Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who just took office in New Zealand earlier this year, appeared to struggle mightily before utterly failing to define the word “woman” during a recent press appearance.
British television host Piers Morgan mocked Hipkins, noting that he had failed to define the term despite the fact that he had only just replaced a woman — Jacinda Ardern — when he took on the role of prime minister.
“BREAKING: New Zealand’s new Prime Minister doesn’t know what a woman is, despite replacing one as Prime Minister,” Morgan tweeted.
WATCH:
BREAKING: New Zealand’s new Prime Minister doesn’t know what a woman is, despite replacing one as Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/3Gj39RhXDX
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) April 3, 2023
One reporter apparently took Hipkins off guard at the Sunday press conference, asking directly, “How do you and how does this government define a woman?”
“To be honest, Sean that question has come slightly out of left field for me. The biology, sex, gender …” Hipkins began, and then he trailed off, appearing to search his brain for the right answer. “People define themselves, people define their own genders.”
The reporter pressed again, saying that he only wanted to know how Hipkins would define what a woman is.
Hipkins dug in and essentially repeated his non-answer, saying first that he had not really expected that question and had therefore not taken the time to “pre-formulate” an answer. “In terms of gender identity, I think people define their gender identity for themselves.”
Hipkins is certainly not the first to struggle with that particular question — when confronted by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson famously claimed, “I am not a biologist.”
The question at the center of the trans movement has become so pervasive that The Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh created a successful documentary based solely on how people around the world respond to it — and people like author J.K. Rowling have been attacked and labeled “TERF” (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) for suggesting that the question does, in fact, have a definitive answer.