#TimesUp on Sexual Assault, Unless the Rapist Wears a Skirt

On Monday, The Daily Wire broke the news that Loudoun County School District tried to conceal incidents of sexual violence perpetrated by a male student in a girls’ restroom. The school district made headlines earlier this year because of the backlash to its new “gender identity” bathroom policy. In June, WoLF and WHRC USA issued a joint statement urging the district not to dismantle single-sex spaces. 

The victim’s father, Scott Smith, was arrested at a school board meeting when he responded emotionally to a woman who said she didn’t believe his daughter had been raped. Smith stayed silent about the reason for his outburst for months, concerned that speaking out would jeopardize his daughter’s chance for justice. But when he heard that the same boy who attacked his daughter had assaulted another girl in the school district, he decided it was time to share his daughter’s story. 

Smith alleges that the school district purposefully concealed the attack against his daughter in an effort to prevent the proposed pronoun and bathroom policy from being rejected. The policy passed in August with a 7-2 vote, thereby ensuring that male rapists would have easy access to female victims by declaring a different “gender identity.” Although the identity of the teenage perpetrator is unknown to the public at this time, Smith reports he was wearing a skirt—suggesting that his presence in the girls’ restroom was related to so-called “self-ID.” 

This case proves what radical feminists have been arguing all along—single-sex spaces must be maintained to keep women and girls safe from male violence. People cannot change sex, and the notion that a man’s “gender identity,” or any other subjective view he has of himself, somehow exempts him from the statistics on male-pattern violence is demonstrably false.

WoLF is appalled by the noticeable silence of the political left in the wake of this news that a school covered up the rape of a girl by a boy in the girls' restroom. This latest case comes just weeks after prominent left-leaning news outlets suggested a Hispanic woman was lying about a man exposing himself in the women’s section of the Wi Spa in Los Angeles. Police later confirmed that the incident was real and that the man is a known sexual predator.

The silence is deafening from all those who claim to care about #MeToo and ending rape culture. It is as clear as ever: for many self-proclaimed progressives, rapists only deserve public scrutiny when it doesn’t challenge the left’s gender ideology.

Gender extremists have gaslit feminists for far too long. They told us, "this never happens." They accused us of "playing the victim." How many girls and women will be intimidated in our own spas, beaten in our own sports, exploited in our own prisons, and assaulted in our own bathrooms before we will finally be seen, heard, and believed? 

It's time to pick sides: Will you stand with those who would cover up the rape of a schoolgirl to advance a men’s rights agenda, or will you stand with the few brave voices who denounce the erosion of women’s rights as a disgusting, misogynistic abuse of power?

Misogynists rely on our silence; they depend on our fear. But more and more women are speaking out. There is a dire need for a feminist counter-narrative on “gender identity” and the sexual exploitation of women. 

As the legal threats to the rights of women and girls in our country loom near, now is not the time to hold back. This is why WoLF uses every tool at our disposal to take on gender ideology and other threats to women’s liberation. WoLF does not work for the left, nor does it work for the right. WoLF works for women. All women.