The Tate Modern gallery in London is under fire by feminists for screening a Norwegian film which purports to try and challenge viewers to assess their definition of woman… but the only thing it was challenging was my ability to keep my dinner down while I sat through it.

The short film – titled What is a Woman? and directed by Marin Håskjold– was screened on Friday evening at Tate as part of an evening focused on female artists. It portrays a scene in a women’s locker room which erupts into a vicarious debate as to whether or not a trans-identified male present should be there.

Of course, the debate is sparked by a nosey, pushy woman who is clearly identified as “the bad guy” from the moment the film begins. Her incessant questioning about the state of the transgender individual’s genitals quickly morphs into her making a series of offensive, straw-man logical fallacies from defining womanhood by menstruation capacity to questioning whether or not she should be able to identify into another race.

At one point, the woman appears to make a toddler in the room cry with her loud assertions about not wanting to see a penis in what should be a sex-segregated space, and the crying, naked child is shown to be a boy. The suggestion is obvious, to cleverly imply there was already a penis in the locker room, thus her argument about not wanting to be exposed to one is somehow rendered irrelevant.

For the first 7 minutes of the 14-minute-long scene, the transgender actor does not even speak, and is instead vigorously defended by a female friend who insists “anyone is allowed” to be in the women’s locker room. Even then, the actor does not say more than a few words before the end of the film.
At one point, a non-binary female enters the conversation, and, predictably, begins to eviscerate the so-called logic of the transphobic bully that appearance, pronouns, or any other superficial detail is what defines womanhood. The non-binary female also begins to defend the transgender individual, and accuses the oh-so-cruel antagonist of conforming to patriarchal standards of femininity.

The film ends with the non-binary female asking “how the hell do you know” when she is told she is a woman and would belong in a woman’s locker room, going on to proclaim “I don’t know what I am!”

After feminist backlash, the Tate made a statement to The Telegraph rejecting criticism of the screening, and insisting the film adequately provided multiple perspectives. But for anyone watching with half of a braincell to mince into small pieces and shake vigorously together in a maraca, it did anything but.

The film portrayed the “gender critical” woman as nothing but an aggressive bigot with half-assed arguments, a sense of self-entitlement, and an incomplete understanding of her own thoughts. Meanwhile, the transgender individual was presented as quiet, respectful, modest (even covering his moobs when the child was present) and hyper-feminine. Likewise, there was definition and depth given to the non-binary female’s discourse to which the transphobic bully could simply not debate.

The entire thing was absurd, if only because it was so terribly detached from reality.
In my humble opinion, the entire premise of the film — a debate about the definition of woman — is dead on arrival.

The moment defining is attempted, the argument is already lost for there is no definition required. Sure, I’ve seen the ol’ faithful “adult human female” plastered about, but even that makes more complex the exceptionally simple, clear single-word the discussion immediately needs to be reduced to.

Female.

That’s it.

I’ll be here all week, folks!

Female is a measurable, calculable, observable, testable, archeological-diggable element of reality. It applies at all ages and stages of that XX-chromosome carrying human’s life. When presented with this fact, trans activists will inevitably spiral into their descent of delusional froth-gargling in which they demand that reality be thrown out the window in favor of some utterly bizarre, first-year sociology class abstraction.

“Oh but… that’s sex! Woman is a social construct!!”

Shh!

“Woman” has, and always will be, intrinsically tied to “female.” That tie, with all of the oppressive baggage it has imposed upon generations of females on all corners of the globe, will not be so easily cut by abruptly deciding to redefine womanhood as a superficial, subjective dash of fanciful whimsy able to be magically conjured through the outside gaze of a non-female. To do so is not only ridiculous, it’s offensive.

From the genital mutilations rife across the Middle East and Africa, to exploding femicide rates in Central America, to an unequivocally disproportionate rate of rape globally — there is indeed an unique collective experience that comes with being female. These experiences defy clothes, hair, weight, “femininity,” and any other superficial appliqué. They are deeply entrenched in cultures, doctrines, and social consciousness itself.

But the ‘oppressive baggage’ I refer to is not just the modern and historical subjugation of females under various sexual, domestic, religious, and physical means, but even manifests prior to that female even being born into this world to experience any of them. An estimated 23 million girls are effectively missing because they just so happened to be gestated in the womb with the wrong chromosomes.

The woman-female semantic bond has always exhibited tangible consequence. Call it a social construct if you wish, but that construction is made of cement and reinforced with steel. It has never wavered, never faltered, and never failed to target a particular group of people, all of which just-so-happen to have no scrotums dangling between their legs. It’s a bullseye every time! Trans activists, for whatever reason, cannot seem to comprehend that incredible accuracy of aim.

I have actually seen trans activists argue that this very real, very unique oppression tying womanhood to the female sex is reason for why it should become a free-for-all feeding frenzy — to somehow ‘erase’ the oppression of woman by redefining “woman” altogether. This was somewhat represented in What is a Woman? in the form of the non-binary character arguing that the ‘traditional’ perspectives on womanhood were “patriarchal” and thus responsible for women’s oppression. Yet I have never seen such logic applied to any other group which has faced oppression on the basis of their shared reality, and I doubt I will ever.

Then again, I’ve never seen any other oppressed group be told to accommodate caricatures of themselves crafted by their would-be oppressors as authentic representations of comparable experience either.

Recall that just a few years ago, Martina Big — a caucasian German woman who “identifies” as a Black woman — appeared on Good Morning Britain where she was (quite rightly) told that she would never experience the unique racial narrative associated with Blackness simply by curling her hair and tanning her skin. This is similar to what Rachel Dolezal was told during the height of her debacle, where it was widely decried that she had accepted positions and opportunities intended for Black Americans.

It should be noted that in Håskjold’s film they line-dance around this racial comparison by simply having the “gender critical” woman be met with “tolerance” and understanding when she asks why she couldn’t simply identify as Black. The two trans activists (who are white) simply offer to accept her self-identification as a Black woman, as though that would ever be acceptable in real life.

Ultimately, though disguised under the doe-eyed intention of good-faith debate, What is a Woman? answers the question of its name repeatedly.

Women are… whatever. Anything. Everything.

Women are nothing but blank canvases upon which anyone can spill paint and dopily interpret like sentient Rorschach tests.

Women have nothing to hold them together as a cohesive group, because if they did that could potentially be a basis for exclusivity, and God forbid!

Women are a nondescript, ahistorical void.

But if some sad, womb-having, vulva-owning, human milk-depositing creature dares to crawl from that void and disagree… well, then she’s a bully. She’s a bumbling idiot. She’s not to be taken seriously. She’s a bitch.

What is a woman? Who knows! It truly is a mystery. But somehow, society always knows to treat them exactly like that. 

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