"What is a woman?"

This is going off the rails. Locking.

My personal favorite response to that question is “a person who covers their drink when you enter the room”
- I’m stealing both of these.
  Also trying to workshop::
  Oh they don’t have them on your planet?
  
  I like it, but that's like a 1960s sitcom tier insult. It's too cute to infuriate.
  
  how about, "a person who doesn't want to have sex with you."
- "Someone who chooses the bear over you."

I like "Well, I'm a straight male, so anything that turns me on is a woman, ma'am."
- Name totally checks out.
- Ooooh, that's so subtle and brilliant, they'll be destroyed for life! Added bonus is it zings for all the alphabet.

Seems like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
They're not honestly curiously asking anything.
- They tried to do a gotcha. Badly. And got gotcha'ed for it.
- One question can't be "sealioning". Sure they aren't curiously looking for an answer, but that's not what sealioning is. Click your own link.
  
  I saw a further video of them doing this type of thing before.
  No need to be a douchebag.

I saw this clip. It was amazing the way that kid just dismisses Charlie Kirk with his response and how he just walked away.
Kirk's face was in shock, cuz he got owned so bad. Mofo couldn't think of anything smart to say except something from another right wing grifter. 🤦
- The right wing really capitalized on the left's good faith approach, for a very long time. Now that younger people that grew up on the internet are a much larger component of the left's base, they don't seem to know how to "own us" anymore. We're used to this sea lioning bullshit, and won't put up with it.
- Thank you for the context. I never know what the youtube bigots look like.
- The craziest thing to me was watching that encounter and then seeing Kirk come away thinking he looked good
- He did get owned - but just to put things in perspective, conservatives who saw the video think he owned the kid, saying the ‘kid didn’t know what to say and so just walked away’.
  These guys are so deep into their fantasies that they don’t see things the way sensible people do. At all. It’s important to keep in mind when talking to them that they are living in a totally different world.

is this a valid response?
- Nah. There are plenty of women who do not make my dick hard. To paraphrase Richard Pryor, I wouldn't fuck Melania Trump with your dick.
  I have no idea why anyone wanted to see her naked. Bleah.
  
  She used to be much more attractive. Look up the picture of her and Donald with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and you can see it.
- Only if you're a himbo on the level of Johnny Bravo.
  
  I can only dream of that.

The ftm equivalent is "What is a man?" And the proper response is "A miserable little pile of secrets".
- But enough talk... Have at you!

Alternative responses:
"Yeah, it makes sense that you wouldn't know."
"A human. Did you seriously not know that?"
"Are you coming on to me?"
- Are you coming on to me?”
  I've actually used "I'm flattered, but I'm not into guys, sorry." and when immediately he got pissy and insisted he isn't gay and wasn't asking me out, "It's okay, you don't have to hide who you are, I'm simply not interested." and at that point my patience and certainty they wouldnt try to deck me were out the door, along with myself.
  A musical theater performance was probably not the best place for the guy to be attempting to ragebait.
  10/10 responses, I'd add in "If you have to ask, maybe you should get out more" which I guess is similar to "Makes sense you wouldn't know"
- Your first option is best. Insulting comeback that isn't open-ended. It ends it so you can move on. The other options are asking for a response, including the OP one.
- You could always go jeopardy style of "what is someone who doesn't want to sleep with you"

Is the answer not “A miserable little pile of secrets”?
- Then men are no different.
- I'd say "A slightly less miserable pile of secrets because they are generally more in tune with their emotions" but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue
- I believe that would in fact be a man.
  But enough talk. Have at you!

Personally I think the "woke" definition of a woman (if there even is one) is much more straightforward than the alternative. This idea that the left "can't define a woman" is absurd projection - the very people who ask this question are the ones who can't define it without having to make 100s of exceptions.
- yep "someone who identifies as a woman" doesn't need to have caveats. every biological argument has to have many.
  
  Im trans, but this only works if you never rule out outliers, which is something a scientific term like female and its counterpart should be doing. There is a normal or default or whatever word youd prefer

- Yes. But imagine the screaming if they hadn't been allowed in.
  
  Okay. I imagined it. It gave me happiness. What next?
- Covertly donating to Democratic party by buying the merch?

Language is an imperfect medium with inherent limitations, intended to convey thoughts from the mind of one person to another. Thus, context is critical. The tragedy of humans not being telepathic.
A large portion of this argument is between two factions trying to have a complex discussion regarding at least four different things using only two words; male and female. The discussion however expands to biology, stereotypes, gender norms, rights, etc.
To me, everyone arguing is a moron for trying to have a discussion without first agreeing on axioms and vocabulary. Male and female are not enough words for a discussion involving this many variables.
It's like, hey, please reconcile general relativity, quantum mechanics, and metaphysics using only X and Y. It just screams absurdity.
- You might want to look at Wittgenstein.
  In his early work he went hard on this approach, and insisted that "hey philosophy is dumb", just agree on the definitions and then chase through the implications.
  In his later work he realised that this is impossible. Words have contextual meaning that is revealed by their usage and you can't nail down full and complete definitions in advance.
  What you're talking about absolutely can and will never work. We have tried it and seen it fail.
  
  The general point is that the "what is a woman" question is still word games rather than an honest attempt at finding truth and understanding
  
  Yes exactly. "What is a chair?" These semantic boundaries may seem annoying and pedantic to explore at first, but can be pretty interesting once examined especially at a neurolinguistic level.
- Yeah, let's spend the next 3 days hashing out all our vocabulary so we could have an argument...
  I get the idea and I agree that people who won't come to the same understanding of words and concepts cannot have a discussion about a topic that uses those words and concepts. But if you think anyone is going to sit down and be "First we must get our axioms and vocabularies in sync" you're dreaming.
  A practical approach is to assume people have roughly the same understanding of vocabulary so you could start the discussion. When discrepancies present themselves that's when you shift to finding a common understanding of axioms, concepts, words or whatever you want to call them. Morons are the people who refuse compromise on anything they believe in (including axioms and vocabulary).

It isn't for me to define, and there are more important things in life to focus on.
- I used to think 2 x chromosomes. Clearly I was wrong.
  
  What if they have trisomy or monosomy?
  What if they have a mutation and they don't have the correct genes in their X and Y Chromosomes?
  What if gender (a social construct) and biological sex aren't actually the same thing?
  What about just let people be because it's none of your goddamned business how they want to express themselves, who they love, and why?

A "woman" is a label. It's a social construct.
As such, while you and I may have some idea of what we think a woman is, it's not really something that can be given a concrete definition the way these people seem to think it needs.
The meta of gender is simply the way we see eachother and not something that can be measured. It's felt.
It's a lot like trying to build a concrete definition for intelligence. What is intelligence? How can it be measured? IQ tests are one way, but they're pretty much universally regarded as inaccurate at best.
Whatever intelligence is, these rage baiters don't have it.
- I agree. the only thing that we can say scientifically is that someone has a specific amount of traits we have associated with the social label 'woman'. These traits are biologically speaking primarily related to reproduction and which role one would be able to fulfill the most effectively. Which does leave room for being able to fulfill both reproductive roles in some way or another.
  Our social needs to mark ourselves and others as one of the two is deeply ingrained, but as it's such a grey area under the hood it would make sense to have a more fluid relationship with the topic.
  
  Gender helps when the surgeon cuts into the abdomen and wants better than 50/50 odds on what to expect on the other side.

Reminds me of this https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/master-debater-both-guy
- "master debator" kind of sounds like masturbater
  
  A cunning linguist once said

Here is the answer to that question:
Until recently, a woman was defined as someone who was born a biological female.
Now, as definitions change, a woman is defined as a person who identifies with the role of the previous definition of woman.
Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
- That's not what the definition has changed to. Women can be women without identifying with that traditional role. A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. I am a woman, and I certainly don't identify with the role of a traditional woman.
  
  I’d quibble slightly and argue that there’s a strong case that gender is also performative so if society generally deems you a woman, you’re also a woman.
  
  A woman is someone who identifies as a woman.
  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.
- "Biological female" has always been a construct, not a social construct but a scientific one.
  Little known fact is that "gender" was adopted initially into parlance to try and rope off a certain arbitrary binary definition of sex before it was applied to social category. Biologically speaking "man" and "woman" was being shown to be way more vibes based than originally thought. An individuals chromosomes, hormonal balance, reproductive capability, outwardly visible genetalia and secondary sex characteristics were way more variable than a strict binary to the point where sex really was being looked at as more of spectrum. In a last ditch effort to preserve the idea of a sex binary the idea of a sort of model man and woman was derived as "gender" where everyone who didn't fit neatly into those arbitrary boxes was looked at as essentially a deviation from the norm instead of basically just being normal in and of themselves. Basically 2 out of every hundred people are born with some sort of intersex trait and there are likely more since a lot of people learn they have some sort of intersex trait by accident. Like there are "biological" men out there who have uteruses or overies just floating amongst their other organs completely undiscovered until they get some kind of medical imaging done that realizes that it's not just a benign tumour or a wonky bit of intestine.
  When people say the the definition is a wobbly gray area they fully include the biological component. Even if you are talking about cis people there is no all encompassing biological archetype which doesn't exclude some cis women.
- identifies with the role of the previous definition of woman.
  So what is the present definition of a woman?
  
  A person who identifies with the role of someone who is historically a biological female

"I'll take someone who wouldn't talk to you if they were trapped in an elevator with you for $500 Alex."

In my experience it's so they can listen to exactly nothing you say in response and then say "oh you've totally been brainwashed" before refuting points I never even came close to making.

"Someone you've never had consensual sex with."

jordan petersons response, is literally perfect. "marry one and find out"
Unfortunately most of his braincells seem to no longer exist, but he has short second winds from time to time i suppose.
- Literally perfect? Because you can't marry a man? Only lesbian marriages are valid?
  
  the question was literally "what is a woman" this is matt walsh we're talking about here, not only are lesbian/gay marriages completely irrelevant here, you're giving way too much credit to matt walsh.

What do you guys think a woman is?
- Like a dude, but a chick.
  
  The real answer is always in the comments.
- it's someone who identifies as a woman.
  if you meet someone who says their name is Jack, do you ask for government issue identification? no, them telling you is enough, because that's all you need for social interaction.
  same with gender. you don't need to check their genitals. if it looks like they're presenting as a woman, they're most likely a woman.
  in fact this is what you do on a daily basis. if you see a woman across the street wearing something ridiculous and turn to your friend and say "look at that woman over there" it's not because you confirmed whether she has a vagina or not, but because she's presenting as a woman. social cues, not biological.
  and if you make the wrong assumption when talking to or about someone and they correct you, and you say sorry and refer to them as a woman going forward. really not a problem in real life. just chodes who never have contact with actual women because they're disgusting creepy weirdos.
  
  Yes exactly and this is similar to what I tell older conservatives. It doesn't matter if there's 70 genders or what a woman is or any of that. They don't have to know all that if it's overwhelming. They only need to know what pronouns someone wants to be called. That's it. Respect that, and they don't have to talk about any of that other stuff or worry about it. It's none of their business and that's okay.
  Whenever they get all bent out of shape I just redirect them back to that. Because I'm sorry, some of these people are in their seventies. They literally cannot rewire the scaffolding in their brain to delete the gender binary that they constantly referred to during their lives. It would be like breaking your arm and rehealing it at that age. We don't really need them to understand, we just need them to be respectful.
- Asking this is like when people debate what is and isn't a sandwich. Everyone knows that a sub and a club are sandwiches right? Bread and filling, straightforward. But it's a big world with many foods. Is a hot dog a sandwich? A pizza? What about a taco? A falafel wrap? It's not exactly clear.
  People spend tons of effort trying to come up with simple definitions that conclusively define sandwiches. But these inevitably lead to consequences that just intuitively don't make sense to people. Now a deep dish pizza is a quiche, pop tart is a toast, a burrito is a calzone until you take a bite at which point it becomes a quiche. Your simple definition is just not useful in the real messy world of bready foods.
  At the end of the day, you have to accept that sandwich is a loose, vague term that cannot accurately categorize all food ever, and mostly it's whatever people say it is.
  The point is, gender and sex are like sandwiches.
  
  Sex is like a sandwich, in that they're both appealing and I'm occasionally ravenous for one of them.
  Gender is just some arbitrary noise to me. I can take it or leave it.
  
  gender and sex are like sandwiches
  I give you a hamburger. Your gender explodes into a million vaginas on a million dicks on a million vaginas on a million dicks into infinity. The vaginas and dicks sing a note, a perfect E flat, and your genders agree. Your dick and vagina take a bite of the hamburger together. A single tear rolls down the vagina and the dick. I give you a hamburger. Your gender is screaming.
  https://youtu.be/nfdEdE96En0?si=5xBg9El4wj-CF7DS
  
  Classic vid that discusses your point:
  https://youtu.be/O9ak89FwYeI
- An intentionally vague term; we have known that a binary gender system is faulted at least ever since the late 1700s as that is when the term "intersex" was added to the Oxford English dictionary. The concept of intersex Highlights the vagueness of both man and woman. Like most intentionally vague terms, we like to pretend to have a clear grasp of what it is as the admission of the vague nature harms the utility of the word. In most cases, an precis Definition of, e.g. culture or woman, carries less utility than the share vague understanding of the term. In other words, trying to define the word is taking part in an effort that goes against the point of having words, being able to effectively communicate ideas.
  Ofc, defining a woman within a conversation or a paper for the sake of clear communication is a good idea in some situations. Just like defining a dice to have 6 sides makes sense in the manual of a game but it doesn't make sense outside of these cases.
- First you have to ask what gender is. Gender is a set of behaviors expected of people of a given sex.
  Then, you have to ask what it means to belong to a given gender. You don't have to, and can't, meet all the behavioral expectations of a given gender. Those expected behaviors change over time. People of all sexes have interests that cross gendered lines because gender is not perfectly correlated to specific behaviors - instead it is a broad notion of behaviors that are considered to correlate with a given sex.
  Additionally, there exist people who are not really male or female due to genetic differences. But, society typically treats them as the gender typically assigned to the sex they most resemble. So, since they do not have the "correct" sex and may not participate in the "correct" behaviors to belong to a given gender, their assigned gender is arbitrarily determined.
  Those 3 things establish that gender is: not biological, not behaviorally determined, and somewhat arbitrary.
  Since gender isn't biological, woman =/= female person
  Since gender isn't behaviorally determined, woman =/= someone who engages in typically feminine behaviors
  Since gender is at least partially arbitrary, woman =/= a factual category that can be determined by material features of a person
  If women don't have to be female or engage in typically feminine activities and can't be defined by physical or genetic characteristics, then what is left? Someone who identifies as a woman - who wants to be treated as a woman by others.
  "But that's circular!!!" It actually isn't. "Woman" as a category confers societal roles and expected behaviors onto a person, "woman" as a person just means someone who belongs to the category "Woman". The only determining factor is being a member of the category. It'd be like asking "what is a boy scout?", getting "a member of the boy scouts" as an answer, and then being upset that there isn't some fundamental universal law being appealed to when classifying people as boy scouts.
  
  This, so much this. Id probably opt for different semantics for woman as person and woman as category, but holy shit someone gets it
- Like a man but wo
- another clump of cells
- An unnecessarily complicated chore.

The proper response to Charlie Kirk saying,'I'm married to a woman' is 'How long did the Koch's make her agree to it?'

Also watch if someone asks you what theft is. (Stupid taxation is theft with no good faith in sight.)
- It's not going to win any bad faith arguments, but then again not much does.
  
  also the white circle represents the value you get from living in a society supported by the taxes you pay
- When a Conservative doesn't pay their fair share of tax and uses loopholes and malicious tactics to ensure they don't pay their fair share of taxes
- I haven't encountered that one yet, but it doesn't shock me that they try it.

What is a woman? A fuzzy type.
Same as many many many many other categories previously thought crisp. Simple example: "living thing".
Beat the right with fuzzy facts and fuzzy logic.

And then the bullies kick your ass.

I do not have to have human rights? 😢

"Metaphysics of gender." Ppfffff hahahaha haha hahahaha. XD
- What exactly would you call a philosophical discussion on the topic of what a gender means if not the metaphysics of gender?
  
  It's a fair criticism to be honest. But, I can't think of a reasonable alternative. When I support trans-individuals, usually I argue from the brain-body mapping perspective as 1) It's not based on feelings as we know that there are people whose brain mapping does not correspond with their body mapping, and 2) There's a lot of evidence to support that perspective.
  A lot of people aren't just going to get "What it feels like to a man/woman.", and personally, while I identify as a man solely for my parts, I just simply lack what it means not because it supposedly matches me, but because I have no feelings associated with gender. And here's the kicker, I wouldn't understand dysphoria when called the wrong gender either. For example, my mother has always addresses me as a male because I was born with a penis and all that jazz, but recently a few months ago, in a endearing way, she told me that I was like a daughter to her, which I take to mean that I give off that energy to her. Didn't really felt off or anything either.
  
  I would just say "concept of gender".

Charlie Kirk is married to a woman. Epic own, buddy 😂

- Go ahead and define a woman for us then. Since you seem to know the definition.
- A man is a person of male gender identity, i.e. identifying as a male
  A woman is a person of female gender identity, i.e. identifying as a female
  That's all there is to it, since the very concept of gender identity revolves around a purely social phenomenon of gender - which many people try to forcefully connect to sex, which is not the same thing and won't ever be.

- Oh look, an ignorant person who thinks trans 12-year-olds regularly get surgery rather than puberty blockers and maybe hormones.
  But your not caring about children committing suicide is noted.
  
  Hey, if it indeed reduces suicide, fine—even more reason for my indifference in them going for such procedures.
  
  Among the 104 youths (13-20 years) who participated, 63 were transmasculine individuals (60.6%), 27 transfeminine individuals (26%), 10 nonbinary or gender fluid individuals (9.6%), and 4 individuals who didn't know or did not respond to the gender identity question (3.8%).
  60.6% transgirls?
  Sylvia Plath on being a girl: https://youtu.be/1pTPuoGjQsI?t=982 (cued)
- Gender is performative. Race is not.
  
  Which is why we celebrate Jenner and we scorn Dolezal.