In 2018, radical and gender critical feminists in the united kingdom began wearing tees, circulating stickers, and sponsoring billboards, all bearing the message ‘woman: noun: adult individual female’. This insistence upon the dictionary concept of your message ‘woman’ had been a response to a proposition to reform the UK’s Gender Recognition Act and then make sex that is legal matter of statutory statement. ‘Woman’, these campaigners asserted, is not really a thing that a person that is male be, and most certainly not based on their simple say-so. In reaction to the campaign, transwomen began publishing pictures of by by themselves on Twitter making use of the hashtag #adulthumanfemale, insisting that their status as transwomen made them not just ladies – since the popular motto (‘trans ladies are females!’) has it – but in addition made them female. Things never have gotten better since that time, with a few transwomen claiming not just to be feminine, but become lesbians, too. It’s possible to be reminded, at this point, associated with the exchange that is well-known Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Through the Looking Glass:

‘“once I make use of word,” Humpty Dumpty stated, in instead a tone that is scornful “it means what we choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The real question is,” said Alice, “whether you are able to terms mean a wide variety of things.” “The real question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is usually to be master – that’s all.”’ – Lewis Carroll (1872 1934), p. 205. Continue reading →