Radical Feminist Organization Opposes Obama Transgender Bathroom Rule

The Women’s Liberation Front is joining with 15 other states, conservative Christian groups, and others to challenge the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom regulations.

The organization, which refers to itself by the acronym WoLF, is suing the feds because, in its view, the rule is is watering down or erasing sex-based, civil rights protections for women by promulgating the mandate that came in the form a “dear colleague” letter which was described by the Obama administration as “significant guidance.”

On May 13, 2016, Obama’s Departments of Justice and Education together issued the nine-page guidance letter requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice or lose federal funding. In one section of the guidance, the government says that “A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity.”

A challenge to this requirement is currently pending at the U.S. Supreme Court by those, including WoLF, who argue that it is regulatory overreach.

In an interview on Tucker Carlson’s FNC show Tucker Carlson Tonight, WoLF Board Chair Kara Dansky insisted that for her organization, the issue is more far reaching than a mere bathroom access controversy and is more about retaining civil rights protections generally for women, The Daily Caller reported.

“…In part, it goes to — within the realm of bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, shower rooms — what the interpretation of sex to mean gender identity means is that potentially any male who self-identifies as female can access any women’s bathroom, locker room, changing room, etc., dormitory, school. But it goes even far beyond that to redefine women and girls to mean essentially anyone who identifies as a woman or girl for purposes of Title IX, which matters to us because we think that women and girls is a meaningful category worthy of civil rights protection…If we define sex under Title IX to mean gender identity, what we are essentially saying is that women and girl can mean anyone who self-identifies as women and girl, which renders the category…meaningless…”

Enacted in 1972, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in education, which, among other things, led to the rise of women’s sports team at the collegiate level.

Taking a position in opposition to the Obama administration results in a lot of online hate from the social justice cohort, including accusations that her organization consists of transphobic bigots, Dansky noted. “We are often threatened with rape and death. We’re told that we need to shut up and go die in a fire because we’re asking questions, and we’re standing up for women and girls.”

Watch the full interview in the clip embedded below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRPvJVlL1g

On its website, WoLF describes itself as a radical feminist organization dedicated to the total liberation of women from the oppressive patriarchy.

In a lengthy explanation of its opposition to the Obama guidance, WoLF also asserts that the mainstream media is creating an incorrect and simplistic divide between reactionary right-wingers against the rule and “forward-thinking liberals” who support it. This media narrative ignores “the many concerned parents and female students who span a wide spectrum in their political convictions.”

“Some feminists have apparently figured out that if men can simply claim to be women, it takes power away from women. Imagine that,” the Legal Insurrection website observed about WoLF.

There has been no indication as yet if the Trump administration will toss out the guidance. Now that the U.S. Senate has finally confirmed Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions to head Education and the DOJ, respectively, perhaps this issue may be revisited.

Last year, North Carolina controversially passed a law requiring individuals to use the bathroom in public buildings corresponding to their birth gender. In addition to all the national headlines, including boycotts and threatened boycotts, as the Inquisitr previously reported, the interim director of Georgia chapter of the ACLU quit because of the organization’s strong support of transgender bathroom rights at the potential expense of women’s rights. The ACLU sued North Carolina over the law, while Georgia is one of the states that sued the Obama administration over the guidance.

Parenthetically, since replacing Megyn Kelly who jumped to NBC, Tucker Carlson has doubled the ratings of The Kelly File.

[Featured Image by Robert Jonathan]