The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls
by Kara Dansky
Democrats and the establishment Left have abandoned and betrayed American women and girls on the altar of “gender identity,” doing untold damage in the process. It’s time for liberals and progressives—especially feminists and free speech advocates—to hold them accountable.
In The Reckoning, Kara Dansky, a radical feminist and lifelong Democrat, exposes the invasion by men into female-only spaces, the harming of children, and the silencing, punishment, cancellation and even violence against women who speak out. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, which claims to represent the interests of women, ignores the problem, while its allies in the organized Left and mainstream media paint all opposition to the “trans” agenda as “right wing.” But radical feminists are not “right wing.” They are leftists who know that sex is real and are not afraid to demand women’s hard-won rights to safe spaces and privacy.
The Democrat-Left wing establishment knows all the ways in which “gender identity” harms women and girls—and plenty of boys. Yet they are sacrificing women and children to a vicious profit-driven industry that allows men to invade women’s spaces and sports, denies that sex is real, and slices up children’s bodies.
Now the Democrats are facing a reckoning. Detransitioners are starting to speak out, clinicians are blowing the whistle, and women and girls, including many lesbians, have had it. Even now, the tide of common sense and decency is starting to turn in other countries that have banned harmful medical and surgical procedures for underage children and a handful of Democrats are bucking the trend at the state level. Elected Democrats will later claim they didn’t know, that they couldn’t have known, that the science has changed. But they knew. They have known all along. This book provides the evidence.
Jayne Egerton responds to the discussion of right wing militias in Dansky’s latest blog, and to WDI USA’s response to her 2021 essay about f
jayne egerton has requested this piece critical of big name gender critical & radfem activists working with the right be shared. it's a follow-up to her first piece
Jayne Egerton writes about women and the religious right in the USA in an article which first appeared in the Radical Notion.
The feminist author of The Abolition of Sex has become the ultimate example of a new propaganda phenomenon, which denounces leftists as right-wing when they say unpopular things
Two years ago, in February of 2020, the Washington Post published a piece called “Conservatives find unlikely ally in fighting transgender rights: Radical feminists.” The essence of the article was to describe groups like the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, full of people with decades-long track records as leftists or feminists, as not merely in temporary agreement with conservatives on trans issues, but actual converts to the entire conservative cause.
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The piece was one of countless examples in which leftist or independent critics of mainstream fixations — from Russiagate to the campaign of Joe Biden to war in Ukraine — are reclassified as right-wingers and Trump supporters. The far left, libertarians, Greens, and other assorted malcontents used to be just ignored by popular media, but now they don’t even enjoy that privilege. The new instinct has a clear and effective purpose, to create the illusion that there is no intramural debate on one side of the aisle, that disagreers are actually enemies in disguise.
Kara Dansky, a former WoLF board member and the author of The Abolition of Sex, may be the most outspoken feminist in America when it comes to criticizing popular current beliefs about gender identity. A former ACLU public defender, she’s focused heavily on the presence of biological men in women’s jails, and for her troubles has been essentially booted out of mainstream progressive politics.
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Dansky is an intense, sharp interview, and also a fluid and purposeful author. Ages ago, as a dumb young jock, I picked up Andrea Dworkin’s 1974 Woman Hating as a joke, and found myself engrossed and reading to the end. Dansky’s book, The Abolition of Sex, isn’t written in the same kind of fulminating, entertainingly rageful prose, but it is a persuasive exercise in no-bullshit argumentation. I recommend it even to people who are inclined to disagree with her. In these passages she talks about the corruption of language:
The entire English language is being manipulated and twisted in order to obscure the reality of sex. In June 2021, the Biden administration replaced the word “mothers” with the words “birthing people” in a section of a budget proposal regarding infant mortality. In a guide on “Safer Sex for Trans Bodies,” the Human Rights Campaign urges readers to refer to a vagina as a “front hole” and to a penis as a “strapless…”
That our language has changed so dramatically as to make the natural, material reality of sex nearly invisible, with so little public debate, is astounding… If we cannot talk about sex, we cannot talk about sexism. If we cannot talk about sexism, we cannot fight back against it.
I asked Dansky about these and other questions in an interview earlier this year. At the time, she had just done an interview with Tucker Carlson, so I asked her about blowback:
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Matt Taibbi: Lastly: I grew up in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s. A liberal was the person who was willing to talk about anything, had a sense of humor, was willing to entertain far-out ideas, didn’t get offended easily, and would’ve had a theoretical discussion about anything. Then all of a sudden, it feels like in the last five years this dynamic has just been turned on its head, and this issue is probably Exhibit A as to that phenomenon. Do you have any thoughts about why?
Kara Dansky: No, I grew up in the same time frame. You mentioned that I say in the book that we expected this kind of misogyny from the right; we didn’t expect it from the left. That’s true. My friend at the Seattle event in 2020 that I mentioned, she made the additional point that we expected authoritarianism from the right; we did not expect authoritarianism from the left. But that’s where we are.
As to why, I don’t know. As to why on this particular issue, I don’t know. It’s mystifying to me. It’s just mystifying, why can’t we talk about things. There’s just no study or nuance.
A Response to 'What Is A Woman' (for Matt Walsh and Matt Taibbi)
A Response to ‘What Is A Woman’ (for Matt Walsh and Matt Taibbi)
I have recently been made aware of a documentary by Matt Walsh called What Is A Woman. For those who didn’t know, Matt Walsh is something of a professional troll. He’s not as insufferable as the intellectual toothpicks like Ben Shapiro, and he isn’t as cringe as comedic fecal smears like Steven Crowder. Having seen it, it wasn’t even remotely surprising. He went after some of the lowest hanging…
The feminist author of The Abolition of Sex has become the ultimate example of a new propaganda phenomenon, which denounces leftists as right-wing when they say unpopular things
Y’all, Matt Taibbi did a great interview with Kara Dansky. Excerpt from intro:
Kara Dansky, a former WoLF board member and the author of The Abolition of Sex, may be the most outspoken feminist in America when it comes to criticizing popular current beliefs about gender identity. A former ACLU public defender, she’s focused heavily on the presence of biological men in women’s jails, and for her troubles has been essentially booted out of mainstream progressive politics.
As I noted in a review of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman?, I originally sat on this interview in an effort to avoid dealing with blowback from trans activists. I apologized to Dansky this week and also asked her thoughts about the film, which are included below.
Dansky is an intense, sharp interview, and also a fluid and purposeful author. Ages ago, as a dumb young jock, I picked up Andrea Dworkin’s 1974 Woman Hating as a joke, and found myself engrossed and reading to the end. Dansky’s book, The Abolition of Sex, isn’t written in the same kind of fulminating, entertainingly rageful prose, but it is a persuasive exercise in no-bullshit argumentation. I recommend it even to people who are inclined to disagree with her. In these passages she talks about the corruption of language:
The entire English language is being manipulated and twisted in order to obscure the reality of sex. In June 2021, the Biden administration replaced the word “mothers” with the words “birthing people” in a section of a budget proposal regarding infant mortality. In a guide on “Safer Sex for Trans Bodies,” the Human Rights Campaign urges readers to refer to a vagina as a “front hole” and to a penis as a “strapless…”
That our language has changed so dramatically as to make the natural, material reality of sex nearly invisible, with so little public debate, is astounding… If we cannot talk about sex, we cannot talk about sexism. If we cannot talk about sexism, we cannot fight back against it.
I asked Dansky about these and other questions in an interview earlier this year.
TERFs use feminist vocabulary but are aligned with national anti-LGBTQ groups
Madeline Peltz at MMFA:
Tucker Carlson recently hosted Julia Beck, a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” or “TERF,” in a segment promoting the illusion that there is an important divide over the importance of transgender rights within the LGBTQ community.
Beck and other TERFs claim to be feminists, but they hold vehemently anti-trans views and are widely rejected by LGBTQ advocates and organizations. In fact, TERF groups and activists have joined with right-wing, anti-LGBTQ organizations around the country in lawsuits against trans rights.
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Right-wing media suggest TERFs are liberals; in fact, they’re aligned with extreme right groups
Right-wing outlets seized on Murphy’s self-identification as a “feminist” as evidence that anti-trans reactionaries do not solely come from the far-right. On his Fox show, Carlson similarly identified Beck as a feminist and claimed that WoLF leader Dansky is a “radical feminist” and “not on the right at all.” And during their appearance together on the Heritage Foundation panel, which was titled “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left,” Beck expressed her surprise at participating in an event hosted by a conservative think tank.
TERFs’ embrace of supposedly feminist aesthetics and rhetoric can make it more difficult for media consumers to identify what they really stand for, and right-wing media take advantage of this confusion to push the illusion that activists “on the Left” share their anti-trans agenda. But TERFs are distinctly on the side of right-wing groups, and they have even allied with the efforts of national anti-LGBTQ groups to oppose trans rights in the judicial system.
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Right-wing media figures like Carlson -- who has time and again demonstrated his intimate familiarity with extremist movements and a willingness to champion their causes -- are pushing a larger agenda that is anti-transgender, which includes denying trans people health care, expelling them from the military, and legally undermining their existence. And along the way, they’ll undoubtedly continue to uplift TERFs’ viewpoints under the guise of progressive feminism. But other media outlets and media consumers should be aware that nothing could be further from the truth; without transgender people leading the way, LGBTQ liberation cannot take place.
