this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
1080 points (94.1% liked)
Political Memes
5511 readers
748 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a recursive statement which gets us nowhere. We need to establish that there is some kind of basis, which is the previous definition.
Whether or not the statement is recursive, it is a basis. I see no valid reason to define it more rigorously. I identify as a woman, therefore I am. I identify as bisexual, therefore I am. Those are labels for nebulous social constructs, and don't need to be rigorous definitions. Any basis beyond "because I say so" would be inherently exclusionary. The entire debate over what defines a woman or a man is a pointless affair which harms transgender people and gender nonconforming cisgender people alike. I believe we should be abolishing gender, not trying to establish a basis for what makes someone woman or man enough. It's all made up.
My main point being: Gender is a social construct, and doesn't fit the complex reality of lived human experience. Let people define their gender in their own terms, for those that desire a label, and otherwise abolish it.
Why do we need to establish a basis if it's all made up anyway? For what purpose?
Because we use words to identify things.
Okay, so then why do we have a word for woman? What is the intention of that category? Is it really necessary to define anyway? If not, why does it matter what a woman is except its what she calls herself?
I don't think you mean it's a recursive statement, are you trying to say it's a circular definition? If we instead changed the statement to "A woman is any person who identifies as such," thus only using the word 'woman' once, does this fix your criticism of this definition? Does this mean you no longer need an arbitrary basis to define women?
It's an acceptable definition. A circular definition would be "A woman is a woman." Instead, she's defining a woman as someone who identifies as a woman. That's not circular. You just don't like it for whatever reason (you have yet to define what a woman is yourself despite thinking a different basis can be established).
This isn't a programming class, dude.
I mean, are you worried about definitions that are circular because A depends on B depends on C depends on A? No, you're not. No one has ever complained about this.