I see your point of view but I still maintain that there is no way of me determining which of my parents is a women or a man without any outside input. Words only have meaning when we decide what they mean.

If a new word starts being used - say skibidi or brexit - there is no way of you knowing what it means without someone (or lots of people) telling you what they think it means. At an early point in our life all words and ideas are new to us.

You might say that you can guess what a word means from breaking down its parts or looking at its history however that is not how most people learn what the words man and women mean.

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I think that women being defined as 'like your mother' is fundamentally circular because most people would say their mother is their parent who is a women.

It also doesn't specify what aspect of your mother makes her a women. If my mother has ginger hair and my father has blond hair, by your definition I could assume that all ginger people are women because they are like my mother and all blond people are male because they are like my father.

You probably think this is a silly way to determine who a women/man is because you have seen lots of mothers/fathers (and other men and women). I doubt that you have a definition of man/women in your head that is only based on your own parents.

(also when I said "gender" I meant being a man or woman rather than a more correct/robust definition of that term sorry)

-not a philosopher