It’s complex blah blah blah

Comments

17 responses to “It’s complex blah blah blah”

1. 

   Artymorty

   Jun 17, 2026 5:20 PM

   For the purposes of trans, the definitions of man and woman are incredibly straightforward:

   A woman is the biological category of human that a heterosexual man is sexually aroused by. A man is the biological category of human that a heterosexual man is sexually averse to.

   A transwoman insists he is a woman because he wants his body to arouse heterosexual males (either himself in the case of AGPs, or other men in the case of gays who “go trans”).

   A transman insists she is a man because she does not want her body to be in the category that heterosexual males are aroused by. Either directly, because male sexual attention makes her uncomfortable, or indirectly, because she wants to socialize in the company of men and women without the burden of sexual objectification interfering with her social standing — she wants to be a “bro”, plain and simple.

   The entire trans phenomenon rests on the innate human ability to tell the sexes apart. It does the exact opposite of demonstrating that the boundaries between the sexes are complex. It just gives people the false hope that lots of expensive, experimental drugs and surgeries can fool other people’s innate sex detectors. They can’t, of course. Not for very long. Even the best-masked transwomen and transmen let slip their true sex after a little bit of in-person company. And certainly in intimate company, you can tell. In fact, in many jurisdictions it’s the law that you *have* to tell: in places like the UK and California, despite their rah-rah trans nonsense, you can still be charged as a sex offender if you misrepresent your sex to someone before having sex with them.
2. 

   Acolyte of Sagan

   Jun 17, 2026 5:31 PM

   Complex? As I said to somebody elsewhere fairly recently, there are literally billions of ways that a woman can be but there is only one way to be a woman, and that is to be born female.
3. 

   Deep Thinking

   Jun 17, 2026 10:20 PM

   It should be a labeled fallacy of some kind to pretend that defining a word is like writing a biography or history or scientific paper about the word being defined.

   Per Wikipedia:

   Mistaking the map for the territory is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents.

   >
4. 

   Lulu

   Jun 18, 2026 1:05 AM

   Does this also apply, in their opinion, to other females? Mare, hen, ewe, bitch – are they all equally complex and indefinable?
5. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Jun 18, 2026 2:55 AM

   Deep Thinking – thank you! I did a cursory look to see if I could find such a named fallacy but failed.
6. 

   twiliter

   Jun 18, 2026 3:17 AM

   How about ‘adult human female’ as a definition? A simple universally medically supported definition. Adding males to that requires obfuscation, not complexity.
7. 

   Deep Thinking

   Jun 18, 2026 4:23 AM

   How about ‘adult human female’ as a definition? A simple universally medically supported definition.

   The definition of “female” seems to derive from “woman”, rather than vice versa; “woman” is a universally defined concept – all languages have a word meaning basically “adult who has the same kind of body as a person’s mother” – whereas “female”, as a unified category that applies to humans and other species, is not.
8. 

   twiliter

   Jun 18, 2026 5:21 AM

   But if we’re talking about the word woman or women, then we’re talking about the human category, and adult human female is very descriptive, definitional, and simple. Therefore the statement —

   There is no single, universally medically supported definition of “woman”. (sic)

   Is false.
9. 

   Deep Thinking

   Jun 18, 2026 5:32 AM

   But if the definition of “female” is itself derived from the human category, “woman”, defining “woman” with reference to “female” is circular.
10. 

    twiliter

    Jun 18, 2026 5:34 AM

    Exactly, and circular does not entail complex. :)
11. 

    twiliter

    Jun 18, 2026 5:48 AM

    If we look at the direct antonym of female, male, then it becomes clear that there are (only) the two categories, with men being in one category and women the other. I know this is antithematic of ‘enbee’ and ‘spectrum’ types, but the binary can’t be wished away either. I mean there’s nothing wrong with adding a little fantasy to one’s life, as long as one knows it’s fantasy.

    They try to add men to the category of women, call it complex, which it isn’t, and require us to disentangle the stupidness (which really isn’t that difficult).
12. 

    Holms

    Jun 18, 2026 11:05 AM

    Deep Thinking, say what? Female is not derived from humans, and is defined in terms that do not refer to any species.
13. 

    twiliter

    Jun 18, 2026 12:03 PM

    Male and female are general terms in all sexually dimorphic species, and man and woman are simply the categories expressed in human terms, as drake and hen are in ducks, etc. This is why adult human female is such a perfect description (in quasi-biological terms) of what a woman is. Trans people try to cheat the duck test.
14. 

    Sackbut

    Jun 18, 2026 1:35 PM

    I had a bit of a conversation with Gemini on this topic. “Mistaking the map for the territory” appears mostly used to say that maps lack important information; this is true also for other variants. When I explained I wanted to say that definitions are possible, that they don’t have to include every detail, I got some more useful results, including:

    “A distinction, not a description”: This explains that a definition only needs to separate the thing from other things, not list every one of its traits.

    I liked this one. When I asked about fallacies, I got these:

    1. The Continuum Fallacy (or Line-Drawing Fallacy) This is the most direct match for your scenario. The Continuum Fallacy (also known as the Fallacy of the Beard or the Sorites Paradox) happens when someone claims that because there is no sharp, precise line to be drawn between two states, no meaningful distinction exists.

    Also 2. The Appeal to Complexity and 3. The Nirvana Fallacy (Perfect Solution Fallacy). But #1 does seem the best match.
15. 

    Deep Thinking

    Jun 18, 2026 1:48 PM

    Male and female are general terms in all sexually dimorphic species, and man and woman are simply the categories expressed in human terms, as drake and hen are in ducks, etc.

    Male and female are categories generalized from universally recognized prototypes of a sexually dimorphic species: man and woman. We first recognize there are two types of body in our own kind, and only then do we abstract from those two types to similar types of body in other kinds.

    This is why adult human female is such a perfect description (in quasi-biological terms) of what a woman is. Trans people try to cheat the duck test.

    :)

    I do feel like I’m going down a rabbit hole.
16. 

    twiliter

    Jun 18, 2026 2:18 PM

    So we’re anthropomorphizing?
17. 

    Deep Thinking

    Jun 19, 2026 12:15 AM

    Yes, in a general sense. Our definitions tend to be anthropocentric.