"Sufficient Indications to the Contrary"

 

President Biden, on the very day of his inauguration, has signed a raft of executive orders. There is one that has caught my attention; it is the executive order entitled, "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation."

This executive order amounts to the repudiation of those who felt Biden was either a centrist or espouses unity among Americans. While no one feels that housing or voting or any other such discrimination against those with atypical gender identities or sexual orientations should be legal, the executive order goes much further than this. The order states, "Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports," and then suggests that Title IX and other legislation must now be interpreted as prohibiting female-sex-only spaces.

The bottom line is that in any clash between sex-based rights and gender-identity-based rights, sex-based rights are trumped. The right of females to have single-sex spaces is trumped by male desire to colonize those spaces. Such colonization also extends to all measures to raise the status of females, including sex-based sports, sex-based scholarships, sex-based quotas, etc. Males now can have all of those, as well. Everything that females have fought so long for is now the property of any males who choose to identify as women.

This is progressive? All historical feminists are spinning in their graves to see how women's interests, once again, are so easily subordinated to the interests of men. This is especially ironic coming from an administration that boasts about having the first female vice president in history. And it's clearly not a step in the direction of unity, because polls have shown that a large majority of Americans do not agree with the erasing of the female sex with regard to restrooms, locker rooms, sports, etc. Indeed, US states, reacting to the clear science that male bodies are different from female bodies, have begun legislating against males identifying as females participating in female-only sports and a similar bill was introduced in Congress by Tulsi Gabbard. The World Rugby association has barred males identifying as females from participating in women's rugby due to the probability of catastrophic injury to females otherwise.

This is a clearly regressive, anti-female executive order. The only wiggle room in the entire document is the phrase, "Under Bostock‘s reasoning, laws that prohibit sex discrimination — including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as amended (20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.), the Fair Housing Act, as amended (42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq.), and section 412 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (8 U.S.C. 1522), along with their respective implementing regulations — prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, so long as the laws do not contain sufficient indications to the contrary." All women can hope is that legislators put "sufficient indications to the contrary" in the law.

On the very day of inauguration, Joe Biden betrayed women and girls. May this betrayal always be remembered.