After Georgia: Charting a Feminist Path Forward for the Left

For those feminists and allies involved in the year-long defense of the Georgia Green Party for its gender critical feminist positions (endorsement of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights and FIST’s Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act), the overwhelming vote by the National Committee of the Green Party to revoke the accreditation of Georgia (119 yes, 17 no and 6 abstentions) was extremely disheartening.

So were the undemocratic, even Orwellian, tactics used against Georgia and its supporters: guilt by association and constant smears and name-calling (“Bigots”, “fascists”, “transphobes”, “transmisic”, “supporters of the Proud Boys, etc.) directed at life-long socialists, peace activists, union leaders, and Greens who raised even the slightest questions or mild disagreement with gender identity ideology. This created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, making others afraid to speak out. There was also a complete refusal to follow democratic process:  the Georgia Party was deprived of the ability to properly defend itself, cross-examine witnesses, or present evidence to the Accreditations Committee, which was stacked with members and supporters of the Lavender Caucus, the complainant in the case. The Secretary of the Georgia Party was even excluded from the Zoom hearing room when the LC provided testimony against Georgia. Members of the National Committee that took Georgia’s side were silenced by biased moderators or removed from the NC before the vote.

But there was also great courage and fortitude shown by defenders of Georgia, who met weekly on Zoom in what we called our “war room” to collectively plan strategy. These include dozens of women and men who came out of the woodwork to contact us from all over the country. One example of such courage was the sole dissenter on the Accreditations Committee, won over during the course of the struggle. He wrote a scathing minority report which the AC attempted to suppress, though we were nonetheless able to get into NC hands. This brave individual was one of the people removed from his NC position, even though he had months left to serve out his term.

Georgia and its allies produced a voluminous amount of evidence and arguments in defense of gender critical feminist politics, including video-taped testimony from Hilla Kerner of Vancouver Rape Relief, Amparo Domingo from Women’s Human Rights Campaign, and by two trans-identified females who have been outspoken in opposition to child “transition.” This evidence was mostly ignored with the TRAs proclaiming “there is no debate.” The evidence can be found on the Dialogue Not Expulsion website. https://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/nlc-vs-ggp/pleadings.

How could this happen in a Party that claims support for grassroots democracy and feminism and seeks to create a just society? What does this mean for the future of “the Left”? And where do we go from here?

First, it should be recognized that gender identity ideology and the “cancel culture” that is imposing these misogynistic and individualistic ideas through authoritarian means, is not the product of a genuine independent radical or socialist left. Rather, it is thoroughly “establishment,” arising from a patriarchal neo-liberal capitalist order, into which the tiny weak Left has been unfortunately fully assimilated. This ideology has been promoted by the corporate-run Democratic Party, including by the Biden Administration (who is fine with killing the ERA while instituting gender identity nationally through his executive orders), and by private corporations, state legislatures, the courts, and even the Pentagon.

This form of “identity politics” on steroids, branded by corporate trainers as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” keeps people divided and focused on etiquette, language, tokenism, and on constructing individual and small group identities at no cost to the system. Not only does it ignore sex-based oppression now overridden by “gender identity,” it does virtually nothing for Black people, people with disabilities, immigrants, lesbians, or gay men (also defined out of existence) or other truly disadvantaged and oppressed groups nor for working people as a whole, facing increasing levels of impoverishment and homelessness. It is both a highly profitable endeavor (keeping women down and making profits for Big Pharma) and a fraudulent substitute for grassroots organizing and mass struggle like the ones that won women the vote, dismantled Jim Crow, and legalized abortion, movements capable of presenting real challenges to political structures of oppression and creating genuine systemic change.

Second, we are living through a period of deep backlash against the gains of Second and even First Wave Feminism. The existence of a Third or Fourth Wave is a myth. Instead, what has been called feminist waves is mostly backlash, and at best, no more than a small ripple. That backlash in the U.S. has two faces – that of the female and lesbian and gay erasure of the transgender “movement;” and the attacks on abortion rights and lesbian and gay rights coming from the Christian Right. Both faces pose extreme dangers to our sex. In the late 1960’s, Robin Morgan wrote an essay, “Goodbye to all that” about the sexism of the Left of that time. But the rise of the Second Wave changed that dynamic, made the Left, though imperfectly, a far friendlier place for feminism. Sadly, that has changed once again as a result of this backlash as can be seen in the U.S. Green Party.

Third, we need to create a gender critical pro-feminist Left, that can become a political home for those betrayed by the two corporate parties and now the leadership of the Green Party. Veterans of the Georgia Green Party struggle are already moving in that direction with the formation of the Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights (GASBR), under a majority female/feminist leadership. There can be no Left worthy of the name, one that can effectively fight against war, for housing and healthcare, to end poverty, or to save the environment from the unfolding disaster of global warming, except under the leadership of conscious feminist women.

Finally, and most importantly, we must build our independent women’s liberation movement. Feminists in Struggle is part of that effort as are other groups such as the Women’s Human Rights Campaign. Our job, in a nutshell, is to turn this feminist ripple into a real wave for our sex.

Open Letter from Feminists in Struggle to the Interim Steering Committee of the Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA:  A Call for Unity among Radical Feminists in the Fight to Amend the Equality Act 

The Interim Steering Committee (ISC) of the Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) recently released the “Equality for All Act,” its own version of an amended Equality Act (EA). The EA is a bill pending in Congress that would add “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” as protected sub-classes under the category of “sex” in federal discrimination laws.  Radical feminists agree that the current version of the bill undermines women’s rights.  We are glad to see that the movement has come together to support the idea of amending the bill, rather than calling for a “no” vote as WoLF (Women’s Liberation Front) appeared to do in previous Congressional hearings, and that we agree on several other important points regarding how the bill should be amended or rewritten.

We are also heartened to know that virtually our entire movement including the ISC has now taken a stand in support of including sexual orientation and sex stereotyping protections, separate from sex, in the Equality Act, and everyone also supports the closing of religious loopholes to civil rights enforcement contained in the original bill. However, we feel obligated to point out that the revision of the bill that the ISC has produced is less comprehensive and actually far less protective of the sex-based rights of women and girls than FIST’s Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act that pre-date ISC’s version by more than a year.  We also must object to the undemocratic process that ISC has engaged in that excluded FIST as an organization from having a place at the table,  even though FIST is an early endorser of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, expressed its desire to be part of a U.S. Chapter, and requested to be included in these discussions.

As many radical feminists and our male allies know, the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act were drafted by a FIST committee of three lawyers and approved following discussion and vote of the democratic body of active FIST members known as the Feminist Assembly. The FAEA, along with in-depth explanation of their necessity and the changes they make to the proposed Equality Act, can be read here: https://feministstruggle.org/faea/. We have several organizations on board as endorsers including the LGB Alliance USA, the Georgia Green Party, and XX Amazons and a total of 146 signers on our website.  We have formed a coalition that we have named the Coalition for the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act (“CoFA”) which has already held several meetings. CoFA held a forum on November 14th in which more than 150 people participated, and just sent by U.S. mail a letter to all 100 members of the Senate urging them to support the Feminist Amendments.  That letter has been publicly shared at https://lgballianceusa.substack.com/p/amend-the-us-equality-act.

We believe that the approach of FIST’s Feminist Amendments is significantly more protective of sex-based rights than ISC’s draft bill for two reasons:  (1) the Feminist Amendments spell out that female-only spaces and programs do not constitute discrimination based on sex or sex stereotyping; and (2) the Feminist Amendments make robust findings about the subordinate status of women in society, the pervasive nature of male violence, and the need for women-only spaces and programs in the interests of achieving true equality for the female sex.

We want to emphasize that we do not see any principled differences between FIST’s and ISC’s two approaches to the Equality Act, only tactical and strategic ones.  We are all sisters (and brother allies) here in the same movement.  We need each other’s support, respect, and solidarity. Because to our dismay the door to dialogue between our two groups has been closed thus far, we can only speculate as to why the ISC felt compelled to create its own amendments, reinventing the wheel so to speak, as ISC’s draft bill in many respects mirrors our own, though a pared-down version of the original.  The only reasons we can come up with is our use of the word “transgender,” and the comprehensive nature of our approach that might have struck some as overly ambitious.

In our opinion, it is a serious mistake for the ISC Amendments to have failed to include a provision stating that the existence of female-only spaces and programs does not constitute sex or sex stereotyping discrimination.  Despite the fact that the Equality Act has not yet become law,  two federal appellate decisions have extended the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision to hold that it is discrimination based on “sex “ and “sex stereotyping” under Title IX to deny access to sex separated restrooms on the basis of “gender identity.”  The Feminist Amendments clearly define “transgender” (a sub-group of gender non-conforming people with a certain belief system that feminists reject) and strip the term down to size.[1]  We do not treat transgender in itself as either a class or a sub-class with special legal protections. Rather, while the Feminist Amendments do recognize the basic human rights of people who identify as transgender–the same rights that should be provided to all people who do not conform to sex stereotypes—the FAEA’s  definition of “transgender” and  inclusion of protection for female-only spaces and programs,  render the ideology harmless with respect to women’s sex-based rights under federal law.

We believe that if, on the other hand, we ignore transgenderism as the ISC does in its proposed bill, it will come back in far more dangerous ways. For example, the courts could continue to conflate sex and gender identity, decide to define “transitioning” to mean one can change his or her sex, and/or rule that denying access to female-only spaces for males who identify as women is discriminatory based on sex and sex stereotyping.

In the interests of developing greater unity and collaboration among radical feminists and our allies in the fight to amend the Equality Act, we make the following proposals:

  • That a dialogue be begun between representatives of CoFA and the ISC to explore the differences between our two proposals and whether or not it is possible to unite around the broader coalition effort supporting the Feminist Amendments;
  • If it is not possible to work together in support of the Feminist Amendments, that we discuss how best to approach members of Congress and the public in a way that is respectful of and does not undermine each other’s efforts.

In sisterhood and solidarity,

Feminists in Struggle

[1] The FAEA define “transgender” as follows:  “TRANSGENDER. –Transgender is a term adopted by a subset of people who do not conform to sex stereotypes commonly associated with their biological sex and who may hold a deeply personal sense of identity that conflicts with or denies their biological sex.”