Smithsonian National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig was brought before congress in July 2026. During the questioning, Nancy Mace asked the director “what is a woman?” For those not familiar with this rhetorical tool, the question might have seemed irrelevant and even bizarre. However, it is a well-established rhetorical tool used by the right that was popularized by Matt Walsh and Justin Folk in the propamentary What is a Woman?
The use of rhetorical tools is a rational approach. For those who accept the cognitive miser theory, using a rhetorical tool saves cognitive resources. Even without a theory, it makes sense not to waste time re-inventing the wheel. It also allows one to borrow skills by “running” a rhetorical “program.”
My fellow gamers will understand the analogy of using an optimized character build and rotation in a game like Diablo IV or World of Warcraft: this allows a person to play above their own skill level by using the work of someone else. There is also the analogy to how people in tech support and customer service use scripts. One can even look at expert systems and AI that use stolen processes to emulate skills.
I have no general issue with people borrowing skills and using templates as I do this myself when I, for example, use an argument by analogy or use a plumbing technique I learned from a book or YouTube video. I also have no issue with using rhetoric—as I tell my students, rhetoric is like flavoring for food. Rhetoric is logically neutral but there is no need to avoid making your arguments “taste good” by using some rhetoric. But I do have an issue with substituting rhetoric for logic and using it in bad faith.
While “what is a woman?” can be a good faith philosophical question, when someone like Mace asks it, they are asking in bad faith. They are not inviting someone along on a journey of discovery or a thoughtful inquiry. Instead, it is a bad faith set up for a trap, for they already have the answer they want, and their intent is to score rhetorical points as part of an ideological performance.
If the target of the question is not prepared, they will probably flounder and struggle with their answer. The questioner can allow them to flounder a while and then shut them down with their prepared answer: “A woman is an adult human female.” For many audiences, it will seem that the questioner won: they confidently offer a decisive, simple answer while their target floundered. But this is obviously just a rhetorical victory: they have proved nothing and have merely persuaded the audience. This is why people on the right prefer to engage with unprepared people, such as college freshmen and other non-experts.
When engaging with a prepared or expert target, folks on the right prefer to ask the question when the target has a limited time to answer, the context favors them or when they can edit the response. In the case of Mace questioning Hartig, Hartig had only a short time to respond and was speaking before congress and cameras as a director trying to do the best she could for the Smithsonian and not, for example, as an expert on gender in a risk free environment. Folks on the right try to avoid engaging experts in contexts in which the experts have the time to provide a detailed response without a metaphorical sword dangling over their head. But this question can still be rhetorically effective against even an expert.
While the right professes to believe their simplistic, grade-school answer to the question “what is a woman?”, this answer does actually have many rhetorical advantages over the sort of complex answer an expert would give.
One is that people generally find complexity boring when it is outside their areas of interest. Obviously. As a philosopher, I notice this—which makes sense. Most people are not, for example, interested in the finer points of trope theory. But I also notice it in my role as the DIY guy who fixes things. I learned decades ago that most people just want the thing fixed and, at best, a simple explanation. They do not want to hear me talk about IRQ conflicts or the idiosyncrasies of 2-stroke engines. An expert explaining what a woman is will most likely bore people, especially since the time spent learning expertise cuts into the time one might spend learning showmanship and rhetorical skills.
The second is that people often find complex explanations about what they thought were simple things unsettling or even frightening, even if they do not have an ideological commitment to the simple conception. While this might seem odd, dealing with the complexities of reality is a matter not just of intellect but also a matter of virtue. Virtue is, as our good dead friend Aristotle said, hard.
Engaging with the complexities of reality requires moderating your pride because you will need to admit when you do not know and when you are wrong. In American culture, admitting ignorance or error is usually a blow to one’s pride and status. It is often equated with weakness, although it obviously requires more strength of character to admit ignorance or error than it does to lie. Admitting ignorance or error also requires courage because, as just noted, doing so puts your status and pride at risk. My students often seem disconcerted and worried when I tell them, somewhat jokingly, that I am wrong about everything.
Concern about status crosses the political divide in the United States but folks on the right seem somewhat more concerned about hierarchy and status than the left. So, if someone offers a complex account of what it is to be a woman that goes beyond what we are taught in grade school, this might cause discomfort and fear in the audience. As such, a simple answer that fits what we were taught in grade school will feel right.
Given that Socrates famously claimed that wisdom is knowing you know nothing, it is hardly surprising that philosophers are often willing to admit ignorance and error. At least within certain limits that, ironically, help preserve their status as philosophers. In my own case, studying philosophy did help me accept that my ignorance is infinite and that I am wrong about everything. But my DIY training also led me to this view.
I had the good fortune of being raised by a dad who taught me many useful skills of the sort that would be stereotypically considered manly. I learned to use tools ranging from saws to rifles. I also took shop in school, something that has apparently been abandoned. I was good at shop, as evidenced by the fact that I have all my fingers. During COVID I enhanced my DIY skills by learning much more about electrical repair, plumbing and automobile repair. I’m also good at electrical work, as evidenced by the fact that I have not been electrocuted or burned down my house.
Refusing to acknowledge ignorance or error is an obstacle in fixing or building things, so part of learning to be good at these skills is learning how to moderate pride and develop courage. While one can get away with lying in business and politics, lying is not going to get your ice maker working again or solve the problem with your PC crashing when you try to play Darktide. Sure, you can lie to someone about fixing their icemaker or PC but that is a business skill. Lying about fixing, for example affordability, is a political skill. As is lying about what it is to be a woman.
The simple answer, that a woman is an adult human female, is obviously appealing to people who accept that ideology. Obviously, any conflicting answer will be looked upon negatively, especially if it is complex. Ironically, while the right seems smugly content with what they think is a simple answer that “proves” their gender ideology correct, they do not seem to understand that it invites more questions. Obviously enough, someone with any curiosity would realize that the concepts of adult, human and female raise questions that demand complex answers.
For example, while the concept of adult might seem simple and obvious, in the United States even the legal concept is complicated. For voting, contracts, jury duty, military service and consensual sex, a person is an adult at 18. For drinking, 21. If we get into the biology of adulthood, then we get different answers that vary between individuals. If we consider adulthood from a normative standpoint, such as in terms of moral accountability, then we also get different answers that vary with time and culture.
Sorting out what it is to be human is also a complex matter. There is the biological question in which we might wonder, for example, if neanderthals were human. There is also the normative question. For example, Kirk claimed that Spock was the most human, despite being only half biologically human. Outside of sci-fi, we make the moral claims that someone is human or inhuman, although they are obviously homo sapiens. There is also the metaphysical question of what it is to be human. For example, was Plato right when he claimed there was a form of Man? Probably not.
And although the right thinks (or pretends) they perfectly understand what it is to be female, this is also complicated even if we just stick to genetics and biology. For example, we are told in grade school that females are XX and males are XY. But 1 in 1,000 females are XXX. Human genital physiology is also complicated. But how can one respond to the “what is a woman?” question effectively and honestly?
From a rhetorical standpoint, the ideal would be to have a concise, snappy answer that is true. So, when the Nancy Maces of the world ask, “what is a woman?” one could just say (insert concise snappy truth). Unfortunately, the truth is complicated.
As others have noted, there is no lower limit to simplicity if you lie, while reality imposes a simplicity floor on truth. This is one of the many reasons politicians and advertisers lie in varying degrees; they know that they need to keep it simple while also understanding simplifying leads to untruth. As such, beyond saying “it is complicated” there is no short, simple true answer to the question, which gives the right a huge rhetorical advantage. As would be suspected, they use the advantage of untrue simplicity broadly and this is augmented by decades of the right training Americans to distrust expertise. They also use the rhetorical technique of repetition as the question “what is a woman?” and the response “an adult human female” are talking points used across the world by the right.
To be honest, there is probably no way to counter this rhetorical question in a way that would change the minds of people already committed to the “an adult human female” gender ideology. Fortunately, most people are not committed to this ideology and their minds can change. After all, people have changed their minds about many things in America, with a recent change being the public view of same sex couples. It was not long ago that people just said “it’s Adame and Eve and not Adam and Steve” to “refute” same sex marriage. So, “a woman is an adult human female” might become another rhetorical relic of the right and they will need to find a new vulnerable group to demonize. Or rely on the classics, as misogyny, racism and antisemitism have served the right well.
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