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Notes -
Election deflection, C-section abjection, complexion dejection, the Meccan deception
Psyops and "gotcha" questions as tools for exposing dishonesty, cowardice and ideological rifts
I
Jay Clayton is the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and the nominee to serve as Director of National Intelligence. Last week, he appeared before the Senate Select Committee to judge his suitability for the role, during which Senator Jon Ossoff repeatedly asked him who won the 2020 presidential election. Clayton declined to answer.
With this simple question, Ossoff has just provided a powerful counter to one that so many progressives have tripped over in the last decade, "what is a woman?" The first example of its deployment that occurred to me was this clip, in which Jo Swinson (then-party leader of the Liberal Democrats) took questions on a call-in radio show. Clearly taken aback, she stumbled through a vague, digressive answer about how "we know what we are" and that all women are important regardless of ethnicity, sexuality or social class. It was like something out of The Thick of It.
Other prominent examples of the question's use include the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (to which she memorably replied "I'm not a biologist") and Sen. Josh Hawley grilling a physician on whether or not men can get pregnant.
But while conservatives and gender-criticals understand how effective "what is a woman?" is in making their ideological opponents look absurd, I think many fail to grasp its precise mechanism of action. You'll often hear such people crowing "How can you claim to know how to run a country, when you don't even know what a woman is?" But of course Swinson knows what a woman is. While she might pretend to endorse a trans-inclusive definition, her revealed preferences surely tell a very different story. I fancy that if she was using a public bathroom and a specimen like "Karen" White strolled in, she'd be out of there like a shot.
Within the progressive coalition, there are a small number of people who subscribe to the woo-y circularity of "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman", a "definition"1 that sounds preposterous to anyone with an ounce of common sense. There is a much larger group of people who don't endorse this definition, but are afraid to say so publicly for fear of alienating the crazy people who do. This makes "what is a woman?" a powerful "gotcha" question, as there's no answer a progressive politician2 can give which doesn't serve the inquirer:
The fact that Swinson took the third option strongly suggests that she doesn't endorse gender ideology, but feared alienating the people in her camp who do. She may be a dishonest coward, but she isn't a lunatic: she does, in fact, know what a woman is.
Likewise with Jay Clayton in the clip above. From watching the clip, I imagine many progressives (and perhaps also many conservatives) will conclude that Clayton thinks Trump won in 2020, but refuses to say so outright, knowing that it's an opinion most people rightfully consider absurd. But I would put money on Clayton knowing full well that Biden won, but being too afraid to say so publicly for fear of angering the lunatics in his camp. (And by "the lunatics", I of course mean "the current occupant of the Oval Office and his army of true believers"). Ossoff appears to agree, asking Clayton if it's "humiliating" that Clayton is expected to "indulge the President's delusions". Clayton isn't crazy or stupid: he's just a coward who lacks integrity.
To sum up: "what is a woman?" and "who won the 2020 election?" can expose someone as a lunatic with crazy beliefs. But even if they don't, they can still expose them as a coward or a traitor to their cause, and in some cases that can be just as useful.
II
When I started writing this, it occurred to me that the structure of these "gotcha" questions (wherein the respondent stands to lose face no matter how they answer the question) bears a familial resemblance to a series of anti-woke psyops from a few years back. Beginning in 2017, a group of anonymous pranksters mounted posters around American college campuses bearing the legend "it's okay to be white". If you're a person who agrees that it's okay to be white (not "being white is better than being non-white"; merely that being white is "okay"), you'll respond to these posters with "well, duh". The ingenuity of the psyop was that it forced the people who disagree with the sentiment to lay their cards on the table. The only people who could find something objectionable in the statement "it's okay to be white" are those who actually think white people ought to feel ashamed of themselves for the colour of the skin - something the most extreme woke people obviously believe, even if many of them pretend otherwise. By responding to this utterly milquetoast statement with shock and outrage, these people out themselves, exposing the gulf between their stated and revealed preferences.
Watching these people dutifully step onto the rake laid in front of them was hilarious, but became a bit disturbing when you mentally substitute the specific sentiment they condemned so loudly. "It's sickening and disgusting to know that people think [it's okay to be white]." Superintendent Andy Bennett stated "It is inexplicable and unacceptable [to believe that it's okay to be white]". "[Believing that it's okay to be white is] completely wrong."
A later example followed a similar format. In Winchester, Massachusetts, pranksters hung up posters which simply read "Islam is RIGHT about women". A local woman tore several posters down and reported them to the police, but when pressed, she found it remarkably difficult to articulate what, exactly, she found offensive about them. (It certainly wasn't anything as simple as her disagreeing with the sentiment on its face.)
Here, the purpose of the posters was to expose cognitive dissonance. Here, the purpose of the posters was to expose cognitive dissonance. A person who disagrees with Islamic attitudes to women and isn’t afraid to say so would be disgusted by the poster. A person who endorses Islamic attitudes to women would read the poster and think "well, duh", as would a person who had swallowed the silly lie-to-children that Islam is a progressive, feminist religion (a sanitised, sanewashed version of the faith that bears essentially no relationship to the genuine article). The only person who would be outraged by the sentiment "Islam is right about women" (without being able to articulate the source of their outrage) is someone who privately believes that Islamic attitudes towards women are abominable, but who feels uncomfortable saying so out loud for fear of appearing racist. The slogan explodes this obvious contradiction, an experience many Winchester residents found (to quote them directly) "confusing" and "upsetting". It's rather telling that none of the people interviewed said anything like "the posters are correct, because Islam is a progressive feminist faith" or "the posters are wrong, because Islam is a misogynistic religion".
One last example. TERF activist Posie Parker paid for billboards bearing the slogan "woman: adult human female". The gender ideologues just couldn't help themselves, promptly calling for the billboards to be taken down and declaring the definition transphobic. Over at Wikipedia, the phrase is bizarrely included in the category "pejorative terms for women", alongside old stalwarts like "bitch", "slut" and "whore".
III
From the analysis above, "gotcha" questions and psyops serve three essential functions:
Hmm - a political coalition whose constituent factions have massive, irreconcilable points of disagreement which go studiously unremarked upon. A political movement whose members' stated opinions routinely appear vastly out of step with their revealed preferences. A political movement beset by cognitive dissonance at every conceivable resolution.
No doubt there are numerous movements meeting the descriptions above, but for me the first that comes to mind is the pro-Palestine/anti-Zionist movement.
As noted by Yassine Meskhout, if you attend a pro-Palestine march you're almost equally likely to encounter a well-meaning young person who's simply upset by gory war footage in her Instagram feed, and a nutcase who thinks that Hamas are nobly trying to finish the job dear old Adolf started. This fundamental difference of worldview is an absolute godsend for maintaining the movement's superficially positive optics, and is virtually never remarked upon by anyone within the movement:
Earlier this week, Shany Mor posted an excellent article in which he observed that, while most pro-Palestinian types claim to be disinterested humanitarians who object to Israel's war in Gaza solely on account of the needless suffering it imposes upon Gaza's civilian population - in many cases their revealed preferences indicate that they are closeted Hamas supporters who wish to see Hamas accomplish its stated aims, even if that entails more death and suffering among Gaza's civilian populace than would happen otherwise. And while I would like to think the accusation of cognitive dissonance is so obvious that it requires no elucidation, for completeness's sake I will note the peculiar irony that many pro-Palestinians accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing while chanting a slogan whose original untranslated wording3 is a transparent call for ethnic cleansing. They accuse Israel of genocide with every waking breath, while relentlessly signal-boosting propaganda published by an organisation whose founding charter is openly, unabashedly genocidal. It's a movement that purports to be anti-racist, but which is perfectly happy to recycle all of the old blood libels and canards against Jews (Jews secretly control the world, Jews murder Gentile children for their own amusement, Jews are sexually deviant etc.) provided they clarify that they are only addressing them towards "Zionists" * wink wink *.
I think the pro-Palestine movement is long overdue for its very own "what is a woman?" or "it's okay to be white", a psyop or "gotcha" question calculated to expose the irreconcilable tensions in the multiple factions gunning for a "free Palestine", and the gulf between what its members purport to believe and what they actually believe.
I'm not entirely sure what this would look like in practice. At last year's Berlin Film Festival, director Jun Li read out a speech on behalf of the actor Erfan Shekarriz, who boycotted the festival in protest of its purported lack of support to Palestinians. Li was heckled by audience members, one of whom yelled "Free Palestine from Hamas." That's a good start. I've noticed that when I discuss the conflict with my peers (most of whom are very hostile to Israel), many of them get quite taken aback when I point out that the most recent war in Gaza began when Hamas invaded Israel - the relentless focus on the perceived brutality of Israel's military response has caused many to overlook the basic fact that it isn't a war Israel started. Many also give vague evasive non-answers when asked "if you object to how Israel is prosecuting its war in Gaza, then how do you think they should have responded to October 7th?" Some pro-Palestine types explicitly object to admitting Gazan refugees into Europe (or even neighbouring countries) on the grounds that doing so would constitute "ethnic cleansing"; applying this logic to other world conflicts could be fertile ground for exposing the cognitive dissonance (e.g. "why should we play into Putin's hands by allowing him to ethnically cleanse the Ukraine?").
These are only off the top of my head, I'm just spitballing here. I'm sure someone more creative than I could think of something to rival "Islam is RIGHT about women" in wicked ingenuity.
1 I don't even think it rises to the level of a "definition", frankly. Circular definitions are no such thing.
2 The question is most effective when posed to politicians in democratic societies, as it's the nature of the job that such people have to appeal to a broad swathe of voters with heterogenous beliefs and opinions. It is not half as effective when posed to, say, activists working in the NGO space, wherein the incentives (per the iron law of institutions) favour ostentatious displays of ideological purity, even if you make yourself look ridiculous and insane to ordinary people in the process. Such people don't care what the "median voter" thinks, and will happily respond "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman" with a shit-eating grin.
3 من المية للمية / فلسطين عربية, "From the water to the water / Palestine is Arab". I suspect it's not an accident that the English translation sounds so much more palatable to Western ideas of liberty and democracy.
α
My answer¹ to "What is a woman?" is "It depends on the context."
In most contexts, a woman is a person whose gender identity is that found more commonly in people who have, or feel viscerally that they ought to have, concave genitalia. This is both trans-inclusive and non-circular, although one could, I suppose, model it as an expanding spiral.... (Note that 'born with concave genitalia', 'born with organs to produce large gametes', and 'has XX karyotype' are strongly correlated; thus, substituting any of them would still point to the same identity.)
In medical contexts, a trans person might be a man for some purposes and a woman for other purposes; the same can apply to some cis patients.
¹Unless the question is being asked by someone rudely shoving a camera in my face while I'm busy, in which case my answer will be "A large happy pile of public information". (If you know, you know.)
β
Part of the reason 'adult human female' rubs me the wrong way is that using 'female' as a noun in reference to humans is associated with misogyny. 'Adult female human' would avoid this, but 'female' as an adjective picks up much of the same flexibility in meaning as 'woman'. For the biological categories to which I believe you are attempting to gesture:
Less biologically:
If and when we figure out how to grow new gonads in vitro, 'gonadally' and 'gametically' can be modified in the same manner as 'anatomically'.
γ
I have noticed a certain form of argument over the years, of the approximate form "My opponent knows that I am right and he is wrong, and is continuing to contradict me out of less-than-honest motives." It is annoying when it is Evangelical preachers assuming that non-Christians 'know' that Jesus Is Lord and reject Him in order to continue sinning, it is annoying when it is the Blue Tribe telling the Red Tribe "You know what an assault weapon is, and you know you don’t need one.", and it is annoying when it is the gender-critical assuming that everyone 'knows' that the True Definition Of Woman does not include trans-women.
Atheists actually believe that God doesn't exist, 2nd-Amendment advocates actually believe that they have legitimate reason to own firearms that the Blue Tribe thinks look scary, and progressives actually believe that trans-women are women.
δ
With regard to whether Islam is right about women, there are two clarifiying questions that need to be asked:
What variety of Islam? If Fred Rogers and Fred Phelps can both be Christians, even both be Protestant Christians, and have such a wide gulf between them, I don't see why a similar gulf cannot exist between Zohran Mamdani and Abdul-Rahman Ballout.
What are we comparing it to? Attitudes that seem retrograde compared to XXI. century progressivism look a lot more enlightened when compared to ante-Islamic Arabian paganism.
Is it associated with misogyny, or is it associated with accusations of misogyny?
Who has produced and maintained this association? As far as I can tell, it's the same people who would find it convenient if those using the phrase "adult human female" were tainted by association with misogyny and whose claims could be safely ignored on that basis.
"Female" is allegedly misogynistic in certain contexts, specifically those where you would say "woman" or even "girl", or if the genders were swapped wouldn't say "male", especially when there's already ambiguously implied misogyny.
Because we refer to animals generically as males and females (although there are specific words for some animals like "cow" and "bull", other animals like mice or fish), while we have specific words for humans, "man" and "woman". Also, incels at least used to frequently use the term while most people do infrequently.
For example, "my cousin is a cool female, you should meet her", "I met a nice female at work the other day", "I like to hang out at that cafe because of all the females". Personally, I think those do sound creepy and imply depersonalization, like the "female" is an exotic species whose main characteristic is sex appeal. I wouldn't call out someone, maybe they're autistic, but would (subconsciously) pay more attention to other signs they think like that.
But when talking about biology, or used as an adjective where gender is relevant, it's OK at least to anyone reasonable. "The disease only affects females", "not 'he', the bus driver is female". Women are no less human than men, which means they are beings capable of reason and complex emotion etc.; but humans are ultimately still sexually dimorphic animals.
It doesn't help that when I hear "female" in a non-technical context I immediately picture in my head a Ferengi talking about "fe-male hu-mons".
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