Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about this. What is a woman question?
Because it continues to be such a major, major issue for the American right wing.
And over the weekend at CPAC, which we will cover later on in the show, the things that got the
most applause were the most overtly homophobic and transphobic things. They were ridiculing
pronouns. They were ridiculing so-called men in women's sports and on and on and on.
And I want to talk about it because it's like the big thing that Republicans now point to as their
sort of gotcha. What is a woman? You won't even define it. And I got a great email from a doctor
of Sociolinguistics whose name is Daniel. I don't want to say more. I want to protect his identity.
I won't even say what country he teaches in. But Daniel sent me a ton of the information
and the research that I'm incorporating into this story. So the situation is as
follows The right loves to say You liberals can't or won't answer the simplest question
What is a woman? So you can't be trusted with anything. You're not honest. You're pathetic.
It's such a simple question. What is a woman? Just answer it. And if you won't or if you can't, then
it shows how bad faith and dishonest and radical you all on the left are. So let's start with
is it actually a simple question? Is the question what is a woman? Simple to answer. The reality
is that it's not. And now separately, there are people saying, is the question even being asked
in good faith by the right? And of course, it's not. They're asking it to make a political point.
They're asking it to justify their preexisting political beliefs. But let's put that aside.
Is it a simple question? Defining common nouns is not actually a simple thing.
Humans are terrible at defining common nouns. I'll give you an example. Define apple without looking
it up. All right. Well, I mean, without looking it up, I guess I'd say, you know, it's a round
fruit whose flesh we eat. And sometimes there's red, yellow or green or orangish sort of skin,
and often it's crunchy, but sometimes it's more mealy. And many of them are sweet,
but some of them are tart. Does that really help us identify an apple? Not really. There's
all sorts of exceptions. There's many other fruits which fit that definition.
So then I can say, well, an apple is now less domestic. That's the Latin name. So when I say
Apple, what I mean is Mollis domestic? That's just circular. That's not a usable definition.
I'm not really telling you anything you can use to determine whether something you see is or isn't an
apple. Now, in addition, no definition that I give you actually encompasses all the contexts where
the word apple is used. The Big Apple, meaning New York City taking a bite out of the apple
as a sales and marketing term, getting some market share. So the reality is that it's not unique that
with the term woman, we define it differently in different contexts. The purpose of the definition
is important. What are we trying to do? And I'm going to get to that in a second. And in fact, as
humans and people who speak English, we can often agree on what is an apple without a definition,
with the looking at the context. So the definition itself is actually not that important. So then as
Daniel wrote to me, the same applies when we're trying to define a woman. What are we trying to do
by defining woman or thinking about what a woman is? And it depends on the purpose and the context.
Consider this if the purpose of defining woman is that you are a man looking to reproduce
and you're looking for a woman with whom you can reproduce. Well, in that particular case,
with that purpose. A trans woman with no uterus is not a good candidate for your purposes of defining
a woman. Right. In that context, you're talking about an individual with the female reproductive
organs so that you can make a baby. On the other hand, if you're a man attracted to feminine
individuals by Western standards, then for you it might be quite plausible that any woman,
meaning a trans woman or not, who has the female form that you're attracted to, is completely and
perfectly suited to the definition of woman. That's a different purpose. It's a different.
Context. And this is where we end up with the bad faith. Republican questions about what is a woman.
They want common nouns defined so that they can either discriminate legally or so that it serves
whatever political purpose they want. Now, there's a big difference between an apple and a woman with
apples. Apples can't make claims about whether they are apples. There's no socio cultural element
to apples when it comes to a noun like woman. We actually do have to pay attention to who claims
to be a woman who is referred to as a woman who is seen as a woman by society in order to build up a
working understanding of what it is to be a woman in society and culture. This is all completely
normal. Republicans don't care about it. They don't care about linguistics. They care only
about scoring political points and putting other people down. So when they say it's so simple, you
idiot leftists, just what is a woman? Just give us the definition. Well, what is the purpose of the
definition? What is the context in which you were seeking it? What are you trying to then determine
with the definition? This is normal stuff. In Sociolinguistics and in many other fields.
They want to pretend like it's not. And it's as simple as just what is an apple, which, by the
way, is not actually so simple. Let me know your thoughts. You can find me on Twitter at Pacman