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This exchange between senator Hawley and professor Khiara Bridges is getting a lot of attention.

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zafrada2.7 K2 years agoPeakD4 min read

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/zafrada/23vsGDbEJoXAVQ2LiH6yohgEkfJWCaaQT5Xg5qZeErdDYtmiazBY823Rc4db2DjWgAiut.png

Overall, I found the discussion mind numbing. Still, it baffles me how many media outlets are treating this as if Bridges "schooled" Hawley.

I mean, they're both assholes; but, a politician being an asshole is nothing new.
Bridges conducted herself in a way that is unbecoming of an educator, especially one of the law.

Bridges made three extraordinary and false statements in an authoritative manner:

  1. Hawley's line of questioning was transphobic,

  2. Hawley was denying that trans people exist,

  3. it's the lines of questioning like Hawley's that lead to suicide attempts among trans people

Let's deal with the last one first - there's literally no evidence that political debate, no matter how harsh, leads to increased suicides. That applies to all groups, not just trans people. This is a "hide the ball" tactic that's being regularly used by our institutions right now to conflate criticism with bullying when it's expedient.

I guess we'll go to the first claim second. Yes, there is such a thing as a loaded question. The thing is, if Bridges really has a law degree, she should know that almost every question asked in a legal context is loaded. No good lawyer asks a question to which he or she doesn't know the answer. Her response to Hawley wasn't even to expose his bigotry; rather, it showed her lack of ability to respond reasonably.

Finally, her claim that he's denying that trans people exist is simply bunk. What she's really saying is that if he doesn't buy her view of what trans people are, he's denying their existence. Since Bridges herself is not trans, she's a cis person who is imposing her own definitions on trans people which trans people may or may not agree with as individuals.

To expound upon this, if Bridges believes in using the dictionary definitions of words, Hawley is correct that men can't get pregnant. Just like the definition of "woman" is an adult human female and the definition of "female" is, "of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes." the definition of "Man" is an adult human male and the definition of male is, "of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring." So, immediately, this isn't cut and dry. One can argue that the dictionary definitions are archaic or wrongheaded; but, one can't, in good faith, shame a person as a bigot for using the dictionary definitions of words while making an argument.

This is where the conservatives have an important rhetorical point. If you believe that public schools have any value and teach us anything that's correct, you must remember that we've been taught (correctly, I believe) that you can't define a word with the word in the definition. If I use the word "loquacious" and you ask me to define it, and I say, "of a loquacious characteristic." I haven't told you a damn thing about what the word means. When you say, "Trans women are women." or, far less often, "Trans men are men." most of the people who use those phrases use the words in their own definitions rendering them moot. If you want the distinction between trans and cis men and women to go away, you need to do a better job with defining the words.

The reality is that making a distinction between trans men and women and cis men and women isn't a denial that trans people exist. A lot of trans people argue that that isn't a denial that they exist. That's still what Bridges was trying to sell.

What's the most horrifying is that she seemed to acknowledge that she was handling the questioning from Hawley in a way resembling how she would engage in her classrooms. I never had a good professor who would call me names and put me down for raising a question or a criticism. If this is how she conducts herself in the classroom, she's not creating lawyers, she's creating lemmings.

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