Defining “Woman” in Three Words
Words matter. Understanding the meaning and implications of a phrase matters, too
Let me make this perfectly queer. We are all, first and foremost human beings, people with inherent worth and dignity. Whether straight or queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, ace, two-spirit, or any of the other myriad variations of gender orientation and identity, we are human beings, people, all in this world together. I believe that each and every person is important and that people should be treated fairly and kindly. Sadly, not everyone believes this, and I’ve seen language and words twisted in very odd ways in what appears to be an attempt to construct harmful ideas.
Words have meanings, of course. Words form our expressive map to describe and interact with the world around us. As we discover more about our world, we have added new words and extended the meaning of existing words incorporating new things we have learned about our world. This has added some complexity to our language as we have to interpret words in the context in which they are used. “Charm”, for example, may refer to the power or quality of giving delight or arousing admiration, may refer to a small ornament worn on a bracelet or necklace, or may denote a variety of unstable quark having an electric charge of +2/3.
We interpret the word in the context in which it is used. Should someone complement my charm, I am unlikely to believe that they admire my collection of unstable quarks. Our interpretation necessarily depends on the context and setting in which it is used. Social interactions are unlikely to be using meanings of language normally confined to laboratory and scientific papers. Definitions and descriptions similarly use words in the sense that best relates to the common usage of the words being defined and the things being described.
Defining a woman
“Woman” is a word, with three consonants and two vowels, the English translation of the Proto-Indo-European word “*gʷén-eH₂”. The word is generally used to describe an adult human being who presents a set of observable characteristics or traits, the phenotype, corresponding to what the culture using this term considers to be in the female range.
Note that the term is typically used by other humans who lack any inherent capability to immediately examine alleles, karyotypes, or details of anatomy concealed by clothing or internal to the body, and is generally used without requiring detailed medical examination or medical laboratory analysis.
The word “woman”, like other words in English and other languages, does not predate the existence of the entity being described. The word is simply a symbolic mapping of the actual referenced entity. Words, like maps, are useful references but should not be confused with the actual entities or terrain.
One can erase or alter a map, yet the actual terrain remains unaffected. Similarly, one can attempt to alter the definition of a word in various ways, create new words, or try to erase words from the language, but the actual entities will persist.
I, for example, have a phenotype typical of an adult human being, and am typically referred to as a “woman” by others, who rather cavalierly apply the term without even insisting on genetic testing or a computer-aided tomography scan! It’s mind-boggling, I know, but some humans don’t overthink and agonize over the words they use in their everyday speech!
“A woman is an adult human female” is a problematic definition and sentence.
I see t-shirts with this statement or a variant styled as a dictionary entry, which I understand has even appeared on billboards. It sounds obvious to many folks, at first glance, but that predicate has an interesting structure. I cannot help but wonder if it was deliberate.
In English, sentences can be built from a subject and predicate. The subject, “woman” is followed by a predicate consisting of a verb, along with a direct object and modifying or qualifying adjectives. In this sentence, “adult” and “human” are placed as qualifiers before the direct object, “female”.
The sentence reduces to a statement that a woman is a qualified form of “female”, which is used as a noun here. The words “adult” and “human” are here used as qualifiers, adjectives illuminating or qualifying the following noun. Why is this problematic?
I avoid female in my own writing because it feels disrespectful, as if I’m treating the people I’m referring to as mammals but not humans. — Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University
If we examine the dictionary we can gain a sense of why using “female” as a noun in this definition of woman is troubling.
female - noun
a female animal or person:
The kitten was actually a female, not a male.
Females (= women) represent 40 percent of the country’s workforce.
used to refer to a woman in a way that shows no respect:
I suspect the doctor thought I was just another hysterical female.
When used as a noun, “female” connotes a biological category, while a “woman” is a whole human person. Emphasizing the biological category rather than their being human beings has a subtly deprecating effect. This is nothing new, of course. People have deliberately referred to women as “females” for comedic or condescending effects for a long time.
What these females have to understand is…
Why would we go to so much trouble over a female?
Oh, females are always doing that sort of thing.
These sort of phrases seem to be making misogynistic statements and use “females” deliberately rather than “women” to emphasize this. No, female as a noun referring to a person just doesn’t cut it outside of a narrow scientific or technical scope.
“A woman is an adult female human”
Here, the direct object is “human,” and I am more comfortable with that. The words “adult” and “female” are used as qualifiers and adjectives to illuminate and further define humans.
I know that I am a human being, first and foremost. Let’s look at how these qualifiers fit me in my everyday life and interactions with others.
Adult as an adjective is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “fully developed and mature” This word describes a broad category that I likely fit within, as a downright overdeveloped and certainly mature senior citizen.
Female is another adjective describing broad categories, with several definitions in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
- “of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs.”
In my day-to-day social interactions, the topic of my ability to produce eggs has never come up. It might conceivably matter if I were being considered as a donor for in-vitro fertilization procedures, but that is something I would never be discussing with strangers or casual acquaintances. I have the appropriate gross phenotype, blood chemistry, and such, but atypically yet not uncommon at my age, I am out of the gamete production business. This is one of those laboratory or scientific definitions that don’t work well in common daily use.
- “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.”
I certainly do not have a male gender identity and certainly feel that I am at the far end of the gender spectrum from male, so this applies.
- “made up of usually adult members of the female sex: consisting of females.”
This definition seems to be a bit circular and applies to groups or sets of people, so I’ll just pass on this one.
- “characteristic of girls, women, or the female sex: exhibiting femaleness.”
Well, yes, I do present pretty typical characteristics of an older woman, so this would seem to apply. This definition also has a hint of being circular and appears to be all about gender performance and roles.
- “designed for or typically used by girls or women.”
Well, no, I’m not an object, so this doesn’t apply to me.
- “engaged in or exercised by girls or women.”
Yes, I engage in some female pursuits and activities, but, this feels a bit stereotypical, another reference to gender roles.
- “Having a quality (such as small size or delicacy of sound) sometimes associated with the female sex.”
I suppose so. I’m moderately small compared to many of my friends. I’m not sure my ancient voice is all that delicate anymore, and the choir director is likely to agree!
As I am neither a rhyme nor a hose coupling, the remaining definitions certainly don’t apply, either.
The noun “Human” seems appropriate enough, as we are first and foremost human beings. Human as a noun is defined as
- “a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens): a person: MAN sense 1c — usually plural.”
Man in this reference is defined as:
- “a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) that is anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished especially by notable development of the brain with a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning, and is the sole living representative of the hominid family.”
This is also a broad definition intended to identify a category of beings. While it does exclude some folks I know who are not bipedal and others who have a great deal of difficulty with articulate speech and abstract reasoning, as a category, we recognize that some individuals may not fully conform to the definition. As with other words that broadly describe categories, it is possible to see past the limitations of the dictionary and grant others the benefit of the doubt concerning membership in the category of “man.”
In the social environment
Within our normal social activities out in the world, the details of our zygote production capabilities do not typically come up. I know that the topic has never come up when ordering breakfast, and even in as intimate and personal an activity as using a restroom, I have never had to explain such details of personal biology to anyone else. Certainly, I have never had to provide a cheek swab and blood sample to a random stranger on the street before they would regard me as a woman.
In the social environment, we rely on the same interpretations for ‘woman’ and ‘female’ as we have used for millennia in categorizing people we encounter, estimating by gender performance, the gross physical appearance, wardrobe, and movement a person presents. We have no real insight into whether or not other individuals have a functioning SRY gene or a particular karyotype. We don’t have access to an inventory of organs for every other person, nor do we pull a medical case history from every individual we meet. We rely on the social definitions of these words in describing ourselves and the world rather than the variations we might use in the confines of the laboratory.
Woman? Very simple, say those who like simple answers: She is a womb, an ovary; she is a female: this word is enough to define her.
— Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, 1949 (2011 translation)
This is a simple answer. It is also effectively useless in the social environment unless one chooses to leave a trail of outraged people in their wake. This sort of reductionist answer, limiting the concept of a woman to reproductive function, offends when actively applied in the social environment. It assumes a degree of intimacy hardly warranted for casual social interaction.
From a man’s mouth, the epithet “female” sounds like an insult; but he, not ashamed of his animality, is proud to hear: “He’s a male!”
- Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, 1949 (2011 translation)
Confining the definition of a woman to her sex is insulting. A woman is, first and foremost, a human being with all the glorious incongruities, foibles, and majesty that come with being human.
“Woman: adult female human.”
For those who must have a simple answer, who are capable of understanding that we all live within a social environment and not a laboratory and thus should use socially oriented definitions of these words, this becomes a marginally acceptable definition. It is also similar to the definition the linguists at Merriam-Webster have come up with, “an adult female person”, and the Oxford definition of “an adult female human being.” These dictionary definitions of “woman” as a category are necessarily terse and broadly descriptive yet limiting. They hardly constitute a checklist for who does or does not qualify.
I don’t care for the simple sound-bite-sized definitions. Humans are amazing complex, and the vast category of women within humanity holds a world of variations and differences. There is far more to any woman than a few words can describe, from our paths through life, our particular lived experiences, our associations with others, to our deepest thoughts and desires. We are none of us the same, and none of us can be held in toto by a few words in a dictionary entry.
We always have to keep in mind that words form our expressive map to describe and interact with the world around us. As we discover more about our world, we have added new words and extended the meaning of existing words to incorporate new things we have learned about our world.
Further reading
Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, Editions Gallimard Paris 1949, Vintage Books May 2011 (English Translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, 2009)
Alex Byrne, “Are women adult human females?”, Springer Nature B.V. 2020, published online: 6 January 2020 https://philarchive.org/archive/BYRAWA
Maggie Heartsilver (pseudonym), “Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”, “Journal of Controversial Ideas”, published: 25 April 2021. Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”https://journalofcontroversialideas.org › pdf
Mikkola, Mari, “Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/feminism-gender/
No comments:
Post a Comment