Scott75

Well according to you I get to define the word however I want so I'm perfectly legitimate to say the Wikipedia is entirely wrong. I said -we- can define words however we want. Naturally, this works best where everyone agrees on the definition of a word. Unfortunately, groups of people don't always agree on what the definition of a word should be. Words that start being defined in news ways typically start off as slang. Gender words have moved past that, to the point that laws and courts are now siding with the new definitions. I've pointed this out to you before, but I think it might be helpful to do so once more in case you've forgotten: Transgender Student’s Lawsuit Over Locker Room Access Costs District Millions | Athletic Business

No, male or female is shorter. True. However, as I've mentioned many times, a significant amount of people now define male as includng both cisgender and transgender males and define females as including both cisgender and transgender females. Given this reality, if you're addressing an audience that includes people who define these terms in this way, people can misinterpret what you mean. The only way to make things clear is to use additional words, such as "biological", "identifies with", both of these, or just cis and trans followed by male or female.

Yes, I have. You use the term to define the term. The same thing is done to define a democrat or a republican. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't attempt to define democrats and republicans with other words, but then, you can do the same thing with males and females. Males generally have more masculine traits, females more female traits. If we're talking about biological males, this is obvious, but there are social traits too, like males tend to like sports more, for instance. An interesting case of a young transgender male who sued his school for not allowing him to be in the boy's locker room after engaging in sports with them: Transgender Student’s Lawsuit Over Locker Room Access Costs District Millions | Athletic Business

LOL, no. Just say male. If I was just talking to you and I knew that your definition of male was "a biological male who identifies as a male", then sure, I could do that. The problem arises when addressing an audience where some people in the group define male as you do and others define male as anyone who identifies as male. To make sure that everyone understands me, I'd have to either go for the very long term quoted above, or I could just say cisgender. Again, which term I use would also probably depend on the audience. If I knew or strongly suspected that some people would object to the term cisgender, I might well opt for the cumbersome "biological male who identifes as a male".

It's not, though. I suspect the reason it's used has to do with people who are intersex. From an article on the subject: ** Intersex is an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male/female binary. There are lots of ways someone can be intersex. What does intersex mean? Intersex is a general term used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the boxes of “female” or “male.” Sometimes doctors do surgeries on intersex babies and children to make their bodies fit binary ideas of “male” or “female”. Doctors always assign intersex babies a legal sex (male or female, in most states), but, just like with non-intersex people, that doesn’t mean that’s the gender identity they’ll grow up to have. This brings up questions about whether or not it’s OK to do medical procedures on children’s bodies when it’s not needed for their health. Being intersex is a naturally occurring variation in humans, and it isn’t a medical problem — therefore, medical interventions (like surgeries or hormone therapy) on children usually aren’t medically necessary. Being intersex is also more common than most people realize. It’s hard to know exactly how many people are intersex, but estimates suggest that about 1-2 in 100 people born in the U.S. are intersex. There are many different ways someone can be intersex. Some intersex people have genitals or internal sex organs that fall outside the male/female categories — such as a person with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have combinations of chromosomes that are different than XY ( usually associated with male) and XX (usually associated with female), like XXY. And some people are born with external genitals that fall into the typical male/female categories, but their internal organs or hormones don’t. If a person’s genitals look different from what doctors and nurses expect when they’re born, someone might be identified as intersex from birth. Other times, someone might not know they’re intersex until later in life, like when they go through puberty. Sometimes a person can live their whole life without ever discovering that they’re intersex. ** Full article: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity/whats-intersex You're talking about hermaphrodites and they are much too small of a community to force the entire nation into the tranny agenda. They will continue living the way they've always lived. The article I linked to doesn't mention hermaphrodites at all, which got me wondering. I looked up the term hermaphrodite on Wikipedia, and I got this at the top: "Not to be confused with Intersex people or Intersex (biology)." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite And yet, when I went to the Wikipedia's Hermaphrodite (disambiguation) page, I got this: ** Biology [edit] Hermaphrodite (botany), a flowering plant that has both male and female structures, that is, it combines both sexes in one structure Bovine hermaphrodite, an infertile cow with masculinized behavior and non-functioning ovaries Sequential hermaphrodite, an individual that changes its sex at some point in its life Simultaneous hermaphrodite, an individual that has sex organs of both sexes and can produce both gamete types even in the same breeding season Intersex (biology), a general term for an organism that has sex characteristics that are between male and female Intersex person, an individual born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies Pseudohermaphrodite, an individual whose gonads are mismatched with their internal reproductive system and/or external genitalia True hermaphrodite, an individual who is born with ovarian and testicular tissue ** The following article from biologydictionary.com directly equates the 2 terms: https://biologydictionary.net/hermaphrodite/ Quoting: ** Causes of Normally Dimorphic Hermaphrodites In sexually dimorphic organisms, a hermaphrodite may arise because of variations in the genetic code. In humans, hermaphrodites are caused by a variety of genetic conditions. In one form, a hermaphrodite or intersex person is created when two fertilized eggs fuse together, giving the zygote two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. Other cases of hermaphrodites are caused by the SRY gene, the gene responsible for testosterone and male genitals, being transferred to the X chromosome during meiosis, resulting in both male and female genitals. ** Anyway, it looks like term for people with these uncommon conditions would generally prefer to be called intersex people, so I'll go with that. As to continuing to "live as they've always lived", I can understand that as a conservative you'd like things to stay as they have always been, but it seems to me that the intersex community would like some changes, one of which is apparently to now be referred to as intersex people rather than hermaphrodites. As to people who are intersex and their crossover with transgenderism, that's not a subject that I've explored all that much. But in the case of intersex people, it's clear that there is definitely a -biological- component involved.

This is not the kind of different meaning you were arguing the term has. All this is saying is that the term female can relate to talking about sex or gender, but they are still the same thing, as it says female is belonging to being a woman or a girl. Which... you must be female to be a woman or girl or to have the sex of female you are a woman or a girl. Did you not notice the example given of the trans female athlete?

They don't. They have one definition Back to denial again -.- Ah well, hopefully you'll come around one day.

Yes, I refuse to accept your new definitions. I have been obvious on that. That you have. Now, if they were -only- my definitions for these terms, that'd probably be the end of it. They're not though. In fact, I didn't even come up with them. More importantly, prominent sources of information now include these definitions. So, you can continue to pretend that these definitions don't exist, or you can acknowledge the fact. Sometimes you seem to do that a bit and then we can get into why you dislike them. Other times, we seem to be stuck in this area where you can't even acknowledge they exist. It reminds me of things like Alcoholics Anonymous, where the first step is to acknowledge the problem and only after that can you get on with the other work that needs to be done.

What I say is backed up by logic, observation, and reason. Anyone can say that. The hard part is showing that prominent sources agree with your logic, observation and reason. That's where you fail on this subject. All I can do is point out what recognized sources of information have said about sex assignment. You're free to disagree all you like: ** Sex assignment (also known as gender assignment[1][2]) is the discernment of an infant's sex, typically made at birth based on an examination of the baby's external genitalia by a healthcare provider such as a midwife, nurse, or physician.[3] In the vast majority of cases (99.95%), sex is assigned unambiguously at birth. However, in about 1 in 2000 births, the baby's genitalia may not clearly indicate male or female, necessitating additional diagnostic steps, and deferring sex assignment.[4][5] In most countries the healthcare provider's determination, along with other details of the birth, is by law recorded on an official document and submitted to the government for later issuance of a birth certificate and for other legal purposes.[6] The prevalence of intersex conditions, where a baby's sex characteristics do not conform strictly to typical definitions of male or female, ranges between 0.018% and 1.7%.[7][8][9] While some intersex conditions result in genital ambiguity (approximately 0.02% to 0.05% of births[4]), others present genitalia that are distinctly male or female, which may delay the recognition of an intersex condition until later in life.[10][11] ** Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment

We have that, they are called transgender. That certainly works when you want to identify people who are transgender. The problem occurs when you want to identify people who aren't. Cisgender works great to do this. LOL, no. Male, Female, Transgender. No problems at all. Again, the problem is that there's a fair amount of people who now define male as anyone who identifies as male and female as anyone who identifies as female. Given this reality, as well as the reality that it is at times a good thing to be able to differentiate between cisgenders and transgenders, adding cis and trans to male and female solves the problem quite well.

The point, Phoenix75, is that you are desperately searching for a way to sow confusion into this topic. On the contrary, I'm trying to focus on the evidence rather than disparaging sources of information that I disagree with for whatever reason. After a lot of posting on this subject, however, I'm wondering if it's really worth much more of my time with the current responders in this thread. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't get them to drink.

Biological sex is ALWAYS sufficient; it's why society needs to stick with it. Some people are intersex, biologically. I'm guessing you didn't read the article I linked to in my previous post. You can still do so if you wish: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity/whats-intersex

Meanings of words do not change overnight. I agree with you there. You may have noticed that "a good amount of people" is a rather vague. How many people would it be? The most important thing, I think, is not really the number of people backing a word, but the amount of clout they have. It goes back to what I said in an earlier post about law, specifically about it being decided by who has the clout. Right now, there are enough people in what we could call the old guard of the gender definition debate that the new definitions of gender and other gender words still haven't succeeded in being in various dictionaries. But it's in a few and I believe that number will grow over time. Hand in hand with this are court cases where some transgender people are winning as I've already pointed out in a previous post to you. Oh, you can, and indeed we do have this when it comes to gender and other gender words, but I think that generally speaking, people would prefer to have just one definition of common words like gender. Eventually, I think one definition will become the winner and the other will become what dictionaries like to call "archaic".

Intersex? Dude...this is silly. Nobody but the most Tweenkie would even consider this. It's a fairly well known term: https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-intersex From the above link: ** What Does Intersex Mean? Intersex is an umbrella term for people who are born with one or more traits in their chromosomes, genitals, hormones, or internal reproductive organs that don’t fit the typical male or female patterns. Some of their traits might not match the sex they were assigned at birth or may combine traditionally understood male and female traits. While intersex traits are often noticed at birth, the differences aren't always obvious then. People might discover they have intersex traits at puberty or in adulthood, sometimes as a result of medical testing for infertility. In rare instances, such differences are found in autopsies, after people have died. It's important to note that intersex people may use varying terms to describe their differences. While many reject the language used by some medical organizations – "disorders of sex development" – some use the term "differences of sex development." The most widely used description is intersex. **

Now you're just getting into lying. What exactly do you think I'm lying about? And once again, I've seen no evidence that cis is a pejorative. If you have any evidence suggesting that it is, by all means present it.

But what if he defines it as "An exercise in self delusion practiced by whiny little brats who can't cope with reality as they've discovered it and are seeking to demand the government wipe their butts so that they feel better"? Word definitions have some similarities to the law. Frank Herbert wrote a great line on the law in one of his Dune books: "Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?" Thus it is with words. There's the clout to get a word into the slang of an area and even more clout if you can get it into Wikipedia and dictionaries. Now, that doesn't mean that morality and other niceties can't be part of it, but the most important thing is the clout. As I've said previously, there is currently a war of sorts going on between those who want to maintain the old definitions of words like gender and those who want to replace them with the new ones that I've mentioned. I think we've agreed that more people are using the new definitions. You've pointed out that new trends are not always good ones, and I agree with that. I think in this particular case, though, it's a good trend. What remains to be seen is this trend will have the clout to win the battle. I think it will, but ofcourse time is the ultimate arbiter on things of this nature.

I agree with you there. But it's not so malleable. But you need to make up your mind, because you're claiming it is. Your flip-flopping back and forth on this. No, I'm not, but I can see how you could get that impression. You absolutely are. Perhaps you don't realize it but you absolutely are doing that, that is the thing you are doing I think sometimes the problem is that you take a snippet of what I write and miss the larger context. I went back to my post #213, where I pointed out that the term gender is not -so- malleable. What I meant is that there are some pretty hard limits to how much a word can be shaped, especially ones which are in common usage such as gender and gender words such as male and female. Right after I pionted out that gender was not that malleable a word, I said the following: ** Recently, there's been a type of battle between what we can call the old definition, that gender is tied to biology, and the new one that it is a social construct, as Wikipedia puts it. For now, both of these definitions exist and thus, it can be hard to know what a person means when they say they are male or female, because it depends on how they're defining their gender. That's why using terms like cis or biological are important if one wants to establish one's biological gender. **

Do you think it is pejorative to call a transwoman, who is a man identifying as a woman, a man, or a male, even after they have asked you to refer to them as how they identify? I think we can agree that referring to anyone in a way that they don't like can be seen as insulting, but there are also levels of offense. Someone who is biologically male and identifies as male is a cismale. Now, some cismales may not like the term, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a very specific and accurate term. Now, let's do a little thought experiment. Let's say that a lab is doing some tests that need to be done on biological males. They are drawing from a pool of people wherein some of them may define being male as being a cisgender male and others may define being male as both a cisgender and a transgender male. In order to make it clear that they can only take cisgender males, they have to have a way to differentiate between the 2. Naturally, cisgender male would work, but biological male would too. Now, let's try a different though experiment. This time, they are looking for biological males who -identify- as males, again drawing from the same pool of people, some of whom define males as biological males and others who define males as both biological and transgender males. This time, it's harder- either they would have to ask for cisgender males or they have to ask something rather long, basically "biological males who identify as males". Ultimately, I think people are going to go with the much shorter "cismales", but at present, perhaps there'll be a bit of both.

LARPing. It's nothing to do with gender. Agreed, LARPing has nothing to do with gender. I was talking about gender fluidity.

No, the fundimental point is that you prefer to insult people in pursuit of your agenda and create hostile wedges to separate people instead of looking for ways to bring people together. Absolute balderdash. I'm guessing this is coming from your insistence that cis is an insult, despite having presented no solid evidence that this is the case.

What you said above made me smile. I recall a certain person saying that cisgender offended them. I can imagine reciting everything you just said to justify the term :-p. Except the part where it's true And that's where you fall flat on your face. It's an inaccurate made up term much like n@gger or chug or chink etc. I suppose there's some truth to those terms, N@gger is based on 'negro' which is an accurate term. But they're invented pejoratives. I don't think the N word is a very accurate term- as far as I know, no one is actually black. Same thing for white, although perhaps albinos are an exception. Instead, humans tend to come in colours varying from slightly pink to very dark brown. Transgender and cisgender, on the other hand, are at least close to 100% accurate terms. And you have yet to show any evidence that they are pejorative terms.

The only "cramming" that's taking place here is your tranny activism. No, I'm just pointing out the fact that there is a significant group of people who define male and female as people who identify as such, and that there are people like you who have a hard time accepting this.

We already had one. Hetero and transgender. That's all you need. Hetero is an informal word for heterosexual, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition. Heterosexual, in turn, means a heterosexual person, someone who is "sexually oriented to persons of the opposite sex", as well as "of or relating to different sexes", according to the same dictionary. Note that it says nothing about what gender a person is, or even what sex a person is. Transgender defines a person who identifies with a sex that is not their own. What's missing is a word for people who identify with a sex that -is- their own. Cisgender is the shortest term for this. But for those who insist on some other term, there's always the super long "biological male/female/intersex who identifies as male/female/intersex".

Again, I strongly disagree, not least of which is because some trans people have children of their own. What's needed is more dialogue to try to find a way that everyone's concerns are heard and ultimately, find an approach that integrates trans people, whether or not they have taking hormones or surgery. I suspect that most people would be better off without hormone therapies and surgeries, but for that, they have to be comfortable in the bodies they already have. And that, I strongly suspect, will only come once societies are more comfortable with the fact that a lot of people don't want to comform to certain gender stereotypes. Trans people have been given way too much latitude, and that fantasy needs to be dialed way, WAY back. Probably to 1950's levels. Your sentiment makes me smile as I consider a line from one of Frank Herbert's books: "Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future." Source: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3634588-god-emperor-of-dune

It doesn't depend on the place It's unfortunate that you're not aware of the reality that it really does. Some examples that make this crystal clear: Wisconsin school district can’t restrict bathrooms for trans student, judge says | NBC Here's another example where a school's intransigence cost them millions: Transgender Student’s Lawsuit Over Locker Room Access Costs District Millions | Athletic Business