That Trans Thread

[Rev. Rye]

Finally watching Jessie Gender's take on Matt Walsh's What is a Woman? a week after it was initially uploaded (and its initial upload was taken down three hours after it was uploaded.)





Jessie's attempts and ultimate failure at answering the titular question reminds me of the first college class I ever took. It was basically post-Civil War American Literature. The first question the teacher asked: "What is American Literature?"

Literature focused on American themes? Okay, what exactly are "American themes?" I'll wait.
Literature set in America? Okay, so I take it that much of Ernest Hemingway's oeuvre isn't American literature. Even the story of his we're going to read, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
Literature written in America? So, many of the later Jeeves and Wooster books are American literature? Because he moved to Long Island in 1946 and didn't leave until shortly before he died in 1975.
Literature written by Americans? Okay. So, Raymond Chandler's novels aren't American. When he wrote his novels (for the most part), among the most vivid depictions of Los Angeles in literature, he was actually a British subject.
Literature featuring American lead characters? So, if I write a novel set in the Nazi era, with no American characters, does that make it German literature? Even if I never left the US in my life?

14 years later, I still don't have an answer. Admittedly, many of the points I raised could be good places to start, but none of them work as full-on definitions are.

I suppose that Matt Walsh's preferred "adult human female" might be a decent place to start for a definition of "woman," probably even one that covers at least 90% of cases, but it's by no means a comprehensive definition.