Author: feministwriter

Radical Feminists Advance at National NOW Conference

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By Butch Barbie

NOW held its annual membership conference in Las Vegas July 10-13.  The conference was hybrid, with elections and plenaries streaming on Zoom.  Issue hearings and workshops were also held but not streamed to virtual attendees.

For the first time in recent memory, a caucus of radical feminists pushed 2 resolutions through issue hearings for a vote by the membership.  A third resolution passed by petition with 35 signatures. The group was surprised that the resolutions passed were the most ‘controversial’—Single Sex Prisons and Online Age Verification for Pornography through the issue hearings, and Lesbian Only Spaces by petition.  The next step would have been a floor vote by the members on Sunday, the last day of the conference.

Unfortunately that day never came.  Elections were held for a new President and Vice President on Saturday afternoon.  Normally the candidates are advised of the results Saturday evening and officially announced Sunday morning.  Instead, Sunday morning the conference was cancelled by parliamentarian Lynette Henley, who stood on stage with Elections Committee co-chair Rosa Colquitt and outgoing VP Bear Atwood.  Citing unnamed (and still unproven) ‘third parties’ interfering with the election, and lack of quorum (untrue and quorum was not challenged), Henley declared the conference void.  Atwood then adjourned the conference.

This unexpected turn of events was met with outrage by those present and online as well.  When a board member challenged the Parliamentarian, she was screamed at and threatened by VP Candidate Triana Arnold James to keep away.  Members ended up gathering for strategy sessions which continued for 2 weeks.

After a secret board meeting convened by outgoing President Christian Nunes who falsely claimed the election was hacked, the Election Committee finally revealed the results of the officer election. The winning slate with 76.9% of the vote was Kim Villanueva for President and Rose Brunache for Vice President.  Rose is a young African American radical feminist from the Washington DC chapter.  Kim, an out Latina lesbian from Illinois, is a longstanding NOW member who has served at nearly every level in the organization and is willing to open up dialogue on our issues.

As for the resolutions, the normal procedure is for the national board to vote on them at their next meeting if they hadn’t been voted on at the conference.  Since nothing was normal about this conference, we will have to wait until the September board meeting to see what happens.

 

 

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE SKRMETTI DECISION

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By Ann Menasche

This piece is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Feminists in Struggle as an organization.

Radical feminists, parents and many others holding a range of political views, welcomed the Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti issued on June 11th upholding the constitutionality of a Tennessee law banning the practice of so-called “gender affirming care” for minors under 18.  Many were anxious to put a stop to this medical experiment on a vulnerable group of children and teens, mostly girls, who are gender non-conforming, autistic, and/or survivors of trauma, a majority of whom, if provided appropriate support, would be likely to grow up lesbian or gay with their bodies and fertility intact.

The decision moved the struggle to the states against this sexist and homophobic practice (based on the idea that some people are born “wrong” and need “fixing” so their bodies “align” with sex stereotypes).  Already, 26 states have passed restrictions or bans on use by minors of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and cosmetic surgeries for “sex change” and more such laws are now likely.  This is good news especially for these “trans kids” whose bodies are being experimented on and permanently harmed.

But like all victories issued under this right-wing court, some of the reasoning in the decision may be a bit of a two-edged sword that could be used against women’s rights in the future.

The majority decision by Justice Roberts held that Tennessee’s law was not subject to heightened (“intermediate”) scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it did not classify based on sex.  Neither did the law classify based transgender status but merely regulates a medical procedure, removing one set of diagnosis – gender dysphoria or incongruence – from a range of treatable conditions.  Such classifications based on age or medical use are subject only to rational basis review.  This is easily passed here.  The Court points to medical and scientific uncertainty and the reviews and restrictions on use of these treatments on minors coming out of the UK, Sweden, Norway, and other countries.  Justice Roberts also distinguishes Bostock; and further points out that Tennessee law has nothing to do with sex stereotyping or restrictions on clothing, behavior etc. All good news.

However, the Court majority relies on and reinforces some very bad law – that discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions, including bans on abortion do not constitute sex discrimination because not all women are pregnant, even though only women can get pregnant or seek abortions.  “Thus, although only transgender individuals seek treatment for gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder and gender incongruence – just as only biological women can be become pregnant – there is a ‘lack of identity’ between transgender status and the excluded medical diagnosis.”  Therefore, even were the ERA recognized as part of the Constitution and sex treated as a suspect class subject to strict scrutiny, abortion bans or other discriminatory treatment based on pregnancy could not be successfully challenged as sex discrimination with the current Supreme Court majority.

The concurring opinions are noteworthy.  Justice Thomas’ description of the horror of what “gender affirming care” actually consists of in practice is quite good; as is Justice Barrett’s review of why the transgender population does not share “the obvious, immutable or distinguishing characteristics of a discrete group” to be a suspect class, like sex or race.  Rather, the transgender population is “large, diverse, and amorphous.” and lacks a history of de jure discrimination that women and people of color have faced. The dissent points to bans on cross-dressing and sodomy laws as proof of de jure discrimination against transgender persons; however, in my view, those laws target gays and cross-dressers, and do not specifically target individuals with transgender identities or who medicalize to hide or deny their sex.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion argues that discrimination based on transgender status is a sex-based classification, and that the Tennessee law is discriminatory.  She believes that hormones and surgeries are “a matter of life or death”; she also implies that it is possible to switch puberties.  Justice Kagan, while also calling for heightened scrutiny, to her credit, takes no view on how the Tennessee law would fare under such scrutiny.

Finally, not one Justice thinks sex discrimination claims under Equal Protection should be subjected to strict scrutiny.  Of course, there is no mention of the ERA.  Though sex is deemed immutable, because of the existence of biological sex differences that society “celebrates”, the Court unanimously rejects strict scrutiny for “sex” that is accorded race discrimination.  The entire Court is therefore committed to maintaining women’s second-class status.

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A shortened version of the following piece was submitted to the New York Times in response to a Guest Essay on its Opinion Page.
by Kathy Scarbrough and Carol Hanisch

Christine Emba’s New York Times opinion piece, “The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness” (5/19/25), takes a courageous public stand in these times when pornography is everywhere. It is a good thing that more people are seeing the cracks in the wall of pro-porn sentiment, but they also need to be aware that those cracks started a long time ago and feminists have worked continuously to widen those crevices and collapse the wall. 

For example, both Feminists in Struggle (FIST) and Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) have as one of their organizational principles that the groups work “for the abolition of prostitution and pornography.” Women’s Declaration International (including its branch in the U.S.) is also anti-porn. Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement and other forerunners of FIST, WoLF and WDI have had pro-woman positions on pornography continuously since the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Gail Dines, the feminist author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (2010) and Robert Jensen author of the pro-feminist book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (2007) both lecture nationally and internationally. In 2021 Carol Hanisch called out the hypocrisy of Jacobin — a publication that claims to be a leading voice of the Left — for publishing a plea from a producer on the social media site OnlyFans not to ban porn because it would hurt business. Hanisch lampooned Jacobin’s “concern” for the involved “sex workers” and “producers” by asking questions like “When you run articles about cutting the military budget, do you ever run a plea by a soldier or bomb-maker on keeping the military machine going because it would otherwise send 720,000 civilians and 2.2 military personnel to the unemployment lines?“

Though Ms. Emba mentions the religious Right also has positions against pornography, she doesn’t distinguish their stance from the feminist one. The Right and feminists come to opposition to porn from different concerns (though women on the Right may well also oppose it for the same feminist reasons we do). Many on the Right have religious views against any non-marital sex and masturbation, and have no qualms about putting women “in their place”. Anti-porn feminists, like those discussed here, are in favor of consensual sex between equal partners and argue that porn degrades women and encourages men to treat us as nothing more than objects for their own pleasure. Ms. Emba also neglects to mention that when people on the Left criticize porn from a feminist position it often means being shunned and smeared as Right-wingers.

Perhaps Ms. Elba is not aware of much of this because those who still struggle for women’s liberation have been mostly ignored and denied a public megaphone, but we are still here and we are still opposing pornography with no delusions about its many harms.

 

Trump Administration is Destroying Feminist Infrastructure Built Over Decades

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(This contribution is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Feminists in Struggle. Stay tune for further discussion and FIST action on this important topic.)

The Trump Administration is destroying the governmental infrastructure that supports feminism–and that was brought into being by decades of feminist struggle.

Social change begins with protest in the streets and gradually moves its way through courts and legislatures to become law. The new laws are administered by government departments that disburse funding for programs mandated by these laws–which often are administered by a web of not-for-profit organizations. As the Trump Administration has moved to dismantle entire government departments, the programs these Departments oversee and that were approved by Congress as a result of much political labor by women and others, are now being defunded, with staff fired and told their work is “not in keeping with the priorities of this Administration”. The fruits of much struggle–including feminist struggle are disappearing.

As just one example: in February, 2025, non-profits that set up and administer shelters for victims of domestic violence, mandated in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) administered by the Office of Violence Against Women (part of the the Department of Justice/DOJ), found that the funds they annually rely on to keep going had been put “on hold” indefinitely. This was as a result of Diversity/Equity/Inclusion programs (DEI) being no longer allowed–with ‘special’ shelters for women being thus classified. VAWA programs are also being defunded because Trump is dismantling the entire DOJ and shrinking it down to being merely a tool of vengeance against his ‘enemies’. Thus, one of the fruits of feminism that started with Consciousness Raising groups of women in the 1960’s discussing violence from men in their lives and then starting a movement to stop it–has been stripped of any government funding and its functioning eliminated.

The Trump Administration has also announced its intention of dismantling the Department of Education (DOE), which is critical for women’s equality in the entire educational system. The DOE oversees equal sports facilities for males and females (under Title 9 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964–added in 1972); it investigates sexual harassment and assault in government funded (public) schools and has its own Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for this purpose; it works toward girls getting educated in STEM/digital literacy subjects and distributes Pell grants so that education is not limited by poverty (girls and women get 62% of these). There are currently over 1,000 complaints of sexual harassment in the pipeline that will now never be investigated because of the dismantling of the DOE (not to mention the girls now being harassed who have no place to turn). If Trump gets his way and all education is administered by the states, you can bet that most will not have these protections for women! And even in the ‘good’ states, it will all have to be fought for over again.

Trump’s attempts to make all aspects of Affirmative Action/DEI illegal, if successful (there are many court cases opposing his attempt) will have a great impact on women, who have largely benefited from these programs. This includes the end of ‘set asides’ in government contracts for historically disadvantaged people such as racial minorities and women; it will change the composition of students on campuses and will remove the legal ‘scaffolding’ women and people of color have used to get ahead in a world where, through generational disadvantage and plain old bias, they have been–and still are–at a disadvantage. At present, the word “women” has been flagged as making grant seekers ineligible for government grants who use this word in their proposals!

There is much more happening to dismantle feminism and all of its objectives in the present nascent fascist Trump Administration than I have space to describe here.

I believe that even as we fight the harms of gender ideology, we MUST keep in mind that everything else that feminists have fought for is under attack by the Trump Administration. Women may argue about which is the greater evil, but I believe that many gender critical women are ignoring or rationalizing Trump’s present and future actions against us, because he has supported some of our gender critical positions (there being only two sexes, etc.).

Given the larger ideology of the Christian Right (see Project 2025, the ideal of ‘biblical marriage’ and the ‘place of women’), the naked male supremacy of this administrations and the ongoing attacks on the infrastructure of feminism,  ‘statements of support’ from the Trump Administration are a ‘Trojan Horse’ and we must not be fooled

It would be extremely ironic if we finally got men out of women’s sport and out of DV shelters, only to find that there was no more women’s sport and no more DV Shelters due to their having been defunded by our new right wing ‘friends’.

 

 

TALE OF TWO WITCH-HUNTS

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By Ann Menasche

(This piece is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Feminists in Struggle)

Feminists are quite familiar with the witch-hunt against so-called “TERFS”, women who assert that sex exists, and is immutable, and the female half of humanity (including lesbians, as women who love women), are deserving of rights based on our sex.  Such recognition that women are a discrete group of people with our own rights and needs (including our right to privacy and safety and to organize apart from males) and indeed, that we are members of the oppressed sex still living under millennia of male supremacy, used to be a no-brainer for progressives and anyone who considered themselves part of the Left.  Then historical amnesia set in and a new catechism, that “transwomen are women”, trickled down from the powers-that-be making a fortune off the bodies of gay, gender non-conforming and/or traumatized children and young people in the “sex change” industry.  Before long, they succeeded in labelling anyone who disagreed as “transphobic” – not ordinary “bigots,” mind you, (with whom you might still be able to have a civil discussion) but the equivalent of “Nazis.”

I have experienced the trauma of the witch-hunt personally – fired from my civil rights job of 20 years, excluded from my local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, told that neither my name nor face were welcome in Jill Stein’s Green Party Presidential Campaign, and more recently prevented from renewing my membership in a professional network of homeless lawyers.  All because I have spoken out publicly about women’s sex-based rights. There are many other women who have had their livelihoods and community work similarly jeopardized and even their physical safety threatened, courageous women like Amy Hamm in Canada, a nurse, found to have committed professional misconduct for her outside feminist activities and then fired; also, Kathleen Stock in the U.K., Thistle Pettersen in Wisconsin and Christy Hammer in Maine, to name just a few.

Like all witch-hunts, this one creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, dissuading others from speaking out. Some have even felt compelled to denounce the “witches” in order not to be accused of engaging in witchcraft themselves.  Like the scapegoating of old, including the Red Scare of the 1940’s and 50’s targeting anyone suspected of communism or communist sympathies, the ostracism meted against these women is often all-encompassing.  It means that you are blacklisted, no-platformed, removed from the community.

It doesn’t matter if the issue never came up in your job or professional work; your “thought crimes” expressed on social media, in your private life or in outside political activities is enough to hang you.  Your very presence, (the magic power of the “evil eye,” no doubt), makes others “unsafe.”

Since it was only feminists affected, for a long time, no one paid much attention to this witch-hunt.  (That may be changing in the UK with a significant feminist fight-back culminating in the UK Supreme Court decision agreeing that woman means woman under law, and that single sex spaces and programs for women and girls must be protected.)

But now a far bigger more dramatic witch-hunt is brewing in the U.S. and Europe, targeting both men and women, especially non-citizens legally in the country, but citizens as well, using a strikingly similar playbook as that used against feminists. In the U.S. this witch-hunt is being orchestrated by the federal government, first by the Biden administration, and now with far greater intensity, under Trump.

The “witches” this time are pro-Palestinian activists on campuses, labelled “antisemitic” haters for their opposition to Israeli genocide in Gaza, whose political opinions and very presence supposedly make Jewish students “unsafe.”  Never mind that many Jews agree with and have participated in the protests and that even in Israel, a growing number of Jews are demanding, in the streets  of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, an end to the slaughter. In Columbia University, numerous students have been expelled, suspended or stripped of their degrees for exercise of First Amendment rights to speak and peacefully protest against Israel and U.S. foreign policy.  Professors too have been arrested and targeted for peacefully registering their dissent.

For legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil, this witch-hunt has meant detention by immigration agents and attempts to deport him, though he has never been charged with any crime. Nor has any evidence been produced that he was antisemitic or even pro-Hamas.  In witch-hunts, evidence is besides the point.

None of this is ever about anyone’s safety, but about silencing speech and preventing critical thought.

Freedom of speech and assembly is for everyone or for no one.  Suppression of speech and thought, whether through government-led repression or by groups claiming to be “progressive” while targeting others’ jobs and livelihoods and ostracizing them from the community for their “wrong” opinions, makes all of us less safe.  We never know who will be the next “witch.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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P. T. Barnum Meets Revenge of the Nerds

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In view of what has been happening in Washington, it seems important to look at the larger context in which we women are losing our rights, as well as our social safety net and livelihoods. We find ourselves in the middle of a war on democracy, justice, freedom of speech, science, reality, and sanity, between 2 cults: the MAGA cult on the right, and the gender cult on the Left. In this post, I will focus on the former; I’ll deal with the gender cult in a subsequent post. In both cults, women lose, but in different ways.

The MAGA cult wants to strip us of all of our reproductive rights, our right to divorce our abusers, our right to equal pay for equal work, our dignity as single mothers, our right to choose our partners, our right to live free from fear of male violence and sexual assault, and have even gone so far as to suggest we should be stripped of our right to vote. The MAGA cult would enshrine fetal so-called “personhood” into law, while denying and even criminalizing our right to choose to be child and pregnancy free, and would even deny us birth control. Being anti-abortion and anti-ERA have been articles of faith for the religious Right, which comprise a huge portion of MAGA, for over 40 years. Anyone wanting to learn more about this threat, particularly from the religious Right, should watch the documentary, Bad Faith. The current administration in Washington has been enabled largely by an unholy Trinity of Christian Dominionists, Big Tech, and Billionaires like the Koch Brothers, and, of course, Elon Musk.

While Vance’s role seems to be relegated to being the administration’s attack dog, Musk is given free rein to destroy our government agencies, along with his band of unqualified, pubescent hackers. It is P. T. Barnum meets Revenge of the Nerds. Trump the lying huckster and Musk the incompetent self-promoting technocrat, narcissistic sociopaths selling their followers on the phony narrative of going after the “swamp” and “waste, fraud, and abuse” when they are the quintessential examples of corrupt plutocrats, dismantling every agency and department that stands in the way of their greed and exploitation. If they really wanted to do away with “waste, fraud, and abuse”, they could start by ending Elon Musk’s government contracts. In any case, it is truly amazing that anyone believes the hype that’s coming from the Trump/Musk traveling circus. But they dare not utter one word of protest or risk being shamed, humiliated, and banished from the cult. Total, unquestioning loyalty is required of Trump and Musk’s minions.

Corporate welfare in the form of government subsidies, grants, tax breaks, and giveaways are where the real money is going and how these criminal billionaires are growing fat off the taxpayer’s dime, selling America’s assets off to the highest bidder while sending all the watchdogs and laws and agencies meant to protect the 99% to the trash heap. Goodbye Inspectors General, Goodbye Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Goodbye ethical attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice, Goodbye programs that help the poor and middle class, Goodbye environmental protections, Goodbye to access for journalists, Goodbye to impartial law enforcement, Goodbye to everything the average American depends on in the name of “bringing down the deficit”. This is the billionaires’ idea of “Making America Great Again”.

A lie this huge ought to be obvious by now and this administration would be a hilarious clown show were it not for the reality that actual people all over the world are being harmed, and women, (and children) more than any other group, are once again the major recipients of this harm. This is particularly true for single mothers and older women, the poorest of the poor, who depend on the social safety net for survival. The MAGA cult is enamored with billionaires and vulture capitalism, and blatantly displays its male supremacy. In this world might is right, human beings are commodified, women are chattel, and every interaction transactional. The only values are money, profit, and power, and every action is only worthy if it can be “monetized” or can enhance their domination.

George Carlin warned us that the owner class was coming for us, years ago now, his words compellingly prophetic.

Both political parties are complicit in this sellout to corporate ownership of our government and ourselves, which began long ago, but with this duo and their loyalist enablers we are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra wealthy that is breathtaking in its scope. It is nothing short of a heist, hidden behind a shell game intended to distract from their true intention: to transform our democratic republic into a kleptocracy run by dictators hellbent on returning us to feudalism.

Jon Stewart’s monologue on DOGE’s budget cuts is also on point:


Silicon Valley and Big Tech have had these designs for a long time it turns out, and billionaires have been plotting to enrich themselves by impoverishing the rest of us for decades. But now it is coming into full fruition with the Trump/Musk traveling circus who are more than happy to allow the Christian fundamentalist, nationalist, dominionists to turn women into handmaidens as payment for their services in helping them gain power. We must resist with every ounce of our individual and collective strength or we will lose everything, including ourselves.

FIST DECLARES ITS SUPPORT FOR REEM ALSALEM, UN RAPPORTEUR ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS

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In February, 2025, Feminists in Struggle joined with over 500 organizations and 5000 individuals in signing the “Global support letter for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem” (1).

Ms. Reem Alsalem became the 5th person to hold the mandate as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls (UNSRVAWG) in August of 2021.  This role was established in 1994 (resolution 1994/45) by the UN Human Rights Council (formerly the Human Rights Commission) for an independent human rights expert to specifically examine the global problem of violence against women and girls and recommend actions to end it (2).

The United Nations defines violence against women as: “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (3).

Ms. Alsalem has been tirelessly speaking out about the systemic oppression of women and girls, state-sanctioned violence, and dramatic losses of previously held civil rights and protections occurring in countries around the world, from United States to Afghanistan.  She has refused to adopt the re-branded “newspeak” seeking to call acts of genital mutilation or prostitution by more sanitized names.   She remains steadfast and focused on the realities facing women and girls as a sex-class, within a global context.   Utilizing a radical feminist and gender critical analysis, she seeks to truly root out the  ‘causes and consequences’ of violence against women and girls and takes a strong stand on behalf of female sexual survivors, presenting groundbreaking research centering these marginalized voices within her reports.

At the 56th session of the the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last June, 2024, Reem Alsalem presented her comprehensive Report on Prostitution and Violence Against Women and Girls, the first of its kind to focus solely on the consequences of prostitution on the lives of women and girls (4).  In this document, she refuses to pander to the demand to re-language prostitution as “sex work” and identifies this as an attempt to sanitize sexual exploitation by repackaging (remarketing) it as empowering to women and as a valid form of labor, just like any other job.   She sees through the attempts to frame pornography as anything other than “filmed prostitution” and above all, she highlights the voices of survivors who have exited prostitution and work toward abolition.

By focusing on the evidence offered by survivors and those who serve them “rather than ideological fervor,” her report provides a thorough review of all of the available data and research, which documents the clear and significant harms caused to women and girls involved in prostitution, pornography, and other forms of sexual exploitation – and how the normalization of these behaviors continues to support the escalation of violence against women and girls everywhere (5).

We as FIST stand with and celebrate Reem Alsalem for her work and join her and other organizations in speaking out against the propaganda campaigns of criminals and their financiers who seek to exploit, commodify, oppress, and deny basic human rights to women and girls across the world.

 

References:

  1. “Global support letter for Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, its causes and consequences.”  Women’s Platform for Action, February 21, 2025. https://www.womensplatformforaction.org/global-support-letter/
  2. https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-mandate
  3.  http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/vaw/v-overview.htm
  4. Alsalem, Reem, “Prostitution and violence against women and girls: Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences.” United Nations, Human Rights Council, Fifty-sixth session, 18 June–12 July 2024.  A/HRC/56/48*

https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/078/81/pdf/g2407881.pdf

Alsalem, Reem, “Response to a Political Critique and Personal Attack Against a United Nations Report that Presented New Evidence About Prostitution as a Cause and Consequence of Violence Against Women and Girls,” Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 10: Iss. 1, Article 6, 2025.  https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2025.10.01.06

 

THE KILLING OF DEI AND THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY

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By Ann Menasche

This article is the opinion of the author and doesn’t necessarily represent the opinions of FIST as an organization.

Many feminists breathed a big sigh of relief when President Trump issued his Executive Order on gender ideology, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/, recognizing two immutable sexes and restoring the definition of women to adult human female, without which any women’s rights, even the ERA, lose all meaning.  This has the immediate benefit of women’s bathrooms and changing rooms, prison cells and sports teams at least on the federal level being reserved once again for us alone apart from males, regardless of their gender identity.

At the same time, Trump revealed through another EO that what he had in mind for the sex class of women wasn’t exactly what we feminists have struggled for over the past century.  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ Instead, he sought to undermine women’s right to equal job opportunities alongside men and to return to the mythical past of a “meritocracy” where white males somehow were always the ones who managed to get ahead not of course because of the “old boys” network providing a leg up, but because they were simply the smartest and most qualified around.

Trump’s direct target was to destroy DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which he labelled “radical and wasteful”, both in the federal government and in private companies that contract with the government. DEI is the corporatized watered-down version of the robust affirmative action programs of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s that helped even the playing field and advance women and African Americans in all sectors of society where they had previously been excluded.  Those affirmative action programs were eroded by successful court challenges and Proposition 209 in California in 1996.

DEI, reduced to a shadow of its formal self, at times even became a caricature -removing sex as a protected class in favor of gender identity, targeting gender critical feminists and lesbians as “bigots”, and emphasizing “politically correct” language (the rules of which changed frequently), virtue signaling, avoiding micro-aggressions, and urging brow-beating and confessions of guilt, as a substitute for real meaningful measures that would provide equal opportunity to women and people of color in the workplace.  Yet DEI was the only way the white males that still dominate the workplace were forced to pay a little attention to whether they were truly the only ones capable of exercising leadership and doing a job well or whether a few Blacks, Latinos or women should be allowed that opportunity.

As anyone  knows who has looked at the research or who has opened their eyes to the dynamics in the workplace, sex and race discrimination are still widespread though difficult to prove on an individual basis.  (Employers and managers frankly don’t always tell the truth.) See https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-americans-hasnt-declined-in-25-years. See also https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/12/14/gender-discrimination-comes-in-many-forms-for-todays-working-women/.  And it is not white males that are experiencing the brunt of the discrimination.

Yet the Trump administration is making the preposterous claim – rooted in white supremacy and male supremacy – that without DEI, there will be a meritocracy that will return us to the time where our “betters” – white males like himself- the only or best qualified, will regain their rightful place in society. He is being cheered on by people who are claiming all over social media that the problem with the Los Angeles fires arose because the Mayor and Police Chief are two “unqualified” women (one, also a person of color) rather than due to policies of austerity and the failure to maintain the fire hydrants which have nothing to do with sex or race.

The most frightening part of Trump’s actions against DEI is his mandating that people report their co-workers who violate his new DEI policy, launching a witch-hunt against anyone who is suspected of utilizing DEI. Of course, the best way to prove one’s innocence is to never hire or promote women or people of color in the first place.

It is essential for women’s existence as a sex to be recognized, but obviously, it is not the whole enchilada.  WE WANT EQUALITY! And affirmative action is a necessary part of getting us there.

 

 

ON DARKNESS, BETRAYAL, AND THE POWER OF SISTERHOOD

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By Ann Menasche

This piece contains the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the collective views of Feminists in Struggle.

Many spiritual and religious traditions celebrate the dark, cold time of the year – winter solstice – by lighting candles, stoking a fire, and gathering close with loved ones.  We do so to help us survive this dark time and to remind us that after darkness comes the light.

The sadness for me this year is palpable.  We lost our beloved dog, Jaz, on December 9th.  And I can’t forget the state of the world that haunts me and disturbs my sleep: the relentless slaughter of the women and children in Gaza; the women in Afghanistan prisoners in their homes, denied work or study.  And closer to home, my homeless neighbors including a growing number of women – virtually all survivors of male violence -subsist crammed into government-sanctioned rat-infested camps, tents three feet apart, with no way to stay warm or dry.

And the state of our rights as women in the U.S. is abysmal.  Over 100 years after Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution, we are still considered second class citizens, as first Trump, then Biden refused to register the duly ratified Amendment into the Constitution. This weakens our ability to fight to regain reproductive rights, to end violence against women, and to achieve equal pay and opportunity in the workplace for women. Meanwhile, trans activists are attempting to erase our sex class from existence in law and public policy so it will be impossible to name, measure, or remedy ongoing sexism.

Is it any wonder that so many young girls are attempting to “identify” out of their womanhood?

Then there is the bitterness of betrayal. Over the last several months, FIST joined with Equal Means Equal and became part of a broad coalition of organizations demanding that the Biden administration instruct the archivist to publish the ERA.  We recently learned that behind our backs, leaders of mainstream feminist organizations such as NOW and the Feminist Majority, supposed feminists and ERA supporters, were urging Biden not to publish the ERA.

How do we explain this treachery?  Is it their loyalty to the corporate dominated Democratic Party that while using women’s rights as a campaign slogan to win votes and donations, never had women’s best interests at heart?  Or do they really believe that the best way to fight for our rights is to be “ladylike” and polite, to not rock the boat?

I’m with Frederick Douglass who said in 1857, “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, the want the ocean without the roar of its many waters…Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.”

I learned a lesson in courage and tenacity watching my sick dog with her back legs failing her, forcing herself up again and again and walking through the house, and up and down stairs.  No matter how many times she fell, she persisted, until she could no longer move at all.

Building movements takes that level of persistence, along with a recognition that when women unite, collectively we have the power to bring in the light, to change everything.  We have that power regardless of who is in the White House.

Like the women in Iran who against incredible odds, led (and will continue to lead) their people in a movement against theocracy proclaiming, “Women, Life, Freedom.”

Like our foremothers, the suffragists.  Women like Alice Paul and the Women’s Party that declared their independence from the patriarchy and its two political parties and were relentless in carrying out their struggle.

It took 100 years to win the vote, but we were not defeated.

 

 

 

 

 

Report on the Nov 1 Solidarity action with German Women—by Butch Barbie

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On November 1, 2024 Germany’s new “Self-ID Law” went into effect.  Under this law, any man can declare himself a woman without any verification. They can do this once per year.  Parents can determine the gender of their babies; from age 5, children can agree to this. Children age 14 and up can determine their own gender with parental consent.

There is a ban on disclosing the former name and sex of a person; any violation can incur a fine of 10,000 Euro. Any quotas German law had for women are cancelled; gender identity, not sex is the determining factor for quotas for women. German feminists asked for a solidarity action around the world and women responded. In addition to holding demonstrations on November 1, they asked for letters of support to be sent to the German embassies and consulates.

I and other FIST members participated in some of these demonstrations. I attended a zoom following the day of action which was attended by 25 women around the world.

Here is a summary of the reports:

Berlin turned out 250 people and had a tent labeled “Ministry of Truth”. There was an opening in the tent made to look like a jail, where people’s faces peered out. The German media didn’t respond, but the press in Italy and France did report on it. Activists felt they broke through the “wall of silence.” Trans activists who attended claimed the feminists were paid by Russian and Mexican evangelicals. The media portrayed the TIMs as ugly old men, instead of pretty young boys as usual.

London’s demo had 300 women.  Maya Forstater made an appearance.  Other UK actions included Ireland.

Other demos in Europe were held in Spain and Portugal.  Brazil had demos in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo; women showed up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Women in Columbia and Chile delivered letters to their German embassies.

Canadian women held protests in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

In the US, women gathered to protest in Chicago, Washington DC, Atlanta, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Oregon.  The German women expressed heartfelt gratitude that their American sisters showed so much support.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_slN_HKObc

YouTube post from Rona.

For more information on the law, see Rona Duwe’s Substack Ronalyze.