Jon Stewart took Republicans to task for what he calls their “gotcha question” about gender identity by pointing out that throughout history, “woman” has been defined “by whatever men had in their wallet that day.” One of his references: the Bible.
“We are in a new dawn of gender and sex complexity, where those who don’t fit into a simple binary are meant to be seen with humanity,” the comedian began the Season 2 premiere of his Apple TV+ series “The Problem With Jon Stewart” Friday night. He very quickly put the spotlight on the Republican party and their disdain for the progressive agenda. “As we know from history, any moment of progressive visability will be met with a vicious backlash,” he said, cutting to clips of various right-wing pundits insisting “there are two genders.”
The point was clear, as Stewart put it, that conservatives define the human race by a simple binary, a black and white understanding: there are men, and there are women. And, Stewart said, “never the twain shall meet.” Until…
Trump is called an alpha male, Elmo is called Pajama Boy and Arnold Schwarzenegger tossed out the moniker “girlie man” when referring to someone whom he believes has less testosterone than he does. “Clearly, masculinity appears to be on a dimmer, not an on-off switch. But ladies are different,” Stewart said. And out came the name-calling in clips with conservatives describing women as “tomboy,” “rabid feminists,” “high-rolling bimbos” and “pretty girlie girl.”
“My God, what a cruise line buffet of the gradient of the American gender expression. Turns out there’s a lot of non-binary s— happening between the binaries,” Stewart said. “But that hasn’t stopped the traditionalists from deploying their newest weapon in the culture war arsenal: the obvious ‘gotcha question.’”
The man on the street interviewing tourists and Sen. Marsha Blackburn questioning Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson all have the same question: How do you define the word woman? A fired up Ted Cruz can be seen in a clip saying, “For all recorded history, people have known what a woman is.”
“Yes! All of recorded history!! It was simple!” a boisterous Stewart said mockingly. “Until, like, a year ago. The answer to what is a woman has always been the same.” Looking down at his notes, Stewart quotes Aristotle with force, ‘…woman was thus a deformity, but one which occurred in the ordinary course of nature.’ I’m sorry. That’s Aristotle. I apologize. That’s not what I meant.”
He continued. “I meant, a woman is a person who has no legal existence once married!’” he screamed, paraphrasing a quote from Coverture Law. “That’s not right,” he said calmly. “No. Throughout history, it’s not a gotcha question, a woman is ‘30 shekels,’” he said, quoting Leviticus … “unless she’s whorish then a woman is a loaf of bread,” he said, referencing another Bible verse, this time Proverbs.
“Yes,” he said, summing it up. “It turns out, for most of recorded history women were just defined by whatever men had in their wallet that day.”
You can watch the entire segment in the clip above.
Season 2 of “The Problem With Jon Stewart” is available on Apple TV+ with a subscription, with new episodes every Friday.
