USA Today cites 'science' to claim 'there’s no simple answer' to defining a woman. Social media responds.

 Critics on social media lambasted USA Today on Thursday after the newspaper cited "science" to suggest that "there is no simple answer" to the question, "What is a woman?"

What are the details?

The paper was responding to a widely publicized moment from Senate confirmation hearings earlier this week when President Biden's Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson told Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) she couldn't provide a definition for the word "woman" since she's "not a biologist."

The exchange quickly went viral on the internet as conservatives expressed shock and anger at the judge's absurd embrace of anti-scientific progressive gender politics. Ironically, Jackson's own womanhood was a primary reason that she was nominated for the court in the first place.

During the hearing, Blackburn spoke for much of the American populace when she chided Jackson's non-answer, saying, "The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education" being taught in school districts across the country.

Yet, in a lengthy report published Thursday, USA Today offered a defense of the judge's answer. The headline of the report said, "Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson to define 'woman.' Science says there's no simple answer." 

"Scientists, gender law scholars, and philosophers of biology said Jackson's response was commendable, though perhaps misleading," USA Today reported in the story's opening paragraphs. "It's useful, they say, that Jackson suggested science could help answer Blackburn's question, but they note that a competent biologist would not be able to offer a definitive answer either."

"Scientists agree there is no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman, and with billions of women on the planet, there is much variation," the newspaper confidently told its readers, later adding, "While traditional notions of sex and gender suggest a simple binary — if you are born with a penis, you are male and identify as a man and if you are born with a vagina, you are female and identify as a woman — the reality, gender experts say, is more complex."

To articulate its point, the paper trotted out not scientists but prominent progressive gender studies scholars such as Barnard College's Rebecca Jordan-Young, UCLA's Juliet Williams, Wheaton College's Kate Mason, and Harvard-educated "philosopher of biology" Sarah Richardson.

At one point, Jordan-Young pointed to at least six "biological markers" of sex in the body, including "genitals, chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive structures, hormone ratios, and secondary sex characteristics" to proclaim "there isn't one single 'biological' answer to the definition of a woman."

"There's not even a singular biological answer to the question of 'what is a female,'" she added.

What was the reaction?

Not surprisingly, the article was mercilessly ridiculed on social media.

NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck called the report "truly insane," adding, "This isn't a column, editorial, guest op-ed, or even one of those you might see labeled as 'analysis.' This is a news article from USA Today's 'Health & Wellness' section."

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson mocked USA Today's inability to determine womanhood in light of archaeologists' comparative ease in doing so on thousand-year-old skeletons.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, "If USA Today had any credibility left (they don't), they laughably lost it in this utterly nonsensical 'story.'"

"There is no sufficient way to define what makes someone a woman, of which there are billions," Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy quipped.

The mockery only continued from there: