One More Lie: The “Equality Act”

As a proud lesbian woman for most of my life I know that every woman benefits from the existence of lesbian women! In a male dominated society every time a woman chooses to direct her life-energy to another woman regardless of the directives of society, she has expanded the possibilities for all girls and women. To defy the normative rules of enforced heterosexuality can be awkward and even dangerous. My long time partner, Jeanne, has noted that the “rubber-band theory” of political action applies here. Example: when lesbian women push the boundaries of accepted behavior, all women and all girls are encouraged to expand their push-back against the multiple pressures on women and girls. We are expected to conform to a narrow path of expectations allowed for females. Lesbians make that path wider and wider.

We are now facing an “Equality Act” that legally declares that a man (via his “gender identity”) can be a lesbian under the law! Passed by the U.S. House, the bill will be voted on soon in the U.S. Senate.

The purported intent of this “Equality Act” is to expand the classes of people and situations specifically protected under federal civil rights legislation. In the bill, three classes of people are named for additional or altered protection under H.R.5:
1. People who face discrimination on the basis of sex.
2. People who face discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
3. People who face discrimination on the basis of “gender identity”.

This bill provides that “gender identity” shall take priority over both sex and sexual orientation; meaning that a man who identifies as a woman is to be treated as a woman under the law, regardless of his sex; and so that a man can be a lesbian under the law. Young (female) lesbians are being lured into surgical and chemical mutilation of their bodies by the lie that they can escape the burdens of femaleness and homosexuality by becoming men.

Homosexual people are now called hateful and transphobic for the very thing that makes them lesbians or gay men; i.e., for excluding people from their dating pools based on sex.

A stealth campaign against homosexuality has been infiltrating much of the so-called progressive wing of politics. In my eyes, the Left has moved to the right and then claims their move to be “woke” politics. I see their political stance as the newest form of misogyny! Neither Left nor Right are reliable allies for women demanding our rights based on biological sex. H.R.5 in its present form would destroy those existing protections by effectively redefining the protected sex class “women and girls” to include men and boys!

The oppression of women and the discrimination against women is based on sex, not gender. Women have been excluded from employment, credit, military service, education, jury service, etc., based on their sex. “Gender identity” reinforces regressive sex-based stereotypes that assign dominance to males and submission to females; federal law should not be doing that.

Please note that is not possible for women to “identify” out of their discrimination by simply claiming to be men. It is biological sex that needs specific protection in the interests of justice. And it is “gender”, i.e., enforced femininity and masculinity, that needs to be questioned and resisted, if equal rights are to be achieved.

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The crux of the problem is that the Equality Act enshrines the concept of “gender identity” into U.S. law. Males base their claim that they are women on this concept which was invented by medical professionals in the 1950s and 1960s (Jeffreys) and latched onto by the transgender movement. Using “gender identity” males are able to say they “feel like” women and, with the Equality Act, the recent executive orders issued by Joe Biden and local legislation, PRESTO, their feelings are turned into what we are supposed to believe is reality.

As Tina Minkowitz, one of the authors of the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act, has explained, with the Equality Act our legal existence as women is at stake! Here’s how this works. The Senate bill explicitly defines sex to include gender identity, saying that each of three factors – sex, sexual orientation, gender identity – is a form of sex discrimination. Here is where women are erased! Gender identity is made synonymous with sex. Discrimination on the basis of gender identity is considered to be sex discrimination.

Thus, the Equality Act makes it illegal to deny males who say they are women access to what have always been female only facilities. The Senate’s Equality Act explicitly states that there can be no female only private personal spaces: “[A]n individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”

Giving any male who wants to the right to claim to be a woman has far reaching circumstances that goes far beyond his entry into female spaces, as is documented throughout the XX Amazons website.
Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act

Feminists in Struggle, or FIST, has proposed Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act protecting women, LGB, and transgender people by cleverly creating two new protected classes – sexual orientation and sex stereotypes – while leaving existing protections for sex in place. Each of the three classes are given clear and uncomplicated protection. The Feminist Amendments eliminate all mention of gender identity, providing protection to transgender people on the basis of sex stereotypes. By focusing on sex stereotypes, gender non-conforming people who are not transgender, including Lesbians and gay men, are also protected when they do not comply with sex role norms (demands).

The Feminist Amendments explicitly protects female only spaces from intrusion by males claiming to be women including “multi-stall toilets, locker rooms, changing rooms, communal showers, battered women’s shelters, refuges, homeless shelters, rape crisis centers, jail cells, bedrooms in residential facilities, hospital rooms, facilities providing intimate services such as massage or intimate grooming, or other places where women are sharing private facilities or are in states of undress and/or where their privacy may be compromised and or their safety may be at risk from male-pattern violence against females.” (p. 17, Feminist Amendments Equality Act) Sports programs, scholarship programs, clubs, political programs are likewise protected.

For more information on the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act, please see:

Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act

FEMINISTS IN STRUGGLE (FIST) LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN FOR FEMINIST AMENDMENTS TO THE EQUALITY ACT

Time is Short – Act Now!