Categories - What is a woman?

[AllisonS]

Q: What is a woman?
A: A woman is a category of human being.
Q: What is a category?
A: Excellent question !!! A category is an abstraction (inside human skulls) about the world
Q: Is it good to think of categories as being "real"
A: No, it is not.
Q: Why?
A: Because if you think categories are real, you are liable to vigorously defend yours and attack others while not having any disagreement about things that actually are real.

We all categorize all the time. Think about it. Much of the struggle for us is BECAUSE of HARDENING OF THE CATEGORIES. We are learning now how categorization works. Its very interesting and its not like we thought. The "classical" theory of categories holds that all members of a category hold at least one thing in common. That is the basis of a "classical" category. That is now known to be wrong and SOOO much is based on it. If you are interested, read about Prototype Theory, or George Lakoff's book "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things".

Also, note that the question "What is a woman?" is about BEING. Being is one of the three ways to know something about something. What is it? What is it made of? How is it configured? How much does it weigh? Etc.
The other two ways are much neglected because our culture is kind of IS (noun) oriented, but for me anyway, they are more important. The three ways are:
Being - What it is
Doing - What it does
Knowing - What it knows

Let's not hold our categories so preciously, or interestedly. Any category is just short-hand for a concept and yes you do have to pause to clarify things around the edges or with people who you don't share much context with because no two people categorize in exactly the same way.

Is she sitting on a "chair".
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[Jenniferathome]

...Is she sitting on a "chair".

No, she's sitting a bean bag.

What do I win?

we all know there is no black and white in life but in order to be able to have any discussion, it only makes sense to reduce the fifty million shades of gray to some basic categories. Otherwise, we are paralized.

[Judy-Somthing]

The answer is C. or is it D or who knows (Women are what we want to be!)

[PretzelGirl]

These label arguments get tiresome. If we don't have words, we don't have understanding. Don't try and marginalize people who are women.

[Zooey]

The tapestry of womanhood is pretty amazing, and filled with lots of colors and shapes. The only thing not in the tapestry is men.

Women are not defined by our exterior.
We're not the clothes we wear.
We're not the ending of sentences with "darling/sweetie/hun/etc.".
We're not a shoe obsession.
We're not satin panties.

Women - trans or cis - are women because we are women, and that's a thing worth being.

Trying to debate the existence of women as a meaningful group in order to co-opt partial membership for men who haven't even seen the tapestry, just a xerox copy of an artist's rendition by a man who heard what it looked like once from "somebody he knows", is not gonna fly. Not with me, and not with a lot of other people.

I know I'm generalizing - not everybody here fits what I'm talking about - and I have no doubt that this will cast me as "superior". If anybody wants to argue that my generalizations are anything other than "generally true" about the content here, I welcome it.

[AllisonS]

If that was directed at the OP (me) consider that the post was not about gender, or "the existence of women", and wasn't a ploy to "co-opt partial membership" (lol) in some group.

It was about how we categorize. I used the category "woman" and the category "chair" as examples. Yes we have to use words but sometimes you have to unpack them. If you aren't interested in how we categorize, in this, or any other context, that's cool

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No, she's sitting a bean bag.

What do I win?

we all know there is no black and white in life but in order to be able to have any discussion, it only makes sense to reduce the fifty million shades of gray to some basic categories. Otherwise, we are paralized.

You win nothing because it was advertised as a Bean Bag Chair! Categories are fuzzy. There are some chairs that are DEFINITELY chairs. The chair you would draw if somebody asked you to draw a chair. Then there are other chairs that are kind of out there, not your prototypical chair. Thats how categories work.

Yep, you have to have words but you also have to reflect about the way you use them, the way others understand them, and the way that shared understanding corresponds with reality... if you can.

[Zooey]

Your post was about whether categories have any value, and if so how much and to what extent they should be defended and held dear. You used "women" as an example.

Categories overlap; that is the way we specify progressively more specific things - through intersections of membership. Not by attempting to redefine, blur, or eliminate the edges of them. In my experience, most people who try to un-define a category are doing so because they feel entitled to access the space occupied by it, and being otherwise unable to take it, they must eliminate its border.

I am a woman, and the borders of my category have value. I am many other things by way of intersection, but that does not change my membership in "woman", it merely makes me a more specific one.

Editing To Add: You said that "doing" and "knowing" are more important than "being". While that may be true for some categories, like categories defined by e.g. careers, I contend that that is precisely wrong in other cases, like "women".

[AllisonS]

Sorry. No, it wasn't about whether categories have any value. It was about the simple fact that categorization is a cognitive function and that the classical theory of categories is wrong (which should please you, I would think) It becomes obviously silly to insist that what is abstract is real. "Mammals" are not real. The creatures that we put in the category mammal are real.

The other part of the post, that you did not comment on, was a claim that you can know something about something by knowing what it IS, DOES, and KNOWS. You've spoken only of "is" and "is not".

Regarding "undefining a category", are you talking about the category "woman"? I missed the part where it was defined, and undefined or was that a different thread.

[Zooey]

I see... You are talking about prototype theory, which is generally used as a model for understanding cognitive association. It deals primarily with understanding associative recognition, rather than the traditional feature-based classification. It is subjective, as opposed to objective, and can vary based on the population used to discover the prototypical elements in the set.

Your notion that "classical" categorization is "now known to be so wrong", is in fact, bullplop. They are distinct modes of categorization. Both are in active use, in different fields, and for good reason. Taxonomies can be inefficient if poor separating criteria are chosen and/or new data suggests a better repartitioning, but that does not render them invalid. Quiet the opposite, in fact.

So no, this does not please me.

It becomes obviously silly to insist that what is abstract is real. "Mammals" are not real. The creatures that we put in the category mammal are real.

But that is - pardon me - BS, because "mammals" is not a set studied in practice via cognitive association. Mammals are studied as a "classical category" - part of a taxonomy - and the category "mammal" is defined by a set of very real criteria quantifiably shared by all members of the set. It is, in that model, an unquestionably real thing.

Prototype theory is more useful for, say, determining what characteristics are most emblematic of the "prototypical dog" - the mental model of dog that most people process most quickly. It is a subjective model. It can be used to make statements like, "huskies are more easily recognized as dogs than chihuahuas", but it does not define what a dog is. That is defined via taxonomy, and includes characteristics such as "domesticated" and "descended from grey wolves". That is an objective model.

The other part of the post, that you did not comment on, was a claim that you can know something about something by knowing what it IS, DOES, and KNOWS. You've spoken only of "is" and "is not". Regarding "undefining a category", are you talking about the category "woman"? I missed the part where it was defined, and undefined or was that a different thread.

I am talking about the category "woman", because despite your protestations you put it in the damn title.

With respect to DOES and KNOWS, I believe I've made my point abundantly clear in recent threads that what most CDs know of femininity, and especially womanhood, is precisely that. They have observed some things that women do, and they know some things that women know. And yet they are not, however, women. DOES and KNOWS are of little consequence when the category is defined by a state of BEING.

You are talking about applying a cognitive model while talking about a classification that is part of a taxonomy, and in doing so you are obscuring the reality of the situation. A cognitive associative model, and particularly one generated from the members here, of womanhood could easily produce a model that in many ways identifies crossdressers as prototypical entities for the category "women". That should be fairly obvious, given the statements that are made here rather often about what the prototype for woman is or should be.

That is what I mean by deconstructing the borders and un-defining the set. You can do it explicitly, or you can do it the way that you're doing it (on purpose or not) - applying the wrong theory to the wrong study and producing potentially interesting sounding but ultimately meaningless rhetoric and/or results.

Congratulations, you're a modern researcher on the grant money treadmill.

[PaulaQ]

Actually "woman" is a gender. Gender is a whole host of things - ranging from behavior, societal norms, roles, and identity.

I think the question you are asking is best answered by gender identity, because social norms and roles change over time.

A woman is a person who tells you "I'm a woman" because they know it to be true about themselves, because it is her identity.

There is no externally visible evidence of this. Her mind simply knows the truth. It may be a fairly weak feeling, or it may be an exceedingly strong one, one that will not be denied without destroying the person in question.

As for whether or not it's real, it's the realest thing in my life.

If man and woman are the endpoints of an axis describing a range of masculinity to femininity (a single dimension like that is overly simplistic, there are many dimensions involved here, but let's keep it simple), then "women" are those who's gender identities are clustered at or very near the "woman" endpoint.

To me, men and women have a different vibe - they just seem different. You could call it an aura, an energy, or maybe it's simply the sum of all the things I listed above, simply because those things fit a particular identity that we sense, more than we can describe. The difference is a "feeling" much more than something you analytically think about. Men and women feel differently when you interact with them. In a lot of ways, I think feelings about this are MUCH more reliable than thoughts. And this is true pretty much for the same reason that it's hard to paint a picture of what something smells like.

You are using the wrong tools to approach this, AllisonS. No system of logic is going to prove someone is a man or a woman - I suspect such a question is undecidable. Feelings transcend that and are much more reliable for this specific question. You have to use your feelings. That is, by the way, an area where women, on average, have an advantage. Men often believe they are using logic and reason - when in fact it is emotion that they are uncomfortable in admitting it as such, because it is a more difficult thing for them - again, on average. Individuals differ wildly in this regard.

[AllisonS]

Zooey,

No I'm not a researcher. I read.

You understand the basics. What I think you are missing is that prototype theory is not a choice. Prototype theory describes HOW HUMAN BEINGS CATEGORIZE IN OUR HEADS.

You can argue with cognitive scientists about what is bull plop. I would start with George Lakoff.

If you believe that the classical theory of categories reveals objective truths, and if you think that is the way to understand what is meant by your concept of "woman", then you must be able to identify the property(s) that all members of that set have in common. Good luck.

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Thanks for that Paula. You are giving a rich description of your sense of woman-ness that is entirely compatible with prototype theory and not at all compatible with the classical theory of categorization. I agree with everything you said... except, I am not using the wrong set of tools to approach this. The "this" that I am approaching is categorization, not what it means to be a woman. When people begin to argue about whether A is in Category X or Category Y, as is done over and over on this site, then I think you have to pause to remember, or learn, about the nature of categorization in general. The message I intended was to urge people not to cling to their (perceived) objective categories so tightly as to cause strife where there should be none.

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Editing To Add: You said that "doing" and "knowing" are more important than "being". While that may be true for some categories, like categories defined by e.g. careers, I contend that that is precisely wrong in other cases, like "women".

And yet Paula asserts that "knowing" is central to the example of the category "woman". She is a woman because she knows she is.

[JanePeterson]

Just because the edges of the categorization may be troublesome to define doesn't negate the value of being able to group certain things together - in a practical sense, women as a category, despite being a broad and varied group, are a real thing... A beanbag can be a chair, but that doesn't mean that every other object is also a chair by extension...

This conversation is way over my head but I wanted to sit at the grownups table for a while

[JamieG]

Alison, I think I see where you are going with this. Prototype theory vs. classical category theory is much too philosophical for me, so I won't comment directly on them. But, the idea that categories are not universally shared is an important point. It seems to me that much of the recent discrimination we are seeing is due to narrow views of what a "woman" is. The people behind these bathrooms bills, etc. think this category is limited to those people who we on this site would refer to as "genetic girls" or "female at birth." Furthermore, they don't consider the thorny questions that arise with intersex conditions and which are obvious evidence that binary categories are problematic. They do seem to obsess over particular aspects of "being" and ignore both "doing" and "knowing." Opponents to the bills (including myself) tend to think that the category "woman" includes "transwomen." I accept that Zooey and Paula are women because they tell me they are women. I trust that they know themselves better than I do. However, I also subcategorize them as as "transwomen;" even on this site where we have a better understanding of gender identity than the average person, we still differentiate transwomen from FAB or GG. Transwomen have more in common with GGs than myself, a run-of-the-mill crossdresser, but they are not the same, and I would hope no one would try to argue that they are. Note, I am NOT saying this makes them less of a woman, just a different kind of woman. On the other hand, I do not think that crossdressers are women, but I do think they fall under the umbrella of transgender. Of course, these are just my perceptions of the categories, and other people may have different perceptions.

[ClosetED]

Our brains need to categorize sensory input to function. The label is added later. An infant sees images, smells things, touches things, hears things. The face of a mother may get categorized as 'woman', but what if the infant is raised by 2 men? The smell of perfume may get put under 'woman' category as may the sensation of nylons and image of lipstick. We take in the raw data and once we have the beginnings of language, we are told of labels created by others that should be associated with these categories made by the infant brain.
I understand the complexities of semantics and labels. A bean bag chair is a chair if you define chair as on object a human sits on. But so might a toilet. A chair with wheels may fall outside the definition, such as a bicycle or unicycle or car. But what about a wheelchair?
I love the strange things in language - how we drive on parkways and park on driveways. We get on a cruise ship but in a rowboat or plane. And don't get me started on statistics! (Everyone who has eaten a tomato will die)
So categories as a brain function are necessary, but be careful what meaning you assign to the label later associated with it.
Hugs and deep thoughts, Ellen

[Dana44]

The logical categorize of a woman is gender with feminine attributes and operating on the side of the brain that is on the right side instead of the left as men do. The left is more logical and the right more thinking in the emotional state and more empathetic. When I came to this site. I found most of the crossdressers very woman like. I was an entirely different animal. I have the social upbringing of a male but I do run from the right side of the brain and the left almost at 50/50 but I can say that I have feminine attributes and more so as time rolls on. Am I a woman, well a doctor looking at my hormones said that is what I am. That answered a lot of questions in my life. But in reality, I do have male attributes although they were beaten into me and raised male. I have always thought of my self as a default mode of a woman. I do find many crosdressers as women in attitude. Although there are masculine ones here. On this site there are more feminine and woman like people in thoughts and actions. So, I was comfortable with this site and was able to express my side which I admit is strange but it is real. So, as a category am I a woman or a man. This is a question that I am still trying to answer and although, the TS have gone through a lot, you have no idea what us gender fluid has gone though and how far into the TG spectrum we are, because we keep ours more secret. But I would say that far more here understand many thoughts of a woman and are more feminine and woman like and that is why we need to have compassion for each other instead of intolerance.

[Zooey]

You understand the basics. What I think you are missing is that prototype theory is not a choice. Prototype theory describes HOW HUMAN BEINGS CATEGORIZE IN OUR HEADS.

You can argue with cognitive scientists about what is bull plop. I would start with George Lakoff

I'm not missing that - I get that, and I don't think prototype theory is wrong either. What I'm telling you is bull plop is the notion that what you call "classical categorization" has been proven "wrong". It hasn't - it's just a different mode of categorization, and eliminates the problems with subjective perception that are problematic in objective study. Both models are correct, but answer different questions.

My researcher comment was a joke.

If you believe that the classical theory of categories reveals objective truths, and if you think that is the way to understand what is meant by your concept of "woman", then you must be able to identify the property(s) that all members of that set have in common. Good luck.

Actually, no - I only need one, and there are more but "has a deeply held persistent identity as a woman" is fully sufficient. What Paula said is in no way incompatible with what I'm saying. In fact, you'll find that the diagnosis criteria for gender dysphoria and the notion of transsexualism are defined in this way, with additional traits of membership. Taxonomy does not reveal truths, it partitions them into defined sets.

And yet Paula asserts that "knowing" is central to the example of the category "woman". She is a woman because she knows she is.

You're misapplying the theory you're trying to use here, and you're mixing models in problematic ways. A "persistent core identity as a woman" is a feature that determines set membership. A cognitive model of "woman" does not look like that, and would be more likely to generate a model that emphasizes the most common observable characteristics, e.g. "Has breasts". A cognitive model is perfect for understanding, say, how people judge "passability". It's a poor choice for defining who/what is and is not a woman.

Just so we're clear, I understand your message, and I wish you had written it without a bunch of bad science attached, because that's what I'm now discussing.

[Jaylyn]

Dana44, you explained a lot about me also. I took a test presented to us by a brain expert once and my brain ( what little of a percent I have) came back 50% for each side. She had me retake the test with different questions. She explained that it was the first time she had seen this. I was 32 when I took the class and test. 50% on my right and 50% on my left. I feel I am also mellowing out in my thinking as I age. I am now mid 60's and I don't know if I am becoming more feminine but I am definitely becoming more testosterone deficient. My question is if I took the same quiz today would I be more feminine and less masculine thinking.

[Tracii G]

A typical psychology class type question designed to start an argument.Been there done that.
All it ends up doing is dividing the class.
Just an exercise in semantics and nothing gets solved because why you ask? Because its a question that has no right or wrong answer.
Whats funny is people fall for it every time.

[AllisonS]

Zooey, if you want to dispute the science, or call it bad, then your argument is with people at the forefront of cognitive science. You can say either that George Lakoff is wrong or the classical theory of categories is wrong. I read the book, and others and came away thinking that the science is correct and the Greeks did the best they could at the time. The findings are making a lot of people mad. We all are quite invested, knowingly or unknowingly, in the classical theory of categories, and I for one think it is problematic for this community.

Sorry, I don't see the difference between saying someone holds "a persistent core identity as a woman" and saying that they "know they are a woman". Thanks for sharing your thoughts. PM me if you want to discuss it further... don't mean to bore the board

[Teresa]

Somehow I think it's fortunate that we're the only living species on planet Earth that can communicate at this level, otherwise would the planet have evolved at all ? May I ask the question if we're going to work through the complete Oxford English dictionary ?
Sorry I do apologise but it's gone completely over my head , I'll leave it there and go and mow the lawn and prune the roses, maybe I'll try talking to them !

[PaulaQ]

So, as a category am I a woman or a man. This is a question that I am still trying to answer and although, the TS have gone through a lot, you have no idea what us gender fluid has gone though and how far into the TG spectrum we are, because we keep ours more secret.

You'd be surprised what TS folks can understand, although I freely admit many don't get gender fluid people, and some of us aren't nice about it. By the way, why are the only valid answers "woman" or "man?" Why aren't "gender fluid", or "bigender", even "intersexed" reasonable answers for you?