Diogenes would be proud here
I find the phrase “Born with the intention” in itself worthy of head-scratching.
Born with the intention to chew bubblegum & Rock n’ Roll.
One internet search later:
https://patient.info/forums/discuss/born-without-ovaries-634173
There are cis women born without ovaries.
Thus Lea the bigot is disproven.
I think she already knew, why else would she mention the people born with the intent of holding eggs (whatever that means).
Is this the kind of picture millionaires take these days?
Or anyone from, you know, the rest of the world.
I’m having trouble finding anyone born with intention. Neither biology nor evolution have plans or intentions. We are fundamentally lipid based sacks of water.
They’re arguing from a religious perspective that understands God as providing intentionality
Which is a self-defeating argument, because if it were true, then women who don’t have eggs are functioning exactly as “intended,” and don’t fit this definition of “woman”
Just being the devil’s advocate here, but do instincts count as intentions? They’re powerful and we’re born with a lot of them. Like, we’re all born to not starve, but also some birds are compelled to pick up large stones and roost them as eggs indefinitely, and others to perform migrations. “Born to survive and reproduce” is biology’s motto but I think it goes beyond that to “born to do as others do”. And if we extend that to gender roles, I can see how with the inherent variation in biology some people will be born to perform an alternative gender role just like I’m compelled to pursue the same gender.
There’s hormonal, chromosomal, and gamete definitions of biological woman/man and you’ll want to be specific about which youre referencing and why it is even relevent for the text.
Hormonal woman with XY (“male”) chromosomes and no eggs: Complete Androgen Insensitivity
Chromosomal woman with no eggs and low hormones: Swyer Syndrome (born without ovaries)
Men who have eggs: Chimeras, probably, and this guy: https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-man-shocked-learn-ovaries-202311718.html
It is deeply confusing to me why people think they can define a word in a way that covers all it’s meaning and no additional ones and make fun of those who admit they can’t.
Challenge for anyone, define “to eat”. Remember, you have to cover eating soup but not drinking tea, or smoothie. But obviously, that isn’t everything.
It shouldn’t be that confusing, considering this is literally the challenge lawmakers (honest ones, as rare as they are) face.
There’s a great blog post by Neil Gaiman (despite recent revelations about his misconduct) that talks about “why we must defend icky speech”.
Long story short, the law is a blunt instrument. If you cannot clearly and accurately define the terms being used in the language of the law then you wind up with a law that can be applied beyond the intended scope. Like when you write laws about freedom of religion and then wind up with The Satanic Temple erecting statues of Baphomet in court houses. Or banning the Bible from library because it contains depictions of violence and sexual deviancy or promiscuity
These issues aren’t just academic. They have real-world consequences. Like, there have literally been legal rulings made based on the presence or absence of an Oxford comma
Is that kind of pedantry useful to the average conversation? No, of course not. But there are people trying to make laws that target women, or trans women, and if they can’t accurately define what a woman is then the law can be used to target people they didn’t want targeted.
Which is one of many reasons why trying to target trans folks with legal authority is a fool’s errand
What shouldn’t be confusing?
In this particular case the available words are easily found in a dictionary, and if it comes to law you can easily write about cisgender women and transgender women.
The problem is people that want the word women to not include trans women. They want to say trans women are not women, while also saying trans men aren’t women, and that’s why to them it is gets confusing talking about what gender is. Because once they realise they are basically saying trans people are not people, they subconsciously know they are morally wrong. And it’s confusing when you think you are doing something that is morally right, while knowing (maybe only subconsciously) you’re not.
Honestly, I don’t know what you are trying to tell me. I am not trying to be rude, I just don’t understand. But I have a point that I understood and disagree with.
Defining words isn’t the “challenge” of lawmakers. Most words used in most legal systems are undefined within it and the rest are defined by words which aren’t defined. E.g. the American legal system is built on that acknowledgement. That is why they work with case law. (Also I wasn’t talking about defining words in a legal setting. So not sure why we talk about it like this)
“capability of holding eggs” covers the vast majority of humankind. Hands are useful like that.
Limes, on the other hand…
You put the lime in the coconut
Why can’t I,
Ah, I can see Diogenes has made an impact on people.
That man is moments away from financial disaster
That man is 100% in Germany. He’s fine.
I once dropped 6 eggs while working and cried
Look man I know that my taxonomy doesn’t work… but have you considered that it was created with the intent to work?
Trying to categorize people into strict definitions for the purpose of determining their responsibilities without considering feedback from the people themselves about how they want to categorize themselves violates Kant’s categorical imperative, also known as Granny Weatherwax’s definition of sin as “when you treat people as things”:
The nature of sin
“There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example.” “And what do they think? Against it, are they?” “It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.” “Nope.” “Pardon?” “There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” “It’s a lot more complicated than that—” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—” “But they starts with thinking about people as things . . .”There’s a deep insecurity in recognizing that there aren’t “objective right answers” to a lot of things. Language is not a law, it’s a negotiated thing. Being a trans man doesn’t sunder me completely from the existence of living as a girl, and there are contexts in which my “assigned” sec does matter. The fact that abortion is utterly illegal in my state is just as harmful and terrifying to me as it is to the cis women I know.
These are people who desperately want to feel in control of the world, and the idea that they would not be able to put a person into a category based on their immediate evaluation of their sex makes them feel a loss of control. It’s attacking something of their ways of knowing, it’s an epistemological challenge that sends them reeling.
With lesbians - it’s the gold star lesbian types. They find joy in their identities as lesbians, which is great, but they treat penis in vagina sex as a contagion. It almost “horseshoe theory”‘s back into sounding like conservative Christians. They squint at some actually good critiques of porn and the way that human sexuality is marketed, and turn into a Holy War against the Y chromosome. This is not common - but it’s a very marked type of pathology. The TERFs are the type to actually be manhaters - to post things like “it’s a girl or it’s an abortion.”
They said “without excluding” not “without including”
Now say he’s a featherless (female) biped and we’re full circle
