Feminism

A man entered the YMCA locker room when my aunt was dressing. This is her letter to the YMCA.

My aunt is a member of the YMCA in San Francisco. A few months ago, a man entered the locker room as she was getting dressed. When she shared her concerns, the staff was condescending and dismissive. The YMCA lectured my aunt on “inclusivity”, but denying women the right to privacy from men is the opposite of inclusive. The reason for the creation of female spaces such as these was to include women in places and activities from which we have historically been excluded. As Sheila Jeffrey said, all space becomes male space unless females maintain a concerted effort to mark a space for themselves. Allowing males unfettered access to female spaces, denying women the right to any boundaries, is regressive and sexist. In her letter to the YMCA (copied below), my aunt wrote: “I put on some clothes in the open area of the showers (with no privacy screens) and went out to complain to the front desk, burst into tears, unexpectedly, shaking; I felt violated, nobody cared.” This is not “inclusion”.

This incident happened in late January but I heard about it a few days ago because I met my aunt for Sizdah Beh Dar at the Presidio Tunnel Tops. She was coming from her yoga class at the Presidio YMCA a few steps away. Since it was cold, we picnicked in the covered area (next to the restrooms and the restaurant Il Parco). The Tunnel Tops park is gorgeous and the covered space offers a way to take advantage of the views when it’s cooler or windy. I love biking and working outdoors, so I used to spend a lot of time in that area. I still go there fairly often, but since they replaced the single-sex restrooms with mixed-sex ones a few years ago, my visits are shorter.

Gender ideology activists act dumb, but they know that most women don’t want naked men in their changing rooms, so the YMCA dupes their female patrons by not putting up signs informing them that their locker room is mixed-sex. Gender ideology activists act dumb, but they know that there is a difference between single-sex and mixed-sex bathrooms, and so unlike every other multi-stall restroom in the Presidio (which are single-sex), the stalls at the Tunnel Tops restroom have no gap between door and frame. It’s not enough of course, and there are often women and adults with children in line looking uncomfortable or confused. Gap or no gap, not many women want to wash period blood off their hands while random men use the sinks next to them. Feminists fought for women to have the right and the opportunity to participate in sports and public life. Places like the YMCA and the Presidio can help people live healthier and happier lives, but these places are becoming, once again, less accessible to women as the new misogyny takes over.

Last month, a naked man harassed a petite 82 year old woman in the Berkeley YMCA locker room after the woman asked him to cover his genitals. A YMCA employee referred to the woman as “uneducated”. It is the staff at the YMCA that is uneducated on what it is to be female in the world, and why female locker rooms exist to begin with. Rather than lecturing women who feel violated as a consequence of YMCA policies, the folks at the YMCA should listen to these women and “educate” themselves.

My aunt’s letter to the YMCA:

February 7, 2025

Chris –

I was at the YMCA Presidio last Friday morning, Jan 31, 2025; had a good workout, felt energetic, and looked forward to a cup of coffee with the walkers. Took sauna and a shower, and while putting on my intimates, this big guy walks in and takes a locker near mine. I couldn’t move, mostly because of the shock and also because of the proximity. I asked him, in disbelief, what he was doing in the women’s locker room [what are you doing here?] and he says “if you are asking me if I am allowed, yes I am.” Frankly, when I was coming out of the sauna, I had heard a man’s voice, and a bit of his back, a man accompanied by a woman, and I thought something must be wrong with one of the locks and here is a handyman accompanied by a staff member to break the lock. The thought had also crossed my mind that no announcements were made that a man was entering the area. Subsequently, coming out of the shower, while dressing, a man walks in on me….

I put on some clothes in the open area of the showers (with no privacy screens) and went out to complain to the front desk, burst into tears, unexpectedly, shaking; I felt violated, nobody cared. I have never been in a domestic violence situation but at that moment I felt the pain a woman must feel when violated – tears, shaking, loud, in disbelief begging to be heard. I could tell from the ‘surprise’ look on the front desk staff member that he too was shocked. Then I reported the man’s presence to a blond woman, who called in the manager (Stacey? Tracy?). The manager said that it was the Y’s policy to be Inclusive of all its members. The look on her face was patronizing, dropped voice, like lecturing me about something religious, apparently trying to calm me. I told her that “but there are no signs” and that they couldn’t just allow it haphazardly, and that Trump had just put a stop to all that stuff……she says something like “I will put a sign”, “do you want me to put a sign”, “I will.” And I thought that this woman is clueless; what kind of question is this? Is it for real? Doesn’t she know that there should be a sign? She is asking me? definitely a poor execution of Y’s policies. And I am thinking that here is this idealist putting a man in an 8×15 area and she is now trying to calm me and to show me the light! What about my rights, my civil rights, don’t I matter? At that point, I truly understood the anger and hurt that people felt and voted against the Democrats. They didn’t matter…and I got it, with my own personal experience.

I finished dressing in the bathroom in the reception area and left.

YMCA’s Inclusivity and gender-conscience policies allowing biological men into Women’s locker room is, in my opinion, reverse discrimination. If the Y wants to be so fashionable and include those with transgender identities in single-sex bathrooms/locker rooms, they should offer accommodations for those with male bodies who identify as women, and they should not do so at the expense of women’s rights to safety, privacy, and dignity. Lawsuits have been filed against gyms that have allowed men into women’s locker rooms, e.g., Planet Fitness, Crunch Fitness – locker rooms are private spaces – there is potentially criminal and civil liability for the Y.

Given that many acclaimed institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution are abandoning and/or evaluating their DEI policies, mostly as the result of lawsuits, and privately settling, I respectfully ask the YMCA of Greater San Francisco to reevaluate its gender-conscience policies to permit biological men to use locker rooms designated specifically for women.

Yours truly,

—-

#WomenRise: The Power of Global Solidarity

I used to speak and write a lot about the grassroots, especially in the context of food system change. The power of the grassroots, the importance of the grassroots, the importance of keeping things grassroots, etc etc. I admit that sometimes I would pause and ask myself if I really believed what I was saying or if I was just going through the motions–all the more as I saw the obstacles faced by the grassroots.

This past Friday was a true testament to the power of grassroots activism, even when one faces a Goliath. Women have been fighting big money, tremendous bias, media that ignores us and social media giants that have repeatedly censored us. And yet we still managed to speak to each other and organize with each other. No wonder the Taliban don’t want women hearing women’s voices. It’s like the water that gets through and around the boulder.

When I met Chema in the early 2000s, he was an independent media activist. Where he was squatting was also an Indymedia center. To witness that and then to see how independent media was overtaken by mega corporations run by tech bros was depressing enough – to then also see, as soon as I got involved in feminism online, how quickly those tech giants silenced and shut women out was chilling. I am referring to Youtube, WordPress, Twitter, Google Play, Reddit, Medium, and I’m sure I’m missing some (I’m not going to link stuff now but feel free to contact me for articles on any of these).

To see then how women have nonetheless managed to speak, and connect, and be heard, and raise awareness, and find solidarity, and organize, and have an impact, is amazing. This past Friday, as Germany’s repressive, regressive, wholly misogynistic Self-ID law went into effect, women from East to West rose up and said NO. We went to German consulates and embassies, and those who couldn’t posted pictures online. Grassroots activism doesn’t have to be about getting hundreds or thousands into the streets; there are so many ways that one can build a powerful movement and that something relatively small or accessible, like posting a picture with a hashtag, can have a big impact. The importance of creativity in particular shouldn’t be overlooked.

I was at the SF protest, joining women across national borders and also ideological ones. Indeed, the SF protest was organized by Women Are Real and WOLF, which was founded by Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth, and Lierre joined us in SF. I have a lot of respect for Lierre as a writer and organizer, however, outside of feminism, I don’t merely disagree with her views; she is an important part of a whole trend that I spent years critiquing and organizing against (mostly in the form of growing a movement for veganic farming). Those disagreements stand, but movements and actions need people and focus. November 1 was the day to come together and focus on women and the harms of Self-ID.

My aunt also came out in support of German women. On the topic of small things that make an impact: Over the years I had mentioned my objection to gender ideology to my aunt, and while she agreed it was all BS, I didn’t think she was keeping abreast beyond what regular media covered. Then the last time I saw her, I said something to the effect of gender ideology being about misogyny and she exclaimed “Of course it’s misogyny!” and went on about “all these men” who say they’re women. I was a bit surprised – where was this coming from? – but carried on. Then when I mentioned I was going to the WDI convention, she knew it was in Atlanta. Huh? It turns out that she’s been on the WDI mailing list since I forwarded one of their fundraising emails to some of my contacts years ago (I think it was the fundraiser I mentioned in Shabe Yalda, or why I paid $12 for Nancy Pelosi to read about women’s rights).

If you need some inspiration this week, check out the hashtags #WomenRise and #SelfIDHarms on X, and watch (and share!) this beautiful video.

Read more: Rocking the Reichstag by Josephine Bartosch

I’ll be speaking at the 3rd Convention of the Women’s Declaration International USA

Below is an email I sent to my list today; I thought I might share it here. This evening, I also realized that Hope Bohanec had removed from Youtube the videos of my talks that were on her channel. This is a woman who, despite organizing a panel on the “herstory” of the animal rights movement (see below), has no qualms about erasing the work of other women from that herstory, even when she has directly benefited from that work (those talks were unpaid contributions to her conferences). At least I won’t want for things to speak about at the WDI Convention!

Dear friends,

I am excited to announce that I will speak at the 3rd National Women’s Convention of the Women’s Declaration International USA, next month in Atlanta. My talk will be about sexism and gender identity ideology in progressive movements (including the factors that led to gender identity ideology being so thoroughly adopted, and the impacts this has on the women in these movements and beyond).

This is an all-female event. If you are a woman, please consider joining me! Registration is open until tomorrow. And for everyone, please help spread the word and share the videos when they are out. There are also a lot of great videos on the WDI channel you can already check out.

In her recent book, Oppressive Liberation: Sexism in Animal Activism, Lisa Kemmerer presents data on the experiences of sexism in the vegan and animal rights movements. I had the honor of contributing a chapter, Meet the New Vegan World. I’ve been meaning to send out an email about this book, so I won’t speak much about it here. But one thing to note is that sexism in the animal rights movement is widespread, and its victims are not only individual women–but also the movement itself. Women are by and large the founders, the backbone, the boots on the ground. When women are pushed out, the movement suffers. And beyond the quantitative, what about the qualitative? There is much to say about the effects of a culture that de-prioritizes the oppression of women.

I have always been interested in understanding how ideas are marketed, what factors make people believe and/or go along with certain things… be it a new war or the beliefs that kids need milk or that grazing cows will solve climate change… Those familiar with Seed the Commons know that unpacking the psychological underpinnings of any phenomenon was always a priority. Indeed, Seed the Commons was in part a continuation of my PhD project in social psychology on how milk is made to be adopted as normative and necessary in populations that until recently were not milk drinkers.

In the early 2010s I was not yet much of a feminist, but the psychologist in me became increasingly intrigued, and then alarmed, at the advance of gender identity ideology. How had lockstep conformity around new mantras and ideas been so quickly achieved? How was it that in San Francisco, a supposed bastion of progressive values, the same people who, less than a decade sooner, had passionately advocated for marriage equality, were now cheering on a movement that vilified (and worse) lesbians for their sex-same orientation? It was a complete 180, and I was morbidly fascinated. As the misogyny and homophobia of the gender identity movement came into focus and I began to understand that we were backsliding on important advances, I gained much greater awareness on societal sexism and the feminist movement. For example, in the past, I was the last person to have any interest in female-only spaces. But in educating myself on the conflict between transactivists and feminists, I learned why and how female-only spaces, such as rape shelters, had come to be, why they are still needed, and I had to reflect on why their importance was at best overlooked, if not outright dismissed, by leftists and liberals.

In the animal rights movement, I witnessed how the adoption of gender identity ideology created a culture in which women felt they could speak up for women or for animals, but not both. One’s commitment to animal liberation meant shutting up about how gender identity ideology was impacting women. Both male and female activists confided that they they felt they had to keep their views secret. People who were founders and directors of their organizations told me that they shared my views but would not speak publicly for fear of losing their funding. The first person to reach out to me was a gay man. Animal rights activism held such an important place in his life that he felt he had to keep silent about the resurgence of homophobia he was witnessing, lest he lose his community and opportunities to make a change. Sharing this with me was like opening the floodgates.

While disappointing, the choice of those who stayed silent was understandable, because the experiences of women who were openly gender critical was systematically one of being pushed out; in the case of one feminist I know, violently so. My personal experiences include being dropped by Hope Bohanec as an author of an anthology, and having my writing plagiarized by A Well-fed World (AWFW), because they didn’t want to give me visibility by crediting me (but still wanted the woke points that came with using my words). Hope Bohanec and Dawn Montcrief (the ED of AWFW) are not just any women in the animal rights movement–they are leaders, and they purport to bring feminist ideals to the movement. This raises some questions on the culture of the animal rights movement.

As part of AR movement’s reckoning with its #metoo moment in 2018, the male organizers of the National Animal Rights Conference were replaced by two women, one of whom was Dawn Montcrief. The conference did not subsequently become one that centered women’s issues or feminist perspectives, and when radical feminists would later apply to speak, their applications would be denied. Hope was the organizer of the Conscious Eating Conference. Shortly after dropping me from her book because of the feminist perspectives I shared on my blog, the focus of that year’s conference was “to explore overlapping oppressions”, with a panel on “the Herstory of Animal Rights”. Pax Ahimsa, a well-known transactivist in the vegan community, was the conference host and moderator. One attendee wrote that, “as Pax stood at the podium to introduce Carol J. Adams, [she] found it relevant to loudly assert that “Trans women *ARE* women”… and the room erupted in wild applause.” Why was Pax, whose writings reveal no grasp of basic feminist analysis and indeed ideas that are in opposition to basic feminism, chosen for this role? Why did Carol J Adams, a renowned second-wave feminist who had previously come under fire from transactivists, go along with this?

For my masters thesis in psychology, almost 20 years ago, I conducted research on the social representations of meat. One line of inquiry was to look into the motivations behind the choice of women to stop eating animals. I could hypothesize it in opposite directions: when women stop eating animals, are they rejecting patriarchal systems, or are they abiding by their assigned roles within patriarchy? (In today’s lingo: Do women stop eating meat because they are feminists or because they are handmaidens?) My research revealed some differences between vegans and vegetarians, with the dietary choices of vegans more often ideologically driven and inscribed in a pattern of social engagement. I leaned toward my first hypothesis, the feminist interpretation, especially in the case of vegan women. This question would circle back to me a decade later when I became involved in the American animal rights movement, and a different picture started to emerge.

There are key differences between the animal rights/vegan movements and other progressive movements, and it is possible that vegan women were especially prone to going along with gender identity ideology. Nonetheless, I believe that there are also lessons that can be applied to American progressive movements at large. When Chema and I confronted the AWFW folks on their plagiarism, their responses were so egregious that I was more shocked by the responses than by the plagiarism. Delving into the reasons for their zealotry is relevant, but that’s not all there is to it. These events didn’t happen in a vacuum. The adoption of gender identity ideology merely reinforced patterns that were already prevalent in today’s non-profit world and social movements. After all, Seed the Commons had encountered territoriality, bullying and exploitative behavior in the animal rights movement well before my feminist politics became an issue. Other grassroots activists, whose views were opposite mine, experienced the same things. Ultimately the dynamics around gender identity were simply more of the same: whatever the impetus, women and grassroots activists repeatedly found themselves pushed out or otherwise screwed over.

At the WDI conference, I will present what I believe to have been key factors in the adoption of gender ideology in social movements, inscribing this in a larger discussion on “social movements” and “social justice” in the last decade, and so I will touch upon factors that range from the psychological and cultural to the economic and institutional. This will include a critique of ID politics and wokeness, from a left perspective. I don’t agree with the traditional leftists who view everything through a class lens and dismiss all ID politics as a distraction. ID politics is a broad term, and I think it has its good, bad and ugly. Unfortunately, in the animal rights movement, I witnessed a lot of the bad and ugly. Many times, and many ways, I saw ID politics both enable harmful internal dynamics, and steer the AR/vegan movements away from effectively working toward liberation for animals and for humans. I hope to help us move beyond the binary thinking that has all but buried leftist and feminist perspectives in our social and political landscapes.

Just as I am upset by the sexism of leftists, I am also alienated by the racism I encounter in feminist circles. At a time when the genocide of Palestinians is being justified with rhetoric around women’s rights, I think it is all the more important that I participate in these spaces. It is likely that I will be the only woman of Middle Eastern and Muslim descent at next month’s convention. It is also possible that my support for Palestinians will put me in the minority. The temptation to avoid discomfort is always there, but cutting ourselves off from those we disagree with and ghettoizing ourselves down to ever smaller activist units is less powerful than building bridges and bringing different perspectives to activist spaces. After all, a decade ago it seemed quasi impossible to cross-pollinate the small farming and animal liberation movements; it seemed like some seriously wishful thinking to get leaders in food sovereignty, food justice and similar causes to speak at a vegan event–yet we did exactly that. And from that barebones, pennies-for-funding, first conference in 2015, grew a veganic movement.

I hope you will join me in Atlanta, and/or share the invitation in your networks, to continue to build bridges. Registration closes tomorrow, Saturday August 31, at 11:59 GMT.

I also invite you to read Oppressive Liberation: Sexism in Animal Activism and my chapter, Meet the New Vegan World. You can read the book for free by requesting that your library order it, and this will have the added benefit of making it accessible to others.

Wishing you a happy September,

Nassim

Shabe Yalda, or why I paid $12 for Nancy Pelosi to read about women’s rights

– San Francisco, Shabe Yalda, Dec. 2023

It’s that time of the year again. Shabe Yalda is the Persian celebration for winter solstice, when families gather and stay up through the longest night of the year eating fruit and reading poetry. In its Zoroastrian roots, Shabe Yalda is about celebrating the return of the light, the victory of light over darkness. Like many Iranians, I only grew up celebrating the spring equinox (Norooz or Persian New Year), but Shabe Yalda has been somewhat rediscovered recently. I, too, have been putting together small celebrations or rituals to mark the return of the light for some years now.

A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity for a perfect ritual and real-world action. In November 2021, I received an email from Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA) titled Deck the Halls of Congress with Feminism. They aimed to raise enough money to mail a copy of the book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each US Senator and Representative. They asked that people sponsor their respective representatives with a twelve-dollar gift that covered the purchase, packing and postage of one book. From their email:

‘Dear U.S. Signatories, As the winter solstice approaches, many cultures celebrate the return of the light after the darkest season. For feminists, the last several years have felt bleak indeed, as most of the media has pursued a blackout policy on covering our objections to “gender identity” in law and society. As a result, many legislators remain entirely unaware of the depth, breadth, and strength of our commitment to the rights of women and girls as a sex class. WHRC USA thinks it’s time to shed some light!

This winter, we will deck the halls of Congress with a feminist critique of “gender identity.” Our volunteers will send one copy of Board President Kara Dansky’s important new book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each United States Senator and Representative, along with a personalized cover letter quoting their constituents and other supporters who understand that recognition and protection of biological sex in law is crucial.’

I liked that they linked their campaign to the winter solstice and to the idea of bringing light into darkness, because the majority of Americans have been completely in the dark as to what’s going on. Even those who are staunch supporters of “trans rights” – maybe especially those who are staunch supporters – very often have no idea of what they’re supporting. So I donated, and I threw in an extra $24 to get copies to Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla as well. To Pelosi, Feinstein and Padilla, I wrote:

“By replacing sex with gender identity in law and policy, California is stripping away the human rights of its most vulnerable women, like those who are homeless or in prison. In San Francisco, our public library hosted an exposition calling for violence against feminists and lesbians, the tech companies we host are censuring feminists worldwide, and I can no longer enjoy an evening out and expect that my local restaurants will have a female-only bathroom I can use. As a woman, California native and San Francisco resident, it greatly saddens me to see the erosion of women’s rights and the increased normalization of misogyny and lesbophobia in a city that was once a global leader in progressive causes. It is time for California political leaders to put women’s rights above woke points.”

WDI USA reached their funding goal, and most of the donations came from first-time donors. Women are sick of the erosion of our rights, the sidelining and censorship of our voices, the vilification of anyone who states basic facts and wants to protect the rights that were won these past decades. People in power have made it clear that they don’t care about women, but it helps to show that some of the public does care and is watching.

We certainly haven’t won yet. Notably of course, in the past two years Roe v. Wade was overturned (which, in my opinion, was not the sole doing of the right). But feminists have been pushing forward. Our concerns and our arguments are making their way into public consciousness. We don’t have a fraction of the funding of the astroturfed gender identity movement, but we are showing that grassroots activism is still possible, that in the face of heavy propaganda, censorship and deeply ingrained bias, speaking the truth can still make a difference.

While I am not personally very active, my inbox is full of calls to action, meet-ups, and local and global news of campaigns, lawsuits and even some wins (I did participate in an action for incarcerated women – and against Scott Wiener’s SB 132 – that I wrote about here). Since my little ritual in 2021, Kara Dansky has written a new book, and WDI USA has held two annual conventions: Reigniting the Women’s Liberation Movement and Accelerating the Women’s Liberation Movement, the latter in San Francisco.

San Francisco has been coasting on its gay-friendly reputation, but the only gays to which it is friendly now are of the male variety. A few years ago, a group of actual lesbians (i.e., of the female and exclusively same-sex attracted variety) was gay-bashed at the San Francisco Dyke March by other marchers. At some point in the 2010s, SF stopped being the city it is reputed to be.

But activism is still in our DNA, and to bring a convention aimed at reviving the women’s liberation movement to a city once progressive and now so captured, is powerful. I couldn’t attend, but it seems to have gone… very well? As expected, the convention drew protests from the anti-feminist pink and blue crew (one delightful protester calling for mass femicide). But unlike other venues reserved by feminists in the past, the hotel did not bow to pressure to cancel the event, and it seems that more than anything, the protesters helped bring visibility to the true nature of our conflict with them (watch Kara Dansky’s account). The women concluded the weekend in front of San Francisco City Hall with a non-violent action for lesbian rights. The same crew arrived to hurl insults at them. We keep ending up back at square 1, having to fight the same fights, but women will simply show up as long as necessary.

It’s going to take a while for the liberals and leftists who are self-righteously entrenched in gender ideology to recognize that theirs is a regressive position, and many will never take personal responsibility. But most of the public – even those who go along with pronouns and mixed-sex bathrooms without a complaint – is not entrenched at all. If we continue to speak up on the harms of gender ideology, and continue to show that there is a resistance, including one that is not rooted in conservatism, and we continue to provide opportunities to transactivists to bring public awareness to their politics and misogyny, we will get through.

Feminists are fighting back in SF: Our protest against SB 132, the bill that allows male inmates to “self identify” into women’s prisons

I am one of the women who protested against SB 132 at the Golden Gate Bridge in early February.

My time got monopolized by two idiotic and antagonistic men.

I’m not going to make a list of every non-sequitur, strawman and ignorant take, but I’ll note a few things:

– These guys wanted to talk AT us. They had no interest in listening to our responses, even when they asked us questions.

– One of them has a TIF (trans-identified female, or “transman”) daughter, yet he thinks that there is no problem with men in women’s spaces, and that TIFs should be in men’s spaces. It is scary how little men acknowledge male violence against women. (Of course, if the notion of male violence is ridiculous pearl-clutching, why are they clutching their pearls about violence against TIMs, or transwomen? From what are TIMs escaping by using female prisons, bathrooms and other spaces?)

– To that point, the other dude said that he owns a homeless shelter in SF(!!!). And yet he compared us – women defending what tiny amount of protection and dignity female inmates have – to people 50 years ago “fighting against people dancing” and said that the world “would advance regardless”. I feel terrible for the homeless women who end up in his shelter. Homeless women are horribly vulnerable and have a dire need for their own spaces.

Of course, the world doesn’t just “advance”, all linear and effortless. I wish it did. The reason that women stood out in the cold that day, some of them risking their incomes, to re-demand the sex-based rights and protections that were fought for by feminists before us, is because progress and liberation, especially women’s, are usually met with a conservative backlash. Scott Wiener, California senator and author of SB 132, is that backlash.

These men at Golden Gate Bridge, ranting and sneering at women speaking up for the women being assaulted and raped in prison, shouting at an elderly woman that she has no compassion, telling me that I am the reason trans youth are killing themselves…. are no different than the men who intimidated, mocked and called manhaters the previous generations of protesting feminists. Because while those women made incredible strides, not enough awareness was raised and maintained in broader society about the extent of the sexism we face every day. Likewise, little has changed in the attitudes of men towards women. And so, as I’ve said before, we are back at square 1, having to argue for our rights all over again. It’s sad, it’s scary, it’s depressing.

– In discussing the hypothetical situation of a transwoman being housed in a female prison, the father of the TIF twice used the pronoun “he”. I had to remind him that he should be using the pronoun “she” if he believes that this person is a woman. One of them also commented that it “wasn’t fair” to punish all transwomen for the doings of a few, in the sense that if a few of them raped female inmates after being transferred, the others should not be “punished” by being excluded from female prisons. The assumption is that, by default, men have a right to women’s spaces. That only the proven rapist can, perhaps, justifiably be excluded. In other words, the assumption is that women do not have an inherent right to our own spaces. A space in which we don’t have to shower, sleep, or use the toilet in front of any man. If I am forced to shower in front of a man, nothing more needs to happen for it to be a violation.

My exchanges with these white knights highlighted what has been made obvious these past years: This was always about men’s rights–or rather, men’s privileges. They can say “transwomen are women” until they’re blue, but there is not a single category of woman for whom they agitate this much and in this way.

In the past three years, every time that I have read about a woman in prison being raped, assaulted or harassed by a male inmate, and every time that I have read about a convicted rapist or other violent male being housed in a woman’s prison, I have thought about Hope, the editor who dropped me from her book at the request of her publisher because of my gender critical writing. Hope didn’t care about female inmates and others harmed by gender ideology; she only cared about doing what was convenient for her.

When Hope questioned me about my views, she scoffed and laughed, acted incredulous and as though I were ridiculously uninformed. This was in 2020. I had been following the “gender wars” for about 4 years, but Hope was convinced that she knew more than I did, and she would not give me even the benefit of doubt. Hope is a California resident who did not believe that Self ID (which is the basis of SB 132, introduced a year earlier, and a number of local policies) is real. She was “sure” that there were “protocols” to determine who is trans. Feminists have spent years writing and talking about Self ID, yet most people still believe that “transwomen” are all men who have had surgery and take hormones. Our claims can be verified with minimal research, but instead we get dismissed as crackpots.

Hope and I were both active in the animal rights movement, and long before our conversation on gender identity, I had mused that she had the sort of overconfidence and entitlement that, in the US, is associated with white men. And now, attending my very first feminist protest, I ended up the captive audience of two such men.

To be a woman in the world is to suffer fools, to be a female activist is to suffer them doubly.

White guy #1, father of the TIF, kept snickering, walking away, and coming back when he thought he had a good “gotcha”. He said he was an “expert” in “sexual orientation”. I asked him what sexual orientation had to do with it, since trans identity is about gender identity, and trans people can be of any orientation. He didn’t answer. He asked us with a smirk ‘so you think that a transman in a men’s prison would be in “mortal danger?”’ Silly women, thinking men are dangerous! But somehow it’s not silly to pass a bill based on that very premise (Scott Wiener has repeatedly framed it as protecting transwomen from rape) if the bill is about protecting males from male violence. (Of course, the same hypothetical male inmate who would rape transwomen can now also identify his way into a female prison…)

The vast majority of the public does not want this. If women were not systematically ignored, silenced and dismissed, we would not be where we are today.

Women’s concerns about male violence have long been dismissed as hysteria, bigotry, or prudishness, and proponents of Self ID laws and policies followed the playbook from day 1. SB 132 grants inmates the right to be recognized as the “gender” that they identify as at that point in time (indeed, they can identify differently later), which entails being referred to with the pronouns of their choice and being searched by a prison guard of their “same gender” (the rights of female prison guards are of course completely overlooked, and they can now be forced to perform these procedures on male inmates). In regards to where they are to be housed, trans-identified inmates can choose men’s or women’s facilities based on where they feel “safest”.

After SB 132 was passed in the California Senate in May 2019, the co-sponsors “converted it to a two-year bill so that the co-sponsors and Senator Wiener could meaningfully integrate feedback collected from a survey of the ~1,200 trans, gender-nonconforming and intersex people currently in CDCR custody.”

Not only did Wiener not consult with incarcerated women, WOLF reported that during a virtual town hall, “in his four-and-half minute response on SB 132, Wiener did not once address the concerns of these women. Instead, the state senator resorted to smearing the women bravely speaking up on this issue.” He handwaved women’s concerns with vague and lazy misrepresentations: “Unfortunately there’s been a right-wing backlash against this law and we have right-wing publications that are publishing a lot of just inaccurate information, frankly fake news, about this law and trying to demonize and scapegoat trans people including, unfortunately, there’s a term called ‘TERF,’ trans-exclusive radical feminist people who believe that trans women are not actually women and advocate in that way.” “These are the same arguments we heard in North Carolina restroom law, that trans women are just trying to scam their way into a women’s restroom to victimize cisgender women.”

In other words, and I am going to use words to which we can all agree, when a person who was born with a penis says that they are in danger, they are to be believed, no questions asked, and they are to decide which facilities they will live in, no questions asked. But when a person who was born with a vagina says that they are in danger, they are to be dismissed as bigots, liars and connivers.

Amie Ichikawa, ED of Woman II Woman, said “The terror, abuse, and cruelty incarcerated women are experiencing because of Scott Wiener’s bill is not ‘fake news.’ I speak to these women every single day. They are devastated. They don’t understand how their elected officials, especially those who claim to care about justice reform and protecting women of color, could turn a blind eye to what is happening here.” Amie and others also point out, in this discussion about a trans-identified female inmate who was retaliated against for speaking out against sexual harrassment committed by a male inmate, that those behind SB 132 have zero concern for trans-identified females; their efforts are solely for the benefit of trans-identified males.

This is basic, age-old sexism. And it’s infuriating.

But– Amie sent photos of our protest to incarcerated women who were “shocked” and “very moved that anyone would do this for them”. They asked, “Who are these women? Why would they stand up for us?” And Amie replied, “They are women who give a shit and are doing something about it.”

So, the action was very much worth it, but we need to find ways to reach larger audiences with more effective messaging. We should try to ask questions of those who think they are on the other side: Let the Socratic method reveal to them how little they know and how illogical and sexist their thought process is. In our communications overall, it’s important to undo the notion that removing women’s spaces is in any way a progressive development. Women’s human rights are being violated. It is not more complicated than that. We, as women and as advocates, have been harmed by the narrative pushed by both transactivists and the traditional conservatives (I explained here how these are simply two flavors of conservative) that the only people opposing this are conservatives. They both benefit from this framing and from distorting or making invisible the work and arguments of feminists.

It is noteworthy that most of the people who expressed support for us that day were women, but they didn’t engage much, and the very first people to approach us were an enthusiastic family visiting from the UK – or “Terf Island” as they said. These actions build community and give people comfort and strength in knowing they are not alone. There need to be more.

It’s ironic that white guy #2 compared us to the stuffy adults in Footloose, because I am partly from a country that imprisons people for dancing–now, in 2023. It is precisely this fact, and the killing of women who refuse to cover their hair, and the killing of youth who protest the tyranny, that strengthens my resolve to face my minor discomforts and put myself out there. Defending the human rights of female prisoners in California is part of the struggle for women everywhere. Here like in Iran, women are oppressed on the basis of being born in a female body. The woke love to masquerade as allies to “women of color”, but by denying the reality of sex-based oppression, and by systematically opposing women’s efforts to have a social movement focused on the dismantlement of that oppression, they support societal and institutional sexism everywhere.

For women who aren’t incarcerated, who aren’t homeless, who aren’t lesbian, who aren’t hedging our careers on a female-only scholarship, it’s easy to ignore the whole thing (while secretly trusting that other women will – as always – do the thankless work of defending the rights you enjoy) so that you can keep your good standing. If solidarity is too much to ask for, at least know that at some point, it will cost you too.

It’s time for more courage, and a lot more protests.

Learn more about the impacts of SB 132 on women: