Depending on your news source, your opinion of Josh Hawley's exchange with a Berkley Law Professor was probably colored by headlines like this:
CNN: Josh Hawley accused of transphobic line of questioning
USA Today: Josh Hawley called transphobic by law professor in Senate hearing
Wash Post: Sen. Hawley accused of transphobic questioning at abortion hearing
People: Missouri Senator Josh Hawley called "transphobic" by law professor
Only Fox News, and surprisingly, Yahoo News, had headlines from the opposite direction:
Fox News: Hawley, law professor clash in heated exchange over who can get pregnant
Yahoo: Josh Hawley says Democrats have "lost their minds" after tense exchange with progressive law professor goes viral
This isn't a commentary about media coverage, which you're already well aware of. It's more about the main question Hawley asked, which is getting very little attention. It's the question that reverberates far beyond this little spat over transgenderism.
"Is this the way your run your classroom?"
Hawley struck at the key question here. In Khiara Bridges words, "Your line of questioning is transphobic. And it opens up trans people to violence."
What are these violent words that Hawley had the gall to utter? "You've referred to 'people with the capacity for pregnancy.' Would that be women?"
And then this violent outburst from the senator: "Your view is that the core of this right, then, is about what?"
These words spoken from the senate floor are so violent that it is risky to reproduce them here. After all, if someone reads these Hawley questions, according to Berkley's Law Professor Khiara Bridges, they might...feel...bad. Which is synonymous with violence, because feeling bad leads inevitably to suicide.
"One out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide," says Ms Bridges, attributing this to Senator Hawley, and the types of questions he's asking.
After a bit more back and forth, Hawley asks the key question, as stated above. "Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you or are they also treated like this where they are told that they are opening up people to violence by questioning you?"
Bridges doesn't answer that. She says, "We have a good time in my class, you should join. You'd learn a lot."
Sick burn. Run the headlines. But don't answer the question. That would be detrimental to the cause.
Ultimately, when Hawley asks about the classroom environment, he's striking the root. If a Berkley Law Professor can't answer simple questions about gender without declaring that they're violent, how open is the discussion when she's in charge of the class? When you can't win a debate, the best tactic is to declare the argument itself invalid. We're seeing this in every facet of American discourse, not just in gender discussions. And you know who's doing the censoring.
Conversely, that means deep down you also know who's winning these debates. When they're allowed to take place, of course.
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Ryan Wiggins is the author of the extremely serious and not funny robot novel, The Life of Human, and is a writer and producer of television shows. He is the host of Wiggins America on 97.1 FM Talk in St. Louis.