The left eats JK Rowling over transgender comments

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Indeed.

But for a related reason, I do not believe that the meaning of the words "man" and "woman" has changed. Briefly, I think it would be akin to changing the meaning of "ill" and "healthy" or at least "red" and "green". Slightly less briefly:

As you mention, words for male and female presumably existed for hundred-thousand-odd years. In fact, I would say that for tens of millions of years at least, our ancestors could tell females from males (at least, of their own species), under some intuitive concept of "female" and "male" (not as complex as a human context, but still).

Now, there are some differences between those categories of course: For example, ill/health seem to have the same concepts across human societies, whereas color concepts vary to some extent. That's understandable because (among other reasons) people care about health and illness much more than they do about color, but still, color concepts vary but the classification is always based on human color vision. For example, the (slightly fuzzy) line between colors might vary, but I don't think one can find a human society that classifies say (99% of green stuff + 1% of red stuff) as one color and some other color for almost all red + a little green.

Where does sex stand?

I would expect it's less important to nearly all people than health/illness, but overall more than colors (even people not interested in having sex, given the relevance of sex differences in human societies, not all of which are the result of cultural variation). But even assuming it's overall not more important to humans than color, the 99% green + 1% red would still not happen.

Suppose that someone said that for some reason, they want to redefine words as follows:

R1:

cis green:= green
cis red: = red.

green (new def): something with (99% of green stuff + 1% of red stuff)

red (new def): something similar in reverse.

(and something similar for trans green, etc.)

Moreover, they want to keep saying "green" and "red" in nearly all conversations, and only use "cis green", "cis red", etc. in a very small percentage of cases.

I think even if 99% of the population were to try, the vast majority would fail, and would keep using the words (at least in nearly all cases). A few very smart and rational people would pull it off and change how they regularly use the words, but for the most part, the meaning would stay. And a major obstacle would be that if they were to redefine the words as above, then they would not want to mean "green" and "red" (new defs) anymore, but "cis green" and "cis red", because those are concepts that align reasonably well with human color vision, rather than the new ones.

What if they did not explicitly state that intent to change the meaning, but they tried anyway, trying to learn the new concepts by pointing at stuff?
I think that that would fail too: either the meaning would not change (probably), or people would usually say "cis green", "cis red", etc., precisely because of how the concepts allign with human color vision. In other words, even if this particularly difficult change in the meaning of the words is achievable (much easier would be to come up with new words that do not closely resemble the previous ones), that would not change the classifications human monkeys actually care about, and would want to talk about, in the vast majority of cases.

Now, maybe I'm wrong about the above and female and male are not even like red or green. But I do not believe I am, because one can just look at the behavior of almost any thing (including all monkeys as far as I can tell) to see that the classification between females and males is relevant in all of their societies - bonobos too, of course. One would expect that anything smart enough would have words that track their intuitive classification, and that those words would be used regularly.

I might be missing some piece of evidence here (and if so, I would actually appreciate the input ), but I'm inclined to think this change very probably has not happened.

There is another difficulty, even assuming the color or illness analogy fails:

I actually do not think that, for the most part, people do not seem to understand themselves as talking about something different now when they say "woman" or "man" than they were talking about 30 years go for example (assuming older people). Many might believe (mistakenly, I think) that some of the people they thought were women were actually men, and vice versa.

But - at least in most of the cases I have encountered, and of course with exceptions - they do not behave themselves as if they believed that they meant something else 30 years ago.

I think your analogy is quite good, and certainly interesting, and as usual very thorough.

Now, does it deal with third party (external) descriptions only? What about objects (or entities) that appear green on the outside but feel (or psychologically are) red on the inside? We may or may not be best to temporarily set aside why this might be the case, because (a) there could be a variety of complicated reasons/factors, involving different levels of analysis (from the macro to the micro, from nature to nurture), that (b) might be at least slightly different in each individual case, and (c) some of them might involve the interactions of and overlap between what we might call psychology on the one hand and biology/physiology on the other, and we might even assume the former reduces to the latter anyway, which would pave the way for saying that permanently feeling red is as (physically) real in colour terms as permanently appearing green on the outside, even if in a different way.

I consider myself lucky. Like most people, my internal (subjective) and external (objective) colour happens to be at least pretty much the same one (allowing for at least some psychological fluidity, ambiguity or variance, which I imagine is very common).

It's maybe like cars. We call cars colors based on majority outward paint color. ...like "that car is red." But the interior might all be green, the tires black, the windshield and windows tinted and transparent...there might even be specks of green in the paint. So much green that if you looked at surface area of interior and exterior, you may find 51% green, 30% red, 19% other....and if the car could talk, it might say, "hey y'all, i'm green."

 

[ruby sparks]

Yes Don, I think that’s quite a good analogy. I say that without being especially familiar with the subject and the issues for those involved.

 

[ruby sparks]

I only know what it feels like to be cis, male and straight, and indeed white.

Feeling that you are in the wrong body must be very difficult, especially if you are very young, and other people’s incorrect or inappropriate expectations, or just their lack of understanding, would probably make it worse.

And a lack of support and acceptance from one’s parents would be awful.

 

[ruby sparks]

I would say that because my gender identity and my physiology have matched my whole life, I’m not even sure I’m aware of feeling my gender identity, if that makes sense. The question, ‘do I feel male’ is not easy to answer, because I’ve never been aware of an alternative. It’s like asking what it feels like to have feet.

That’s not to say I haven’t felt feminine at times. I have. But that’s different. As is a vague sexual attraction to other men, occasionally. So I have clues about those, but not about transgender. So it’s sort of a mystery to me, and I can only try to understand it by listening to what others who are transgender say.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

What trans claims do you mean? If you mean, as I think you might, the claim by a trans woman that she is a woman, then my suggestion is to agree that she is a trans woman, perhaps keeping the term woman for cis (non trans) women. Isn't this how it pretty much is at the moment?

That covers some of the claims (though I would certainly not put it that way). There are also claims that some people who seem to be women (as assessed in the way it would have been assessed when I learned to speak English, and in the way I would still assess it) are men, and morey. But the claim that you mention is a claim that the person in question (who may or may not be the one making the claim) is a woman, not only that the person in question is a trans woman. Indeed, usually there are claims that trans women are women.

So, again, at least the following conditions would be required:

1. That the person in question has a female mind or whatever one calls it.

2. That the meaning of the words "man" and "woman" are such that whether a person is a man or a woman depends on the sort of mind they have (i.e., some properties of the mind are relevant and make them female or mail), trumping sexual organs or other characteristics in the sense that female sexual organs + male mind -> man, and male sexual organs + female mind -> woman.

A slight improvement might be for both to have a prefix (trans or cis as appropriate), so that a clear and fair distinction is made. The unprefixed version could still be used in everyday casual conversation perhaps, subject to being clarified if necessary, or left unprefixed if used as an umbrella term (which trans already is).

I don't think so, for the reasons I outlined in my first post in the thread. If people keep using "man" and "woman", they would not mean something that makes trans claims true. But even if I'm not correct about that, I would say the change in meaning has not happened, given how people generally speak about it.

As to ‘different brain’ criteria, I do not think we either need or can get confirmation. In other words, I don't think we need to identify brain differences, just as I don't think we do (or reliably can, as far as I know) for homosexuality, or even depression.

Sorry I was not clear. We do not need to find it with a scan. Rather, the differences need to be real and sex-specific, i.e., female and male minds.

It might be useful if we could, but since I don't think that's possible at present, I prefer to work on the basis that unless someone is either lying or confused, that they are what they feel they are (trans, gay, depressed, etc) and that there must be physical differences (otherwise it would not be the case) even if we can't detect or classify them (could be brain chemicals rather than brain structure for example).

Obviously different minds are conclusive evidence of different brains. That is not the point. There has to be such thing as female minds and male minds, with distinct characteristics. There are such differences say, for lions: see a documentary, and you will see female lions behave in such-and-such ways, male lions in such-and-such ways, so those are differences in minds; moreover, having different organs with different sensations result in different ways of experiencing stuff, so again different minds, etc.; there are also such differences for cats, dogs, horses, elephants, capuchin monkeys, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, orca, black bears...and you can keep going.

If on the other hand you mean the claim to have the right, as a trans woman, to use the women's showers at the gym, or race against cis women, then that is obviously more complicated.

No, I do not mean any of that.

 

[prideandfall]

I would say that because my gender identity and my physiology have matched my whole life, I’m not even sure I’m aware of feeling my gender identity, if that makes sense.

this is totally out of left field and unrelated to the conversation surrounding it, but it caught my attention and got me curious.
is this true of most cis people? other men in this thread, have you ever contemplated the existential concept of being 'male' in your life?

i've been deeply introspective about the nature of being male since my teens, and it never occurred to me that other people don't also do this. kind of threw me off, the idea that people don't muse on philosophical concepts of their gender.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

But there are also those who are x,255-x,0. They are rare but they do exist. Most are close to red or green and are generally classified as the primary color, but some are closer to the middle and are harder to define. These are the intersexed.

Sure, but whether they are men or women depends of course of the meaning of "man" and "woman", and on their properties. They may be neither.

The real problem is that in addition to the obvious anatomy there's a mental wiring for red or green and it is far more common for this mental wiring to deviate from the 255,0,0 vs 0,255,0 dichotomy. These are the transgendered.

That does not seem to address my point, either. A question what that mental wiring actually is. Another is whether, going by the meaning of the words "man" and "woman", a person with the mental wiring you say, a vagina, ovaries, etc., is a man or a woman, and so on. But to make the usual claims true, the conditions I posted need to be met.

 

[ruby sparks]

That covers some of the claims (though I would certainly not put it that way). There are also claims that some people who seem to be women (as assessed in the way it would have been assessed when I learned to speak English, and in the way I would still assess it) are men, and morey. But the claim that you mention is a claim that the person in question (who may or may not be the one making the claim) is a woman, not only that the person in question is a trans woman. Indeed, usually there are claims that trans women are women.

I am not familiar with what claims are actually made. I was only proposing a set of labels that might work, and I was (perhaps mistakenly) thinking that trans women (for example) would typically refer to themselves as trans women, and not just women, and that if they said they were women it was only to say that being trans women they are in the larger category of all (types of) women (eg cis and trans). I don't think I've heard or heard of a trans woman saying (to a hypothetoical cis woman) "I'm a woman, as much as and in the same way you are" but maybe it is what some say.

So, again, at least the following conditions would be required:

1. That the person in question has a female mind or whatever one calls it.

2. That the meaning of the words "man" and "woman" are such that whether a person is a man or a woman depends on the sort of mind they have (i.e., some properties of the mind are relevant and make them female or mail), trumping sexual organs or other characteristics in the sense that female sexual organs + male mind -> man, and male sexual organs + female mind -> woman.

I gather that you have the claim as "I am a woman' (by a trans woman). In other words you are talking about a strong claim. I'm not sure why, necessarily.

But to me, The above conditions would seem to apply whether a trans woman (for example) is claiming to be a woman, or a trans woman (on the basis that trans woman is a type of woman).

What's interesting is that you seem to be suggesting that the mind (and below, related behaviour) trumps other considerations (such as having a womb for example). On the one hand, that feels right, but on the other hand I have a feeling in the back of my mind that it's controversial. Nor do I personally see why one 'way of being a woman' has to trump another way.

I don't think so, for the reasons I outlined in my first post in the thread. If people keep using "man" and "woman", they would not mean something that makes trans claims true. But even if I'm not correct about that, I would say the change in meaning has not happened, given how people generally speak about it.

I tend to agree with you that the change in meaning has not happened (with the huge caveat that I may simply not have registered how many users have changed their usage). As to whether it makes trans claims true, that would seem to depend on the claims. I'm not clear that the strong claim 'I'm a woman' is necessarily made, and that even where it is, it means "I'm as much a woman as a cis woman' (rather than 'I'm in the general category alongside cis women').

Obviously different minds are conclusive evidence of different brains. That is not the point. There has to be such thing as female minds and male minds, with distinct characteristics. There are such differences say, for lions: see a documentary, and you will see female lions behave in such-and-such ways, male lions in such-and-such ways, so those are differences in minds; moreover, having different organs with different sensations result in different ways of experiencing stuff, so again different minds, etc.; there are also such differences for cats, dogs, horses, elephants, capuchin monkeys, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, orca, black bears...and you can keep going.

Ok. What about organisms that don't have minds, in your opinion? Traditionally, those are still, where appropriate, labelled male and female, and still, in at least some cases I believe, exhibit typically male or female behaviours, even plants I think (apparently only female cannabis plants make buds, which is where most of the THC is, for example).

 

[Emily Lake]

Or women were defined as a man's property? Those kinds of things.

Women were never defined as men's property: this is a nebulous feminist myth that just won't die. Women as a class were never owned like chattel slavery.

You're right in that they weren't treated exactly the same as chattel. You're wrong in that they were viewed as the property of their husband. They had no independence, no right to own property, own money or incomes of their own, etc. If their husband beat them, that was his right. If their husband raped them, that was also his right.

 

[Bomb#20]

In fact, I would say that for tens of millions of years at least, our ancestors could tell females from males (at least, of their own species), under some intuitive concept of "female" and "male" (not as complex as a human context, but still).

True. Intuitive categorization preceded language; it's probably what evolved into language.

Where does sex stand?

I would expect it's less important to nearly all people than health/illness,

The prevalence of venereal diseases suggests otherwise.

Suppose that someone said that for some reason, they want to redefine words as follows:

R1:

cis green:= green
cis red: = red.

green (new def): something with (99% of green stuff + 1% of red stuff)

red (new def): something similar in reverse.

(and something similar for trans green, etc.)

Moreover, they want to keep saying "green" and "red" in nearly all conversations, and only use "cis green", "cis red", etc. in a very small percentage of cases.

I think even if 99% of the population were to try, the vast majority would fail, and would keep using the words (at least in nearly all cases). A few very smart and rational people would pull it off and change how they regularly use the words, but for the most part, the meaning would stay. And a major obstacle would be that if they were to redefine the words as above, then they would not want to mean "green" and "red" (new defs) anymore, but "cis green" and "cis red", because those are concepts that align reasonably well with human color vision, rather than the new ones.

There's a semi-natural experiment underway about this: the ongoing progress of the meme competition between the terms "dinosaur" and "non-avian dinosaur". A major obstacle is that people mostly don't want to mean "dinosaur" (the clade) but "cisnon-avian dinosaur", because that's a concept that aligns reasonably well with human intuitive animal categorization. I take it you'd predict that the cladists trying to change our speech patterns will lose the competition in the marketplace of ideas. Probably so. Of course, cladists lack the advantage of coercive power.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Yes Don, I think that’s quite a good analogy. I say that without being especially familiar with the subject and the issues for those involved.

I am going to add something here. I think one of the interesting claims by people is one about linguistics. [By the way, I said earlier that the idea of binary sex is one promoted by anti-trans activists and we can see this by those activists in this thread, but at the same time they claim it has no bearing on trans...yet they have to keep promoting the idea of the binary. I believe it has to do with the imposition and force of a structure. Anyway...] So I am hearing claims about linguistics that for a gazillion (some unspecificed vague range of years), there have only been binary sexual words across languages. This is quite a bizarre claim since we currently have words like intersex and hermaphrodite and trans. If you look at the root of the word hermaphrodite it comes from Hermes and Aphrodite in Greek legend....which one could look up and confirm the etymology and usage going back to the 15th century in Middle English, never mind whatever it could have been understand as in Ancient Greek. It's not a word that some kind of left-wing conspiracy invented yesterday at least.

Here's a simple counter-example to this bizarre claim and by the way there are many. Note this is a very conservative newspaper in a conservative region of the US and in very conservative times, i.e. the 50's: The Knoxville Journal. 07 Dec 1952. "GI Who Became Girl Only One of Many, Medical Authorities Explain":

Most Only Partially Double Sexed, Doctor Says; Some Are True Hermaphrodites … ...

...and such 1952 article goes on about medical experts' statistics on what they call pseudo-hermaphrodites (those who are somewhere in between purely male and female and a hermaphrodite with both genitalia)…

It's not like this article is a fluke either or the usage of the word hermaphrodite is not a fluke. In my digitized newspaper access I have I see between 1784 and 1952, more than 11,000 articles that use the word hermaphrodite. My digitized database is highly incomplete, too. Let's take a look at an example from 1784, though.

The Hartford Courant. 20 Apr 1784. "LONDON Jan 10." Page 2:

A few days since was found dead by the side of a fence, a small distance from the town, the noted hermaprodite, whose occupation was a bellows mender. The uncommon shrillness of his voice so much attracted the attention of the late Dr. Hunter, that he was induced to doubt his sex; and having interrogated this person on the occasion, he declared to the Doctor his deficiency of claim to either sex. ...

It's not like 1784 was some kind of fluke either, like I wrote, the word hermaprodite has roots in Ancient Greece. Aristotle even wrote some weird stuff about hermaprodites in his work Of Hermaprodites. Aristotle was of course alive 384–322 BC.

It should be noted that much of Western culture and linguistics is going to have been influenced by the Ancient Greeks and so many words in modern Western languages will have been derived in some way from the Greek word. hermafrodita in Spanish; ermafrodito in Italian; hermafrodyta in Polish.

Going back to the Ancient Greeks for a moment, some of the myths they came up with were borrowed and whether borrowed or invented, the original source was often based on natural observation and attempt to explain the observations by mythology. So, the source of these things was from well before Aristotle and based on the natural observations that we still see today.

The multiple categories intuitively exist because there are multiple kinds of observations.

 

[Emily Lake]

The existence of intersex people does not mean sex isn't real or that sex in mammals is not functionally binary, because it is.

Some humans are born with six fingers on each hand. Does that mean that fingerage in humans is a spectrum?
Some people are born without legs. Does that mean that the number of legs associated with the term "human" is a spectrum?
Some snakes are born with two heads. Does that mean that headcount in snakes is a spectrum?

A coin has heads on one side and tails on the other. For all reasonable interpretations, the land of a spun coin is binary. It's possible that, under certain circumstances, a coin might end up perfectly balanced, or get stuck against something, and stop on its edge. That doesn't mean that the outcome of a spun coin is now a spectrum. It's still binary.

Morse code uses long and short tones to send messages. For all reasonable interpretations, morse code is binary. It's possible that there is static on the line, or an interruption in transmission, so that some long tones get interrupted sound like short tones, or that some short tones get blurred together and sound like long tones. That doesn't mean that morse code is a spectrum of tone lengths. It's still binary.

 

[Emily Lake]

You don't seem to understand intersex. You're describing a failure to develop, not an intersex condition. Intersex is someone displaying some characteristics of both sexes. For example, the guy mentioned upthread with a uterus. (Although that was probably an absorbed twin rather than true intersex development.)

Actually, intersex conditions include Kalmans. Intersex includes a whole host of malformations, false starts, failure to develops, mixed elements, and partial developments. The majority of people with medical intersex conditions don't know they're intersex until something doesn't work right. Full androgen insensitivity people, for example, don't know they're genetically male because they never developed male parts, even though their chromosomal makeup is male, and.

True hermaphroditism is very, very rare, and is not the entirety of what is considered intersex.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yes it is. Most are, and some are not. On the other hand, every person assigned male at birth is, well, assigned male at birth. It's a tautological truth that, in the context of transitioning, "biologically male/female" draws the correct delimination line only, say, 99% of the time, while "assigned male/female at birth" does so 100% of the time, almost per definition.

That's not especially plausible. The doctors and midwives who get the first look at a newborn's genitals are not 100% reliable; and in the modern era some of them probably barely even take a look because they already know what somebody told them the ultrasound showed; and ultrasounds aren't 100% reliable either, to say nothing of the possibility two fetuses' ultrasounds got mixed up. It's inevitable that some parents get told the wrong thing, take their babies home, figure it out within the first day, and hopefully but not necessarily contact some administrator before he or she files the paperwork for the birth certificate. Such a child who was assigned wrongly at birth is not going to need to transition; it's just going to be an amusing story the parents tell. (Or perhaps a horrifyingly Kafka-esque story of struggle against indifferent bureaucracy.)

 

[Emily Lake]

You said "a woman is an adult human female" but wouldn't provide your definition of 'female'. That's like saying "A coelint is a dagg" and then not saying what a 'dagg' is.

This is an inane sticking point. It's arguing a nitpick for the purpose of arguing.

Here:

woman:
noun, plural wom·en [wim-in] .
1) the female human being, as distinguished from a girl or a man.
2) an adult female person.

female:
noun
1) a person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman.
2) an organism of the sex or sexual phase that normally produces egg cells.

 

[laughing dog]

You said "a woman is an adult human female" but wouldn't provide your definition of 'female'. That's like saying "A coelint is a dagg" and then not saying what a 'dagg' is.

This is an inane sticking point. It's arguing a nitpick for the purpose of arguing.

Here:

woman:
noun, plural wom·en [wim-in] .
1) the female human being, as distinguished from a girl or a man.
2) an adult female person.

female:
noun
1) a person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman.
2) an organism of the sex or sexual phase that normally produces egg cells.

It is not nit-picking.

From Merriam-Webster. female
of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs . (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/female)_.

Clearly, that definition would encompass trans women as females.

Clarity in the thought helps reduce needless disagreement in discussion. Which is why it is useful to find out what someone means by _____ when _____ has multiple legitimate meanings.

 

[Emily Lake]

Now, does it deal with third party (external) descriptions only? What about objects (or entities) that appear green on the outside but feel (or psychologically are) red on the inside?

How far does this concept extend? How separate is the mind from the body?

If a person has a long torso relative to their leg length, epicanthic folds, thick straight dark hair, and yellowish skin tone feels caucasian on the inside, is that a valid claim? If a person with 7% body fat feels fat on the inside, is that a valid claim?

100% true: I have a friend who is naturally blonde. All her life she hated being blonde, she hated how it looked, she hated how it made her feel. She started dying her hair in middle school, and has been living as a redhead ever since. She has said that she has always felt like a redhead. Afew years ago, her hair grew out and she hadn't had a chance to get it colored. I commented on her roots, and said "Oh hey, I never knew you were blonde". She was angry and hurt, and deeply offended that I would refer to her as blonde. She asked me to never refer to her that way again, and to continue treating her as a redhead.

I complied, because it's the nice thing to do. It makes no material difference to me. She identifies as redhead. Does her internal identity as a redhead dictate reality?

More specifically, if there were a competition for the prettiest redhead, should she be allowed to compete? If a company were running trials on a new kind of shampoo, specifically designed for red hair, should she be allowed to partake in those trials? If a philanthropist decided to set up a college fund offering scholarships exclusively to redheads, should she be allowed to win that scholarship?

 

[Emily Lake]

That’s not to say I haven’t felt feminine at times. I have. But that’s different.

This seems like a good starting point. What do you mean when you say you felt feminine? What were the circumstances, and what does it mean to you to feel feminine?

 

[Emily Lake]

I would say that because my gender identity and my physiology have matched my whole life, I’m not even sure I’m aware of feeling my gender identity, if that makes sense.

this is totally out of left field and unrelated to the conversation surrounding it, but it caught my attention and got me curious.
is this true of most cis people? other men in this thread, have you ever contemplated the existential concept of being 'male' in your life?

i've been deeply introspective about the nature of being male since my teens, and it never occurred to me that other people don't also do this. kind of threw me off, the idea that people don't muse on philosophical concepts of their gender.

I can't speak for the men in this thread, but I do have a sense of being a woman. It is something I've thought about, because it affects my life (often in ways that I find irritating), and it affects how people interact with me. It frames people's expectations of me.

The problem I have is that all of the ways that I have of understanding "feeling like a woman" are either directly related to biology, or are directly related to socially defined gender roles. I can't for the life of me come up with anything that is part of "feeling like a woman" that is part of my mind and that is NOT part of my biology or my society.

 

[Emily Lake]

You said "a woman is an adult human female" but wouldn't provide your definition of 'female'. That's like saying "A coelint is a dagg" and then not saying what a 'dagg' is.

This is an inane sticking point. It's arguing a nitpick for the purpose of arguing.

Here:

woman:
noun, plural wom·en [wim-in] .
1) the female human being, as distinguished from a girl or a man.
2) an adult female person.

female:
noun
1) a person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman.
2) an organism of the sex or sexual phase that normally produces egg cells.

It is not nit-picking.

From Merriam-Webster. female
of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs . (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/female)_.

Clearly, that definition would encompass trans women as females.

Clarity in the thought helps reduce needless disagreement in discussion. Which is why it is useful to find out what someone means by _____ when _____ has multiple legitimate meanings.

Are you claiming that transwomen typically have the capacity to bear young and produce eggs? That is quite wrong. Are you perhaps mixing up the terms, and actually meant transmen (people who are female-bodied and who identify as men)?