Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the 236th episode of the Atlas Society Asks. My name is Jag. I'm CEO of the Atlas Society. I am coming to you live from Malibu, so I may need to ask for your patience a little bit. Power is out as the fires continue to rage, so I am relying on my starlink, my new starlink for connectivity, and it's definitely been a lifesaver, but it's not exactly glitch free. So just wanted to give you a heads up on that. I am just super thrilled to be having Kara Dansky rejoin us. She is the author, of course. We had her on previously to talk about the abolition of sex. And she's got a new book out, the how the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls. And as you can see from my many little tabs here, I got a lot out of it. So I want to encourage you guys to take take a look at the book. And Kara, thank you again for joining us.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: So again, you joined us almost three years ago to the date to talk about your first book, the Abolition of Sex, How Transgender Gender Harms Women and Girls. So let's take a level set what has happened with this issue over the past three years?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: So a lot. I published that book, as you know, in November of 2021. And at that time, I was very frustrated with the Democratic Party's seeming either inability or unwillingness to have any candid conversations about what was really going on. For any viewers who may not know, I talked about how the very word transgender is an attempt to abolish sex throughout law and society. And I really wanted people to understand that we could talk more about that. But my. The basic premise is that society has been told repeatedly by the Democratic Party and the left that transgender is real. And the bottom line is that no matter what people may call themselves, every single human being on the face of the planet, all 8 billion of us are either female or male. So that was in November 2021. I don't know if you want to get into the second book yet, but so much has happened since October 2021, including some very recent events, including a vote in the House of Representatives yesterday and some important legal rulings, not to mention the 2024 presidential election. So I'm happy to go in whatever direction you'd like.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: All right, well, let's get into this, the second book. You had a very specific audience in mind. Of course. We want everybody to pick up and read the book. But why did you decide to preface the book with, quote, a note to American Democratic Women?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Because American Democratic women, by and large do not understand that party leadership is throwing women and girls under the bus at the altar of the extremely regressive, sexist, homophobic, authoritarian, so called movement that is trans. I think most people on the political left have been persuaded, or at least had been until recently persuaded, that they had to be nice, that trans is a marginalized community. I think a lot of people across the political spectrum think that trans is some sort of different form of gay or something. And everybody, most people in society want to support gay rights. And I think people sort of thought they had to kind of go along with it, including American Democratic women. And so my preface to the book, the Reckoning, A Note to American Democratic Women is, look, we need to have this conversation. Our party leaders are throwing us under the bus at the altar of trans, and we need to tell them that they need to stop doing it. And, and that book was published in November 2023, two years after the publication of the Abolition of Sex. And I really wanted Democrats to get the message. In some ways, the book was a warning to the Democrats in power of what was coming in November 2024. If they didn't change course, that warning quite obviously went unheeded.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yes. And consequences ensued. As Ayn Rand likes to say, you can evade reality, but not the consequences of evading reality. And those consequences are here. So in terms of the Democrats that have thrown women and girls under the bus, I guess it would start right at the top. Now, President Joe Biden likes to present himself as a moderate, but on this issue, he's been quite radical, even more so than Obama. And it is tempting to chalk this up to simply being cognitively impaired and assuming that his agenda on this issue is simply being driven by a few gender ideology zealots in his administration. But you describe how that has actually been coming from him and from Jill Biden. So what is the backstory there exactly?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: I think it is really tempting and easy to think, and I would say understandable to think that this is all happening because President Biden is cognitively impaired, as you say, and that he's just being advised by some gender zealots. But that's not the case. And so I would like to point to the year 2012, which is the year that a young man named Tim McBride, who was the president of the student government at American University, decided that he's a woman named Sarah. So Tim became Sarah, and in 2012, he went to work at the White House as an intern. Before that, he served as a personal assistant to President Biden's son, Beau.
This is President Biden's and Jill Biden's. Sorry, President Biden, not Jill Biden's older son, Beau, not Hunter. Beau Biden died in 2015, but at the time, he was the Attorney General of the state of Delaware. And Tim McBride went to work for him as a personal assistant and driver. So after Tim became Sarah in 2012, Sarah then went to work at the White House under the Obama Biden administration. It was the year 2012 that President Biden started saying transgender discrimination is the civil rights issue of our time. And so I think it's a mistake to think that President Biden is just confused about this. This goes back for a very long time.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: This is intentional. This is intentional. So let's talk about what specific administrative actions he has taken to advance that agenda, and particularly how he's done that through mandates to his various agencies.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: So on the first day of taking office, January 20, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 13988, Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual or that order instructed all federal agencies to redefine the word sex to include so called gender identity for all purposes under federal administrative law. And in the first half of 2021, the administration did exactly that. The Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a new rule that said that that housing in the United States that receives funding, that receives HUD funding would have to be mixed sex. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a new rule that said that medical professionals that receive federal funding are not permitted to discriminate against people on the basis of their gender identities. And of course, the Departments of Justice and Education went ahead and decimated Title nine in various ways. I don't know how much detail you want to go into on Title ix, but we could definitely talk about it. But the Biden administration has spent four years decimating women's rights at the altar of trans.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: So one of those policies, again, all of these directives aimed at every branch of, you know, his administration, and that includes the military, was a policy to permit men to be housed in women's military barracks. How might that impact military preparedness? I mean, it's done in the name of military preparedness.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: So I am not a veteran, and I can't really speak to the specifics of how that might affect the military, But I do know that there's one story in which a young recruit, a female soldier, was forced to share a barrack with a man who called himself a woman. And that was really dangerous for her, for her as a person, but also for her ability to advance in the military. It's psychologically distressing for any women, especially young women, to have to share living facilities at night with men. So that was just a real travesty.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: So let's be clear. You're, you know, we've been talking about President Biden and President Obama, but your politics are different probably than most of the audience watching us right now. You are and always have been firmly on the left. So what has it been like for you to find common cause with conservatives, for example, on this issue?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: So I have worked with two radical feminist organizations in the past 10 years. One of them is the Women's Liberation Front, which I served on the board of from 2016 to 2020. And these days I work mostly with an organization called Women's Declaration International US Chapter. And both organizations are nonpartisan, but the women affiliated with them consider themselves on the political left, generally consider themselves liberal, very liberal, or progressive. Both organizations have also made common cause with conservative organizations, most of most specifically conservative women's organizations. So both WOLF and WDI USA do work with Concerned Women for America, which is an unabashed conservative women's organization. They're anti abortion, they're anti same sex marriage, as well as the Independent Women's Forum, which I believe does not have positions on abortion or marriage, but is generally considered a conservative women's group. And the answer to your question of what has it been like to make common cause with conservatives is that I have just thoroughly enjoyed working with women's organizations across the political spectrum because we've gotten a lot done. Many of us spent last summer on a bus touring the United States in association with a tour called Our Bodies, Our Sports. That was very collaborative. It was mainly spearheaded by the Independent Women's Forum, but it was absolutely delightful. It was a bunch of women, especially female athletes, but it included a lot of radical feminists, including myself, who wanted to speak out about the importance of female only sports. So it's been great working with a lot of these conservative women's groups. Yeah.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: But I would think it would also just be healthy in general. You know, you're collaborating on this one specific issue, but, you know, in a day and age when we are very tribal, when people are in their bubble, they're not interacting with people that have different views on politics. I would think that would just kind of, you know, reaffirm your faith in humanity. And strengthen your ability to have relationships with people that are about other things and not just about politics. So I envy that. So now, of course, Atlas Society, we're a philosophical organization, and you trace the evolution of the current gender ideology back to so called queer theory and even further back to postmodernism. Postmodernism is an issue we spend a lot of time explaining and criticizing. In particular, it's rejection of objectivity, material reality, and manipulation of language. So what is queer theory and how did it pave the way for transgenderism?
[00:12:52] Speaker B: So, yes, queer theory comes directly from postmodernism, and one of its most vocal current proponents is a professor named Judith Butler at Berkeley in California. But it basically says that sex isn't real. It says that Butler's central premise is that gender is performative, which is interesting because if you think about it in terms of stereotypical gender roles, I would agree that that is performative. But she essentially goes further and argues that women are a social construct.
She uses they them pronouns in her bio on the Berkeley page. But queer theory essentially says that sex is no more real than anything else, that it's not a binary, that it's a spectrum, and that it's mutable, that it can change. And none of that is grounded in material reality or as you say, in objectivity.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: So I'm just taking a peek at the comments here. And Ilyishin said everyone should read the man who Would Be Queen. He predicted this back in 2013. 3 I actually interviewed that author, so maybe we can find that link and put it into the comment section. And I thought that book was dense, but it was interesting insofar as understanding gender dysphoria in its different manifestations, including autogynephilia, which is getting sexually aroused by dressing in women's clothing and assuming a female identity, that that is not usually something that is associated with homophobia, I mean, with homosexuality. And also that, you know, when you detail these many examples of men housed in women's prisons, they have histories. I mean, regardless of whether or not they have autogynephilia or not, or they're just, you know, claiming this, but many of them have historically histories of sexual violence towards women and girls.
So what would you say when you look at the various people that are assuming women identities, are they.
Where is it coming from? I mean, is it just expediency, grifting, wanting to take advantage, getting a shortcut? Or is it predatory or is it sexual? What's, what's your, your sense?
[00:15:28] Speaker B: I think there's a broad Variety of reasons why men do this. There. There is a category of men who are gay. And. And historically, it should be said, before the modern transgender craze, most of the men who underwent so called transition were gay men who for whatever reason, were more comfortable presenting as women, even though they weren't women and no one thought they were women.
But today, yeah, the vast majority of men who call themselves transgender are straight men with autogynephilia, and the vast majority don't undergo any form of surgery. So my position that I do my best to make in the book is that men don't belong in women's sports, prisons, or spaces under any circumstances. But I think something that's not really well understood is that the vast majority of these guys don't have any surgery. They have their full bodies intact.
So why they do it? Yeah, for the most part, it is a sexual fetish. And it's worth looking into the work of Genevieve Gluck, who writes at the feminist magazine Redux, as well as Women Read Women on Substack. And she has done some amazing work uncovering the linkages between trans and pornography. And when you really dig into it, you can see that porn is a big, big part of what is fueling this.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Now, other authors, like Abigail Shrier has talked about the extent to which these young women getting infected with this ideology and that leading to irreversible damage, that social media is playing a big part of it. But I think what was more eye opening for me was how you describe in your book that this is not entirely a social media driven or organic movement, but you detail how several enormous foundations are funding this agenda. So if we, quote, unquote, follow the money, what do we find out?
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one thing that's really important to understand is there are many reasons to critique the use of the word transgender, but one of them is that on the one hand, we're talking about men with sexual fetishes. On the other hand, we're talking about the topic Abigail wrote about, which is young girls and young women who are essentially trying to escape their female bodies. And I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for young women who are going through puberty or experiencing adolescence or may have been sexually assaulted who are trying to escape their female bodies. I understand as a woman who has grown up in this society, why one might want to do that. So I have tremendous sympathy for those young women, and they're very different from the grown men with sexual fetishes. Okay, so in terms of what's fueling this, the Foremost expert on this is a woman named Jennifer Billick who writes at the 11th Hour blog. And she talks about the extremely wealthy men who are essentially funding all of this all over this country and all over the world. They include one man named Jennifer James Pritzker, who is related to current Illinois Governor Pritzker as well as former Obama Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. A man named Martine Rothblatt, who was born Martin, who is a multimillionaire and who advances an agenda called Transhumanism, which we could talk about if you'd like. He's written a book called From Transgender to Transhuman. So. So he's very open about his views on all of this. He's been featured by Oprah Winfrey, he's been on the COVID of New Yorker. So he's pretty well known for his views promoting transhumanism. Another man who's involved in this is a guy named Tim Gill who founded the Gill Foundation. Another data point worth mentioning is that 2023 pride at the White House where a man named Rose Montoya flashed his fake breasts at a camera and a video of that went viral. To its credit, the White House banned him from future White House attendance, which is good. But during remarks during Pride 2023, both President and First Lady Biden thanked Tim Gill and the Gill Foundation. So the Gill foundation essentially funded Pride 2023 on the White House lawn. And the Gil foundation has given millions of dollars to so called trans or queer causes. Another guy worth mentioning is John. He's also a multimillionaire who is heir to the Stryker Corporation, which is a medical supply company. Stryker founded something called the Arcus foundation, which again has given out millions and millions of dollars over the years to fund so called trans or queer projects. So a lot of people like to say that this is sort of a grassroots movement of marginalized people. It's absolutely not true. It is a very top down, money driven industry.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Yes. And so some of these foundations are explicitly funding groups that have their mission is to advance this trans agenda, but they're also funding existing established institutions in order to co opt them and make them have this as a priority. And so, you know, I'm thinking about my earliest years when I was on the political left and I was a member of the National Organization for Women. And I've marched with them and I've been supportive of groups like Planned Parenthood for helping women take ownership of their reproductive destinies. So I have to say I was completely shocked to read in your book how such Organizations have been, as I said, co opted by the Trans Agenda. Can you describe for our audience what has happened there?
[00:21:40] Speaker B: All of them. Every single one of them. I worked at the ACLU between 2012 and 2014 on criminal justice policy. I worked on the ACLU's campaign to end mass incarceration. I authored the ACLU's investigation into and report on excessive police militarization, having no idea that the ACLU by that point had fully bought in to the lies of gender identity. So the ACLU is obviously one of the biggest proponents of so called trans in the courts and in law and in society today. But all of them have. The Human Rights Campaign, which was largely established to fight for gay marriage, is now all about trans and gender identity. GLAAD used to be a gay and lesbian organization, now it's all about trans and gender identity. The same is true, as you say, of National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the Women's March, the National Women's Law Center. Every single major institution on the political left has completely abandoned its commitment to women, its commitment to gays and lesbians, its commitment to truly marginalized communities. And they've all abandoned their commitment to classic liberal values like free speech. The ACLU was founded on free speech, but now when women like myself try to speak up, they just silence us and act like we shouldn't be able to speak. You haven't asked about the media, but. But I'll just say women like myself, radical feminists or TERFs, if you want to get into that term, we cannot get a platform in the mainstream legacy media. We can't do it because they understand that if ordinary Americans across the political spectrum could hear what we have to say on this topic, the whole edifice would crumble. So they silence us. And so the aclu, once a bastion of free speech and free press, is now completely against it when it comes to having honest conversations about trans and gender identity.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: So speaking of the aclu, your book introduced me to a term I hadn't heard before, and that is trans washing. Tell us what it is and how it's been used by groups like the aclu, among others, to erase the actual history of the fight for individual rights for gays and lesbians, a process you describe as, quote, blatantly homophobic.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: So there was a decades long fight for lesbians and gay men, which has been largely successful. I think most people in America have been persuaded, regardless of what anyone thinks about the institution of marriage, whether you think it's a religious institution or not, most people don't think that anyone should be fired from a job for being gay or evicted from housing for being gay.
And these days, organizations like the ACLU will take that history literally taking examples of actions that the gay rights movement took and say that either they were led by so called trans people or that they were about lgbt. We should probably talk a little bit about that acronym, but they'll make it out or make it seem as though trans is a decades long civil rights movement. And they do this starting with Stonewall, which is so insulting because Stonewall, for anyone who doesn't know, happened at a bar in the late 1960s in New York where it was a gay bar and the whole thing, it was a gay bar and the police were.
The police were raiding it and a lesbian started the Stonewall rebellion. And now organizations like the ACLU will say that Stonewall was started by so called trans women of color, which is just an obnoxious lie, but they do it all the time. So the ACLU does this. But perhaps even worse, organizations like GLAAD do it. The aclu, for as long as I knew, fought for gay and lesbian rights, and I support that, but it wasn't. The ACLU's advocacy is not limited to gay and lesbian rights advocacy, of course. It's ostensibly focuses on free speech, women's rights, et cetera, et cetera. GLAAD at its origin was specifically an organization for lesbians and gay men, and now it engages in trans washing. So it trans washes its own advocacy history by saying that it's advocacy to get, for example, better representation of lesbians and gay men in the media, which is its core mission. It did that for the longest time and now it will trans wash history by saying that was all about trans or lgbt.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's interesting, you were talking about censorship, and just as you were talking about it, apparently Facebook took our livestream down. We usually livestream this show to YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. So so much for Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto of saying that there's.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Did her Internet go out?
[00:27:12] Speaker C: It appears, Jack Internet has gone out, unfortunately, due to the LA Fire. So in order to sort of keep things going, let's sort of jump into just one of the questions we had coming in from the audience. I think is probably really relevant because we've been talking a lot about the US and its role in this from lock, stock and barrel.
Or Candice Morena ask, where are the surgeries more common, US or Europe?
[00:27:38] Speaker B: That I don't know. I mean, I know that surgery is incredibly common here in the US and it also depends on whether we're talking about young people or adults. But it's worth noting comparing the US and Europe. Many European countries have made tremendous strides in reducing the availability of so called puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones for minors and young adults, which I think is outstanding. The US has not made as much progress. And so we still have major medical institutions all over the United States handing out drugs that block children's puberty and cause permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function and other long term health issues. Which is upsetting because I think it's an international human rights violation against children that we're doing this. So that point of comparison is worth noting. And I don't know about comparisons about surgery between the US and Europe.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Interesting. And then again for everyone, it looks like Jack is still lost. Connection will hopefully have her back soon, but we'll just keep going. If you still have your questions questions, please feel free to put them in the comments section. This next question though relates to what you were talking about when it came to this trans washing in the ecu. But this specifically goes to how has the trans agenda specifically impacted lesbians?
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Yeah, the trans agenda has impacted lesbians possibly more than any other category of human beings. I mean, my main argument is that the trans agenda harms women and girls as a sex class, which of course course includes lesbians. It harms everyone by denying the material reality of sex. There are so many far reaching implications of denying the material reality of sex that we could talk about, but it harms women and girls as a sex class, including lesbians, and it particularly harms lesbians in a couple of ways. For one thing, you cannot protect same sex attraction in the law if you cannot acknowledge the material reality of sexual. That's a way in which the trans agenda harms both lesbians and gay men. Second, what is happening is a lot of same sex attracted young people or you know, teenagers who are just starting to explore sexuality, who are just figuring out who they're attracted to. A lot of young people who find that they're attracted to members of the same sex will try to explore that and figure out what that's about and then they are told that they actually are the opposite sex. So young women, adolescent women who are starting to figure out that they're attracted exclusively to other girls are being told that they're actually boys and they're being put on puberty blockers and they're being given testosterone and their bodies are being absolutely decimated. Another way that lesbians are particularly impacted is that there used to be lesbian only spaces. There used to be lesbian bars where all women were welcome, but particularly there were four lesbians to hang out with other lesbians and meet other lesbians and now they've been completely invaded by men who call themselves lesbians on the basis of their gender identities. So that's true for bars, it's true for meeting groups, it's true for dating apps. Dating apps, yes. I was just going to say dating apps.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: So I don't know if I, if I was down and out when I mentioned that I saw someone on our chat say that as we were discussing censorship that our livestream on Facebook got taken down. So so much for Mark Zuckerberg's telling us that we were going to have a new era of free expression on meta. Apparently perhaps some of their sensors over there still hasn't haven't caught up with that.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Did we lose her again?
[00:31:37] Speaker C: I unfortunately I think we had another hiccup. It's hopefully Starlink will reconnect. Let me move on to the next.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: So feel free to answer support there.
Lock, stock and barrel asks where, why is it perpetuated that if these surgeries don't occur there will be an increase in self harm or self termination?
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's often said that if children don't get access to what is euphemistically cynically referred to as gender affirming care, they will self harm or commit suicide. This claim is based on a study that has been completely debunked. First, it relies on young people who just describe themselves as trans. It doesn't matter whether they're girls or boys or whatever. It's a completely self selected group of people.
Excuse me. Second of all, the study doesn't distinguish between suicidality, which is thoughts about suicide versus suicide attempt, which is an attempted suicide versus suicide completion, which is a completed suicide. And it turns out that young people who are not given so called puberty blockers, or what I refer to as opposite sex sex hormones, if left alone, they'll actually be fine. They will actually end up desisting, accepting themselves as the sex that they are. And it's the kids who actually go on to take these harmful hormones and surgeries.
It's those kids, excuse me, who end up harming themselves. So it's just based on a lie.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know we were talking before about my interview.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Now I can't hear you.
[00:33:37] Speaker C: Interesting. Oh, can you hear me now? Okay, I think, I think we got it fixed. So it Looks like her Internet has cut out again. Must be going through just a rough patch. Yeah, let's jump down to this question here that, that she had talking about how this agenda is being pushed in elementary and high.
What, for example, is a gender. Genderbred person?
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So the chapter in my book, the Reckoning, how the Democrats on the Left Betrayed Women and Girls, Chapter five is about the media and schools. And the section on schools begins by saying, if you are a parent of school age children, please do me a favor and put this book down right now. And if your children are in earshot, see if you can have a conversation with them and ask them if they have heard the word transgender used in schools. And if they have, pull them from their school. If your child is not in earshot, please immediately email the child's teacher and ask what's being taught in your children's school and see what comes back. And a reader of my substack helpfully suggested I add, you don't even have to ask your kid's teacher what is being taught on this topic. You can ask anything about recess or lunch or whatever. And if the email comes back with pronouns in the signature, you know, you're in trouble.
Yes, this has been, this is being taught in schools all over the country. And it's absolutely devastating because young people are being told that sex isn't real. Young people are being told that they can be either a girl or a boy on the basis of their say so. And it's just a manipulative lie and it's terrible. The gender bread person is a drawing of a gingerbread man cookie. And it, it basically is a visual depiction of what is supposed to be meant by so called gender identity. It's very cute. I'm sure it's very attractive to children, but it's all based on lies. It just, it's a visual depiction of the idea that sex isn't real.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: So you raised another aspect of this agenda that some in our audience may not have considered before, and that is the regressive nature of pushing sexist stereotypes about what a woman should look like or behave or dress like. What are some examples of that?
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so back in the 1950s and before, we had very rigid ideas about how women and men should dress. And a lot of feminists did a lot of great work in the 1960s and 70s to get rid of those. And so, you know, no one looks at me strange when I walk down the street in jeans, which I almost inevitably do. It's fine for women to defy sex stereotypes when it comes to appearance or when it comes to behavior. So another thing that, you know, that feminists often say is, you know, back then women had to wear dresses. We changed that. But now today, anyone who wears a dress can be a woman. So it really is a return to 1950s sex stereotypes as well as a return to 1950s homophobia. You haven't asked about this, but a lot of people also say that trans is a new form of gay conversion therapy for the reason that I said earlier, which is that young people who are finding themselves same sex attracted are being told that they're the opposite sex and having their bodies mutilated. So in many ways this is just a repackaging of old sexist, homophobic, regressive stereotypes.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I remember those days and I was raised by a radical or maybe moderate feminist. And I remember her dressing me up in overalls and wanting to cut my hair because she didn't want me to look like a girly girl and said that people, if I did, if I dressed the way I wanted to dress, which people would objectify me, which, you know, I like to joke, that helped me grow up into an objectivist. But, you know, we've gone from maybe one extreme to Dylan Mulvaney's 365 years of girlhood kind of presenting this caricature of what a woman looks like. So now what does the polling look like on this issue? Why have Democratic Party leaders and their media allies been so slow to realize how deeply unpopular this is with the American people, even those who consider themselves very liberal?
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah, the group Women's Declaration International usa, which I mentioned a while ago, conducted polling in late 2023, and it found that four out of five voters know that a woman is an adult human female. 84% of voters want sports to be single sex. 85% of voters want there to be female only locker rooms. So it's true. The vast majority of the American electorate understands that sex is real and doesn't want men in women's locker rooms, doesn't want men on women's basketball teams.
And why the Democratic Party is ignoring this is a really excellent question to which I wish I knew the answer, quite frankly. You know, as I said, I wrote the book the reckoning in November 2023 to tell them, hey, Democrats, guess what's coming if you don't change course. And I didn't just publish that into the ether. The organization WDI USA sent copies of the book to every congressional office, including the members themselves as well. As their chief of staffs, we sent copies of the book to the White House and other important officials across the country and they didn't heed the call. So November 2024 happened and they're still not heeding the call, save for a few small exceptions that we've seen just in the past couple of months that we could talk about if you'd like.
[00:40:00] Speaker C: Unfortunately, I think we've lost her again. Oh, nope, there she is.
Jack, we have you back now. I think maybe she can't hear us.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: I can.
[00:40:12] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: You know. Your afterword, Kara presents a cautionary tale and a policy prescription. How does the experience of the Labor Party in the UK or other parties on the left in Europe present a cautionary tale?
[00:40:29] Speaker B: So in 2018, the Labour Party introduced so called reforms to something called the Gender Recognition act, which is a law that is now well known, but at the time was not. In 2004, the UK enacted the Gender Recognition Act. This allows anyone to obtain legal recognition of the opposite sex. They have to meet very minimal requirements. But it was enacted essentially because two men wanted to get married and that was not allowed back then. And so the UK came up with this complete legal fiction of, you know, legal sex, which you can claim to be the opposite sex and you can get something called a gender reform or gender recognition, excuse me, certificate. And in 2018, the Labor Party introduced so called reforms to that to eliminate any gatekeeping requirements, to eliminate any requirements to have to prove anything. Anybody could get a gender recognition certificate calling themselves the opposite sex just on the basis of their say so. And that woke up a lot of women in the UK who were members of the Labour Party who said, what? That's outrageous, we are not having that. And they won. They defeated it. So the Labor's proposed Labor Party's proposed reforms did not go through, which is great, but it kind of ignited this, this passion among labor women to say, what is going on here? Why does our left leaning Labor Party hate women so much that they would even suggest that? And that kind of unleashed a firestorm, started all sorts of things. J.K. rowling ended up talking about it, as people probably know. So women ended up ditching the Labor Party in droves. They just said, no, I'm absolutely not going to vote for you if you don't recognize the material reality of sex. The Labor Party won overwhelmingly this past summer. So I don't know how effective that was. But the Labor Party women in the Labour Party made some very strong statements about how they simply weren't going to Support labor if labor continued to deny the material reality of sex. Similar things happened not only across Europe, definitely happened in Spain where a so called progressive government brought in what's called self ID where anyone gets to be the sex they claim to be on the basis of their self identification and the voters voted them out and brought in a very conservative government. The same thing happened in Australia. So I'm saying in the book, in the cautionary tale, listen, Democrats, women are going to leave the party in droves if you don't pay attention to what is happening in left leaning parties in other countries.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: So Alan Turner asks, do you think the Republicans gaining seats is going to be a wake up call against supporting these ideas going forward?
[00:43:23] Speaker B: So it remains to be seen. Maybe now would be a good time to talk about a vote that took place yesterday.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: In the House of Representatives. Yeah.
So there's a bill called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. I believe it was initially introduced in 2021. I became aware of it in 2023 and WDI USA firmly supported it. In 2023 I wrote a piece in the Washington examiner called why Progressives Should Support the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. It's a very reasonable bill. It's four short paragraphs and it essentially defines sex biologically and says that schools that receive funding under Title IX have to maintain single sex sports when a sports activity is designated as female only. And so the House voted to pass it in April of 2023. Not one Democrat voted for it, not a single one. And then it went into the Senate where Majority Leader, then Majority Leader Charles Schumer just let it die. So it got reintroduced this year and kind of fast tracked with the incoming, with the incoming majority's priorities. And so it went for a vote yesterday.
The debate is really something to watch if you really get into the details on this. I watched it with my partner and my partner just said the Republicans sound like normal people and the Democrats all sound like they're in a cult. It's true. He's right. The Democrats who stood up and, and voiced their opposition to the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports act sounded, and I have said this publicly before, so I'll say it again, they sounded like absolute lunatics. The vote was taken shortly after the debate and two Republican, excuse me, two Democrats voted for the bill. That's historic. A lot of people are upset that only two Democrats voted for it. And I understand why. I'm as frustrated with my own party leadership as anyone is. But I think It's a minor miracle that two Democrats actually voted for this very common sense, sensible bill to protect female only sports under Title 9. So that's a big deal that two Democrats actually voted for it. But question whether the Democrats are going to get the memo. Apparently not, other than these two, because all the rest of the Democrats who spoke against this very sensible bill sounded like absolute lunatics.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: You know, I'm surprised. We talked about, we talked about the big money that is these foundations that are funding not only these specific organizations that are promoting this agenda, but also co opting these other, you know, classically liberal institutions like the aclu. But who knows, maybe there is a Republican billionaire somewhere who is paying all of these Democrats to, to maintain their support of these insane policies even in the face of, you know, vast polling majorities against it. Because he, he knows that if they keep voting for this, that it's going to be a good thing for Republicans. You could, you could maybe write a farce, a farcical piece on that.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Entirely possible. But you know, also worth noting, Jennifer Pritzker, I mentioned earlier, he's one of the biggest funders of this. He was born James, he's related to the Pritzker family and he gives millions of dollars to this. But he gives equally to Democrats and Republicans. I don't know if equally is exactly the right word, but he gives both, let's say that, to Democrats and Republicans. And so there are a lot of people who are feeling extremely confident with the current Republican majority in both chambers of Congress and the, you know, incoming administration. People are very confident that we'll reverse course on this as a nation. And I am less confident. I am cautiously optimistic, but I want everyone to be really careful because Republican politicians are also receiving money from the gender identity industry.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: So again, another super chat from Mark Thomas. Thank you for that. And he's asking how should we respond to the negative rights arguments for transgenderism and educate people on the actual rights people have regarding biology. So I don't know if I entirely understand the question, but I'll try to do my best. And you know, I would say that if someone wants to assume a woman's identity, dress like a woman, that makes them happy. They feel better about it. That's fine. I mean, I have hung out with Caitlyn Jenner. She wants to call herself Caitlyn. And I'm fine with that. I think where I would say that you begin to have a conflict with the rights of others is if women have an expectation. For example, in a prison, that's funded by the government to not be housed with biological men who have history of violence against women. That, that is kind of where the rubber hits the road. I don't know. Kara, do you see this issue differently?
[00:48:48] Speaker B: I don't see it differently. I think maybe part of an answer to the question is to always use accurate sex based language. So what I read in that question has something to do with instead of being defensive and arguing against so called transgenderism, how can we frame more positive arguments? And I would argue that one way of doing that is to always maintain fidelity to accurate sex based language and also to ask questions. And I've actually had a conversation recently with a friend of my mother's who is a very progressive woman in her 60s, but she's also frustrated with the Democratic Party for various reasons. And we had a very honest conversation about this. And I just kept asking her questions. And so when she would say something like, but transgender people are the most marginalized in society, I would just ask her, what do you mean by transgender? And when you ask people questions like that, ultimately they sort of talk themselves into the awareness that maybe something else is going on here than what they've been told.
[00:50:04] Speaker A: All right, so would you describe the election of Donald Trump and Republicans impending control of Congress as the result of that cautionary tale that went unheeded?
How much of virtually every demographics rightward shift do you interpret as a backlash against this trans issue? Certainly it was very motivating with some demographics, but you know, there's a lot of other reasons why people were dissatisfied with Joe Biden and wanted to see a return of Trump's more pro growth policies, among others.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: So I actually wouldn't call it a rightward shift. I would call it a rejection of the Democratic Party. And as you say, for several reasons, the post election polling from Blueprint found that immigration and the economy and this issue were the three biggest drivers of Trump's win in November. And then when you look at it more granularly, you see that among voters who waited until the last minute and just made a last minute decision to vote for Trump, this was the issue. So when you look at the polling, there is absolutely no question that this issue played a big role. I, you know, I used to live in Washington D.C. and did so in October and early November. And TV networks in Washington D.C. pick up the networks in surrounding states like Virginia and West Virginia. And I watch football. That might get my feminist card revoked, but that's okay. I watch football. So there I was watching a football game and one of those ads came on saying, you know, the narrator said, kamala Harris is for they them. President Trump is for you. And I thought, that's it. It's over. Like, that's just going to clinch it. And so there's no question that this issue played a big role. I will also just say anecdotally, I know a ton of people who consider themselves on the political left who have had it with the Democratic Party for a variety of reasons. A personal friend of mine left the Democrats, registered Republican, voted for Trump because she was sickened by the Democratic Party's assault on free speech. I know another woman, historically very left of center, who was very frustrated with what she viewed as authoritarian attitudes on the political left regarding COVID policies and things like that. And of course, so many Americans are extremely frustrated with the Democrats for essentially lying to us about President Biden's cognitive state for so long. So there were unquestionably a variety of issues. But there's no question that this issue played a major role.
[00:52:48] Speaker A: And part of that disaffection on the part of Democrats and the censorship regime and all of that has driven, to an extent, the phenomenon that is the Free Press. I mentioned, as the only Republican in my family, that this is the one kind of journalistic endeavor that all of us can participate in. But you shared some news right when we went live that I think I can break here on this podcast, which is that today you unsubscribed for to the Free Press, if you're comfortable to maybe share some of your reasons.
[00:53:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I was extremely excited about the Free Press when it launched and became a very early paid subscriber and have subscribed for a while now. I started becoming frustrated with the Free Press for how it not only platformed, but really seemed to elevate the profile of an individual named Brianna Wu, who's a man named John.
And today it was announced that they're giving him a weekly spot at the Free Press. And that was it. I just couldn't take it. Wu has just said some terrible things about women, in particular about feminists on X. He's blocked me on X. And so since he's blocked me and they're giving him a weekly spot, I just decided that was a line too far and I canceled my paid subscription.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: Well, Nelly, if you are listening, she's been also a guest on the previous show.
You might want to take heed to this cautionary tale because generally the Democrats fail to take heed to their peril and loss. And so we don't want any leakage of Free Press subscribers. So maybe I'll just ask. In closing, Kara, if you think that we're poised to see significant progress in terms of protecting women's sports, women's spaces, and protecting children from these irreversible medical treatments and mutilations, or will trans activists and those funding their agenda double down and dig in their heels?
[00:55:07] Speaker B: Oh, they'll definitely double down and dig in their heels. When I talked about the gender industry giving to Republicans, I once went on Tucker Carlson and I explained to him about an experience I had where I was at the Supreme Court marching for Roe v. Wade. And a couple of us went into the anti Roe v. Wade side and we heard a chant that we had never heard before, which was trans rights start at conception. And he and I discussed that, and I said, I'm worried that having colonized the political left, the gender industry is coming for the political right. And he at first kind of laughed, but then thought that kind of made sense. And he said that the right was now prime political real estate, as he called it. So I'm just going to be very cautious about this. And yes, the gender industry will absolutely dig in its heels and fight for whatever it can get. I'm very encouraged by a recent ruling out of a federal district court in Kentucky which essentially vacated the Biden administration's rewrite of the Title 9 regulations. We didn't have time to go into the rewrite of the Title 9 regulations, but basically the Biden administration rewrote the Title 9 regulations to obliterate women and girls as a sex class. And a federal district court said, no, you can't do that. The court said it's unconstitutional, it's a violation of statutory authority, and it's arbitrary and capricious. And it vacated the entire rewrite of the Title 9 regulations. So I'm very encouraged by that. I'm very encouraged by the passage of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports act in the House yesterday. I'm very skeptical that it will get through the Senate, but we'll see. So I think we're seeing real progress. But the fight is far from over. And everyone who cares about this issue has got to keep fighting as hard as we can.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: And part of that fight means educating yourself by getting a copy of this book, the Reckoning how the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls. Again, highly recommend. So thank you so much, Kara, for this wonderful conversation and for all of the work that you are doing to try and protect women and girls.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:57:24] Speaker A: It's been great and thanks to all of you if you enjoyed this video. Especially thanks to those who put in a super chat if you neglected to do that. You can head over to theatlisssociety.org donate and make your donation there. It's tax deductible and a final thank you to everyone for your patience. I think we learned something which is that this Starlink is not going to be adequate for next week's podcast. So we'll figure something else out. But and so in an uninterrupted podcast next week I hope you will join me when Professor Timur Kuran will join us to discuss his work on preference falsification. I learned about him when I was researching my interview with Todd Rose so if you enjoyed that one, you won't want to miss this one in particular. He's been doing a lot of research these past years on the decline in religiosity throughout the Arab speaking world. So looking forward to seeing you then.
