What Is A Woman, Judge Jackson?

In the waning hours of a marathon second day of Kentanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asked whether Jackson could define the word “woman.” Jackson said she could not, at least, “not in this context.” After all, she said, she is “not a biologist.”

It is easy to mock her response. But it was not, from a progressive perspective, an easy question to answer. It forces the respondent to navigate several competing and contradictory left-wing claims about sex and identity.

The first is that the United States...