What is a female??

[We Never Know]

With all the transgender threads on the forum, can we clear up what a female is? What makes someone a female?

To me a female in general is a person that can bear offspring, has ovaries, has periods, experiences menopause, has a vagina, etc etc.

What is a female in your words or by a definition of your choice?

 

[SomeRandom]

A miserable pile of secrets. But enough talk, have at you!!!





Oh my apologies. It seems this is the definition of a man, not a woman.
Continue on your way, folks.

 

[Estro Felino]

A vagina haver.

 

[exchemist]

With all the transgender threads on the forum, can we clear up what a female is?

To me a female in general is a person that can bear offspring, has ovaries, has periods, experiences menopause, has a vagina, etc etc.

What is a female in your words or by a definition of your choice?

A female is the sex, in organisms that employ sexual reproduction, that produces the ovum gamete.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

 

[Revoltingest]

Female:
A man, but without reason &accountability.

 

[Soandso]

With all the transgender threads on the forum, can we clear up what a female is? What makes someone a female?

To me a female in general is a person that can bear offspring, has ovaries, has periods, experiences menopause, has a vagina, etc etc.

What is a female in your words or by a definition of your choice?

What about someone who is intersex who may not meet all of those qualifications? What if someone has both a vagina and a penis? Testes and a womb?

I have a friend who is intersex. What gender should I refer to them as?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

With all the transgender threads on the forum, can we clear up what a female is? What makes someone a female?

To me a female in general is a person that can bear offspring, has ovaries, has periods, experiences menopause, has a vagina, etc etc.

What is a female in your words or by a definition of your choice?

One of only two possible choices for those who can only imagine black and white, yes and no, short and tall, stupid or smart. For such people, none of these things can possibly exist on a spectrum -- there's no gray, no maybe, no "average height," no "moderate intelligence." You get two choice and two choices only -- pick one.

In that case, a female would be the ovum producer. (By the way, your other definitions leaves out female animals. Birds and reptiles don't have periods, menopause, vaginas and such.)

This assumes that what makes a person uniquely themselves (the mind/brain) plays no part in their sexuality -- that it doesn't count in the least.

And yet, as Descartes said, I know I exist because I can think about me existing. So what do we call a person who thinks she is a female but does not produce ova? Does such a person have no right even to their own identity? Are you the identity that other people assign to you, or are you your own person?

 

[ChristineM]

A woman gives birth to a baby, and afterwards, the doctor comes in and he says, "I have to tell you something about your baby."

The woman sits up in bed and says, "What's wrong with my baby doctor? What's wrong?"

The doctor says, "Well, now, nothing is wrong, exactly, but your baby is a little bit different. Your baby is a hermaphrodite."

The woman is confused. "A hermaphrodite..... what's that?"

The doctor replies, "Well, it means your baby has the.......er......features....of a male and a female."

The woman turns pale. She says, "Oh MY GOD! you mean it has a penis..... AND a brain.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

S -- HE
WO -- MAN
FE -- MALE
HU -- MAN
PER -- SON

I don't know that that displays any linguist pattern or not, but it certainly is interesting.

 

[Estro Felino]

I think that words can have a biological and a cultural meaning.

Biologically, a female is a person who has two ovaries, a uterus and a vagina.
Whether she is sterile, or not. It doesn't matter.

Culturally, the term female changes a lot, according to the culture of reference.

For instance, according to the popular culture of Southern Italy, femininity and masculinity all depend on sex. On who you have sex with.
Not on appearance and manners, since those are very deceiving and phony.
If you are a muscular, hairy hunk, a body builder who is gay, you will never be considered a male in Southern Italy.
If worse, you are a bottom gay, you are considered a female. A priori female, because you are possessed (anally) by another man.
I need to be blunt and outspoken. We are all adults here.
If you are effeminate cis man but have sex with women all the time, you're considered male. A real manly, masculine, virile man. No matter how effeminate you look or sound.

I know it's very backward, homophobic and matriarchal....
but there's much worse.

 

[wellwisher]

A female produces eggs.

Say we have 100 females, which all produce eggs for reproduction. This can are confirmed clinically. It is Halloween and all 100 females decide to play dress up and pretend to be different characters. These range from animals, cartoon characters, celebrities, mystical characters, super heroes, mythological, religious and scary characters, with a few even cross sexual drag queens; exaggerated female surfaces. Does pretend and makeup change that fact that they all produce eggs? Or is the idea of eggs too deep and clear cut, such that judging by the shallow surface is easier but confusing.

When I was younger there were boys and girls and men and women. There were not all homogeneous in terms of the surface, since they came in different sizes, shapes, dispositions, personalities, etc. But these differences on the surface did not define a new species or a new sex. Why so much confusion, today?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

With all the transgender threads on the forum, can we clear up what a female is? What makes someone a female?

To me a female in general is a person that can bear offspring, has ovaries, has periods, experiences menopause, has a vagina, etc etc.

What is a female in your words or by a definition of your choice?

I always try to avoid definitions as if they always state objective facts.

Rather words are 3 factors, a meaning, a sign and a referent.
The problem is that not all referents are objective. And that some referents are in effect not concrete, but rather abstracts and sometimes categories.
So in the weird sense you can get a word that have several referents as concrete, abstract and category.

So a female is at least a category of several concretes, but in practice for humans also several abstract referents for behavior.
But the problem is that some people reduces the complexity of biology away and in effect reduces a female down to XX for which that is not always the case and only focus on objective sex traits for reproduction.
And in effect science has moved on from that model of a simple fact as per XX, because it is more complicated than that.

So here it is as a complex set of behaviors in brains.
If you take a sufficient number of humans for a sufficient number of cognitive brain scans/tests, you can with 96% probability determine the sex for the simple model of male or female, it seems.
But it is false, because for the 2 cluster for outcomes, male and female, you have a set of humans that doesn't match those 2 clusters. Trans-people, they have brains that doesn't match the 2 clusters for male and female as per sex as per XY and XX.
The problem is that science is never absolute and can change over times as for what is known.

In effect XY and XX is old science, but some people assume that scientific models and theories are absolute and can't change with new data, but they can in some cases.
In effect for the joke of this:
"Rather, as German physicist Max Planck somewhat cynically declared, science advances one funeral at a time. Planck noted “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”"
That is not just science as such. It is also people in general for the broader category of culture.

So here it is for you, We Never Know and I. We are both humans, but that is not just concrete objective facts. Rather we as all humans are also products of limited variations, but that can't be reduced down to neat objective facts of Y/not Z or Z/not Y a relevant for this game of what a human is.

 

[Twilight Hue]

What about someone who is intersex who may not meet all of those qualifications? What if someone has both a vagina and a penis? Testes and a womb?

I have a friend who is intersex. What gender should I refer to them as?

A third natural sex. I think there are actually three.

 

[Estro Felino]

A female produces eggs.

Say we have 100 females, which all produce eggs for reproduction. This can are confirmed clinically. It is Halloween and all 100 females decide to play dress up and pretend to be different characters. These range from animals, cartoon characters, celebrities, mystical characters, super heroes, mythological, religious and scary characters, with a few even cross sexual drag queens; exaggerated female surfaces. Does pretend and makeup change that fact that they all produce eggs? Or is the idea of eggs too deep and clear cut, such that judging by the shallow surface is easier but confusing.

When I was younger there were boys and girls and men and women. There were not all homogeneous in terms of the surface, since they came in different sizes, shapes, dispositions, personalities, etc. But these differences on the surface did not define a new species or a new sex. Why so much confusion, today?

Do you know why?
It's all based upon appearance, now.

On visual aspects of life. Homo sapiens sapiens has turned into Homo videns.

But actually during sex, either you are penetrated or you penetrate.
It's all binary.

 

[Soandso]

A third natural sex. I think there are actually three.

Ah. So then how should I refer to my friend who fits within this category if I can't call them him or her? Xim/xer? How do I decide how to refer to this friend accodding to this third gender?

 

[ChristineM]

But actually during sex, either you are penetrated or you penetrate.

That's during intercourse, it is not necessarily to have full penetrative contact during sex

 

[Estro Felino]

That's during intercourse, it is not necessarily to have full penetrative contact during sex

The fact we are 8 billion on this Earth suggests me that vaginal intercourse greatly prevails.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

A female produces eggs.

Say we have 100 females, which all produce eggs for reproduction. This can are confirmed clinically. It is Halloween and all 100 females decide to play dress up and pretend to be different characters. These range from animals, cartoon characters, celebrities, mystical characters, super heroes, mythological, religious and scary characters, with a few even cross sexual drag queens; exaggerated female surfaces. Does pretend and makeup change that fact that they all produce eggs? Or is the idea of eggs too deep and clear cut, such that judging by the shallow surface is easier but confusing.

When I was younger there were boys and girls and men and women. There were not all homogeneous in terms of the surface, since they came in different sizes, shapes, dispositions, personalities, etc. But these differences on the surface did not define a new species or a new sex. Why so much confusion, today?

Not all females as adults produce eggs. Learn to check for the facts, since you are so hot for evidence and facts.

 

[Father Heathen]

But actually during sex, either you are penetrated or you penetrate.
It's all binary.

What about frotting or tribadism?