So Senator Marsha Blackburn asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word "woman." And while I understand the tactic of not engaging since to say anything of substance, especially if it exposes and smacks down a bigot, means political suicide and a sunk nomination, I really wish someone would. How hard would it have been to say:
I know that many people think the question of what it means to be a "woman" is easy, but it has been my experience that what it means to be a "woman," or a "man," for that matter, is actually quite complex. To some, it boils down to body parts and chromosomes. They'll say that a "woman" is defined by her ability to bear children. But then I have to ask, Senator Blackburn, as a woman who is in her 60s and thus presumably long past menopause, does that mean you aren't a woman anymore? The only thing that makes a person a woman is the menstrual cycle? What about my mother, who underwent a hysterectomy for medical reasons? Was she no longer a woman because her uterus was removed? She then had the further indignity of coming down with breast cancer and underwent radical mastectomy to remove it. Did that mean she was no longer a woman? It is my understanding that that is one of the hardest things a woman facing breast cancer has to manage: The feeling of no longer being a woman because of the loss of a breast. Their self-esteem is destroyed. Their understanding of who they are is connected to their body and to have it altered in such a radical way, even though it is done to save their lives, is such a tremendous ask of them that it is no wonder that they question what it means to be a woman if those physical signs are taken away. But I would never presume to tell someone that has had a hysterectomy and/or mastectomy, like my mother who had both, that they weren't a woman. That doesn't mean that the body has nothing to do with it. But it is so much more than just that. It would be the height of arrogance and temerity to look at survivors of cancer and polyps and fibroids and tell them that they are no longer "women" simply because their bodies no longer fit into the regimented stereotype of what it is somebody else thinks it ought to be. Was the Senator referring to something else?
But alas, that would have destroyed her nomination immediately.