With today’s vote for the Orwellian “Equality Act,” House Democrats have abandoned their core commitment to women’s basic civil rights, privacy, and participation in public life, while cruelly mocking our reasonable safety concerns as “hysterical” and “fear mongering.”

I could not be more disappointed in them.

Their blatant disregard for the privacy and safety of adolescent girls, women who are incarcerated or need emergency shelter, women and girls in long-term care, women of faith who follow strict guidelines about where they can take their ease, and every woman who simply wants to be able to change without a man around, is inexcusable.

Democrats can’t claim to want to protect women’s health on the one hand, and then turn around and use gender identity to eliminate us as a category in the law on the other. They can’t protect us if they’re going to stand up in broad daylight and claim that they don’t even know what a woman is, except someone who “feels like” a woman.

I don’t know what feelings I have that are supposed to be my “woman” feelings, but today, I’m going to go with my fury.

Natasha Chart

Board chair, Women’s Liberation Front