Law professor Khiara Bridges took Josh Hawley to school at a senate hearing yesterday, and we don’t think he’ll be graduating any time soon.
In Tuesday’s hearing on “Post-Roe America”, Hawley mocked the professor for referring to those affected by the Dobbs decision as “people with a capacity for pregnancy”, asking, “Would that be women?”
Bridges succinctly explained that there are women who can’t get pregnant, as well as trans men and nonbinary people who can.
“We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups,” Bridges clearly explained. “Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.”
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Somehow, that’s just too much information for the junior senator to process.
After a tense exchange where Hawley tried to imply Bridges believes Roe is not a women’s issue, she plainly said the quiet part out loud.
“I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic, and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.”
Related: Josh Hawley wants to force women to have babies and make adoption easier… just not for gay people
The senator responded incredulously, as if he couldn’t fathom how denying trans folks’ existences could possibly be harmful to them.
Indeed, Hawley and his state’s legislature don’t seem to want to recognize trans people if they can help it. The state’s legislature has put forth what the Missouri chapter of the ACLU is calling a “record number of anti-LGBTQ bills,” including a recently approved bill effectively banning trans children from competitive sports.
They are also pushing forward HB 2649, a bill that would criminalize any and all gender affirming care for patients under the age of 18, effectively forcing trans kids to undergo puberty further into a sex or gender that they don’t identify with.
As Hawley tried to deny being transphobic, Bridges again put things plainly, asking if he believed men can get pregnant.
Hawley, of course, responded in the negative.
“So, you’re denying that trans people exist,” the professor explained, followed with a curt, “Thank you.”
In the end, Bridges recommended that Hawley attend one of her classes, stating that he might learn a lot.
We’re not so sure he has the capacity, but if anyone could parse it out in small enough words for him to understand, it seems she’d be the right person for the job.
Watch the full exchange between the two here:
