KARA DANSY - FIGHTING THE NEW MISOGYNY

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ning. As Lierre said, my name is Kara Dansky, and I serve on the board of the Women’s Liberation Front. I am an attorney with a background in women’s rights, criminal justice, and civil rights. It’s wonderful to be in Seattle. I used to live here, and it’s great to be back. Go Seahawks, go Beast Mode, we had a good run this season.


I am here to talk about gender identity in the law, and I will do that. But first, I would like to make a brief statement. I am extremely angry.

I suspect that many of us are extremely angry. We on this panel are all capable of speaking on the topic of “gender identity” in a measured way, because we are accustomed to doing so. I put air quotes on “gender identity” just then, so when I use the phrase gender identity throughout the rest of this talk, please imagine air quotes around the phrase, because gender identity isn’t real, in any material, real-world sense. We on this panel have all been called to speak about gender identity, in the media, on social media, and in our regular lives, with regular people. And so, we have found that we have no choice but to speak on this topic, and we so we do, in a polite manner, as we, as women, are required to do.

To be clear, I do not think that any of us actually want to be talking about gender identity at all. In addition to her feminist work, Lierre has spent her entire adult life and career fighting for the planet and its inhabitants. I suspect that Meghan would probably rather speak out against the violence of pornography and prostitution, and that Saba would prefer to spend her time ending the violence of racism. I would very much like to be fighting for reproductive sovereignty for women, including abortion on demand and without apology. All of us have spent our lives fighting for justice, in one way or another. And yet now we all find ourselves in the following situation: We have to talk about the violence, misogyny, and homophobia of gender identity because we have no choice but to do so. But, then, men forcing women to do things that we do not want to do is hardly novel.

I am angry that the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence can report the following statistics regarding domestic violence in the United States: • 1 in 4 women experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and death.

• One in 7 women have been seriously injured by an intimate partner.

• One in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner. • One in 4 women have been victims of severe physical violence, for example, beating, burning, or strangling, by an intimate partner.

These are averages, and the situation is far worse for black women than for white women. Lesbians are routinely harassed, attacked, and beaten for the sin of being female homosexuals, and today, lesbians are being told that they are hateful bigots because they refuse to acknowledge the lie of the “female penis.”

To be clear, when we read, or hear, or speak the statistics I read above, every single person knows exactly what is meant by the word “women.” Literally no one is confused by this. The man who forced his penis inside of my vagina when I was 19 years old did not ask me for my “preferred pronouns” before doing so. Literally every person hearing these words, knows exactly what I am talking about.

And yet, we have been told that we are not permitted to fight for women and girls, as women and girls. The mob awaits us. So now I will talk about gender identity and the law. And I will do so dispassionately, as women are obligated to do, notwithstanding this simmering rage. I will be speaking primarily about U.S. law and its origins, because that is what I am most familiar with.

Let’s start with some history. The Magna Carta, promulgated in 1215, is generally considered to be the original source of U.S. law. It is well known that its primary purpose was to grant political and religious rights to male aristocrats, and to grant some rights to lesser but still property-owning men and their male heirs. It is less well known that under the Magna Carta, a widow was permitted to inherit her husband’s estate and to remain in his house for 40 days after his death before being evicted. Widows, however, were not permitted to remarry without first receiving the permission of a baron. The Magna Carta also provided that a man could not be punished for killing another man, if the murder complaint was made by a woman, unless the murder victim was the woman’s husband. These are the sole references to women in the Magna Carta’s entire 63 provisions, all of which went to great lengths to emphasize the rights of men. In 1606, King James of England signed the first Virginia Charter, establishing the colony of Virginia. The Charter granted all colonial governing authority, and all of the property that it stole from indigenous Americans, to 8 white English men all of the rights that residents of England and its other colonies had. For women, of course, this

. Later, King James would appoint a man, Lord Delaware, to serve as colonial Governor. The King granted the residents of the colony meant zero rights.

The Charters establishing the other 12 American colonies were similar to the Virginia Charter, in that they granted all governing authority and all stolen property rights to white men.

In 1776, of course, Congress famously declared that all men are created equal, and in 1789, the U.S. got its Constitution, which gave individual states the authority to determine voting rights.

Not a single state at that time granted women the right to vote.

We don’t have to limit this historical discussion to voting rights, as important as they are.

We could also talk about how, for example how:

• • • A 17th century law in Massachusetts provided that women could be executed for luring men into marriage by wearing high-heeled shoes;

Women were granted the right to practice law in federal court in 1879, but most states still prohibited women from practicing law in their state courts;

And, of course, abortion was outlawed in most of the U.S. throughout most of U.S. history.

This is just a tiny list of times throughout history when U.S. law has explicitly discriminated against women. And, let’s be perfectly clear: All of the men, making all of those laws, over all of that time, knew exactly what the word woman means.

There have been some tremendous gains, of course. We have Roe v. Wade to protect abortion rights (for now). Thanks in part to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1971, the Supreme Court decided that women are people under the law. We are allowed to have our own bank accounts and credit cards. We are even allowed to have law degrees. These are good and hard-fought developments, and feminists should be proud of the work that we have done and the gains that we have made to protect women in the law.

Gender identity is destroying all of it. Everything. Everything that women have fought for is being annihilated by gender identity.

I will now talk about how gender identity is annihilating women at the federal level in the U.S. If anyone has questions about how gender identity is being enshrined into law at the U.S. state level, we can do that in the Q&A.

The question of what the word sex means is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case called Harris v. EEOC, which involves a man named Aimee Stephens, who is demanding legal recognition to be female.

If the Supreme Court decides that Stephens is literally a woman, then women will be obliterated as a category worthy of civil rights protection in the United States and centuries worth of work will be undone. It’s as simple as that. WoLF has filed a brief in the case, arguing that sex-stereotyping in employment constitutes unlawful sex discrimination and opposing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We expect to hear this spring or summer whether the Supreme Court thinks that women are allowed to exist in the law.

The question of what the word sex means is also before the United States Congress. The so- called Equality Act has been before Congress for several years, but this year, the U.S. House of Representatives took the unprecedented step of voting to pass it. The Equality Act, like a bad ruling in the Stephens case, would obliterate women and girls as a discrete legal category for civil rights protection.

Congress is also considering a bill called the Fairness For All Act as an alternative to the Equality Act. The Fairness for All Act is terrible. Like the Equality Act, it would replace the legal category of sex with gender identity, but crucially, it would also exempt religious institutions. What this would mean, in practice, is that religious institutions would be able to maintain sex-segregated spaces, but public institutions such as public schools would not. It essentially encourages the idea that religious women and girls are entitled to sex-segregated spaces, but other women and girls are not. The Fairness for All Act would also give religious institutions a legal excuse to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, which we adamantly oppose.

The upshot of all of this is that it is simply not possible to both protect and women and girls and protect gender identity in the law. Federal law can protect women and girls in order to make up for centuries of unfairness and injustice, or it can protect a self-declared and undefined “identity.” It cannot do both.

So let’s pull this all together. The men in power for thousands of years enacted countless laws with the deliberate intention of keeping women out of power and out of civil society, purely on the basis of sex. And now, at the altar of “gender identity,” we are expected to simply pretend that sex does not exist. No. I want to make one final point. Lawmakers who take an interest in this topic often say that they want to “ban transgender athletes from women’s sports,” or that they want to “ban unnecessary medical procedures for transgender children.” These efforts are often well- intentioned but misguided. If there are any lawmakers out there listening, please note: there simply is no such thing as “transgender.” Gender is a caste system designed to keep women in our place, and must be abolished, not enshrined in the law. Women are female and men are male. It’s not complicated.

In conclusion: Women are being fired from their jobs for saying the kinds of things that we are saying here today. At least two members of WoLF have been fired from progressive non-profit organizations for having the audacity to stand up for women and girls. Another has lost an important source of contract-based income. Yet another member has been erased from her position in her doctoral department. This IS the new misogyny – it’s the same as the old misogyny, but with a post-modern twist. Finally, to paraphrase something that radical feminists often say on the topic of gender: only men could oppress women for thousands of years, and then turn around, put on a dress, and claim to be the most marginalized group in society. Women have had it. We are angry, and we are not taking it anymore. Women will never stop fighting. No matter what you wear, no matter what you claim to be, women will never stop fighting. We know who we are.

Turning to the state level, there are many ways in which gender has crept its way into law and policy. Here, I will focus on two.

First, laws regarding the housing of prisoners.

In the state of California, the state of “being transgender” is considered a medical diagnosis, and any inmate given this diagnosis is assigned to one of 13 out of California’s 33 prisons. As of 2015, California inmates can receive taxpayer-funded genital surgeries. So while up-to-date data is not available, it is likely that at least some male inmates who have received genital surgeries are housed in women’s institutions in California, putting vulnerable women at risk.

In 2019, a bill was introduced that would have allowed any inmate to demand to be housed in an institution designed for the opposite sex, which would have put women at even greater risk. WoLF was able to send someone to testify against the bill, and, luckily, the bill eventually died in the state Assembly. But it will be back. I am telling you all of this because of the case of Karen White. As many of you will recall, Karen White is a UK man who “identifies as a woman” solely on the basis of self-identification. He is also a convicted pedophile and entered the UK prison system on charges of grievous bodily harm, burglary, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women. In 2018 he was transferred to a women’s prison, where he proceeded to sexually assault two female inmates.

To be clear, WoLF’s position is that no man should ever be housed in a women’s prison, regardless of whether he has had his penis removed. But allowing men to be housed in women’s prisons solely on the basis of self-identification is so extraordinarily dangerous for women that it should not even be considered, and the members of the California Senate who voted to do it should be ashamed of themselves. The situation is the same across the U.S.

The Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Framingham is a women’s prison in Massachusetts – it is exclusively for women. But in August of 2018, a man named Michelle Kosilek asked a federal district court to order that he be transferred to MCI-Framingham. In 1990, Kosilek had been convicted of murdering his wife, Cheryl. When the police found Cheryl’s body in the back seat of her car, her shirt had been pulled up, her pants had been pulled down, and she had been nearly decapitated. The next day, Michelle, then Robert, confessed to the murder.

Often, when feminists talk about Karen White, or Michelle Kosilek, we are told that should not base our views of an entire population on the bad acts of one or two men. Fair enough. But that argument misses the point completely. Saying “not all trans” is exactly the same as saying “not all men.” Putting men in women’s prisons puts vulnerable women at risk, plain and simple. I have spoken personally with two women in a Texas prison who had been required to share a cell with a man. These women were terrified.

The other aspect of state law that I want to mention briefly is identification documents such as driver’s licenses and birth certificates. Each state has its own set of laws for determining what information to include on such identification documents. Increasingly, states are examining proposals to allow anyone to either “identify as the opposite sex,” or to tick a “third option.” Some people might think that this is not a big deal – why concern yourself if someone wants to identify themselves in a certain way? But it matters, for several reasons. First, government issued identification does not exist for the purpose of validating people’s sense of themselves. It's literally for identifying individuals. This identification must function on the basis of an objective criterion, not on feelings. Second, as most of us in this room already know, and as we have been discussing here today, all of “gender identity” harms women and girls. If anyone is interested, we can get into more detail during the Q&A about the specifics of why allowing opposite-sex identification and “third option” identification is dangerous.