What is a woman?

The question of the week, it seems.

I’m going to invite you one more time to consider how interesting it is that this is always the question. What is a woman? What do you have to do or be to be considered a woman? Who should be admitted into women’s spaces?

Where’s the agonizing about what is a man?

Why is the central, burning question:

How can we define “woman” to include men?

Of course this movement is misogynistic and male supremacist. I’ve been pointing that out for a while:

A movement that is based on:

• Convincing young women that they would be better off male
• Enabling males to be accepted as girls and women
• Western gender stereotypes that emphasize female submissiveness and appearance

No…that’s not misogynist at all.

The essential takeaway from Kentaji Brown Jackson’s unwillingness or inability to define “woman,” I think, is not so much about her, personally, but about shedding yet more light on the ultimate illogic of sex agnosticism.

As many have (gleefully) pointed out – if Jackson can’t define “woman,” is there any grounds for pride in the accomplishment of possibly being the first Black woman on the Supreme Court? If we can’t define it, it doesn’t exist as a useful category any longer.

If we can’t define it – if it’s open season, if feelings define membership in the category, then what’s the point of Women’s history, women’s schools,, women’s groups, women’s prisons, women’s shelters, women’s teams or any accomplishment of this undefinable thing called “Woman.”

It’s gone. Just like that.

Which is where your traditional feminists come up hard against transactivism, only they either don’t or won’t see it yet.

So what is a woman? Here’s the simplest definition you’ll probably find, and one that avoids the minefields of infertility, the absence of pregnancy or birthing in a woman’s life as well as physical variation, either congenitally or in the course of one’s life:

Male and female are basically (and unromantically) just the bodies that house one of the two gametes required for sexual reproduction.

And a “woman” is an adult human female.

Credit: a discussion at Ovarit. Can’t find the specific one right now, but it was in a thread over there.

And that’s it. For let’s face it: once you allow the self-definition of “gender” to replace sex, you have removed human beings from the “mammal” category.

The reason that this is essential is not because of abstract definitions. It is because women – as women – as adult human females – have certain experiences in life, are vulnerable in certain ways – that are unique.

There is a reason women and men are housed in separate prisons.

There is a reason why abused women, most of whom have been abused by males – need single-sex shelters.

There is a reason why girls entering puberty and navigating the beginning of menstruation need privacy from males.

No, you do not need to be a biologist to figure this out.

Further, when it comes time to restrict certain human beings from going to school or forbidding them to drive or put them in burkas or performing genital mutilation – seems as if, globally, there’s not much ambiguity about the matter.

To prioritize subject, self-discerned gender identities over biological reality and the privacy, safety and dignity of women and girls is absurd, wrong and the fruit of narcissism run wild, which it will do, every time, if not checked.

Interestingly, Matt Walsh announced a new project today:

The TERFy boards and discussions I follow are generally torn about this, not surprisingly. For Walsh is, of course, a Very Bad Guy, but as is the case with this issue, progressives and liberals, even liberal feminists, have sold out completely to transactivism. Actually “torn” is too mild. At wit’s end, is more like it, deeply and profoundly frustrated at the political homelessness they feel and disgusted that they’re put in a position of finding more in common on this fundamental issue with the likes of Matt Walsh than Kenjati Brown Jackson.

One more point, perhaps edging up to conspiracy-land. This may be too tin-foil hatty for you, but here you go:

One of the life skills that females learn early is to be on our guard against males. Sorry to bust your idealistic bubble, but it’s true. Not all males, of course, but let’s put it this way: you’re in a public restroom or locker room and another woman enters, you don’t even notice, even though this is a space in which everyone is doing intimate things. It’s nothing.

A male enters?

You tense up.

You’re walking alone on a street, especially at night – a woman approaches? Again, nothing. Maybe you greet each other, maybe you don’t. No fear.

If it’s a man?

Different story.

Sitting a coffee shop and a woman strikes up a conversation? Perhaps a little annoying, depending on your mood, but probably not threatening. A man? Could be nothing, could be me anodyne human interaction, but you never know. You tense up, just a little.

Women have defenses against males for a reason. There is no denying that most physical violence against females is perpetrated by males, and always has been.

But now, what if women – especially young women – are being gaslit and conditioned to repress their own natural defenses, their own instinct to protect themselves…. for the sake of “kindess”….to men?

Who benefits?

Who?