How to answer the question…

[Indigo Blue]

What is a woman?

I, a straight white middle-aged woman who supports gender minorities, would like to ask the question I’ve been thinking of today. 
 

*If this is too intense/controversial, I understand.• I would prefer to stay on topic, which is how do you answer this question and prefer not to get into the weeds or argue about things not relevant. 
 

The question is: How would the intelligent people of TWTM answer the question “what is a woman”?
 

If it were asked of you, how would you respond to MW in a concise, sound, effective way? 
 

I’m just very curious on this. I’m also wondering why do they not seem to have debates with actual medical doctors that can actually provide facts and educate people instead of asking people on the street?

I have no good one-line answer for that question because I think it’s dumb to ask something like that and then go, “See, you have no plausible answer!” It’s just a trick, of course. 

But…. how would you intelligently respond if asked, on camera, something like that?

What is a good answer/response to this question? 

Can we stick to that and not insult and rant? I just really want to know how one could/should/would answer this. Maybe the best answer is just a blank stare. IDK. 
 

Has this been discussed here recently? If so, I can delete if no one wants to talk about that again. 

[Katy]

I would assume anyone asking such a question had a political agenda I didn’t agree with so I would decline to answer. 

[Indigo Blue]

It annoys me that a person can use this question to make people appear to have no good answer in an attempt to make  their credibility shaky. To make a point. Does a good response to this dumb question exist? If it does, surely it can be found here. I am not savvy enough to have such an answer, even though I do have opinions. 

[Catwoman]

I see one every time I look in the mirror and that's definition enough for me. 😉 

(But I agree with @Katy -- unless it was someone I absolutely trusted to be genuine, I would assume that the person had a political agenda and I wouldn't bother to answer.)

[TheReader]

I find it a hard thing to articulate.  I do know that "shaves her legs/has long hair/has feminine features" is not (to me) a sufficient answer. 

But, what IS the answer?  Other than "not a man"? If we boil it down to biology, it leaves out so very much, and so very many. If we use traditional gender roles, we leave out so much, and so many. 

I really don't think there's a concise answer.  

[Indigo Blue]

If someone chose to take MW head on, can you think of a response that would do so? I think that’s what I’m getting at. 

[TheReader]

5 minutes ago, Indigo Blue said:

If someone chose to take MW head on, can you think of a response that would do so? I think that’s what I’m getting at. 

I'm forgetting who exactly MW is, and I'm supposing an answer like "A woman is one who uses the pronouns she/her to describe herself" is not sufficient, but that's about the best I can come up with. 

For *me* personally so much of "womanhood" is tied up with "motherhood" and "wifehood" but that is not by any stretch a universal answer, that's just part of what it means *to me* to be a woman. (And note *part of* what it means to me, not all of what it means). But it makes it hard *for me* to separate out the answers. 

 

[Indigo Blue]

14 minutes ago, TheReader said:

I'm forgetting who exactly MW is

Matt Walsh

[Melissa Louise]

Adult human female.

[WildflowerMom]

2 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

Adult human female.

This seems like the obvious answer but maybe I'm missing something.  I know zero about MW except that he's considered a conservative.  I've never heard him speak, so I don't know how he fits it with anything. 

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, WildflowerMom said:

This seems like the obvious answer but maybe I'm missing something.  I know zero about MW except that he's considered a conservative.  I've never heard him speak, so I don't know how he fits it with anything. 

MW is an very regressive person. 

Nonetheless, the answer is as above.

It's an annoying question because it's one to which everyone actually knows the answer. 

[Pam in CT]

"what is a homeschooler?"

"what is a Christian?"

"what is a white person?"

"what is a parent?"

"what is a sister?"

 

... and I can think of 20 other questions, without trying, with seemingly perfectly obvious answers that simultaneously have nuance and complexity and circumstance-specificity and blah, blah, blah.

 

I don't trust folks who insist on "simple" answers.

[Melissa Louise]

The problem is, it's just not that intrinsically complex. 

It's an unnecessary conversation.

People can have identity and  presentations that don't align with their sex without pretending this is enormously complicated.

AHF is the least regressive definition. It doesn't state anything about womanhood other than age and sex. Within that definition, women are free to be as various and diverse as they are. 

Other definitions are either circular ( a woman is someone who identifies as a woman), or sexist (a woman is someone who performs women-gendered activities). 

Nobody has to give MW the time of day. I wouldn't. Doesn't mean I need to pretzel myself out of a truth. 

 

 

[EKS]

59 minutes ago, Indigo Blue said:

But…. how would you intelligently respond if asked, on camera, something like that?

Adult human female.  Easy.

[Melissa Louise]

1 minute ago, EKS said:

Adult human female.  Easy.

It's just not hard to answer. 

*I do have a slightly more expensive personal definition, which includes CAIS individuals (no masculinizing puberty, socialized from birth as female, female phenotype) as social women, so if asked to expand on that, I would. 

[EKS]

2 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

It's just not hard to answer. 

*I do have a slightly more expensive personal definition, which includes CAIS individuals (no masculinizing puberty, socialized from birth as female, female phenotype) as social women, so if asked to expand on that, I would. 

Sure, there are situations that require case-by-case consideration, but it isn't necessary to tie oneself in knots answering the question just because these folks exist.

Edited August 22, 2023 by EKS

[KSera]

29 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

Nobody has to give MW the time of day. I wouldn't.

This.

[WildflowerMom]

Ok, I just googled.    I had no clue about MW and now I see he had a movie or something asking this question.   I didn't understand what he had to do with anything and now I do.  He sounds like a peach.  /s    😖

[MercyA]

Matt Walsh: "All of us today would be in a worse spot if slavery never existed."

https://www.mediamatters.org/matt-walsh/daily-wires-matt-walsh-all-us-today-would-be-worse-spot-if-slavery-never-existed-all

Also Matt Walsh: "Gun control is a meaningless concept."

https://themattwalshblog.com/gun-control-a-nonsensical-concept/

Sounds like he really cares about people, right? 

[Danae]

There is no good answer to anything that a “gotcha” filmmaker asks on camera.  There just isn’t, because he is going to select and selectively edit to make whatever point he’s already decided he wants to make.  It’s a can’t win don’t try situation.

[BusyMom5]

Ignore MW, but seriously it's an adult human female with XX DNA- with very few biological exceptions.  We have other words to describe the other people who wish to use this term.  They should not get to appropriate a term with a widely understood meaning.  

[bolt.]

"Woman" is a word in the English language, generally used to refer to an adult person of the female sex, as well as to refer to persons of any sex who identify with femininity as it is expressed in our cultural context. When specificity is required female women are called cis-women and non-female women are called trans-women. However, the matter of being a cis- or trans- woman is generally considered information that is private to the individual.

Edited August 22, 2023 by bolt.

[Melissa Louise]

51 minutes ago, MercyA said:

Matt Walsh: "All of us today would be in a worse spot if slavery never existed."

https://www.mediamatters.org/matt-walsh/daily-wires-matt-walsh-all-us-today-would-be-worse-spot-if-slavery-never-existed-all

Also Matt Walsh: "Gun control is a meaningless concept."

https://themattwalshblog.com/gun-control-a-nonsensical-concept/

Sounds like he really cares about people, right? 

The matter of MW being a man with seriously regressive views, including on abortion, isn't a question.

 

[Spryte]

I had no idea who MW might be, till reading further in this thread. That is not a person, nor an abbreviation, that has any place or meaning in my personal world. Thankfully.

I would never answer any (disingenuous) question from that person, or engage at all, in the extremely unlikely event that a question was asked.

 

 

[MercyA]

48 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

The matter of MW being a man with seriously regressive views, including on abortion, isn't a question.

I hadn't heard of MW before seeing him mentioned on this forum a year or two ago. I thought that might be the case for others as well.

[annandatje]

If I were asked “what is a woman,” I’d be tempted to respond with something along lines of “I would have thought you would have figured that out by now” and redirect conversation or just walk away.

[HomeAgain]

18 minutes ago, annandatje said:

If I were asked “what is a woman,” I’d be tempted to respond with something along lines of “I would have thought you would have figured that out by now” and redirect conversation or just walk away.

This.

It smacks of the argument that a featherless biped is a man, and would go deep into a rabbit hole to find its way out.  We don't entertain twaffles so they can hear themselves create worthless arguments and call it genius.

[Clarita]

5 hours ago, Indigo Blue said:

If it were asked of you, how would you respond to MW in a concise, sound, effective way? 

"No comment."

The first time I read the question though I read it as Monday Wednesday and I was so confused.