#what is a woman

[radsplain]

the gag is that everyone knows what a woman is and there is absolutely no confusion about it whatsoever. not even amongst the most zealous of tras

[quasi-dilla]

In the unfortunately common discourse of "What is a woman?", I feel that TRAs/gender ideologues/etc. completely forget the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition. The production of ova is a sufficient condition to being a woman: that is, if you produce ova, you are a woman. It is not a necessary condition, meaning that you can be a woman who doesn't produce ova. Similarly, production of sperm is a sufficient condition to being a man.

I'm sick of dealing with people who don't even understand the words they're using.

[saint-augustines-pears]

Actually, no, we should know what a woman is. If you’re going to challenge a term, you have to come up with a new definition. If we are going to have a rational conversation, all terms must be defined.

If woman doesn’t mean adult female human, what does it mean? If you’re getting defensive reading this, that’s a problem. You should be able to know what you’re arguing for. You should be able to tell people what you’re arguing for. Otherwise, what the fuck are you even doing? Why are you arguing about something that, if undefined, logically does not exist?

I would love for everyone to be happy. Delusion is not happiness. I need to know whether this is delusion or not.

[regularwomen]

You say you feel like a woman. Why does that make you a woman?

There are people who feel they are animals. Why aren’t they animals?

There are people who feel like they are fictional characters. Why aren’t they fictional characters?

There are people who feel like they are people of colour. Why aren’t they people of colour?

Why is womanhood uniquely available for parody and mockery? Why is woman a term that can’t be strictly defined? What is it you feel that is inherent to womanhood? I don’t think most women feel anything like that, does that make them not women? Are you somehow an expert on womanhood to the point that you can say that what you feel is related to being a women, despite not being one?

What is a woman?

Why does that make you a woman?

[beirarowling]

Never forget!

[lorynna]

So close radfem isn't a thing because you don't support all women. So you are not a feminist and will never be one. Stop looking for validation and maybe do smth with that air head >-<

i support ALL women (definition: adult human female with at least one X-Chromosome and with no functioning SRY-gene) ❤️

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Reminder that "What Is A Woman", the best and most important documentary of the past year, is still available to watch for free on Twitter here, with over 180 million views in the past 10 days.

[prolifeproliberty]

What cracks me up the most is how much leftists hate Matt Walsh and yet can’t identify him in a wig using the name Matt and speaking in his normal deadpan voice

I’m curious how many more of these kinds of things he can do before the leftists start studying his picture and videos so they don’t accidentally sit down for an interview with him 😂

[elierlick]

I spoke with NBC about how What Is a Woman? inspired a new form of far-right pseudo-documentary. Deceptive editing that aims to delegitimize the existence of trans people isn't innovative, but it is more widespread now than ever (link)

[victusinveritas]

[radsplain]

a TRA talking point about "cis privilege" that drives me absolutely insane is the idea that "cis" women (ie. adult human females), who "ID with the gender that aligns with their birth sex, have never had to think critically about their identity as women and take their womanhood for granted, while trans women, who do not have the same privilege, have had to critically think about and dissect their identity as women, and therefore understand the nuances and complexities of womanhood more intimately than cis women ever will."

it's just completely nonsensical, for multiple reasons.

firstly, the idea that trans women appreciate and understand their "womanhood" more intimately than "cis" women ever will is downright laughable when you realize that gender ideology is built upon a post-modern faith-based spiritual belief that identifying as something actually does indeed make you that thing. like by that logic, Rachel Delezol, who identifies as a black woman even though she's ethnically caucasian, understands and appreciates her identity as a black woman more than actual black women because she wasn't granted with "race privilege," despite being born as a white woman (this is also a funny parallel to how statistically, most "trans women" are white, heterosexual males; people who by all accounts are born with the epitome of privilege).

that besides, how can trans-identified males understand womanhood more than actual women, when they've never and will never know what it's like to be a woman (ie. adult human female), and all of the stages of development and embodiment that entails, from birth all the way until death? how does a trans-identified male appreciate his "womanhood" more than an actual woman, when, when asked how he knew he was even a woman in the first place, can only come up with sexist, regressive stereotypes that align with the fake, man-made, misogynistic version of womanhood we call "femininity"?

secondly, the insane idea that "cis" women haven't had to critically dissect or think about our "gender identity" and therefore don't appreciate or understand womanhood like trans women do is such a blatant form of gaslighting and rewriting of base reality.

the reality is, actual women do not "identify" as women. your first mistake was believing that we all buy into the dissociative, disembodied concept of "gender identity." your second mistake was believing that being a woman means being content with the sexist, regressive, misogynistic gender roles that have been placed on the female sex in the form of femininity. what makes women women is not identifying with harmful, patriarchal stereotypes of gender; it's being female. women don't "identify" as women any more than people identify as blonde or brunette, 5'2 or 5'6, far-sighted or near-sighted, etc. you either ARE those things or you aren't. you either ARE an adult human female or you're not. your body is EITHER oriented around producing large, immobile gametes (despite the lack or ability of proper functionality) or it's not. you either ARE a woman or you're not. we do not use the term 'woman' as a form of gender self-identification. we use it as a form of class identification and categorization to describe the material differences in humans based on biological sex. that's literally it.

women don't need to "appreciate" or "critically dissect" our existence as women to be women, because we simply ARE. end of.

[theexodvs]

A woman is someone who covers their drink when an outspoken autogynephile is in the same room.

[ovafexx]

Call me what I am: I am a woman.

[trexalicious]

Matt Walsh is an American political commentator. My cousins and I are going to go see this based on the trailer. He also put out 'What is a woman' which trys to understand the 'logic' behind the gender ideology movement...

[hestiasroom]

At first I wasn’t particularly inclined to watch Matt Walsh’s documentary What is a Woman? I know the answer to that one already. Everybody does.

A woman is someone who isn’t allowed a final say on what a woman is. Pretending not to know this — that defining “woman” is incredibly complex and bewildering — is an age-old tactic deployed by non-women, usually in order to excuse treating us badly. 

Are women fully human? Do they have souls? What do women want? Far greater men than the host of The Matt Walsh Show — Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Sigmund Freud — have tried and failed to answer these questions (they could always have asked an actual woman, but first they’d have had to establish whether women can think, and then they’d have been back to square one).

As Matt himself says at the start of his film, “I like to make sense of things. Making sense of females is a whole other matter”, noting that “even astrophysicist Stephen Hawking” was “completely dumbfounded by women”.

Even astrophysicist Stephen Hawking! Honestly, ladies, if the author of A Brief History of Time hasn’t a clue what the hell we are, what hope do any of us have? 

The thankless nature of the task may be why the twenty-first century version of The Woman Question has now been allocated to those somewhat lower down the male intellect hierarchy: Edinburgh fringe comedians, disgraced MPs, right-wing shock jocks, Owen Jones and Billy Bragg. 

The proposal that a woman is anyone who defines themselves as a woman — and that no woman may say anyone isn’t a woman — has led to a particularly unimpressive stage of the debate, one which can only be described as the Summa Theologica meets incels r us. 

On the bright side, it’s clear the men are bloody loving it. If you’re left-wing, it’s your chance to put those TERFs in their place after years of having to “do feminism” as part of the right-side-of-history package deal. If you’re right-wing, it’s your opportunity to own all those feminists who suggested female bodies weren’t inferior and that pink, fluffy ladybrains were a myth. As Walsh declares of his film, “the movie makes utter fools of educated elite liberals”. I’m guessing that’s the point. 

I confess to having known very little about Matt Walsh up till now. “I’m a husband, I’m a father of four, I host a talk show, I give speeches, I write books,” he tells us by way of introduction. Hey, that sounds nice! Alas, a quick perusal of his twitter account shows that he’s the kind of renaissance man who tweets things like “feminism is an ugly and bitter ideology” and “rapists love abortion. It helps them cover up their crime”.

He’s also the kind of man who, should feminists show themselves to insufficiently appreciative of his recent woman-defining efforts, tells us we would “rather be a victim than win the fight” and that we “just want to sit on the sidelines and whine”. He’s been, like, getting death threats due to his challenge to contemporary gender mores! Would you risk that, eh, feminists? What’s anyone ever done to you, JK Rowling, you massive coward? 

I first wrote about the problematic nature of a gender identity-based definition of women over eight years ago. Other women, such as Julie Bindel, were sounding the alarm far earlier, and with little support. I know we’re supposed to be eternally grateful to Matt for stepping into the breach. What a gent! As the Onion once put it, Man Finally Put In Charge of Struggling Feminist Movement (admittedly it’s a man who thinks feminism is an ugly and bitter ideology but hey, we can’t have everything). 

In any case, I gave in and watched Matt’s film, just on the off-chance I’d missed something (more fool me; I read Gender Trouble on that basis, and look where that’s got me). There was little in What is a woman? that I didn’t already know from the work of feminists themselves, but that’s no reason to discount it. What’s wrong with alerting the normies to the excesses of trans activism too? 

Walsh never acknowledges the role his own rigid beliefs play

Perhaps the most difficult thing about conveying the absurdities of extreme trans activism to anyone who hasn’t yet encountered it, is that you either sound as though you’re making it up (usually in order to “stoke moral panic”) or the person to whom you’re talking concludes you must have missed some essential point (it would indeed be horrific if teenage girls were having their breasts removed due to social contagion and “progressive” institutions were cheering it on, therefore it can’t be happening. There must be something else afoot).

One of the great things about Walsh’s film is that he shows, first, that harmful things are indeed taking place, and second, that there is no hidden meaning behind them. The therapists, surgeons, academics and politicians to whom he speaks don’t suddenly pull back the curtain and reveal, yes, this is the reason why it isn’t total bollocks to claim that no one really knows what sex anyone is. That moment never comes (and believe me, I’d have loved it if it had. Being a Known TERF is a pain in the arse).

Instead they say things like “a chicken has an assigned gender” and that the word truth is “condescending and rude”. Ha! Aren’t liberals ridiculous? At one point Matt interviews someone who identifies as a wolf (or some other animal. I got bored and went to the kitchen for a biscuit at that point). What’s striking is that you sense his interviewees know on some level that they’re bullshitting. That’s why a number of them end the interview early, citing Walsh’s alleged bad faith as the reason why. 

There are some genuinely moving sections to the film, such as the interviews with female athletes cheated out of prizes by the inclusion of males in the girls’ categories. The contribution from Scott Newgent, a trans man deeply concerned about the impact of medical transition on young females, was incredibly engaging. I could have watched a whole film on Newgent alone, as someone clearly driven by both personal trauma and compassion for others. 

So why, overall, did the film leave a bad taste? Am I just an “ugly and bitter” feminist, peeved that a man has come along and claimed a number of feminist observations as his own? Am I a purist, unwilling to accept any support from anyone whose views don’t align precisely with mine? 

I don’t think so. The problem for me is that Walsh never acknowledges the role his own rigid beliefs play in creating and perpetuating the current situation. 

He finds countless people convinced that the only way to avoid imposing harmful social norms on individuals on the basis of their sexed bodies, is to pretend we can’t define said bodies or impute any social meaning to them at all. Yet he does nothing to suggest one shouldn’t impose said norms, or that his own pink/blue fantasies of girlhood and boyhood might be leading those who don’t conform to feel they are somehow “wrong”. 

“Give my son a BB gun and that’s just about all the emotional support he needs,” he muses over a children’s party scene, all boys in blue jeans, all girls pink princesses. “My daughter on the other hand … I’ve heard people say that there are no differences between male and female. Those people are idiots.”

Hmm. I have three children, all biologically male, all of whom have played with dolls houses and worn dresses. Two of them have Frozen-style long blonde hair and I’ve never bought any of them a toy gun (nor have any of them asked for one). 

Women are caught between two forms of misogyny

According to Walsh’s own gender ideology, I’m on the slippery slope towards the erasure of any stable definition of “male” and “female” at all. This is the mirror image of the absurdities of trans activism. Both Walsh and the people he interviews conflate sex difference denialism with the rejection of gender stereotypes. He thinks we should suffer the stereotypes; they think we should suffer the surgery. Feminists believe we shouldn’t suffer either. 

There’s a particularly grim scene where Walsh attends a Women’s March, and delights in harassing female protestors who don’t want to give a precise definition of the word “woman”. Much as this reticence frustrates me, too, I know where it comes from. The polarised politics of the day has told these women they must choose between denying their sex and accepting an anti-choice, conservative vision of what it means to be an adult human female. It’s a vision Matt Walsh shares.

These women are caught between two forms of misogyny but to Walsh, it’s all “own the libs” fun and games. This man is not on our side, nor will he win over the women he lazily misrepresents as not knowing what’s good for them. 

At the end of the film, Matt returns home from his gender odyssey to his waiting Penelope. She is, of course, in the kitchen, and happens to be struggling with a pickle jar. 

“What is a woman?” he asks her.

“An adult human female — who needs help opening this!” she responds. Got it, ladies? He’ll defend our right to exist as a sex class, as long as we can all agree it’s the weaker one. 

In the end, I’m just so fed up with the machismo. Last year I spoke to one of the founders of Woman’s Place UK, who told me sex-based rights will ultimately be defended best by those in it for “the victory, not the glory”. The people, mainly women, often lesbians and women of colour, who do the dull, behind the scenes work of compiling data and challenging unfair practices one by one. The people who aren’t seeking to reimpose other, equally oppressive beliefs about sex and gender. 

It may be that What is a Woman? helps, by showing some still on the fence that the problem is real. Others, it may push in the other direction. Either way, women themselves won’t be thanked for their own hard work and significant risks. 

After all, that’s just what being a woman is.

[thenighttimeparadise]

So a while ago there was this question that went viral, what is a woman, and I'm here to talk about it a bit and answer the question, so if like me, you support trans people but are a bit confused with what it means for gender to be a social construct, you're in the right place. This is also my take on why I think gender as it is now is inherently patriarchical and misogynistic, not gender in itself but as it is nowadays.

So first of all, sex is not the same as gender, you probably know that already but gender is a social construct, so...what does that mean?

Well basically, gender is the associations we gathered and made along the centuries with the different sexes. They vary in different cultures, religions, regions, and individuals.

gender right now isn't only misogynistic and patriarchal in itself, since assigning characteristics based on biological and physical qualities will never be fair, logical, nor efficient idea, but the qualities that are associated with each sex IS IN ITSELF what people dislike about gender.

what I mean is, the things that are associated with femininity for example, aren't inherently good or bad, they're just things (liking pink, being a stay at home partner, being submissive, being kind, wearing make up, showing emotions, ect) but even only associating those things with someone based on physical characteristics or anything else that doesn't have anything to do with the characteristic itself (people say you like pink if you're a girl but pink has nothing to do with biology, it's the same with almost everyone else that is associated with femininity and masculinity) is problematic, because it's like saying that people that have big noses, for example, are more prone to like the colour purple, or just do certain things that other people that aren't in that category don't usually do, but that has nothing to do with the category itself. I could also bring race into this but this is a (very important) talk for anyone time.

Now, I can absolutely assure you that if you'll check the correlations between people's nose sizes (or other physical characteristics) and people's favorite color (or other things that doesn't have anything to do with big noses), you'll probably fine one group that is more prone to like one colour or thing then the other. But does that mean they like that colour BECAUSE they have a big nose? Or is it just a coincidence?

if you'll tell me that people with big noses usually spend more money on plastic surgery then others, that would make sense and could ACTUALLY have something to do with the fact that they have a big nose, but it wouldn't be that they're more prone to spend money on that biologically, it's that the beauty standard that society has for us has decided that noses that are too big are unattractive (I wholeheartedly disagree that was just an example don't come at me)

Another example is that blonde people are more likely to prefer comedy to horror. Again I have no idea if that's true, it's just an example, but while some people might just decide that people that are blonde are cowards or like to laugh, it could just be a coincidence or two facts that don't actually correlate. There could be social reasons for that for sure, and I can make up different explanations for that all day, but my point is that while males and females do definitely have physical differences that affect the personality, sex (not gender, but sex, just the biological part) is more like a spectrum too, you can ask any doctor and they'll tell you, some females has more testosterone and some males have more estrogen, it's not this or that, black or white. And even those differences that the different sexes have, aren't as big nor significant as people make them out to be, and they greatly very between individuals.

Many people think that what's wrong with our society is that we force women to be traditionally feminine and men to be traditionally masculine, but the real problem is that we even associate those kinds of characteristics with biological qualities. Feminine and musculine could just be things by themselves, but that are not associated with the different sexes. If gender wasn't something that is associated with sex then that'd be good, but the problem now is that if someone thinks they relate to something that's more traditionally feminine for example, while they're a male, then think they're a female, because being a female is associated with those certain characteristics they relate to. Of course it's possible and absolutely valid to just feel like you don't belong in your body, I do that too, but the thing is, people need to ask themselves WHY, because the only reason you can feel like you don't belong in your own body is it a psychological one, which means you or someone associates certain physical characteristics and body types with certain qualities, and so you or they feel like because you have a certain quality, you need to have a certain body.

I'm in NO WAY saying trans people aren't valid, I'm trans myself, I'm non binary, but what I'm saying is that you or someone being trans is not the reason it's the result, and it's the result of something else, there is a reason why you feel that way, things don't just happen, and this is what I think is the reason some people feel like they do not belong in their body. Someone being a male only means one thing, that they're a male. That's it. The same with female.

Because of the way they were socialized, women learned to make themselves smaller, and men are usually thought they need to be bigger then they actually are, and that's why usually when guys change for the better, they learn they don't have to be big and take up space or always we tough and strong and woman learn that they don't have to me small and vulnerable.

Please please please leave your opinion or write it to me in private or leave a request, the subject of gender is very interesting to me and I have a lot of things to say about it, so if you have any questions or you disagree with what I've said or you just wanna talk, you know what to do

* disclaim the art is not mine. Also English is not my first language, so let me know if I made any mistakes, thank you for reading!