Josh Hawley Gets Schooled By Senate Hearing Witness

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During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was schooled over a brazenly anti-LGBTQ line of questioning. Specifically, Hawley was targeting transgender people, and Khiara Bridges, a law professor at Berkeley School of Law, shut him down for it.

Hawley questioned Bridges’s description of people who had a “capacity for pregnancy” in a discussion on access to abortion. “Would that be women?” Hawley asked. Obviously, there’s no indication that Hawley was engaging in some kind of good-faith attempt to better understand the situation. Even though discussing individuals who have a “capacity for pregnancy” is perfectly fitting in a discussion on abortion since it’s that precise category that would be most affected by restrictions on the procedure, Hawley opted to use the chance to complain about the inclusion of transgender people, specifically targeting transgender men who may become pregnant. Such individuals weren’t by any means the sole focus of the conversation, and they already face formidable societal hurdles on a daily basis, but Hawley was undeterred.

“Many women – cis women – have the capacity for pregnancy; many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy,” Bridges succinctly responded to the Senator. “There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy, as well as non-binary people who are capable of pregnancy.” The professor’s remarks answered Hawley’s question, but he wasn’t done. “So this isn’t really a women’s rights issue,” Hawley opined. “We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley,” Bridges subsequently replied. After Hawley asked Bridges for her view on the “core of this right” — meaning, it would seem, the previously recognized right to an abortion — the professor fittingly moved on, pointing out that the Senator’s dismissal of the basic existence of trans people is a threat.

“So, I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic, and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing — ” Bridges said before Hawley cut her off. She added: “I want to note that one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide, so I think it’s important” to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue. “Denying that trans people exist, and pretending not to know that they exist, is dangerous,” Bridges added as the recent discussion continued. Later on, Hawley tore into how Bridges handles her classroom discussions — which wasn’t, according to any reasonable estimation, a topic meant to be focused on at the hearing. “Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you?” Hawley asked, in part. “We have a good time in my class, you should join… You might learn a lot,” Bridges added to Hawley. Check out the discussion below: