Tag: President Biden’s Executive Order

Actions to Take In Response to Biden’s Executive Order and Imminent Introduction of the Equality Act

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Since the first day of the Biden administration, developments have come thick and fast regarding attacks on and attempts to protect single-sex programs and facilities for women and girls. FIST encourages everyone who cares about the legal rights of women and girls to contact Congress, the White House, and the federal agencies to demand the protection of our legal rights to single-sex sports teams, scholarships, prisons, shelters, and other facilities.

Reach out to the White House and social media, to your U.S. Representatives and Senators, and to the federal agencies. Letters, emails, phone calls,and demands for in-person meetings with your U.S. Representatives and Senators are all needed.

Regarding the Equality Act: Write and call your Senators and Representatives, urging them to support the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act. Here is a sample letter.

The website The US Equality Act continues to grow and to be a valuable resource. The site includes much good explanation of how the Equality Act and Biden’s January 20 “Executive Order on Preventing & Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” will harm women and girls and need to be amended, revised, or applied by federal agencies to preserve the Congressional intent behind Title IX.

 The US Equality Act site also has lots of guidance and sample material for sending letters to Congress and to the federal agencies tasked with applying the Executive Order. Most recently two new sample letters were added:

One for Speaker Nancy Pelosi

And one for the Bureau of Prisons

FIST on Joy of Resistance, WBAI Tonight!

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Feminists in Struggle’s Ann Menasche will be interviewed on WBAI Radio’s Joy of Resistance show, 99.5 fm, tonight at 9 pm EST (6 pm PST) to discuss the Biden executive order on January 20th, collapsing gender identity with women’s sex-based rights, and to discuss the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act, the changes FIST would like to see made to the Equality Act, legislation passed by the House in 2019 (but not the Senate) that is likely to be reintroduced this year and considered high on the Biden agenda.

The write-up of the JOR show states that:

“Last week, the Women’s Liberation Front, put out a press release that was carried on the AP newswire entitled “Biden Executive Order on Gender Identity Will Eviscerate Women’s Rights”; the group Feminists in Struggle (FIST) issued a similar statement and The Women’s Human Rights Campaign started a letter-writing campaign in protest of this EO.”

The Joy of Resistance summary acknowledges that these groups are all considered left of center, with Feminists in Struggle strongly identified with the Left.  This is a refreshingly accurate characterization in view of attempts by many transactivists to smear any group that speaks out about gender ideology or the erasure of women as “right-wing” or even as “hate” groups.  FIST denounces such mischaracterizations, and has spelled out our distinction from the Right in our Principles, particularly in #12.

We greatly appreciate the Joy of Resistance show on WBAI, which features feminist content, and we recommend anyone who cares about the liberation of women listen tonight, and every Monday, at 9 pm EST (6 pm PST).  Please tune in!

There is also a demonstration in protest of this executive order planned on March 8 in front of the White House, and FIST members plan to be in attendance.  Join us!

Feminists in Struggle responds to Biden’s Executive Order

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Feminists in Struggle (FIST), a national feminist organization, denounces the subjugation of female rights to those of transgender rights in the executive order signed by President Biden on his first day in office.

Women’s rights are included in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act because female people have been and continue to be discriminated against on the basis of our sex.  We are disadvantaged in employment; we do not receive equal pay as compared to males for the same or comparable work; we are discriminated against in education and in sports.  Indeed, females have long been treated in patriarchal societies as lesser human beings because of our sex.  Every advance we have made has been on the basis of sex, NOT “gender identity.”

Of course, as feminists, we wholeheartedly agree that, “Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love,” and that people should not be “fired, demoted or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.”  However, we cannot possibly achieve equal rights for everyone by taking away the rights of some, in order to enhance the rights of others. “Gender identity” should not be used as grounds for eroding the sex-based rights of those of us born female since we have not yet achieved full equality.

This executive order does just that, by erasing females as a distinct class of people who are still oppressed and discriminated against in our society based on our sex and in need of legal protection. We continue to need programs for women and girls under Title VII and Title IX to redress past wrongs and level the playing field, so that those of us born female have an equal opportunity to develop ourselves and pursue our dreams. We need female-only spaces and refuges for reasons of dignity, privacy, and safety, especially because male sexual and physical violence against women and girls remain pervasive.  Therefore it is crucial that “sex” remains a distinct category and that it is not conflated with “gender identity.”

We demand an executive order and an Equality Act that will protect everyone’s rights and not pit one group’s rights against another’s. FIST’s legal committee has drafted a model bill that incorporates Feminist Amendments into the Equality Act. Our Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act preserve women’s sex-based rights including the right to female-only spaces and programs while adding strong prohibitions against discrimination based on sexual orientation and sex stereotyping, Such provisions will fully protect lesbians, gay men, bisexual individuals, those who identify as transgender, and all gender non-conforming people without weakening the rights of females.

In addition, President Biden can make great strides toward equality for half the population born female by instructing the archivist to publish the Equal Rights Amendment (already ratified by the requisite 38 states) into the U.S. Constitution.  We urge that he do so immediately.