What is a woman?
Had you told someone in 2005 that this would be among the more vexed questions in politics two decades later, I suspect they would have laughed. Still, it is, and we have to deal with it — just as people in 2005 had to deal with Tony Blair, George W. Bush and landfill indie.
Readers will no doubt be surprised to hear that I, a Critic editor and contributor, believe a woman is defined in accordance with her biological sex. A woman, in other words, is an adult human female. Yes, there are biological anomalies, and I’m not going to pretend that I would be comfortable defining the sex of someone like Caster Semenya, but the fact that some zebras are born without stripes does not make us feel uncomfortable with saying that zebras have stripes — still less with saying that a horse cannot become a zebra.
Still, I think I understand why people disagree with me. For them, to be a man or a woman is to possess a particular identity. Of course, most of us have a sense of ourselves as men and women. There are biological traits which are found in men and women to different degrees, and cultural tendencies which interact with men and women to different degrees, and all of them contribute to our sense of self. Those being average rather than universal differences, there are of course men who feel more like women and women who feel more like men. What I don’t understand is how this defines manhood and womanhood in an objective sense without some sort of esoteric spiritual dimension.
Other people believe, as far as I can tell, that defining manhood and womanhood according to how people want to be defined is a matter of kindness. As terminally unoriginal an observation as it is, I’m not sure how less is any less irrational than a white man choosing to become an Asian man. Still, there are clearly a lot of people who suffer from gender dsyphoria, while people who are keen to change their race amount to isolated eccentrics like the “transracial” influencer cum sincere and not at all opportunistic conservative commentator Oli London, so I see what activates people’s sense of concern.
But there is one form of reasoning, on the question of womanhood, that I can’t respect at all. It is Keir Starmer’s. A woman is an adult human female, he says. Agreed. But why does Starmer think this? After all, he used to claim otherwise. Well, it is because the Supreme Court “has made that clear”.
For Starmer … nothing is true if a judge has not ruled that it is true
Actually, the Supreme Court has defined women in the context of “the provisions of the [Equality Act] 2010” (no great triumph for those of us who think that the Equality Act 2010 should be abolished). The judgment of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers explicitly states that it is “not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex”. For Starmer, though, nothing is true if a judge has not ruled that it is true. His commitment to procedure is such that I am convinced that he needs a court to rule on where his family should go on holiday.
For a normal person, though, the idea that a judge can determine the definition of “woman” is surely ludicrous. A biologist might help, perhaps. A philosopher might help. Frankly, the average person doesn’t need helping. But a judge? Get out of here. Is the prime minister unwilling to name his favourite novel or poem because he really does not have them or because the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the merits of War and Peace versus Crime and Punishment, or “To Autumn” versus “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”?
I feel bad for trans people. Once, Starmer was implying that a woman could have a penis and that a man could have a cervix. Now, he is saying the opposite. And why? Not because of any individual reflection. Not because of reasoning that will be explained to us. No, because Lady Justice Mum and Lord Justice Dad told him what to believe.
Does Starmer have any sincere and consistent opinions? (I also felt sorry for Corbynites. Starmer once described Jeremy Corbyn as a friend and then changed his mind and all but said that he wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.) Apart from when it comes to supporting Arsenal, the PM appears to be a receptacle into which unelected officials can pour their opinions. Granted, all prime ministers — and even MPs — should sometimes set aside their views for the sake of the people they represent. But I’m not sure Starmer has views to set aside. He can’t even decide what a woman is without a judge holding his hand.
Keir Starmer, famously, does not believe in God. Perhaps for some people the legal process has become a source of spiritual comfort in a secular age. God is dead, and with Him we have lost a sense of objective meaning and morality, but the courts are here to judge the universe back into a coherent shape. Next, the Supreme Court is going to rule on how something can come from nothing — a phenomenon we would all like to see when it comes to the prime minister’s brain.
