April 2, 2024 - 8:00pm
On 31 March — the new Transgender Day of Visibility — the National Organization for Women (NOW) tweeted, “Repeat after us: Weaponizing womenhood [sic] against other women is white supremacist patriarchy at work. Making people believe there isn’t enough space for trans women in sports is white supremacist patriarchy at work.”
Safety and fairness for female athletes is the “white supremacist patriarchy at work”? One might be forgiven for wondering what happened to the National Organization for Women. Unfortunately, it has joined a disgraceful lineup of women’s organisations that have turned their missions inside-out in the name of trans “inclusion”. Rather than defend the rights of women and girls — to safety, dignity, single-sex spaces, and fair play — these organisations have lost their purpose.
The issue of who gets to compete in women’s sports has been a hot topic over recent months. Back in December, Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, praised the importance of female athletes learning to “lose gracefully” when pressed on the unfairness of letting male athletes compete in women’s sports.
NOW appears to have copy and pasted directly from the Transgender Law Center’s 2021 messaging guide, Transgender Youth and the Freedom to Be Ourselves: Building Our Choir with a Race Class Gender Narrative. The report shows that the public is deeply confused about trans issues, with one-third of respondents voicing support for a pair of contradictory policies: sorting sports teams by gender identity and sorting sports teams by sex. The report’s author spun this finding as positively as they possibly could: “Our base and persuadables want to support transgender student athletes, but are extremely susceptible to our opposition’s argument that excluding trans youth is necessary to protect the fairness of women’s sports.”
Unfortunately for activists, “people primarily understand sports through the individualistic lens of competition, where if one person wins then another, by definition, loses.” The report warns that political opponents “use the physicality of the issue to directly spout dehumanizing stereotypes about transgender women and girls” — specifically, by pointing out that “transgender women and girls” are, well, male.
To overcome this resistance, the report advises activists to reframe the issue. Never mind about winning and losing. Forget fairness. Focus instead on the “collective” values young athletes pick up on the playing field (one can hear Goss Graves’s appeal to “losing gracefully” here). Rather than making the case for why males belong in female sports, talk about “people of all races, backgrounds, and genders”. To excuse unfairness today on the basis of sex, simply hijack “the long legacy of discrimination against all women athletes” by informing the public that “women’s sports have never existed on an equal playing field.”
The report’s authors note that this argument “garnered a notably high ‘unsure’ response across the board, suggesting it helpfully caused people to question their understanding of the issue”. Or confused them, which was the whole point. That’s how we get NOW’s word salad about how it’s somehow racist — and sexist — to “mak[e] people believe there isn’t enough space for trans women in sports”.
Like every other argument in favour of overwriting sex with gender identity, the NOW’s arguments really don’t hold much weight. All the same, it is yet another organisation to succumb to gender ideology.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWoke politics leads to insanity. Back in the 1930’s the Hitler Stalin pact had Jewish Communists marching is support of Hitler. The Woke takeover of institutions leads women’s organizations to oppose women in favor of gay males. Gays march in support of Hamas who would kill them.
Well it is all a logical extension of their basic philosophy
This is not about gay men. The number of men who transition into being ‘lesbian’ and then seek to coerce gay women into sex with them puts paid to that.
Transgender ideology seeks to erase homosexuality just as it seeks to erase sex. Gay people are being told they should be attracted to “gender” not sex, that to object to being intimate with someone of the opposite sex who identifies as your sex is bigoted, and that lesbians should accept “female” partners with p*nises.
Only in the eyes of St*newall and other pro-trans activists is there a link between the LGB and the T. What on earth do people who are defined by being attracted to others of the same sex have to do with a group of people who think sex is irrelevant and should be abolished.
Yes, these lesbians are nothing but the worst kind of bigoted phallophobes.
You are right. Most trans-identified males are straight, albeit with a variety of fetishes.. Many are or have been married. Google Trans Widows and you will get an idea of what lies and manipulation their wives have had to put up with.
The LGB Alliance (UK) was started by former members of Stonewall who wanted to break the link with T. It’s unfortunate that the acronym ‘LGBT (community)’ is so widely and unthinkingly used, ignoring that fact that many LGBs do not wish to be associated with trans ideology.
One of the strangest things around here is how the readers and writers of UnHerd (most of them trans-skeptic, let’s say) are so very confused about why the gay advocacy groups have sided with the trans advocacy groups.
The reason is because the gay rights movement was built on the same ideological foundations that the trans movement is trying to build itself on. Namely, rejection of traditional, conformist views of sexual characteristics and desires, elevating deeply held personal feelings over biological reality, and transforming markers of exclusion into key elements of identity formation.
They are natural ideological bed fellows (insert joke here).
I think, in addition to some degree of ideological alignment (as you rightly point out), the structure of the institutions themselves plays a role in this phenomenon. It is in the nature of bureaucracies to self-perpetuate. Once gay advocacy groups had mostly won what they were fighting for they were faced with the choice to disband or pivot into the next “progressive” cause. An easy choice indeed for the type of moral busybodies who tend to populate such institutions.
Being gay is not just a ‘deeply held personal feeling’, but even if it were, being gay doesn’t affect anyone else. The ‘trans’ movement overwhelmingly adversely affects women. To conflate this current fetish culture with homosexuality is a mistake.
Completely agree that the T has no place alongside LGB.
But I don’t think that TRAs actually believe that sex is “irrelevant and should be abolished”. The ‘trans’ thing is ALL about sex. Fetishist transvestites get a sexual buzz from interloping on women’s spaces, as well as a psychological kick from intimidating us into accepting them there. Being physically stronger, they – and we – know that they could hurt us if we object. I think they consider it a victory when women gush over them as ‘brave & stunning’, all while they’re actually laughing at our gullibility as they photograph themselves doing unspeakable things in our toilets and changing rooms. It’s quite disgusting.
It seems that introducing women to activism has fatal consequences for the female mind.
.
PS. Let me remind those who disliked me. Women are protected by nature from extremes. In addition, their minds are tenacious, observant and practical, this is one of the reasons why husbands so rarely share with their wives their brilliant reasoning about politics, art and science. It’s not very nice when your wife pushes your face into the wall of reality. But if nature doesn’t save woman, expect trouble.
Alcoholism in women is practically incurable. Fanaticism in women is simply terrible; if you doubt it, look at the biography of Rosalia Zemlyachka. The stupidity of women’s activism knows no bounds.
I’m one of them. It’s just a “mansplaining” rant that has nothing to do with the subject of the article.
Wrong. We are discussing the National Organization for Women and the intelligence of the leadership of this organization. I did not detect intelligence and saw only the presence of idiotic dogmas and false statements.
And you?
You aimed your ‘stupidity’ comment at all women’s activism, not just at NOW. So it comes across as grossly misogynistic. If women do not become vocal and active about men larping and interloping on their spaces, we will be overwhelmed by a wave of male sex fetishism.
If women do not become vocal and active about men larping and interloping on their spaces
You are not doing that! NOW and others are doing opposite with all this sh.t about gender etc. Even J.K. Rowling started with the phrase “I have a friend transgender” for not to be blamed in “transphobia”. What a nonsense!
That’s why I’m furious. And I’m furious you don’t ask men, real men, to protect you because of our “toxic masculinity”; after all, it’s a man’s job to defend common sense.
I’m surprised that NOW is using the word “woman,” as they didn’t use it in their literature a year ago. I guess sometimes meaning force them to use the dreaded word. Planned Parenthood is another organization that does not use the word “women” in their literature. In fact, they are mainly handing out hormones now. I truly feel betrayed by these women’s organizations that prioritize trans women[sic]. The trans inclusion into women’s sports is especially egregious. Sorry, if a man goes through puberty, he is almost impossible to beat. I was reading about an Australian women’s soccer team with five male players. Women are injured right and left. The team has had a 10-0 season. Most games the opposing team didn’t score. How could they? All of the male players are large. I don’t get it, but I guess I’m just old. When women were female.
Does PP offer abortions to trans-women?
It’s utterly absurd & surreal. Women’s teams forced to play against teams with men in them should just refuse to compete.
I’m beginning to think I’m in an episode of Inside No 9.
Perhaps their strategy is, if they say the most bonkers thing possible over and over again, sane people will eventually fatigue and just give up. I for one find this same irrational cr*p being rolled out repeatedly to be draining. Only a developing sense of extreme contempt for our new rulers keeps me away from defeatism.
Due to DEI initiatives many of our institutions are run by people who hate the cultural foundations of the West. They hate the beautiful and strong which is what these ugly cultural wars are really all about. Much easier to bring others down than to lift yourself up.
They hate the beautiful and strong – Smart included 🙂
Will Discrimination on the Basis of Intelligence Be Banned Next?(dailysceptic.org)
With current trends towards encouraging ‘neurodiversity’ in the workplace, this is only a small step.
It already exists, it’s called admission to college.
Where’s Kurt Vonnegut when you need him?
He is out having a drink with Harrison Bergeron and trying to have a conversation with him before the buzzer goes off in Harrison’s head.
It’s been with us for some time. What else is DEI? Look at the quality of our politicians, civil servants, academics, corporate heads – anywhere where power and influence lies. And then look at the continuing decline of the country into squabbling mediocrity. I doubt the country will endure more than another generation as functioning entity.
Isn’t it really just all about the Benjamins though? A simple rule of no government funding for registered charities and most of this nonsense would stop.
Given that most of these creeps are middle class white men, isn’t their barging into women’s sport ‘toxic white male patriarchal supremacy’? That’s it, ladies, the white male monster has rampaged thorough the world and ‘colonised’ everything. With nothing left ton conquer and with western power declining, now he ‘colonises’ being a woman. And a bunch of barking mad posh women accuse other women who object as facilitators of the white male patriarchy? It takes some degree of mental gymnastics to pull that one off and still make sense to yourself.
Whoever downvoted that, justify yourself. If anything up there isn’t blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain, I don’t know what is.
I have little sympathy. Women activists lived by the sword of identity politics for half a century and now they can, well, you know.
I get it. Frankly, if I weren’t a woman and the mother of a daughter, I couldn’t care less about what happens to these vile NOW activists! As far as I am concerned, they are so low that they could nosedive out of a pox-ridden rat’s behind and still achieve free fall.
I did not downvote you. As a woman with a fully functioning brain, I agree with you. Males, who claim to be women to intrude into and take over female spaces, are misogynists. They not only think that they’re better than women, but that they are the better women. Delusional and very dangerous!
I agree with you, but this is the reaction to women demanding access to men’s spaces. If women can take over what used to be traditionally male domains why then can’t men enter women’s spaces? As ugly as it is, Isn’t this what true equality looks like?
No. 1) Women as a sex are not a sexual threat to men as men are to women. 2) their exclusion was based on prejudice against their sex just because, not because their inclusion would be physically unfair as it is when males compete physically against women.
It was and is based on the outdated elitism of the male in a patriarchal society. Of course many men who enjoy this undeserved privilege don’t want it changed but it has nothing to do with physical risk or unfairness. You’ve got your knickers in a twist.
Men have always been physically stronger than women, and men and women are both more like their own sex than their opposite. From these experiences came our social order, not from a ‘patriarchal’ conspiracy. ‘Underserved privilege’ is a political idea emanated from malcontent that can never be fully satisfied. That said, ‘trans-males’ competing in womens’ sports is unfair and should not be allowed. Unfortunately, ‘knickers in a twist’ equality ideas complicate the matter. Only compromise can solve things, even if it makes some feel unhappy.
Abso-bloody-lutely this! Equality was never about blurring the lines between the sexes, it was about allowing men & women to participate in society as intellectual equals – alongside each other, not trampling over each other. We are not physically equal so it was never about pitting ourselves against men in a wrestling ring ffs.
Pretty far out Julian. Re “women moving into men’s spaces” can you please offer an example that somehow analogues men competing with women in a given sport? And please don’t make it about the broad success of women in the workplace, medicine, academia (unfortunately). These are very different realms of endeavour.
Let’s consider a concrete example of a traditionally male space that has been adversely affected (for males) by female participation, the primary school classroom. As support for girls’ quiet, obedient and collaborative learning style has increased, support for boys’ more competitive, physical and interest-following approach has declined. Partly it’s a resource issue in that holding boys’ attention requires more of a teacher’s energy, and it’s easier to delegate part of the learning load to groups of girls to work things out collectively. A solution would involve breaking teachers’ unions to free up resources for teaching, school choice to make non-leftist approaches achievable, nudging the average teaching approach back in a male-supportive direction, and sometimes offering a choice of collaborative and competitive classes in the same subject. The same material would be covered in each class, and anyone could choose either approach. Most of the boys and the female tomboys would choose the competitive option, with more of the girls and the quieter boys opting for collaborative.
School choice is the answer. Let the parents decide what and how their child is taught, rather than the government or teachers unions.
Are they not ‘stunning’ and ‘brave’?
Oh, they’re stunning alright!
Yes, as much as I agree with you that transgenderism is rooted in misogyny, I can’t help but feel that this is an understandable reaction to women encroaching on men’s spaces. Women are pretty much dominating in school, college, family, and the work place. Meanwhile, the media bitches about men not ‘stepping up’, lambasts straight men, while celebrating womenly men. I actually can’t think of a more toxic time in history to be a straight man. It is no wonder then that a generation of men are being taught to hate themselves. Now that they’re becoming more widely accepted and entering positions of authority, they are now cleverly adopting the language of feminism and directing their self-hatred towards women. The transgender chickens are coming home to roost.
It’s called ‘misandry’! It’s everywhere …
Biological cockerels are hens too!
Oh I see – it’s our fault? It’s women who have made men want to actually BE us? Because a man who wants to look like a stereotype woman – either a plastic shop window mannequin or his own granny – is a poor little fella who’s lost in the woods of gender because of nasty women taking all his toys?
Take a dive – if you dare – into the murky male waters of sissy porn, forced feminisation and autogynephilia, where I think you will find that ‘trans’ is all about male sex fetishism.
You see, Jane. You’re so good at being a woman that you are inspiring legions of blokes to follow in the tracks of your stiletto heels.
I understand where you are coming from, but perhaps it’s not about sexual fetishism, but about assuming the feminine role vacated by women? It seems that nature abhors a vacuum.
Framing the trans-sports issue in terms of ‘fairness’ or physical safety seems obvious to those on the right, but doesn’t persuade those on the left. Why is that?
It’s because the reality is that there is a tiny handful of trans-athletes, so the broader social acceptance of their trans-status seems more important than a tiny handful of female competitors losing their races, etc.
The only way forward in this discussion is to get us back to a place where ‘feelings’ – no matter how deeply felt and earnestly held – are an insufficient basis for social policy. But of course, that puts at risk a much wider swathe of transformative social changes, everything from gay marriage to euthanasia to over prescription of anti-depressants.
Trans-sports are simply the leading edge of the ‘expressive individualism,’ the dominant world-view that is remaking society so furiously. Until the root causes are addressed, we can’t be surprised by the depth of the division.
I have long said that we need to start with gay marriages
“And a bunch of barking mad posh women accuse other women who object as facilitators of the white male patriarchy? It takes some degree of mental gymnastics to pull that one off and still make sense to yourself.”
I can’t handle this
What the hell is wrong with all these liberal white women?
Ya know, the problem with these kinds of organizations is that they only attract the most fanatical types to work for them. That is true across the political spectrum, this just happens to be an article on NOW.
I give up. If women are willing to do this to themselves then there is no point as guy in standing up and saying how stupid it is.
I just make sure my daughter goes out armed and I made sure she had a black belt as a teen. From here on out it is up to her and her peers to sort out.
Well, they ain’t actually “liberal”, are they? They are a sort of fascist really, brooking no opposition to their views. Liberal is now one of the most abused words in the English language. I used to describe myself as a liberal, but no longer. It seems my liberal values are now deemed far right. I am bewildered. How can I describe myself now in one word? Normal?
These idiots are at least on the right track: an actual patriarchy would put all of the trans-identifying males back in the closet.
that’s not the way it works in Iran
True, but the West is not Iran. Patriarchies are not monolithic.
“white supremacist patriarchy”
The problem I have with this bureaucritised academese is that parroting buzz words replaces analysis. It’s only aim is to signal belonging to the gang to the rest, not to describe and explain reality, let alone transform it. Then they had supremacist patriarchal acts on their faces and they can’t see them, because the perpetrators are not pure Aryans in terms of Nuremberg laws.
So they end up justifying Nazis using Nazi logics.
Of course women blame men. It couldn’t be any other way. In spite of polls showing women supporting trans rights much more than men. I saw the Washington Post article a few months back citing data that most feminists support trans rights too. After decades of being told nothing that is your fault, it’s never your choices, it’s men that are always to blame, Liberal women can’t think any other way.
We can sort it out over a coffee in the trenches of this upcoming WW3. I mean, the women will be conscripted and/or volunteering too won’t they?
I think women will volunteer. In the Ukraine, some women stayed and fought. They were a little more than 10 percent of the army.
Not in the UK they won’t.
And the vast majority went online and found husbands and boyfriends abroad.
The Ukrainian army women are not doing the fighting. Women aren’t up to it.
Every man I know is against trans in female sports and spaces.
Feminists seem to be the most enthusiastic supporters.
Seems crazy, but true.
Not sure why “the patriarchy” is being blamed.
You’ve forgotten about us “TERFs”, I guess, whom Trans “Women” and their bullified allies love to hate? “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists” is what it stands for, but plenty of intellectually and morally intact plain old Feminists — by which I mean most women, given we’ve at least established that women are people, too — would, if they spoke up about this garbage, be instantly branded “TERFs”, and be as popular among the Trans Activist set as JK Rowling. And then, yes, there are “Feminists” who actually believe we’re all living in a children’s playground, and the fair thing to do to spare their feelings is to put genitally intact sex offenders in women’s prisons, and to ruin women’s sports for both the competitors (and there’s scholarship money, on top of the reward for hard work and long training) and the spectators (as making the winners in the women’s category a foregone conclusion takes the buzz out of it.). But at least some atypical people will feel “normal”. Guess what? We are all in some respect abnormal. And, speaking as a Feminist, who believes women have needs that should be respected, the idea that Trans people are The Most Marginalized is bull. And the supposed right of Trans Women for everyone around them to participate in their made-up world does not trump anyone’s right to live in the real one.
Intra-female status games.
I’m a supposedly liberal woman and I rather resent being told how I think, whether by man or woman. The Washington Post doesn’t define what it thinks a feminist is but arrogantly states that ‘most’ of them support ‘trans rights’- whilst also not defining what those are either.
i would suggest that if you explained properly to every woman on earth – biological ones that is – what ‘trans’ women actually are (answer = men) and then took a took a global poll, the overwhelming majority would consider the idea of men playacting as women and inserting themselves into those areas where only woman belong to be utterly absurd and totally unfair.
it not the fault of all men, but it is the fault of the bullying, sissy-porn addled ones who think that having their own pair of tits is a turn-on and that imitating and intimidating women is empowering. The whole thing is a fetishist’s charter. There is no such thing as a ‘trans’ person. There are two sexes, humans cannot change theirs and ‘gender’ is just about stereotypes. I’m fed up with being gaslit by these arrogant bastards, and with the people who enable them. ‘White supremacist patriarchy’? What a load of crap. People who call themselves ‘trans’ women are men.
So come and get me, Scotland.
It must be acknowledged that the triumph of this wrong think is a masterclass of double speak. I’d find it hard to believe if I didn’t know first hand that many of my friends have swallowed it whole. As have the political parties only the conservatives are dragging their feet the rest are celebrating the nonsense. Why? Because it appeals to everyone who is a little insecure of their own opinions, that perhaps worry that the seemingly gobbledygook of Judith Butler et al is perhaps because they are not clever enough? Because it is roped together with obvious salient, positive good things like justice and compassion?
So our basic knowledge of our species is challenged and accepted. Incredible.
It would be far less bizarre if there was a black rights group who championed white people who said they were black and excoriated people who challenged them as racist. That is the lighter lever of the double speak we are dealing with here. And it’s working.
Sexism has always harmed women and favoured men so it was not surprising that many women at first embraced this movement against difference, after all the sole aim of feminism was surely equality. What they didn’t realise, or anticipate, was how men would run in and take any perceived advantages that women had because of their physical difference. Never underestimate the patriarchy. Or be surprised that identify with it for protection and power.
Biden really does come across as an agent of communist China with this divisive trans day during a Christian festival. The agenda must solely be to divide American society farther for the benefit of the CCP. Personally, he has always been on the payroll of the governors of the PRC, but these cultural politics align perfectly with his supporters and handlers who seek ideological hegemony through a monocultural system of government.
Not so much ‘agent’, more ‘pawn’ I think.
Ideologues like NOW will rarely change their minds. They’ll simply ignore or re-frame any evidence they don’t like.
The true battle is to get the general public to be aware of exactly what they are demanding and its implications for women, girls and the rationality on which all our rights and freedoms are ultimately based.
NOW is insistent on making itself even more irrelevant than it already is. I’m half-surprised at no mention of “colonization” or some other leftist buzzword. The group that purports to represent the interests of women has now turned on its host. Because that’s what parasites do.
“Repeat after us”
Proceeds to not allow replies thus not allowing anyone to actually repeat after them…
NOW’s positions are still worth noting? When it responded to Bill Clinton’s violation of all of its positions with a resounding silence I thought it had become less creditable than the Flat Earth Society.
“Repeat after us: Weaponizing womenhood [sic] against other women is white supremacist patriarchy at work. Making people believe there isn’t enough space for trans women in sports is white supremacist patriarchy at work.”
We who are free and critically thinking individuals should be just as concerned with the “Repeat after us:” command as we are with the false claim being presented.
This is partly the failure of society to deal rationally with mentally ill and sexually deviate males.
And it is the failure of female society to confront the encroachment of men identifying as females into their reserved sex defined domain.
Too many biological women actually go along with the liberal ‘progressive’ fantasy that a human being can be anything other than that which they biologically were born as.
Until women (thats real women) in sufficient numbers are willing to speak the truths of biology and stand up to confront this social mania, then we can expect ever more madness and idiocy.
The uncharacteristically fanatical language of the NOW statement on this topic makes me wonder if the “women” who run NOW are actually trans women?