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WOMANISM
What is a Woman, and Why Does That Matter to So Many Americans?
They’re trying to gatekeep womanhood for sick, twisted purposes
When Senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz grilled Ketanji Brown Jackson at her confirmation hearing last spring, they demanded that she define the word woman. “Can I provide a definition? No. I can’t,” Jackson responded, hip to the game conservatives were trying to play. They wanted her to provide the traditional definition of a woman, which reduces womanhood to sex. Posing the question was conservatives’ strategy to dismiss the academic work of gender theorists and bully people who decide to use inclusive language. So, where does the idea of gender come from?
In 1955, John Money coined the term “gender,” arguing that our identity should not be reduced to “the fact that one sex produced ova and the other sex produces sperm.” Money realized and developed research that suggested sex was different from gender. His work broadened the scientific community’s understanding of gender, leading to the development of critical gender theory. Yet, as we saw in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing, many conservatives “have a difficult relationship with science” and struggle to grasp the concept. Just as they attacked her stance on critical race theory, conservatives also…
