comment: >
  
  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.
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.