If what you mean by that is “you need a reproductively capable uterus in order to be pregnant, and that requires that you be anatomically female”, then I don’t think anybody here is disagreeing with that in the least.
But you’re gratuitously clinging to unnecessary verbal ambiguity and then complaining when anybody points out that that makes your statements potentially ambiguous.
Ok…
What are you arguing?
I do not think I was ambiguous.
Maybe it would be better to ask:
What question do YOU think the OP is posing for debate? (no wrong answer here)
That it’s okay to use factually accurate and specific terminology, even if it’s also generally okay to use more ambiguous imprecise terminology as a shorthand approximation for it.
“Is all gender-specific language now on the way out?”
Trans men getting pregnant is a thing that happens. Stop trying to tell reality it has to conform to your views.
There are roughly 3.75 million births per year in the US.
How many are by trans men? (really asking)
And this statement is false. It denies that trans men are men. Trans men can and do get pregnant. If someone can be a woman without a uterus, then someone can be a man with one.
Even talking about biological sex as having only two options is incorrect. What medical science calls sex is actually a grouping of several biological traits. And, while there is usually a certain correspondence in these traits, not everyone has only “male” traits or only “female” ones. The most widely known example are women with Androgen Insensitivity syndrome. These women have XY chromosomes, but their body cannot process the androgens, and thus have nearly all other female biological traits–though they are usually (possibly always) infertile.
It’s not known if this mosaic of traits also is why some people assigned female at birth ultimately identify as male or vice versa, or if this is the reason for non-binary gendered people. But it is known that our old way of dealing with these things is incorrect. Upwards of 1 out of 100 people do not have all the “female” or “male” biological traits. And a similar number of people identify as trans or nonbinary.
It literally is not:
fe·male
/ˈfēˌmāl/
adjective
AIUI, there doesn’t yet exist data that would answer that question for the US. For comparison, there were apparently about 311,000 births in Australia in 2014, and 54 of those were to transgender men.
Which puts transgender men at approximately a whopping 0.017% of all people giving birth. Still, y’know, those 54 guys are people too. And if they’ve gone to the trouble and trauma of coming out as transgender and living as male because male gender identity is important to them, then I’m not really comfortable with insisting that they be called “women” just because I know they gave birth.
Not in the sense of anatomically/biologically female, as your dictionary definition clarifies (and as we’ve all agreed on right from the get-go in this thread, how many times does it need to be repeated?).
But “female” can also be used in the sense of having a female gender identity: e.g., a female name, female pronouns, etc., which don’t necessarily correlate with what kind of reproductive organs you have.
This is what I was talking about when I said that you insist on using ambiguous language and then complaining when people object that it’s ambiguous.
To say something like Being pregnant requires being anatomically female is not ambiguous. But to say something like Being pregnant requires being female is ambiguous, unless you’re assuming that “female” automatically implies “anatomically female”.
Which a lot of people do not assume, for the reasons articulated by BigT and other posters above.
You can’t alter reality by appealing to the dictionary. And the reality is that some people with anatomically female reproductive systems identify as male when it comes to their gender identity, and present and live as male. Some of them even get pregnant and have babies, but that doesn’t change the fact that their gender identity is male.
So if you insist on referring to them as “female” without qualification, because what you mean is that they have anatomically female reproductive organs, you come across as saying that your rigid classification scheme for their anatomy is more important than their personal gender identity.
YMMV, but I don’t think your artificial ideal of classificatory consistency is worth that.
So, a person who identifies as a man, has a vagina and was inseminated by a male and then carried a baby to term and gave birth but you think he is not a female biologically?
Who is being ambiguous? (see above)
[ETA: Your edit of the quoted post after I had begun to answer it added the adverb “biologically” before the question mark, which wasn’t there in your original version of the question. I think my answer below is sufficiently clear as a response to either version.]
As I’ve already said approximately a thousand million times in this thread, and which everybody else in this thread totally agrees on as well, I absolutely recognize the incontrovertible biological fact that he is anatomically female in the sense of having female reproductive organs. Which he obviously must have, because he gave birth to a baby.
But I would not say “he is a female”, unqualified, because of the potential ambiguity about whether I’m referring to his birth anatomy or to his gender identity. I would say “he is a man” or “he is male”, and if I had to clarify that in the context of his giving birth, I would specify that he is a transgender man, or transgender male.
ISTM that that’s a perfectly reasonable solution for both accurately stating biological facts and respecting someone’s personal identity.
Anyone who insists on using a multivalent word like “female”, unqualified, to imply only one restricted meaning when it can actually have different meanings. For example.
I would submit changing language to accommodate these edge cases is a bridge too far.
I’m not sure where the line is drawn. One case. A hundred, a thousand, a million. I dunno.
I do not think it is enough today.
Yeah, that one will get complicated quickly. Is a woman who has had a complete hysterectomy no longer biologically or anatomically female? Or not fully so?
And you’re saying only females can be pregnant and that female = woman. So you think it’s fine to refer to everyone who is (or can be?) pregnant as women, but you’re aware that some of them identify as men. And then you complain that just calling them pregnant people is what’s imprecise. Do you oppose other “people first” terminology?
There is a lot of goalpost shifting and term conflation happening. No one here is saying that using the term pregnant female is wrong. It seems odd to me, but not wrong.
This seems dismissive, but maybe that was unintended? Also, as mentioned, it plays a role in sex and orgasms. Also some other female anatomy is different.
What?
I am saying pregnant people need female parts (e.g. a uterus).
It does not matter how a person identifies themself. If they can carry a baby to term and give birth they are biologically female.
No two ways about it.
Literally no one has disagreed with this. You are defending the term “pregnant women.” How does your point relate to that term if you are not conflating women with female?
Again, it’s not really “changing language”. When I speak of a “pregnant transgender man”, you know exactly what I mean. It’s still the same language.
What language is for is to give us ways of talking about reality. If the reality is that some people who identify as men (and present as men, perhaps with beards and chest hair and all, as in Little_Nemo’s linked photo) get pregnant and have babies, then language needs to be able to accommodate that reality.
Which do you think is the more descriptive and comprehensible statement about such a case: “that woman got pregnant and had a baby”, or “that transgender man got pregnant and had a baby”?
You are confusing the issue:
And you’re saying only females can be pregnant and that female = woman. So you think it’s fine to refer to everyone who is (or can be?) pregnant as women, but you’re aware that some of them identify as men.
Literally no one has disagreed with this, either.
When you are explicit then fine.
The OP is about being vague.
It is?
