There are people that feel inherently disconnected from their biological sex, and with the social construct of gender associated to this. Some of them suffer. A lot. So they might want to change their gender. As a society, we have the option to support them, which might be a bit inconvenient. Learning a new name for a person takes time and training. Questioning internalized gender roles can be unsettling. But ultimately, I think it is worth it, if we can help trans persons suffer less. Also personally it was definitely freeing.

So yes, if you deny trans persons this basic support, it makes you look like a prick who chooses his own convenience over their suffering.

Also I don't know if this applies to you, but hate against trans persons definitely exists.

Why don't you believe trans people when they ask you to do this? Apparently you think that you know better than trans people themselves, what will make them suffer. Just for the record (because you asked above): This is exactly what I consider problematic.

You're allowed to disagree but you've already asserted that my view is hateful and ignorant which was my original complaint.

You can carry on as you've always had, but some fraction of the public will assume ignorance, some stubbornness, and some malice. It's not really any different than terms for ethnic minorities or those with disabilities over time. How you approach it is up to you, but how people perceive you is up to them.

Some people (you, apparently) agree with that and just want to shift the definitions so "man" means "someone who identifies as a man" and will be replaced by "biological man". But other people don't agree, they don't believe that "man" and "woman" are immanent categories that exist outside language and culture.

As far as language changing, it certainly does, but it rarely changes by fiat. I don't believe changes referenced in this article represent organic change, I think they're a fad that will only catch on in a few enclaves. We'll see.

I don’t particularly care what the common use meanings are or if they shift over time, I’ll use what I think is most appropriate for the circumstances and audience, while trying to be as inclusive as I can.

Though I won’t be using “menstruators” any time soon for the same reason I won’t use “Latinx”, too many people I interact with find it derogatory and offensive.

That's absurd. It divides humans into two groups, and everytime you divide humans into groups they make this about their identity.

And that language changes doesn't mean all changes are equally good. When language loses its grip on reality, we've lost. We've become Orwellian.

Among people who are Very Online this might be a sizable fraction. But if you look at the public at large it isn't. Language is about usage. It's not about usage by an elite minority. Reminds me of latinx, favored more by white college grads than by hispanics.

Maya Forstater was fired, and JK Rowling still receives death threats for their use of the word "woman" to signify adult human females. That's domestic terrorism, to present it as "the language is always changing" is Orwellian.

> It's not really any different than terms for ethnic minorities

What if the USA declared all citizens to be "black"? Blacks would now perfectly match all the USA's demographic averages, income, crime, lifespan, etc, etc.

Racism solved, right? Or the beginning of a vastly worse racism that must be endured in silence because the words to describe it have been taken away?

I think as long as you acknowledge there are people who use language to disambiguate sex and gender, but you choose not to use that language, then you are just expressing your opinion.

I think it's fair for folks to probe why you choose the language you do, and even to suggest that the reasons you supply might be considered ignorant.

We only improve if we all try to understand the reasoning behind each other more.

That's the ultimate issue here. Different groups of people want to disambiguate some terms and conflate others, and there is not enough overlap between these groups to reach a common ground. At its core is a struggle for power with the meanings of words representing territory to be won or lost.

Orwell wrote extensively on this topic and left us with some pretty stern warnings which we as a society continue to ignore. And while everyone fights over this stuff we are ruining the planet and risking catastrophic consequences both environmental and political.

I don't use "yeet" as a word, and I find it silly. But nonetheless I'm aware some people do use it, and so it's in my lexicon as a word that I just don't care for.

My point is that we cannot deny new usages. We can disagree with them or choose not to use them, but denying them is just never going to work.

This is not remotely the same as making up a new word like yeet.

I believe language is descriptive, and therefore definitions follow usage. If there exists new usage in common enough use, then the definition follows that use.

And I don't believe the traditional use of a word makes one a bigot by default. I think that there are both bigots and non bigots that use the words traditionally.

But this thread is absolutely stock full of people refusing to acknowledge that there might be multiple correct definitions.

> There's this strange perception that anything new must be good and right. Perhaps OPs language isn't keeping up with the times, or maybe the times are just...incorrect.

This asserts that newness does not equate with correctness. This implicitly recognizes that there are multiple uses.

Other places in this post people absolutely do deny the usage.

> My point is that we cannot deny new usages. We can disagree with them or choose not to use them, but denying them is just never going to work.

Where is someone denying that people use these terms in these new ways? I haven't read all the comments but haven't seen it so far.

I'm genuinely curious: If you do not want to use the word 'woman' for someone whose sex / gender assigned at birth is male and whose gender identity is female, is there another word you think fits better?

This is getting my brain rolling, so: In how I use the words and think about this topic, trans women and cis women would both be subsets of women (because for me, that refers to gender identity and expression). For you, are trans women and cis men a subset of men, with biological sex being the deciding factor? Or are women, men, trans women and trans men each seperate categories for you? Or something else?

In the end, none of the options I can think of the top of my head are really satisfactory (if acceptable at all) in all contexts... Using the word 'woman' only for cis women / for exactly everyone assigned female at birth ignores quite a few aspects of the daily life of trans women, especially those who 'pass' (= are perceived by others as women / like cis women), and would also just suck because gender dysphoria is a thing. But on the other hand, having 'women' mean 'exactly everyone whose gender identity is female' (like I use it) leads to the trouble in contexts where pregnancy, menstruation, ... are relevant, which is what parts of the article are about. Using terms like 'people who menstruate' when you are talking about, well, people who menstruate, is precise, after all not all (cis) women menstruate, but some trans men etc do, and all that. But I can totally see how it might come off as reductive, creepy or potentially even discriminatory to some, like the author of the article describes. And of course it all gets more complicated when you consider that most trans people (in maybe not all parts) experience the first parts of their lives as the gender they're assigned at birth; how things like HRT, surgery and potentially even transplants change someone's body; the fact that people exist whose gender identity and/or sex don't fit into either 'male' or 'female', etc etc etc

It seems to me that the words in question ("man", "woman", etc), were used to refer to both biological sex and gender for centuries under the assumption that they always co-occurred. The conflict has arisen now that we've realised they don't always co-occur because different people have taken different views on which of part was primary or definitional. Neither view is inherently wrong. But taken together they're hugely problematic because we're using the same words to mean different things, which is leading to lots of confusion.

(there is additional conflict as some people have decided that we ought to not talk about one or other of biological sex and gender at all - which one depends on who you ask of course)

Ultimately the solution will need to be a second (and perhaps a third) set of words that are clear in their meanings. I don't think it really matters too much which word means what, so long as we all agree on the meanings. Possibly it would be better to ditch "man" and "woman" entirely so nobody feels hard done by that other people can use them but they can't.

I think I've articulated my position and held it firmly, but at no point did I feel upset about people who disagreed.

I don't believe I called anyone a bigot or was any more rigid in my language than folks who hold a more traditional meaning of the word in their minds.

You ask questions rather than name call and finger point.

While I personally struggle with these new definitions and their potential cost to certain groups (someone pregnant like the post’s author), I feel like I can actually discuss and learn something new, and feel heard myself.

We need more activists like you.

Inevitably, patience wears thin and comments get more bitter, and the polarization continues.

I'm sure the reverse happens for folks who disagree with me. They get tired of everyone just assuming they are a bigot, and start just assuming that's what's coming from the other side.

I wish there were more forums to have small, moderated chats where anyone who makes sweeping generalizations about their opponents ("you lefties always..." "All your right wingers...") were clipped out.

There’s a lot of fearmongering on both sides. I think people already come to the table really amped up quick to throw stones.

Hear, hear on the forums part, though.

Right, so, by your definition, most women over 50, and women incapable of having a child, are actually men?

Or just perhaps there is a more complicated nuance here…

it does not imply there are no woman who can't give birth.

The sense I get from the article is definitely that she thinks people who can't give birth are unworthy of the title "woman" and that follows with the comments about menstruation at the bottom. Aka, if somebody hasn't bled through their shorts in gym class, they are not a woman

I think you're missing the point.

Biology may be a fact, but we can, and do, choose to value the link between parent and child socially as the most important part, not the biological link.

We can do the same with gender, referencing identity over biology in the general case. Why have you come to the opposite conclusion?

If someone said that about adoptive parents, would you just accept that?

If you want to get rid of the words man/woman altogether socially, feel free to advocate for that, but until you succeed, don't dictate to trans people that live in a society with those words that they (and they alone) can't use the ones they identify with.

I do somewhat think that this might need to be the solution. However, I think this goes both ways. If trans people don't want to me to use the words "man"/"woman" in the ways that I see fit, then they shouldn't use them either. I certainly don't appreciate what now seems to be a connotation of "man" (the identity I use), that I "feel like a man" (I have no such feeling).

> The difference is you are saying identity has to be prescribed by biological sex.

I'm not saying identity has to be prescribed by biological sex. I am saying that it is reasonable to identify someone on the basis of many gendered categories.

Three key ones would be:

- biological sex (physical characteristics) - gender feeling (an internal feeling of gender) - political gender (how other people gender you)

Importantly for me, identifying someone as a gender in one sense (say a man in the biological sense) does not contradict someone else identifying someone as a gender in another sense (say that person identifying themselves as a woman in the feeling sense). They can both be valid simultaneously.

We wouldn't say you shouldn't describe someone as black (race) because they're really a man (gender), because gender and race aren't equivalent. To me, it seems like the same applies to the different dimensions of gender. They exist independently of one another, and shouldn't be seen as equivalent. The only problem is that we use same words for both categories.

I would add that there are good reasons for people to want to identify others in ways other than that they self-identify. As an example:

I am exclusively attracted to biologically female people. If I can't identify people by their biological sex, then I cannot express my sexuality. I therefore think it's reasonable for me to want to talk about the class of biological females. And given that there is no socially accepted term for this other than "women", I think it is reasonable for me to use that term, even if not everyone in that groups identifies as a woman.

But it’s not different. All of the same arguments apply. One could argue that “father” has a deep-rooted, unambiguous, biological meaning. One could argue that the use of “father” to describe an adoptive guardian is distorting this fundamental biological truth. One could assert their right to never refer to your adoptive guardian as your “father” because it’s just untrue.

But nobody does that because obviously that would be extremely hurtful and rude to adopted children and adoptive parents.

I have never once seen a screed like “Their birth certificate might say you’re their father, and you might play catch with them and celebrate Father’s Day, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t change the fact that at the genetic level, this child is simply not yours. They are someone else’s.”

Few people will see an adoptive mother at a class for new mothers and say “This is really uncomfortable for me. Why is she here? She did not give birth to this child. She’s not even lactating at all. What made her choose to spend her time hanging around us real mothers? I’d rather be with a group of only birth-giving mothers. I would feel safer sharing my experiences.”

In summary:

"There are several crucial differences between biological and adoptive parents, on the one hand, and transwomen and women, on the other hand. These include:

- that both biological and adoptive parents actually parent, whereas it’s not at all clear what transwomen and women have in common that is supposed to play this same role;

- that there is no historical power relationship between biological and adoptive parents, whereas there is between male and female people;

- that calling adoptive parents parents doesn’t undermine our understanding of what it is to be a parent because what is core to parenting — raising children — is done by both, whereas what is core to being a woman is being female, and that is not done by both;

- there is no established history of adoptive parental violence against biological parents, whereas there is an established history of male violence against women;

- that adoptive parents do have ‘similar enough concerns and interests’ to biological parents, but transwomen do not have these to women (especially considering the heterogeneity among transwomen);

- that there is no ‘oppressive ideological agenda of parenthood’ but there is of being a woman (namely being feminine); and finally,

- that there are many ways to be a bad parent, which we can probably agree on, but there are no ways to be a bad woman."