What Happens If Trans Women Aren’t Women?
From time to time, I like to grapple with life’s big questions.
What happens after we die? Why do Adam and Eve have belly buttons? And, most perplexing of all, what is a woman? This last, seemingly innocent question has become a political landmine in recent years.
Ketanji Brown-Jackson claimed she didn’t know the answer at her Supreme Court nomination hearing last week (despite using the mysterious terminology numerous times during the proceedings).
A few weeks earlier, on International Women’s Day no less, Anneliese Dodds, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities in the UK, got so confused that she lost track of what the words “adult” and “female” mean.
And Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, refused to even try, describing the question as a “rabbit hole."
The question of what a woman is has become so contentious, that some people on Twitter have grown suspicious:
“Ever notice how these transphobes only ask people to define “woman?"
And it’s true! For some reason, the debate around trans rights is almost entirely focused on these mysterious “women.”
