A real one this time, for sure.
I’m going to be writing about this a lot. Just so you know.
I already have, in fact. Go to this page for links. Warning: Most of those posts are longish and a bit wandering. It’s taken me a while to work out, not my views, but how to express them. So apologies for having to wade through all of that thinking-out-loud.
So, yesterday, amidst the traditional first day-flurry of Executive Orders, Joe Biden signed this one.
Some are suggesting that the order wraps up the most destructive elements of the proposed “Equality Act” and forces them on us as an Executive Order. I’m not sure about that, but here’s the most thorough look that’s out there today via the radical feminist Women’s Liberation Front.
And yes, I have zero problem considering myself an ally of groups like this on this issue. I wouldn’t donate money, considering money is fungible and no, I don’t want to support most of the group’s other causes, but no apologies on this score. No one is seeing these issues as clearly as either radical feminist groups or conservative legal groups. So there you have it, and if this is to be fought, these sides must find a way to work together.
With this action, Biden is bypassing the legislative process to implement the most controversial provisions of the Equality Act—changing the definition of sex in federal anti-discrimination regulations so that female people are no longer a discrete class with protected status under the law. As we predicted, the new administration is relying on the Bostock decision to do so.
This executive order directs federal agencies to do two things. First, federal agencies are now required to interpret “sex” as also including “sexual orientation and gender identity” in their own internal regulations and workplace policies. Second, agencies are directed to perform a comprehensive assessment of all regulations under their purview, and create a plan with 100 days to “revise, suspend, or rescind such agency actions, or promulgate [propose] new agency actions” that will impose this interpretation onto all American employers, institutions, and individuals, with no exceptions.
The Supreme Court was clear at the time of the Bostock decision that the ruling was only meant to be applied to hiring and firing discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, in advancing their novel reasoning that “transgender status” meant that a male employee should be allowed to identify into the otherwise lawful sex-based rules for female employees. While we strongly support protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation, the Biden administration has grossly expanded the application of the decision with far-reaching implications for women’s rights in nearly every aspect of public life, including Title IX.
I’ve written before about this. I’ll write again. But for now, just know this and understand it deeply.
The core to all of this activism, legislation and proposed changed is gender identity, which in this country at this moment, translates to self-identity.
This means that a person’s gender identity is based on what they declare it to be.
No surgery, medication or official documentation required. That’s what gender self-identity is all about.
What gender critical activists are holding fast to is sex. There are two sexes – male and female. A woman is an adult human female. There is no “assigned” element to this. You are either male or female. To expand protections to “gender” means to expand “protections” and “rights” to any human being who declares themselves as one or the other – or whatever.
And the minute you move beyond sex to gender as a legal category, you are in the land of “I’m a woman because I feel like it today.” And then you are in the land of males in female-only spaces – shelters, prisons and sports teams.
And they will go there.
I just spent ten minutes looking up a bunch of other links, went down rabbit trails, got ready to write it all…and then said to myself…nope. Make it shorter this time. This will not be last time, for sure. This isn’t a fringe issue, either. The implications are massive if it continues unabated.
If you are interested in following this, some suggestions. Again, you might find yourself disagreeing with these groups and individuals on other issues. Vehemently. But there’s a lot of energy there clarifying this issue that you really don’t find anywhere else.
Said It (Reddit alternative) Gender Critical board
Ovarit (Reddit alternative) board.
Save Women’s Sports Twitter feed.
Graham Linehan is an English comic, writer and actor (Father Ted) who has, for some reason, made this his cause. He posts about it frequently on his Substack. Again, he has views on other matters with which I disagree, but his posts on this are very useful. For example, this one on male criminals conveniently declaring themselves women so they can a) be housed in women’s prisons or b) get lighter sentences. And this one, about how trans activists have forced the only all-female seawater pool in Australia to admit men. And to show you how this goes: the pool first agreed to allow men who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery, but then the self-ID crowd raised hell, so they said, okay. Feel like a lady today? Come on in!
Sadly, faced with this onslaught of bullying and blackmail, the R&CLSA had no choice but to capitulate and within 24 hours this 100 year old female-only pool was open to males. Its website now says: “Transgender women are welcome to the McIver’s Ladies Baths, our definition for transgender is as per the NSW Discrimination Act.”
The act defines transgendered women as anyone who “Identifies as a member of the opposite sex by living, or seeking to live, as a member of the opposite sex”. (Whatever that means.)
But even this isn’t enough for the baying mob of gender ideologues. They have started a petition demanding a public apology (ie total supplication) from the R&CLSA and an ‘explicit’ trans-inclusive policy. Furthermore, on Sunday they held a protest and mass swim-in at the baths and revelled in filling the pool with men.
Sydney boasts many beautiful beaches and dozens of seafront and harbour bathing pools. Why can’t women be allowed one little 20 meter long seawater baths? Because men will not allow us to have even one tiny place of our own that doesn’t include them. And when men ‘identify as women’, the validation they demand drives their determination to colonise our spaces with an even greater ferocity.
One more from Linehan: a take-down of a BBC report on how the #s of women sexual abusers has risen in recent years. Oh really? And how many of those criminals being reported as “women” are actually men?
Finally, this short video for you. The past day or so, a committee for the Montana legislature has been debating a bill to protect women’s sports. The bill passed committee this morning, and will go on to the full legislature.
But here in this video, an ACLU representative is asked whether or not her organization would support an all-trans women’s sports team. She couldn’t say no.
This is nuts and is good for nobody’s mental health. I don’t understand how it can be ok to “feel like a woman” and thus become one but not ok to “feel like” you’re black when actually the biological demarcation is much clearer for sex than it is for “race.” Thankfully, my daughter, as liberal as they come, has also taken this up as something to oppose.