GOP Lawmakers Struggle When HuffPost Asks Them to Answer ‘What is a Woman?’

Throughout Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation process, conservatives have criticized how she responded when asked to define a “woman.” HuffPost decided to ask Republican lawmakers the very same question Jackson got from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), which came back with some interesting results.

It was just over 2 weeks ago when Jackson took questions from Blackburn during her second day of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At one point, Blackburn asked Jackson “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Jackson replied she could not in that specific context because “I’m not a biologist.”

Blackburn was unsatisfied with that response, telling Jackson “The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.” Jackson’s answer drew condescension and outrage from other conservatives as well while the nation continues to grapple with transgender issues.

HuffPost released a report on Wednesday, describing several engagements with Judiciary Committee Republicans who were asked for their own answer to Blackburn’s question. Reporters Arthur Delaney and Jennifer Bendery said Blackburn dodged her own question “three times in a row, citing her policy of not talking to reporters in Senate hallways.”

“In a follow-up email to HuffPost,” they added, “a spokesperson for Blackburn said her definition of a woman is ‘Two X chromosomes.’ The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether Blackburn considers women born with only one X chromosome to be women, or if she considers men born with two X chromosomes to be women.”

That was how Blackburn handled it, but several other GOPers were asked the same inquiry, which led to a myriad of responses about X chromosomes, body parts, and some who just refused to answer the question.

Here’s Huffpost’s reporting on how Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) answered it after saying a woman is someone who is “biologically a woman”:

The birds and the bees stuff — it’s been a while, but I think I remember the general gist of the differences. To have a hard time answering that question is kind of odd to me.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX):

Cruz, when asked, immediately answered that a woman is “an adult female human.”

He denied that he had recently looked it up in a dictionary.

“I just happen to speak English,” Cruz said, adding: “A Homo sapien with two X chromosomes.”

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA):

I don’t have anything for you on that

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX):

I’m not going to indulge you.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO):

“Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman,” he said. “Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”

So if a woman has her uterus removed by a hysterectomy, is she still a woman?

“Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?” he asked. (Yes.)

Asked again later if he would consider a woman to still be a woman if she lost her reproductive organs to cancer, Hawley said: “I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?”

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC)

My wife.