I Can't Define Woman? | Trans Deeper #1

Welcome to the new Trans Deeper, a show where we take a deeper look at what people are saying in the trans conversation, and whether their claims are valid or not. In this first episode, I want to examine an increasingly common phenomenon: asking people to define the word 'woman' on the spot. Trans skeptical politicians and anti-trans activists in America and Britain have, with increasing frequency, demanded that people they perceive as pro-trans define the word 'woman' on the spot. Where they can't do that satisfactorily, it is deemed that they have an agenda to abolish the long-standing understanding of 'woman' and sex and gender more generally, as if they were into postmodern queer theory. However, is this a fair way to approach things?

Firstly, I think we should look at what answers people might give, when asked to define 'woman' on the spot, which, by the way, is a very odd and awkward thing to be asked. I guess the first option that comes to mind is to give the common dictionary definition, i.e. 'an adult human female'. But then again, this definition clarifies nothing, because nobody actually disputes the 'adult' and 'human' parts of the definition, it's the 'female' part that is supposedly disputed, which this dictionary definition does not further define. Therefore, the demand that one define 'woman' is basically a demand to define 'female'.

While this question is usually asked in the context of trans rights related controversies, we should acknowledge that, even if we leave trans people aside, it is still going to be difficult to define 'female' on the spot. Let's examine the objective facts empirically. If we look at the 99% of the population who aren't trans, there isn't going to be a definition of 'female' that will satisfactorily include every woman and exclude every man. If we go by chromosomes, women with conditions like CAIS are going to be misclassified as men. If we go by anatomy at birth, many intersex women are going to be excluded. If we go by reproductive organs, many infertile women are going to be excluded. These misclassifications and exclusions are not only absurd socially, they are also cruel psychologically, and are likely to have adverse effects on families too. In other words, imposing a simplistic definition of 'female' across the population, to justify opposition to trans rights, would also inevitably have socially absurd and inhumane consequences on many people who aren't trans. It is not only trans people who have something to fear about this approach.

Besides, the demand that one give a simplistic definition of 'female' on the spot is essentially against the spirit of science and open inquiry, and it is something that everyone concerned with free thought and free speech should be very concerned about. If you ask a biologist or medical doctor to explain sex differentiation properly, they might give you a lecture that lasts for an hour. Demanding that people, who aren't even scientists or doctors, give a definition of 'woman', in a context where they only have a few minutes to speak, basically means demanding a simplistic definition for a complicated matter, which is anti-science. Requiring people to give a particular simplistic definition of something, when the reality is clearly more complicated, is literally political correctness at its worst, because it demands that people give an answer that is 'politically correct' in public to avoid trouble, even though they know that it is not factually correct.

I acknowledge that there is a very real anxiety in some sections of the community that, with the increasing influence of queer theory, words like 'man' and 'woman' could be deconstructed to eventually mean nothing concrete at all. This is an aspect of queer theory that I have strongly disagreed with, both as a pro-science person who is committed to the objective truth, and as a trans person who believes that gender deconstruction hinders the formation and communication of stable trans identities. However, the way to stop gender deconstruction isn't to demand and enforce rigid definitions. As I previously suggested, the long-standing understandings of 'male' and 'female' are actually archetypal categories, based on ancient observations about humans and nature. Everyone knows what the archetypal 'male' and the archetypal 'female' look like, and by extension, there is no controversy at all about whether 99% of more of the population are 'male' or 'female'. In other words, we can preserve the long-standing understandings of 'male' and 'female' just by insisting on the objective existence of the archetypes, and resisting attempts to deconstruct the archetypes by postmodern philosophy. To impose rigid categories is not only unnecessary, it is counterproductive. And it can even undermine the traditional archetypes by, for example, misclassifying intersex women as men.