Reply to If gender is a social construct, what about age?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Women are less likely to become CEOs than men.

Isn't it important to be able for us to communicate what we mean by "women" and what we mean by "men" in that case?
Although I suppose if we conveniently say that "women" are no longer a category that can exist because it's just too inexact, we no longer have to worry about centuries of abuse and oppression and we have one fewer minority group. Hey, why don't we do that for ALL groups that have been oppressed and disadvantaged?[/quote]

Generally it's not relevant whether (for example) a woman has a uterus or not. You don't CEO with your uterus, or do science with your uterus. In cases where uterus-having is relevant, I'm fine with something like "people who have a uterus" or "uterus-havers" -- or even "women who have a uterus", although that would exclude men (i.e., transmen) who have a uterus.

[/quote]

And yet, when we talk about women being CEO's less than we expect given women's percentage of the population and their success at things that lead up to being a CEO, we either know what we mean or we don't.

With the increased numbers of transgender people, should we stop paying attention to how many girls end up in tech and whether they're being discriminated against on their way to get into tech? Since we have more biological males saying they're women, that covers some portion of the inequality. Is that sufficient? Or are we still interested, especially if more transgender women end up in tech than one might expect proportionally? (I have no idea if this is true - I work in tech and I know more transgender women in some of the more esoteric positions than biological women, but that's just anecdote.)

If you make the categories meaningless "you can't explain what you mean by woman" then we can apply that to absolutely every other category. Sex has more foundation in biology than race does (race has none), which would allow us to easily define away all ability to discuss race-based oppression. Does that make you happy?[/quote]

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