Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

What is a woman?



A woman is someone who sees in herself at least one attribute, which she regards as a sufficient condition for her own membership in that category. What that attribute is can vary from woman to woman.

The same definition applies mutatis mutandis to men.

---

Now what is the concession that's being made?


> A woman is someone who sees in herself at least one attribute, which she regards as a sufficient condition for her own membership in that category. What that attribute is can vary from woman to woman. Now what is the concession that's being made?

If we had to limit ourselves to that entirely unclear definition we'd be giving up a lot, including the ability to recognize anyone as either man or woman (or even male or female) in cases where they aren't able to communicate to us whatever they've decided using made up attributes they (entirely on their own) deem sufficient to place them in one group or another.

This would include every single non-living person and anyone whose physical or mental limitations prevent them from communicating or inventing that list of arbitrary attributes and then classifying each one themselves according to some unspecified process in order to determine which term should apply to them.

Even just changing the definition from something that was nearly always entirely clear, easy to define objectively, and immutable, to something that is not defined, where the determining criteria can differ from one person to the next, and where the classification for a single person can change from one moment to the next is a major concession that has wide ranging implications.


The concession is that the word "woman" becomes utterly meaningless and thus terms like AFAB or ciswoman are then needed to serve the function woman used to.


The only reason that redefinitions such as this are being proposed (and in many places, accepted) is so that some men can claim to be women, and to twist law and policy around such claims.

So, as a consequence of this, we now have men in women's prisons, men in women's sports, men in women's shelters, and so on. Is this really a beneficial concession to be made?


„Woman“ in your mind is the only societal category which is completely devoid of external attributes.

I can not be a baseball player without playing baseball. I can not be German without being born in Germany. I can not be of color without the needed heritage or a certain amount of melanin in my skin. I can not choose to be tall. I can not choose to be male without being male.

It just doesn‘t make sense. If the category is that loose, then why have it at all?




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: