The New York Times’ gender editor, Susan Chira, castigated white women this past weekend for betraying all women. Noting that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump, Chira laments the fact that “women did not link arms,” and quotes Salamishah Tillet saying the following: “[A] sense of betrayal is sincere and comes from a place in which there was an optimism about solidarity from white-collar women. It’s not like black people or Latino people aren’t sexist and patriarchal. But when we thought about our self and collective best interest, we voted for Clinton.”
Hold on just a moment. Did Chira just imply that these women betrayed the Democratic Party and its nominee, and by extension, all women?
I believe one of the reasons some women voted for Trump—despite the fact that, according to Chira, 89 percent of those who did so were upset by his treatment of women—is very simple. The Democratic Party betrayed women by attempting to supplant sex with gender. Chira entitled her article, “The Myth of Female Solidarity,” but the real myth is that the Democratic Party stood in solidarity with women. It didn’t.
Democrats Chose the Trans Agenda Over Women’s Rights
Of course, on many issues it did, such as equal pay for equal work and paid maternity leave. But in May 2016, right in the thick of the campaign season, Democrats betrayed women in favor of transsexuals. A joint Justice and Education department directive threatened to pull federal aid from school districts that would not allow transsexual access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their chosen gender. Twenty-three states immediately filed a lawsuit challenging that directive.
Though many were afraid of being called “transphobic” if they objected to intact males colonizing all remaining female space—in this era of deconstructing “rape culture,” ironically enough—there were signs that this was a bridge too far. Way too far. Even for self-identified liberals.
For example, when the first article on this topic hit the New York Times on May 12, there were 2703 comments, and the top Readers’ Picks were all in favor of the directive. Fast forward to October 27, when the Times published their latest article on the subject, and every single top Readers’ Pick is against that same policy. This is a stunning reversal. That it took place at the New York Times should give the transsexual lobby great pause. The top comment on the October piece was from a self-identified female from New York:
Women and girls do have a right to, and expectation of privacy when in a state of undress. This includes the right not to be forced to be nude in front of someone with male genitals, or to be forced to view those private male parts. I’m sick of the trans “movement” trying to make their “advances” by trampling on the rights of girls and women. Enough already. We can have separate locker rooms for those confused about their gender, but I’ll be dammed if me or my daughter are going to be bullied into sharing female only space with anatomical males.
Reinterpreting ‘Sex’ To Mean ‘Gender’ Puts Women At Risk
This commenter may have the law on her side: as Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gerson has pointed out, the 2016 DOE directive is on a collision course with its own 2011 directive that schools must prevent sexual harassment and violence. As Gerson notes,
[T]here is also a growing sense that some females will not feel safe sharing bathrooms, shower rooms, or locker rooms with males. And if a female student claimed that a bathroom or locker room that her school had her share with male students caused her to feel sexually vulnerable and created a hostile environment, the complaint would be difficult to dismiss, particularly since the federal government has interpreted Title IX broadly and said that schools must try to prevent a hostile environment . . . But would she not have a similar claim about having to share with students who identify as girls but are biologically male?
The reinterpretation of “sex” in Title IX to mean “gender” by the Obama DOE is also poised to play havoc with girls’ sports. The Summer Olympics also contributed to the debate this summer: Caster Semenya, a South African runner with undescended testes and no uterus or ovaries, was allowed to race as a woman, easily dominating all her events. Again, all the top New York Times Readers’ Picks on the article felt this was grossly unfair and that if the same logic was extended to transsexuals, it would lead to male imperialism of women’s and girls’ sports.
One top-rated commenter, another female New Yorker, stated, “I am so sick of anyone who decides they are a woman being validly considered a woman. Women have enough trouble competing against male privilege in this world…we really don’t need men elbowing their way into our ranks.”
Liberals Won’t Acknowledge Their Betrayal
This perfect storm, brewing over the final six months leading up to November’s hotly contested election, should go down in the history books as a clear factor in Trump’s victory. The abrupt reversal of liberal opinion in that short period of time is unprecedented, and for that to have occurred, the corresponding feeling on the conservative side of the spectrum must have been even more intense. One conservative mother put it this way, “I’d vote for the Devil himself if he promised my daughter would not have to use the same locker room as a ‘girl’ with a penis.”
Interestingly, this pivotal aspect of the race may not go down in the history books at all, because apparently it’s impolite to say it openly. Today I tried to comment on the Chira article, pointing out that because the Democratic Party sold out women on this issue, a number of women decided to pick up and go to the polls and vote for a man whose treatment of women really bothered them. The New York Times refused to publish the comment. It seems that the critical role this issue played in the 2016 election may be purposefully obscured by those whose interests might be compromised if it were acknowledged.
So let’s acknowledge it here at The Federalist: Women—even liberal women—now feel the Democratic Party has sold them out in favor of transsexuals. It’s time for the leadership of both parties to take stock of what role this sense of betrayal played in Clinton’s poorer-than-expected showing among women. After all, what profiteth it a political party to gain the transsexual vote but lose the women’s vote?
