It's the final days of 2022, which means it's time for website Dictionary.com to name their "Word of the Year," and this year the site has made quite an impression with its selection.
It seems the people at Dictionary.com have become as exasperated with Republicans' constant attempts to attack gender diversity as the rest of us.
Or, perhaps they just wanted to be helpful! In any case, they've used the "Word of the Year" to help the right-wing with that pesky bugaboo of theirs, the definition of the word "woman."
Republicans have repeatedly attempted to "gotcha" transgender people and liberals who support the LGBTQ+ community by asking them to define the word "woman" in congressional hearings, on TV and at basically any other opportunity they can get their hands on.
They need wonder no more, because Dictionary.com has taken care of it for them.
In its own article on the announcement, Dictionary.com called the word "woman" " inseparable from the story of 2022" after searches for the word spiked by as much as 1400% during certain times of the year.
Most notably, the spike occurred during a March confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during which Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn tried to back Jackson into a corner by asking if she can define "woman."
Jackson refused to take the bait, replying that she was unable to define the word because she is "not a biologist."
Other Republicans like far-right extremist Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, failed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker and disgraced former North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn have played similar rhetorical games in 2022.
And the Daily Wire's self-professed "theocratic fascist" commentator Matt Walsh has spent much of the year promoting his film What Is A Woman?, a transphobic polemic Walsh claims is a "documentary" that features interviews with transgender people who were tricked into appearing in the film.
Dictionary.com went on to subtly reference these debates in its announcement.
It wrote:
“Our selection of woman as our 2022 Word of the Year reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary."
On Twitter, many applauded Dictionary.com for its handling of the debate.
Dictionary.com went on to say that unlike the Republican Party, it recognizes it " is not the last word on what defines a woman."
Rather, it writes:
“The word belongs to each and every woman—however they define themselves.”
Hear, hear.
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