“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) are some of the most overused words in the English language of late. Ostensibly the DEI movement is designed to ensure and promote access for everyone to everything. But reading between the lines shows that is not at all what is happening.
Listen closely and you will quickly realize that DEI efforts are designed to promote special agendas, provide special access, and give special protections to a select few.
But what would progressive left DEI promoters say if they knew one of their own heroes did not agree?
In the mid-1970s, legal arguments regarding the Equal Rights Amendment were ongoing. One of the voices was a rising legal star from Columbia Law School who questioned the acceptability of introducing men into women’s spaces. In a “Washington Post” opinion piece, that left-leaning professor and volunteer ACLU lawyer opined, “Separate places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy.”
The author went on to say, “Individual privacy, a right of constitutional dimension, is appropriately harmonized with the equality principle.”
The author promoting this concept – that men and women having a right to privacy and security is not antithetical to constitutional principles – was none other than the “Notorious RBG,” liberal feminist icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
I wonder how liberals feel about their hero on this topic now?
This past week, the “What Is a Woman Act” was considered in a public hearing at the Alabama Statehouse. The bill is designed to codify gender terms, and to address the rights of Alabamians to not have their privacy infringed by those who believe how they identify gives special protections to commit such infringements.
Sponsored by conservative freshman legislator State Rep. Susan Dubose (R – Hoover), the bill attracted an unusual amount of attention. Dubose referenced Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s refusal to define a woman in recent U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, leading Dubose to rightfully believe that states should begin embedding clear definitions of gender into state law to ensure that alternative definitions are not thrust upon us later.
Opposing views were read from the very latest of woke ideological glossaries. Belle Moyers, an opposition speaker identified as a “transgender biologist,” claimed, “This bill uses an arbitrary aspect of a person’s biology to regulate social spaces. It’s the government sticking its nose into all of our lives to make them more dangerous and frankly more annoying.”
A word salad that states the true goals of DEI out loud.
Forget what Ginsberg said in the 1970s, or what science has said for millennia. Forget that the laws of the land favor women having a right to their privacy and a reasonable sense of security. Forget that they favor a child’s protection from perpetrators, or equal opportunity for women to engage in sports and business on a fair and even playing field.
No, transgender biologist Moyers just word-vomited the actual DEI agenda in a statehouse committee this week; namely, that science is notional, your feelings mean nothing, and progressive liberals intend to insert themselves into every place they feel like going, and you’re just going to have to learn to live with that because they deserve special protections.
DEI advocates want “special protection” from the law. A get-out-of-jail-free-card to do whatever they please, whenever they please, however they please and to whomever they please.
Federal law under Title IX, among other things, prevents males from getting an edge over women in sports. Boys generally do not compete against girls … unless they’re boys claiming to be girls, in which case they get special protection from the law.
The laws of every state prevent adults from exposing themselves to children as a criminal act … unless you are a man who believes he is a woman or a woman who believes she is a man, in which case you get special protection under the law to expose yourself in public locker rooms.
Laws exist at state and federal levels to ensure that women are treated equally for campus experiences like scholarships for women’s sports, admission to a sorority, and equal rights to participate in campus activities … but if you are a man claiming to be a woman, you can gain access that no man who knows he is a man would ever get away with.
Common sense is not always common. But it seems we have a chance to codify common sense with the “What Is a Woman Act.” Men are men and women are women. It is definable. It is not fluid or flexible or fragile. It is fact.
No amount of word salad protestations by transgender biologists will ever change the fact that there are only two sexes. Societal laws, mores and norms predicated on the protection of one from the other are there for good reason. The only way that reality breaks down is if we give in and allow special protections for a few over the many.
Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg knew that separate space for actual men and women is harmonized with equal protection, not with special protection.
To contact Phil or request him for a speaking engagement, go to www.rightsideradio.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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