Notwithstanding Democratic Party leadership’s embrace of “gender identity,” leftist feminists globally are rejecting it in favor of laws, policies, and practices that protect the sex-based rights of women and girls. The Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights (SB 1628) would enact that protection in Arizona, and I urge the House to pass it and Governor Hobbs to sign it.
I serve as the president of the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA) – the leading global organization that works to advance women’s sex-based rights all over the world. It does so by promoting the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, which challenges the discrimination and oppression we experience from the replacement of the category of sex with that of so-called “gender identity.” WDI USA supports the Women’s Bill of Rights, in Arizona and elsewhere.
In the 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminists, who leaned Left, fought for women’s rights. They opened rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters for women fleeing male violence. They won many property rights for women, allowing women to leave oppressive marriages. And they fought for abortion rights.
There’s a good reason why second-wave feminists had to fight for women’s rights—because women didn’t have rights before because they were women (i.e., adult human females). Today, those victories are being thrown out, including by Democratic women leaders, because of the nonsensical, pseudoscientific concept of “gender identity”—the idea that somehow sex isn’t real, that a person can be the opposite sex, or that there is some mysterious third sex class (there isn’t). There is nothing progressive about pretending sex isn’t real.
Democratic leaders, including women, have been participating in this charade for years, and it’s time to stop. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the Women’s Bill of Rights in her state (the legislature overrode the veto). New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham failed to support the bill in her state. At the federal level, every Democrat in the House of Representatives (including the women) voted no on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act—a straightforward bill that would protect women’s sports under Title IX nationally—last year. In March 2023, Vice President Kamala Harris sent Dylan Mulvaney a letter on White House stationery congratulating him for achieving “365 days of girlhood.”
WDI USA is a nonpartisan organization that works with women’s groups across the political spectrum to advance women’s sex-based rights. Speaking for myself, I have always been a Democrat (except for a brief stint as a Green) and I am appalled at the female leaders within my own party who, in service to “gender identity,” are throwing women and girls under the bus (though a handful of Democrats at the state level have taken a firm stand supporting women’s sex-based rights and I applaud them).
In 2021, I published a book called The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, where I outlined the Leftist feminist critique of “gender identity.” I always put “transgender” in quotation marks because the word does not describe a coherent category of people. One hundred percent of human beings—all 8 billion of us—are either female or male, even if some claim otherwise.
In 2023, I published another book, The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls. The last section is an Afterword with a policy prescription for Democrats. It says:
Democratic Party leadership: You must change course, and you must do so immediately. You should do this because it is the right thing to do, but you should also do it for the health of the party. You only need to look at some of our allies across the pond and down under to understand why. Women all over the world are rejecting their left-of-center parties for refusing to represent our interests and for sacrificing women and children at the altar of “gender identity.”
Arizona Democrats should vote yes on the Women’s Bill of Rights and Governor Hobbs should sign it when it reaches her desk. Women and girls — the sex class — depend on it.
Kara Dansky is the President of Women’s Declaration International USA and the author of The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls.
Fantastic article, Kara! I want more dems to see this. The only people who gain from trans policies are males. Females don’t win anything; not even the “trans-identified” females. Only one of the sexes benefits: male. Which sex would suddenly get an improvement in prison housing if they claim a trans identity? Which sex would suddenly jump to the top-ranked in their sport if they claim a trans identity? I’m not willing to sacrifice the opportunities and safety infrastructures specifically set aside for women & girls in the name of “transwomen”, aka men. Men have their own opportunities and categories. Women’s Bill of Rights to keep men out of women’s spaces and opportunities!
The rights won by women throughout the generations has often been portrayed as a cause of left leaning women. They just happened to be the ones GIVEN that celebrity status. As a middle of the road American woman I experienced those efforts for equal opportunity and pay. I throughly resented the celebrities asserting their attitudes and opinions as though they SHOULD be shared by every woman. But that is the way of the left isn’t it. Here we are today, the left is trying to destroy women’s rights and create more mentally ill generations by broadening exactly what it means to be a woman. How diabolical. And then using that propaganda to promote sexualizing of children. What a perverted affront those efforts are to the women who came before them. Whether today’s leftists are aware or not women on the left owe a responsibility to protect women rights. I’m appalled at the lack of moral compass and stupidity spreading like a virus among the indoctrinated or low functioning people.
Which begs the question, why are you a democrat?
Exactly! Even girls in the womb should be protected! I’d guess that’s why this person is not conservative all the way…
Progressive feminists were the first to look at gender ideology with a critical eye decades ago. Also, many lesbian and bisexual women are done with the gender charade as it completely erases sexual orientation. Gender ideology is inherently homophobic and misogynistic. The days of “vote blue no matter who” for a sizable group of progressive women are over.
Unfortunately they won’t. The Democrat party feels it is more important to ally hselves with that less than one percent group than the majority of their base. In the Democrat party if you’re not LGBTQ, billionaire or an illegal you don’t matter to them at all.