This article is taken from the May 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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Scientists and intellectuals have long struggled to determine what a “woman” might be. This mysterious concept has evaded the sharpest of minds through human history. It is very much the holy grail of metaphysics, a will-o’-the-wisp dancing on the ever-receding horizon of knowledge.

So when Boris Johnson claims he knows what a “woman” is, and that they ought to have “single-sex spaces” and their own categories in sports, we should treat his comments with the derision they deserve. When Keir Starmer was asked if a woman could have a penis during an interview by Nick Ferrari on LBC, the Labour leader’s response was far more incisive and dignified: “Uh, Nick, I’m not, er, I, I don’t think we can conduct this debate with, you know, I get this, uh.” This just goes to show that only a Labour government will be able to bring clarity to this issue.

A woman is a feeling, a shimmering nimbus of possibility

This new “gotcha” question, favoured by bigots and fascists, has even reached the highest levels of the US judiciary. Ketanji Brown Jackson, recently confirmed to the Supreme Court, was asked during her confirmation hearing to define the word “woman”. “No, I can’t,” she replied. “I’m not a biologist.” Personally, I found this answer a little disappointing, because it implied that being a woman was somehow connected to the myth of “biological sex”.

Anyone who asks the question “what is a woman?” is thereby revealing that they have the intelligence of your average garden slug. This is why we shouldn’t trust these so-called “archaeologists” who claim to be able to determine whether those ancient skeletons they’ve uncovered are “male” or “female”. This is pure pseudo-science. Next they’ll be telling us they can work out their pronouns by measuring the femurs.

Let me settle this matter once and for all. A woman is anyone who says she is a woman. A woman is a feeling, a shimmering nimbus of possibility, an echo of distant dreams reverberating gingerly through a winter’s gloaming. She is a mewling constellation, a bagful of semi-felched pixies, the enchanted stardust that pirouettes luminously on the spindle of time.

It’s got absolutely nothing to do with tits.