Controversial Topics

What Is A Woman?

This is a really controversial one, huh? I know some people might be like "oh a woman is someone who has the woman parts and can give birth and has periods," but that argument is flawed for a number of reasons.

For one, there are menopausal women who can't give birth or have periods, but I think we can all agree they're still women, right? There's also women with PCOS who experience infrequent to no periods, and PCOS can also cause infertility—but we can agree that women with PCOS are still women, right? What about generally infertile women who can't have a baby no matter how hard they try? They're still women, right?

And now what about intersex women, because they do exist. They may or may not have periods, their internal organs can be all manners of different—if an intersex woman cannot have periods and does not have a uterus to give birth with, is she still a woman?

If you're a normal person, you would say, "yeah of course because being intersex doesn't mean you're just not a woman or a man." But if you're someone else, you won't say that. Why? Yeah, I don't know, I don't have that mindset.

If you think a woman is someone who presents femininely, then are masculine women not women? They have all the women parts, they just present differently.

So then what IS a woman? Some might say "oh an adult human female," but remember, intersex women also exist and if we count intersex as a sex seperate from female, that doesn't work. Can't be anyone who can give birth because not all women can give birth, and not all women can have periods. To be a woman is much more nuanced and complicated than a mere biological function.

According to Stanford Medicine, a woman is "A term used to describe someone who self-identifies as a woman or as feminine based on what is important to them as an individual—including gender roles, behavior, expression, identity, and/or physiology." But some people don't agree.

Matt Walsh, a right-wing political commentator, released his problematic documentary, "What Is A Woman?" in June of 2022. In this film Walsh asked various people, from politicians to medical professionals, "what is a woman?" He intended to poke holes into the trans movement with mindless prejudices under the guise of 'common sense.' It was portrayed that no one was able to give a universal definition of "woman." The common response was that a woman is someone who "identifies as a woman." And while this makes sense to me, Walsh makes a point to show that this violates the rule that you can not define a word by using that same word in the definition and ultimately puts into question the legitimacy that trans women are women.

The English language sometimes does not appropriately grasp the nuances of gender. Jacob Tobia explains the limitations of language when speaking to gender in their memoir Sissy: A Coming-Of-Gender Story with an analogy to the game, Mad Libs. Mad Libs is a game with a pre-written skeleton story, where the player fills in the blanks from a limited list of options. While the "list of options" resonates with some people's experience, it can not encompass everyone's. What it means to be a man or a woman is different for everyone and varies between contexts and cultures.

As we rounded the end of '22 we witnessed dictionary sources like The Cambridge Dictionary update its definition of "woman" to include trans women. While the entry for "woman" still includes the longstanding definition—"an adult female human being"—an additional definition of the word was added—"An adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth." The Cambridge Dictionary was one of many and soon Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster both took to changing or adding to their definition of "woman" as well as "man."

The answer to "what is a woman?" is not dictated by biology or language but rather is defined by the people who identify with it. The point isn't about going head-to-head with people like Walsh, trying to fit your ever changing, ever growing relationship with gender into the archaic and limited definition of "woman" but instead showing them that there are as many ways to be a woman as there are women.

The answer to that question can not be found through a scientific route. It's not based on what we do but rather who we are. To be a woman is not based on your ability to bear children—some cis women can not produce eggs or bear offspring—but on something much deeper. Our gender experiences are more accurately found in the small ways we interact with the world and how the world interacts with us. It is nuanced in how we think and how we feel. Therefore, our understanding of gender needs to be expansive and we need to relinquish ourselves of the need to fit into ancient definitions. It would be a shame to simplify something so beautifully complex.

The definition of "woman" is found within every person who identifies as a woman, and the meaning that they place upon that word is what they decide it to be. Suddenly, the word "woman," something that was once aspirational but restrictive, now feels limitless because they no longer need to fit into someone else's understanding of gender simply because they lack the language to even begin to comprehend them. Every single woman is a walking, changing, growing definition of what it means to be a "woman" and no two will ever be the same.

Why do you need to have one definition of what a woman is when words by themselves have multiple definitions? Maybe don't limit yourself with a singular definition and instead of focusing on this, something which at the end of the day shouldn't mean anything unless you identify with it, focus on things that have something to do with you and your life.