Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Declines To Define 'Woman' Because She's 'Not A Biologist,' Sparking Memes Amid Supreme Court Confirmation
Yesterday on the second day of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennesee asked Jackson to define the term “woman,” to which Jackson refused to do, saying “I’m not a biologist.” The response subsequently went viral, causing the word "biologist" to trend on Twitter and ignite viral discussions as people responded to her remarks with memes and hot takes into today.
Jackson’s answer was widely criticized and mocked by right-leaning commentators online, who argued the definition of "woman" was very clear. The topic of gender identity is top-of-mind for many as states around the U.S. consider (or have already passed) laws that would define what a woman is — potentially excluding transgender people from that category in some places.
For Senator Blackburn and others, the problem with Jackson’s response had to do with its perceived wokeness. Pundits online offered their own definitions of “woman,” asserting that, in their view, the answer to Senator Blackburn’s question was obvious. As such, jokes followed in the wake of the discussions.
Many on the other side of the aisle have argued that conservative critiques of Jackson have centered around issues of gender and race, with Republican senators like Ted Cruz asking more questions about Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ issues than about legal practice or principles. Some Republicans also rallied around what Democrats call a “debunked” claim by Senator Josh Hawley that Jackson is “soft” on child pornography offenders.
Supporters of Judge Jackson mostly memed about her qualifications compared to those of her GOP questioners, arguing that Blackburn is not as intelligent as Jackson.
A Washington Post chart comparing Jackson’s qualifications to those of her predecessors also circulated widely. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
Quite the @washingtonpost chart on the background and experience that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will bring to the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/S3dMEjFUYd
— chrismeagher46 (@chrismeagher46) March 21, 2022
Most observers seem to believe that Ketanji Brown Jackson’s chances of confirmation are very good. Due to the Republicans’ so-called “nuclear option” filibuster reform in 2017, Supreme Court nominees only need 51 votes for confirmation (which, with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as a tiebreaker, the Democrats have). According to a recent Gallup poll, Jackson also enjoys significant public support.
"Initial public support for judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the Supreme Court ties as the highest Gallup has measured for any recent nominee." https://t.co/RzysdtgxP8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2022
For the past few years, Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been a reliable way for Senate Judiciary Committee members to earn national media attention (then-Senator Kamala Harris famously trended in 2018 following her questioning of Justice Brett Kavanaugh) and so the hearings tend to produce more memes than other legislative proceedings. As the hearings continue this week, expect more viral tweets and partisan squabbling.
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Gumshoe
People are pretty annoyingly conflating "recongising" with "defining". Defining things is very hard to do in general, because it requires very specific immutable paramters that all examples have to meet. I can't tell you the definition of many common things without looking it up or having to think about it. I don't know the definition of a dog, or a car, or a lemon. I can probably tell you if something is a dog, or a car, or a lemon, but that doesnt' mean I can define it in a way that is unambiguous and not controversial.
The Supreme Court itself famously failed to define pornography in the 60s and had to just resort to the famous test of "I know it when I see it". For most people, that's going to be how they define what a woman is too. I know the answer conservatives want is "a woman is someone born with a vagina", but that's just a deliberate attempt to erase trans and intersex women, and it's not how we recognise gender anyway. I can say Marsha Blackburn is a woman, and I don't need to make sure she has a vagina to do it. Similarly, if I worked with someone who looked like Blaire White, I'd instinctively call them a woman too, and lacking other information you probably would too.
Nurdboy42
Woman: featherless biped.
Pokejoseph64
Still more qualified than kavanaugh and Barrett
Xtal
Why?
ConspiracyNut
Because they disagree with Pokejoseph, whose authority on politician worth is likely somewhere between Patrick Star and a half-rotted potato.
KoimanZX
This is the kind of thing that pushed me away from Breadtube and the like. I'm sorry to be a bigot, but a woman is an adult human with female reproductive structures. There is no male or female "essence", and the idea of sexed brains is absurd. Many of these people claim to be Marxists, yet they deny material reality with this idealist notion of "gender." The end result is people hating their bodies, thinking that they are somehow "wrong", and giving lots of money to the medical industry to "fix" said bodies.
And no, I'm not a TERF because I'm not a feminist (gender critical feminists like to blame everything on porn and regularly demonize men). Feel free to ban me for hate speech, but I can't act like 2+2=5 anymore.
Sumarios
"I'm not qualified to say what a rock is; I'm not a geologist."
"I'm not qualified to say what a flower is; I'm not a botanist."
"I'm not qualified to say what a cloud is; I'm not a meteorologist."
"Is that a baby? I wouldn't know; I'm not a pediatrician."
The sad part is, she actually is qualified to be a supreme court judge. But if she had given a real answer the entire media and educational apparatus (which is currently singing her praises for bending the knee) would have turned on her. She's not stupid. We just watched a soon to be supreme court judge fold to social pressure in an agonizingly obvious way. Which is a bit concerning for the future.
Jill
None of those are as obvious as you might think. Is a cluster of mineral particles that falls apart in your hand a rock? When referring to a sunflower flower is it one individual floret, or is it the collection of hundreds to thousands of them as in the vernacular? Is the steam from a kettle legally cloud? Is someone who looks young guaranteed to be such and therefore ignore alternate evidence to the contrary?
When one is in a position to legally define something, this is important. What "real answers" are you you going to use to objectively include everyone you consider to "be a woman" and exclude everyone you don't? People who were born intersex but did not know until adulthood and appear female "not women"? Are people who physically appear female but naturally have higher than average testosterone level "not wemen"? Are people who appear to be standard girls in their youth but do not undergo standard female puberty and find out they are chromosomal XXY "not women"? If you limit it to undergoing puberty "as a male" do you mark people who thought they were FtM but then did not continue/retransitioned after feeling that wasn't right for them as "not women"?
Even independent of trans women, if you were to legally define women by one of these metrics, you would be excluding people that most people would not seriously question if the people was female or not.
Sumarios
If someone hands you a rock and you act like you don't know what it is you're either an idiot or you're being obtuse on purpose. This is no different than the kid who says "Actually, it's not cold, it's less hot."
Yes, intersex people exist (although most intersex people are still clearly male or female, the truly physically androgynous ones are quite rare). Yes, there is room for nuance. There are outliers and they deserve equal treatment which a one-size-fits-all approach may not support.
This does not change the fact that nobody needs a biology degree know what a woman is.
Jill
You are rather missing the point.
If you hand someone a bit of granite, then pretty much everyone says it is a rock. What about sand that has been weted and dried? Most would reasonably say that is not a rock. Now, what of extremely brittle sandstone that crumbs to the touch? Can you clearly and explicitly tell me why that is/is not a rock? What about chalk? What about iron oxide concretions? Most people "know" what a rock is. Very few people can give a clear definition that encompasses everything that is and excludes everything that isn't.
You are acting as if defining what "is a woman" is so incredibly easy that it is laughable someone does not want to do it. However, when asked, you in fact made no attempt to define it yourself. My point is that most attempts by non-experts to define things to clearly include all of the thing intended and exclude everything not is very likely going to have Diogenees bring forth a plucked chicken. For a thought experiment that's kind of funny. For someone who deals with interpreting laws at the highest levels of government, how they say and define certain things will have impacts on people's lives for decades to come.
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