After making such a big deal about Ketanji Brown Jackson’s deferral after being asked, “What is a woman?”, you’d think they’d be prepared with a good answer to the question themselves. They aren’t.

“I’m going to tell you right now what is a woman,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) informed the audience at a GOP event after namechecking Jackson. “This is an easy answer. We’re a creation of God. We came from Adam’s rib. God created us with his hands. We may be the weaker sex — we are the weaker sex — but we are our partner — we are our husband’s wife.”

That is not a workable definition. It’s actually kind of amazing that anyone in the 21st century would still believe that that old fable is literally true.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was asked by a HuffPost reporter to define woman, and replied, “Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman. Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” When the reporter asked him whether a woman whose uterus was removed via hysterectomy was still a woman, he appeared uncertain: “Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?”

Poor slow Josh. He said it didn’t seem complicated, was immediately confronted with a complication. And didn’t know how to answer it. I wonder if there are any women in his district who will notice he just turned them all into “men”?

Some Republicans punted.

“I don’t have anything for you on that,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).

“I’m not going to indulge you,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) dodged the question three times in a row, citing her policy of not talking to reporters in Senate hallways ― even though it was Blackburn who made this an issue with Jackson in the first place.

I think there must have been some panicky emails swapped around after that so they would get their story straight, because Blackburn hurried back with an answer.

In a follow-up email to HuffPost, a spokesperson for Blackburn said her definition of a woman is “Two X chromosomes.”

Except not all women have two X chromosomes, and relatively few people have actually had their chromosomes directly examined. It’s not a good criterion, you know? You can’t claim that it’s always been obvious what men and women are, and then base that distinction on a cellular property that was completely unknown until about 120 years ago, and is completely invisible now without a microscopic examination. What were the Victorians doing, just stumbling around guessing who men and women were, bumbling about and accidentally impregnating or getting impregnated?

Here come the parrots (sorry, parrots, you don’t deserve that comparison).

In a written statement, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) offered the same definition as Blackburn: “A woman is born with two X-chromosomes.”

Of course, Ted Cruz had to bungle it.

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.”

It’s Homo sapiens, you doltish imitation of a human made from a sack full of cockroaches. I’m not surprised that you would get that wrong.

Cue more circular definitions.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) shouted his definition of a woman before slipping into a Senate elevator: “An adult female of the human species.”

Define “female”.

Some people didn’t get the memo.

“I have more of a traditional view of what a woman is,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

What is that?

“My wife.”

It’s always nice to give the Ralph Wiggums a chance to speak up.

The prize for the most confused Republican answer has to go to Lindsey Graham, though.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said a woman is simply someone who is “biologically a woman,” adding that he thinks most Americans can figure out who’s a woman and who’s a man.

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

A woman is someone who is biologically a woman. Got it. That’s helpful. Well, except that word “biologically”, which he just threw in to sound sciencey, inadvertently revealing that he’s got no scientific understanding at all, just like Cruz.

It’s also revealing that he has forgotten the details of that “birds and the bees stuff” and just remembers “the general gist of the differences”. Is it any wonder he doesn’t have any children?

I made a prediction last summer.

The fall from grace was precipitous, but it should have happened long ago. The molecular biologist David M. Sabatini has been outright fired from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Whitehead Institute, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also loses his tenured position at MIT soon enough. Can you guess what prompted his ouster?

Sabatini was the unpleasant combination of arrogance and entitlement that led him to think he could fake data and sexually harass his students. He lost all of his affiliated positions at various prestigious institutions, but kept his tenure at MIT.

Until now.

David Sabatini, the high-profile biologist who was forced out of the Whitehead Institute in summer 2021 after a probe found he violated its sexual harassment policies, has resigned his tenured professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His move came after three senior MIT officials recommended revoking his tenure.

“Professor Sabatini has stepped down from his tenured faculty position at MIT … without exercising his policy right to request that a faculty committee … review the recommendation to revoke tenure,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif wrote in an email to faculty members this afternoon.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I do wonder where Sabatini is going to end up, since he’s managed to flush his entire career down the toilet. There’s a lesson to be learned there.

I think this comment from Nancy Hopkins is also an important message for everyone considering careers in science:

Nancy Hopkins, an emeritus professor of biology who helped lead a landmark push for gender equality on the MIT faculty in the 1990s, called the Sabatini resignation “a milestone,” noting in an email, “First, MIT had rules in place that forbid the faculty behavior in question. Second, a young woman had the courage to demand that the rules be enforced. And third, she was heard.”

She added: “It is noteworthy—and another sign of progress—that the heads of HHMI and the Whitehead Institute and MIT’s Dean of Science are all women—two of them the first women to hold these positions.”

Ha! The dude-bros were right to fear the feminists!

This seems to be the question for April. Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked, and I don’t think she gave a good answer: she basically punted. She told Marsha Blackburn that she was unable to answer the question because she is “not a biologist.” The problem isn’t that she’s not a biologist, it’s that the question is so complex and involves so many interacting perspectives that it is silly to expect a one sentence answer. It’s not a true/false question. It demands a full thesis paper to even begin to touch the subject, and it’s going to involve biology, genetics, endocrinology, psychology, sociology, and history to give an adequate answer. Good biologists know that, too, and so please, don’t expect us to deliver a definitive, complete definition. It’s also not going to lead you to the simple binary that Blackburn wants.

Would you believe Answers in Genesis tried to answer the question? They’re stuck on the biology, too — and I tell you what, if you’re expecting a bunch of young earth creationists to give a reliable answer on a biology question, you’re boned.

The biological differences between men and women go far beyond the reproductive system and secondary sexual characteristics. Women’s bones are, on average, less dense than men’s. Women have less muscle and more fat on their frames. Research suggests that women have better language skills and men are better at some types of math, though some of this has been attributed to differences in brain function, learning styles, and perhaps cultural expectations. (And while this may be true on a population level, it says nothing about the relative abilities of any particular man or woman.) Women’s biology is so different from men’s that doctors are now realizing they have distinctive heart attack symptoms and sometimes have different reactions to medication. Women’s lifespans are, on average, a few years longer than men’s. That the sexes are different regarding their bodies, their interests, abilities, and even their medical needs should not be surprising, nor should it be a boasting point for those of either sex.

Statistical epiphenomena are not particularly useful mechanisms for identifying the differences. They are even vaguely aware of the problem, as you may notice with that parenthetical comment that it says nothing about the relative abilities of any particular man or woman. Yes, there are differences in the averages, but there is significant overlap, and they are shaped by cultural expectations, as even AiG is able to notice. There are real biological differences, and the variants do tend to cluster into a bimodal distribution, but the properties of a population don’t necessarily apply to the individual. Many of those aren’t at all diagnostically useful — do we have to wait for someone to have a heart attack, die, and then use their symptoms and age at death to determine sex? Boy, those are going to be some depressing gender reveal parties.

Tellingly, they don’t answer the question, either. Their final definition relies on the pathetic trope of looking it up in a dictionary, and saying that everyone just knows what a woman is.

Merriam-Webster has, as of the date of writing, the primary definition of woman as “an adult female person.” The Oxford English Dictionary has the definition as “an adult female human being,” as does the Cambridge Dictionary. Every English dictionary has had a similar definition of the word woman, and up until very recently, everyone everywhere understood that men and women are the two biological sexes that comprise humanity. From ancient times, it is simply assumed that a person is either a man or a woman.

Great. Define “adult”. Define “female”. Define “person”. Every word of that definition has been historically and culturally fluid. Can you at least learn to recognize that these properties that you think are so rigid and definitive are and have always been weebly wobbly culturally defined conventions rather than inviolable biological absolutes?

Oh well, I thought Answers in Genesis would be the absolute rock bottom of the well being dug to haul up buckets of stupidity, but there’s always someone willing to dive a little deeper for that delicious, precious inanity, and here comes Madison Cawthorn.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (@RepCawthorn): "You might amend a bill, but you'll never amend biology. Science is not Burger King. You can't just have it your way…take notes Madame Speaker, I'm about to define what a woman is for you." pic.twitter.com/kPlUV2FALi

— CSPAN (@cspan) April 4, 2022

His definition:

XX chromosomes, no tallywacker.

There are people who identify as women who only have one X chromosome, and other people who identify as men who lack a “tallywacker”. This is a bad definition. It’s simple-minded and trivializing, exactly what you might expect from a Madison Cawthorn.

Let’s turn it around and ask a different question.

What then is a man?

I know. It’s just possession of a penis. Which means that a gigantic literary genre has been an epic waste of time. We can short circuit all the breast beating of Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Miller — just have their protagonists pull their pants down in the opening paragraph, done. Rip SE Hinton out of school libraries, since we can just replace her with a pantsing scene. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? We already know what manhood and masculinity are, good riddance. Homer and the Epic of Gilgamesh? Now superfluous.

It seems to me that all these self-involved authors have been writing an awful lot about what it means to be a man, and we can clear out a lot of library shelf space if we replace it all with the collected works of Madison Cawthorn, which would be a one-page pamphlet with a single line, XX chromosomes, no tallywacker. We can keep all the biology textbooks until the day that someone actually reads one, unlike self-righteous defender of biology Cawthorn, and discovers that they all say that sex is more complex and diverse than the prudes can imagine.

Man, a heck of a lot of famous literature is just guys looking for their tallywacker.

As a cis-het relatively healthy white male person in a stable financial position, I’m getting worried. Who can I victimize next? We’ve trampled on the rights of people of other races, lord knows if you get sick you are fucked, The Gays are mocked and abused, we are definitely punishing the poor for being poor, and we’re deep into our campaign to humiliate and torture trans people.

But…once we’ve achieved our goals and completed The Cis Agenda, what are we to do? Who’s the next group (who isn’t us, obviously) we can beat down and abuse to make ourselves feel good about ourselves? I feel like we’ve reached the final frontier, the end of history. “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” Or perhaps more appropriately, what do schoolyard bullies do when they’ve beaten up all the smaller kids at the playground?

Are you feeling some pity for the privileged cis folk yet?

Everything she touches turns to poison. If you’ve never heard of her, she’s a notorious Minnesota hate-monger, a nasty, more bitter version of Michele Bachmann. She’s the master hater behind the Minnesota Child Protection League, one of those misleadingly-named right-wing organizations that swoops into schools to protect the kids from bullying, which usually translates into defending the bullies right to torment LGBT kids. She’s simply an awful person.

MCPL’s lead spokesperson is Barb Anderson, a ubiquitous figure in the school bullying debate. Anderson has long volunteered as a researcher for the Minnesota Family Council, which led two failed battles against marriage equality. She was also a vocal opponent of LGBT safety in the Anoka-Hennepin School District where she helped launch the Parents Action League. PAL is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its adamant demands to have the ex-gay movement in the Anoka-Hennepin School District.

Anderson has made some extreme statements about LGBT people, so much so that GLAAD has added her to its Commentator Accountability Project.

For example, she once said, “The greatest threat to our freedom and the health and well-being of our children is from this radical homosexual agenda that is just so pervasive.”

She was bad news several years ago, when a wave of suicides was sweeping through the Anoka-Hennepin school district — nine kids dead by their own hand in a couple of years. It was horrific. The school district was highlighted in a Rolling Stone (Massive trigger warning: that article recounts the personal experiences of many young people who were viciously bullied, and graphically describes several suicides).

There was another common thread: Four of the nine dead were either gay or perceived as such by other kids, and were reportedly bullied. The tragedies come at a national moment when bullying is on everyone’s lips, and a devastating number of gay teens across the country are in the news for killing themselves. Suicide rates among gay and lesbian kids are frighteningly high, with attempt rates four times that of their straight counterparts; studies show that one-third of all gay youth have attempted suicide at some point (versus 13 percent of hetero kids), and that internalized homophobia contributes to suicide risk.

Administrators denied that there was a problem with gay kids being bullied. They want to stop all bullying, which is a common defense for avoiding conflict with special interest groups targeting LGBT rights. They can’t possibly single out LGBT kids for protection, despite the fact that they’re getting bullied because they’re LGBT. They won’t even acknowledge that the behavior of these kids is perfectly normal, so they avoid useful approaches, like inclusive sex education. No, they just close their eyes to the issues, because they’d rather offend families of the bullied kids than the MCPL. They’ll even go so far as to blame “gay activists” for the problems.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed a lawsuit on behalf of five students, alleging the school district’s policies on gays are not only discriminatory, but also foster an environment of unchecked anti-gay bullying. The Department of Justice has begun a civil rights investigation as well. The Anoka-Hennepin school district declined to comment on any specific incidences but denies any discrimination, maintaining that its broad anti-bullying policy is meant to protect all students. “We are not a homophobic district, and to be vilified for this is very frustrating,” says superintendent Dennis Carlson, who blames right-wingers and gay activists for choosing the area as a battleground, describing the district as the victim in this fracas. “People are using kids as pawns in this political debate,” he says. “I find that abhorrent.”

That is explicitly Barb Anderson’s approach. If LGBT kids are being bullied and committing suicide, that’s the fault of the kids themselves and of schools that permissively tolerate the pied piper of perversion and that GSAs [Gay-Straight Alliances] will draw more confused and questioning youth into gay experimentation which will lead schools to affirm sexual disorders, which is why all those kids killed themselves.

Anti-gay backlash was instant. Minnesota Family Council president Tom Prichard blogged that Justin’s suicide could only be blamed upon one thing: his gayness. “Youth who embrace homosexuality are at greater risk [of suicide], because they’ve embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle,” Prichard wrote. Anoka-Hennepin conservatives formally organized into the Parents Action League, declaring opposition to the “radical homosexual” agenda in schools. Its stated goals, advertised on its website, included promoting Day of Truth, providing resources for students “seeking to leave the homosexual lifestyle,” supporting the neutrality policy and targeting “pro-gay activist teachers who fail to abide by district policies.”

Asked on a radio program whether the anti-gay agenda of her ilk bore any responsibility for the bullying and suicides, Barb Anderson, co-author of the original “No Homo Promo,” held fast to her principles, blaming pro-gay groups for the tragedies. She explained that such “child corruption” agencies allow “quote-unquote gay kids” to wrongly feel legitimized. “And then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death,” Anderson said. She added that if LGBT kids weren’t encouraged to come out of the closet in the first place, they wouldn’t be in a position to be bullied.

It’s deja vu all over again. The Anoka-Hennepin catastrophe, fomented by Barb Anderson and her cronies, was nine years ago. So she pulled up stakes and moved to another school district to dispense her venom. The latest episode? The Becker school district invited the MCPL and Barb Anderson to present an alternative view point at a meeting of the school board.

That’s right. The fools running the Becker school district invited a known hate group to speak to the board about adopting their hateful policies. So they did.

The school board invited the Child Protection League to speak at a special meeting following outrage from some community members when OutFront Minnesota — an organization supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights — presented at an August meeting.

The Child Protection League describes itself as an organization committed to protecting children from exploitation and indoctrination. Barb Anderson helped form the group, along with the Parents Action League, which was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-gay rhetoric and involvement in the Anoka-Hennepin School District when it saw a rash of suicides and a lawsuit claiming the district didn’t respond to harassment on the basis of sexual orientation.

GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, also lists Anderson on an anti-LGBT watchlist for saying LGBTQ antibullying efforts are the “pied piper of perversion” and affirm sexual disorders.

Anderson was not at Monday’s meeting but Child Protection League Board Chair Julie Quist spoke about children’s books she said violated the beliefs and norms of the community by accepting different gender identities. Quist previously served as district director for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. Also speaking were former Becker board members Betsy Armstrong and Chris Klippen.

Armstrong spoke for about 50 minutes and was interrupted several times by protesters — mostly Becker students — questioning her statements or chanting “gay rights are human rights.”

She spoke mostly about what she called the “worrisome” increase in the number of transgender youth in the last decade and cited possible reasons as anxiety, autism or sexual trauma exacerbated by peer and social media influences — something Armstrong called a “social contagion.”

Armstrong also referenced a Bible quote that says God created two sexes — male and female — and said people who follow religious teachings are constitutionally protected and their opinions ought to be given equal consideration.

Notice one aspect of their tactics: emphasizing trans kids. Focusing on gay kids, while still something they do, has had diminishing returns as homosexuality is gradually, increasingly acceptable. Trans kids are fair game! Let’s pick on them until the community wakes up to the fact that this all the same horrendous game of finding someone to ostracize and abuse.

The kids are all right, though. They showed up to protest, and were a lot more intelligent than the sick grownups who brought on this spectacle.

Hundreds of students, parents, and residents in the Becker, Minnesota School District showed up, mostly to protest, a special presentation by an anti-LGBTQ group that offered what it called an “alternative viewpoint” on transgender people. The group, the Minnesota Child Protection League, has been cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“This is disgusting,” said Skyler Seiler, identified by Fox9 as a transgender student at the school. “I can’t believe this, we are humans too. I don’t know why they’re treating us like we’re not. Is it not your job, as school board members, to make students feel safe and welcome?”

The school board on Monday voted to allow the group, which Fox9 says is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, to deliver the special presentation. It’s unclear why the school board agreed to allow a third party organization to deliver a message of hate and discrimination that directly affects the students and families it is supposed to support, protect, and defend. It’s also unclear if that information was vetted or fact-checked before being delivered. Attendees say the group’s information was not from credible sources.

“Human rights don’t have two sides so bringing in another side just doesn’t make sense to me,” Heather Abrahamson told Fox9.

“They were not credible sources that they were citing, and it was completely biased and really offensive and insulting,” Maggie Seiler said. “This is painful, I’m sure those kids in there feel even more ostracized and like the school doesn’t back them and like they have even less rights.”

Those kids would be right. It was school board members who brought in the hate-mongers and who argued that “free speech” trumps the kids’ right to learn in a safe environment. They don’t care about the students, prioritizing the horrid discriminatory religious beliefs of people like Barb Anderson over the experiences of people who have to live with the discrimination.

Look, people, you probably don’t like the optics of citizens turning out en masse to call you a bigot. There’s a solution: never ever pay attention to hate groups like the MCPL or the Parents Action League or the Minnesota Family Council. Don’t invite them to your meetings. Burn their recommendations. Drive them out. Or get more of this from the families you claim to support.

The state is a playground for racists, white nationalists, and the religious right, which I guess should make it no surprise that their house of representatives passed a hateful, regressive bill to make health care for trans kids a felony.

The Idaho House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would bar gender-affirming medical care for transgender children. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would alter current state code that outlaws female genital mutilation. The new code would make it a felony to provide minors with puberty blockers, which stop or delay puberty, hormones or transition-related surgeries. The House passed the bill on a near-party-line vote. Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, a retired physician, opposed it. Other Republicans said the bill will preserve the ability to procreate and would protect children from regretting gender reassignment later in life.

I guess it’s something that one Republican opposed it, but also understandable: he’s a doctor, and this is a bill that targets doctors.

I am fascinated by the Republican rationale. It’s about “preserving the ability to procreate”, but puberty blockers don’t affect that, they just delay it, which ought to be considered a good thing, unless you really want 13 year olds to have children. Which is odd, since Idaho has long had a reputation for being the place to go for cheap, fast weddings. I can thank Idaho for my existence, since my parents eloped to Idaho to get married against my grandparents’ wishes when my mother was somewhere around 17 years old. (I think they’ve tightened up their laws a bit since the 1950s.)

It’s going to be a long struggle for Idaho lawmakers if they think their mission is to prevent teenagers from ever having regrets.

The sponsors of the bill are sick, sad puppies.

The ability to procreate is a fundamental right that must be protected, Skaug said. Don’t let their bodies be sterilized. Rep. Ben Adams, a Nampa Republican, quoted the Bible’s account of gender, after saying his transgender cousin had a mental health problem.

Again, puberty blockers don’t sterilize people. Some transgender men can still have children, and some transgender women can still impregnate other women. Procreation is a choice, not something that Republicans get to enforce, and no, the only mental health problem on display in the Idaho house is Republicanism. If they really cared about mental health, maybe they should ask qualified people how to treat it, rather than the Bible. Those qualified non-bigots seem to have a different take on it.

“It is so disappointing that some politicians in Boise have decided to follow Texas and Alabama down the path of imposing felony criminal penalties upon doctors who are simply doing their jobs. By making it impossible for doctors to provide care for their patients, transgender youth are denied the age-appropriate, best practice, medically-necessary, gender-affirming care that a new study just found reduces the risk of moderate or severe depression by 60% and suicidality by 73%.”

“Every kid in Idaho deserves the chance to grow up feeling safe and respected for who they are. Denying someone medically-necessary health care simply because you don’t approve of who they are is textbook discrimination. Decisions about what kind of care is appropriate for young people should be left up to the young person and their parents, in consultation with health care professionals, not by politicians looking to score political points at the expense of the well-being of transgender youth. It’s critical that the Senate listens to medical professionals, parents, and kids and refuse to entertain this flagrantly discriminatory legislation any further.”

This is all part of conservative agenda. Ever hear of ALEC? They write the laws.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play network of conservative state lawmakers and business lobbyists that writes model legislation, claims that it no longer works on social policy. But videos of ALEC-led events, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), tell a very different story.

At the 40th anniversary meeting of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in May, ALEC leaders boasted about their extensive efforts to advance state legislation to severely restrict access to abortion and limit the rights of trans students, as well as voter suppression bills.

I am not surprised. Idaho Republicans are stupid potato-brains who need a lot of help writing their evil laws.

Yeah, do not follow the lead of Governor Abbott, he’s just the worst. But now look at Alabama — you know those pathetic kids who join the school bully’s gang, and follow him around and get gleeful when the abuses someone? That’s Alabama.

The Alabama Senate has approved some abomination called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. Wow. When the Republicans preemptively engage their contradictory name generator, you know the actual content is going to be bad. This is another bill to criminalize safe medical practices.

Senators voted 23-4 to approve the measure, dubbed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, sponsored by Republican Senator Shay Shelnutt. The bill now heads to the state House of Representatives, which has already approved a companion bill.

The two bills would make it a felony for medical professionals to treat transgender minors under the age of 19 with gender-affirming care. Violators could face up to 10 years in prison or a $15,000 fine.

The bill also requires school staff in the state to disclose to parents that “a minor’s perception that his or her gender is inconsistent with his or her sex.” Essentially, teachers would be required to “out” transgender students to their guardians — regardless of whether they are ready to do so.

Where’s the “compassion” and the “protection” in that bill? Here’s another surprise (not a surprise):

During Tuesday’s debate, Shelnutt said that he has never spoken to a transgender youth before, adding that he did not know that such treatments were being done in the state when he introduced the bill last year, AP reports.

Ignorance kills.