Australia’s first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been slammed for giving a waffling four-minute answer to the simple question: ‘What is a woman?’
The former Labor Party leader was speaking on the topic of ‘women’s advancement’ at Government House in Adelaide, South Australia, on Friday 25 August when audience member and women’s rights activist Biddy O’Loughlin put her on the spot.
‘What is a woman?’, asked Ms O’Loughlin.
‘Do you agree with Queensland’s Attorney General Minister for Women Shannon Fentiman that trans women are women and with UK’s leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer that some women can have a penis?’
Ms Gillard said she was ‘very happy’ to answer the question before launching into a rambling, four-minute response that failed to directly address either part of the question.
Australia’s first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard (pictured) gave a rambling, four-minute response to the seemingly straightforward question: ‘What is a woman?’
The ‘what is a woman’ question has become controversial in recent years, with many politicians across the West struggling to answer in fear of upsetting either side of the exceptionally polarising and – at times, toxic – debate on trans rights.
At first, Ms Gillard told the audience she spent half the year in the UK where she claimed the definition of a woman had become a ‘gotcha parlour game’ designed to catch politicians out.
‘There are a number of people who genuinely believe that they are trapped in the wrong body and they want to be recognised as the gender their mind and soul have always told them that they are,’ said Ms Gillard.
‘And that doesn’t go one way – it goes both ways. People who have transitioned from being men to being women and women who have transitioned to being men.
The former Labor Party leader was speaking on the topic of ‘women’s advancement’ at Government House in Adelaide, South Australia, on Friday 25 August when audience member and women’s rights activist Biddy O’Loughlin put her on the spot (Gillard is pictured with Frances Adamson AC, Governor of South Australia)
‘I think we’ve just got to say, like we’d want show everybody else in the community, love, inclusion and respect, we should do that for each of those individuals.’
Ms Gillard, who is seen by many around the world as a feminist trailblazer for her excoriating ‘misogyny speech’ delivered against Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2012, then touched upon some contentious issues within the trans debate, including access to female-only spaces like prisons and the question of fairness if sport.
‘Most people in their lives won’t end up playing elite sport, most people won’t end up in prison, most people in their lives will encounter at some point someone who is a transexual person and I think what really counts is the openness and spirit of inclusion about the way that you encounter them,’ said Ms Gillard.
She finished her lengthy answer by calling for the ‘temperature’ to be taken out of the debate.
But her comments inflamed critics, with some condemning her for ‘betraying’ the women’s rights movement.
‘Tragically, it was our first female Prime Minister that presided over the erasure of sex based rights in Australia,’ said independent Victorian MP Moira Deeming.
‘Now she frames reasonable questions and complaints about the consequences, as petty bigotry.’
Sky News host Rita Panahi accused Ms Gillard of ‘floundering hopelessly’ over the simple question.
‘We’ve seen that question stump many gutless bureaucrats and politicians, but I never thought that Australia’s first female prime minister, the first woman in the lodge as leader of this great nation, would be incapable of answering ‘what is a woman?’ but here we are,’ said Ms Panahi.
‘Even Albo managed to answer that question without beclowning himself.
‘Around four minutes of idiotic waffle that shows where Australia’s … first female prime minister stands on this most crucial issue … she stands firmly with the trans activists that have hijacked the Left and modern feminism.’
Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked the same question on British broadcaster Piers Morgan’s ‘Uncensored’ show in early May.
Mr Albanese gave a very simple answer, defining a woman as ‘an adult female’, which sparked a backlash from supporters of trans rights who accused him of failing to defend trans people.
Sky News host Rita Panahi accused Ms Gillard of ‘floundering hopelessly’ over the simple question and branded her answer ‘imbecilic’
Ms Gillard, who is seen by many around the world as a feminist trailblazer for her excoriating ‘misogyny speech’ against Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2012 (pictured), touched upon some contentious issues within the trans debate, such as access to female-only spaces like prisons and the question of fairness if sport, before appearing to dismiss them as only ever affecting a small number of people
Now, Ms Gillard has angered the other side of the debate.
2GB host Ben Fordham laughed at her attempt to provide a definition of the female sex on his Monday morning show.
‘The actual answer was more than three minutes long and at the end of it we still don’t know what a woman is,’ he said.
Angie Jones, a women’s rights campaigner, said: ‘Look at the former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a former lawyer & excellent public speaker, get flustered when asked a variation of the “what is a woman” question.’
‘It’s so obvious that she does not believe a word of what is coming out of her own mouth.’
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