Nominee for the Supreme Court of the USA can't define what a woman is

I'm in the U.S and will take any sign of hope for future court decisions that I can.
I get that because I do exactly the same whenever the Labour Party throw us a bone. But I'm trying to train myself out of it.

The left in the US & UK have both abandoned women. The fact that neither of them will admit that a woman is an adult human female attests to that. It's all about rights of men. There is no doubt that the Supreme Court is in need of a re-balance if Roe v Wade is to be upheld...but this is likely to lead to the end of women's sport.

(As an aside, obviously professors of gender studies have shown themselves completely unable to say what a woman is. Or they are opposed to even trying to ... they just want to 'queer' the very concept , it seems. Which is no basis for any sort of laws.)

I've been waiting all day for y'all to figure that out. She said, "I'm not a biologist" not "I'm not a PhD in gender studies." Clue dropped.'

I said something similar on another thread.
She knows damn fine what a woman is, and the necessary and sufficient criteria for being one. But she can't straight out say it without being slaughtered.

'If Ketanji Brown Jackson says she can't define a woman because she isn't a "biologist"...does that mean being a man or a woman is, in fact, based in biology?'

twitter.com/SydneyLWatson/status/1506815205577220109

'I've been waiting all day for y'all to figure that out. She said, "I'm not a biologist" not "I'm not a PhD in gender studies." Clue dropped.'

twitter.com/miashadow7606/status/1506826667368583174

I'd rather people asked "do you think transwomen are women for the purposes of included them in women's spaces" or something, because that gets to the heart of what they want to know.

"Define" just seems a bad question. It reminds me of undergraduate days when we were learning about what makes humans different - is it language (then we'd learn about various animals with language); is it lying (then we'd learn about possible cases of primates lying) etc. Every possible characteristic had some potential 'counter'. And yet for every day use, there was little need for a definition.

It's only from reading things here that I learned that 'adult human female' was the answer that people are after to that question. Otherwise, I'd be trying to define it in terms of chromosomes, physical characteristics, reproductive function etc., and knowing that any of those could have edge cases tht might mean I was wrong. I'd not have said 'female' because it would imply the same thing as woman, in my mind.

So it seems more like it's a question to test whether people konw what the debate is, and what they say indirectly shows what side they're on. I'd rather they just came out and asked the right question, really!

But yes, she should have known this was a particular debate at the moment, along with many others. I can't blame her for just saying it's a question for biologists, though.

What it illustrates to me is that, just in the UK, right-wing politicians in the US have realised that they can use "What is a woman?" as a trick question to left-wing politicians.

If they answer honestly with something like "an adult human female" they will antagonise all the loonies on their own side who think that men can be women. If they answer anything else (e.g. "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman" or, as in this case, "I'm not a biologist",) they risk looking like an idiot.

So from the point of view of Republicans/Tories, it's a win-win.

It’s getting people talking at least.

Actually I thought "I'm not a biologist" was quite a sensible answer.

Most of us who are not thoroughly immersed in the debate have never really thought about exactly how one defines a word like woman, really. We just know we are and have always been and always will be. It isn't something that most of us ever think about putting into words.

And then when you start to become aware of the whole debate and the minefield around what exactly you say, you realise that this is somehow going to be seen as a 'trick' question. You don't want to mention physical attributes/organs, because some might not have them, you don't want to get into hormones, same sort of thing, etc - those sorts of things are fraught with difficulty. And just saying 'adult human female' sounds simplistic ,because you'd expect that the person would then say 'ok, define female' - it sounds like they are asking for a specific biological definition, how can you tell exactly, etc. And for a lot of people, they wouldn't really know.

Of course someone in her position should know that it's a huge debate at the moment and probably have prepared something to say.

But I do think that some people who are really immersed in the debate have lost sight of what the average person probably thinks if they're asked to define a woman. It just seems like such a bizarre question that many might not know how to answer - female seems too simplistic, since for most people, it just means the same as woman, and thus is circular. And beyond that, you might have to get into some very specific biological facts, and they wouldn't want to claim to be an expert in that either. And for normal day-to-day purposes, it just isn't something that needs definining!

So I have sympathy (to an extent) for someone finding that question difficult. I'd probably flounder if I was asked that question too, wondering what on earth the questioner was actually after and what hidden meanings there were.

Somehow I find it even more depressing that a Supreme Court nominees claims you have to be a biologist to know what a woman is and, instead of laughing her out of court, we scrutinise her words for signs of something positive.

Some on Twitter thought "I'm not a biologist" was implying that the definition is based in biology. So it might be a more satisfactory answer than it seems at first.

"Though Jackson claimed to be unable to define the word “woman,” she used it at several points while answering questions Tuesday — including when she insisted that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey “are the settled law … concerning the right to terminate a woman’s pregnancy.”"

nypost.com/2022/03/23/sen-blackburn-slams-judge-jackson-on-definition-of-woman/amp/

If you don't know what a word means should you be using it? That being said I'm glad she said woman instead of pregnant person but I'm so sick of the gotchas of people not being able to define woman.

I feel embarassed to be on the left. I always felt bad for religious people who believed in science to be lumped in with creationists and now I feel like being on the left has me lumped in with people who refuse to recognise basic biology

It is very troubling that she is unable to answer that question, especially if it is out of fear of reprisal from the very people who nominated her.

How many fingers am I hold up, Ketanji?

She did say she couldn’t define woman because she is not a biologist. At least she know the answer is rooted in biology.

I don't think Trump will win in 2024.

Not saying the other two candidates would have answered this question any differently, but we'll never know. But it doesn't matter what those two would have said, because the one he chose said what she said.

All that said, given the current state, anyone he nominated here was going to get appointed in the end. No democrats will break rank, and the republicans have no way to stop the appointment.

What this will do however is give yet even more ammunition to the republicans for what is set to be an absolute bloodbath midterm cycle, and a decisive Trump win in 2024.

Men have to be allowed into your safe spaces because trans women are women, but hey, you can have an abortion if they rape you. - Hardly a compelling campaign platform.

But what is the alternative? They have to play the Republican Party at its own game. Biden only has a slim margin in the Senate. Risk losing it, then losing a justice and not being to get able to get a nominee passed? That would leave the SCOTUS even more politically unbalanced than it currently is following the previous President's nominees...

But then they turn around and push for expanding the court to pack it, and they openly put pressure on Breyer to resign...pretty much explicitly stating that they are treating the court as a political body.

And the inability to state a biological fact when directly asked should be an automatic disqualifier.

Wasn't the previous appointed accused of rape and still got on.

Once their on the court - they can go their own way and many have in the past.

What her way is I doubt will be clear to anyone due to all the politics she's currently wading through on the way to the post though I agree it's not looking great but that's US poltics at the minute.

It's partly because she's in a domain mixing law and politics. Next time you hear someone going on about how our judges should not have authority because they are unelected, think back to this.

What the democrats are pushing for in support of TRA is national level. There would be no options.