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What Is a Women’s History Month?
Since 1987, America has recognized March as Women’s History Month. In this year’s proclamation, President Biden wrote that the event “provides an opportunity to honor the generations of trailblazing women and girls who have built our Nation, shaped our progress, and strengthened our character as a people.”
Truly a noble effort. But in 2022, nothing can be so simple. We can’t even agree what a “woman” is, let alone “history” or “month.”
The latest example occurred during the hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.) asked the nominee, “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?'”
Jackson appeared befuddled. “I can’t,” she said, “I’m not a biologist.”
Any elementary schooler could answer this easily: “a woman is an adult female person.” But a graduate of Harvard Law and a Circuit Judge for the D.C. Court of Appeals had to feign ignorance.
In 2022, common sense is dangerous.
If appointed to the high court, which seems all but assured, Jackson will rule on laws such as the Violence Against Women Act, Title IX, and the Equal Pay Act, which requires men and women to be paid the same.
If you don’t even know what “men” and “women” are, good luck with the finer points of the legislation.
Judge Jackson obviously knows what a woman is, as do the court-watchers outraged by Sen. Blackburn’s simple question. But admitting such a basic fact would upset a minuscule activist class that changes definitions faster than the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
We must pretend to believe what everyone knows is untrue.
Another strange Women’s History Month moment was swimmer Lia Thomas’s victory at the NCAA championships. She won the Division I women’s championship despite beginning her collegiate career on the men’s team.
Thomas’s physical advantages were obvious on the podium, her frame dominating the much smaller silver and bronze medalists. But even to notice obvious facts is considered hateful. Lia was compared to Jackie Robinson while ESPN feted her with glowing coverage.
Second-place finisher Emma Weyant was forced to fake-grin and bear it. Fourth-place finisher Brooke Forde didn’t receive a medal. Happy Women’s History Month.
None of this is hateful to Lia Thomas but is simply an effort to preserve women’s sports. There are thousands of young women attending university on athletic scholarships, a chance they could be denied based on the whims of the NCAA’s equity and inclusion policy.
It’s awful for a talented athlete to know that the best she can get is second place. It’s a nightmare for more marginal female swimmers who might be prevented from attending college at all.
But what is a woman anyway? It’s a mystery for the ages.
USA Today celebrated Women’s History Month by choosing Adm. Rachel Levine as one of their Women of the Year. The Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services was feted as “the nation’s highest-ranking openly transgender official.” Levine was given the appointment following a disastrous Covid response as Pennsylvania’s health secretary and has done little in her current role. Maybe next year, USA Today can find a woman who has achieved … something.
In a book about life in the Soviet Union, Elena Gorokhova (a woman, by the way) explained the great fictions their society was built upon.
“They lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
As we honor Women’s History Month, a similar zeitgeist reigns in the United States.
The vast majority knows all of this is nonsense, but we’re terrified to say so publicly.
Instead, we pretend not to know what a woman is, while celebrating women’s rights. We condemn “mansplaining” as men lecture female athletes that it’s good Emma Weyant missed out on the gold. We celebrate Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court even though she can’t admit she’s a woman.
Let’s hope Women’s History Month 2023 can go back to celebrating great women. If we don’t, women themselves could be history.
Published in Culture, History
Ms. Gorokhova would have been a great street cop.
What is a woman? Well, the answer depends on the context of the question, if you are a judge in 2022. Apparently. It depends.
I don’t think we should have a Women’s History Month. The Left has desecrated the sanctity of the female through their games, and it makes me ill to think who might be included in the future. It’s pathetic.
Some argue that you should use the name someone wants because you can change names but you can’t change your sex. Others argue to use the person’s given name. Either way, the swimmer is a male and the male pronoun should be used.
I notice Greg Corombos is very cagey on the Three Martini Lunch podcast and goes out of his way to avoid pronouns when these stories come up. Either uses the person’s name or something generic like ‘the swimmer’.
This is a very good point. For the record, this was originally written Wednesday for the local newspaper. They fought to run it, but the national higher-ups spiked it. Since the local paper has a center-left audience, I try to frame issues to that mentality — and the AP Stylebook — for better or worse. Whatever I write about gets about 200 comments of people screeching at me, but then get emails from center-lefties saying they’ve reconsidered their position or admit that my position is theirs, but they’re afraid to say so publicly. Always kind of a balancing act…
Understand trying to balance the sides of the strange world we’re being asked to enter. It’s sad that this article couldn’t be printed. Another example to prove the theory of the piece that people are afraid of the truth.
One of my favorite guys on YouTube has really embraced the use of they/them for any number of people to the point of making some episodes hard to follow. In one he was giving the history of a male mathematician and then started saying, ‘they did this’ and ‘they did that’. I wondered who the extra people were but he was still talking about the one guy.
It’s laughable that half the reason this person was nominated was because of her gender but she can’t even define what that is. And we’re supposed to believe she’ll be able to fight for women’s rights. Whatever that is. Crazy town.
Why is this supposedly “miniscule activist class” so powerful?
So powerful, in fact, that even though the OP explicitly mentions changing definitions of the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and in the next sentence laments the fact that “[w]e must pretend to believe what everyone knows is untrue” — yet two sentences after that, the OP refers to the male swimmer Mr. Thomas as “she” and refers to “her collegiate career.”
This Thomas person is a man. Even his assumed first name — “Lia” — is a lie, as it is a transparent effort to require others to address him with an obviously feminine name.
In my view, if you’ve conceded the linguistic territory as to pronouns and names, you’re playing along with the Ministry of Truth too.
If you accept that formulation, here’s what you have to say about Mr. Thomas. “She shouldn’t be allowed to compete on the women’s swim team.”
Wrong. He shouldn’t be allowed to compete on the women’s swim team, because he’s not a woman. He’s a man. He’s not a she, and his name ain’t “Lia.”
I also don’t think that he needs understanding or support. He needs to be told to straighten up and fly right, in my view.
By the way, the ideology that led to there being a Women’s History Month is the same ideology that led to the trans-nonsense.
Is everybody who’s cheering Lia still cool with it if he decides he’s Larry when the college career is over?
Giving some group a month is sort of demeaning anyway — a consolation prize.
A thought I have is that years ago they glommed on to the homosexual movement, adding the T to LGBT. Even though they have a lot of differences. I’m born this way versus I was born the wrong way for example. They were probably welcomed aboard to increase numbers.
The LGBs have had tremendous success over the last fifteen years and are now just shooting the wounded on the battlefield. The Ts decided it was their turn and wanted in on it. Maybe some are afraid to speak up for fear of appearing disloyal to the whole LGBT movement. Look how feminists complaining are slandered as TERFs, “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”.
It’s interesting that Rachel Dolezal is still laughed at by pretty much everyone for wanting to be black when she is white but those listed in the post are taken seriously by a not too small number.
That’s pretty good.
Here’s a better question, maybe: If you’re trans, and you’re in some step or process of transitioning, when do you flip teams if you’re a competitive athlete?
For dude swimmer, that’s probably not right now. Because he’s all dude, and competing in a women’s event is like Lebron dunking on 10 year-olds. That’s not competition, that’s self-aggrandizement, and any competitor with his/her/she/its head on straight knows that, and wouldn’t want to do it.
Which is where I come out. He’s just doing this for himself and masking or sublimating the real reasons because they’re inconvenient and difficult to deal with. If you’re a competitor, you’re not a cheater – this is even worse than cheating, because it’s not hidden, and there’s no attempt to hide it.
Quite the opposite. The brazen attitude taken when it’s done, full frontal, is celebrated by chowderheads who have only ever competed for 3rd place in the line for coffee at work.
Am I the only one who finds this statement remarkable, not because Jackson says she can’t define “woman,” but because she can’t do so because she’s not a biologist. Isn’t biology exactly what trans advocates deny is the crucial factor in determining gender?
No, you are not. My follow-up would have been, “So, you’re stating for the record that being a woman is entirely based in biology?”.
Congrats on the Instapundit link Jon. Welcome to Ricochet Instapundit readers. Join us.
I searched this page and didn’t find an Instapundit link.
There was a link on Instapundit.
I was hoping there was a link to the link on Instapundit.
Sorry @TheReticulator. I’m just not media savvy enough.