I Am Woman, Hear Me … quietly leave the room

“Can you provide a definition of the word ‘Woman’?”, asked Senator Blackburn.  

“No, I can’t.  Not in this context…I’m not a biologist.” 

~ Justice Nominee Jackson’s Response to the Senate Judiciary, March 22

When I was a standup comic, the most exciting part of any show was when something unexpected happened in the room that caught everyone’s attention.  At that moment, I had a choice; continue with my bit or lay aside the script to venture into the great unknown called improv.  

Nine times out of ten, I chased the squirrel in hopes of unearthing treasure troves of laughter from the expectant audience.  Even typing this now, I can feel the adrenaline surging through my body as these were often the most hilariously memorable parts of a show for both me and the crowd.  

When we depart from the script, truth has a way of leaking out.

This is what just happened in the Senate Judiciary Hearing when Biden’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice was asked a question any first grader can answer.  The problem was; no one was laughing.

This may be an example of why leftist education activists are trying to confuse and contort elementary children’s minds when it comes to gender and sexuality.  The innocent children are making the broken adults look bad.  

It’s easier to break the children than to look in the mirror and repent.

Senator Blackburn was working from a script, which left nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson no choice but resort to her improv skills.  I genuinely wonder if, given the chance, Jackson would have tried out different material in the second show?

One friend coined it a silly question altogether.  Others are screeching that anyone who even considers an examination of this exchange is a racist, misogynist, transphobe, or committing violent hate speech.

I am not any of these labels and this is not a silly question.  So let’s pause to think about this while ignoring the insults blooming across social media landscapes like poppies in Oz.  It is a monumentally important question that deserves an answer, particularly from someone who may serve on the SCOTUS for decades  

Senator Blackburn went on to cite the fact that a biological male had just won the NCAA Division I women’s swimming championship.  Judge Jackson rightly replied, 

These are topics being hotly discussed … and could come to the court.

Jackson admitted that as a Judge, she may have to preside over disputes regarding gender and sexuality — yet she can’t tell us what a woman is.  This should cause all of us to stop and lean in. But, is this even her fault?

USA Today recently named Rachel Levine as one of their celebrated Women of the Year.  Rachel spent the first 53 years of life as a man, was married, and has children.  Rachel now identifies as a woman yet has no breasts, no uterus, no fallopian tubes, and no ovaries.  Rachel is genetically, chromosomally, and anatomically a male.  

Don’t hear me wrong; Rachel has the personal right and freedom to define his or her identity however they choose.  It’s one of the hallmark provisions of living in a country where individual liberty is fiercely protected.  What is not provisioned for is the demand upon the rest of society to dismantle the fundamental cornerstones of civilization in the process.  

This week, both The Babylon Bee and Charlie Kirk had their Twitter accounts suspended for precisely this matter of sexuality and gender.  While The Bee serves up its spicy satire with a Scoville rating in the millions, Charlie’s tweet registered at a Heinz 57 on the heat scale.  Yet, both were suspended.

Who can really blame Judge Jackson as she is astutely aware that one person’s individual liberty has suddenly been bundled with mass formation compliance. 

Since college, I’ve had male friends who cross-dressed but that didn’t make them women.  I also have male friends who score high on effeminate personality traits but likewise, it doesn’t make them women.  And I have gay friends who have not had to change the definition of man and woman in order to be content and carry on with their lives.

Once the T was hitched to the LGB train, the rejiggering of fundamental terminology was inevitable.

Even though my car has an internal combustion engine, affixing a Tesla logo on the grill doesn’t make it electric.  When I am with my friend who is completely colorblind, I don’t tell him the sky is green and the grass is blue.  And no matter how much I would like to identify as a 28-year-old comedian again, the fact is I was born in 1963 and used up all my funny.

We’ve heard the argument made that to defend or adhere to the etymology of certain words is to delegitimize or even erase a person’s right to exist.  While this is patently false by any measure, behold the communication calisthenics being performed by all those who hope to avoid drawing a penalty from the woke referees.

The only thing truly fluid in this game of gender are the rules on the boxtops.

Lia Thomas has the right to call himself or herself a woman.   But should that translate to every biological female in the NCAA swimming ranks to quietly accept defeat? More so, should an entire nation be forced to collectively jettison the biological definition of words across every facet of society?  

It very well may be that Judge Jackson was unable to state the definition of the word woman because she, like most of us, has been bullied enough times into the corner of contentious confusion.  Or, was she merely trying to avoid the penalty box?  

I am a Christian.  I don’t expect all of you to likewise identify and therefore my expression of being a Christian may be very different from how you might understand it.  However, that neither erases nor negates our ability to define the empirical meaning of the word and understand its derivation.

In the ancient scriptures of the first church, the term Christian means “Little Christ.”  Jesus’ followers did not just believe in a set of rules or ideas but also lived their lives as Jesus did — miracles included — by the indwelling life of the Holy Spirit.  

The definition is crystal clear, it hasn’t changed, and is a deeply meaningful term for billions of people on the Earth today.   Understanding that the definition of woman impacts every single person on the planet, perhaps we should be a bit less hasty to rejigger it.

If confirmed, Judge Jackson would be the first black woman to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court. Or would she? If she can’t define the word woman, will the milestone still apply?

It does make me wonder how her husband and two daughters feel about her response.

Politics aside, a Supreme Court Justice is charged to uphold the Constitution, enforce the Bill of Rights, and interpret the law. When a nominee for this role is unable to define the word woman, we should all thoughtfully ponder how this could be and more importantly: Where is this leading us?

Maybe a vision flashed before her mindseye of her answer rolling across every cable news network for weeks on end and chose to skate away from the penalty box.  Or maybe she is genuinely confused by her gender? Either way, these are not the responses of a Judge who understands the authority her words carry.

The troubling fact is her response not only highlights the crumbling state of cultural dialogue under the seismic pressure of progressive ideology, but is a stark denial of the image we have all been created in.

Elohim created humankind in his own image, in the image of Elohim he created them, male and female he created them.

~ The Book of Genesis, Chapter 1

God has never been known to throw the script away.