How do you define “woman”?

[Mr. Morden]

Can't read the poll question without thinking of "So I Married An Axe Murderer":

[Cokeland Saxton]

Voted option 2, since it’s the closest to my definition, but none of these fit perfectly.

[Bacon King]

Let's talk about the poll design real quick.

One of its big problems: options 2, 4, and 5 overlap to such a broad degree that for most people answering this poll, the differences are little more than semantic

No one is going to seriously and consistently refer to themselves a woman unless they internally identify as one (i.e. have "a woman's brain"). These women will almost always identify with female pronouns.

This poll doesn't take into account that enbies (i.e. nonbinary people) also exist, and many femme enbies prefer to use feminine pronouns (or use she/they more broadly). Option 3 ignores enbies as well as the fact that there are feminine men who don't necessarily conform to the norms of their own gender.

Option 1 not only ignores the difference between gender and biological sex, it is also vague and extremely reductionist. What counts as "female anatomy"? Reality is not the neat binary you're trying to make it out to be. Consider intersex people, born with elements of both male and female anatomy, who until recently were always (and to this day still often are) arbitratily assigned a male or female gender based entirely on the discretion of the attending physician at birth -- and studies show that often literally the only consideration for most doctors was the size of the infant's penis. After assigning a gender the doctor then performs surgery as necessary so that the newborn better "matches" the norm of their newly assigned gender. There are millions of men out there with ovaries or some other clear indicator of "female anatomy".

Furthermore the state of someone's anatomy can change drastically throughout a person's life. Is a woman still a woman if forced to remove some element(s) of her anatomy for health reasons (e.g. cancer?).

Are you conceding that a full gender reassignment surgery ("sex change operation") is sufficient for a transwoman to be considered a woman, and for a transman to be no longer considered a woman? Or does your definition of "anatomy" not count that for some arbitrary reason?

My problem with option five is its weird casual tone. Contrary to what right wing trolls believe, you don't automatically become a woman just by claiming "I AM A WOMAN LOL NOW I GO COMPETE IN WOMEN OLYMPICS" ... you have to actually be GENUINE. Yeah there's not exactly a bright line there to delineate what that means but I'm not trying here to provide some nuanced and exacting definition of gender identity. I'm just expressing that you can't merely claim it, it has to be genuine. Sure, you can concern troll about what counts as genuine but that's far beyond the scope of this thread. You can surely understand the principle of such a distinction without splitting hairs about it

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

Let's talk about the poll design real quick.

[snip]

Yeah, this is basically why I was reluctant to vote and felt the need to quote Dreadnought in how I define woman, because the quote in question wasn't thoroughly represented in the available options.

[VAR]

Option #5 (sane, doesn't know or care about "brain sex", not a transphobe)

[Biden his time]

I don’t believe that gender even exists. Some people define woman as whoever identifies with that label and/or is treated as a woman societally and I think that is a functional definition.

Atlas moment

[Big Abraham]

I don’t believe that gender even exists. Some people define woman as whoever identifies with that label and/or is treated as a woman societally and I think that is a functional definition.

Atlas moment

I actually tend to agree with the first sentence in that post. Creating an unnecessary distinction between gender and sex serves to create more confusion than not, and it's perfectly acceptable to talk about socially-constructed structures based around sex and/or masculine/feminine identity without deviating from sex. The terminological distinction only emerged with John Money (a problematical figure for many reasons), and even then only solidified with the emergence of feminist and "gender/queer" theory in the succeeded decades, which seems more indebted to ideology than to biology.

[Biden his time]

I don’t believe that gender even exists. Some people define woman as whoever identifies with that label and/or is treated as a woman societally and I think that is a functional definition.

Atlas moment

I actually tend to agree with the first sentence in that post. Creating an unnecessary distinction between gender and sex serves to create more confusion than not, and it's perfectly acceptable to talk about socially-constructed structures based around sex and/or masculine/feminine identity without deviating from sex. The terminological distinction only emerged with John Money (a problematical figure for many reasons), and even then only solidified with the emergence of feminist and "gender/queer" theory in the succeeded decades, which seems more indebted to ideology than to biology.

You learn something new every day

[TheReckoning]

Obviously option #5 is the most correct and most polite.

If a 300 pound woman asked me “Am I fat?” the polite answer would be “no,” despite that being obviously false.