scientific paradigm which is based on facts and evidence, not opinions. There are very clear cut and well defined categories of male/female according to biology. You can argue all you want, but you’d only be arguing the secondary qualities.
OB @14,
Ok, I won’t attempt to torture the analogy further if you don’t find it useful.
I guess the way I look at is this: I’m comfortable with having multiple definitions for a term. As I understand it, tomatoes are botanically a fruit, but nutritionists (and most people in general) regard them as vegetables. Back when I took a course in human sexuality in college (in the ancient days of the 90s), I believe my textbook offered six or seven different definitions of sex or gender rather than the two being commonly debated now. And that didn’t really faze me: it’s fine, life and language are complicated sometimes.
The important thing in my view is to use the correct definition for whatever purpose is at hand. Which is why when it comes to competing in women’s sports, I couldn’t care less how someone identifies, or about their hair, makeup, or clothing — what matters is whether they have the physical advantages that come with what we generally consider to be biological males. And I have no patience for the argument that it’s bigoted to care about the genital configuration of one’s sexual partners. Conversely, if we’re talking about pronouns, I’m happy to go with whatever someone wants, within reason, because that’s all social convention anyway. Then there’s a bunch of situations in between where I’m still figuring out what I think. I’ll skip the bathroom issue since I’ve commented plenty on that recently. On set-asides or political leadership positions, I kind of want to draw a distinction between who’s been subjected to gender-based discrimination and who hasn’t, but that’s not terribly practical — how long does a trans woman have to live as a woman to experience “enough” of that, and does it matter how well someone “passes,” etc.
It is not the rare class of hermaphrodites that are accusing people of transphobia, or claiming to be women and disrupting feminist activities, it is biological men with gender dysphoria. It’s not that fuzzy.
As someone once put it on the internet, it’s not that sex is a perfect binary, it’s that it’s not a matter of self ID. However one’s chromosomes, hormone levels, genitalia, etc, fail to align with a sexual binary, those things are not a matter of self-declaration.
“If I fill the gender role of “woman” then I am a woman”
OK, since NO man who claims to be a woman has ever or will ever truly “fill the gender role” then these men are never women. Works for me.
I distinctly remember being told by gender apologists that the claim that the TRA idea of being a “woman” has anything at all to do with gender roles is a disgusting transphobic strawman. If they were consistent, the usual suspects should be flooding this guy with hate right now. Not holding my breath though. It’s Doublethink all the way down.
There’s an interesting analogy here from information architecture, where you quickly learn that, while there may be multiple ways to categorise things, not all categories are equally useful, and will largely depend on what you’re trying to achieve. So, you could organise your library by spine height if all you cared about was the aesthetic effect of the slope, but if you’re trying to find a particular book, it’s useless.
Sex is a meaningful category, because there are real biological consequences to having different bodies, and separate needs that should be accounted for. Gender, though… it seems to me that it’s only a useful category if you want to be able to treat people differently based on their presentation, otherwise it serves no purpose.
Careful, Suz, or you’ll find yourself labelled a GC feminist, then comes being a TERF, and then….cancel culture has your number!