WoLF Brings Women to the Front in New Mexico
2024 Women to the Front Conference In Review
From March 8 - 10, WoLF gathered 70 women in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for our 10th anniversary to discuss the most pressing issues facing women on all fronts. It was truly a powerful women's gathering. We talked about commercial sexual exploitation, the state of women’s reproductive rights, and the movement to roll back sex-based rights via ‘gender identity’. WoLF trained the attendees to take action on these issues and make their voices heard both locally and on the national stage in the coming year.
Presentation Highlights
The women of WoLF opened the conference with presentations by Mary Lou Singleton and Dr. Melissa Farley on the new frontier of ‘sexploitation’ - reproductive technologies, maternal mortality, and pornography. Dr. Suzanne Vierling gave an excellent presentation on critical hegemony and the triple patriarchy now faced by black women.
While discussing our support for online pornography age-verification laws that reduce minor access to porn, we were notified that Pornhub lost its lawsuit against the state of Texas for implementing its age-verification law! The court said, "The age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in preventing minors' access to pornography. The requirement for age verification does not violate the First Amendment." (Read more about that on our blog!) The resulting mood at the conference was quite celebratory!
On Day 2, WoLF founder and special envoy Lierre Keith spoke about how ‘transgender ideology’ is the best men's rights movement ever conceived. Then, we heard from Coach Kim Russell from Oberlin College about how women in college are fighting back in women's sports.
Next, we discussed the legal situation regarding sex falsification efforts via gender ideology at length with our attorney Lauren Bone, and Elspeth Cypher, a retired Massachusetts State Supreme Court Justice.
We heard harrowing testimony from two detransitioners and IWF ambassadors, Prisha Mosley and Isabelle Ayala. They'd been deceived into believing they could cure their problems through cross-sex hormones and experimental surgeries to mimic the opposite sex.
WoLF is supporting Isabelle's lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Impact litigation like Isabelle's is a powerful way to knock serious holes into the wall of duplicity erected by the medical industry and statehouses that tell people they can change sex. Prisha and Isabelle walked us through the hopeless landscape that quickly devolves into.
We also heard from lawyers on the devastating impact of gender identity policies in women's prisons and received updates on WoLF's groundbreaking Chandler v. CDCR lawsuit in California.
We then discussed Project 2025 and other serious threats to women's reproductive rights. Part of this discussion was on additional threats to women's self-sovereignty such as blocking birth control; enacting personhood at conception, which led to the Alabama IVF ruling; ending no-fault divorce; bills to surveil women; prohibiting women from driving over certain roads; and calling for repealing women's right to vote.
While Sharon was presenting about women’s self-sovereignty, Slate magazine put out a hit piece slandering WoLF as an anti-abortion group. We quickly hit back. (Unsurprisingly, the Slate article was written by a man pretending to be a woman, and did zero research about our work.) It is both a gift and a curse to stand for women's rights in this era, as it completely confuses hardcore partisans.
Our charitable mission is to restore, protect, and advance the rights of women and girls, NOT to advance a political party. We are living in a new era, apparently, where saying men in dresses are not women makes one a bigot. You know the women of WoLF are not having it - not for a moment.
Training Women For A New Era on the Front Lines of Feminism
As the conference moved into its final day, we trained women on how to orchestrate grassroots advocacy on all fronts of this fight for sex-based rights. The WoLF team taught attendees how to build relationships with state legislators, track pertinent bills, and submit public testimony.
Next, we had a session on working with federal regulators, and our Treasurer, Nancy Stade, and Legal Director, Lauren Bone, just finished talking with the Office of Management and Budget regarding upcoming Title IX changes - efforts to invalidate the sex-based protections in education.
Finally, we trained women on how to speak at City Council meetings, as city administrators are quite close to the people they serve, and women's safety is a municipal concern. We taught how to give testimony at school board hearings, where many of these policies are implemented, to parents' shock and horror. We also gave training on how to demonstrate publicly, and some of this may be necessary as we head into this election year. (Lunch counter-protests have their place in history for a reason.)
It was an amazing weekend, with so many wonderful women from across the United States!
Looking Forward
We know that some of you really wanted to be there, and couldn't. To all of our WoLF Sisters in Action and supporters who weren’t able to join us in New Mexico - we missed you! The WoLF team plans to put up many of the conference presentations on Youtube, and schedule webinars to bring you the training sessions you missed.
The women of WoLF loved seeing so many of you Sisters in person, and hope to replicate this amazing event soon! Please stay tuned for future announcements of events and trainings that may be in your area.