“I’d love to get your opinion on that, and you can submit that,” Blackburn continued. “Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as male and female?”
“Again, because I don’t know the case, I don’t know how I’d interpret it,” Jackson said. “I’d need to read the whole thing.”
“Okay,” Blackburn said. “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?”
“Can I provide a definition?” Jackson replied, clearly bemused. “No. I can't.”
“You can’t?” Blackburn replied.
“Not in this context,” Jackson said. “I’m not a biologist.”
“So you think the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn said, obviously framing Jackson’s response unfairly.
“Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes,” Jackson said. “If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments and I look at the law and I decide. So I’m not —”
“Well, the fact that you can’t give me a straight answer” — here Blackburn offered a wry chuckle — “about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about,” the senator said.
