Toxic Gender Philosophy

[Consul]

"Cultural studies is both an intellectual and a political project. Neither half of this equation is optional. Perhaps more crucially, neither takes precedence over the other. Instead, these two spheres of activity are mutually constitutive of one another.…

(Rodman, Gilbert B. Why Cultural Studies? Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. pp. 40-1)

Neo-Marxism hasn't been the only formative influence on the development of cultural studies, but it's the central one. There (still) is the Frankfurt School with its Critical Theory (which celebrates its centennial this year!), and there was the Birmingham School (1964-2002), which is the birthplace of institutionalized cultural studies as we know it today.

"Critical theory aims not merely to describe social reality, but to generate insights into the forces of domination operating within society in a way that can inform practical action and stimulate change. It aims to unite theory and practice, so that the theorist forms “a dynamic unity with the oppressed class” ([Max Horkheimer] 1937a [1972, 215]) that is guided by an emancipatory interest – defined negatively as an interest in the “abolition of social injustice” (ibid., 242) and positively as an interest in establishing “reasonable conditions of life” (ibid., 199). “The theory never aims simply at an increase of knowledge as such,” but at “emancipation from slavery” (1937b [1972, 246]) in the broadest sense of eliminating all forms of domination."

Critical Theory: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

[Consul]

Gender studies is part of the vast field of cultural studies, whose scientific status is questionable, mainly because of its political bias. In cultural studies in general and in gender studies in particular we find a mixture of (left-wing) politics, philosophy, and "soft" science (sociology, psychology).

In the philosophy of social science there is an ongoing debate over the notorious opposition of explaining and understanding, and the corresponding opposition of "hard" or positivistic (strictly empirical/nomological/explanative/quantitative) social science and "soft" or antipositivistic (hermeneutical/interpretative/qualitative) social science. Postmodern cultural/social theorists loathe scientific positivism.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't subsume gender studies under anthropology, but I get your general point.

I agree, actually: even anthropology is more rigorous than Gender Studies. It has no discipline of its own at all. It's just an ideology attempting to present as "academic."

There is a hierarchy of sciences in the intuitive sense that—regarding their respective institutional process/product structures—some are "harder" or "more scientific" (particularly, more objective) than others, with the "softest" or "least scientific" (particularly, least objective) ones bordering on or overlapping with pseudosciences.

Yes, that's the right way to see it, I think. There are no absolutely-hard sciences; there are only ones that are more or less relatively-hard when compared to softer ones.

However, when it comes to giving a precise meaning to the hard-soft distinction that goes beyond intuitive plausibility, things get complicated.

I think generalizations are quite possible, actually. And I've mentioned a basis for such: when a subject has a discipline of its own, a special method intrinsic to it, a close relationship with evidence, observation and data, quantifiability, testability, repeatability, controls, modesty in its conclusions that resists going beyond the data, and so on, and a high degree of demonstrated reliability in real life, then that's clearly a firmer discipline than comparatively softer ones.

"The biological sciences had in most cases intermediate values between the physical and the social, with bio-molecular disciplines appearing harder than zoology, botany or ecology. In multivariable analyses, most of these parameters were independent predictors of the hierarchy, even when mathematics and the humanities were included."

That's a tidy summary of the situation.

Physics can be "harder" because much of it depends less on the unpredictable "human" element. Chemistry, likewise. Biology is necessarily involved with life forms, which don't always behave according to lab conditions or prediction, but still have some regularity. But when we get into the social, the psychological, the arts, things get "soft" fast. Human beings are not machines, not calculations, not rigid data: they do things with a large measure of unpredictability. They have motives. They make choices. They swerve. Their comings-together catalyze reactions in unpredictable ways. At that level, the data is harder to confirm, less reproducible, more general than specific, requiring of interpretation by other humans, and so forth. That all introduces a much higher level of variability into the situation.

But what of something like Gender Studies? Even in its chosen sobriquet, it declares the conclusion it demands before any evidence at all comes in: it is a fallacy of "assuming the conclusion," right out of the gate. And it runs head-on into the much-harder science of Biology, which shows that sexual reproduction is inherently, non-negotiably binary, and that asexual reproduction is impossible to human beings. It has no evidence for its assumption that "gender" even exists, except its willingness to take the pure word of the morally-deficient, the sexually-disoriented and the mentally-ill. But it uses those to deny the hard binary biological reality of sex, and then claims that's "data."

How is that "science"? It finds itself unable to explain coherently even so basic a term as "woman."

How "hard" is that?

[Consul]

"The biological sciences had in most cases intermediate values between the physical and the social, with bio-molecular disciplines appearing harder than zoology, botany or ecology. In multivariable analyses, most of these parameters were independent predictors of the hierarchy, even when mathematics and the humanities were included."

That's a tidy summary of the situation.

Physics can be "harder" because much of it depends less on the unpredictable "human" element. Chemistry, likewise. Biology is necessarily involved with life forms, which don't always behave according to lab conditions or prediction, but still have some regularity. But when we get into the social, the psychological, the arts, things get "soft" fast. Human beings are not machines, not calculations, not rigid data: they do things with a large measure of unpredictability. They have motives. They make choices. They swerve. Their comings-together catalyze reactions in unpredictable ways. At that level, the data is harder to confirm, less reproducible, more general than specific, requiring of interpretation by other humans, and so forth. That all introduces a much higher level of variability into the situation.

Interestingly, in a previous paper by the same author, it is stated that…

"On the other hand, these results support the scientific status of the social sciences against claims that they are completely subjective, by showing that, when they adopt a scientific approach to discovery, they differ from the natural sciences only by a matter of degree."

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2850928/

But what of something like Gender Studies? Even in its chosen sobriquet, it declares the conclusion it demands before any evidence at all comes in: it is a fallacy of "assuming the conclusion," right out of the gate. And it runs head-on into the much-harder science of Biology, which shows that sexual reproduction is inherently, non-negotiably binary, and that asexual reproduction is impossible to human beings. It has no evidence for its assumption that "gender" even exists, except its willingness to take the pure word of the morally-deficient, the sexually-disoriented and the mentally-ill. But it uses those to deny the hard binary biological reality of sex, and then claims that's "data."
How is that "science"? It finds itself unable to explain coherently even so basic a term as "woman."
How "hard" is that?

Apart from "gender" and "gender identity" being ill-defined or variously defined (unless "gender" is simply used as a synonym of "sex"), denying the natural reality of the two sexes is flatly antiscientific.

[Alexiev]

You are not interested in how words are actually used.

That's the funniest thing you've said so far. Until recently, everybody used "woman" to mean "adult, human female." That's how I use it. But I'll be very interested to see your definition...especially if you regard yourself as any voice in favour of "women's rights." Because if you don't even know what a thing is, how can you be an advocate for its alleged "rights"?

...since you ask, I will give you not my definition of woman,...

No, I have many dictionaries at my disposal, some good, and some poisoned by absurd political correctness. I've given you MY definition, above: now, I want YOUR definition, the one you're using whenever YOU use the word. When you say "woman," exactly what do YOU mean?

Go ahead.

Perhaps you should study anthropology. If you did, you would know that in order to be an effective tool for communication, language must employ words that have shared meanings. If YOUR definition or MY definition differs from the general shared meaning of the word, language becomes meaningless gibberish. The lexicographers who write the Cambridge dictionary know that. But you appear to prefer Humpty Dumpty's lexicography to theirs.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

[Immanuel Can]

Apart from "gender" and "gender identity" being ill-defined or variously defined (unless "gender" is simply used as a synonym of "sex"), denying the natural reality of the two sexes is flatly antiscientific.

Well, yeah, it is. Not only any biologist, but any farmer, animal breeder, medical doctor and paramedic, every mother, father and every other sane person in the universe knows sex is binary. That's really the end of the story. So the whole idea of "Gender Studies" makes as much sense as "Leprechaun Studies." And yet, in a triumph of stupidity and craven catering to ideology, universites all have departments of it.

No wonder the universities are in trouble.

[Immanuel Can]

You are not interested in how words are actually used.

That's the funniest thing you've said so far. Until recently, everybody used "woman" to mean "adult, human female." That's how I use it. But I'll be very interested to see your definition...especially if you regard yourself as any voice in favour of "women's rights." Because if you don't even know what a thing is, how can you be an advocate for its alleged "rights"?

...since you ask, I will give you not my definition of woman,...

No, I have many dictionaries at my disposal, some good, and some poisoned by absurd political correctness. I've given you MY definition, above: now, I want YOUR definition, the one you're using whenever YOU use the word. When you say "woman," exactly what do YOU mean?

Go ahead.

Perhaps you should study anthropology.

I'm sorry...I seem to have missed your personal definition of "woman." Or am I to understand that you don't have one?

I'll know by what you say next.

[Alexiev]

"The biological sciences had in most cases intermediate values between the physical and the social, with bio-molecular disciplines appearing harder than zoology, botany or ecology. In multivariable analyses, most of these parameters were independent predictors of the hierarchy, even when mathematics and the humanities were included."

That's a tidy summary of the situation.

Physics can be "harder" because much of it depends less on the unpredictable "human" element. Chemistry, likewise. Biology is necessarily involved with life forms, which don't always behave according to lab conditions or prediction, but still have some regularity. But when we get into the social, the psychological, the arts, things get "soft" fast. Human beings are not machines, not calculations, not rigid data: they do things with a large measure of unpredictability. They have motives. They make choices. They swerve. Their comings-together catalyze reactions in unpredictable ways. At that level, the data is harder to confirm, less reproducible, more general than specific, requiring of interpretation by other humans, and so forth. That all introduces a much higher level of variability into the situation.

Interestingly, in a previous paper by the same author, it is stated that…

"On the other hand, these results support the scientific status of the social sciences against claims that they are completely subjective, by showing that, when they adopt a scientific approach to discovery, they differ from the natural sciences only by a matter of degree."

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2850928/

But what of something like Gender Studies? Even in its chosen sobriquet, it declares the conclusion it demands before any evidence at all comes in: it is a fallacy of "assuming the conclusion," right out of the gate. And it runs head-on into the much-harder science of Biology, which shows that sexual reproduction is inherently, non-negotiably binary, and that asexual reproduction is impossible to human beings. It has no evidence for its assumption that "gender" even exists, except its willingness to take the pure word of the morally-deficient, the sexually-disoriented and the mentally-ill. But it uses those to deny the hard binary biological reality of sex, and then claims that's "data."
How is that "science"? It finds itself unable to explain coherently even so basic a term as "woman."
How "hard" is that?

Apart from "gender" and "gender identity" being ill-defined or variously defined (unless "gender" is simply used as a synonym of "sex"), denying the natural reality of the two sexes is flatly antiscientific.

Even within the so-called hard sciences, methods differ dramatically. Experimental sciences design repeatable experiments. Astronomy (and astrology, for that matter) rely on the repeated patterns of the movement of stars and planets. What about naturalism? We can observe wild animal behavior, but it is not consistent or repeatable. Does this make it a "soft science"?

Clearly, physical anthropology is a hard science, although not an experimental one. Cultural anthropology (as I've repeated) is more like history. It records the cultures (languages, myths, religions, economic practices) of cultures and subcultures. It is true that some anthropologists have tried to derive from these observations general theories about the development of culture. Neo-Marxists, for example, show how the economic infrastructure of societies affect the other facets of culture. The "culture and personality" school (Maragret Meade and Ruth Benedict) postulated that child rearing techniques influence personality, which influences the culture. None of these general theories has been shown to have much predictive accuracy, but there's nothing wrong with making noble attempts -- just as in the "hard sciences" many of the theories of the past have been debunked, and many of the current theories (we can assume) will be debunked.

Nonetheless, the essence of science is not general theory, but data collection. Anthropologists have recorded languages, rites, cultural practices,
and mythologies that would otherwise have been lost forever as indigenous societies disappear. To bad-mouth such an important field of human study (as IC has done) is anti-intellectual. Does IC really not care how humans live ins simpler societies, and how they may have lived in our own past?

Regarding gender, modern DNA testing (employed by physical anthropologists) has clearly demonstrated that the old "four race" theory of human genetic diversity is incorrect. Many "negroids" are more closely related (acc. the DNA) to caucasoids than they are to many other negroids. This is well known, and I bring it up only to make a point.

Here's the point: does this biological reality mean that nobody should study "race"? Race is a cultural and political reality, even if it is not a biological one. The same, of course, is true of gender. Anthropologists (and the Cambridge lexicographers) are properly interested in how gender is viewed in the context of particular cultures. Anthropologists studying Native American culture were interested in how they saw gender, and it's reasonable to be interested how a changing modern Western culture views gender. Unless, of course, change is terrifying.

[Alexiev]

I'm sorry...I seem to have missed your personal definition of "woman." Or am I to understand that you don't have one?

I'll know by what you say next.

If you missed it, it is because of your lack of understanding. I clearly stated that definitions must be conventional and shared for language to be meaningful. The Cambridge Lexicographers agree, so I'll go with their definition. If you prefer to act like Humpty Dumpty, stay away from walls.

[Consul]

Apart from "gender" and "gender identity" being ill-defined or variously defined (unless "gender" is simply used as a synonym of "sex"), denying the natural reality of the two sexes is flatly antiscientific.

Well, yeah, it is. Not only any biologist, but any farmer, animal breeder, medical doctor and paramedic, every mother, father and every other sane person in the universe knows sex is binary. That's really the end of the story. So the whole idea of "Gender Studies" makes as much sense as "Leprechaun Studies." And yet, in a triumph of stupidity and craven catering to ideology, universites all have departments of it.
No wonder the universities are in trouble.

The biological story of human sex is not the end of the story of human sex, because it also has a psychological dimension and a sociological one. So the psychology and the sociology of human sex are legitimate sciences (which I don't equate with gender studies). Using Marx's distinction between Basis (base) and Überbau (superstructure), one can say there is the material (corporeal) base of the two sexes and a sociocultural superstructure erected upon it.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm sorry...I seem to have missed your personal definition of "woman." Or am I to understand that you don't have one?

I'll know by what you say next.

If you missed it,...

I didn't. You never gave any definition of your own. You tried to hide behind Cambridge, the definition of which is not only contentious but very clearly merely politically correct, as well. And we can see this because it's totally question-begging.

Here's what you cited:

since you ask, I will give you not my definition of woman, but that of the Cambridge Dictionary:

“an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”

That's not what Cambridge says, actually. Evidently, you faked that. Cambridge reads as follows: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... lish/woman. There it is.

You lied. Cambridge agrees with me, not you.

But it wouldn't even matter if it didn't, and if the definition your fraudulently presented as Cambridge's was really theirs, because it's question-begging and circular anyway. "An adult who lives and identifies as female," it says. But what does it mean to "live and identify as a female"? What is that? How does it differ from "living and identifying as a male"? Your definition does not say. So it doesn't really "define" at all. It's circular: essentially, it's "a female is somebody who identifies as a female." But what they're identifying AS remains totally obscure. Nothing is actually being defined.

So it's not...

...because of [my] lack of understanding

...as you claim. Rather, it seems it's because of your lack of honesty and forthrightness, in having replaced their defintion with one of your own, and having attributed it to them (an appeal to authority, as well), and your failure to ask of your own definition that it actually define, and not refer to itself in a circular way.

So the result is that you cannot possibly be an advocate for women, since you don't know what one is. And you can't even be an advocate for the trans, since you don't know what this "being a woman" thing is, that they are either trying to escape or arrive at.

So you're not an advocate for anything. Apparently, you're just a confused -- or ideologically possessed -- person, as evidenced by your own answer.

[Consul]

Nonetheless, the essence of science is not general theory, but data collection.

Data collection is essential to (empirical) science, but I wouldn't call it "the essence of science", because there is more to it.

Here's the point: does this biological reality mean that nobody should study "race"? Race is a cultural and political reality, even if it is not a biological one. The same, of course, is true of gender. Anthropologists (and the Cambridge lexicographers) are properly interested in how gender is viewed in the context of particular cultures. Anthropologists studying Native American culture were interested in how they saw gender, and it's reasonable to be interested how a changing modern Western culture views gender. Unless, of course, change is terrifying.

It's not true that "race" is no longer a viable biological concept, because all that has been disproved is that human races exist as distinct and discrete subspecies of the species homo sapiens; and it doesn't follow therefrom that there are no natural human races at all. Actually, there is an alternative racial (population) naturalism that is scientifically defensible. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/

As for gender, if gender ≠ sex, it needs to be clarified first what gender is supposed to be. That there is a sociocultural superstructure of human sex is not in question; and it can certainly be studied scientifically. Moreover, it is certainly legitimate for feminists to analyze and criticize traditional gender/sex norms and roles.

"What are these alternative senses of 'gender'? There are four: gender as femininity/masculinity, gender as sex-typed social roles, gender as identity, and gender as woman/man."

(Byrne, Alex. Trouble with Gender. Hoboken, NJ: Polity, 2024. p. 36)

"I will disambiguate four senses of ‘gender’ now. Readers should return to this section if they later come across a use that confuses them. Just as the English word ‘bank’ can refer to the land beside the river, or the institution that looks after your money, the following are four different meanings of the English word ‘gender’ – etymologically related, no doubt, and overlapping in terms of people they apply to, but standing for different things. Here they are.

GENDER1: A polite-sounding word for the division between men and women, understood as a traditional alternative word for biological sex/the division between biological males and females. This word is thought to have the benefit of an absence of embarrassing connotations of sexiness in the copulatory sense. When a passport application, say, asks for ‘gender’, it’s intended in this sense. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, a character refers to the ‘masculine gender’, meaning males/men.

GENDER2: A word for social stereotypes, expectations and norms of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, originally directed towards biological males and females respectively. These can and do differ from culture to culture, though there are many overlaps too.

GENDER3: A word for the division between men and women, understood, by definition, as a division between two sets of people: those who have the social role of masculinity projected on to them, and those who have the social role of femininity projected on to them. …In the late twentieth century [this view] was enthusiastically endorsed by some feminists as a putative shield against accusations of ‘biological determinism’: the idea that female anatomy is domestic destiny.

GENDER4: A shortened version of the term ‘gender identity’. …[A] common idea is that it is the ‘private experience of gender role’ – roughly, whether you relate to yourself psychologically as a boy or man, girl or woman, or neither, in a way that has nothing directly to do with your sex.

Keeping these different senses in mind is crucial when trying to decipher various claims made by feminists and trans activists."

(Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. London: Fleet, 2021.)

"Debates in feminism and trans politics are often framed in terms of a background assumption that "gender" names some particular thing and that the important questions and disagreements are concerned with what it truly is, where it comes from, or whether it is good or bad. In this book, we'll argue that questions posed in these terms are usually confused. "Gender" doesn't pick out any one thing; it equivocates among many. …
To illustrate the problem better, let's consider some oft-repeated claims about what "gender" is:

Problematic Slogan 1: Gender is the social interpretation of sex.

Problematic Slogan 2: Gender is an oppressive system that ties certain behaviors and characteristics to sex.

Problematic Slogan 3: Gender is a performance of the role prescribed for one's sex.

Problematic Slogan 4: Sex is female, male, etc.; gender is feminine, masculine, etc.

Problematic Slogan 5: Sex is female, male, etc.; gender is woman, man, etc.

Alongside these claims about what “gender" is, in debates about trans life and trans experience we often encounter claims about what “gender” is like:

Problematic Slogan 6: Gender is between your ears, not between your legs.

Problematic Slogan 7: In transsexualism, biological sex conflicts with psychological gender.

Problematic Slogan 8: A person is cisgender if and only if they identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Problematic Slogan 9: Gender is an important, deeply felt aspect of the self, which deserves our respect.

We plan to argue that serious problems arise when we understand all these slogans as claims about one and the same thing, but, to start, let's note that each of them is getting at something worth talking about. Some of them are unnervingly vague, some of them incorporate debatable assumptions or political positions, and some use dated or offensive language, but, in their various more or less clumsy ways, they are all gesturing at important phenomena that deserve our attention.

Problematic Slogans 1-5 are all concerned with contrasting "gender" and "sex". The notion of "sex” is understood in many different ways, and it, the associated notion of distinct "sexes", and the "sex"/"gender" distinction all present their own difficulties."

(Briggs, R. A., and B. R. George. What Even Is Gender? New York: Routledge, 2023. pp. 5-7)
——————
"“Gender Identity” in the Received Narrative

We’ll start by sketching the received understanding of “gender identity” in the collective imagination:

1. People have a more-or-less stable inner trait called “gender identity”.

2. One’s “gender identity” is what disposes one to think of oneself as a “woman” or as a “man” (or, perhaps, as both or as neither).

3. One’s “gender identity” is what disposes one to favor or avoid stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviors (or otherwise gendered behaviors).

4. It is possible for there to be a mismatch between one’s “gender identity” and one’s physiology (in particular one’s “assigned sex” or “natal sex”).

5. The frustration of these dispositions, or the presence of this sort of mismatch, results in a kind of distress known as “gender dysphoria” (or “gender incongruence”).

6. The alleviation of “gender dysphoria” is the legitimate purpose of medical transition.

7. It is one’s “gender identity”, and not one’s physiology, that properly determines whether one is a woman or a man (or both or neither).
Few people would endorse all of 1–7 without qualifcation, or would even regard them all as positions worth taking seriously, and trans theorists like Stone (1987), Spade (2003), and Bettcher (2014) have long criticized many components of this picture. Nevertheless, the prevailing discourse keeps returning to these assumptions, often with disastrous results. Relying on the language of “gender identity” (and the closely related concept of “gender dysphoria”) to describe every aspect of trans subjectivity (and, indeed, of gendered subjectivity) contributes to concrete harms, including the three we sketch here."

(Briggs, R. A., and B. R. George. What Even Is Gender? New York: Routledge, 2023. pp. 21-2)

[Immanuel Can]

The biological story of human sex is not the end of the story of human sex, because it also has a psychological dimension and a sociological one.

Yes, of course. The vexed question, though, is not whether the social and psychological dimensions of sex exist, but rather whether the purely psychological can completely override the biological, the factual, and the physiological, such that imagination, not biology, becomes determinative of the truth. That's what "gender," as a concept, requires.

Can a man be made into a true woman because he says he feels he wants to be? Can a child be socially raised into being a genuine woman, when he's actually a boy? That's what "gender" ideology thinks can be done. And ranged against that absurd postulate is all the force of biology and empirical reality. And the cost of this absurd ideology is the slicing and dicing of the mentally ill, to their painful detriment, to their sterilization, to their early demise and to the regret of those 'lucky' enough to realize their error and detransition before the worst happens. So it's worth fighting.

Using Marx's distinction...

Marx is the most homicidal ideologue in human history, statistically speaking. I don't suggest we try drinking from that polluted fountain. Not even today's Neo-Marxists try to defend everything he said, he was so frequently wrong.

[Alexiev]

I'm sorry...I seem to have missed your personal definition of "woman." Or am I to understand that you don't have one?

I'll know by what you say next.

If you missed it,...

I didn't. You never gave any definition of your own. You tried to hide behind Cambridge, the definition of which is not only contentious but very clearly merely politically correct, as well. And we can see this because it's totally question-begging.

Here's what you cited:

since you ask, I will give you not my definition of woman, but that of the Cambridge Dictionary:

“an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”

That's not what Cambridge says, actually. Evidently, you faked that. Cambridge reads as follows: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... lish/woman. There it is.

You lied. Cambridge agrees with me, not you.

But it wouldn't even matter if it didn't, and if the definition your fraudulently presented as Cambridge's was really theirs, because it's question-begging and circular anyway. "An adult who lives and identifies as female," it says. But what does it mean to "live and identify as a female"? What is that? How does it differ from "living and identifying as a male"? Your definition does not say. So it doesn't really "define" at all. It's circular: essentially, it's "a female is somebody who identifies as a female." But what they're identifying AS remains totally obscure. Nothing is actually being defined.

So it's not...

...because of [my] lack of understanding

...as you claim. Rather, it seems it's because of your lack of honesty and forthrightness, in having replaced their defintion with one of your own, and having attributed it to them (an appeal to authority, as well), and your failure to ask of your own definition that it actually define, and not refer to itself in a circular way.

So the result is that you cannot possibly be an advocate for women, since you don't know what one is. And you can't even be an advocate for the trans, since you don't know what this "being a woman" thing is, that they are either trying to escape or arrive at.

So you're not an advocate for anything. Apparently, you're just a confused -- or ideologically possessed -- person, as evidenced by your own answer.

Once again, you display your illiteracy. Click on your link, and read the second definition therein, which I copied and pasted.

You should be more careful about whom you call a liar, because when you do so incorrectly you make yourself look like an ass. As usual.

[Immanuel Can]

Click on your link, and read the second definition therein, which I copied and pasted.

Did you bother to notice what I said?

But it wouldn't even matter if it didn't, and if the definition your fraudulently presented as Cambridge's was really theirs, because it's question-begging and circular anyway. "An adult who lives and identifies as female," it says. But what does it mean to "live and identify as a female"? What is that? How does it differ from "living and identifying as a male"? Your definition does not say. So it doesn't really "define" at all. It's circular: essentially, it's "a female is somebody who identifies as a female." But what they're identifying AS remains totally obscure. Nothing is actually being defined.

I asked you for a non-circular definition. You tried to hide behind a circular one. But if you have a non-circular one, then you can try again.

By the way, that second definition you selected out in exclusion of the first clearly illustrates the point. Here it is:

an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth:
She was the first trans woman elected to a national office.
Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.

If "Mary was "assigned" something at birth, something different from what she "is," according to the example given, then what was it she was "assigned," and what was it she was "being" before? You see? These ideologically-possessed idiots can't even get their own story straight.

Heck, they even have to couch it in the passive voice, so they don't have to say who did the "saying" in the second part of the sentence. Talk about lack of frankness...