comment: >
  
  That's actually fairly accurate.
  Genders and what defines a specific gender is determined by culture and society.
  What it means to be a woman, a man, etc changes from culture to culture and across time.
  Colours for boys and girls have changed, what clothes define a man or a woman have changed.
  That's it means to be a social construct, genders are concepts that emerge from the collective biases we have about gender indicators.
  That genders are breaking down to become less well defined is a good thing.
context: An interesting fact about categories is that the way that the human brain works is not by matching definitions but rather by archetypes. 
  A lot of people think we put things in categories by comparing an item to a list of properties and then if and only if the item has the properties on the list does it go in the category. That’s not how brains or languages work. 
  Is a hotdog a sandwich?
  The reason people have inane category fight like this is that they keep making that definition basis error. I.e. “a sandwich has bread outside and a meat filling…”
  Instead, this is how categorization works:
  In your mind instead of a list of criteria, there exists a prototype sandwich. Close your eyes and say the word sandwich. If you’re like me, you’re now picturing that prototype sandwich. Mine looks like this 🥪. 
  It has two slices of white bread some lettuce and definitely some meat and cheese. That’s the center of the bullseye. The archetype. And it lights up a particular cluster of neurons that we can “recognition of a sandwich”. 
  Now when you open your eyes and see something that might be a sandwich, what you’re doing is comparing the new object to the archetype. If I see one without lettuce and on a club roll, my mind says “close enough” to the archetype and I call it a sandwich. Personally, when I see a taco, it’s too far from the bullseye to hit the recognition circuit cluster of neurons for “sandwich” so I don’t use that word. But if everyone else started to, probably my dart board would grow. It’s not like there’s some kind of objective meaning for the category. 
  Now, the exact same is true of social categories like gender. The word “woman” refers to the archetype you see when you close your eyes. That archetype is based on a platonic ideal of a woman. In my minds eye she looks like this 🙋‍♀️💃. In real life, when someone has long hair but isn’t wearing a dress, yeah, she land a hair off center from the bullseye — but is just as much a “woman” as a club roll with meat and cheese is a sandwich. Other things can vary too. Maybe she is wearing a dress but doesn’t have long hair. Maybe she has un expressed Y chromosomes. Maybe she’s physiologically male but expresses gender as a woman. 
  All of these things are somewhere on my dartboard for woman. 
  All social categorizations work this way. Things that fit a right definition based category rather than an archetype are the rare exception and gender has never been one of them. >
  
  I’m not op but with your logic, wouldn’t a lot of the self ID stuff become problematic ? You are basically saying that trans women need to pass as women before they can be considered as women. Because otherwise they don’t fit the archetype. If my brain goes “short hair and beard = male” but the person identifies as a women, what then? I think that’s what Op is referring to. There are no traits that map onto these terms anymore >
  
  Let’s flesh out this discussion with more precise words. We’ll need:
  
  gender identity
  gender expression
  
  
  I’m not op but with your logic, wouldn’t a lot of the self ID stuff become problematic ? You are basically saying that trans women need to pass as women before they can be considered as women. 
  
  Trans women need to express their gender identity as female to be taken as female. What constitutes a woman will depend on who’s dartboard you’re talking about. If it’s their own, we’re talking about their gender identity. 
  Who’s are you asking about?
  
  Because otherwise they don’t fit the archetype. 
  
  Who’s archetype?
  
  If my brain goes “short hair and beard = male” but the person identifies as a women, what then? 
  
  Then you have a choice to make. Update your dartboard like I did with the taco or don’t. 
  
  I think that’s what Op is referring to. There are no traits that map onto these terms anymore
  
  How do you get to there from here? You went from “here are a new set of traits to map” to “there are no traits”. I think you’re still thinking with definitions instead of archetypes. >
  
  It never did OP. Gender is a social construct >
  
  You are equating something not being able to be objectively and concretely defined with something having no meaning, which is a false equivalence.
  When it comes down to it, most words can't be concretely defined in such a way that we can come up with a set of criteria that all things that we use the word for fit, and all things that we do not use the word for do not. The classic example that people use for this is the word "chair".
  A word can carry a lot of meaning without having a concrete definition like this. We can even accept that a word's meaning is subjective and that it's unlikely that any two people will define it in exactly the same way (take colours, as an example of that) while also accepting that the word has both meaning and utility.
  Definitions are a tool. They do not make language work, they do their best to describe how it works. >
  
  I don’t understand your example. I think it’s reasonable to say a chair generally has some support to the ground and is also designed to allow a person to sit on it. Do you have another example of an intentionally definitionless term ? >
  
  
  a chair generally has some support to the ground and is also designed to allow a person to sit on it
  
  This could also be a bean bag, pillow, sofa etc.
  Intentionally definitionless term as you put it I don't think is the right way to look at it. Most words need some form of clarification in order to understand what is meant, because words are not the things they signify. >
  
  I see your point, but I can compare chairs to those other seating things. Pillows are softer and smaller items with no definable legs. 
  I would likely change my view if you could give me even a vague definition of any gender, the same way I can give you one for chairs. >
  
  Chairs have four legs, a back, and people sit on them right >
  
  Not all chairs have a back - that's actually a relatively recent addition. Chairs can also have three legs, or be like the ones I had in school with two curved legs. >
  
  We call that a stool >
  
  The first is a chair. Can you repaste the second link please.? >
  
  So a chair is not restricted to four legs, something with three legs can be a chair.
  Second link fixed - as per the other comment it has four legs, a back and is in contact with the ground. However if you decide it is not a chair then something would have to be added to that other definition, like sized appropriately for a single person to sit - and then we'd have to go down and look at what possibilities that addition adds.
  We're also assuming that "legs" means something stubby protruding from the 'body' of the chair, and not a human leg, which would need further clarification. >
  
  Gender is a social construct, and social constructs are pretty complicated to define. Basically, gender is whatever we as a society want it to be. Contrary to what you are saying, we have not completely changed the meaning of gender. We have only changed how we determine which gender someone is, although even this is only changed slightly.
  For 95% of people the old way still is the way their gender is determined. Your parents or the doctor determines the sex, and that means you're the equivalent gender for the rest of your life. For the small group of people who feel like this determination was wrong, they can now easily change their gender. However, it's not merely by saying they are now of the other gender. If a man says he is now identifying as a woman but keeps everything else the exact same, society will treat this person as a man regardless of him identifying as a woman. This is because gender is not only descriptive, but also prescriptive.
  We don't just use gender to say that a person is either man or woman, we also use it as a reason to expect certain things from people. Your "women have long hair" is not only a description of women because you observed that most women have long hair, but it's also a prescription: You expect all women to have long hair, and if a person doesn't, you'll judge them for it.
  And both the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of gender are still very much alive. These are the defining characteristics. "Women have long hair" is still something that is part of the idea of 'woman'. Even though many women don't have long hair. Think of any identifying aspect that you can realistically know about someone you meet that makes them either a woman or a man. Long hair = woman, muscular = man, thin hands = woman, workers hands = man, broad shoulders = man, makeup = woman. Now think about if these things have ever been 100% accurate. You'll find that no descriptive feature of gender has ever been true for all women or all men.
  So yes, the concept of gender still has lots of meaning. If it wouldn't have any meaning, why would there be people who wanted to change their gender? >
  
  u/Falcon_FXT I’d like to see your response to this one please. >
  
  Thanks for the tag, sorry there’s a lot of comments and I’m trying to engage with them all. Jietoy - when you say “we have not changed the meaning of gender”, what is the meaning then? 
  What you are saying only supports my view. A man that can change nothing about himself, but transition to a woman proves this. The person is exactly the same but was a man for a period and now will be a woman - nothing changed, but both man and woman apply. If you say we mistakenly said he was a man but he’s actually been a woman the whole time; what made him a woman? The only answer in my view is that he prefers to be referred to as such; which means the gender is essentially a name which I think also has no inherent meaning. >
  
  Don't worry, I'm discussing this and gave you the definition of gender in another thread by now. We don't need to continue here.
  Just for u/Surrybee: I don't think gender can be simply changed by a man transitioning to a woman without changing anything. Because gender is not just about by what is said, but also by what is perceived. A person who takes hormone therapy or gets surgery to go from male to female, will do so because they perceived themselves a woman in the first place. So it's not a man changing into a woman by transitioning, it's a woman getting the correct hormones and genitals. >
  
  So if i feel sad, i can take euphoric drug to Elevate myself. That' should be completely fine, by that logic. 
  People perceiving's are very fickle. I don't really have any problem with people doing whatever they want, with their body, but the logic that, "i feel in a certain way, so people should adapt to my ways", just doesn't seem to fit the seriousness of this subject.
  Also the moment hormones are involved it becomes biological. So your last sentence just collapses. >
  
  That's not what I'm saying at all though. In other posts I say that being a woman is about perceiving yourself to be a woman, but also others perceiving you to be a woman. If you perceive yourself to be a woman but you don't act according to other's expectations of 'woman', you will not really be a woman.
  So a person isn't pushing their own feelings onto someone else just like that. >
  
  But that's just society putting certain standards and stereotypes, isn't it the same, societal expectations are a sharp edge, that's making a lot of lives miserable. Everyone faces them, not just people with criteria as gender.
  And isn't it said don't give a damn about what society thinks? So in a way changing yourself is just bending to such whims. Since gender is a lot more about how other perceive you, how do you as an individual get to decide what gender is. >
  
  
  And isn't it said don't give a damn about what society thinks? So in a way changing yourself is just bending to such whims. 
  
  Yes, that's true. But we live in a society, we can't function without others, so we have to adhere to society's rules. We can try to change them, but we can't live without following them.
  
  Since gender is a lot more about how other perceive you, how do you as an individual get to decide what gender is.
  
  You don't. An individual doesn't get to decide what gender is, that's what we do as a society. That's why the perception of others is so important. That's why it's so important that we don't misgender people on purpose, and that we accept others who are trans. Because they can't change their gender on their own. >
  
  
  I can’t say “women have long hair”, because that’s not true. 
  
  Was this true at any point prior to now though? There were always women with short hair and men with long hair. >
  
  It used to be more common, perhaps my other example about pregnancy is more fitting. You have not changed my view as you have only pointed out how one of my analogies/examples does not perfectly reflect my position. >
  
  It just struck me as odd to even include it, because it's such an obviously flawed example. I actually think it illustrates quite well that gender has always been a somewhat hazy concept though. Gender is a collection of behaviors and attributes we ascribe to people. No single characteristic that you might say reflects what it means to be a woman will ever include all women as a result of that. >
  
  Women usually have longer hair than men I think is broadly i controversial and probably statistically true but I’ll leave your issue with my example aside because it doesn’t change my view at all. 
  Can you give me examples of behaviours that ascribe to a particular gender? And again there are theoretically infinite genders so I can’t see how you can say each one has examples of behaviours. >
  
  I think what they are getting at is that it is not some new development for gender to be a foggy topic. Physical presentation is not homogenous to any perticular gender, and certainly not across culture. Many Sikhi women have beards due to their rules about not cutting hair. Bodies come in all shapes, sizes, and colours.
  
  Can you give me examples of behaviours that ascribe to a particular gender?
  
  Is it behaviour which works as the defining trait of gender? If so why not just call it behaviour or mannerisms? >
  
  Okay, can be something other than behaviours. Physical traits, whatever you want. My view may be changed if you can establish any reasonable definition of any gender. >
  
  You're after a purely arbitrary definition of any gender based on something external? How would that work?
  I think it would be better if you thought of it like the way language works in law. What is murder in a legal sense? It's anything that the legislation, or precedent, or a jury, or a judge decides is murder.
  An action will take place, someone dies as a result, and a suspect stands trial to determine whether or not society feels their actions fit into murder, or whether self defence, first degree, second degree, manslaughter, collateral damage etc come into it.
  In the same way, the idea of masculinity and femininity is different to everyone. To some a person in a burqua is a woman. To some only a person who hunts and cooks their own meat is a real man. Real men don't cry. Or do they? Real women exist to serve men. Or do they?
  When you hear someone is a nurse and assume they are a woman, there's nothing in the word nurse that denotes woman, but there is an idea that only a woman can be a nurse. The "male equivalent" of nurse is still nurse. The "female equivalent" of doctor is still doctor. 
  There are many ideas of what it means to be man or woman or whatever else, so it's for people to decide whether or not those definitions work for them.
  However all of this is despite the point that your view indicated that you see this as some recent development, and not something thats always been the case. >
  
  Even if not all encompassing, some definition that is mostly fitting is fine with me. Can you offer an approximate definition for “woman” that does not exclude trans people? >
  
  Can you please point to any time in history where there was a definition that you'd agree with?
  Even when society was hunter/gatherers there were males who would gather, including the children (that doesn't mean they changed their gender just their role when they came of age to hunt).
  You're also asking in terms of an English centric use of language. Is a table a woman or a book a man just because the French language assigns gender to them? >
  
  Yep 200 years ago when we didn’t recognise trans people as much, the definition was genitals based. >
  
  If you specify that it's sex and not gender, then the sentence "men can't give birth" still makes sense >
  
  “Men” is not a sex, it’s a gender. “Male” is a sex and so I could say males cannot give birth. That establishes again my point that there are definitions for sexes, but not for genders, which is why I say genera have no real meaning. >
  
  i've never heard of men and women as being genders, but yeah i don't disagree that genders don't have a "real" meaning. I just think of gender  being similar to the traditional sex characteristics minus the biological differences >
  
  But that may be transphobic because traditional sex characteristics (even minus biological) will often not apply to trans people >
  
  it doesn't have to be a perfect match but the line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise there is zero point to identifying as a transgender if you don't identify more so with whatever you're transitioning as imo >
  
  I agree there is now zero point to identifying as transgender. That’s because we cannot draw a line anywhere >
  
  well it probably doesn't help that gender roles are being challenged now, etc. I guess the only definition I can give of a "woman" then is someone who identifies as a female, in the sense of societal characteristics that are associated with being female >
  
  Yes I agree that’s the definition, which I think itself is meaningless. I’d equate it to a name - what is “Jake”? The answer is - someone who says they are Jake. Jake is a name but there’s no actual concept of what “Jake” is because it’s anything. >
  
  That is true, but then a lot of terms used for identification would be invalid, since not everyone under a group will be 100% the same. This may not be the best analogy, but sex and gender could be compared to something like ethnicity and nationality. For example, an ethnically egyptian person born in egypt is also egyptian by nationality, but if they moved to china because they resonate with chinese beliefs, then their nationality would change to chinese. Just like how gender traits are changing, so is something like a country's beliefs >
  
  Yeah maybe some more would be. I don’t think nationality would because it still requires some connection to a physical land (so I’m born in the UK and lived here my whole life, so have my ancestors, I can’t say I’m Chinese). But yes I take your broader point and maybe other words are meaningless for the same reason, agreed >
  
  
  I can’t say “women have long hair”, because that’s not true.
  
  You could never say that before either. Women could always have short hair.
  
  I can’t say “men cant give birth” because trans men can.
  
  You could never say that before either. Many women were infertile or had complications that prevented pregnancy or safe births. Menopause can also prevent women from being able to have children. A significant portion of women are not able to give birth.
  Under the view that sex and gender are synonymous, the only thing you could ever say with certainty would be "all men have XX chromosomes" or similar. Barring that, there was never any universal statement that could apply to all members of a sex/gender (that wouldn't be universally true for all humans). >
  
  The hair example does not effectively support my point, agreed. 
  The fact that not all WOMEN could give birth does not negate the fact that MEN were incapable of giving birth (prior to the recognition it trans men as men). I therefore do not accept that my example about birth is invalid. In any case I do not believe that very narrow exception negates the general point I’m making. 
  The chromosome point is an even better example, but I believe this actually supports my view rather than negates it, because I still can’t say men have certain chromosomes because of transgender people. I can only say “males” do. >
  
  Your view is that gender no longer has any meaning, but it used to.
  The only working example you have of this is a being able to say what someone's sex organs cannot do. Unless you can name anything else, your view is essentially limited to a very specific set of a statements contrasting male and female reproduction.
  At that point I would ask - did you really make this CMV specifically because you find it important to associate gender and a list of things their reproductive organs cannot do? Otherwise it seems like your view has narrowed. >
  
  Well my point is I can’t say either gender can or can’t do anything, because since anyone can identify as either one, my point can be negated automatically by one such person. That’s what I mean. Another example someone mentioned is chromosomes. I used to be able to say a woman has xx chromosomes and men have xx. But not a female can transition from woman to man, and they will still have xx chromosomes. >
  
  I feel like we're might start going in circles, so correct me if I'm wrong here.
  Your issue is that you can no longer say if a gender can/can't do anything.
  My point is, you could never do that in the first place except for:
  
  Stating whether someone's chromosomal sex pair is XY or XX
  Stating what someone's sex organs cannot do
  
  So now I ask - if you accept that these are the only things you could ever say categorically about a gender, do you still hold the view that gender used to have some substantial meaning? >
  
  No, those are only examples. The genital at birth is another one. But they’re examples of characteristics used to define a gender - which I felt were substantive enough to give “gender” some definition and meaning. 
  Can you define man or woman or any gender for me? In a way that allows trans men or women to be included? >
  
  It may help you to recognize that “male” and “female” are not and never were defined by genitals or chromosomes. There has never been one test that a person can run that would include all females and exclude all males because of the natural variation that exists in biological sex. Some people have always had chromosomes that don’t match their genitals, genitals too ambiguous to be classified by the doctor at birth, and bodies that don’t respond in the normal way to sex hormones. Sex is and always has been divisible into two main groups defined by a set of biological features that generally group together, but there is still no way to predict how someone with some of these biological features but not others would be classified as between the two groups. 
  So when you look at it that way, linking gender directly to sex never enabled you to do more than say “well, however they define your sex, that’s the thing that defines your gender” >
  
  
  However, gender now does not actually have any defining characteristics. I can’t say “women have long hair”, because that’s not true.
  
  Was that ever true? That seems like a bad example. Women having shorter/no hair predates the more modern distinction between sex and gender.
  The problem here is requiring essentialism - trying to come up with a definition that must necessarily and absolutely apply to every woman and to every man without exception. There is no problem to say that "men typically or on average can't give birth". Just because those words can have exceptions doesn't mean that they have lost all of their meaning. >
  
  This has been raised. Ignore that example and replace it with men had xy chromosomes and women had xx. Different genitalia also >
  
  You haven't addressed the point about essentialism. Words having only approximate definitions that allow for some exceptions, isn't a problem and doesn't mean that those words have lost all meaning. >
  
  Yep approximate definitions within reason is fine. Can you offer an approximate definition for “woman” that does not exclude trans people? >
  
  I think that an answer can be found if we have a look at how transgender is typically defined. A recurring observation (and common part of definitions of transgender e.g. by the APA) is that one's gender identity can either match or mismatch one's physical sex. Someone whose sexual bodily characteristic match their internal gender identity (sense of gender) is described as cisgender, while someone whose sexual bodily characteristics do not match their gender identity, is described as transgender.
  One could thus define men/human males as persons who identify with a body that has male sexual characteristics, and women/human females as persons who identify with a body that has female sexual characteristics, even if their existing bodily characteristics are different from how they identify.
  That would cover both cisgender and transgender individuals and still allows for gender roles, presentation and behaviors etc. to be treated as approximate, but not as absolute requirements. >
  
  But then the definition includes that person's own idea on what a gender should feel like. What if that person is mistaken, confused, lying, sexist, transphobic?
  If we can't come up with a definition that can overrule self-identification without being transphobic, doesn't that mean that gender itself has no legitimacy to continue existing as part of society anymore? >
  
  If we exclude self-identification, wouldn't that mean that a person cannot legitimately self-identify as LGB either? >
  
  No, attraction is a body/brain response that can be measured.
  You show them different people in different situations and measure who they are attracted to and who not. Or however complex you want to make it, you can actually measure it, you don't need to believe what they say.
  Which is not to say that that should be done to everyone, but the fact that it could be done means that there's a legitimate real thing.
  What do you measure for gender? How they feel about stereotypes? That'd be sexist or transphobic again. >
  
  How would you measure the sexual orientation of someone who is unable to experience any sexual arousal, i.e. some asexual people, or due to a disability etc.? >
  
  Well someone that doesn't show any romantic or sexual attraction when measured would be an asexual aromantic. Or the scenarios where they were measured were lacking in the one super specific thing that turns them on. 
  Maybe some rare disability made them that way if that's what you are insinuating,  not sure if that is possible, but how they became that way is an entirely different discussion to what they are. >
  
  It's kinda like one's race. Generally we can categorize people because that's what the brain is hardwired to do but there's no real definition (or reason) in separating say slavs from celts. >
  
  I assume there’s a historical connection to some land at some point though >
  
  Perhaps but those days are long since past. Boarders change. A Russian in sakalin is likely to be much closer to ethnically Chinese than eastern European. Distinction in citizenship does have practical utility but the idea of the modern nation state is pretty new in the grand scheme