Steven, I think you've identified a genuine problem, but I'm not convinced you've answered the question your title promises.
The strength of your essay is not that it tells us what a woman is. It shows why demanding a single, context-free definition often fails. The chair example is entertaining precisely because it demonstrates how quickly necessary-and-sufficient definitions become absurd.
Where I think we differ is in what follows from that observation.
I don't believe the question *"What is a woman?"* is the most important one. The more important question is: *"What do we mean by 'woman' in this discussion?"*
Language only works because speakers implicitly agree on the rules of the language game they are playing. Problems arise when they don't.
If two mathematicians use **x** to mean different values, no amount of algebra will resolve their disagreement until they first agree what **x** represents. The problem is not mathematics; it is semantics.
The same applies here.
There is no reason to assume that every conversation requires the same definition of *woman*. A geneticist, an obstetrician, a lawyer, a sociologist and an anthropologist may all use the word legitimately, but for different purposes and with different criteria. None is necessarily wrong. They are simply playing different language games.
The mistake is to begin arguing about the implications before agreeing on the rules.
If, for the purposes of one discussion, both participants agree that "woman" means an adult human with an XX karyotype, then the discussion proceeds on those terms. If another discussion is about legal recognition or social identity, a different definition may be entirely appropriate. The crucial point is that everyone knows which game is being played before the debate begins.
In that sense, I think Wittgenstein's lesson is slightly different from the one you draw. It is not that words have no stable meaning. It is that meaning is inseparable from use. Stability comes from shared use within a context, not from discovering a metaphysical essence.
So I would answer the Internet's most exhausting question rather differently.
Don't ask, "What is the one true definition of woman?"
Ask, "What definition of woman are we agreeing to use for this conversation?"
Once the rules are agreed, people can disagree productively. Without that agreement, they are often not disagreeing about reality at all—they are simply playing different language games while believing they are playing the same one.
That’s a really detailed and fair critique. I appreciate your reading my article and taking the time to write such a thoughtful response.
⠀
I think we’re almost entirely agreeing here. If anything, I feel like you may have overcorrected my rhetoric into a more academic version of my thesis than I deserve. But you can’t overcorrect me without first being correct, which makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.
Despite the article’s subtitle, I offer very little in the way of answers. I’m more of a “poke at it with a question-stick until it grumbles” sort of guy.
Less professor, more linguistics-clown wondering how you would explain to someone born deaf why “Jung juggling jester” is two-word, not three-word, alliteration.
⠀
I strongly agree with you that words are not meaningless, they're labels we put on meanings. The important part is ensuring we are talking about the same meaning, when we are using the same word. My observation is that approx. 99.87% of online arguments around this particular article's title, are between people who are meaning different things when they argue about the same word.
Once those meanings are hammered out, then by most means, brandish those labels about until the cows come home... from wherever they’ve been.
But then, going into another space and swinging around the same label, just presuming that the same meaning that was established earlier is what you're swinging around with that word here, now, is folly.
⠀
So yes — I think your framing is very close to the clean version of the linguistic labyrinth I was juggling, with my bells on my hat.
That's part of the problem; the same word "woman" is doing work in three categories. Are we talking biology? Sexuality? Social roles? In every case, the criteria are similar, and there's a lot of overlap, but no definition that will unify all three. Since gender is quite as objective as we thought, how do we define it? Fall all the way to subjectivity, where "woman" is a tautology? What is a USEFUL definition? Or would a meaning-cluster be more appropriate. Is there a statistically significant portion of the population deviating from the norm, or is it just some edge cases? You have to draw the line SOMEWHERE, or the categories mean nothing. But where?
All words are tautologies if your definition of the word is the definition you've assigned to the word. That's largely the point of my article. Words are just tools to share our thoughts, which are far too varied — not just person to person, but context to context, and day to day. That makes language isufficient to be treated as prescriptive. Hence words are descriptive, and is why English, and every tongue, is spoken differently across different places and time periods its spoken.
At one time, in the English language, little boys were called girls and boy was a term for a servant. Using the term boy for a male child and girl for a female child would have been seen as a bizarre perversion of language... but now, those same sorts of "linguistical puritans" will yell at you for making baby Jesus cry and accuse you of inviting communism into our just and fair capitalist lands, if you call a tiny penis'd human a girl.
Someone in these comments argued that a wheel chair isn't a chair. Is it? isn't it? It wasn't, based on what he was thinking in his head when he used the label "chair" for it.
Two people who have different nuanced conceptions of what a chair is, saying back and forth to each other: "A wheelchair is not a chair", "No, a wheelchair IS a chair!" is not a helpful way to argue about a topic, unless the goal is to forget about installing the wheelchair ramp entirely and instead crowning themselves King Dictionary and calling it a job well done.
In fact, this only sidelines the topic to instead argue semantics and pedantics, until the original topic is well in the rearview mirror and now you have two people raging, angry that the other one refuses to have the same thoughts for a word that they do... the subjectively obviously right way.
People who say "wheelchairs aren't chairs" aren't wrong, because they are the ones invoking those words - They are making a comparison between what THEY view as a chair, and what THEY view as a wheelchair. The wheelchair doesn't actually change in any case - it's still the same assortment of atoms, still usable in the exact same ways. Both sides are just refusing to play in the conversation unless they get to pretend that their opponent is using the same definition for chair that they are.
I agree with you quite strongly that categorization is important, and we need to use the same words even to just communicate. I'm merely pointing out the limitations of language, and saying that words and their definitions come as a set, and are swappable… you just need both sides talking about the same set or you might as well be talking at each other in different languages.
I normally despise an abundance of emoji, even old-fashioned smileys rendered with unicode, but you somehow make it work and seem natural to the flow. Now I really want a turtle-shaped chair for some reason. Well done also on cleverly dodging the obvious loaded interpretation of the headline question (in the meat of the article anyway). Works equally well iyk or iydk.
Thanks for the encouraging comment! So far this project is still a bit of an experiment to see if my sideways approach to argumentation is valued by people enough to attract them to want to want to read more of my future words.
I'm glad you saw not just the content, but the form as well. Your pointing out that my play-with-language still carries clear meaning — without having to rely on my reader to have "inside-baseball" knowledge — is about the best compliment I could have received in response to this article.
The problem here is that you are in fact being unclear in your original definition, and specious in your exceptions. You also don't talk about whether you are trying to exclude chair from other types seating, which would require a stricter definition or you are looking for a broad definition. We use chair both ways, both as a synonym for seat and as a specific object. The number of legs is meaningless as a specific object though having a back is crucial. Backless it is a stool. Or a possibly a bench.
A turtle, alive or dead, can't be a chair because its purpose is not to be sat on. It's purpose is to be itself. A rock can be used as a chair, but it isn't a chair. We make these distinctions all the time.
In any event, a wheelchair, despite being called a chair, it is not in fact a chair. This not because it lacks legs, or has only two leg like objects. It is a medical device whose purpose is to transport people of limited mobility to and from places. That people sit in it to be transported does not change its purpose, that many users sit in it between movement does not change it.
Thanks for this — genuinely. This is the first serious critique the project has received, and it landed right in the center of what the essay was trying to get at: definitions, edge cases, purpose, and usage.
You helped me write a follow-up piece. I anonymized you out of respect, because I’m not trying to make you the story. I’m more interested in the thought-juice your comment put on the table.
I think you've managed to exactly prove the author's point. If a thing is best defined by its purpose and a chair is a thing whose purpose is to be sat upon, then a stool is a chair. But you clarify that a backless chair is actually a stool, implying that your definition of a chair is "something whose primary purpose is to be sat upon, but which has a back".
And of course this implies that a couch is a chair, which most people would disagree with. You could say a couch is not a chair, but you'd need to make your definition more complex. Or, you could say a couch is a chair, which would be disagreeable to an interior designer and most ordinary people.
The author's point is that "perfect" definitions often don't exist and attempts to make them perfect divorce them from their original purpose: to communicate an idea. While there are exceptions (especially in STEM), most definitions communicate more of a "vibe" than a precise thing. And even more to the point: endless bickering about the precision of definitions is almost purposeless.
I mean c'mon dude. Encyclopedia Britanica is quite simple and calls it a a seat with a back, intended for one person. It doesn't muck about with the leg issue like Webster and notes that the term can include a stool and a throne. Nobody is going to get confused about couches and will pick up that stools and thrones aren't fully considered chairs.
That's pretty precise.
People aren't confused about what it is. While there are plenty of words that have plenty of vibe action to them, most words are not based on it--which is why we can translate from one language to another.
Do people (or English speakers at least) use the word Chair only to mean the specific thing one draws visually when drawing a chair? Do we also use it as a substitute when we are asking referring to the need we have for its use? Yes. That's by the way NOT about vibes either, unlike say the word magnificent or vile. We are saying, in shorthand, chair or like a chair. We well understand what is being asked in the context?
I just read a piece on our world becoming uni-context and that being a mixed bag and what has bugged me about a lot of linguistic conversations is the pretense that our language is uni-context as well. The idea that because we will use a word with precise definitions a way that stretches that precise definition * in specific contexts that all understand* all words are without precision or real meaning.
The rules when we use it differently are far more precise than people are being honest about in this essay or discussion. (And English isn't even the most precise language out there.) There are entire classes of intellectual understanding that precede the definition of chair one won't even consider bringing to definition--because you don't have to.
What we bring to language is so much more too. It is popular to treat that as fuzzy when it is in fact quite specific.
You don't have to define that a chair isn't alive because its furniture which is inanimate ie not alive. We know aspects of a definition simply by being alive and don't tend to explain them because there is no need--not because our understanding lacks precision.
I mean, I agree with virtually everything you wrote, which is largely in agreement with this essay. One can't encapsulate the definition of a "thing" in a few sentences: it requires a considerable degree of context and background education. This essay is highlighting that attempting to be precise with words alone is insufficient. In other words, this essay is showing why a uni-context understanding of language can't get very far.
Do you interpret this essay as being supportive of a uni-context understanding of language? If not, what is it critiquing? If your issue is that treating language this way is silly, I agree (and the author likely does too). The title of the post gives a hint that this is in response to the tendency of anti-trans groups turning the debate into a definition game while ignoring all the context and prior education that should inform them that when a trans activist says "woman", they most definitely aren't referring to biological sex.
It requires understanding of the world we live in. And I'm sorry but most trans activists post-2008 actually do deny the reality of biological sex. They use the term assigned at birth as if it is some outside authority that determines it and not something determined by physical observation, DNA, secondary characteristics etc. And there is a strong push to say that transwoman were always women from birth no matter what their physicality was.
However, the term women when referencing human beings does mean biological sex--even to people with gender dysmorphia else there would not be the need to change physically.
(This is quite different than the pronoun she, the term feminine and its agreements, unfeminine, womanly etc. All of which are often used in denote other conceptions, not even those of gender expectations, though there are plenty of rules for that and it doesn't happen willy-nilly)
But the pre-eminent understanding remains biologic, and calling people silly for "not understanding" that we really mean the non biologic term despite constantly acting as it isn't the main definition (even if that were true & post 2008 I don't think it is).
Not to mention, non-biologic conceptions of women have different controversies, the first is that they are wildly sexist. Or just flat out incorrect. So if we are talking about words and vibes, what er "vibe" are we talking about? It is not as simple as a woman is something you sit on.
Look, I understand your frustration. To you, the word "woman" refers to a biological property. And that's completely ok -- you're allowed to have your own conception of words and I do agree that for most of human history (including now), the word "woman" typically does refer to a biological property for most audiences in most settings.
But I suspect when people use "woman" to refer to "gender identity", you're almost always able to identify that that's what they mean. And if you are, then this sort of proves the author's point (and your own point from a few posts back): that definitions fail in isolation and require both context and shared understanding.
You may think it's silly, unclear, or outright harmful to language itself to use the word "woman" to refer to anything besides biological sex -- and that's totally fine. You're allowed to feel that way. But the author is not claiming here that you should use language in that way; they're merely pointing out that it's often difficult (or impossible) to define a term in isolation from its context.
To put a bow on this: if you understand what a person *means* when they say "woman" from the context of the situation, then language is doing it's job, regardless of whether you like that they used that word to mean what they did.
You might be frustrated that some treat a non-standard definition as the main one, you might feel that "woman" should be reserved as a purely biological concept, and you might feel that the trans activist definition of "woman" opens a can of worms -- and you might even be right! But that's beside the point the author is making here, and it doesn't change the fact that when these people use that word, you know exactly what they mean.
Lastly, I feel like the very "soul" of the author's post is that arguing about definitions is the most pointless way of debating trans issues. I'm very pro-trans, yet I totally understand what you mean when you say "woman" and why you're frustrated that the word is being used in that way. Similarly, if I say "woman", you almost certainly understand what I'm referring to. So we're not having any issue communicating, yet we're discussing the meaning of words when the whole purpose of words is to aid communication (which we're not having issues with!)
Topics more deserving of debate include:
-> Does the trans movement deny the reality of biological sex?
-> Is the can of worms brought by the use of "woman" in this way worth opening? Are there ethical issues? Will it be confusing?
-> Is being trans psychologically defensible or is it a mental illness?
-> Should legislation protect trans people?
-> Bathrooms, sports, and contests.
-> Is a non-biological definition of "woman" sexist?
I could go on. All of these topics, if discussed, further people's understanding of these issues and might lead to meaningful change or compromise. Debating definitions does neither of these things.
But you can't discuss those terms if you can't use the word women chiefly in its biological context and if you must instead pretend that that isn't its its historic and mass understanding.
Sure, there are people who can't even hear the phrase I identify as a woman without saying but you are not. I'll agree they are annoying. However, there is a outright refusal on the part of the post-2008 trans activist community to define what they actually mean re I identify as a women and that caused a lot of ill feeling.
Because for many women what you mean by "I know what they mean" is actually a source of pain and outrage and something we've been fighting against as feminists, as anti-racists or as anti-classism (not sure the grammar there) or otherwise in opposition to I think the word is cultural hegemony (but that's a word that feels very much all about vibes, or at least to me, whose never quite memorized the definition).
So we are supposed to "understand" and even support an idea we were already in full rebellion with and trying to de-install in people's minds. And even, even are given a name to indicate we are cool with the idea whose vibe we kinda grok only as an enemy.
Or to put it another way, if we are talking about "vibing" a word, the vibe and thus understanding of that word is totally and completely different for those of us in the fight it mode than those in the wish I was. It is in fact not the same understanding at all of what it is.
Steven, I think you've identified a genuine problem, but I'm not convinced you've answered the question your title promises.
The strength of your essay is not that it tells us what a woman is. It shows why demanding a single, context-free definition often fails. The chair example is entertaining precisely because it demonstrates how quickly necessary-and-sufficient definitions become absurd.
Where I think we differ is in what follows from that observation.
I don't believe the question *"What is a woman?"* is the most important one. The more important question is: *"What do we mean by 'woman' in this discussion?"*
Language only works because speakers implicitly agree on the rules of the language game they are playing. Problems arise when they don't.
If two mathematicians use **x** to mean different values, no amount of algebra will resolve their disagreement until they first agree what **x** represents. The problem is not mathematics; it is semantics.
The same applies here.
There is no reason to assume that every conversation requires the same definition of *woman*. A geneticist, an obstetrician, a lawyer, a sociologist and an anthropologist may all use the word legitimately, but for different purposes and with different criteria. None is necessarily wrong. They are simply playing different language games.
The mistake is to begin arguing about the implications before agreeing on the rules.
If, for the purposes of one discussion, both participants agree that "woman" means an adult human with an XX karyotype, then the discussion proceeds on those terms. If another discussion is about legal recognition or social identity, a different definition may be entirely appropriate. The crucial point is that everyone knows which game is being played before the debate begins.
In that sense, I think Wittgenstein's lesson is slightly different from the one you draw. It is not that words have no stable meaning. It is that meaning is inseparable from use. Stability comes from shared use within a context, not from discovering a metaphysical essence.
So I would answer the Internet's most exhausting question rather differently.
Don't ask, "What is the one true definition of woman?"
Ask, "What definition of woman are we agreeing to use for this conversation?"
Once the rules are agreed, people can disagree productively. Without that agreement, they are often not disagreeing about reality at all—they are simply playing different language games while believing they are playing the same one.
That’s a really detailed and fair critique. I appreciate your reading my article and taking the time to write such a thoughtful response.
⠀
I think we’re almost entirely agreeing here. If anything, I feel like you may have overcorrected my rhetoric into a more academic version of my thesis than I deserve. But you can’t overcorrect me without first being correct, which makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.
Despite the article’s subtitle, I offer very little in the way of answers. I’m more of a “poke at it with a question-stick until it grumbles” sort of guy.
Less professor, more linguistics-clown wondering how you would explain to someone born deaf why “Jung juggling jester” is two-word, not three-word, alliteration.
⠀
I strongly agree with you that words are not meaningless, they're labels we put on meanings. The important part is ensuring we are talking about the same meaning, when we are using the same word. My observation is that approx. 99.87% of online arguments around this particular article's title, are between people who are meaning different things when they argue about the same word.
Once those meanings are hammered out, then by most means, brandish those labels about until the cows come home... from wherever they’ve been.
But then, going into another space and swinging around the same label, just presuming that the same meaning that was established earlier is what you're swinging around with that word here, now, is folly.
⠀
So yes — I think your framing is very close to the clean version of the linguistic labyrinth I was juggling, with my bells on my hat.
That's part of the problem; the same word "woman" is doing work in three categories. Are we talking biology? Sexuality? Social roles? In every case, the criteria are similar, and there's a lot of overlap, but no definition that will unify all three. Since gender is quite as objective as we thought, how do we define it? Fall all the way to subjectivity, where "woman" is a tautology? What is a USEFUL definition? Or would a meaning-cluster be more appropriate. Is there a statistically significant portion of the population deviating from the norm, or is it just some edge cases? You have to draw the line SOMEWHERE, or the categories mean nothing. But where?
All words are tautologies if your definition of the word is the definition you've assigned to the word. That's largely the point of my article. Words are just tools to share our thoughts, which are far too varied — not just person to person, but context to context, and day to day. That makes language isufficient to be treated as prescriptive. Hence words are descriptive, and is why English, and every tongue, is spoken differently across different places and time periods its spoken.
At one time, in the English language, little boys were called girls and boy was a term for a servant. Using the term boy for a male child and girl for a female child would have been seen as a bizarre perversion of language... but now, those same sorts of "linguistical puritans" will yell at you for making baby Jesus cry and accuse you of inviting communism into our just and fair capitalist lands, if you call a tiny penis'd human a girl.
Someone in these comments argued that a wheel chair isn't a chair. Is it? isn't it? It wasn't, based on what he was thinking in his head when he used the label "chair" for it.
Two people who have different nuanced conceptions of what a chair is, saying back and forth to each other: "A wheelchair is not a chair", "No, a wheelchair IS a chair!" is not a helpful way to argue about a topic, unless the goal is to forget about installing the wheelchair ramp entirely and instead crowning themselves King Dictionary and calling it a job well done.
In fact, this only sidelines the topic to instead argue semantics and pedantics, until the original topic is well in the rearview mirror and now you have two people raging, angry that the other one refuses to have the same thoughts for a word that they do... the subjectively obviously right way.
People who say "wheelchairs aren't chairs" aren't wrong, because they are the ones invoking those words - They are making a comparison between what THEY view as a chair, and what THEY view as a wheelchair. The wheelchair doesn't actually change in any case - it's still the same assortment of atoms, still usable in the exact same ways. Both sides are just refusing to play in the conversation unless they get to pretend that their opponent is using the same definition for chair that they are.
I agree with you quite strongly that categorization is important, and we need to use the same words even to just communicate. I'm merely pointing out the limitations of language, and saying that words and their definitions come as a set, and are swappable… you just need both sides talking about the same set or you might as well be talking at each other in different languages.
This reminds me a bit of an older post on the same question (after we've sorted out the definition of a fish). The author has a philosophy degree. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
"A miserable pile of secrets."
I normally despise an abundance of emoji, even old-fashioned smileys rendered with unicode, but you somehow make it work and seem natural to the flow. Now I really want a turtle-shaped chair for some reason. Well done also on cleverly dodging the obvious loaded interpretation of the headline question (in the meat of the article anyway). Works equally well iyk or iydk.
Thanks for the encouraging comment! So far this project is still a bit of an experiment to see if my sideways approach to argumentation is valued by people enough to attract them to want to want to read more of my future words.
I'm glad you saw not just the content, but the form as well. Your pointing out that my play-with-language still carries clear meaning — without having to rely on my reader to have "inside-baseball" knowledge — is about the best compliment I could have received in response to this article.
The problem here is that you are in fact being unclear in your original definition, and specious in your exceptions. You also don't talk about whether you are trying to exclude chair from other types seating, which would require a stricter definition or you are looking for a broad definition. We use chair both ways, both as a synonym for seat and as a specific object. The number of legs is meaningless as a specific object though having a back is crucial. Backless it is a stool. Or a possibly a bench.
A turtle, alive or dead, can't be a chair because its purpose is not to be sat on. It's purpose is to be itself. A rock can be used as a chair, but it isn't a chair. We make these distinctions all the time.
In any event, a wheelchair, despite being called a chair, it is not in fact a chair. This not because it lacks legs, or has only two leg like objects. It is a medical device whose purpose is to transport people of limited mobility to and from places. That people sit in it to be transported does not change its purpose, that many users sit in it between movement does not change it.
Thanks for this — genuinely. This is the first serious critique the project has received, and it landed right in the center of what the essay was trying to get at: definitions, edge cases, purpose, and usage.
You helped me write a follow-up piece. I anonymized you out of respect, because I’m not trying to make you the story. I’m more interested in the thought-juice your comment put on the table.
I wrote a full response here: https://tripledigitiqclub.substack.com/p/tdiqc-gets-its-first-ever-critique
Short version:I think you’re right that my chair definition was broad. You spotted that very accurately. But the broadness was my point.
I think you've managed to exactly prove the author's point. If a thing is best defined by its purpose and a chair is a thing whose purpose is to be sat upon, then a stool is a chair. But you clarify that a backless chair is actually a stool, implying that your definition of a chair is "something whose primary purpose is to be sat upon, but which has a back".
And of course this implies that a couch is a chair, which most people would disagree with. You could say a couch is not a chair, but you'd need to make your definition more complex. Or, you could say a couch is a chair, which would be disagreeable to an interior designer and most ordinary people.
The author's point is that "perfect" definitions often don't exist and attempts to make them perfect divorce them from their original purpose: to communicate an idea. While there are exceptions (especially in STEM), most definitions communicate more of a "vibe" than a precise thing. And even more to the point: endless bickering about the precision of definitions is almost purposeless.
I mean c'mon dude. Encyclopedia Britanica is quite simple and calls it a a seat with a back, intended for one person. It doesn't muck about with the leg issue like Webster and notes that the term can include a stool and a throne. Nobody is going to get confused about couches and will pick up that stools and thrones aren't fully considered chairs.
That's pretty precise.
People aren't confused about what it is. While there are plenty of words that have plenty of vibe action to them, most words are not based on it--which is why we can translate from one language to another.
Do people (or English speakers at least) use the word Chair only to mean the specific thing one draws visually when drawing a chair? Do we also use it as a substitute when we are asking referring to the need we have for its use? Yes. That's by the way NOT about vibes either, unlike say the word magnificent or vile. We are saying, in shorthand, chair or like a chair. We well understand what is being asked in the context?
I just read a piece on our world becoming uni-context and that being a mixed bag and what has bugged me about a lot of linguistic conversations is the pretense that our language is uni-context as well. The idea that because we will use a word with precise definitions a way that stretches that precise definition * in specific contexts that all understand* all words are without precision or real meaning.
The rules when we use it differently are far more precise than people are being honest about in this essay or discussion. (And English isn't even the most precise language out there.) There are entire classes of intellectual understanding that precede the definition of chair one won't even consider bringing to definition--because you don't have to.
What we bring to language is so much more too. It is popular to treat that as fuzzy when it is in fact quite specific.
You don't have to define that a chair isn't alive because its furniture which is inanimate ie not alive. We know aspects of a definition simply by being alive and don't tend to explain them because there is no need--not because our understanding lacks precision.
I mean, I agree with virtually everything you wrote, which is largely in agreement with this essay. One can't encapsulate the definition of a "thing" in a few sentences: it requires a considerable degree of context and background education. This essay is highlighting that attempting to be precise with words alone is insufficient. In other words, this essay is showing why a uni-context understanding of language can't get very far.
Do you interpret this essay as being supportive of a uni-context understanding of language? If not, what is it critiquing? If your issue is that treating language this way is silly, I agree (and the author likely does too). The title of the post gives a hint that this is in response to the tendency of anti-trans groups turning the debate into a definition game while ignoring all the context and prior education that should inform them that when a trans activist says "woman", they most definitely aren't referring to biological sex.
It requires understanding of the world we live in. And I'm sorry but most trans activists post-2008 actually do deny the reality of biological sex. They use the term assigned at birth as if it is some outside authority that determines it and not something determined by physical observation, DNA, secondary characteristics etc. And there is a strong push to say that transwoman were always women from birth no matter what their physicality was.
However, the term women when referencing human beings does mean biological sex--even to people with gender dysmorphia else there would not be the need to change physically.
(This is quite different than the pronoun she, the term feminine and its agreements, unfeminine, womanly etc. All of which are often used in denote other conceptions, not even those of gender expectations, though there are plenty of rules for that and it doesn't happen willy-nilly)
But the pre-eminent understanding remains biologic, and calling people silly for "not understanding" that we really mean the non biologic term despite constantly acting as it isn't the main definition (even if that were true & post 2008 I don't think it is).
Not to mention, non-biologic conceptions of women have different controversies, the first is that they are wildly sexist. Or just flat out incorrect. So if we are talking about words and vibes, what er "vibe" are we talking about? It is not as simple as a woman is something you sit on.
Look, I understand your frustration. To you, the word "woman" refers to a biological property. And that's completely ok -- you're allowed to have your own conception of words and I do agree that for most of human history (including now), the word "woman" typically does refer to a biological property for most audiences in most settings.
But I suspect when people use "woman" to refer to "gender identity", you're almost always able to identify that that's what they mean. And if you are, then this sort of proves the author's point (and your own point from a few posts back): that definitions fail in isolation and require both context and shared understanding.
You may think it's silly, unclear, or outright harmful to language itself to use the word "woman" to refer to anything besides biological sex -- and that's totally fine. You're allowed to feel that way. But the author is not claiming here that you should use language in that way; they're merely pointing out that it's often difficult (or impossible) to define a term in isolation from its context.
To put a bow on this: if you understand what a person *means* when they say "woman" from the context of the situation, then language is doing it's job, regardless of whether you like that they used that word to mean what they did.
You might be frustrated that some treat a non-standard definition as the main one, you might feel that "woman" should be reserved as a purely biological concept, and you might feel that the trans activist definition of "woman" opens a can of worms -- and you might even be right! But that's beside the point the author is making here, and it doesn't change the fact that when these people use that word, you know exactly what they mean.
Lastly, I feel like the very "soul" of the author's post is that arguing about definitions is the most pointless way of debating trans issues. I'm very pro-trans, yet I totally understand what you mean when you say "woman" and why you're frustrated that the word is being used in that way. Similarly, if I say "woman", you almost certainly understand what I'm referring to. So we're not having any issue communicating, yet we're discussing the meaning of words when the whole purpose of words is to aid communication (which we're not having issues with!)
Topics more deserving of debate include:
-> Does the trans movement deny the reality of biological sex?
-> Is the can of worms brought by the use of "woman" in this way worth opening? Are there ethical issues? Will it be confusing?
-> Is being trans psychologically defensible or is it a mental illness?
-> Should legislation protect trans people?
-> Bathrooms, sports, and contests.
-> Is a non-biological definition of "woman" sexist?
I could go on. All of these topics, if discussed, further people's understanding of these issues and might lead to meaningful change or compromise. Debating definitions does neither of these things.
But you can't discuss those terms if you can't use the word women chiefly in its biological context and if you must instead pretend that that isn't its its historic and mass understanding.
Sure, there are people who can't even hear the phrase I identify as a woman without saying but you are not. I'll agree they are annoying. However, there is a outright refusal on the part of the post-2008 trans activist community to define what they actually mean re I identify as a women and that caused a lot of ill feeling.
Because for many women what you mean by "I know what they mean" is actually a source of pain and outrage and something we've been fighting against as feminists, as anti-racists or as anti-classism (not sure the grammar there) or otherwise in opposition to I think the word is cultural hegemony (but that's a word that feels very much all about vibes, or at least to me, whose never quite memorized the definition).
So we are supposed to "understand" and even support an idea we were already in full rebellion with and trying to de-install in people's minds. And even, even are given a name to indicate we are cool with the idea whose vibe we kinda grok only as an enemy.
Or to put it another way, if we are talking about "vibing" a word, the vibe and thus understanding of that word is totally and completely different for those of us in the fight it mode than those in the wish I was. It is in fact not the same understanding at all of what it is.