This knocks loose a memory for me. The instructor for the anthropology class that I took in college introduced the idea of natural categories versus cultural categories, and the example that he used was the category of things called “chair.” It’s a cultural category, which is defined as things that humans assign to the category somewhat arbitrarily.
A chair might be something for a human to sit on, like a wooden platform on four legs, with a vertical back for lumbar support. It may have armrests (“arms”) or not. If it doesn’t have a back, it’s a stool. But stools can also have backs, like some barstools, if they have longer legs. But a director’s chair has long legs, and a back, and is not a stool?! And then what of a papasan chair, with no legs, with the seat and backrest combined into one, curved platform?
If you sit on a stump around a campfire, that’s kind of an improvised chair, defined more by the use than the shape. Then, put a collection of stumps around a table in a cabincore dining room, and now they are formally chairs.
In the other direction, the student union at my university is well-known for its colorful terrace chairs with a sunburst pattern on the back. It has a couple of 10-foot-tall versions for people to climb on (at their own risk!) for social media photo ops. Those are chairs, because of the shape, although they’re not for a human to sit on.
And then let’s not even get into lounge chairs, upon which you can be fully recumbent instead of sitting… Point is “biological female” is a natural category (sexually-reproducing organism bearing the larger of its species’ gametes). It includes lizards and ferns, but not all of what we call women, because women is a cultural category. It’s kind of arbitrary.
And yeah, intelligent people know this, and the “adult biological female” people are just trying to hide their bigotry. I just like to think out loud about it.
He wrote an otherwise funny episode of the IT crowd, but the B plot involved violence against a trans woman. When he was criticized for it, the universe presented him with a choice:
This knocks loose a memory for me. The instructor for the anthropology class that I took in college introduced the idea of natural categories versus cultural categories, and the example that he used was the category of things called “chair.” It’s a cultural category, which is defined as things that humans assign to the category somewhat arbitrarily.
A chair might be something for a human to sit on, like a wooden platform on four legs, with a vertical back for lumbar support. It may have armrests (“arms”) or not. If it doesn’t have a back, it’s a stool. But stools can also have backs, like some barstools, if they have longer legs. But a director’s chair has long legs, and a back, and is not a stool?! And then what of a papasan chair, with no legs, with the seat and backrest combined into one, curved platform?
If you sit on a stump around a campfire, that’s kind of an improvised chair, defined more by the use than the shape. Then, put a collection of stumps around a table in a cabincore dining room, and now they are formally chairs.
In the other direction, the student union at my university is well-known for its colorful terrace chairs with a sunburst pattern on the back. It has a couple of 10-foot-tall versions for people to climb on (at their own risk!) for social media photo ops. Those are chairs, because of the shape, although they’re not for a human to sit on.
And then let’s not even get into lounge chairs, upon which you can be fully recumbent instead of sitting… Point is “biological female” is a natural category (sexually-reproducing organism bearing the larger of its species’ gametes). It includes lizards and ferns, but not all of what we call women, because women is a cultural category. It’s kind of arbitrary.
And yeah, intelligent people know this, and the “adult biological female” people are just trying to hide their bigotry. I just like to think out loud about it.
TIL the creator of Father Ted is a bigot. Fuckin bummer. Why can’t these assholes keep their shitty opinions to themselves?
He wrote an otherwise funny episode of the IT crowd, but the B plot involved violence against a trans woman. When he was criticized for it, the universe presented him with a choice: