Please define Man and Woman.

If sensible names for body parts (almost) all humans have disturb you, please leave now.


Ok, with that over, how do you define a man or a woman.

Can you go by if they have a penis or vagina? If so, what about those with both/neither/half and half?

Can you go by the genes? XX or XY, but what about all the other combinations (or lack there of)? Or when other genes mess with the development of the baby, such as a female with XY genes, but who is immune to a key hormone with is useful in developing a penis and plumbing?

And then we can go take a look at their brains.

Or their gender identity.

Or the double DNA. This is a fun one, you have two non-identical twins who early on in gestation get combined into one individual with two sets of DNA, and as such could have a fully function (if not for the lack of space due to having both) male and female genitals. Actually, cases of this are so rare I would contend it is possible for there to be one who has both genitalia and can reproduce with either a male or female partner. A case I have seen has one half of the body male and the other half female, straight down the middle.

And now why (some of) you should care about it. If a person with xy genes but a vagina 'weds' and has sex with a person with xx genes and a vagina, is that homosexuality or heterosexuality?

What happens if it is a male that the first weds and beds.

And with the double DNA, should they marry a 'standard' 'male' or 'female'?

I will say that assuming gender at first (or second) glance is something of a necessity because the majority of people we don't have enough time to get into the details enough to find out if calling her a her or him a him is in fact correct. But in cases concerning sex partners, much less marriage partners, we should be able to invest enough time to solve this, if only we knew how. So how do you purpose to solve this?

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Here´s my standard caveat:
The question actually is
How do we define "man" and "woman"?
We define words, not things or beings.
This is a semantics question, nothing else.

Personally, I am willing to call everyone "man" who feels "I am a man" and accordingly with women.
I think I am flexible enough to switch between different definitions of words, depending on the context.
I have never encountered a situation in which the question "Will I call this person 'man' or 'woman'?" posed a major problem for me.

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Why I call myself a „non-believer“ or „atheist“:
I can´t relate to any of the god concepts I´m familiar with so far.
Either I´m not convinced by the concept, or
– although not having a problem with the worldview itself -
I see no reason to call one of its elements „God“:
There are already more precise, more common, less loaded and less likely to be misunderstood terms for these elements.
E.g. I prefer to call nature „nature“, the universe „universe“ and everything „everything“.

Too much think-time on your hands, lawtonfogle? May I suggest a night out with some friends? Get together for dinner and a movie. Then, go home and soak in a nice warm bath to help clear your head. Get a good nights rest (don't set the alarm clock). It'll do you good. ;-)

~Barbara

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Q. What is an atheist?
A. A person who does not believe god(s) exist.

Q. Why do you say God doesn't exist?
A. I didn't say God doesn't exist. I said, I don't believe it.

Men or women?

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Why I call myself a „non-believer“ or „atheist“:
I can´t relate to any of the god concepts I´m familiar with so far.
Either I´m not convinced by the concept, or
– although not having a problem with the worldview itself -
I see no reason to call one of its elements „God“:
There are already more precise, more common, less loaded and less likely to be misunderstood terms for these elements.
E.g. I prefer to call nature „nature“, the universe „universe“ and everything „everything“.

Man dust of the earth.
Woman dust of the earth's rib.

There are also syndromes where people have chromosomes that are XXY or XYY.

If we see a continuum biologically, why must we arbitrarily divide things into two exclusive categories?

If the only need to distinguish genders is semantics, perhaps it is time we came up with more accurate terms, or better yet, learned to live without adjectives that do not serve a useful purpose.

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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
-- Eric Hoffer

I would probably make an assumption on their sex upon meeting them, and if someone I thought was a man tells me they are a woman, I'll refer to them in the feminine sense from that moment on. I'm happy to go by whatever they consider themselves to be.

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Yes, our language isn't designed very well for those people who fit in between. Referring to them as "it" rather than "he" or "she" I would imagine would be quite insulting.

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Well, when the network network support is supposed to be supporting isn't in need of supporting, and the 'make it better' projects have been canceled due to corporate take over, what else can a network support do? Yeah, I do spend a lot of time thinking, and computers haven't been breaking around here often enough (tomorrow 10 are going to break all at once just because I said this).

Be a bit hard seeing as they are all located though out America. Come middle of august, will all meet back at the Campus, but most everyone I know is somewhere else. And I live out in the boonies of the boonies.

I don't even have a working alarm clock (don't ask what happened to the other, it involved duck tape, a hammer, and cement). Anyways, if you think it is bad here, you should seem me Sunday mornings and nights. Has a church ever gotten a restraining order for a person before? If not, I might make history soon.

What I really need is to do some programming. I haven't programmed a project of reasonable size in a few weeks, I may be having withdrawals... but oh what to program... may a man/woman detector .

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Gawd Doesn't Make Mistakes!!!!!!!!!11111111oneoneoneone

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"This country is turning into a dream I had, and I woke up crying." John Stewart