Women in Today's News

I love Kansas.  I might even have a loyalty bordering on pride when it comes to my home state.  That doesn't keep me from being deeply ashamed at times about what the world knows of Kansas and some of its people.  

Today I felt shame again when I read the story in the news about what the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has been up to.  Her name is Virginia (Ginny) Lamp Thomas.  She was apparently in direct conversation with people in the White House and others who were part of the Trump administration, strongly promoting efforts to keep Biden out of the White House after January 20.  The events of January 6 were part of the effort she supported.  

As it turned out, it is actually Nebraskans that might more properly feel shame.  My memory was just a smidgen faulty, and I thought Mrs. Thomas was from Hutchinson, Kansas.  I was going by memory from events in 1991 when her husband, Clarence Thomas, was under consideration for appointment to the Supreme Court. A former employee of his named Anita Hill came forward at that time with allegations that he had sexually harassed her.  

Virginia Thomas had a sister living in Hutchinson, and our local newspaper printed a story about the local connection.  It was a lengthy article, as I recall, and made much of how severely both Clarence Thomas and his wife suffered through the confirmation ordeal, and how unjust the accusations were that Anita Hill brought up.  

Anita Hill was in largely uncharted territory when she went public about her experience.  It was certainly the first time in my memory that so much publicity was given to the sexually harassing behavior of a public figure.  I don't remember that the fact that both Thomas and Hill are black was a significant point of interest in the unfolding story, but now, in retrospect, I wonder how different the coverage might have been if one of them had been white.  Ironically, some of the offensive language that Thomas allegedly used in Hill's presence is very similar to that which a former president of the United States used in public--and he still won a presidential election, supported by many evangelicals.  A lot has changed in 30 years.

Fortunately I don't remember the name of the local person who is a relative of Virginia Thomas'.  Here is Dan Rather's newsletter about the breaking news on Ginny Thomas. 

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Ketanji Brown Jackson is a black woman who is currently undergoing confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court of the United States.  I haven't watched the hearings, but I've heard corroborating reports from several sources that some of the questioning was "jackassery," as Republican Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska put it--perhaps a bit too colorfully.  Sasse believed that cameras in the courtroom make it tempting to those who are running for re-election to use the hearings as a campaign opportunity.  Ted Cruz asked Jackson, for example, if she can define what a woman is.  She didn't take the bait.  Here's what Isaac Saul in today's issue of "Tangle" said about that exchange:  "When Ted Cruz is checking his Twitter mentions two minutes after he's done "questioning" a Supreme Court justice (he was really just interrupting, delivering monologues and implying she had a soft spot for pedophiles), it's clear what the game is."

I ventured into a Facebook conversation this afternoon that had controversy written all over it (I couldn't seem to help myself).  The OP was about Jackson refusing to define "woman" in response to Cruz' "questioning." The person posting felt that this was the crux of a big problem:  people can't seem to acknowledge plain truth.  

One person commented who had a contrarian view.  Essentially, I took her to be saying that she doesn't believe that determining what a woman is is as simple as examining external body parts.  I learned a lot from an article to which she posted a link, although even before I read the article I could see that it was indeed wise to allow for some nuance in how sex is defined.  How gender is defined should be even more nuanced.  Here are two of my comments on that post:

First comment:

I first became aware of the fact that some "girls" in fact have an XY chromosome pattern when I was having babies. I gave birth only to boys who all have XY chromosomes, as far as I know. What interested me though about learning this is that it explained that in some large all-girl families, a portion of the girls have sometimes been discovered to have XY chromosome patterns. As I recall (getting on shaky ground here because I haven't looked it up recently), a second "prompt" of some kind must occur after conception for an XY-chromosomed individual to go on to develop with typical male characteristics. If this does not occur, the baby is born "female" by all appearances and in all typical ways of biological functioning. Reproduction can happen normally, for example. The article you've linked to expands on something I first learned of nearly 40 years ago, and I want to come back to reading it entirely soon. If SCOTUS nominee Jackson knows what the writer of this article knows, it makes perfect sense that she is reluctant to define "woman." Thanks for posting the link.

Second comment:

I'm currently reading the book Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to be Different. I'm not very far into it, but one of the big takeaways for me so far is how very many of our associations with gender are culturally defined and have nothing to do with how individuals are made. Pink and blue? When our oldest boy was born, we received a beautiful pink hand-crocheted baby afghan from his Japanese grandmother. In what "universe" was that a faux pas? A very inflexible, uncharitable, immature one, IMHO. I think some of the other gender definitions we mindlessly ascribe to have similarly indefensible roots.

The bottom line for me in these discussions of sex and gender is that God's design of male and female persons is good.  We do well to celebrate people like both Adam and Eve.  We also do well to recognize that God delights in each individual who has been born since Adam and Eve, despite the fact that everyone's DNA is more muddled than was the case for the first two humans. 

I love simple, straightforward definitions of words like man and woman.  Indeed, for most situations, the simplest definitions will do.  For rare cases, like when someone ends up with a genetic code for sex like XXY or XYY, or when someone is trying to score points with a partisan political group during the vetting of a SCOTUS nominee, a great deal of reticence to make definitive pronouncements is not only permissible, but it is mandatory.