by Lil Tuttle
In what had to be one of the most frank discussions ever held as part of the Conservative Women’s Network, four politically and ideologically diverse women of the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition gave an eye-opening presentation on the transgender movement and its pursuit in eradicating women and women’s rights in culture, employment, sports, and law.
The presentation, moderated by Ryan Anderson, arranged and hosted by The Heritage Foundation and co-sponsored by CBLPI, occurred on the same day as the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era directive on transgender bathrooms in public schools and colleges.
Yet the progressive and conservative, lesbian and straight, religious and agnostic women on the panel left no doubt in the audience’s mind that radical transgender activists will not be dissuaded from their mission to erase all male and female sex distinctions in society. Women, they argued, must respond to this threat boldly and in unity, regardless of their political persuasion.
Gender Identity Abandons Reason
Miriam Ben Shalom is an activist who made history by being the first openly lesbian woman reinstated to the military.
Quoting Thomas Payne from Age of Reason – To argue with a man who has renounced reason is like giving medicine to the dead – Ms. Shalom argued that the Gender Identity and transgender movement abandons all reason and scientific reality. It relies instead on intimidation and threats to advance its cause.
“A lot of people are lying to themselves and each other,” she said about the threat Gender Identity and transgenderism pose to women. Those in the gay and lesbian community who recognized the threat are being bullied into silence. They fear transgender activists.
“Biology isn’t bigotry. Biology is the truth,” she argued. People who oppose transgender policies are not transphobic; they are opposed to the new form of patriarchal male violence against women that transgender policies usher in.
Mind-Blowing Cognitive Dissonance
Mary Lou Singleton, a nurse midwife, self-labeled radical feminist and board member of the Women’s Liberation Front, told of her organization filing a lawsuit against the Obama administration to stop the arbitrary substitution of Gender Identity for sex and to restore Title IX rights to women and girls.
She called transgenderism part of the larger “global feminicide” against women and girls around the world.
“My entire lifework is to fight for people oppressed on the basis of their biological sex,” Ms. Singleton said, citing several examples of ways in which girls and women are treated no better than property in parts of the world. By claiming to be women, she argued,the Gender Identity movement has stolen the comprehensive term for that oppressed group of people.
Quoting Voltaire – Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities – and echoing a point made by Ms. Shalom, Ms. Singleton said the transgender movement is the railroading of complete insanity and a denial of the science of species and our sexual dimorphism.
“The cognitive dissonance is mind blowing,” she argued. “If we lose this battle, we [women] have lost everything in terms of our legal protections.”
If Gender Identity Wins, Women Lose
Kailey Triller Haver is a rape survivor. She currently is Communications Director for the Just Want Privacy campaign in Washington State – a state that moved early to adopt transgender policies.
Her experience has taught that every time Gender Identity policies win, women lose. Asked how she would respond to trans-activists who reject the idea that pedophiles will exploit the transgender rules, she said preventive and screening measures are an essential component in women’s safety:
Are We Prepared for Sex-Blind Sports?
Kami Mueller, a communications consultant who played an integral role in the NC transgender bathroom law (HBS), noted that NCAA’s activism on behalf of the transgender issue was puzzling and raised a number of questions.
Is the NCAA prepared for sex-blind sports teams, with biological men freely participating in female team sports, and biological women freely participating in male team sports? That’s the likely future if Gender Identity wins and replaces biological sex as a sports team eligibility factor.
Alternative Realities vs. Objective Reality
Emily Zinos, a stay-at-home Catholic mom with 9 children who works with the Family Policy Alliance in Minnesota, was unable to attend due to a family medical emergency.
In prepared remarks read by Ms. Shalom, Mrs. Zinos argued from the public school parent’s perspective. Subjective alternative realities of transsexuals should not take precedence over the objective reality of biological males and females, she said. Transgenderism is gender dysphoria and a false anthropology.
“Public schools have a duty to serve all children, but a school cannot serve children and a totalitarian ideology all at once.”
A Lively Q&A
The question and answer session was equally frank.
Q – Why aren’t feminists revolting against Gender Identity since it strips them of many of their gains?
Q – What would convince you, if anything, that trans identities are legitimate and deserve the protections and interventions you oppose?
Every Woman’s Issue
Two things should make this issue a priority of every woman: (1) the personal experiences of these women who have dealt extensively with transgender activists, and (2) the comprehensive report issued late last year by world-renown Johns Hopkins University medical and psychiatric professionals who have provided psychological services to transgenders. The report states unequivocally that Gender Identity is entirely a recently-developed sociological construct that has no basis whatsoever in science. (For more, see Lawsuits Challenge Obama’s Transgender Restroom Order or read that report’s short executive summary.)
The transgender movement has progressed, largely under the radar to this point, as a “civil rights” issue affecting less than one percent of the U.S. population. In fact, the policies demanded by the transgender movement impacts 100 percent of the population, most especially women. It cannot be ignored or tolerated.