I have not considered it on the context of time/ephemeral. I usually think of it as mutable, but your word choice brings up a point about stages of life I think is worth considering.
Hmm... having looked up the definition of ephemeral, I don't think I meant ephemeral. I meant based more on the social aspects or a feeling of gender
> I usually think of it as mutable
I have increasingly come to think of it multi-dimensional (e.g. one can have physical sex, feelings of gender, norm conformity, political gender, etc, etc) all existing independently of one another. Whether those are mutable (and who has the power to mutate them) depends on the dimension.
After going through the list that you’ve given, would she be wrong for feeling like that? Or is it just a matter of her feelings [1] being rendered incompatible with the contemporary milieu?
[1]: Which per your list, sound legitimate irrespective of the tone of the article or her writing itself, I’m going to use your takeaways as a model for my questions.
I don't think so (although she might of course express her feelings in a way which is unhelpful/problematic/harmful).
I feel like if people realised that this was actually a consequence of self-identity centric models of gender, then they wouldn't advocate for them in the first place.
With bodies and genes and biology, we have a distinction between men and women (and some genetic outliers). This in no way affects if you like barbies or action men, what you wear, and how long your hair is. Excluding disabilities, this also defines your physical characteristics and possibilities, from being able to pee in a urinal (without special tools) to giving birth.
If we define women as "everyone who defines themselves as a woman", what exactly is a woman then?
I agree. If we open things up so widely, then terms like "man" and "woman" become meaningless. Nevertheless, it also doesn't seem right to be to disregard the experiences of trans people.
My preferred way out of this conundrum is to view gender as multi-dimensional. As such, there are multiple kinds of woman (and man). Three important kinds might be:
1. Biological women. Which we can define in different ways: it might include only people who were born women, or it might include people who have altered their physiology either through surgery or hormones. It might include some intersex people, or it might not.
2. People who "feel like" a woman
3. The political class of women: those are identified by others as women, and treated differently on that basis.
If one wants to define "woman", one then has to be clear about what kind of woman they mean. At which point it becomes relatively straightforward. As a linguistic convention, I would suggest:
- "man"/"woman" can be informally used for any of the above categories
- Where possible, or is asked to clarify, people should be specific about which kind of gender they mean.
- Nobody should claim that "man"/"woman" refer only to one kind of gender.
I would eventually like to get to the point where people have separate identities in each category, which is already how I approach my own gender identity. I identify as biologically male. I don't have feelings of gender, so I identify as non-binary or agender in that category. And I am usually but not always treated like a man, so I mostly identify as male in that category, but not entirely.
I feel like this is a lot more useful (and inclusive!) than a binary "are you a man or a woman".
We can observe DNA sometimes makes creatures that breath air, sometimes it makes creatures that breath water, others can fly, etc... surely we can group DNA into species EVEN IF some of the "edges" are fuzzy (the categories exist, but the borders blend together smoothly between categories). This classification of DNA is recursive, and can be done within a species. A great number of species consistently produces TWO main categories... the creature with eggs, and the creature with sperm. Again, this doesn't mean the borders are perfectly defined, but the main category is.
I'm illustrating this to show that in fact this duality in types of humans exists, and this duality is the main mechanism to keep the species alive. Maybe we'll soon reproduce in labs; maybe test tube babies will have DNA that is neither man or woman, and maybe we're in the process of transitioning there. Even if that's the case, it doesn't mean that up until now there was no such thing as a man or a woman, and we had it wrong all this time. I would have more respect for this gender movement if it was about transhumanism and moving beyond our evolution, but instead it's trying to shame everyone into believing contradicting ideas (i.e. by changing definition of words and undermining established science).
Again, those are edge cases of the category, which does not mean the category does not exist.
> But I don't think it's asking too much to address an individual in the way they prefer.
That is only a part of what is being asked. The real ask is to actually believe in this whole theory of self-identification, and if ANY objections are raised it's punished with shame.
Sure, but that's not the only thing they're defined by. We might for example like to categorise people by their profession, and doing so is not in conflict with categorising them by their DNA.
You can't self-identify yourself as being of a certain profession because you first have to do it. I cannot declare "I am a nuclear scientist now, and you must address me as doctor", and then expect people to actually do it without questioning the veracity of the claim. Self-identifying as a species doesn't work because of DNA, self-ID as a sex doesn't work because of DNA, and self-ID of a profession doesn't work because it's based on knowledge, skill, and credentials (etc).
That's true, but there are identities where self-identity does make sense. Religious identity would be a good example. I think it's best to think of feelings-based gender identities as akin to religious identities. They don't replace the category of sex, but they are valid in their own right.
- This woman identifies as a woman on the basis of her physical body (giving birth being an example of an experience that she had in part due to the body she was born with)
- For this woman, that's what being a woman is: when she describes herself as a woman then she means someone who has breasts, gives birth, etc.
- If other people use "woman" to mean something different and more ephemeral, then it makes it difficult for this woman to describe herself as a "woman" and have it understood that by saying this she is talking about her body.
- It may even be the case, that if "woman" means what other people want it to mean then this woman would no longer identify as a woman.
In other words, she's offended because her own identity is being challenged.