What is the definition of a woman?

Print

Until very recently, this would have seemed a really stupid thing to ask as we should all know the answer.   Throughout the history of mankind, for some 6,000 years, there is no record of this question needing to be answered because male and female genders were clearly understood.

On the website zfacts.com, we read: “The woke position currently amounts to this: women should not talk about themselves as an identity group. That group is apparently now politically incorrect and undeserving of a name, especially undeserving of its old and well-respected name.”  It goes on to say that “woke ideology (but not woke individuals) should be erased. Claiming to be woke — alert to injustice — is just a cover for authoritarian excess.”

However, it seems that this is an ongoing issue and one outcome is the confusion concerning the use of gender-neutral toilets.

Wikipedia writes under the heading of “transgender” the following:

“Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth.   Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual.  Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer.”

And then comes along the “trans” lobby and a nominee for the US Supreme Court who said she couldn’t define what a woman is.

Quoting from thefederalist.com, we read the following:

“Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Joe Biden in large part because of her sex, said she couldn’t define what a woman is on Tuesday during her confirmation hearings.

“Jackson was chosen to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer in fulfillment of Biden’s identity politics pledge to install a black woman on the Supreme Court. Despite those reasons for her nomination, Jackson stumbled through giving a definition of ‘woman’ when Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked the straightforward question. ‘Can you provide a definition for the word “woman”?’ Blackburn asked during the hearing. ‘No, I can’t,’ Jackson said after confirming the question.

“The progressive judge claimed she was unable to provide a definition because ‘I’m not a biologist.’ ‘The meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?’ Blackburn pressed. ‘Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law and I decide,’ Jackson said.

“As Blackburn noted in her response, the fact that Jackson couldn’t give ‘a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”

It is worth repeating that exchange to show how common sense is so under threat from the woke brigade and the liberal left.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Kirrin Medcalf, head of trans inclusion at the controversial LGBT lobby group, made the following comments during an employment tribunal hearing when he was asked, “Do you define women as anyone, including men who say they are women?”  Medcalf replied, “Bodies are not inherently male or female. They are just their bodies.”

It appears that we can read from the comments of some “luminaries” that there is no longer a definition of what a woman is, and that bodies are not inherently male or female.

In our 2018 booklet, God’s Teachings on Sexual Relationships,” we covered much information including all of the wrong sexual practices that the world now, in general, seems to approve of in direct opposition to what the great Creator God instituted when man was formed some 6,000 years ago.   On page 111 of this booklet, we write as follows under the headline “God Created Male and Female”:

“The Bible is very clear on this matter. We previously discussed in this booklet that God created human beings as man and woman (Genesis 1:27–28; 5:2; Matthew 19:4–6)—two genders with no other variation—and told them to be fruitful and multiply. That cannot happen with a number of wrong sexual practices that exist today.”

God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), but Satan the devil is.   We read in John 8:44:

“You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”

Wherever there are problems, and the world is full of them, it can be guaranteed that our adversary, Satan the devil, will be in the mix somewhere.

In the Washington Examiner on 22nd March 2022, the headline read: “It’s not just Jackson: Even scientists and ‘philosophers of biology’ can’t define what a woman is, says USA Today.”

As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson cannot define what a woman is nor, apparently, can “scientists and ‘philosophers of biology’”, let us educate them all on this matter.

Wikipedia (amongst others) gives the following information:

“A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural women is sometimes used in certain phrases such as ‘women’s rights’ to denote female humans regardless of age.

“Typically, women have two X chromosomes and are capable of pregnancy and giving birth from puberty until menopause. Female anatomy is distinguished from male anatomy by the female reproductive system, which includes the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina and vulva. The adult female pelvis is wider, the hips broader, and the breasts larger than that of adult males. Women have significantly less facial and other body hair, have a higher body fat composition, and are on average shorter and less muscular than men.”

In spite of what man might be trying to engineer, only women can conceive and give birth to children.

In the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, we read in Genesis 1:26-28: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’  So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

We appreciate that there is so much antagonism towards the Word of God today where the numbers of believers in an all-powerful Creator God seem to reduce by the year, but that, in no way, negates the Truth that it contains. Had God not made male and female, the only two genders that there are, none of us would be here today.

Trends, styles, crazes, fashions and fads will come and go but the Word of God, the Holy Bible, is constant in its instructions and guidance.   It defines who we are, what we are, and what we can look forward to in the soon-coming Kingdom of God.   When we take notice of the Bible, we reap the rewards of its unending urging, direction and answers.

In 2 Timothy 3:15-17, the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: “…from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.   All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Taking note of what the Almighty says is of far more importance and infinitely wiser than listening to the thoughts and musings of fallible men and women who come up with their own theories, philosophies and considerations.

God says that He created a man and a woman, and they were to multiply on the face of the earth, and they have done and are doing that.

And that has been achieved with just two genders, male and female.

God has designed male and female as both equal and different.   Both have different roles in life.   We read in Titus 2:3-5: “…the older women likewise [are to] be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.”

Of course, that doesn’t go down well with the “women’s lib” movement, but it is taken from the Word of God which is written for the good of mankind, and there are many other Scriptures which attest further to the roles of men, women and children.

In short, a woman marries a man, bears children where possible, nurtures and protects her family, is a homemaker and a support for her husband.   He, in return, has the responsibility to provide for his family in the best way possible.  There are biological and emotional differences, and they complement each other as God ordained it so.

Proverbs 31:10-31, which is a wonderful description of a virtuous woman, would be a good starting point for anyone to read, particularly those who can’t define what a woman is and those who ridiculously state that “bodies are not inherently male or female.”  However, that would probably be a leap too far to ask strident, God-defying people to look at, or review anything other than their own perceived wisdom.

That’s a shame because they could learn much from the Word of God!

Lead Writer: Brian Gale (United Kingdom)

©2024 Church of the Eternal God