Lots of People Don't Know What a Woman Is

But I do

1 Introduction

After my last article got lots of controversy, in this one, I’ll stick to something uncontroversial and explain what a woman is.

“What is a woman?” seems to be the question of our era. Ever since Matt Walsh released his very funny yet invariably idiotic documentary What Is a Woman, one hasn’t been able to talk about issues relating to transgender people for five minutes without being pelted with the question by various conservatives. Left-wingers, on the other hand, often seem unable to provide a decent definition, acting as if the request for the meaning of a basic term that most people use frequently is objectionable and that no such definition can be given. So it’s about time someone had a good definition—whether you’re left or right, surely you must agree that there is some definition of the term. Fortunately, Bentham’s Bulldog is on the case.

One important note: what a woman is is different from who we should treat as a woman for many practical purposes. For example, even if I were convinced that some transgender person was not a woman in a purely descriptive sense, I would use the pronouns that they would like me to use. It is polite. It deeply bothers trans people when their preferred pronouns are not used. Conservatives often, in response to this, claim that this is in some way an affront to the truth—but it isn’t. It’s just a basic part of being polite. To illustrate this, imagine a scenario where a person’s real name was Greg, but every day, from 1:00 to 2:00, they became deeply distressed by being called Greg and wanted to be called Gorg. If being called Greg drove them into a deep depression, even if it’s not technically their name, you should call them Gorg. This is not lying or denying the truth—it’s just being nice.

If a person wants to be called Gorg, this doesn’t require that they believe their legal name is Gorg—it just means they would like to be referred to as Gorg at that time. If there are ways that people really want to be referred, you should refer to them that way unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise. There’s also no necessary connection between the pronouns you use to describe someone and what gender you think they are.

2 A woman is not one who identifies as a woman

People may find this news shocking, but Nina Turner and those who share her views are incorrect. A woman is not just one who identifies as a woman—the definition has various problems.

1. The definition is circular. If a woman is one who identifies as a woman, then it’s one who identifies as one who identifies as a woman, which means that the definition boils down to one who identifies as one who identifies as one who identifies as one who identifies as … with an infinite number of additional repetitions, and then the word woman at the end. But this isn’t a definition—if you didn’t know what a woman was, then a definition that uses the term woman won’t help you, just as a definition of chair can’t be “a thing with chairlike properties.” So it’s not just infinitely regressive—it also is not a functional definition, because it uses the term it’s trying to define.

2. Suppose that one is mentally enfeebled and doesn’t have a concept of women. This would imply that they are not a woman.

3. Suppose someone identifies as a woman because someone paid them a lot of money to do so. This would imply that, even if they abhor she/her pronouns, have a deep voice and beard, and don’t internally think that they’re a woman, they’re actually a woman.

4. This implies that people who we don’t intuitively think of as women are, in fact, women. I’m a very big, very masculine man, and if five minutes from now I started identifying as a woman, that would not seem to make me a woman. Even if it would be convenient if people used the term woman to refer to those who call themselves women, that is just plainly not what most people mean by the term.

(Me and my very hulking, masculine frame).

3 A woman is not an adult human female

Conservatives tend to like the definition of a woman as an adult human female. But it isn’t a good definition.

1. It has to say implausible things about people who are women. Blaire White seems like a woman and Buck Angel seems like a man, but on this definition, Blaire White is a man and Buck Angel is a woman.

(A man apparently)

(A woman apparently)

2. Even conservatives often have to catch themselves to make sure when they’re using this definition. When talking about Blaire White, it’s very hard to refer to her as he. I’ve noticed conservatives repeatedly slip up before correcting themselves to use the pronouns that trans people don’t want to be referred to as.

3. There are strong pragmatic reasons not to use it, as referring to trans people with the pronouns of their birth sex tends to make them upset, and you shouldn’t upset people absent a good reason.

4. It’s just manifestly not what we mean by the term. The vast majority of people wouldn’t call Blaire White a man. If you were at the bar talking to Blaire White, you wouldn’t say “look at that man I was just talking to,” and if you were talking to Buck Angel, you wouldn’t say “look at that woman I was just talking to.” Even if you would, most people wouldn’t, obviously, so you’re just defining the word wrong. If your definition of a term is not how most people use the term, it is a bad definition.

5. If a woman is consistently interested in dating and having sex with other women, she would be either lesbian or bisexual. But one who is interested in dating and having sex with Buck Angel would not necessarily be lesbian or bisexual. Therefore, Buck Angel is not a woman. This is just trivial—a much larger portion of gay men would be interested in Buck Angel than of lesbian women.

4 A woman is someone with a sufficient number of feminine traits

I accept a social definition of woman. I think a woman is someone with a sufficient number of feminine traits. Traits are feminine in this sense if they are associated with adult human females (it must be defined this way to avoid circularity). Examples of feminine traits would include:

1. Wanting to be referred to with she her pronouns.

2. Having long hair.

3. Painting one’s nails.

4. Having a high voice.

5. Having interests that are disproportionately had by adult human females.

6. Having breasts.

7. Being born a female.

8. Wearing lipstick.

9. Wearing dresses.

Etc. There are lots of things that are disproportionately had by women—these would be feminine traits under my definition. This definition is superior.

1. It’s just more accurate. Most people do consider Blaire White a woman but wouldn’t consider me a woman if I came out, because Blaire White looks, talks, and acts like a woman, and I give off “alpha male with very high testosterone who spends all day drinking beer, being a lumberjack, lifting lots of weights, and watching professional sports” vibes.

(Me about to hang out with my lumberjack friends).

2. There are strong pragmatic reasons to use it. Referring to trans women as men makes their lives worse, and this should at least count somewhat against definitions that say that trans women aren’t women. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that the word squirrel meant computer, even if there was some pragmatic reason to do so, but if there are two definitions that are both pretty good, and one makes lots of people’s lives better, then that definition should be preferred. This doesn’t affect which definition is accurate, but it affects which one we should use.

3. Most philosophers agree with it, and they’re generally pretty smart and have thought about this issue in a more rigorous way than most of the political ideologues who talk about it.

4. This definition, unlike the definitions given by the left and the right, doesn’t require that I use the term woman to refer to people who I don’t naturally think of women. Right-wingers have to constantly correct themselves when they inevitably think that Blaire White is a woman. Left-wingers have to constantly correct themselves when they inevitably think that the equivalent of my lumberjack friends who identify as women are, in fact, women.

5. My definition best passes the dating test. The people who are romantically and sexually interested in those I would refer to as women are lesbians or straight men mostly. Very few straight men are interested in other straight men who identify as women, and it’s hard to believe that a lesbian woman would be interested in Buck Angel (my lesbians friends confirm this).

5 Reasons you might think my definition is wrong and why you’re wrong

1. You might initially worry that my definition of women would say that some people who are born women and identify as women are not women. Very butch lesbians might not be women on this definition. But if we include what a person wants to be called as one significant feminine trait and biology as another, then we can make it such that one who was born as a woman and is biologically female is a woman. So there’s no problem there. I also don’t think it’s inconceivable that some people who are born as women and identify as women are not women—though I’d use she/her pronouns to refer to them. If, for example, Buck Angel started identifying as a woman, I think he’d still be a man. But if you don’t accept that, then you can adjust the weights accordingly.

2. You might think that this is sexist. After all, it says that a woman is defined by feminine traits, and saying that women have to have feminine traits like wearing pink is sexist. But I don’t think this is true. As long as we accept that there are traditionally feminine traits, we can define being a women in terms of these. There obviously are lots of differences between men and women. This does not require saying that one is not a real woman if she has traditionally masculine interests, because she would still have enough feminine traits to be considered a woman.

3. You might claim that this denies biology. No, that’s obviously wrong. People who are a woman on my definition are not all biologically female, but they would still be women. For all the reasons I gave, we shouldn’t use the biological definition. This is like saying that those who call step-parents parents are denying biology—no, they’re just claiming that the term parent, like the term woman, doesn’t exclusively refer to biology.

4. You might worry that this definition would mean that some people who call themselves women are not women. This is true but a feature, as I argued in section 2. Based on what people actually mean by the term woman, a lumberjack who calls himself one would not be a woman. Now, I’d still refer to them with she/her pronouns if they wanted me to, but they would not be women. Remember, we’re asking how people actually use the term, not how we want them to use the term, and it’s just very clearly the case that most people wouldn’t consider lumberjacks who want to be called women, women.

5. You might worry that this definition would allow biological males into women’s sports and prisons. If a woman is someone with a lot of feminine traits, then there could be people with penises in women’s prisons. But this is wrong—we could just narrow women’s prisons to only include some women; change them from women’s prisons to some women’s prisons. If our intuitions about what a woman is differ from our intuitions about who should be in women’s prisons, then we should keep our definition of woman and just recognize that women’s prisons should not include all and only women. Btw, the biological definition seems like a pretty bad definition here too—I wouldn’t want Buck Angel in a woman’s prison or Blaire White in a man’s prison.

6. You might think that this is circular. But this is wrong—it would be circular if it included the word woman in the definition, but it doesn’t. The definition makes reference to feminine traits, which are traits had disproportionately by adult human females. So there’s no circularity there.

6 Conclusion

So, there you have it—that’s what a woman is. This definition just seems obviously better than the definitions used commonly by both the left and the right. Any definition that is circular is wrong, and any definition that says Blaire White is a man is wrong. My definition avoids both.

I was chatting with a Substacker today who accepts the definition of a woman as an adult human female, and he basically agreed that, while he didn’t agree with my definition, there wasn’t a knockdown argument against it. Because there are knockdown arguments against the other definitions that people generally give, mine is the only one left standing.

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