Kurt Mahlburg
mercatornet.com
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adults pastor.
Back in about 2015, I recall conservatives warning that legalising same-sex marriage would end in a wholesale erasure of gender. I couldn’t picture what such a scenario would look like — and I, therefore, didn’t find this iteration of the “slippery slope” argument too compelling.
Fast-forward to 2022. Same-sex marriage has been legalised for several years. Transgender ideology is thoroughly mainstream, having successfully piggy-backed off the same-sex marriage movement.
And here is what Harvard-educated Ketanji Brown Jackson — the nominee for the highest legal appointment in the free world — has to say about gender:
If it weren’t so serious it would be laughable. Well, actually, it is laughable — and the trusty internet hasn’t failed to see the funny side.
“‘What is 2 + 2?’” tweeted conservative commentator Kangmin Lee. “Judge Jackson: ‘I don’t know Senator, I’m not a mathematician.’”
RedState’s Jeff Charles also weighed in: “Officer: Ma’am, do you know how fast you were going? Ketanji Jackson: How the hell should I know? I’m not a physicist!”
In a meme genre that really writes itself, Matt Walsh also had his say, tweeting, “I’m pretty sure it’s a cloudy day but I’m not a meteorologist so I can’t speak with authority on the subject.”
In fact, Walsh deserves special mention as perhaps the earliest critic noting that the transgender house of cards comes tumbling down under the meagre weight of one extremely simple question: “What is a woman?”
If irony counts as humour, we must also consider that Ketanji Jackson being a woman was crucial to her SCOTUS nomination, and yet she can’t define what that all-important characteristic actually is.
Looking beyond the humour — but staying well within the bounds of irony — there are other questions we must ask about Jackson’s beliefs on gender, and her looming nomination.
If it takes a biologist to define what a woman is, isn’t Jackson conceding that the question of gender should be settled biologically, rather than emotionally?
How will Jackson — who cannot define what a woman is — be able to rule on abortion cases which are, if nothing else, instances of women’s lived experiences?
In an age that says “believe all women” and with a court system that often favours women in divorce and child custody cases, what good will a SCOTUS justice be who sees sex and gender as open slather?
March is Women’s History Month. But it’s been a rough one for women in 2022.
We’ve seen a biological man win the women’s NCAA swimming championship; another biological man become one of USA Today’s Women of the Year; Twitter banning multiple accounts that have spoken truthfully about women, and a Supreme Court nominee who can’t define the word woman.
It seems we missed the memo. The theme for this year’s Women’s History Month? Women are history.