A Woman Biologist Defines “Woman”

Heather Heying offers this precise definition of woman in her article, I am a Woman and a Biologist. Here's an excerpt:

Women are adult human females.

Adults are individuals who have attained the average age of first reproduction for their species. They have reached the age of maturity. The term adult applies across many species, and is used to distinguish them from juveniles, who are not yet capable of reproduction.

Humans are members of the genus Homo. Our relatives in the genus Australopithecus, now extinct, are sometimes categorized as human as well. Every individual Homo sapiens is a human.

Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).

It’s the definition of that last word—female—that will be difficult for some to accept.

Some people imagine that, because words are a social construct, so too, inherently, are the concepts that they describe. Some words do describe social constructs: offended, justified and controversy, for instance. These things have no reality in the physical universe, or if they do, that reality can be negotiated by social means.

Many words, however, do describe an underlying reality. Words like bulldozer, grasshopper, and woman.

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“What is a Woman,” Australian Department of Health Version

The British Department of Health struggles to answer a question: "What is a woman?" What's amazing is that I am absolutely sure that every member of this panel (and everyone reading this) freely and confidently uses this word in private conversation.

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What Happens When Academics Go to a Comedy Club to Start a Conversation that is Finished by Comedians?

A recent episode of Glenn Lourie's podcast occurred in the NY comedy club, The Cellar. The conversation was started by academics and thinkers including Glenn Loury, Roland Fryer and Coleman Hughes. Once under way, the comedians entered the conversation and many interesting things were spoken. Oh, and many of those interesting (and serious) things were hilarious. The comedians included Andrew Schulz, Judy Gold, Shane Gillis, T.J., Rick Crom, Nikki Jax and Sam Jay. Definitely worth an hour and a half of your time. I love hearing comedians talking shop and that is a lot of the conversation. There is another main theme, however. Can the comedians save us from cancel culture and wokeness?

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How to be a Human Animal, Chapter 24: You are a Big Intuitive Elephant Attached to a Tiny Squawky PR Department

Hello again, Hypothetical Baby! I'm back to offer you yet another chapter with a simple lesson. As you grow up, people will question you about some of the decisions you make on “moral.” Issues. By the way, “Moral” is an ambiguous word. We tend to pull it out most often when we are talking about sex, death and distribution of food and the other things you need to stay alive. That reminds me. Someday we will have some good discussions about sex that will consist mostly of letting you watch selected David Attenborough Nature Videos featuring animal sex. You'll find that most human talk about sex is confusing and unhelpful except to let you know that most other people are as awkward discussing it as you will be. I'll give you a one sentence preview. Bank on this: human animal sex is a lot like the sex of other mammals, even though it does not much resemble the exotic sex of snails.

Before we go further on moral decision making, here's a short reminder that I’m trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up. I learned these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons here.

Now, back to your moral decision-making. After people challenge why you made a particular “moral” decision, you will try to give reasons and words will actually come out of your mouth, but much of the time (to quote "My Cousin Vinny," it will be a bunch of bullshit.

Jonathan Haidt has shown that, for the most part, we don’t make moral decisions using our ability to reason methodically. Moral decision-making is not like math; there is no metric for making moral decisions. Nor does our ability to decide moral issues make use of emotions (which are intricately tied up with our sense of reason, as we discussed in Chapter 11). Most of our moral decision-making is intuitive. Based on sophisticated and entertaining experiments, Haidt has shown that our moral judgements are instantaneous and based on intuitions (akin to what Daniel Kahneman describes as thinking fast). After you’ve made your quick and dirty moral decision, you will employ your slow difficult thinking to concoct excuses that you will publicly present as “reasons” for your decisions.

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How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 22: Ontology and Mushy Words

Hello again, hypothetical baby!  I'm back to offer you yet another chapter to help you to navigate this convoluted world into which you have been plopped.  I'm trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up. I learned these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons in one convenient place: Here.

To begin, here is a "thing," a work of art that I created:

What is this thing? It started out as a part of a 2-D paint splatter I intentionally created--paint on canvas. I then photographed it and carted it into Photoshop and blended it with other layers until it looked like this.  It’s now a thing that that looks almost 3-D. I call work of art “Risen.”  Is it really a “thing” or does it just look like a thing?

As you grow up, you will constantly deal with “things,” physical and otherwise. It will surprise and annoy you that human animals constantly disagree about what a particular thing is and even whether that “thing” exists at all. Philosophers tuck these disagreements into the branch of philosophy called “ontology,” but these disagreements aren’t limited to philosophy classrooms. They occur constantly out in the real world.

You will find it a challenge to determine whether there are such things as violence, justice, love, intelligence, humility, courage or happiness. In the year 2022, people argued a lot about “race” even though there is no such thing as “race” (even though there are instances of ”racism.” Consider the work of Sheena Mason on this issue).  None of the real-world instances of these things come with labels pasted on them. People often disagree about whether these things exist in particular situations. Some people stick these words on some situations and other people disagree. In other words, these things have no ”objective” meaning. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (who I mentioned in Chapter 18) explain the term "objective" in their classic book, Metaphors We Live By (1980):

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