Why doesn’t anyone know what a woman is?

No one knows what a woman is anymore, but it wasn’t always the case. When I was at primary school 35 years ago, even the slowest learners in the class could reliably identify the contents of their pants. On one occasion, a boy famously strayed into the girls’ toilets and was thereafter accorded the sort of hushed respect usually reserved for infantrymen who’d survived a dash across no man’s land.

Fast forward to the present, and cast-iron certainties about gender have faded. Indeed, getting us all swapping genders like Panini cards is perhaps the greatest liberal achievement of recent decades. Anyone who doesn’t fancy this game soon finds themselves in disgrace outside the headmaster’s office.

Angelos Sofocleous, assistant editor of Durham University’s philosophy journal ‘Critique’, wanted to test how stringent the rules were by retweeting a Spectator article, ‘Is it a crime to say women don’t have penises?’ He got his answer pretty unequivocally, when he was sacked for being ‘transphobic’.

There are none so fearful of transphobia allegations than politicians, particularly those whose bread and butter is pretending to care about increasingly marginal issues.

On Tuesday it was Labour’s Shadow Equalities Minister, Annalise Dodds attempting to explain what a woman is:

Well I have to say there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is. I mean you look at the definition within the Equality Act and I think it just says someone who is adult and female I think, but then doesn’t say how you define either of those things. Obviously then you’ve got the biological definition, legal definition… it does depend on what the context is surely. Surely that is important here.

Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, had a crack on Wednesday:

I think people get themselves down rabbit holes on this one. Let’s just celebrate International Women’s Day and amazing women all over the country, amazing women all over the world, but also challenge inequalities and say what it is we need to be doing for the future…

I’m not going to get into rabbit holes on this. Why are we all getting ourselves tangled up?…

As you can see I’m avoiding going down rabbit holes, because I just think this is pointless. We had a great celebration of International Women’s Day, I think there’s still all kinds of inequalities, I think we still see problems around violence against women and girls where there needs to be action.

The Labour Party has form in this department. Last year’s conference was beset by cervix-gate, when Keir Starmer nobly stepped in to remind Rosie Duffield MP that just because she was a woman, did not mean she was entitled to bigoted opinions like ‘only women have a cervix’.

The Liberal Democrats are no better. Jo Swinson, leader in 2019, definitely fancied as much of the ‘trans’ vote as she could get:

Well, I know I’m a woman, and we know what we are. And I think all women are important, and their rights need to be protected; whether they are Black, Asian, White, whether they are gay or straight or bi, whether they have a very privileged upbringing or they don’t have much money, whether they are cis or trans, whether they have a disability, we are all important, in all of those different ways.

When asked ‘If a man wears a dress twice a week to work, is he a woman?’ she replied emphatically, ‘Not necessarily’.

Layla Moran, who fancied herself as leader in 2020, tried a different tack:

Well, a woman is a gender, it is a way to self-identify and there are lots of genders. There is male and that is biological. There is female, which is also biological. A woman is a gender identity which is more akin to being a man. Those are the opposites and then there is also non-binary, which is people who don’t identify with either.

Clear as mud then.

If you want to criticise others, you should of course have a solution yourself. I confess, I’m reasonably content with the Collins Dictionary definition – woman: an adult female human being. I.e., it is biology rather than emotions that matter; biology, its concomitant XX chromosomes, and the ability to bear children. In short, the lack of an Adam’s apple, five O’clock shadow, and a massive cock.

The argument that this is not always the case (while true) is a deliberate red herring. As an illustration, a gunshot to the head results in death 90% of the time. But surely no one would argue that such injuries are not fatal; not dangerous, or not even injuries?

Gender dysphoria affects somewhere between 0.014% and 0.002% of the population: one in 30,000 male births, and one in 100,000 female births. Rewriting biology on such a marginal issue is therefore not only absurd, but clearly politically motivated. It is noteworthy that while men are more affected by gender dysphoria, everyone still miraculously knows what a man is.

Pretending not to know what a woman is under the guise of tolerance / inclusivity / compassion (choose your wankwords carefully), is mere reflection of a simple truth: no one has worked out how to sell male victimhood. Female victimhood is however big business, and it seems, ‘men pretending to be female’ may even top that.

If you think that men becoming women’s officers, men destroying women’s’ sports, and male rapists getting transferred to female prisons somehow empowers women, I’d respectfully suggest your woke moral compass needs realigning.

While I have genuine sympathy for those who feel they are in the wrong body, that sympathy does not extend to demands that the world not only play along, but be forced to do so. I won’t agree that ‘transwomen’ are women, even if you force me to agree with J K Rowling.