Why do liberals refuse to define what a woman is and what does that mean for the future of feminism?
Last Updated: 25.06.2025 06:11
The single thing that determines sex is the presence of a gene called SRY. Its discovery in 1990 changed everything we thought we knew about sex in humans. And we learned that the biology of sex in humans is actually multilayered, quite complex — and occasionally quite messy.
woman
All this means you may be genetically male-or-female, chromosomally male-or-female, hormonally male/female/non-binary, with cells that may or may not hear the male/female/non-binary signal of your hormones, and all this leading to a body that can be male/non-binary/female.
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So... there you are. I’ve defined “woman.”
Here you go:
So point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is. And you can’t.
noun
—Cambridge Dictionary of the English Language
So sex in humans is not *binary*. You can’t have a binary classification system if there are *any* variations, regardless of how few they may be — and the percentage of chromosomally/genetically/neurologically intersex people may be as high as 1%.
And that’s not even taking account of variations in *karyotype sex* such as XXY, XXXY, and XYY. (And yes, “karyotype sex” is the proper technical term for this.)
Furthermore:
In the absence of the SRY gene, all sexual development defaults to *female*.
So before you hate on people for how they define themselves and wish to be known — what do you know of *your* chromosomes and genetics? One of the reasons there’s no genetic testing in elite sports is that everytime it’s tried, a few people get really upset when their actual genetics don’t match what’s on their birth cert.
But there are a number of plot twists possible.
So you can be XY — a chromosomal male — but have no SRY gene. You’ll have a *female body*, you’ll be chromosomally male but genetically female (because no SRY gene). And you’ll have a female brain/body map and there’s nothing in your felt-identity telling you that you’re not female.
Anatomy and even chromosomes do not define sex.
It’s the SRY gene that is responsible for the cascade of things that begin changing what’s called the “bipotential primordium” into male reproductive anatomy and the neurology — the *brain/body map* — to run it, starting at about six weeks gestation.
2. an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth
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You were lied-to. Liberals do not refuse to define what a woman is.
If your X chromosome has an SRY gene (due to a fault in dad’s sperm production), you’ll be physically male, chromosomally female (XX), and genetically male (SRY). And your brain/body map is likely to be *female*, in spite of having a penis.
And your interoception (a neuroscience term) of your sex can be different from the evidence of your physical anatomy.
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And while *gender* is a social construct, there IS a biological basis to our felt-sense of where we belong in the gender mosaic. That much is clear from neurological, epigenetic, and endocrine studies. Links to the studies upon request.
If you are XY with a defective SRY gene — or one that’s blocked or your tissue is insensitive to androgens, you’ll have a female body, male chromosomes, and be genetically male. In some variations you might even be able to bear children, and in others you will be infertile altogether.
The SRY is usually found at the tip of the Y chromosome (which is why science thought chromosomes determined sex when we were kids). But it can be defective. Its action can be blocked by other genes (notably a mutation on chromosome 17 called CBX2). It can hop off the Y and settle on an X. And it can be missing altogether.
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1. an adult female human being