0. i am seeing quite a few people in the replies to this (and also in various quote tweets) decrying this usage as somehow transphobic and/or sexist and/or "bioessentialist". it is none of these. here is a thread about why https://twitter.com/APStylebook/status/1287789727329013760

1. the argument i am going to rebut, in its strongest form, goes something like this: "female" is used in the realm of biology to refer to a given suite of physical characteristics (usually having to do with reproduction — we'll come back to this!), as such, it is an adjective...

2. ...that refers to physical sex, and not to the social category of gender at all. "woman", on the other hand, this argument says, is a word that refers to the social category of gender, and is not regularly used in the field of biology

3. thus, the argument i'm rebutting runs, to use the word "female" to describe a human being is to reduce her down to her reproductive organs in a way that is sexist (in that reducing women to their reproductive capacity is a deeply sexist move),...

4. bioessentialist (in that it equates womanhood with biological sex), and transphobic (in that it implies that only people with certain anatomies are women)

i think this is a flawed argument on descriptive grounds, and i think it is a transphobic tactical mistake to accept it

5. first, while "female" *is* certainly used within the realm of biology, it's also used quite freely outside that field — it's hardly a term of pure jargon like allele that has no use in general language. and the way "female" gets used in general language is *absolutely*...

6. ...related to gender. this is such a banal usage that it's almost hard to find examples of, but here are some random ones pulled from some quick internet searching:

7. Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Pinter's Female Portraits (1988), p 120: "Before pursuing Pinter's . . . handling of female characters, it is essential to look at those plays which include male characters alone." difficult to read this as being abt ~reproductive capacity~, not gender!

8. Catherine Maxwell, The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne (2001), p 8: "some representations of the sublime are specifically masculine . . . but this isn't necessarily the case as the abundant imagery of the female sublime shows." clearly a gender term here!

9. to take an older example, Virginia Carey's 1830 Letter on Female Character No. 25 talks about a woman exercising her "female influence" to "impart to her servants the fundamental rules of morality, and [open] to them the source of divine truth"

10. i don't want to make any assumptions about y'all's genital configurations, but i have yet to encounter any virtually or in person that have anything to do with imparting morality or teaching religion — this is patently to do with social/cultural gender, not biological sex

11. there are also some titles that seem obviously gendered, not strictly sexual:
-Katie Pickles: Female Imperialism and National Identity (2002)
-Ellen McWilliams: Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009)
probably not about large-gameted imperialism or books!

12. i could very easily keep going with examples, but i think the point is made: in general use, "female" is regularly used as an adjectival form of "woman", in the same way that "male" is an adjectival form of "man". in casual speech, "female" is a gender term

13. BUT ALSO! that biological usage? is . . . not actually that clear cut. partly this is b/c sexual differentiation may have evolved multiple times, and so the strategies for it are Hecking Wild, but partly it's b/c . . . biologists bring their cultural assumptions to their work

14. my favorite example of this is the honeybee. there's a pretty reasonable argument to be made that honeybees have three sexes: queens, who lay eggs; drones, who fertilize the eggs; and worker bees, who do not reproduce. but the Western biologists studying these bees...

15. ...came from a culture that was a d a m a n t that there were Only Two sexes, and so these biologists were like "lmao nah, there can be Only Two sexes of bee, also, we're going to call the worker bees female too"

16. this . . . creates a problem if you want to say "well, in BIOLOGY, 'female' means 'produces large gametes', so that's what it should mean EVERYWHERE ELSE TOO". because here's biology blithely slapping that term on an organism that . . . does not make gametes at all. oops?

17. the more you look into the biology of sexual reproduction across species, the more you'll find cases like this. the idea that there's one single consistent cross-species definition of "female" in the field of biology is a fantasy

18. even if it weren't, insisting that "male" and "female" are purely biological terms when applied to humans would raise a *huge* number of very awkward questions around puberty and infertility. do we only become male or female when we hit puberty?

19. do we never become male or female if we're infertile? if we never try to have children, does that mean we'll never know if we're male or female? none of this seems to match at all with how "male" and "female" are used by people who are fluent in English!

20. as a common dodge to this sort of thing, some people try to hedge and say "well, it's not so much whether you *do* have physical characteristics X, Y, or Z, but whether you *could* under ideal circumstances/if the right conditions were met"

21. often, this goes to a very Natural Law sort of place: the womb is Meant to produce children, that is its Intended Function, therefore an Ideal Womb is a Functional Womb, and if your womb weren't Defective, you too could have babies. this is . . . obviously *hideously* gross

22. like, seriously, this reduces down to some Thomas Aquinas Middle Ages–Catholicism patriarchy *very* quickly, and it's . . . almost all gender snuck in thru the back door in addition to all its *many other awfulnesses*

but also...

23. ...womb transplants are a thing? if you transplanted a womb into my body, i would ovulate, menstruate, etc. so if you say "well, the important thing is the *potential* under the right conditions", those are the right conditions for my body. like, i . . . have that potential

24. ok, so outside biology, "female" is *loaded* with gender, inside biology it often is too (and isn't super well defined anyway); the whole argument from the top of the thread is *on the rocks*

but why is it a tactical mistake to accept it anyway?

25. it's a tactical mistake because it cedes *far* too much ground to the transphobes. if you say that "female" is strictly a biological term with no social/cultural connotations of gender, you're essentially saying "well sure, trans women are women, but they're not *female*"

26. i . . . hope it's obvious why this is transphobic? like, it is very *very* easy to find transphobes on this platform talking about how they don't want "male athletes" (by which they mean trans women) competing against "female athletes" (by which they mean cis women);...

27. ...these are obvious and transparent acts of misgendering, and they would be not just licit but demanded by the argument i laid out in my initial tweets. indeed, to say that "female" refers strictly and exclusively to biological sex *is itself bioessentialist*

28. because, again, "female" has been and is still regularly used as a simple adjectival form of "woman", so if you say that it means, strictly and exclusively, "has a uterus" or w/e, you're effectively saying that to be a woman is to have a uterus, you're taking...

29. ...all of the qualities associated with womanhood, all of the richness that people — including bell hooks ("The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" anyone?) — have associated with the word "female", all of it comes from and is tied inextricably to reproductive anatomy

30. this is, quite simply, grotesque. i refuse to cede this linguistic ground. i refuse to operate within a framework of language created by those who would drive me from existence. i refuse to let terves reinvent what "female" means

31. i refuse to give life to the fantasy that biology exists outside of society, that biological terms never have cultural baggage, that "male" and "female" are pure jargon with nothing whatsoever to do with gender. i refuse to give transphobes this weapon against me

32. i think you should, too

"male" and "female" are adjectival forms of "man" and "woman", with all the connotations of gender that implies. they should be used as such. trans women are women (noun); they are also female (adjective)

33. this may mean that biologists have to come up with some new terms! they can survive this. hopefully, they will take this opportunity to come up with words that more specifically and accurately describe the phenomena they are applied to — instead of some handwavey...

34. ..."oh, you know, this spore-producing plant's second-generation offspring are kind of like a human woman, somehow", imagine if they had a term that actually pointed to the pertinent characteristics, in the same way that "menstrual products" actually tells you much more...

35. ...and does much more to fight the menstrual taboo than the vague "women's hygiene products" (which could include, you know, hand soap...)

there are, i think, ultimately many more pressing fights in the struggle for trans existence than this kind of linguistic affair,...

36. ...but i cannot guarantee healthcare and housing for all via twitter thread, nor can i eradicate employment discrimination and obstacles to legal recognition, let alone fix any of the many other things that need fixing in our society where trans rights are concerned

37. i can, however, explain why using "female" as an adjective for "woman" is neither sexist, bioessentialist, nor transphobic, and, in fact, why *restricting* its usage to some imagined biological meaning is what is actually all of those things, so here we are

38. please, for the love of g-d, stop making the abysmal argument that "female" excludes trans women; you play directly into our opponents hands when you do

thank you, and have a good night

~END OF THREAD~