Donald Trump was asked to define what a woman is – a perennial question that conservatives like to say liberals can’t answer as they ignore liberals’ answers – and he was unable to provide a definition that included all women and excluded people who aren’t women.

Trump attended an event this past Friday for the swearing-in of interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba and took questions. A very friendly reporter who prefaced his question by thanking Trump for “keeping men out of women’s sports” asked him, “What is a woman and why is it important that we understand the difference between men and women?” The question was posed in the context of Women’s History Month, which ends today.

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“It’s sort of easy to answer for me,” Trump started, “because a woman is someone who can have a baby under certain circumstances, she has a quality…”

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That is where his definition ended, and he started to riff on the theme.

“A woman is a person who- a woman is a person who is much smarter than a man, I’ve always said,” he continued. “A woman is a person who doesn’t give a man even a chance of success.”

“And a woman’s a person that in many cases has been treated very badly because I think that what happens with this crazy, this crazy issue of men being able to play in women’s sports is just ridiculous and very unfair to women.”

No men are competing in women’s sports. No mainstream politician is advocating for men to play in women’s sports. Trump didn’t stop men from playing in women’s sports because no men were playing in women’s sports.

What is actually happening is a handful of trans girls and women have participated in girls’ and women’s school and professional sports, often meeting extensive medical requirements to do so.

Trump’s definition of a woman – “someone who can have a baby under certain circumstances” – is one that has generally been rejected by women’s rights advocates for several reasons. First, many people who are considered women are not capable of getting pregnant and carrying the pregnancy to term, including postmenopausal women, women who are sterile, and trans women.

Also, Trump’s definition of “woman” would include minors – that is, “girls,” not “women” – who are capable of getting pregnant. The anti-child marriage organization Girls Not Brides cites the idea that a girl becomes a woman at puberty – or between the ages of eight and 13 – as a social norm linked with child marriage and the sexual exploitation of underage girls.

Last, Trump’s definition would include trans men and nonbinary people who are not women but are capable of getting pregnant.

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