“Woman. Noun. Adult human female,” read the sticker applied to Queensland MP Shannon Fentiman’s office window. Walking past the window at the Waterford Shopping Centre in Logan, one might have assumed the sticker belonged to Fentiman. She was, until Thursday, Queensland’s Minister for Women.But one would’ve been mistaken. “I know the sticker doesn’t look like it says much, and most people will be lucky enough to be unaffected by what it says,” Fentiman wrote on her Instagram page. “But for some people in our community, these stickers represent much more – they represent a movement which discriminates against them and denies their existence.”Instead of meaning “adult human female” – or the half of humanity who have ovaries – politicians such as Fentiman now say a woman is anyone who feels like a woman, even if they come with penis and scrotum. The attempt to change the meaning of the word “woman” is justified by politicians such as Fentiman because it is argued that being a woman is a social role and not a biological category. Any person can become a “woman”, just as any person can become a police officer or a nurse. When it comes to social roles, biology is irrelevant.In several Australian states one can – or will soon be able to – update one’s birth certificate to state “woman” or “female” even if one has fully intact male sexual organs and XY chromosomes. On Thursday, Fentiman was sworn in as Queensland’s Minister for Health, just one week after she told reporters “anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman”. Will this new appointment mean Queensland women will soon be encouraged to have regular prostate examinations? When visiting women’s health clinics will women be asked if they would like to have their sperm count checked?
Source: Trans activism, transgender, Shannon Fentiman, Piers Morgan, Anthony Albanese | The Australian