PURELY POLITICAL, By Jim Buckley
At first, if someone asked you the question, “What is a woman?,” your initial response would probably have been, “You’re kidding, right? Is this a real question?”
Apparently, Tennessee’s U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn thought it was a real question, when during the Senate hearings to consider the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, the senator asked Judge Brown Jackson whether she could “provide a definition for the word, ‘woman’?”
Instead of asking if Sen. Blackburn were kidding, or even giving some kind of legal-sounding explanation of what the law has determined is a woman, Judge Brown Jackson scoffed and said she couldn’t.
“Can I provide a definition? No. I can’t,” she said.
“You can’t?” Sen. Blackburn shot back, somewhat nonplussed.
“Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” Judge Brown Jackson said, smiling.
“Okay,” Sen. Blackburn says, “so you mean the word ‘woman’ is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?”
The judge then did slip into legalese, saying that her job as a judge was to mediate, to listen to both sides, and come up with a decision based upon the facts in that particular case.
“Well,” Sen. Blackburn responds, “the fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is, underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”
Much of that line of questioning and the ensuing national conversation that followed had been amplified by events such as “Lia” Thomas, a male swimmer who “transitioned” to a female and went from a sub-par competitive male swimmer into a champion female swimmer.
Health & Human Services Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine, born male, was credited as having become not only the “first four-star female admiral,” but also one of USA Today’s “Women of the Year.” It was an honor that elicited Washington Examiner editors to opine that “you not only do not have to be good at your job to become ‘Woman of the Year,’ but you also don’t even have to be a woman.”
Following up on the Senate hearing and the questioning of Judge Brown Jackson, former President Donald Trump, during an on-air interview with Piers Morgan, was asked what a woman is. His answer at first was, “I’m not going to respond to the question,” but Mr. Trump being Mr. Trump, did, in fact, answer.
“A woman is somebody that swims at a certain time and doesn’t get beaten by 38 seconds by somebody that wasn’t even a good swimmer as a male.”
So what exactly is a woman?
Dictionary definitions are not helpful, certainly not definitive. For example, Merriam-Webster, as of the most recent edition that I’ve come across (though it could have been changed since), defines the word woman as “an adult female person.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines a woman as “an adult female human being;” as does the Cambridge Dictionary.
So, well, heck, if that’s all there is, then anyone who swallows loads of female hormones, gets a boob job (or not), lasers his mustache and/or beard hair off, or dresses like a woman (though that standard is way too flexible), could readily be described as a “woman.”
Right?
Not really.
Let’s go deeper.
According to the National Institutes of Health website “The human genome is organized into 23 pairs of chromosomes (22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes), with each parent contributing one chromosome per pair. The X and Y chromosomes, also known as the sex chromosomes, determine the biological sex of an individual: females inherit an X chromosome from the father for a XX genotype, while males inherit a Y chromosome from the father for a XY genotype (mothers only pass on X chromosomes). The presence or absence of the Y chromosome is critical because it contains the genes necessary to override the biological default — female development — and cause the development of the male reproductive system.”
There is some encouraging news for men who want to be women, though they may have to wait longer than they’d like to before anything significant occurs in this process: apparently – according to NIH – the Y chromosome seems to be breaking down and, “Many speculate that the Y chromosome has become superfluous and could completely decay within the next 10 million years.”
Other differences between the sexes are that women have wider pelvises and their bone structure is different. Women’s bones are not as dense as men’s (on average), and there is more fat and less muscle on women’s frames than there are on men’s frames.
Most importantly, women have different genitalia than men. Women are born with a complete reproductive system, a cache of gametes (eggs), the ability to ovulate (once every four weeks or so until menopause), and only women (those with two X chromosomes) can bear offspring.
In other words, only women can get pregnant. Men cannot.
Many years after death, in addition to bone structure and pelvis size, the sex of a cadaver can be determined by a simple DNA test.
Here is probably the easiest and most accurate definition of the two sexes.
The Independent Women’s Voice recently teamed up with the conservative Concerned Women of America, the radical-feminist Women’s Liberation Front, and the radical-feminist Women’s Declaration International, and released what they’ve dubbed the Women’s Bill of Rights, which defines “sex” as biological sex, i.e., the sex one is born as.
According to the Bill of Rights, a female is “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova.” It defines “woman” and “girl” as “human females,” and “mother” as a “parent of the female sex.”
A male is “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
I believe that encapsulates what a woman is and should satisfy most people, except of course men who will continue to believe or at least expound their opinion that because of how they “feel” and what they’ve done to their bodies, they are indeed women.
And to anyone who’d suggest that kindergarteners and elementary school children – or even teenagers – should be allowed to decide what sex or gender they are, all I can say is that without any of the required internal reproductive organs, any man who thinks otherwise – and I know this may hurt some but truth is truth – is simply a female impersonator.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
James Buckley is a longtime Montecito resident. He welcomes questions or comments at jimb@substack.com. Readers are invited to visit jimb.substack.com, where Jim’s Journals are on file. He also invites people to subscribe to Jim’s Journal.
