The Labor/Labour Party, both here and in the UK are in crisis. A crisis regarding women. Amidst accusations of bullying and gender inequality, Labor/Labour politicians cannot even define the term “woman.”

Here in Australia not one Labor politician can offer a definition that makes sense. All seem to repeat the nonsensical statement, “anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman.” It is no better in the UK.

The first to fall at the hurdle of common sense this week was Labour MP and shadow minister for women and equalities Anneliese Dodds. When interviewed on BBC Woman’s Hour, on International Women’s Day, Dodds seemed surprised to be asked by host Emma Barnett ‘for a clear definition of what a woman is’. In response, a flustered Dodds did her best impression of a prevaricating philosophy undergrad, and explained that ‘there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is’. When pushed to be clear, Dodds argued that what constitutes a woman ‘does depend what the context is, surely’. 

After Dodd’s toe-curling display, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper tried to avoid answering the woman question entirely when it was put to her the next day by Times Radio’s Stig Abell. Cooper said she didn’t ‘want to go down the rabbit hole of defining what a woman is’, chuckling at the idea that it might matter that leading figures in Britain’s opposition party are either incapable or unwilling to answer such a simple question. Instead, Cooper boasted about the fact that her book of women’s speeches had been illuminated in lights in central London the day before, to celebrate International Women’s Day. Quite how Cooper managed to collate a book of women’s speeches, without apparently knowing what a woman is, is a mystery.

It is astounding that Labor/Labour politicians go to such great lengths to deny science and reject biological reality. It is even more astounding that women go along with it.

The real reason Labour politicians play dumb when it comes to the woman question is because so many of them feel the need to tiptoe around contemporary trans ideology, which holds that womanhood is a matter of gender identity, not biological sex. According to some trans activists, anyone who doesn’t repeat the mantra ‘trans women are women’ should be sacked, doxxed and virtually lynched for their essentially fascist beliefs. For high-profile trans lobby groups like Stonewall, anyone who voices what has come to be known as a ‘gender critical’ view (ie, someone who believes that biological sex is real and gender identity isn’t) is as bad as an anti-Semite. According to the leader of the Labour Party, it is ‘wrong’ even to utter the words ‘only women have cervixes’.

This view of the world is shaping Labour policy, too. Leading Labour figures are fighting among themselves to propose the most drastic legal changes possible. MPs like Angela Eagle argue that ‘self-ID’ should be introduced into the Gender Recognition Act, meaning that people would be allowed to change their legal sex at will. Others like Nadia Whittome insist that the term ‘non-binary’ be recognised in law.

One obvious consequence of this is that spaces that were formerly segregated by sex – like prisons, toilets or changing rooms – would be expected to allow people to enter based on their self-declared gender identities. Anything less would be outlawed as ‘transphobic’.

Leading Labor women in Australia have been accused of bullying, while at the same time playing the victim card for being a woman.

Yet the likes of Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek and Kristina Keneally can’t even define the term woman.

How on earth can a party protect or promote women if they can’t even define them?