Month: October 2023

Tickets are on sale now on Eventbrite for our Saturday December 2nd forum, 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, 2:00 p.m. Eastern time,on fighting gender identity indoctrination going on in our public schools.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/perilous-lessons-fighting-gender-identity-indoctrination-in-schools-tickets-747745937227?aff=oddtdtcreator

To the horror of many, children in public schools are being indoctrinated to believe that some people are born in the “wrong” body; that biological sex, to the extent it exists at all, is “assigned” and can be changed; and that if a child or teen doesn’t conform to sex stereotypes or if they are same sex attracted, their body is “wrong” and they may need to medically “transition.” Girls, lesbian and gay teens, autistic children and anyone who is “different” are particularly vulnerable to this message. Children are being “socially transitioned” – treated like they are the other sex (or neither sex) in school – often behind their parents’ back. This sets these children on the path to puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, removing or surgically modifying healthy body parts resulting in sterilization and other permanent harms to their long term mental and physical health, often while they are still minors.

To begin the discussion on how best to fight back against the indoctrination of school children into gender identity ideology and the promotion of child transition by our public schools, FEMINISTS IN STRUGGLE presents two women who have been leaders in this struggle:

CAROL DANSEREAU is an advocate, organizer, singer, feminist, mother and grandmother. She spent decades advocating for environmental protections, including for farm worker families exposed to highly toxic pesticides for which she and her organization received the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association’s Public Justice Award. Carol has been fighting Gender Identity Ideology since 2019, most recently at her local school board, and sees the movement we are building on that issue as central to achieving the system change needed for a just and sustainable world. Visit caroldansereau.substack.com for her articles, reports and videos on Gender Identity ideology, environmental issues, immigration and other topics.

ERIN FRIDAY is a licensed California attorney, mother and wife. She is also a lifelong Democrat whose daughter used to believe that she was a boy . Erin co-leads the Western Region of Our Duty, an international group of parents and allies who are fighting to protect children and vulnerable adults against gender ideology. She is on the executive committee for Protect Kids California https://protectkidsca.com/, that is promoting a 2024 ballot initiative to stop gender interventions on minors, prevent males from competing in female sports and entrance into female spaces, and stop schools from socially transitioning students without parental knowledge or consent. She also leads a local branch of Parents of Rapid-Onset of Gender Dysphoric Kids. She has authored articles in the Wall Street Journal, Daily Signal, the Ohio Press, the Epoch Times, Our Duty Substack, Post Millennial and for Parents of Inconvenient Truths about Trans. She is frequently found in Sacramento fighting bills that erode parental rights and force parents to subject their children to gender interventions.

FIST’s Feminist Forums series are interactive and organizing events. At our forums, women have an opportunity not only to hear interesting speakers on a variety of feminist topics but to meet each other, make comments, ask questions of the presenters and discuss feminist politics together. We also usually tape the events so they may be viewed later. Persons in attendance are free to shut off their cameras and mute themselves, should they prefer to do so. If you prefer to remain anonymous within the group, or plan to sign in under a different name from the name you have used for registration and purchase of your ticket, please contact the organizer prior to the event. Thanks.

THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO BOTH MEN AND WOMEN BECAUSE OF ITS IMPORTANCE TO PARENTS, TEACHERS, LGB COMMUNITIES, AND DETRANSITIONERS OF BOTH SEXES, THOUGH WOMEN WILL BE GIVEN PRIORITY DURING DISCUSSION.

Photo from Jewish Voice for Peace protest in Grand Central Station, New York, 10/27/2023

By Ann Menasche

This is the opinion of the author alone and does not represent the position of Feminists in Struggle.

The targeting of civilians in war, whether in the name of “resistance against occupation” or “defense against terrorism”, whether from bombs thrown from the air onto crowded residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and places of worship or attacks with guns, knives, explosives, or other violent attacks from the ground, means the brutal deaths of innocent women and their children at male hands. It is a particularly egregious form of mass femicide, this time, not directed against their “own” women – the women of their nation or ethnic group – but the women of the demonized “other”, the “enemy.” Because in virtually all contemporary societies, men are the large majority of combatants and the civilians are women, children and the elderly.

It was not until 1949, the aftermath of World War II, a war that resulted in over 38 million civilian deaths that international law in the Geneva Conventions legally defined war crimes or crimes against humanity. And it was not just Nazis that caused those deaths during World War II, though they caused a lot of them. The estimate of deaths from the allies’ firebombing of Dresden which were justified as an attempt to shorten the war and save soldiers’ lives, is at least 25,000 to 35,000 civilians; the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately killed 214,000 Japanese civilians, not counting the later premature deaths of countless others from radiation. But the victors don’t usually get charged with war crimes. That slaughter was justified on the same grounds, but according to primary source I read in college, the U.S. was well aware that Japan was about to surrender; however, they wanted to show the Soviet Union their new powerful weapon, as the Cold War was just being launched.

Rules of war established after World War II have almost always been honored in the breach, with the U.S. having quite a lot of civilian blood on its hands, again mostly women and children. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, justified by 9/11 and the “war on terror”, 280,000 to 315,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by the violence, not counting the life-threatening damage to civilian infrastructure that caused even more deaths. The bombing of Vietnam during the Vietnam war resulted in between 30,000- 65,000 civilian deaths. The Vietnam government estimates the total civilian deaths from the war to be 2,000,000 people. Again, we are talking about the wanton mass murder of women and children.

Of course, one reason the U.S. hesitates to criticize Israel as it indiscriminately kills thousands of Palestinian women and children in Gaza through its bombs and threatens more lives with its tightened blockade preventing clean water, food and energy from entering, and letting only a trickle of humanitarian aid in, is because the U.S. does the same thing. The U.S. government’s refusal to support the international call for a ceasefire in the Israel/Gaza war is criminal and makes our government complicit in the extensive war crimes going on right now.

War and peace are feminist issues because, among other reasons, war allows men to murder women and our children with impunity. Feminists, whatever side we may be on in a conflict, should never justify or support the deliberate targeting of civilians or the callous indifference to civilian lives so that men will sacrifice any number of innocent women and children to get the “bad guys.”

As feminists we should care about the lives and wellbeing of our sisters around the globe, including both Israelis and Palestinians. We should never excuse the crimes of the men on “our side” of these wars. No more femicide in my name.

As feminists, we should also know that only justice and equality can establish a solid ground for peace and safety for all the peoples of this planet.