WoLF Statement on Working with Conservatives
If a lesbian wants to get published these days saying that the left is allowing the rights of same-sex attracted people to be destroyed, she now has to do it on the pages of The Federalist. This odd circumstance is only the tip of the iceberg of the blacklisting and threats that are levied towards women and all LGB people critical of gender identity politics by the left.
Meanwhile, incarcerated women are being forced to share showers with men who intentionally expose themselves to them and harass them. Why does the left care when this sort of voyeurism or harassment happens in public, but not when women are in government custody and can’t leave? The conservatives we’ve talked to not only cared, they stepped forward to offer material help.
Just a couple months ago, two women were kicked out of a women’s homeless shelter because they didn’t want to room with a man who had to be admitted because of a Canadian gender identity law, one that’s similar to the policies enacted in the US last year by executive rulemaking. The conservative women we’ve talked to about this not only shared our concerns, they worked with us on a petition to the Department of Housing and Urban Development supporting the privacy rights of women in need of emergency shelter in the United States, which our coalition delivered this week.
Our friends on the left are afraid to talk about the fad of the sterilization of minor children for sex stereotype nonconformity, as often determined by children’s preferences in 21st Century toys, clothes, and hairstyles. That’s because our friends on the left are worried that they’ll get fired or shunned by their unthinkingly neo-eugenicist neighbors, whose ideological forbears employed castration, hysterectomy, clitoridectomy, and primitive brain surgeries, that all attempted to cut the sex drives out of the wayward and deviant. The conservative women who stand with us share in our genuine horror at the idea that the modern “cure” for strongly deviating from sex-stereotyped behavior as a child should be the chemical sterilization or surgical removal of one’s genitals before adulthood.
Indeed, most reasonable people likely agree that castration, chemical or surgical, is a disproportionately harsh consequence for being a little boy who likes to play with dolls and costumes that Disney and Mattel decided to market only to girls. Similarly, mastectomies and hysterectomies seem like an extreme penalty for being a girl who likes dinosaurs, superhero stories, Legos, and clothes that are suitable for an active lifestyle.
We’re baffled that anyone thinks cosmetic genital alteration is a good option to offer young people. But here we are, in a country where such surgeries are prescribed as a treatment for unhappiness or eccentricity to people too young to drive, vote, or be allowed to buy alcohol. Our friends on the left consider it dehumanizing to children to take away their innocence by holding them to adult levels of responsibility when it comes to school conduct or legal infractions, but not dehumanizing to let them choose permanent sterility. How does that make sense?
Since these situations are matters of some urgency to the people involved, as well as those who care about them, we have reached out to the women we knew who both could and wanted to help immediately. We’ve joined with our sisters to answer these challenges, across deep fault lines of political belief, faith, class, race, and sexual orientation, to engage in a practice of solidarity that has demanded an extraordinary lot of every one of us.
As a woman, Virginia Woolf once said, she had no country. As women now, as feminists, we have no party. But we will make our case to anyone who will listen in good faith, and we will continue to fight for the neglected rights of all women.
Finally, with respect to our sisters who are engaged in other areas of work necessary to advancing the rights of women and girls, we wish you all success, and the very best of luck. Thank you for everything you do to make a better world.
