As a life-long leftist / progressive in the U.S., I have consistently and reliably voted for the Democratic party (and sometimes the Green party). I’m quite a bit further left than the Democrats, aligning strongly with democratic socialism, but we only have two viable parties in the U.S. and the Democrats are usually close enough. I have never believed that the Democrats are perfect and I often disagree with them, usually for being too capitalistic, too militaristic, or too accommodating to Republicans. But never before have I disagreed with them so strongly that I was ready to completely abandon them… until now.
The current wave of Democratic politicians blindly supporting gender activism and gender legislation demonstrates just how little women’s rights matter in our modern world, even within the supposed "progressive" wing of American politics. It also very likely shows how deep in the pockets of billionaire lobbyists and Big Pharma the Democrats are, which means they care more about power and money than anyone's rights or freedoms. The sex-based rights of women have always been one of the platforms that the Democrats have at least pretended to care about. The Democrats are arguably considered to be the party most closely aligned with feminism and the party that can typically be counted upon to uphold a pro-choice stance. What the Democrats have taken for granted is that they were only tenuously holding on to that "feminist" label. Yes, women have been voting mostly in favor of Democratic candidates for the past couple of decades, but a big part of that was because the only other choice - the Republicans - were busy becoming more openly racist, more openly misogynistic, and more openly ridiculous and fantastical in their loony anti-science beliefs through much of the last couple of decades. But now the Democrats are starting to become the anti-science party. They are upholding a set of fantastical beliefs in genderism, and trying to force these beliefs upon everyone else. Many women in the U.S. have also taken for granted their sex-based rights, including the right to body autonomy. We've allowed the Democrats to hold us hostage by using Roe v. Wade as an implied threat: "You better go along with what we say and vote for us, or else the other guys will win and you will lose your right to choose!" We must never take for granted our sex-based rights, and we must continually be fighting for them. Andrea Dworkin and other great feminist writers have discussed this concept before, but it feels like now we are seeing the prophecy come true before our very eyes. For the women who support gender activism, I wonder if they have forgotten just how recently women gained our sex-based freedoms? When they demand that trans-identified males be given full and unquestioned access to female-only restrooms, changing rooms, hospital wings, and women’s shelters, I wonder if they know that it was only around a hundred years ago that women first were provided sex-protected public restrooms which allowed them to leave the house and finally be free from the "urinary leash"? When they demand that we refer to abortion as a "human rights issue" and not a "women's rights issue" in order to be gender inclusive, I wonder if they know that it was only around two generations ago that woman-controlled contraception ("the pill") helped to free women from the burden of being pregnant throughout the majority of their childbearing years? When they associate a “gender identity” with articles of clothing, I wonder if they know that there are a lot of women alive today who were restricted from wearing trousers at some point in their lifetime? When they demand unquestioned acceptance of trans-identified males into women's sports, I wonder if they remember that the WNBA was founded in 1996 or that it was just in 2012 that women competed in every sport at a Summer Olympics for the first time? Why have we been taking these hard-won women's rights for granted in favor of appeasing the internal feelings of men? When did we make the shift from “boys and girls can like whatever they want” to “if a boy plays with a doll and likes pink, he must really be a girl”? How did we get to a point where lesbians and gay men are being shamed for refusing to date opposite-sex partners who identify as trans? How did we go from “born this way” to “born wrong, must fix”? And how can people who support this kind of regressive genderism dare to call themselves feminists or progressive? During the 2020 elections, for the first time ever, I had no idea who I should vote for. I absolutely was not going to vote for Trump or anyone who supported him, but how could I vote for someone who promised to sign away women’s rights (with the Equality Act executive order that protects gender identity, but does not protect sex as a class) on his first day in office like Biden and his supporters? I feel absolutely politically homeless. Even the Green party in the U.S. has been indoctrinated by this gender nonsense, with only a few state-level Green party organizations holding out and standing up for women’s rights – and they are being punished by the national Green party for doing so! No one cares about women, and I will never forget this. Many women will never forget this. On the national level at least, it feels as if the left has completely abandoned women. Women are being silenced, removed from positions, fired from jobs, kicked out of organizations, and threatened for speaking up for their rights. Why does the Democratic party and Green party think that is okay? Why are they not willing to listen to feminists and women speaking up about these issues? Do they want to lose women’s votes for the next generation or so? The vast majority of the politicians who are speaking out against gender legislation and speaking up for women’s rights are Republicans. Who would have ever thought that Republicans would be the ones standing up for women? But here we are. Many of the Republican politicians who are speaking up do not actually represent the feminist viewpoint of why sex-based rights matter, however. Quite a few of them are approaching this from a religious angle, or are attacking all of the LGBT together for the problems of the T. Gay rights is also deeply suffering from the gender wars, which is why so many “LGB” movements are gaining momentum throughout the world. Some right-wingers are also using this to attack feminism, saying that “women asked for this (men in women’s sports), because they wanted equality” - genderism has given misogynists the perfect ammunition to attack women. But some on the right are also seeing the reality of the situation, and if they are smart they could use this situation to their advantage. If the Democrats aren’t careful, the Republicans could take this opportunity to steal away the majority votes of women, and to seize power back in government for a long, long time. It would take a really, really big change in the party for me to vote Republican, but if they started with revising their stances on abortion and the environment, they have a good chance of winning me and a lot of otherwise left-leaning women to their side. Right now, the Democratic party looks like they are operating in a fantasy land based upon the academic ponderings of the ivory tower elites. I am a damned ivory tower elite – I’m a college professor in the humanities! – and even I can see this absurdity for what it is. They are trying to force this academic language and postmodernism upon the masses, and if the masses don’t comply they risk losing their jobs and their reputations through social shaming. More and more people are waking up to this reality. When we have a pandemic, an economic crisis, and a struggling working class to worry about, the gender-feelings of a bunch of mostly white middle-class men with autogynephilia who want to invade women’s spaces and have their cosmetic surgeries paid for by taxpayer money suddenly seem like the height of self-indulgent consumerism in comparison. So why are so many so-called progressives falling for it? I used to volunteer and donate and go out and pound the pavement to get better people elected to office. I used to donate to the ACLU and believed their causes were in alignment with mine. I used to think the dem party in the US represented our best chance at a better future. I still stayed with it, even after Dems seemed to side with pornographers and people who profit from the sex industry at the expense of women and girls.
However, now that femaleness itself is being colonized by males, I find I cannot continue to support any organizations like I used to. The DNC, the DSCC, the ACLU, the HRC, erx - I've discontinued all donations and support and even find myself speaking out against the ACLU entirely. I basically feel that as a woman, I have no allies in government or NGOs. I am a millennial writing from the US. Ever since I turned 18 and gained the right to vote, I have voted as a Democrat. I have also supported Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, my university’s union, and a number of causes associated with the left. I have been a proud feminist ever since discovering feminism as a teenager. In fact, much of my artwork is focused on themes of biology, the female form, and life and decay. For years now, I have been observing the erasure of females in feminist circles in the name of “inclusivity” toward men “identifying as women” or “identifying as gender minorities”. For example, I have witnessed feminist artists being pressured to depict penises in their art, and women being told “not all women get periods” when merely describing their own experiences. I have been increasingly troubled to see the intrusion of gender ideology beyond feminist circles, into areas such as politics, universities, and workplaces.
The first time I expressed my concerns about women’s bathrooms being unsafe due to self-ID policies, I was accused of spouting Fox News, right-wing myths and dismissed by a young male at work. This was stunning to me, as a feminist and Democrat who has personally experienced street harassment. It seems like common sense to me that if I am harassed in broad daylight in public by strange males, then obviously they will continue their harassment in the bathroom once they discover it’s a “free-for-all”. After this incident, I stayed quiet for a few years but became upset once more when I was referred to as a “person with a cervix” when receiving a pap smear at a doctor’s office. I was previously diagnosed with HPV, so it was upsetting to be suggested as “less than a woman” while receiving such a sensitive exam and worrying about cervical cancer. Meanwhile, I was on a diversity committee at the university and asked for “sex” to be included with the listed categories; a male student identifying as a “genderqueer non-male” asked me, “Why would sex matter?” Finally, I expressed my opposition to a law that would allow any male prisoner to self-ID as a woman and be transferred to a women’s prison. I clarified that my opposition was to the self-ID aspect of the law, but I would support vetted transfers, creation of third prisons or wings, etc. The female friend of the same “genderqueer non-male” started interrogating me about this, and I finally stepped down from the diversity committee, fearing for my university position. In the past year or so, I have been sending detailed letters and phone calls to my Democratic representatives expressing my opposition to laws that push extreme gender ideology. My communications have been ignored. For the first time in 2020, I changed my voter registration to Independent and voted for third-party candidates. I have also stopped donating to ACLU and Planned Parenthood. I have stopped participating in the university union. I never intended to be a “single issue” voter or person, but I cannot in good conscience contribute to a party or organization that is stripping away the hard-earned rights of half the population. How many women must object, before leftists will listen? How many women and girls will be harmed, before leftists will admit there are conflicts of rights? I had always assumed women’s rights would improve in my lifetime, but I am saddened to discover that my daughter may be born into a world with less freedoms than what I enjoyed as a girl. My only consolation is that females are incredibly strong. We have weathered tremendous hardships in the past and will survive them in the future. |
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