What Is A Man Or A Woman?

At no other point in human history have the definitions of "woman" and "man," "male" and "female," "masculine" and "feminine," been more contentious than now. This book advances a pragmatic approach to the act of defining that acknowledges the important ethical dimensions of our definitional practices.

We are bring forth discussions that go to the very basic definition of being human. A new book by Edward Schiappa looks into “The Transgender Exigency”

Adding depth to the popular discussion of transgender rights
Phys.org
By Peter Dizikes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
December 17, 2021


In 2016, the state of North Carolina passed bill HB2, a controversial measure that barred most transgender people from using multiple-occupancy public restrooms. The legislation mandated that access for people was "based on their biological sex," and relied on a particular and contested definition of gender, namely, "the condition of being male or female" as stated on a birth certificate.

North Carolina did not seem to have a surfeit of restroom-use problems prior to 2016, and its law has not been replicated by any other state. Still, politicians elsewhere continue to tout HB2-style legislation, and transgender people's rights remain heavily politicized. On this front, the battle to inscribe values into law often involves defining gender in the first place.

[…]

The book, "The Transgender Exigency," is published in print form this month by Routledge. MIT Libraries has provided funding to make an open access version of it available as well. In the book, Schiappa examines transgender rights debates in multiple domains—education, sports, restrooms, the military—with a focus on the way varying definitions of gender and transgender identity have emerged.

Definitions constantly change, take the word “Transgender” fifty years ago that wasn’t really a word. Some say it was trans pioneer Virginia Prince who used the word first but that is debatable. Before the word transgender was used trans people were either called transvestism and transsexualism but the community rejected those terms because 1) They were assigned to us by the medical community and 2) They were described as fetishism and we rejected those words. We started using the word transgender as an umbrella term to describe anyone who crossed the gender normals and that was shorten to “trans” but that is even now being challenged by some who want to redefine the word to mean those who have transitioned.

An article in Them said,

By the 1990s, the distinction between “transgender” and “transsexual” began to fade. According to Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer Jonathan Dent, this was around when the wider LGBTQ+ community began to embrace “trans*” as an umbrella term that would “cover a wide range of identities” that might not fit with “traditional notions” of gender, similar to “queer” for sexuality. Despite this, the term “trans*” didn’t make it into the OED until earlier this year.

So when it comes to “women” and “men,” and “female” and “male” being questioned it is to be expected since science has now realized that gender and sex are different and “sex” is more than chromosomes.

The Transgender Exigency goes on to…

One theme emerging from that discussion, in Schiappa's book, is that attempts to craft a single overarching definition of transgender status are likely ill-advised or unrealistic—as the differing examples of higher education access and sports suggest.

"For the foreseeable future, it is neither necessary nor possible to devise a 'one-size-fits-all' definition that will meet all our needs at all times and in all contexts," Schiappa writes in the book.

I think that this is true, we are not going to one definition for “trans” and the definition will change over time. I remember when we were discussing the wording of the non-discrimination law here in Connecticut we wanted to avoid words like transgender because we knew definitions change over time. Take a look at the wording of the Connecticut law,

(21) "Gender identity or expression" means a person's gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth, which gender-related identity can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held, part of a person's core identity or not being asserted for an improper purpose.

No where in the law will you see transgender or transsexual or any other words used, it is all written in the most basic words so that the meaning will not change over time.

The Them article ends with,

Ultimately, transgender is word that denotes both a concept and a series of specific identities. In its most broad usage today, transgender means to cross the boundary of your original or assigned gender. But, not all people who may transgress this boundary identify as transgender. Regardless, trans and nonbinary people of all identities are powerful and beautiful.