EVENT Transcript

As you may know, the Women Against Gender event experienced technical difficulties with its audio feed. As such, the preface included below was unable to be included in the edited video. For this, we apologize and promise to improve our capacity in these areas.

M.K. Fain:

“Hello everybody! Welcome to WoLF’s 2021 Women Speak panel: Women Against Gender. I am Mary Kate Fain, and I will be moderating today’s event. I want to thank every single person who showed up tonight. Each woman on this stage here with me knows from experience the personal, professional, and physical risks that come with being labeled a “woman against gender” in today’s society.

Despite centuries of gender roles being used to oppress women, today’s so-called “progressives” have bought into the patriarchal notion that, somehow, women speaking out about this oppression is “hateful.” 

The irony is especially thick today here in Austin, Texas — where just this morning over 1,000 protesters gathered at the capitol in defense of women’s rights. Despite the context of this protest, in the wake of a right-wing attack on abortion, an experience that is exclusive to women and girls, some individuals this morning turned against feminists to declare that men can be women, and anyone who thinks otherwise is hateful.

Nothing highlights more clearly the fact that feminism has become politically homeless in the United States and, really, across the world. On the right, women are under attack when it comes to our most basic right to bodily autonomy. On the left, the very existence of women and the fundamental basis of our oppression is erased. 

As a woman who lives in Texas and has experienced both an abortion that would be illegal today in this state, and also censorship and cancellation for speaking out on gender, I know first hand how women are on our own, left to fend for ourselves politically if we want to survive.

Today, you will hear from four women who are bravely standing on the front line of feminism. These women are consistently canceled, deplatformed, harassed, and threatened for the simple fact that they oppose modern gender roles. Nonetheless, they have each found ways to fight back against patriarchy, male violence, racism, and censorship that has left women alienated from mainstream politics on either side.

So, on behalf of the entire WoLF team, I thank you all for joining us tonight for this event. I would like to also thank WoLF’s members and donors who made this event possible.”

Speaker: Lierre Keith

M.K. Fain:

"First up, we will be hearing from Lierre Kieth on the origins of transgenderism and why women must resist it. 

Lierre is the founder of Women’s Liberation Front and currently serves as the Board Chair. She has been a radical feminist for over forty years, is the author of seven books, and is proud to say she has been arrested six times. She lives in California with giant trees and giant dogs.

We ask that you please hold all your questions for each speaker until the end, as we will have lots of time for Q & A. Please welcome, Lierre Keith!”

Lierre Keith:

“This talk is dedicated to my mother, Victoria, who endured an illegal abortion when she was 19.

[Referencing Free To Be You and Me Slide] came out in 1972, which was also the year my mother went to consciousness raising. The glorious results appear before you. We had this record. I still know the words. I remember going around the schoolyard asking the girls one by one: are you for women’s lib? That’s what I said: women’s lib. I was seven years old. But I wanted to know who had my back. Who was going to dig down and find some courage and fight for women. I’m 57 now, and I’ve lost every battle I’ve fought, but I’m still asking. Are you for women’s lib?

For asking that question, for asserting that women are a material class, I have had so many death threats that men with guns have been assigned to my protection detail. If you had told me twenty years ago that radical feminists would one day need armed guards in order to speak, I would not have believed you. And it’s not the government that wants me dead, not the pornographers or the pimps, and not right-wing ideologues. It’s entirely men on the left. Specifically, men who call themselves “transgender.” How did we get here?

You’ve heard of speed dating? This is speed revolution. Around the globe, women face constant insults to our intelligence, our bodies, our lives. For example, the number one reason women go to the emergency room is battering. That’s a man beating up a woman. In the United States alone, a man does that every 18 seconds. That’s more hatred than I can comprehend.

This is the basic insight of feminism. Women share a common condition, and that condition is political. It’s not bad luck, it’s not choosing the wrong man, it’s not created by evolution, and it wasn’t ordained by God. None of these horrors are inevitable.

So for male dominance to continue, every generation of boys has to be molded into dominators. Being a real man requires a psychology of entitlement, emotional numbness, and a dichotomy of self and other.

That’s gender. Female socialization is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Across history, this breaking has including so-called “beauty practices” like female genital mutilation and footbinding as well as the ever-popular sexual abuse. Femininity is just the traumatized psyche displaying acquiescence.

Gender demarcates the geopolitical boundaries of patriarchy. It divides us in half but it’s not a horizontal half. It’s vertical. Gender is not some cosmic yin and yang. It’s a fist and the flesh that bruises. It’s a mouth crushed shut and a girl who will never be the same.

Without feminism, the realities of women’s lives are unspeakable, each woman cut adrift in a hostile, chaotic sea.

Apply the words “sex-class,” and that chaos snaps into a sharp pattern of subordination, from the small, daily insults to body and soul to the shattering traumas of incest and rape. The crimes men commit against women are done because women belong to a subordinate class and they’re done to keep women a subordinate class. It’s not personal and it’s not random; it’s political and it’s unjust.

To get justice for women, we have to dismantle the caste system called gender. Brick by brick, we have to bring it down. Not accommodate to it. Not make the best decisions we can inside it. But bring it down. And now we come to the newest brick in that system: Transgenderism.

Reading the words of girls who think they are transgender has broken my heart in ways that will never heal. In their own words, this is what makes them transgender:

I like skateboarding.

I love math.

I want short hair.

I hate my body.

They want physical freedom, a life of intellectual pursuits, and bodily integrity. They want to be human beings not objects. Feminism is very simple. It claims all women are human beings, not objects.

Feminism is also very hard, because in the words of Andrea Dworkin, “it requires precisely what patriarchy destroys in women: unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power.”

Trangenderism is also very simple. It claims some people like being objects and those people are called women. Other people don’t like being objects and they are called men. This is innate, immutable, created by God or evolution or hormones or something because clearly, women’s little brains can’t handle the rigors of skateboarding or math. Instead, we are compelled by God or evolution or hormones to be pink precious princesses.

And when we age out of that, the pornographers are waiting. 12 billion searches. 14-year-old girls aren’t stupid. The only world they see is a cage made by men and their predations.

The only feminism they see is a celebration of collusion, not any kind of resistance. The personal isn’t political now. The personal is personal. And some girls hate their bodies because they are really boys. This is the way out: refuse to see yourself in other girls, deny the caste you all inhabit and the system that puts you there. You are a human being, they aren’t. Any route to sisterhood, any rumor of female solidarity, any last whisper that once there were women who were warriors, is gone.

In my teen years, we punished our bodies with eating disorders and self-harm. And yes, those spread by wild social contagion. Those practices have now been medicalized and institutionalized. Your doctor will take care of that horrifying female fat with chemical injections and your surgeon will do the cutting for you.

And most of the girls who are shunted down that path would grow up to be lesbians. It’s the gay and lesbian kids who are being transed.' Young lesbians are being gutted of their uteruses, their ovaries destroyed, their breasts sliced away, and their vaginas atrophied, all before they can vote. Free to be, you and me, through chemicals and surgery. They should be our next generation of warriors and instead, the battlefield is their female flesh.

The loss is not just individual. Lesbians are always the beating heart of women’s liberation. Every so often, lesbianism and feminism come together for a brief moment and there’s an explosion across the culture. Women make progress when women love women. It really is that simple.

Lots of people are bewildered about where this movement has come from, why are there so many of these men all of a sudden. There is an answer: pornography.

I did click through so you don’t have to, and I’m not going to inflict on you what comes next. But I will tell you there was one woman being choked, one woman having her head yanked back by her hair, a woman crying out in pain, on an endless page of women being objectified, hurt, and sold for fun. And there [are] 13 billion search hits for this.

Men are now saturated in the sexuality of pornography—in sex that is about power, not love; about cruelty, not care; about violation, instead of connection—and some of them are going to find the subordinate role arousing. The porn industry is churning these guys out like tribbles.

This is what men are doing to themselves with porn. That’s what they think a woman is. In real life, these are the images that women are drowning in—a relentless display of women reduced to body parts, turned into objects, willingly abused, and loving it. That is the landscape of the mass media only [it is] more like a hellscape. This is what women are fighting against to assert our humanity. How many of these photos do we have to see before the pattern is clear?

[Referencing “Big Lips” Slide] This is what women are. This is what women are for. Here’s the bargain basement version. He hasn’t inserted any plastic into his face, but it’s the same thing. There [are] so many versions of this. Millions of photos. Does it get clearer when you see grown-ass men dressed as sexy schoolgirls? Or ballerinas? Or adult babies? If you don’t think this has real-world consequences, ask me about David Challenor in the Q & A.

And this is what is waiting for them. An entire genre [is] called “sissification” or “forced feminization” porn. I don’t have the heart to make you look at this. It’s men taking on aspects of femininity as humiliation and pain, for the purpose of sexual arousal. It’s horrible watching human beings get humiliated and hurt, but until you enter this world at least a little bit, you will never understand the nature of this movement. This is where they are coming from. This is the Hell Mouth. Some of them will even admit it in public.

[Referencing Andrea Long Chu Slide] “sissy porn made me trans” This is Mr. Andrea Long Chu, whose book Female: A Concern was reviewed in none other than the New York Times.

“Femaleness is a universal sex defined by self-negation… I’ll define as female any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another…The barest essentials of femaleness are an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.”

That’s what these men think a woman is. And they want to be women because subordination gives them a hard-on. I’m sorry to be so crude but that is the driving force behind this movement. Yeah, they’ve got a few billionaires, but that’s what powers it, not what drives it. The driver is the paraphilia.

The name for this is autogynephilia. The term was coined by Dr. Ray Blanchard. These men are sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as a woman. It is now considered the worst kind of transphobia to mention autogynephilia when we say it. Meanwhile, many of them freely admit it.

“Autogynephilia describes not an obscure paraphilic affliction but rather the basic structure of all human sexuality. This is not just because everyone has an erotic image of themselves as female — they do — but the assimilation of any erotic image is, by nature, female.”

He wants to claim that he’s a woman, and the way he gets in is by insisting that everyone is a woman. But the reason he wants to be a woman is because a woman is the thing on which acts are done, and that idea gives him a thrill. This is vile and no other oppressed group would ever be expected to put up with it.

And if you think Mr. Andrea is a one-off, this was in the NY Times three days ago. So because some men find the word “woman” offensive, the New York Times has decided “individuals who have receptive vaginal sex” is a reasonable replacement for the word “woman.”

Women are passive sexual receptacles for an active male agent. This matches rather precisely how Mr. Andrea defines “woman,” and it is of course the entire, endless point of pornography. Or as Catharine MacKinnon said so succinctly, “Man fucks woman: subject verb object.”

You’re allowed to be angry at this. You don’t have to keep being nice.

One reason we are losing this war is because women refuse to face the nature of these men. Oh, the poor dears suffer from “gender dysphoria.” No, they don’t. Their suffering is entirely self-inflicted. They are obsessed with their subordination fetish to the point that it takes over their personalities and their lives and they don’t care who they destroy in the process.

You can ask the women and children who have survived these men. Their stories are horribly the same—used by narcissistic, abusive men who demand full servicing of their sexual desires.

To wrap this up: [Referencing Chart Slide]

We say biology is real, and that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. This does not seem controversial but the genderists have made it so. They insist that biology is a social construct because suddenly, after 500 million years, sex is a spectrum and something about seahorses.

We say, gender is women’s oppression and we’ve got centuries of mutilated feet, genitals, and rib cages to back us up. They say no, gender is great fun. The only problem is we don’t get to choose between the dominant and subordinate roles. And some men really want the submissive role, and they are enraged when they are denied. The name for that is “aggrieved entitlement.” Take that home—you’re going to need it.

Our solution is to dismantle male supremacy. Their solution runs into trouble. They know that biology is not a story humans made up. They can’t dismantle it. So the best they can do is stop anyone from talking about it. Our best outcome would be women’s liberation.

Their best outcome? Well, women are losing the ability to talk about sex-based oppression, since sex doesn’t exist. The women on the front lines are, as ever, the least of us.

Women in homeless shelters, in prisons, in battered women’s shelters are being forced to share intimate spaces with men who claim to be women. The dignity and safety of the most vulnerable women have been weighed against the feelings of sexual predators, and the feelings of those men have been declared more important. Feminists warned where this would end, and now here we are. I want everyone to imagine the terror of being locked in an 8 x 10 cell with a rapist. This is happening to women.

Ultimately, the genderists want to liberate men’s sexual fetishes. This is a men’s sexual rights movement. And for that, they need women’s subordination. We expected authoritarians from the Right. We weren’t prepared for it from the Left. Women have lost their jobs, they’ve lost their careers, they’ve lost publishers, they’ve lost custody of their kids, and they’ve been physically assaulted.

The most basic facts of biology are now considered hate speech, which means the reality of women’s lives is back to being unspeakable. The worst part is that no one believes us.

Civic institutions that were built as a bulwark against power are crumbling. The ACLU has actively tried to keep citizens from accessing Freedom of Information Act requests. The American Booksellers Association has declared a feminist book “hate speech.” Journalists are afraid of losing their jobs. If all of this doesn’t chill you nothing will.

At Harvard, a professor is in trouble for saying “pregnant women.” Academia has fallen, though Hogwarts still stands. And people I counted as friends and comrades just want to keep their heads down so they can keep their jobs, hoping that the fever will break because this can’t go on. It can. That’s the thing. It can get worse.

I’m asking the same question now I did as a child: are you for women’s liberation? I still want to know who has my back. I want to know who is going to find that unimpeachable bravery and confront male power.

And if we can’t do it for ourselves, we have to do it for her. Because there is no one else to do it. So one more time: Are you for women’s lib? Thank you.”

Speaker: SABA Malik

M.K. Fain:

“Thank you, Lierre! If you want to support WoLF’s work to abolish gender, please text WOLF to (202) 858-1233. Donations to WoLF are tax-deductible and go to support our feminist advocacy to protect and restore women’s rights. Once again, that is text WOLF to (202) 858-1233.

Our next speaker also brings to the table decades of activism. Saba Malik joined the British Black Power movement in the 70s and has worked for justice in various forms ever since. Along with Lierre, she was a co-founder of Deep Green Resistance and is currently a licensed mental health worker in California. She is a mother of two, and an experienced martial artist with training in Kung Fu and Kickboxing.

Please welcome Saba, who will address the way gender identity advocates compare transphobia with racism and why this is both inaccurate and offensive.”

Saba Malik:

“Hello, my name is Saba Malik and I am grateful to be here tonight. I thought long and hard before accepting the offer to speak, on this panel, partly because my life is a very busy one and anytime away from my family comes with some disruption but also because this topic has become so contentious that it involves a certain amount of risk.

Now, before becoming a mother this would not have been a reason for me to decline but knowing that my children may face backlash because of my views certainly gave me pause for thought. I decided finally that it was important for my voice to be part of this panel for two good reasons. The first because it is important to speak the truth and show solidarity with women who are risking their well being, their reputations and in some cases their careers to be here but also, and this is really important because I felt that a woman of color should be here to refute the idea that believing biology is important and that a woman is an adult human female is the same as being racist. Trans activists and their supporters have more than once characterized themselves as the New Civil rights frontier.

As a woman who has experienced racism, violence, and prejudice personally, systemically, and systematically; I find this comparison distressing and offensive

Let me say really clearly, I firmly believe that all human beings deserve basic human rights, they deserve to live without fear of oppression or violence, to have access to housing, jobs, and equality before the law and judicial systems, whoever you are, however, you dress or present yourself and however you identify, That is not up for discussion at all.

Are trans people barred from owning property? Voting? Are they denied a fair wage on the basis of their identifying as transgender? Are they denied "personhood" based on their "trans-ness?" What human rights are they denied?

The issue here is that they view social validation of their "trans-ness" as a human right. It's not. Other people's opinions have nothing to do with a person’s basic civil liberties.

The reason I find the charge of my beliefs vis a vis the protection of women’s sex-based rights being the same as racism is that it’s a false comparison and it completely obscures the issue.

It’s a false comparison to conflate 400 years of slavery, murder, rape torture Jim Crow and the segregation of public spaces by whites against Black people with attempts to open women’s bathrooms, shelters, prisons, locker rooms, and other female-only spaces to male-born people simply on the basis that they ‘identify’ as women.

That apparently makes me transphobic or even a ‘nazi.

As a woman of Muslim and Pakistani heritage, the word ‘transphobe’ has often felt like the term ‘anti-American’ to me. I’ve been accused of being both. I compare these two slurs because both these terms are used to fire up emotions and shut down robust discussion.

What does it mean to be transphobic? Phobia means having an unexplained fear, I don’t have an unexplained fear of people who identify as transgender, I have a disagreement with their definition of what gender is. That is a far cry from being phobic. I am not here to encourage violence to anyone, I’m not here to claim I am better, superior, or more evolved than anyone else. I am here to question the idea that womanhood is something which anyone can identify into.

So, back to the idea of false comparisons, when I think of the civil rights movement and whatever has been captured about it in writing, media, pictures, etc., what I am confronted with is images of black people being attacked with state-sanctioned violence by dogs and clubs and water hoses while they linked arms and tried to withstand the brutality of the opposition, images of white adults braying abuse and screaming at the children who were picked to first desegregate schools in this country and of those children being escorted by police and armed guards just so they could enter a building so the irony of the claim of my being like a racist is not lost on me when I, along with the other panelists had to be escorted [by police] through a separate entrance because of the protest over [these events] and also because of numerous threats and suggestions of harm to us personally.

I have received both rape and death threats for choosing to be here, I know these other women have too. I find it interesting how the rape threats keep coming - almost as though I have some bodily characteristic that played an important part in that definition.

What I don’t understand is why I am called violent when I have not threatened anyone. I have never called for anyone to be de-platformed or removed from a job simply because they disagree with me ideologically. And yet my disagreement is defined as a form of violence by transactivists. My belief that sex-based rights which women have fought so hard for are important and not negotiable is considered as bad as racism and an attempt to ‘erase’ trans people. I’m not sure how this is even possible.

My disagreement with someone does not erase them. If that were true, none of us would be here, because there is not a human being alive who does not know someone who disagrees with some part of their ideology. I do not like the term cis-woman but if someone calls me that it’s not violence and it doesn’t erase me. I would have to have a very fragile existence for that to be true.

Biological sex is important. Historically women’s biology has been the basis of our oppression since civilization reared its head. We were not oppressed because we performed womanhood in some way or wore certain clothes, we were owned by men so our sexual and reproductive capacities could be commodified as well as our labor. When humans first started to practice agriculture and found that it required a large labor force as well as more and more land too, tribes who conquered other tribes would kill all the men and keep the women. They did that because women can reproduce and a constant supply of workers was necessary. There was also the added benefit of women’s forced labor and […] being used for sexual gratification.

Women in this country were still chattel, that means they were owned by their male relatives. They could be bought and sold and won and lost in card games until the late nineteenth century and so the hard-won sex-based rights that women before us campaigned and in some cases lost their lives for are incredibly important because they are an acknowledgment that women as a class have suffered immensely at the hands of men as a class. Those title 9 rights are still important.

Women and girls have a right to their private spaces, they shouldn’t be afraid to express that. Many young girls don’t want to share their locker rooms and other private spaces with boys who claim they are girls, they don’t want to compete against them in sports either but they are too afraid to say they think it’s unfair - what about their rights?

This is the core distinction between those of us who are silenced, on the one hand, and trans activists, on the other. Trans activists go beyond promoting civil rights for trans people by insisting that transwomen are literally women, and that, as such, they’re entitled to unfettered access to women’s spaces, sports, affirmative action slots, and more.

It feels like the silencing of women all over again. The extremists have succeeded in injecting the transwomen-are-women concept into all sorts of policies already adopted by sports associations, school districts, and government agencies. They’re pushing for more. The Equality Act pending in the U.S. Congress gives “gender identity” (a person’s self-declaration as to whether they are male or female, regardless of biological reality) precedence over “sex” as a protected category in federal civil rights laws.

These are enormously important decisions being made that will affect thousands of women and yet a robust discussion and critique of these policies is not allowed. It’s past time for people to stand up and be counted and to stop being afraid. One of my old professors sent me a message before my appearance here […] and I wish to share that message with all of you. She said courage calls to courage everywhere. I hope that’s the case.”

Speaker: Lauren Adams

M.K. Fain:

“Next will be hearing from Lauren Adams, WoLF Legal Director. Lauren has nearly a decade of legal experience with a focus on serving the needs of women.

Recently, Lauren’s work has been centered on defending the rights of incarcerated women in states like Washington and California, where female prisoners are being housed with violent male offenders. Lauren will be speaking on the current state of women’s legal recognition at the federal and state level, and why this is a crucial moment in the fight for women’s rights.

As a reminder, if you want to support WoLF’s work tonight please text WOLF to (202-858-1233). Our legal advocacy is entirely made possible by generous donors who understand the urgency of this moment and are ready to take action. Please welcome WoLF’s Lauren Adams!”

Lauren Adams:

“Women’s status in society can be broadly measured by two things: our practical access to our fundamental civil liberties, and the welfare of the most vulnerable or marginalized groups of women. By both of these measures, we are suffering and lagging, but there is reason to be hopeful and there are things we can do to improve things (one of which is openly discussing our current challenges, as we are doing here tonight.)

There are few women more vulnerable than those who are in the custody of the state. Right now, across the country, incarcerated women are being locked up with men, many of whom have histories of terrorizing women. This is happening in states like California, where they passed a dystopian law giving men the right to opt into women’s prisons, even if they do not identify as women. Nearly 300 men have applied for transfer so far. These policies are also being dictated via court order, in places like New Jersey, and being quietly and unofficially implemented in many states, from Washington to Florida to Texas…

I could spend hours on the horror show of mixed-sex prisons, and you should absolutely follow us and visit our website for more information. But there are also little-discussed Orwellian encroachments on how the women in these places are allowed to speak about their experiences.

In California, an incarcerated woman named Nadia filed a grievance after multiple incidents with a man who had been placed in her unit. In it, she said, “Men who feel unsafe are allowed to transfer from men’s prisons, but I have nowhere to transfer where I can feel safe, and I am forced to live in constant fear.” The prison rejected her grievance, and while quoting her in their response, they put the word “men” in scare quotes and bracketed the words “transgender females” next to it. The “transgender female” in her grievance is Michael Hernandez Contreras, who is serving a life sentence for multiple homicides and was transferred earlier this year, along with his fully intact penis, to Central California Women’s Facility.

Jason Hann is on death row at the same prison as Contreras, for beating his two-month-old son Jason to death, and a year later beating his 10-week-old daughter Montana to death as well. I’ve read the police reports and the court records and the things he did to his own babies are something out of a nightmare. Their mother Krissy is serving a sentence at the same facility as him, for failure to protect her daughter. Since Jason was transferred to that prison, she has multiple times been corrected by others for using “he/him” pronouns to describe him.

Nadia, Krissy, and every other woman inside [deserve] to rehabilitate in single-sex prisons, and they have the right to use their own language to describe their experiences and their feelings. One of the truly disappointing things that [are] happening now is that many of the entities that are supposed to protect our civil liberties - such as the ACLU - are in many cases actively fighting against them. In Washington, a man who calls himself Princess Zoee Marie Andromeda-Love was sentenced to prison for raping a 12-year-old girl. Upon asserting a “female” gender identity, he was transferred to the women’s prison. Unsurprisingly, he raped a woman at the first chance he got.

We only know about this because of employee whistleblowers who went to the media. Citizens then filed public records requests to get information on the male offenders being housed there, including serial killer Douglas Perry, who killed three prostituted women because he was jealous of their ability to have children. The ACLU then sued to prevent disclosure of the documents and named several interested parties in the lawsuit, one of whom WoLF represented in the suit. Documents produced by the state for that case supported the whistleblower rape reports, though the judge enjoined WoLF from releasing the documents in order to protect the rapist from being outed as a man. As if there was any question...

They are also coming after the free speech rights of our young people. Title IX education regulations now define using sex-based pronouns as potentially a form of sex discrimination. There is a young detransitioner at a liberal arts college on the east coast, who put messaging on posters and stickers about detrans rights, which triggered a Title IX investigation against him. He has chosen to go through an alternative resolution program - originally designed for rape cases - where he has to apologize for messages like “Sex not gender” and “Who is Keira Bell?” and explain why they are supposedly harmful to classmates who identify as “transgender.” If he does not complete his reeducation program, or if he does not follow its terms, the school will proceed with a full investigation which could result in his suspension or expulsion.

Speaking of stickering - we had a bittersweet victory in free speech for women this week in Wisconsin, as WoLF member Thistle Pettersen was cleared of hate crime charges brought after a “TERF Collective” sticker was found on a media box in downtown Madison. The man who called the police said he felt “attacked and intimidated” when he saw the sticker. The authorities were complicit in this kangaroo court at all levels. The police officer wrote the citation and forwarded it to the DA for prosecution. The detective who wrote the probable cause affidavit for the criminal complaint. Multiple attorneys in the DA’s office wrote and filed the complaint charging Thistle with a felony. And the attorney who showed up the day of her hearing to prosecute the case. They rolled over as soon as Thistle’s attorney moved to dismiss the case. The ADA said she knew that the facts in the complaint did not support the hate crime charge. Nor did she contest the motion to dismiss the underlying disorderly conduct charge on first amendment grounds.

This is a favorable outcome, but what if Thistle didn’t have an attorney? What if her attorney hadn’t fought it? The ADA was going to let them proceed with hate crime charges that she knew were trumped up and unconstitutional. They were trying to make an example out of her, as a warning to other feminists that they need to sit down and shut up, or they could lose their freedom. Or, they were simply bowing to activist pressure to silence women’s speech that they don’t like. Either way, it is completely unethical behavior for legal professionals.

But not necessarily surprising - state bar associations across the country have adopted or are considering adopting a model ethics rule from the American Bar Association that prohibits ‘discrimination’ on the basis of “gender identity” in “conduct related to the practice of law.” It does not define “discrimination” but since the prior ethics rule includes “harassment” they are presumably trying to expand the covered conduct. The Texas AG said that the rule could even apply to continuing education courses, law review articles, or even things like what I am doing here tonight. Almost every state is considering adopting this new rule. They don’t even need new ethics rules to do this - the NY state bar has made “misgendering” a form of judicial misconduct, comparing it to using a racial slur.

So - we are facing a lot of threats to free speech, and there is a lot to worry and be angry about… but there are positive trends and we have had some wins recently. In addition to Thistle’s victory earlier this week, the Meriwether case affirmed a secular free speech right to use sex-based pronouns in an academic setting. In U.S. v. Varner last year, a federal appeals court ruled that people in court cannot be compelled to use “preferred” pronouns (though this is not binding on other circuits). State attorneys general have filed a lawsuit challenging various facets of Biden’s anti-woman “gender identity” executive order, and other legal challenges at the state level are incoming.

The new issues cropping up, and the old problems that remain, are not going to go away on their own. But people are waking up. Women are waking up. Despite all the polarization, even some Democratic lawmakers are starting to speak out - dozens of Democratic state legislators have voted for bills protecting women’s sports and prohibiting elective cosmetic procedures on struggling adolescents.

Feminist voices are growing and organizing. Nonpartisan and cross-partisan collaboration is thriving and making space for female-centered advocacy. LGB people have gained more robust protection against discrimination in employment, housing, health care, and education. And there is so much more we can do. Get involved. Center women in your politics; and embrace [a] diversity of thought and diversity of tactics.

Follow WoLF and what we are doing; take opportunities to get involved with what we are doing; get involved in other groups that resonate with you. Lobby - educate your representatives, ask them on the record whether they support women’s rights, and hold them accountable. Speak up with friends and family if you can. Come out to events like this. The attacks on women and on free speech feel overwhelming, and it feels overwhelming to even try to do something about them… but it’s worth it and it’s working.”

Speaker: Dr. Mahri Irvine

M.K. Fain:

“Last, but certainly not least tonight, we will be hearing from Dr. Mahri Irvine. Mahri is an anthropologist with over 20 years of experience fighting to end sexual violence, including working with rape crisis centers, non-profits, and higher education. She has been an outspoken advocate against porn and the sex industry, and today will be speaking on why so many women remain silent while sex-based rights are quickly eroded: economic coercion at the nexus of capitalism and patriarchy. Welcome, Mahri!”

Dr. Mahri Irvine:

“Good evening! Thank you for having me. A few years ago, back when I was on Twitter, I saw a post from a successful, prominent, self-employed feminist about how important it was for women to publicly speak out about protecting women’s rights and to protest against harmful transgender ideologies. I certainly agreed with her about her basic assertion: that it was important for people to speak out.

But then, this woman continued on to essentially say that women who did not publicly align themselves with the gender-critical movement were “cowards.” She said we all needed to be braver and publicly share our views.

As a socialist feminist who has long been interested in – and deeply concerned about – how women are harmed by both patriarchy and capitalism, I was struck by the tone of elitism and economic privilege displayed by this woman.

It is relatively easy when one has a substantial amount of money in one’s bank account and assurances of a secure financial future, to prominently align oneself with unpopular political or social opinions. However, it is not just difficult, but it often feels terrifying and impossible, to publicly join the gender-critical movement when one’s bank balance barely covers next month’s bills – or this month’s bills.

So tonight, I’d like to talk with you about some of my thoughts related to cowardice, survival, courage, and hope situated within a capitalist patriarchy. To delve into these issues, let’s start off with some basic facts about women’s financial experiences and employment security in the United States.

I’d like to ask you all to engage in some participation with me as I discuss some facts about women’s financial status in the United States. Let’s do some quick and informal polls of those of you in our audience. If you’re watching the live stream tonight, you are welcome to join in as well. So here we go: after you hear me ask a question, please stand up if your answer is “yes.” If you have limited mobility and cannot stand, please wave your arms in the air.

Question 1: How many of you, at some point in your life – either now or in the past – have carried credit card debt? And what this means is, have you ever carried over credit card debt from one month to the next because you couldn’t afford to pay off your entire bill all at once? Please stand up or wave your arms in the air.

Well, it seems that many other American women are in a similar situation. In August 2021, the gender gap for paying off credit cards became even bigger, with women being 10% less likely than men to feel confident about paying off their credit card balances in full. Only 59% of American women said they could pay their full balance. (Schulz 2021) That means that 41% of us – including me – couldn’t afford to pay off our credit cards.

Question 2: How many of you, at some point in your life – either now or in the past – have carried student loan debt? And what this means is, have you ever carried over student loan debt from one month to the next because you couldn’t afford to pay off your entire bill all at once?

Once again, you’re in good company. Did you know that Americans owe 1.7 trillion dollars in student loans? And women account for two-thirds of those outstanding student loans. This is not proportionate to the different rates of men and women going to college. And student loan debt is not just a gendered issue – it is a racial issue as well. On average, African-American, Pacific Islander, Hawaiian, and Native American women owe more in student loan debt than white women.

Question 3: How many of you, at some point in your life – either now or in the past – had good reason to believe that you were victimized by the gender wage gap? And what this means is, do you have good reason to believe that you have not earned as much as men over the course of your life? Go ahead and stand up or wave your arms in the air if this applies to you.

Once again, you’re not alone. Women are more likely to graduate with college degrees than men, but over the course of their lives, they’re paid less money. As most of you probably already knew, white women are paid just 79 percent of what men are paid. (DeMarco 2021) And this is also a racial issue as well as a gender issue: black women are only paid 63%, Native women 60%, and Latina women are only paid 55% as much as white men. Asian-American and Pacific Islander women’s rates range from 52% to 85%. (Nat Partnership Women and Families 2021)

And of course, when women aren’t paid as much as men, they have a harder time getting out of debt. In 2018 the median salary for men was over $10,000 more than the median salary for women. Those women aren’t going to be as successful as paying off their debt because they’re not earning as much money, to begin with. (Scipioni 2018). And let’s not even get into the cost of childcare, or the financial burden of unpaid maternity leave, and how that affects single women’s income levels and monthly bills! And we don’t have time to talk about the cost of health insurance and how it is connected to full-time employment! And we don’t have time to talk about the gendered differences in retirement!

As you know, the COVID pandemic significantly harmed women’s employment status in the United States. Before COVID hit, women were already about 10% more likely than men to work in low-paying jobs. Before COVID, 46% of all working women worked in jobs that paid a median of less than $11 per hour. And this wasn’t because these women all “chose” to work for such low pay as a “side gig.” Many of these women were the heads of their households working full-time, trying to support their families with these wages. (Bateman and Ross 2020)

Globally, the pandemic negatively affected women’s employment more than men’s. 4.2% of women lost their jobs, compared to 3% of men. Projected job growth suggests that men will return to their pre-pandemic employment levels, but women will not. (Reuters 2021)

Now, let’s do one final question together. This is a question about savings. Many financial experts recommend that we squirrel away six months’ worth of savings in the case of a dire emergency, such as a long period of unemployment. So, let’s check-in and see how we are all doing with our savings plans. Please stand up or wave your arms in the air if, at this point in your life, you do not have six months’ worth of living expenses saved up.

Well, it’s probably not very surprising that most of us stood up. A 2020 survey found a gendered pattern of emergency savings accounts: only 45% of women have emergency savings, while 62% of men do. (Delfino 2020) Six month’s emergency living expenses is a LOT of money. It’s enormously hard for people, especially women, to save a lot of money.

So, there are some clear patterns here, right? Many or most women are carrying credit card debt, carrying student loan debt, being paid less than they deserve, and don’t have enough savings to protect them in case of a sudden job loss.

Let’s keep this in mind as I talk for a few minutes about what it’s like for women to live in a society of at-will employment. At-will employment means that an employer can terminate an employee for any reason without warning (of course, employers aren’t supposed to discriminate). In the US, every state and the District of Columbia is an at-will employment state. Many states have some type of policy exemptions that provide limited protections, and individual employers can provide contracts to employees that remove the threat of at-will employment. However, in an at-will employment situation, the burden of fighting the termination falls upon the employee.

Appealing terminations, fighting for lost wages, and battling against former employers take a lot of money, time, and mental energy. Most people don’t have that much money, time, and energy.

Is it any wonder, then, that women are scared about voicing their opinions related to transgender ideology and the loss of women’s rights? Over the past few years, in various countries, we have witnessed women (and men) being fired because they expressed their personal beliefs in feminism, science, and biology. Women are harassed by men online and in-person and threatened by men with sexual violence and death, simply for expressing their personal opinions about feminism and gender ideology.

Quite frankly, women cannot afford to lose their jobs. It is difficult for women to find good-paying, satisfying jobs. Women of color face the additional challenge of dealing with racism as they search for jobs. Older women face the additional challenge of ageism. Women with disabilities have to deal with disability discrimination. The list of intersectional oppressions goes on and on. Capitalism hurts most people, but it hurts women in very unique ways. When capitalism and patriarchy intersect, women are harmed over and over and over again.

So I want to come back to this idea of cowardice. Is it cowardly for women to remain silent about their gender-critical views because they fear losing their jobs? Is it cowardly for women to assess their risks and decide that they need to make the painful decision to remain publicly silent because they need to take themselves, and children, and elderly parents, and spouses, and fur babies?

No, this is not cowardice. This is survival. These decisions are made by women who understand what it means to be women in a capitalist patriarchy. They know they cannot afford to take the risk of job loss. Not now. Not in this inequitable society. This is their strategy for survival.

So I want to take my last few minutes now and talk with you about courage and hope. There are so many ways to support the gender-critical movement other than making public statements. It’s okay if you need to provide support behind the scenes. Small, quiet actions make a huge difference. Here are some quiet ways to provide support:

Reach out to parents in your community who are struggling with children who think they need to “transition.” Offer non-judgmental support. Ask if they would like someone to talk with. Ask if they’ve got all the resources they need. Provide them with actually good resources, not propaganda. Right now, parents need help. Parents are being threatened with the idea that their children will die by suicide if they’re not given hormone treatments and genital mutilation surgeries.

Show compassion and support to parents in your communities. They need your guidance. They need to know that they are not “abusive” when they oppose the mutilation of their children. If it feels safe to do so, get in touch with your local political leaders. Express your concerns as one of their constituents. Educate them about what’s happening. Many of them do not understand the serious consequences of what happens when the legal definition of “woman” is ignored or changed. Many of them have not thought about the social and economic impact on girls who are forced to compete in athletic competitions against boys. Many of them do not even know about the prison situation in California and how this legal precedent could potentially threaten the safety of incarcerated women throughout the country.

If it feels safe to do so, contact news agencies and lodge complaints about biased reporting. It seems that almost every day, we see mainstream news organizations running stories about “oppressed trans children.” Contact these organizations and express your concern about the one-sided reporting. Ask them to run some stories about parents and doctors who are being accused of bigotry because they don’t want children’s genitals to be mutilated. Challenge these agencies about how their one-sided reporting contradicts their mission statements about accurate and non-biased news coverage.

Identify potential allies in your community. Are there individuals or groups who would be open to education about these issues? Perhaps there are teachers, school administrators, parent groups, churches, or non-profits that could benefit from basic education. Reach out in a way that feels safe to you, and see what happens.

Become a volunteer for WoLF. Here are some things you can do for WoLF: Become ghostwriters for WoLF. Write op-eds, letters to the editor, and news articles, and WoLF can use these as templates without using your name. As you know, writing letters and articles takes time and mental energy. This type of volunteer work is invaluable.

If you are educated as a lawyer or have knowledge about legal issues, provide support to Lauren Adams. Help her conduct research, prepare legal briefs, and edit documents. Your name doesn’t need to be connected to the work.

Do research and track data for WoLF. Help WoLF keep track of biased news reporting, problematic legal cases, and intentionally inaccurate data collection that categorizes men as women. All of this information can be used by WoLF and our allies to help demonstrate the far-reaching harms created by gender ideology.

Offer up your editing, content development, project management, and artistic skills. Donate your time and energy helping WoLF produce documents, projects, and events that help protect women’s rights.

I know that I just spent a lot of time talking about the threat of poverty hanging over women’s heads. But if you are able to do so, becoming a regular donor to WoLF is a tremendously important way to help out quietly and behind the scenes. Your donor information will remain confidential and will be protected. Take a look at your monthly budget. Can you afford $50 a month? $10? $5?

Talk to your friends, neighbors, and colleagues who share your political views. Create a group commitment. If you have 4 friends who feel like you do, and you each donate $10 a month for a year, your group would contribute $600 to WoLF. You might not personally be able to afford a $600 annual donation, but by working as a team, you could achieve this goal.

All of these small steps matter. All of these small steps help us protect women and girls. Yes, it is scary to live in a capitalist patriarchy, with the threat of job loss hanging over your head. But there is hope. There are so many ways for you to be courageous while still protecting yourself and your loved ones. Patriarchy tries to silence us and keep us living in fear.

You, however, are glorious courageous women. You are intelligent, talented, and strategic. There are so many behind-the-scenes ways that you can continue to protect women and girls. Thank you for your courage. Keep on fighting – because you are making a difference, in every small way.”