A Conservative Definition of ‘Woman’

Intersectionality has emptied the term ‘woman’ of usable content. I wrote an article analysing the flaws with the intersectional concept of ‘woman’ a few years ago, in which I explain that the main problem with the intersectional definition of ‘woman’ is that there isn’t one, or that it becomes so broad that it encompasses everything without excluding anything, or that it becomes illegitimate through self-reference.

So to properly define what ‘woman’ means, we need to understand the full scope of the term. I would argue that ‘woman’ is what British philosopher Bernard Williams would describe as a “thick concept,” that is, a concept containing many layers that are intrinsically entwined, and which cannot be separated without destroying the concept itself. 

Thick concepts are part of the kind of complex mythological web of understanding we inherited from our prescientific past and carry with us as we move through the world. It is through thick concepts that we map our understanding of the moral universe we inhabit onto the people and places with which we are familiar. (I go into this in depth in this premium podcast if you would like to learn more.) 

As a thick concept, ‘woman’ appears to at once and inseparably combine an essential biological description with a series of social relationships which contain normative instructions as to how such things should ideally be, culminating in a flowered crown that is the art of being a woman. As such, this essay will tentatively explore the three-dimensional view of the concept. I am attempting to map out the general structure of the idea and how we use it in daily life, its purpose, and the benefits it provides to us. 

Before we begin, it is important to note that I will be speaking in general terms. The essential definition will be necessarily true of all women, but many of these statements will be generally true of most women. To specific fringe cases, they may not be true. However, these exceptions merely prove the rule; the fringe cases are defined by their exceptional nature to the general rule, which demonstrates that the general rule holds for most cases and it is for exceptional reasons that they would fall outside of it. 

I will not be addressing fringe cases in this essay, as we are looking to establish what is true for the majority and ideal of womanhood, what it is to be a woman, and how these layers of identity connect together. 

The Essential Aspect

To begin, then, it seems sensible to start with the Aristotelian definition of woman. These are the necessary attributes that, without them, the person to whom we are referring cannot be a woman. They are not the sum total of womanhood, but it is in these attributes that womanhood is rooted and from them that the concept grows and from these that it manifests in society.

The essential definition of woman has traditionally been adult human female, and this seems to be a right and proper description of reality. As Simone de Beauvoir said in The Second Sex, “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.” ‘Adult human female’ sufficiently captures the truth of this observation: a girl is not born as an adult human female, but develops into one through puberty, and this process is inextricably tied to their biological organisation.

A girl is destined to become an adult human female with reproductive capacity because of the physical teleology with which she is imbued: the reproductive system of an adult female has the purpose that she bears children. This is an evolutionary necessity; without a female’s reproductive ability, there can be no continuation of the human species. There appears, then, to be no way to disentangle the concept of being a woman with the ability to bear children: it is predestined by nature itself. The reproductive apparatus that adult human females possess instructs our social understanding of the necessary requirements of womanhood. 

Much of society is geared around the needs of women in this regard, if not in actuality, then in potential. While not all women are mothers, it is expected that all women can become mothers, and this eventuality is the subject of a great deal of public debate and policy. When a woman loses the ability to reproduce, it can feel like they have become “less of a woman,” indicating that reproductive capacity is felt by women as an intrinsic and essential component of their womanhood.  

‘Woman’ is, therefore, the word we use to describe this kind of person and is a reference to these essential characteristics. It does necessarily entail that the person in question is a human female, and that she has reached adulthood, and it is expected of her that she either is, or has the capacity to become, a mother. This is a universal aspect of womanhood, and appears to be true for all cultures. It is from the biological reality of women from which the relational aspect of womanhood grows. 

The Relational Aspect

Embedded within and emanating from the essential definition of woman there is a further definition of ‘woman’. This describes a woman’s standing in that society and the expectations that might be placed upon women from men, and considerations given to women by men, and how women should interact with one another and with children.

This relational aspect is a function of the interactions which adult females have with the adult males with whom they share social space. This aspect speaks to the actual relationships in the day-to-day life of those adult females existing in a society of which they comprise roughly half, with the other half being adult males. To accommodate the biological imperatives men and women have, which pertain directly with the opposite sex, the term ‘woman’ has been inherited with a great deal of cultural baggage so that we might be socially ‘pre-programmed’ with knowledge on how to deal with the opposite sex in ways that ensure that we will have pleasant interactions with the majority of people we will encounter. 

This relational aspect of the term ‘woman’ is flexible and variable between cultures. However, it speaks specifically to the social expectations which each sex will inherit as a member of their culture. These relational expectations also attach themselves to children and the elderly, though in different ways. The most important aspect of this for the harmony of day-to-day life is between men and women, because they want something physical, intimate, impactful and lasting from one another: a family within which to raise children. 

The relationships between men and women are connected to the various stations in life a woman might occupy, such as wife, mother, aunt, et cetera. In fact, ‘woman’ itself is one such station and carries cultural baggage that is based in a relational understanding of the world. The gender role for either sex is not created in a vacuum, and our cultural understanding of what it is to be a good or bad woman is informed by the inherited traditions of our society in relation to what it is to be a good or bad man. This is why conservatives will often describe the gender roles as “complementary” to one another; men are expected to provide one set of behaviours, and women are expected to provide a different set of behaviours in order to fulfil their biological roles as parents. 

It is from these relational expectations that the rituals and standards to which men and women must abide originate. It is in the relational bonds between men and women in which we find the ethics of the gender roles we have inherited: those which tell us what a man and woman ought to do as a man or woman.  

The Normative Aspect

The normative aspect of what it is to be a woman describes the ethics of what a woman ought to do, and speaks to the moral ideal of what a woman should be as derived from the inherited traditions of womanhood for her particular culture. It contains a set of moral instructions to adult females as to how they should conduct themselves in accordance with the established customs of their country in order to be accepted and respected by their peers, family, friends, and strangers. These are the expectations that her society has of her, and describe the ways in which these expectations can be fulfilled. In short, they are the gendered instructions of right and wrong. 

These customs are the result of many generations of experience that cumulate to provide a basic blueprint of the decisions a woman can make that are likely to provide stability and happiness over the course of a lifetime. They are not the product of any one person or generation, and are informed by the biological and social reality of those women who came previously.  

The social station that underpins the concept of ‘woman’ in this aspect is connected through strong moral relations to other familial stations in life, such as ‘man’ and ‘child’. Women are expected to take care and love children, are expected to be respected as caregivers by men, and thereby hold moral authority in their positions as wives and mothers. They can make moral demands which are enforced by social custom and law, and these are often the subject of intense scrutiny based on the behaviour of the woman herself. A wife who is not loyal to her husband, or does not take care of her children, will likely find society generally unsympathetic to any problems that she incurs by failing to abide by these social rules. She will be considered to be deliberately flaunting the moral traditions which have been established to prevent such problems from arising, and will not be considered a ‘good woman’, that is, a woman who honourably embodies righteousness according to the normative moral code that ‘woman’ contains. 

The moral obligations that are attached to these stations in life apply in each direction and can be seen in such aphorisms as “women and children first,” “respect your elders,” “a man should respect a woman,” “a woman should give him something to respect,” and “a wife should have her husband’s dinner on the table when he gets home.” While some of these seem old-fashioned now, one can see the purpose of them: they are general instructions on how men and women should interact with one another in order to ensure that society functions smoothly, with everyone understanding what they ought to be doing when presented with a dilemma. 

These unwritten but socially prescribed guidelines act as a method of instruction for girls (and boys) who are becoming young adults to provide clarity on their expected role in society. They provide predictability and allow people, men and women, to understand what it is that they should be doing. Moreover, they provide instruction on how one can feel proud about oneself for fulfilling these obligations and having done the right thing. This set of traditions act as ancestral advice that is handed down so that the present generation might not feel alone and adrift in the universe, and can feel secure in themselves and their place in the world. Life is complex, and it is very useful to have a slate of generalised instructions to which we can refer when we are unsure about the correct decision. 

These traditions vary from culture to culture, of course. They are not set in stone and change with the demands of each generation as the world changes around them. However, they are tied to the essential biological and social aspects of being a woman and the demands this places on society. 

From this amalgamation of considerations that underpin the concept of woman, a kind of artistic vision emerges. Atop the complex structure blooms the aesthetic crown of womanhood. 

The Aesthetic Aspect

The previous aspects of the concept of ‘woman’ blend together to inform us about the requirements that women have and place upon the men of society. The lovely flower atop of the tree of womanhood is the aesthetic aspect of what it is to be a woman. What this describes is how a woman feels about being a woman and those feelings which being a woman instils in others. Put simply, there is an art to being a woman. 

If Frank Sibley is correct about the subject, aesthetic experiences are derived from the non aesthetic features of our daily lives, and the way we feel about our environment is the contingent result of these collective sensory inputs. An aesthetic experience is a combination of the feelings and sentiments which are generated within us from the stimulus we imbibe; if we cherish where we live, then we ascribe to the things around us a sentimental gloss. 

It is from the non aesthetic features with which women adorn themselves, such as hairstyle, makeup, jewellery, perfume and clothing, combined with a particular kind of appropriate graceful behaviour and adherence to feminine social customs, which create the aesthetic effect of womanhood in the minds of the people who perceive it. The aesthetic aspect gives women great social power, leveraging the demands of the normative and relational aspects on men with respect to the biological demands of the essential aspect. This social power is fundamentally why it is inaccurate to describe all of human history as a tyrannical patriarchy; it is what prevents being a woman from being a state of evil in which women have always existed. There are restrictions on behaviour for both men and women, in the same way there are different benefits and rewards, and these are reflections of the biological differences between the two sexes. 

The aesthetic nature of the expectations and considerations of the appropriate look and behaviour for women is variable from culture to culture. In a strict Islamic country, the expectations placed upon women might be different to those in more liberal countries. Though many signifiers of womanhood are particular to each culture, there is an underlying thread that connects them all, that of their relationship to the universal biological characteristics of women which makes them recognisable to people from alien cultures. The particular performative aspects of womanhood signal to other people that they are in the presence of a woman and should act accordingly. Once these signals have been established, transmitted, and accepted, it appears that a particular kind of feeling emerges, that of ‘feeling like a woman’. There is, of course, a corresponding way of ‘feeling like a man’ for men. 

The aesthetic aspect of Western womanhood is the perceived embodiment of an ideal that projects virtue, beauty, and compassion. It is not necessary or sufficient to say that wearing makeup or a dress makes one a woman, but they are a part of the aesthetic presentation of a woman, and the quality with which a woman beautifies herself is a facet of that art, as is behaving in the appropriate way. This can be down to even the smallest of cues, such as a flicker of the eyes or a tilt of the head, or a pause before a response. The art of being a woman is perfected when all of the facets of womanhood are brought together at the peak of excellence as dictated by the cultural standards of her time and place.  

Where Does This Leave Transgenderism?

Being a woman begins with the essential biology of the adult female and grows to encompass the requirements that females have when in social contact with adult males. From these requirements an ethical tradition evolves and from this an aesthetic ideal is formed. This is a process that begins from the bottom-up in a linear fashion: without the ethical tradition of womanhood, there is no aesthetic ideal. Without the social needs of women against men, there are no ethical requirements. Without the physical power of reproduction possessed by the female body, there is no relationship between men and women. 

Now that we have established a three-dimensional framework of what it means to be a woman, we can see exactly where transgenderism intersects with this schemata and how it interacts with it. 

The most transgender people seem to desire to ‘pass’ as the opposite sex in order to fulfil the role of the opposite sex as accurately and authentically as possible. For male-to-female transgender people, this means to appear to be sufficiently feminine so that strangers might not realise that they were not born female, so that they might live their lives as an authentic woman. This surely makes the ultimate goal to be the transformation of a man into a woman in every conceivable way. 

Transgenderism is, therefore, a reversal of what it is to be a woman. Instead of beginning with the essential characteristics of being a female and working outwards through the relational and normative aspects until we reach the aesthetic plume, transgenderism begins by adopting the aesthetic aspect of womanhood to evoke in others the feeling that they are in the presence of a woman—the process works backwards. Transgenderism then attempts to co-opt the normative aspects of “woman,” such as demanding to be called by female pronouns and given the ethical consideration due to women by men. This paves the way to demand access to the social relationship men and women have with one another, such as entry into female-only spaces and occupying the female role in male-female interactions. Eventually, transgenderism seeks to modify the body sufficiently to mimic the biological aspect with hormone treatments and surgery. It would seem, then, that womb transplants the final frontier of transgenderism. 

It would seem that drag queens are a parody of the art of being a woman. Instead of seeking to gracefully embody the aesthetics of womanhood, they embody a vulgar excess of femininity and exaggerated feminine attributes. The historically comedic view of drag was in the irony that this was done by a man, unsubtly showing those arts to be culturally considered unsuitable and laughable for men. In the modern day, this appears to have taken on a decidedly sexual aspect. 

Conclusion

As stated at the beginning, this is a tentative opening step towards understanding what it is people are truly saying when they look to define the term ‘woman’ and determine that which people are actually attempting to describe. 

I doubt this exploration will please many people who attempt to thin out or erase the concept of woman, but I am of the opinion that this is little more than a series of linguistic strategies designed to disarm more conservative-minded people of the ability to defend their own positions on the subject, rather than a genuine exploration into what the concept actually involves.