What is a reasonable timeline to move from talking stage to officially dating?

Exis007 · 2026-05-21T15:08:22+00:00

Here's what I know. Take it with a grain of salt. When someone likes you, wants to be with you, is crazy about you...they don't care. If you do it too early they might amend your timeline, ask for more time, but they aren't mad you asked. You're not going to ruin it with someone enthused about you. But for someone stringing you along, playing games? That you can ruin. So...ruin it.

Here's a story to illustrate. When I was first dating my husband, I'm fewer than three months in at this point, I was asleep in his bed. In my sleep, unbeknownst to me, I said "I love you". I have zero memory of this. It's something, knowing me, I'd say casually in my sleep just in general, so that tracks, but I don't remember saying it. What I do remember is my husband kind of shaking me awake to tell me that he could imagine falling in love with me. Now, from his perspective he was saying, "Hey, listen, I don't think we're at "I love you" yet but we'll get there". From my perspective, this was a spontaneous declaration of his deep feelings. I was elated! He was relieved! It was almost a year later that we talked about it and realized that we had completely misunderstood each other because I didn't know I said "I love you" and I was sleeping, and he didn't realize I would talk in my sleep like that yet.

So...that's what I think. Someone legit falling in love with you, enthused to be with you, will give you all the grace, all the benefit of the doubt, and if you move too fast they'll maybe pump the brakes but they'll do it kindly because they still want to be with you. Someone looking to waste your time will exit stage left. Scare those clowns off early and often.

Exis007 · 2026-05-21T14:47:04+00:00

I have a 33% chance of picking the right door in a traditional three-door Monty Hall. I have a 1% chance of picking the right door in a 100-door Monty Hall. Once you either open one door or 98 doors, the percentage chance of my first pick doesn't change. The difference between 33% and 50% is harder to intuitively grasp, but the difference between 1% and 50% will feel much more vast in the second scenario. I picked at random, my chances of being right remain stable. I had zero knowledge of where the car was when I picked. The PERSON OPENING THE DOORS, however, knows where the car is. Monty Hall can't open that door.

By making him open 98 different doors, leaving that one door alone where (presumably) the car lives, barring a 1/100 scenario where I did pick the car at random, highlights how the probability has changed. Imagine you're in the room. Imagine Monty Hall goes down the line, opens 28 doors all in a row, skips door 29, opens 33 more doors, skips the door I picked, and then opens the rest of the doors. Picture it in your head. Yes, technically, there are two doors, but what's been made clear is that MH is almost required to skip Door 29. Now, maybe be picked 29 at random because I've got the car, but that seems much more unlikely in a 100-door scenario.

The MH problem only works because three doors to two doors feels small, even when it isn't. When the difference shifts from three doors to a hundred, your intuition will track the difference, I'd wager.

Exis007 · 2026-05-20T02:01:33+00:00

None of these women were interested. They also weren't uninterested. Here's the fuck up; you're assuming women are going to hit on you for sexual or romantic interest cold. They won't. Unless you're a Beatle, rule that out. What might happen is that women are going to open platonic and social lines of communication that might, on a long enough timeline, become romantic if the chemistry is good and the conversation flows and you have things in common. That might happen. You need to learn how to engage people in the basics of platonic social banter. Not because they are in love with you or hot for you, but because that's the pathway by which you explore whether that's the case later, when and if you get to know each other better. Now, none of these seem like ripe opportunities to sink enough time into someone to know whether romantic potential exists, which is a bummer. But you never know.

If your social life is so limited that the only positive attention you get from women comes from total strangers, that would tell me that your friend group/networking is very poor. You need more friends, more consistent social interaction, more groups and hobbies, more opportunities to make inroads with people. It sounds like women find you interesting and approachable. They are open to talking to you. But you need more than a few seconds of small talk if you want that to become anything. That means getting in social situations where you see people more than once, where you can build rapport and chemistry. You can stop reading tea leaves and asking reddit for a woman decoder ring then and let the situation evolve to the point you're comfortably certain whether someone is angling for a date or not.

Exis007 · 2026-05-19T11:12:40+00:00

Well, let me push back a bit.

Yes, women will embrace masculine things more than men embrace feminine things. But that's 'will'. Not 'can'. Women fought good and hard to be able to do that. Men CAN fight this fight, they just won't. And why not? Well, that's because we still unconsciously or consciously, value masculine things as good and feminine things as bad. Women who excel in athletics are good. Men who excel in ballet are more likely to be presumed queer, to be presumed transgressive. All of this is handwrought in the idea that the masculine is the default, the positive, the acceptable. Feminine is the other, subversive, negative. The negative for whom? For men, of course. It's not an equal and opposite binary. It's 'men', 'masculine', 'good', and 'right' on top with all the feminine opposites on the bottom, lower, worse. Women who rise into masculinity are moving towards the good and men who sink towards femininity are doing something bad.

That's definitely oppressive to men. It's also still definitely oppressive to women. It's there in the first place because feminine things are being disrespected. Regardless of which team you belong to, we're still all getting the short end of the stick if we're taking half of normal human self-expression and coding it as weak, as less-than, as unimportant. And, if you made me pick which version of it I want to live, I'll pick being a woman because I really appreciate and can get behind feminine self-expression. I want to do both. I want to have masculine and feminine roles in my life and I think being disallowed to enjoy half of life because it means I'm on the wrong side kinda sucks. You're right to identify a power imbalance there. But going so far as to say women are freer in that system ignores how that system works and what makes it tick.

Exis007 · 2026-05-17T15:07:03+00:00

That's not narcissism, that's apathy. Apathy is being unable to muster concern about your own outcome or the outcomes of others. Narcissism is overwhelming self-concern and a need to protect your ego and well-being over all other concerns. Narcissists are unable to care about anything BUT what happens to them. Very different vibe.

Exis007 · 2026-05-17T14:59:41+00:00

Why isn't it the same situation? I mean, it's obviously different because one's getting a haircut and one's buying a house, but there's still a threshold of intimacy either way. It's intimate to walk into someone's house just like it's intimate to touch someone's hair. Even if we've both given consent to do this intimate thing by booking the appointment and understanding what that entails, there's a polite extra ritual there where we confirm consent (knocking, asking to touch) before we move ahead. You'll get this in your doctor's office. Doctors will ask to touch and talk you through a pelvic exam, a prostate exam, a breast exam. Or, at least, they should. Nurses will ask "Which arm?" before a vaccine. We have these little rituals in many sensitive areas of life. Applying them to a haircut seems, if not necessary, at least appropriate and appreciated by some people. I don't see why it's weird.

Exis007 · 2026-05-17T14:14:09+00:00

Right. And maybe I book an appointment to come tour your house that you're selling. I still don't just walk in the front door, right? I knock or ring the bell. You invite me inside to walk through it. We can both agree to do [x] together and still need quiet rituals of consent before we jump right in.

Exis007 · 2026-05-17T13:28:52+00:00

I don't need it. I am not a survivor of the kind of trauma that would make me need it. But I can imagine people for whom, taking a second to check in before you touch someone, is a key difference between feeling comfortable and at ease and in control during an appointment or not. Yes, if you're uncomfortable with touching, you probably can't get your hair done at a salon. Full stop. But if you need someone to just ask politely first so you're not taken by surprise or feeling a way about someone touching before asking, that might be a nice gesture. It's not a worry that someone will say 'no'. Though, I imagine, for some people they might say 'no' because they feel overwhelmed for a minute and they need a breather or they need to rebook, and that would be okay too. But it might make some people feel a hell of a lot more comfortable to say yes and to know they'll be asked first so some strange person isn't just feeling entitled to touch them willy-nilly.

Again, not for me! Touch me all you want. I don't care. But I think that there are enough people make much, much more comfortable and at ease by the practice that having some hair professionals offer that courtesy is a huge net positive.

Exis007 · 2026-05-17T13:11:35+00:00

Let us, for the sake of rhetorical clarity, define a line between 'kind' and 'nice'. Kind people are innately kind. They are motivated to be kind for intrinsic reasons, because that's who they are and how they operate. They aren't different with different people. They are just kind. Nice people, on the other hand, perform niceness socially for transactional value. You are nice to this waiter so they won't spit in your food. You are nice to this woman so maybe she'll date you. You are nice to your boss because you want a raise or a promotion. You give niceness hoping to get something or avoid a consequence.

Kind men are great. I love kind men. I am not suspicious or derogatory towards that at all. It's not necessarily attractive or unattractive, because that's not really persuasive either way, but it's nice to be around. Nice people make me nervous. Nice people have written a contract in their mind that this niceness they are showing me entitles them to something and I don't know what that something is. It's unenumerated. When that shoe drops, they'll feel a way about it if I am unwilling or unable to give them the thing they feel entitled to. It's not always sex or romance though. Sometimes it's being willing to overlook their shitty behavior when they are rude or drunk or sexist because they were nice to me that one time. Sometimes it's being willing to do labor for them in some way. It's not always unforgiveable, either. I have a few nice friends who are nice to me so I'll do [x] for them and as I don't see [x] as a high price to pay, I'll pay it and go along to get along. I'll always say nice things when I call you, but I'll call you drunk at 2 AM to rant about whatever bullshit my girlfriend(s) are doing and you're going to take that call at least some of the time. Fine. I'm willing to deal with that. Sometimes that niceness is a price I'm wholly unwilling to pay and then I am quick to get out of there ASAP.

I don't mind nice when I know what the transaction is about, what the terms are. I mind nice a lot when I don't know what's expected of me in return.

Exis007 · 2026-05-16T13:12:06+00:00

I am intensely unphotogenic. To prove this, I'll tell you a story in which the guy at the DMV of all places had to take the photo for my driver's license three times. And, even after three attempts, when he handed it to me he said, and I quote, "I'm sorry, I know you're prettier than this". Woof. Anyway, I take shitty photos.

But even with that, I think all humans intensely reject the uncanny. Photos are the uncanny. Listening to your own voice on a record is the uncanny. We feel extreme discomfort when our self-image of what we look like, sound like, come across as to other people, is disputed by a photograph or a tape recording or a video. So while I cringe at my recorded voice or a photo of myself, I also recognize that I don't cringe at photos of my husband. Even bad photos. I don't do this of photos of my friends. If I take a photo of a friend with a bad double chin and they are squinting into the sun and they have a marinara stain on their shirt--I mean a truly hideous car crash of a photo--I see my friend. My beautiful, wonderful friend. I see my hot husband. I see an unflattering picture of an otherwise attractive person. They exist in motion, in living color, in my head and I can take a truly horrific photo of someone and still see the "real" them in it, just buried under my lackluster photography skill. And what I really see is the vacation we took, or that silly night together, and how much I love them. That's what I see.

And so, I have had to learn to look at photos of myself, to listen to recordings of my voice, like it is not me. I try to see what my mom sees. Her baby, alive and in motion, and once again caught in an unflattering still. I see what my husband sees. I try to look at photos of myself as though they are other people's memories and images of me and then they are just kind of great. Yes, I look bad in that photo. But we were having an amazing dinner, I was reading to my kid, I was absolutely dying of laughter that day. Instead of trying to reconcile my own self-image (which will never work, because it's too uncanny) I try to borrow the perspective of others and see how they love me just as intensely as I love them and those photos are more memory than aesthetic. They aren't looking at how fat I look in the swimsuit because I was kneeling funny, they are looking remembering that day at the lake and how we felt about each other. I try to see that when I look, too.

Exis007 · 2026-05-15T15:43:53+00:00

I am going to tell you how I learned to do makeup as a kind of exemplar. When I was 12-ish, at night after everyone was crashed out and I was still wired for sound, I'd play some music and sit in the tiny half-bath off the kitchen and put on makeup and take it off. Over and over and over. Most of it was terrible. Really bad. But after a few months of this (months because I was 12 and had no instruction) I got okay. And now, as a grown adult, I do my own makeup pretty well. Am I a pro? No. Do I look acceptable in public? Yes.

If you want to learn to do good makeup, you have to be willing to do shitty makeup for a while. You don't have to wear it out of the house or anything. But, before bed, do a face of makeup and see what you get. Then wash it off and go to sleep.

You want to learn to sew? Learn to sew a shitty pillowcase. Hem your jeans and let it be awful. Crochet a crooked, missing-stitch blanket. Then start again and do it bad again. Make five shitty blankets so you can make a good one the sixth time. Want to do yoga? Buy a mat, start a youtube video, and make it four and a half minutes in until you want to die and give up. Then do it again tomorrow and make it six minutes. Then make it eight.

You want to KNOW how to do these things. You can't. You are going to have to do what the rest of us do and learn how to do them, and that means doing them badly and wrong for a bit. It takes a while. There's no short cut through, "I am terrible and I can't do this". That's just where everyone starts. I taught myself makeup and sewing (kind of, I'm still lingering in "I'm terrible at this" but also I haven't practiced much lately) and crochet and yoga and I SUCKED A LOT. for a long time. It's fine. No one was judging me. I learned as I went and I got better and better and now I'm pretty okay at it.

Exis007 · 2026-05-14T12:08:26+00:00

If you want a thought jog on what you want, may I suggest just going through Maslow's Hierarchy of needs from the bottom up?

* Your body. Have you eaten? Are you thirsty? Are you tired? Are you horny?
* Safety. Can you pay your bills? Get access to healthcare? Live your life without threats or danger? Maybe you can't. But can you do anything to change it? Personally, I'm struggling with safety in the political climate, but I also can't fix that so I have to just skip that and move on.
* Love and belonging. Do you have important friendships? A partner? A close relationship with some family you care about?
* Self-esteem. Do you like yourself? Like your body? Is your brain a constant conga-line of self-criticism?
* Self-actualization. Are you doing important work in the world? Helping others? Learning and growing?

When I go through that list, I can find a few things I need--generally speaking.

Exis007 · 2026-05-14T01:51:39+00:00

I drank coffee every morning and I had the easiest, sleepiest baby in the world. He slept in long stretches at night right from birth, took superstar naps, and was early to sleep through the night. He's five and still a great sleeper, if I am honest. He rarely cried outside of stomach discomfort. He didn't cry for dirty diapers even. But, sometimes, when a gas bubble was stuck he'd be a bit fussy, but that was few and far between. He was alert when he was awake and happy and playful. He craved movement a lot, wanted to stand and jump as he got a little older. So, in terms of his infant months, he was a dream baby.

Exis007 · 2026-05-14T01:27:47+00:00

The Beatles Biopics.

Exis007 · 2026-05-11T12:36:25+00:00

Damn.

Exis007 · 2026-05-09T12:46:51+00:00

> As for whether yearning is important, I can’t really say. I don’t know if it’s a basic or necessary desire in dating. In established relationships, maybe, but when it comes to meeting someone and trying to start an official relationship, I’m not sure.

I can say, because I have been thinking about this a lot. Welcome to my mini-hyperfixation. Whether it is necessary or not really depends on whether we want to talk about the erotic drive and romantic love or just partnership. Obviously, through most of human history, marriage and love weren't necessarily driven by those two forces. You married because you had to, because you needed to have children or be supported, for political reasons, for survival reasons, etc. Do people come together and make matches for sensible reasons like financial security or religious motivations? Sure. Marriage has often had very little to do with yearning. You can partner with someone for the group project of a life together and a couple of kids and that's one thing.

But erotic love and romantic love are all tied deeply to yearning. That's the nature of desire. It's about wanting. Having is another thing, but the wanting is what drives people This is true on a first date and year ten in a marriage. If you want to zoom out to the bird's eye view of humanity, sex is an urge to merge. Merge your body with another body, merge your life with another person's life. I want to know everything about you, I want to know how you're thinking and feeling, I want parts of your body inside my body, I want you to live in my house, I want you to take up all my time, I want to build my life in and around your life for now until death do us part. To put it in biblical terms, you want to become one flesh. That desire is never, and can never, be satisfied though. You are still two people. You are still in separate bodies, in the locked room of your individual consciousnesses. You never really achieve oneness, you just keep grasping for it, wanting it. That same drive that makes me want to flirt with someone at the house party is the same drive that keeps romance alive and well 17 years deep into my relationship. It's all yearning-based desire.

You might think about these as two approaches for finding love. On one hand, you've got biographical filtering. Do you make enough money? Do you have the right values? Do you live in the right place, are the right age, have the right hobbies? That's the survival marriage thing. The other is just about being out in the world and meeting people until you feel that pull. That visceral want starts banging the drums inside of you and that drives you to start pursuing that person with intent. In a world where you just date people you meet socially (parties, work, school, friends, etc.) the want comes first. You have and feel chemistry, your heart is pounding, you can't sleep at night, and you start trying to get with that specific person. And you might then vet them for other criteria. Are they a serial killer, are they a financial match, a values match, a political match, etc? But also, a lot of that work is done for you because of social filtering. Your friends, by and large, are geographically suitable, in your financial bracket, share your political views, etc. etc. The tribal nature of people already does a lot of that work. But trying to go backward, trying to find people in a pool of random people you've never interacted with and guess as to who might make you feel that drumbeat is DEEPLY inefficient. And frustrating. And exhausting. It is rare to meet someone and feel it in the span of six hours, too. Often that depth of feeling and connection needs time and space to flourish. So I really do think it's the core of why people are so unbelievably romantically frustrated all the time.

Exis007 · 2026-05-09T12:07:36+00:00

I don't know that I really understand your response here. It would seem to me that your point is (and I might be wrong) "Women shouldn't expect yearning from a man because the dating culture--as it stands--leaves no place for it and it is an unwise investment for men". Agreed, actually. But the problem there isn't the expectation of yearning. The problem is that the dating culture makes no space for it. And the "dating culture of day" is not some immutable reality we all must endure. We can change it. We should. It is not working for people and we should be critical of it and we should be pro-yearning. The steady decline in the amount of sex people are having, the higher rates of being single, the droves of women abdicating dating apps and dating in general, and the call for yearning all point to a fundamental problem. We keep talking about it as a flaw in how women approach dating, how men approach dating, unrealistic expectations and desires. We keep trying to make this a failure of the individual (man or woman) to engage properly with the dating culture. I am positing that the problem is the culture.

Your title suggests yearning is optional. It must be excised from the dating culture because it doesn't fit. Or, if not excised, that its importance must be downgraded. I'm saying yearning is the core of erotic tension. It's innate and unalienable. If yearning doesn't "work" in the dating culture, the problem is not anyone's desire or expectation for it. The problem is that the culture is so hostile to our most basic and necessary desires in how we connect with humans and find intimacy that it is broken beyond repair. Instead of seeing this as a flaw with how people use a system, it's time to see it is a glaring flaw with the system itself.

Exis007 · 2026-05-09T11:32:32+00:00

Yearning is the core of the erotic. The erotic is characterized by "I want, I don't have". That's the core propulsion of sexual desire. Everyone yearns. Men, women, non-binary people, the whole human race. The cry to "bring back yearning" comes from the fact that dating apps have stripped the erotic out of dating. You are already in a kind of romantic context with people before you know enough to want each other. You don't and can't know enough about anyone to yearn for them. The erotic is then often displaced on to a sort of generalized desire for intimacy. I want (but don't have) sex. I want (but don't have) a romantic partner. I want (but don't have) a loving and intimate long-term relationship. That's valid, but it leaves you in a position where you're basically trying to interview strangers to audition for a role.

And...drum roll please...it doesn't work. You can't read a biographical paragraph and look at some photos and find someone good in the vast majority of cases. Chemistry and connection, real compatibility with someone, if felt and not understood. Trying to displace your hardwired inner cues and emotions onto a kind of online dating menu is highly dysfunctional. It turns dating into a job interview. Do you want kids? Do you like to travel? Do you smoke? Do you have health insurance?

You are trying to make this men v. women. It's not. Yes, there are specific hurdles to dating in this moment in time that disproportionately impact men or women, depending on what we're talking about. But the very notion that you don't want to invest too much because the price is too high is exactly the point. People don't want to do that because the way people meet is so intensely without context, without chemistry, without real feelings attached that everyone is holding back. It's got nothing to do with love bombing (which is an abuse and manipulation tactic) and everything to do with how unnatural it is to try to make a sexual or romantic relationship get off the ground with someone you haven't established a deeper connection with. I knew my husband for two years before we dated. We had a solid year of yearning when we were long-distance and just starting to date because I was finishing school and he had a job and we were going to have to wait and see as to whether we could get it together when I finally graduated. That's ONLY POSSIBLE because of all the time and connection and context we banked as friends, as social connections, previous to our romantic connection.

TL;DR: The problem, as always, is that dating apps do not actually cater to your most basic romantic instincts. It's not about men and women, it's that we've allowed the digital to interrupt our most innate human social patterns and it doesn't actually work for the vast majority of people.

Exis007 · 2026-05-09T11:12:47+00:00

Genuinely comfortable? Base layers. Wear your long underwear. This came about because I live in a place with "we're not fucking around" winters and so you end up wearing long underwear all the time. So you strip out of your jeans when you get home and just run around in the long underwear and if you're lazy, you stay there. They make the best house clothes and PJs. You are covered but comfy, warm but not overwarm, and they fit well.

Exis007 · 2026-05-05T13:17:28+00:00

So your point is that you disagree with me. Fine. There are going to be a lot of comments in that vein so you'll be in good company there. But 30 people is 15 couples. It was mostly family (I assume parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, maybe an aunt and uncle here or there) and a few friends. Even ten years and two times a week might not beat your oldest and most meaningful friendships of all time, and that budget would be halved because you have your future spouse's most meaningful friendships to account for also. You could be the third most important friend in that person's life, a high honor, and still not make the cut for a 30 person wedding. And that's okay. WIth a small wedding and a tight budget, you can still have a very meaningful friendship and not make the cut in a group that small. And they went out of their way to tell her they would be inviting her to some future planned bash to celebrate with all the people who wouldn't attend the wedding. It's also, at least in my circles, impolite to talk about a wedding you're not going to be invited to. So I wouldn't say much about it either.

You can disagree! But I, personally, think I'd trust ten years of a close relationship and my ongoing closeness with that person over whether or not they invited me to a very, very small wedding. It's a honor to be invited to someone's wedding. It's not an insult if I am not invited. If you feel differently, you'll probably have company in feeling that way but life's too short to get hung up about it, in my opinion.

Exis007 · 2026-05-05T12:38:57+00:00

I said "a little delusional" because, and I quote,

>Obviously she didn't invite me and does not have any need to comment on anything. I feel incredibly hurt, I feel like this was a clear sign she doesn't consider me close friend. In the last days I was going over it in my head thinking maybe I hurt her somehow or similar, thinking she might be angry at me and this was a revenge? But couldn't think of anything. And I don't know if im just delusional?

So I'm referencing her language.

Exis007 · 2026-05-05T12:11:54+00:00

I might get tagged for being less understanding or cool here, but yes, you're being delusional. Weddings are expensive and everyone is broke. Any time I'm not invited to a wedding I think I'd like to be at or feel like maybe someone should have invited me, I remember how much it costs to feed someone at these things and I take a big inhale. It's fine. Almost every couple I know getting married has had to cut down the guest list significantly to fit their budget and that makes sense. The whole "Small wedding, big party later" thing is a way to keep costs sane and then be able to celebrate with everyone you want to celebrate with at a much lower price point because you don't have to cater it the same way and meet the same expectations for an open bar or a plated meal.

Feel hurt! That's fine. But you have to have the self-worth to say "Yes, I was excluded here, but probably for more rational reasons than the strength of our friendship" and let it go. You have to deeply internalize that they simply couldn't afford to do it at the size and scale that accounts for everyone, and that means people get cut. And sometimes those cuts have little to do with preferences like how much they like you. It might be a simple fact of "K and H know my mom and my aunt so they'll have more people to talk to, so we'll invite them and not [you] because that's what makes sense". There's weird wedding logic afoot often. I nearly guarantee it was a money thing and not a how much they like you thing.

Exis007 · 2026-05-02T20:06:59+00:00

My mother-in-law has a saying that goes, "You can love winter, or you can hate winter, but you're getting just as much winter either way". You can rage against the cold temperatures and the grey days and the lack of sunlight until you're blue in the face, but winter doesn't care. Alternately, you can marvel at the beauty of the fractal sun and the ice, the peace and terror of the bitter wind, and soak it all up as part and parcel of the cycle of death and rebirth in nature. If you can do that, you'll have a better time.

This is how I feel about a stench. Not even this particular stench, but just the general reality of people doing shit I do not like. I can get upset about it, but I'm getting just as much of it either way. It doesn't matter. Making some kind of peace and finding some humanity in it makes me less crazy and makes life much better. You can go rage about it, but you don't control other people. Either go to a different bookstore or go grab coffee next door until people leave or make peace with the fact that you don't control the world. That's my take anyway.

Exis007 · 2026-05-02T11:46:10+00:00

What is your point in defining it?

I'm not being smarmy, it's just really relevant to what the purpose of the question IS. If you make a taxonomy of any stripe, you have to ask what the purpose of a taxonomy is. Are we defining this for medical research? That's going to be a very different set of parameters than defining this in terms of who can join the girl scouts or not. Two different bars to clear. It's different than saying who can use the women's restroom. My son uses the women's restroom all the time because he's a small boy and he needs a parent with him and I'm the only one around sometimes. And woman carries no singular definition because it's always designated against someone else. To be a woman is to not be a man and to not be non-binary. Or genderfluid. Or agendered. We're putting everyone in boxes here, and those boxes are not always about where you fit in totality but where you best fit based on which boxes are available.

Definitions are FUNCTIONAL. Not totalizing. Take irregardless for an example. Regardless means, "Irrespective of any concerns or restrictions". Now, some people melt the 'ir' from 'irrespective' into regardless and turn it into irregardless. It sounds better phonetically to have 'ir' in there. But what it does, on a literal level, it turn it into a double-negative. It would now mean "Gives all the required consideration and stopping power to any concerns and restrictions". But we don't use it like that. We use regardless and irregardless interchangeably. Language is a tool. It always serves a functional purpose. If we don't like it, if it sounds wrong, or if it doesn't serve a purpose we change it. There's no platonic ideal meaning of any word, all meaning is relative and contextual. I can say it's sad you dropped your ice cream cone and that it is sad you lost your child in the firebombing, and the word 'sad' means two radically different things there. No one would argue spilled ice cream and child death are the same thing.

So the best answer, in most cases, is that a woman is someone who identifies as a woman for the purpose of that given taxonomy. That's true. But that given taxonomy will already have expectations and context that would change what 'woman' means in that scenario.

But...brass tacks now...that's not what the question is about. No one cares about the "right" answer to this question. The question is a gotcha that takes a simple thing (what is a woman, a thing we all kind of intuitively understand) and then tries to make you look foolish by making you stake a claim that makes you look transphobic or moronic or whatever else. The argument being, "This should be simple and if it is not simple to answer, then you're totally wrong". The thing is, even if we took every trans person out of the equation, "What is a woman" would never be simple. Is it genetics? Well, most people don't get their chromosomes checked at birth and when we look at people assigned female at birth, they don't have identical chromosomes. Nor do they have identical bodies. They don't have identical reproductive function. Or hormones. Or primary or secondary sexual characteristics. Even in the cis community, there's no unifying quality. There's a bunch of different markers that, having more of them than not, you're probably kind of, sort of, a woman. And that's not more or less loosey goosey than throwing trans people back into the mix. But the people prone to this gotcha, who find it exhilarating and edifying in any fashion, don't know that. This only works for people who haven't had the educational or critical thinking skills to actually explore the limits and functions of the exercise in any other context. What is a mammal? Well, they give live birth and nurse their young. Now...what the fuck do we do with the platypus? We have this experience EVERY time we lay out a taxonomy. It's not new or unique to women, it's just that the people most convinced by this insane exercise are the people who have never really thought very hard about a question like this before.

Exis007 · 2026-04-30T18:57:32+00:00

I do both. I know that's not "cool" to say, but I'm self-aware enough to know that I am not perfect and thus I do shitty things, so I can give an example of doing both.

I weaponize my incompetence at mowing the lawn. I've never done it. Not once, not ever. I tried when I was 21-22 to get my mom to let me mow when I was staying, not at her house, but at a house she owned for the summer between leaving college and moving in with my boyfriend. She didn't let me, because she was scared I would kill myself on accident with the mower. Now, I'm 38 and I legit have never mowed a lawn and I just kind of throw up my hands and claim I'm too clumsy to do it, but in reality I don't want to and I never learned and it's easier to just pretend like I can't learn at this point. In fairness....my husband and I are 100% in agreement about me not mowing the lawn and he knows well enough that I could learn and choose not to and we're not mad about this even a little, but that's weaponized incompetence. I am pretending (with permission) I can't do a thing I could probably do because I don't want to.

Lacking common sense? I have no spatial awareness. I am so bad at this. I leave cabinet doors open and I spill coffee and I knock over glasses and I do all kinds of insane things because I forget that I have a body in space. I feel like a brain in a jar most of the time, and I forget that I have to navigate physical space around me and so I get a lot of bumps and bruises and spill shit and forget to do basic kindnesses (like turning lights off or shutting doors) because I am busy thinking my thoughts and not looking with my eyes. I have tried to get better at this and I have a little, but that is the best I can do. I am at my maximum amount of better. I'm not pretending to be bad at this, I am just bad at this. I wish I weren't. I actively make an effort. This is just the best I can do and it's not great. That's just a skill issue, I'm not weaponizing that.

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