Hear them roar

For the past couple of years one of the most excruciating sights in British politics has been when a Labour Party figure is asked to define what a woman is. In their desperate efforts to say nothing while speaking words, they have frequently taken the English language into whole new territories of evasion and obfuscation.

- Andrew Anthony 

Last year, for example, shadow minister for women and equalities Anneliese Dodds told a reporter on International Women's Day that there were "different definitions legally around what a woman actually is", and said the answer depended on "the context". Finally, after much prodding, she took refuge under the party's definition: "A woman is a woman." 

There were many other such adventures in tautology and verbal contortionism. Then suddenly, a few weeks back, Labour leader Keir Starmer announced that a "woman is an adult female", precisely the phrase that had previously been deemed career-endingly transphobic. Anyway, he said it, society did not collapse and the world continued to turn.

The irony is that as a debate has raged around the political acceptability or otherwise of biological reality, women themselves have continued to show that, whatever their definition, they can't be easily categorised.