> But then you threw in the (self-described!) theocratic fascist dogwhistle.

Huh? What fascist dog whistle? Sounds like the person was just describing their opinion and experience. The whole idea of dogwhistling sounds like a weird conspiracy theory. I’m sure it’s happened more than 0 times, but thinking dogwhistling is everywhere sounds just as unhinged to me as any of the wacky right wing conspiracies.

"What is a woman" is the rhetorical work of Matt Walsh, who describes himself as a "theocratic fascist".

The beginning of this essay explains the phrase pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAMM3l156Oo

And since nobody has asked that question before that well known rhetorical work we know everyone who mentions the same question is just dog whistling a reference to it.

You left that part out.

The throughline of

>it's now controversial to ask "what is a woman?"

to Matt Walsh is pretty clear. The entire documentenary is based on the premise that it's not controversial to ask this, because the answer must inevitably be "adult human female", this excluding trans people. Meanwhile in reality, nobody finds this question controversial, only Matt Walsh's simplified extremely common sense appeal answer.

What do you mean that nobody finds the question controversial? I remember it being a huge controversy when the US congress asked it during Kentanji Brown Jackson's interview.

You got the order of events wrong. That was after it became a dogwhistle for bioessentialism. As a consequence of Matt Walsh.

I guess if you want to be exact, I will correct to "nobody found this question controversial before it became a dogwhistle". But the question itself is still not controversial, it's all context.

So how can someone phrase the exact same question in a different way that is not a dogwhistle?

If you explain to me the purpose of the question - that not being invoking the dogwhistle - I'll let you know. Otherwise I'm not interested in playing this game with a bad faith actor.

The purpose is that in the law we have clearly determined concepts such as Women's Rights. Thus, the justice system needs to be able to determine who is or not a woman in order to do its job properly. For instance, in the UK wolf-whistling can be considered a hate-crime if and only if the receiver is a woman.

Why not just make wolf-whistling a hate crime regardless of the receiver's identity? From the responses I've gotten around here a woman is an adult. Now we're legally OK with young girls being wolf-whistled at?

Aside that we are in agreement that laws should not be gendered if we want equality (not examining whether wolf-whistling should be a hate-crime - imho it’s ridiculous it is in any context) since we live in reality and there ARE gendered laws I’ll reply to the second part of your comment.

It does exactly make the point, you are somehow trying to define what a woman is, and asking if the definition only encompasses adult human females or underage as well.

It's amazing that some are seemingly convinced a conservative man came up with a problem that feminists (so-called "radfems") have highlighted for years. Goes to show how little attention many pay to women's issues.

"What is a woman" is a perfectly reasonable question to ask a legislator who refuses to acknowledge that women exist. I certainly would never vote for someone who believes that women are defined as "whatever I feel right now." I'm disappointed you think it's the people demanding acknowledgement which should be labelled "theocratic fascists" rather than the misogynists refusing to acknowledge women exist.

I didn't label anyone a theocratic fascist. That's just Matt Walsh's twitter bio. Though radfems seem not too uncomfortable with Walsh, considering JKR praised the man for his "documentary" and received little backlash from her loyal following.

Which legislator refused to acknowledge that women exist?

It absolutely does not add clarity. Enough people do not even know what a cervix is, or whether they have one, that it's an obfuscation. One which harms women disproportionately, like most other things radfems get upset about.

Go measure the prevalence of "people with prostates" and compare. The word "man" is, strangely, not subject to this erasure.

But... that's absolutely a thing? Is this the same selective perception that brings radfems to proclaim that trans lesbians don't date each other?

(That being said, the likelyhood of getting prostate cancer on HRT is pretty low. Not quite the level of cis men getting breast cancer, but it's down there. It's a very androgen dependent cancer.)

If it only takes a simple sentence to set you off. You should be careful how much you’re reading into peoples language. The worlds not filled with facists in disguise. Look at people that way and you’ll see it everywhere. It will drive you mad.