The policy blueprint is intended to help lawmakers codify the definition of ‘woman.’
On Thursday, the last day of women’s history month, a coalition of progressive feminist and right-wing women’s organizations released their “Women’s Bill of Rights,” a policy blueprint to help lawmakers codify the definition of “woman” and preserve female-exclusive spaces.
Drafted by Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), and Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), the document aims to “preserve biological sex as a distinct legal category and help codify our common understanding of the words ‘female,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘sex’ before they’re erased.”
The bill of rights is comprised of seven resolutions detailing different components of womanhood and protections designed to preserve women-only spaces.
Female activists across the political spectrum came together Thursday for a special press call to announce the project.
“The advances of gender ideology have made it difficult to maintain these gains that women have had over the past century,” said WoLF legal director Lauren Adams.
Adams argued that the progressive left’s erasure of gender distinctions has had a profound effect on American society, from athletic fields, to prisons, to domestic violence and rape shelters, to restrooms.
In progressive states such as California and Washington, for instance, male sex offenders who identify as transgender have been transferred into women’s prisons — and have in some cases sexually assaulted female inmates.
WoFL, Adams’ left-wing radical feminist group, filed a civil rights lawsuit against California’s prison-transfer policy in November.
Abigail Shrier, renowned author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, joined the conversation to add that the transgender movement has “pressed the undo button” on all the advances that women have fought for decades to achieve.
Urging compassion for those who identify as transgender, she didn’t mince words: “We want transgender Americans to flourish in this country too but we will not give up women’s rights without a fight.”
Speaking under a pseudonymn, Margaret, whose daughter competed against transgender athlete and now NCAA titleholder Lia Thomas this past swimming season, lamented the “emotional blackmail and abuse” her child and her teammates endured.
She relayed the heart-wrenching trauma these girls experienced, as they questioned “whether they had a right to undress out of sight of a male’s eyes in a locker room.” She watched “previously empowered young women fade in confidence,” to the point where some sought counseling, she claimed.
“People in power have used inclusion as a weapon,” she declared, urging the widespread adoption of the Women’s Bill of Rights.
“A woman is not defined by her hormone levels or her cosmetic attributes, a woman is defined as a human adult female…sex is an unequivocal immutable truth and its has been the basis of oppression of women for all time,” she said. “The very words that define us are being eroded.”
While its organizers hope the Women’s Bill of Rights will be enacted at the state and federal level, “for now it is a vehicle for conversation,” said Jennifer Braceras, director of IWLC.
The definition of the word “woman” is now controversial, she said, and “if we don’t clarify this and codify the definition of common sex based terms, laws that prohibit sex based discrimination will not mean anything at all.”
The Women’s Bill of Rights roll out comes on the Biden administration’s observance of International Transgender Day of Visibility, which the president honored by telling parents that “affirming your child’s identity is one of the most powerful things you can do to keep them safe and healthy.” The State Department also announced Thursday that gender neutral passports will become available for U.S. citizen applicants starting in April, marked with an “X.”