In Defense of Feminism
In Defense of Feminism
A letter from a #LetJulieSwim activist
The following letter was sent to us by Dawn Land, a woman who took part in the Port Townsend press conference last week. We contninue our reporting on that story and we will have much more to bring you soon about her experience there.
Feminism is often touted as the root of everything wrong with Western society, and women who declare themselves feminists are routinely vilified. Man-haters, feminazis, or — as Matt Walsh so famously declared — “rotten to the core”; with labels such as these, it’s no wonder women claiming feminism are regarded with such contempt.
The level of scorn shown towards feminism today is disturbing. It’s obvious that many people – particularly men- don’t understand what feminism really is. Feminism is women believing and advocating for women to have rights equal to men. It’s as simple as that. It would be disingenuous to pretend that women ever fully achieved that equality we’ve been fighting to obtain for generations. Likewise, it would be negligent to ignore the fact that the past decade has seen a steady erosion of the rights women fought so hard to acquire.
Yes, women have earned the right to vote and the right to own property. We have shattered the glass ceiling, broken barriers, and accomplished much, all while raising families.
When Katherine Switzer defied regulations by entering and running the Boston Marathon in 1967, a race official tried to expel her from the race – during the race. After she was subsequently disqualified from the marathon for the audacious crime of being female, Switzer went on to create women’s running clubs and running events. She turned her drive for women’s rights in sports into successfully bringing women’s running events into the Olympics. It was efforts like those of Katherine Switzer which helped lead the U.S. to create Title IX in 1972.
Equal access in sports opened many doors for thousands of girls and women. Like the many rights women have fought for and won in the last one hundred years, Title IX was earned through bold, unrelenting feminism.
But the steady decline of the hard-won equal rights of women is undeniable, and the biggest source of this indefensible reversal is the cult of transgenderism.
Nowhere is this egregious attack on women’s rights more obvious than in the world of sports. Men claiming to be women are increasingly dominating women’s sports in which participation was previously based on the reality of sex, rather than the feeling of “gender.”
The subversion of Title IX by President Biden has been a brutalizing attack against all females. From his first day in office to his most recent edict, the intentional assault on feminism is clear. It is the commandeering of women’s rights in favor of the fallacy of transgenderism.
Unfortunately, conservative men can be just as misogynistic as the TransCult. Matt Walsh’s documentary, What is a Woman?, explores gender and transgenderism. But while Walsh exposed the hypocrisy and misogyny of transactivists in his film, he seemed more concerned with scoring political points than actually defending women.
Watching a therapist try to defend trans rights by asking if a chicken can cry is humorous. But it does nothing to provide any comfort or help to female inmates locked in their prison cells with male rapists claiming they are women.
While men who speak against the TransCult do get some pushback, it’s nothing compared to the hatred leveled at women who speak out. It’s something I’ve experienced firsthand.
In June 2019, I was one of several friends speaking out against Drag Queen Story Hour and other pro-transgender events preying on kids and teens in our libraries. When we attended a Teen Pride event, complete with a transgender drag queen stripping for tweens and teens, a friend and I were removed from the public event by police despite sitting quietly and simply observing everything.
Outside the library, my friends and I were harassed and threatened by two men. It reached the point where we had to call the police back to the library for our own protection. One of those men also claimed he was a transgender woman.
Throughout the month of June, we continued to be harassed and threatened by trans activists any time we spoke out against predatory children’s programming in the library. I had my picture posted on Twitter by trans activists, I was confronted multiple times in a library, and was even threatened with a baseball bat after a library board meeting. It should be no surprise that by the end of June 2019, I had purchased my first handgun.
So when Matt Walsh joins the misogynistic attacks against a woman already reeling from hostilities by the TransMob, it’s clear he doesn’t comprehend the magnitude of hatred reserved for women who dare to stand against the cult of transgenderism. Unfortunately, Walsh seems to prioritize making himself look good over advocating for equal rights for women.
J.K. Rowling criticized Walsh for showing willful ignorance of the hate and threats received by women who are critical of the TransCult. When Jason Whitlock jumped to Walsh’s defense by mansplaining to J.K. Rowling her place in the world, it was with appalling, blatant misogyny. A man who tells one of the most accomplished women in the world to sit down, be quiet, and let the men handle this, should actually follow that up by speaking out in defense of women’s rights. It’s puzzling why Whitlock feels Rowling’s bold and courageous feminism is stopping him or any other man from standing up to the TransCult. The man who wrote, “Don’t marry, date, or bed a feminist…” is not a man likely to defend the rights of women. Because when a man can see another man pretending he’s pregnant and still somehow blame “toxic femininity,” any concern he may have for women being bullied by trans activists will never be able to overcome his misogyny.
It’s no great revelation to see the attempts to silence women by both trans activists and conservative men. Feminists learned long ago that women are our own best advocates. Our rights are not going to protect themselves and men don’t typically defend women’s rights. This is why our society needs feminism. This is why every woman should be a feminist.
Dawn Land is a wife and homeschooling mother. She considers herself a pro-life, Christian, feminist.