The effort to put transgenderism in the mainstream and even create a protected class has caused an unsurprising partnership between two groups that believe the movement is an attack on natural law and womanhood — conservatives and feminists.
One of those feminists testified before South Dakota’s House State Affairs Committee last month about a bill that would make providing radical drug and surgical treatment to children illegal.
“Doctors shouldn’t help kids take out their sadness and anger on the only bodies we can ever have,” said Natasha Chart, a member of the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF. “Please vote yes to forbid the sterilization of these young people.”
The Washington Post reported on the alliance with trepidation and dismissed Chart as representing “fringe activists:”
The Women’s Liberation Front is part of a long-running strain of feminism that rejects the existence of transgender identity. These fringe activists argue that advancements in transgender rights will come at the expense of women’s rights and threaten the safety and sanctity of women-only spaces. They say women are defined not by their gender identity, but by their biology and by having “survived girlhood.”
Mainstream progressives have long shunned the organization, calling it a discriminatory, right-wing group disguised as feminist. But the Women’s Liberation Front, also known as WoLF, has found an increasingly influential platform by teaming up with conservatives who disagree with their support of abortion rights and the “reproductive sovereignty” of women.
Now, WoLF is even helping shape legislation in places like South Dakota, which last month became the first state to advance a wave of state bills nationwide banning medical interventions for transgender youth.
The Post reports that the link between WoLF and conservatives discredits the group, citing members connecting with conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Post blames President Donald Trump for a growing number of state lawmakers taking steps to protect children from severe treatment to “help” children alter their biological sex.
“And Chart and other radical feminists are helping to bolster their message, creating the perception of bipartisan support in a polarizing social debate,” the Post reported.
The Post found critics of this growing nationwide effort, including Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, who called the partnership a “false alliance.”
“That’s what’s driving their influence — the false claiming of a feminist mantle and attaching that label to anti-transgender positions,” Tabacco Mar said. “This is not a principle of crossing party lines. This is a principle of exclusion.”
But those who belong to WoLF, many of whom are lesbians, according to the Post, have said they are victims of “cancel culture,” have been targeted on social media, and have suffered in their personal life for taking a stand.
And tensions led to a scuffle last weekend at an event WoLF held at Seattle Public Library entitled, “Fighting the New Misogyny: A Feminist Critique of Gender Identity.”
Protestors claimed the event did not include all women, or men who want to be women.
“If you don’t fight for ALL women,” one sign read, “you fight for no women,” the Post reported.
But WoLF rejects the idea that men can be women.
“Gender identity is literally threatening to erase women and girls as a meaningful category … in language and in law,” Kara Dansky, a WoLF board member, said in the Post report. “We view that as an emergency.”
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