"No Tallywhaker" is Madison Cawthorn's Definition of "Woman"

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was ridiculed by a lot of people for asking Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define "woman" during the confirmation hearings. But as it turns out, the question is producing some interesting responses when turned back on Republicans.

Reporters Arthur Delaney and Jennifer Bendery posed the question to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Several refused to answer, but here are a couple of the responses.

Two X chromosomes - Marsha Blackburn and Chuck Grassley

Someone who has a uterus - Josh Hawley

Two of the most performative trolls from the House side weighed in as well.

We came from Adam’s rib - Majorie Taylor Greene

X chromosomes, no tallywhacker - Madison Cawthorn

On the X chromosomes, Delaney and Bendery point out that there are women born with only one X chromosome and men born with two X chromosomes. Also, when asked whether a woman who has her uterus removed for medical reasons is still a woman, Hawley stumbled a bit and eventually suggested that a woman has a vagina. As Monica Hesse pointed out, that means that Hawley "would be forced to accept trans women, post-gender affirming surgery, as women too."

Hesse also had a little fun with Greene's response.

I’m not sure how much closer this gets any of us to a definition of womanhood that we can actually use in The Year of Our Lord 2022. How is a women’s college or women’s athletic team supposed to incorporate the Adam’s rib test into their eligibility policies? Is there a swab for ancestral rib residue?

You see Republicans, it's not so easy, is it? 

Someone with an open mind would begin to question their gender assumptions when faced with these facts. But of course with these Republicans, that was never the point. 

There are some questions this whole episode has raised for me, though. The most prominent is "why didn't Blackburn ask Jackson for a definition of "man?" Perhaps the answer to that one is correlated to the fact that all of the right wing fear-mongering about transexuals has focused on men who transition to women. 

It might be that Cawthorn's "no tallywhacker" is a clue that helps us answer that question. His definition of what it means to be a woman boils down to not having a penis - the symbol of manhood. In other words, having a penis is the norm/default and women are defined by their lack of one. Similarly, it is unthinkable/outrageous that a man would want to give up his penis to become a woman. 

All of this reminds me of how enraged I got a few years ago when the Daily Caller published an article by James Poulos titled "What are women for?" Here's part of how I responded at the time:

So yes, the author...is really asking the question about the utility of women. Of course, the next question that comes to any non-misogynist's mind is "utility to whom?" For the author who is obviously a man, the answer to that question must be a given because it never comes up. The result is that underlying the whole thing is that the question of women's utility to men must be an important question that we should all ponder deeply.

Subconsciously, these kinds of discussions always assume that maleness is the default. The definition of a woman is determined by her deviation from that norm, which must be justified by her utility to the norm. We have to recognize the depth of misogyny inherent in those assumptions if we're ever going to root it out.