The Essence of a Woman

Last week, senator Tito Sotto, in response to the SOGIE bill being pushed in the said that a man can never be a woman because a trans-woman cannot have a baby, he doesn't have ovaries or the sexual organs associated with the fairer sex.

Social media blew up with people from the LGBT community and their allies attacking the senator saying he was reducing the worth of a woman to that of child bearing. Vice Ganda put it very bluntly saying that women who have their ovaries removed or women who don't want to have children are no less women because of they don't have ovaries or don't want children. He then ended by saying, "Sila ay babae dahil sila ay babae."

What Vice considers a huge mic drop moment is actually meaningless. It's as meaningless as saying that "Chukabas are chukabas". Vice has missed the opportunity to move the conversation forward by putting words that Tito Sotto's mouth. Now, I'm no fan of Tito Sotto but the man's got a point in his original statement.

Trans-women want to be accepted as women in our society but they have failed to define what a woman is. Actually, no one is concerned about it from the LGBT community. Here, we have Senator Tito Sotto give his definition and the LGBT community and their allies just bash him saying he got the definition wrong without giving their alternative definition. This is what I find to be the most problematic part of the SOGIE bill. No one seems to be concerned with the definitions of a man or a woman - they just are.

What makes me, for example, "not a woman" and my mother and sisters, "women"? Men and women are terms whose meanings we've known very well for thousands for years. It's only now that we pretend we don't know.

Like it or not, being a woman has something to do with the reproductive system (Tito Sotto's point). Even the LGBT community knows this - why do you think gender reassignment surgery is a thing? We all know that our plumbing (if you will) is directly related to what it means to be a man or a woman. Men have penises and women have vaginas.

Part and parcel with the woman is her inherent ability to carry a child in her womb. Such is not possible at all with a man. This is why we say a woman has a healthy reproductive system if she's able to get pregnant. A woman who cannot bear a child even if she tried so much, is just a woman who doesn't have a healthy reproductive system. A woman who chooses not to have children is simple a woman who's chosen not to use her reproductive system.

It bothers me a bit that people - mostly women - think it's an insult to women when we say that childbearing is one of the things that comes with being a woman. Women, to the exclusion of men, are the only people who can carry children. As such, they are the only people who are able to bring about the next generation. No man has the honor of being able to do that.

Now, some people will not agree with me and that's fine. From the few online debates I've been on, no one seems keen on defining what a woman is. So if you don't agree with me, open my mind and tell me what a woman is.