Matt Walsh has a point, kinda, its just not the point he was making.

In the Summer of 2022, Matt Walsh ascended to new levels of relevance by asking the question “What is a Woman?” This profound query drove Matt Walsh into the hallowed attention of the Queen of the Bigots herself, JK Rowling. Other GCs weighed in with their applause as well. Notable examples being Maria Maclachlan and Posie “Packin’ Heat” Parker. That said, the only thing notable about Posie Parker is her abuse of bleach.

For those uninformed, Matt Walsh is a childrens book author, notable member of the Daily Wire, white supremacist, theocratic fascist (what? Check his twitter bio, his words not mine) and misogynist. Of course you are probably wondering why such noted examples of Radical Feminism are so enamored Matted Facial Hair Walsh?

You know what they say about broken clocks and shit? Broken clocks are correct twice a day, unless they have an LCD screen, then they are just broken. As for shit it’s a great fertilizer when it’s not stuck to your shoe.

And so it is with Matt Walsh. Our “Radical Feminists” have mistaken a sticky shit with a half digested and totally broken Casio watch that has been smeared across the lawn for fertilizer and an Omega.

However, maybe Matt has a point in asking “what is a woman?” Let’s toss out the source of this profound thought, delouse it of transphobia and actually ask, in good faith “what is a woman”.

Thank you Matt, I’ll take it from here.

So what is a woman?

If we had asked this question to the average Joe before the “trans moment” the answer would probably have been “well, she has xx chromosomes and she is an adult”. Which is not a bad answer for the general public circa 2014. But it is 2022 and that answer has been superseded. It doesn’t matter how much Matt Cockwomble, Posie Parker, Maria Maclaclan or JK Rowling would beg to differ, that definition is simply no longer adequate.

This has happened before and it will happen again. Humankind has within its collective mind knowledge it considers immutable. Along comes an unforeseen scenario or more information is discovered and that knowledge is challenged and superseded. Granted it’s 2022 and it happens relatively seldom that we find out we are wrong about something so basic as the definition of a woman. As a result we as a society have become arrogant and stubborn when it comes to challenges to what we consider “bedrock knowledge”. Probably due to the scale and pace of discovery. We don’t see massive shifts in knowledge anymore. We see small incremental sharpening of points driven by boring labs and calculus. So when something truly substantial comes along and challenges our bedrock, we tend to resist it. Indeed, some of us make complete idiots of ourselves in our resistance (I mean you Matt Walsh).

I imagine that the world was awash in Matt Walshe's during the enlightenment. Afterall Galileo was imprisoned by a Theocratic Fascist for challenging the bedrock knowledge of the time. It so happens Galileo was right (and the pope was and still is an asshole)

It is with this mind that I now insist that we have it wrong and our bedrock is due for a refresh. Post Transgender Moment we entered a world where we acknowledged the existence of not only transgender people but also intersex people. Science and medicine has stopped seeing these people as disorders or mentally ill, broken beings. That view of gender and sexual variance as natural is now filtering through to the general public. We have started to see them as natural variants of Homo sapiens. No longer are we speaking about sex differentiation as two distinct and discrete categories. Words like bi-modal distribution have entered the lexicon of the general population. The idea that sex and gender are spectra has existed in academia for quite some time and it’s now filtering through to the general public’s understanding humanity. .

Look at it from this perspective, post Transgender Moment, xx chromosomes are not going to cut it as an answer for “what is a woman”. We have trans and intersex women that challenge these notions. Of course you can say trans women are biological males. Except what does that mean? Sure trans women have significantly male resembling biology. But how do you define someone as male when it’s clear that at some biological level, they are women. Like it or not, they function as women in society. The hormones they use are not placebos and their mental health improves dramatically when they transition with hrt. They say they are women and we have to accept they are correct because the evidence is solidly on their side. So taking that into account, trans women may biologically resemble men to a limited extent but they are not biologically males.

In an effort to define “woman” we could say women are reproductively competent and can fall pregnant but there are women who can’t reproduce and we can’t exclude them. We could list organs we typically don’t see in males, but there are cis women without those organs either. We could list chromosomes, but whilst rare intersex people negate that point. The list of inclusionary criteria is endless and the number of exceptions is similarly endless. To boot, we must also acknowledge that what we consider the “social construct” of gender offers a poor definition of what a woman is and merely describes what society expects women to kinda, sorta, maybe be.

This leaves us with the answer “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman”. Some have pointed out that this is a circular definition. I contend that it’s not a circular definition. It’s the answer to an entirely different question though. That being “who is a woman”. That is because much like the answers to “what happened before the Big Bang?” Or ”Is there really an infinite number of universes shearing away from each other at every single moment in space time where more than one possible arrangement of matter becomes possible?” We don’t know. Our understanding or our description of sex and gender are imperfect, incomplete and unreliable.

There have always been transgender, intersex and homosexual people, but today we have far more functionally LGBTQIA+ people in society and as a result we have to start considering how they impact our understanding of ourselves as sentient animals. We are all aware that under certain environmental pressures some animals change reproductive roles or even reproductive modes. Perhaps our understanding of human beings as binary sexes was applicable in 1950 when the global population was 2.5 billion. However in 2022, edging toward 8 billion, maybe we are subject to those same environmental pressures that impact other animals’ reproductive capacities. Maybe the number of queer people is a reflection of the greater need for lower reproductive rates. The LGBTQIA+ community is very capable of reproduction, but no one can deny they reproduce at lower rates than heteronormative society. Is it possible our understanding of sex and gender is flawed because we don’t understand these mechanisms? Maybe in times when population growth is a necessity reproductive competence is favored and when population stability is required our genetics allow for more variance in sex, gender and sexuality? Is it possible this proposed mechanism is completely incorrect and there are many other mechanisms we don’t understand about ourselves?

I can’t tell you what a woman is, I don’t think anyone can. I think it’s time we became a little less arrogant about what we know and don’t know. We should learn not to trust theocratic fascists and bigots to guide our thoughts and instead embrace those central tenets of skepticism. Perhaps it’s time we started accepting that we don’t know what a woman is, we merely know who a woman is and we know because she defines herself.