Why “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman” is not a meaningless statement
Is it really true that tautological propositions are meaningless?
This is a really hot topic now because of the phrase “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman”. The argument goes like this: this is not a valid definition because it leads to an infinite recurrence (A woman is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as a woman -> A woman is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as (…), etc.).
But is this really true?
First off, all meaning is context-dependent. When a person tells me that a woman is someone who identifies as a woman, the meaning of this statement changes depending on when they say this, what I asked them before, etc.
One way we could define meaning is “the information produced by a statement”. From this perspective, the statement is incredibly meaningful since I get to know so much about what a person believes when they tell me that: the fact that they likely support trans rights, the probability that they would agree or disagree with other statements regarding trans issues, it’s also an ingroup/outgroup marker, etc. Since when someone tells me “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman” I get to know so much information, either about them or about the situation I’m in, then the statement is meaningful by this definition.
Another way we could define meaning of a statement is “the impact produced by the statement”. From this perspective, a statement is ‘alive’ in a sense, it changes reality in a certain way and actively interacts with its linguistic environment. A statement is meaningful if it ‘does’ something to the reality around it. From this perspective, the statement is also meaningful since it causes a predictable reaction in the people hearing it, and the more predictable this reaction is from a cause-effect perspective, the more meaningful the statement is (a statement that causes a completely unpredictable reaction without pattern is meaningless, like the word salad of a person suffering a psychotic break, but the moment it gathers a pattern it becomes meaningful).
From both of these perspectives, the statement “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman” is meaningful, even if not logically valid by the standards of binary logic.
Moreover, tautological statements often hide contradictions embedded within them, as Hegel teaches us. Zizek often gives the example of the statement “law is law”.
Let’s say that you are 17 years old and 364 days and you have a friend who is one day older than you that just turned 18 today. You both go to a club to celebrate, the bouncer lets your friend in but he does not let you in because you are not 18 years old. You ask the bouncer what is the difference, or what does your friend have that you don’t already have, since if there is only a one day difference between you, there is no reason why only one of you should be let in. The bouncer replies “law is law”. In this case, the statement is only said when law is NOT law, because if law was really law, there wouldn’t be a need to say it out loud — the inner contradictions of the law when a quantitative difference has to turn into a qualitative one get underlined by a tautological statement. A similar case happens when we use the phrase “it is what is is” in English.
The next point I would make is how we handle loops in algorithmic thinking. In programming, there is the concept of a recursive function. In order for the function to be useful, it needs to have a base case to default on, otherwise it would just end in an infinite loop and cause a stack overflow. However, a recursive function that causes a stack overflow is still a function that does something in your computer, despite it not working ‘as intended’. This is more evident when we consider how the computer uses the stack in the first place: each call/iteration of the function is different from the previous one, highlighting Deleuze’s point that repetition is always the repetition of difference (when something repeats itself, it repeats itself differently).
This point can also be found in Lacan’s critique of Decartes’ cogito (I think therefore I am) — in this case, the I in the beginning of the proposition (the subject of enunciation) is not the same as the I in the end of the proposition (the enunciated subject). Why can’t we apply a similar logic in our earlier example? In the statement “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman”, the first ‘woman’ is not the same as the second ‘woman’, one represents the agent of enunciation while the second represents the enunciated subject. A woman (the subject) is someone who identifies as a woman (the social identity). The statement is thus meaningful because it encapsulates the performative act of identification itself. I guess this is why we need process philosophy more than ever today: the act of identification as such is an action, a verb, a process or an event, not a static state of affairs. The statement “A woman is someone who identifies as a woman” is invalid only from the perspective of static logic, not dynamic (or even dialectical) logic. The word woman looping back on itself is an action, an event, a ‘happening’ and the statement meaningfully describes that process.
What I am trying to explain in my previous paragraph is that the word ‘woman’ should be distinguished from the act of identification itself. The question “identifies as what?” is absurd then, we all know what it means to identify as a woman: someone who says or thinks the words ‘I identify as a woman’ and changes their beliefs as a reaction from it. A woman by this definition is someone who engages in the act of identification (a dynamic process).
If we were to reject all tautological propositions, then we would have to deny the reality of fiat money as well (a dollar is a dollar, a euro is a euro), which is absurd. Before 1971, the definition of a dollar was “this amount of gold”. After 1971, the definition of a dollar is “a dollar” and yet it still works, is meaningful, and is a very useful construct that shapes our reality. Of course, one can also define a dollar in regards to exchange rates, but exchange rates are fluid and cannot provide a stable, unchanging essence of a dollar. Similarly enough, the identity of ‘woman’ is in a constant dynamic process of change through its cultural-contextual implications, just like exchange rates are fluid: there is no stable essence of ‘dollar’, but there is an ever-changing set of relationships between a dollar and other tautological concepts (euro, pound, etc).
Moreover, even classical definitions sometimes rely on recursion. Think of how dictionaries define words:
1. “A sibling is a brother or a sister.”
2. “A brother is a male sibling.”
3. “A sister is a female sibling.”
By strict logic, this would be circular, but in practice, it works because the meaning is grounded in use, not in a fixed ontological essence.
Tautological statements are meaningful because they do something — they structure reality, establish conventions, and reveal contradictions. The statement “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman” is not a logical error but an assertion of an active process of identification. It gains meaning through its function in discourse, just as money gains value through collective belief.
If anything, this highlights the limitations of static, binary logic in capturing social and linguistic realities. Meaning is not a fixed property but an emergent process — something that happens rather than is.
So, rather than rejecting tautological propositions as meaningless, we should see them as sites where deeper contradictions, ideological struggles, and performative acts of meaning-making take place.
EDIT: To be clear, this essay is not arguing that a woman is someone who identifies as a woman, nor is it arguing against this definition. This essay is arguing two things:
- The statement is meaningful
- The critique of circularity is not a valid critique of the definition. There are other more valid critiques.
