'What is a woman?' has become a contentious question with practical implications. The philosopher Kathleen Stock gives an account of the category 'woman' and how we should think about it. She gives a different answer to this question which Amia Srinivassan addressed in a previous Philosophy Bites interview on this topic.
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What is a woman?
Is a woman simply an adult female human?
Or should we move away from biological definitions and think of being a woman as socially and perhaps even subjectively defined, defined by how people feel?
What does that mean for transgender people?
The philosopher Kathleen stock has thought hard about these issues, which have become particularly contentious in the last few years.
Kathleen Stock, welcome to philosophy bites.
Hi.
The topic we're talking about today is what is a woman?
Sounds an easy enough question.
What is a woman?
Well, I can tell you what I think a woman is, but perhaps I'd better tell you what the available alternatives are.
First, on one view, the one with the most historical longevity, a woman is an adult human female person.
And that's, I think, still what the word woman refers to for most people, and obviously in other languages, there's equivalent words that we can find pretty easily.
So in that sense, it's a person who has a certain biological sex and is an adult and is a human.
But there are other options too.