Woman vs Female

[Bonnie Chan]

I got that part you said Megan about life experiences defining who you am... But you are not quite answering my question about a different perspective from other people who judge you from the image outside at first glance.

I'll quote my full sentence which you missed last part of it:

So, what exactly is "woman" or "man" then? I find this very interesting because when you view it from yourself, you would say it depends on lived experience. But from other people who look at you, it rather depends on your image, again, in my opinion.

Again, if there's a situation where a male suddenly transformed into female body, that person would surely think he's still a man at that moment even though he's got female body now. But other people will always look at him as a "woman" because regardless of how he act, he would still look like a woman. As Reine mentioned before, women and men have a lot of shared traits. And, because of how people look at him as a "woman", he will start to have life experiences as a "woman" simply because of having female body. Then eventually he will "become a woman" too because he's gaining life experiences as a "woman".

So from this perspective, isn't "woman" or "man" rather depending on the image outside only for other people that see you? Even when socializing, they would probably still think you are "woman" or "man" based on appearance only, no matter what personality you have.

Let's say this, if a mom plays a game with her kid about telling who's "man" or "woman", a kid will say "that's a man/woman" based on appearance only.

So my point is, "woman" is not clearly defined in one meaningful way. It very much depends on the context when you use it too.

And Megan, I'm not saying you're wrong or anything. As you see what I wrote above, I'm only suggesting that there's a way to look at "woman" or "man" definition differently too. And I already acknowledged one of the definition is up to life experiences as you said. You don't need to get defensive. We are only discussing on different ideas because who knows we might find a new conclusion to all of this. It's a "learning" experience for all of us.
And I have to ask, are you ready to accept new ideas yourself yet? The problem with Zooey is that she's not willing to accept different ideas from her own, and worse, she just downright bashed them all down without a second thought. I'm sure you can do better than Zooey because I get a feeling of respectfulness from your tone of speaking and I do respect you back.

And oh, I almost got lost track with the main topic. I haven't yet got an answer from you regarding "feel like Tom" too after I explained my reasoning about "feel" meaning. Do you agree with the "feel" being a look feeling only in the case of "feel like Tom". If not, I'd like to know what's your reasoning back.

- Bonnie