Julia Gillard's waffling four-minute response as she's asked 'what is a woman?' and whether she agrees some women have penises: 'Floundering hopelessly'

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.

‘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.’

READ JULIA GILLARD’S ANSWER TO ‘WHAT IS A WOMAN’ IN FULL

Audience member Biddy O’Loughlin:

What is a woman?

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?

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard:

I’m very happy to answer your question but I do worry that – I should just say I spend around half of each year in the UK.

And in the UK this has turned into a kind of gotcha parlour game, so if you’re listening to the radio there will literally be some person on there from London City Council who’s trying to tell you why the traffic is not going to flow well that day and the journo will be saying “can you tell me what a woman is?” to try and create these gotcha moments.

I think we’ve just got to move away from all of that and just come at this once again from first principles and say to ourselves, we as a community are full of people with diverse stories and diverse life experiences, amongst that rich diversity which … is powerful 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.

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. 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.

And then there are a set of issues that need to be thought through about prison arrangements, about fairness in elite sport – those sorts of things – that where up to thinking about and working through if we try and we try and do it inclusively.

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.

And I, having certainly met, known and appeared on stage with, transsexual women believe that part of that inclusion is referring to them the way they want to be referred to, using the pronouns that they want have used about them – I would seek to do that in that circumstance – I would seek to do it when I was meeting somebody from an ethnically-diverse background if there was a particular way that they wanted to be referred to, have their ethnicity referred to then I would adopt that way and the list goes on and I think if we can all do that we can kind of take the temperature out of this.

And I think the temperature is being created for political reasons often, not because it’s inherent in the discussion.

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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk

Julia Gillard’s waffling four-minute response as she’s asked ‘what is a woman?’ and whether she agrees some women have penises: ‘Floundering hopelessly’

READ JULIA GILLARD’S ANSWER TO ‘WHAT IS A WOMAN’ IN FULL