Why Judge Jackson’s Non-Answer About Women Was “Transphobic”

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made stunning news this week when she told the Unites States Senate she could not define what a woman is because, as she put it, “I’m not a biologist.” Liberals, feminists, and trans activists have remained curiously silent on a woman being considered for a seat on the highest court in the land not being able to define what a woman is. Yes, it is a head-scratcher.

But, few have noted this other curious fact.

According to the very rules of the new gender orthodoxy, Judge Jackson’s answer clearly put her in the camp of transphobes and TERFS, supposedly the worst people alive. It has gotten lesbian professors banished from university campuses. It got J.K. Rowling exiled from her own literary franchise.

You see, Judge Jackson’s appeal to the objective authority of biology makes her a biological essentialist (or “bio-essentialist” as the kids say today). We know this term at Focus on the Family because we regularly get accused of being “bio-essentialists” by gender activists. They mean it as a slur because we believe that objective biology, and not feelings or “identity,” are what make someone a boy or girl, man or woman.

Yes, according to the sloppy rhetoric of gender politics today, Judge Jackson’s appeal to biology clearly puts her in the transphobe category. Don’t take our word for it. The gender ideologists tell us so quite clearly here, here, here, here, and here for starters. As the folks at Lambda Literary, a leading pro-LGBT activist collective, explain plainly, “we cannot content ourselves with any [Supreme Court] protections that rely on biological essentialism.”

This fact indicts and condemns Judge Jackson, even though major gay and trans groups are on record praising her.

In trying to cleverly dodge the brand-new, woke-created pitfalls in answering one of the most basic questions of humanity, Judge Jackson actually and unwittingly stepped right into the very middle of the controversy she was trying to avoid: Do biology or feelings determine male or female?

For anyone paying attention to this whole debate, biology is the new very wrong answer when it comes to what male and female are. And for anyone keeping honest score, Judge Jackson’s answer puts her clearly on the wrong side of the new Gender Orthodoxy.

The gender ideology camp cannot even keep its own beliefs straight because that’s what happens when you try to turn nature on its head. Judge Jackson is the latest victim. This is clear to anyone listening carefully to what gender theorists are foolishly trying to teach us.