From June 26 to 28, radical feminist and lesbian members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) who were attending their conference were denigrated as “terfs” by other conference attendees and NOW leadership; called “transphobic” for describing men as men; accosted in a hallway and shouted at by the primary conference organizer; and threatened with removal. All for the crime of knowing what a woman is — ironic at a gathering of the National Organization for Women.
NOW celebrated its 60th anniversary this year and is one of the most prominent grassroots liberal feminist organizations in the US, with half a million members and over 300 affiliate groups in states, cities, and campuses across the country. Nancy Pelosi spoke at this year’s conference.
However, NOW is also known for its historical opposition to lesbian participation in feminism, with its founder and first president, Betty Friedan, calling same-sex attracted women the “lavender menace” and removing out lesbians from the organization. Ultimately, NOW changed course enthusiastically, passing and acting on pro-lesbian resolutions for much of its history — until recent years.
Today the National Organization for Women is grappling with the new lavender menace: gender critical lesbians and radical feminists, women who are broadly in alignment with NOW’s missions but recognize that women’s rights are based on the material reality of our sex, not on “gender identity.”
While the category of sex is key to the rights, privacy, and safety of all women, it’s especially germane to lesbians, whose sexuality is based on exclusive same-sex attraction. Today lesbians are being pressured to date and sleep with “transwomen” and accept “girldick,” and being called “exclusionary” or “genital fetishists” if we don’t.
NOW describes itself as “the grassroots arm of the women’s movement” and takes great pride in its democratic values and processes. However, its 2026 conference was characterized by a top-down attempt to silence certain groups of women and ideas gender-identity activists on and off NOW’s board found objectionable. The identity crisis that liberal “feminists” are experiencing was on full display.
What follows is a chronological account of what sex realist attendees experienced at the event.
Friday
“Transwomen are men, and it’s okay to say that.” — Kara Dansky
On Friday afternoon, a young attendee was chatting with another attendee, discussing the sessions they planned to attend. When she mentioned she planned to go to the Lesbian Caucus session, the other attendee said “”I have to warn you. There is a group of older women here who are terfs.”.”
Women of the Lesbian Caucus were informed by friendly attendees that they were consistently being called “terfs” by other attendees and even NOW leadership.
Saturday
“Insisting on the reality of ridiculous counterfactual claims was pretty much the theme.” – Holly
First thing Saturday morning (7:45 AM!), a session by the Lesbian Caucus discussed the history of lesbians at the National Organization for Women and challenges lesbians face today, then circulated a statement asking that the NOW president make an announcement that “TERF and any other derogatory language referring to lesbians and lesbian supporters is unacceptable at any NOW gathering.” The statement cited the 2026 Code of Conduct of the conference booklet, which “prohibits a participant from using verbally egregious behavior.” The attendees in the session were broadly supportive, and there was no public tension or controversy during the session. At the very beginning of that session, the conference organizer began filming the session, despite caucuses having been designed for private conversation, and not even livestreamed to NOW members attending virtually.
In the next session, an issue hearing for “LGBTQIA+” issues, two resolutions were brought up. The first was to support “transwomen in sports” and the second was to keep prisons segregated by sex, not “gender identity.”
The proposed resolution supporting boys’ participation in girls’ sports was, in effect, arguing against a creed: all the justifications given were unsourced disinformation about boys being virtually the same as girls, with a strong side of emotionally manipulative language. One woman argued that sports should be about community, not competition. Another fearmongered about the “invasive genital checks” young girls are allegedly being subjected to. A counterpoint about cheek swabs being an uninvasive and inexpensive sex test was rejected on the basis that sex is actually a spectrum. A woman referenced HeCheated.org to refute the unfounded assertion that examples of a boy taking a girl’s win were cherry-picked individual instances.
Initially, one of the co-chairs and a session intern counted the pro-boys resolution as passing, with 14 votes for, 12 against. An attendee had a different count: 14 to 13. Another attendee cited Robert’s Rules of Order, which NOW follows, and pointed out that chairs can’t vote. The issue was voted on again and was defeated by one vote, although this resolution would later be revived.
The resolution on single-sex prisons was similarly contentious and driven by uninformed emotional appeals. Single-sex prisons, we were told more than once, are “a death sentence.” One of the sex-surrealist attendees said she knew 20 (or was it 24?) “transwomen” and they are the sweetest, gentlest people in the world. (We regret not asking if she meant to imply that these friends have been convicted of crimes serious enough to put them in prison.) We pointed out that the resolution as written didn’t state anything about having to house “transwomen” with other male prisoners, just that they couldn’t be housed with women. How about a separate wing, or a third prison entirely? This was not considered a sufficiently validating alternative.
Irene Lawrence, who works in prisoner re-entry upon release, spoke to the history of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and the data that is being collected on NotOurCrimes.info. Another sex realist argued strongly about the heightened responsibility the state assumes towards incarcerated people, who are completely under government control. Another woman said, “If the problem is violent men, deal with that.” This resolution ultimately became entangled in bureaucracy and did not progress. Our impression is that it would have passed had it come to a vote.
Also of note is that only members of NOW were eligible to vote, and not all conference attendees were members. Issue hearing chairs largely disregarded this, not mentioning it, much less verifying membership, prior to calling votes.
Shortly after the “LGBTQIA+” session, five or so of us were gathered in the wide hallway between the breakout rooms and the main meeting room, where most attendees were behind very effective sound-dampening doors, attending an awards plenary. We were getting to know one another and discussing the sessions so far, as well as the ones to come. Other groups of women were scattered throughout the hall chatting or investigating the exhibitors’ tables.
A woman who eventually identified herself as the conference manager came up suddenly, threatened to remove us — with the NOW president’s blessing, she claimed; who knows? — and generally began berating us. Below are a few highlights. You can also listen to a recording of part of the conversation here. Virginia is a one-party recording consent state.
- “You are upsetting the hell out of people!”
- “I will make a scene!”
- “Stop being so damn condescending!”
- “This is transphobic language! It is transphobic language. [You said that] transwomen are men.”
The event staff stormed away after haranguing us for a couple minutes but returned soon after to tell us we were “blocking the hallway.” This was clearly an ideologically motivated objection: the hallway was at least 20 feet wide, most attendees were in the plenary session, and there were many other small groups congregating exactly as we were. We complied partially and moved farther down the hallway to a small seating area where it would be absurd to argue that we were in any way obstructing traffic (not that the charge made sense before).
We attended at least two other sessions Saturday — a workshop on how to write a resolution and an evening community session for young feminists.
The resolution workshop assignment was to draft a resolution addressing a global issue. Rather than make a statement on Islamic feminism, as one woman suggested, with most participants depending on the expertise claimed by a tiny group of women, the room agreed on girls’ and women’s rights to education. The moderator insisted that NOW wanted solutions “for all,” so most references to “girls and women” were taken out of the resolution. Instead, the phrase “feminist education” was incorporated wherever possible, including in the title’s call for “feminist education for all.” In the end, the board wisely declined to include this effort in the 2026 resolution packet.
A few 20-something members of our group who took part in the community session for young feminists expected to join other young women talking about their experiences and hopes for feminism. Instead, they found mostly non-young women and men talking over them in order to discuss how to reach young feminists, e.g., would Girl Scouts be too young to approach?
Sunday
“I learned that infighting among women is alive and well and the libfems are 100% having an identity crisis.” — Mary
Most of Sunday’s agenda consisted of discussion and voting on proposed resolutions and bylaw amendments. The morning began with a scramble to obtain copies of all the proposed resolutions, because the organizers “didn’t print enough for everyone to have their own” because “that would be too expensive.”
One of the first resolutions to be considered called for age verification for access to online pornography. We expected it to pass quickly and without much dissent, given both the feminist audience and the bipartisan, nearly unanimous passage of age verification bills across the country. That expectation was not met, to say the least.
Here are some snapshots from that discussion:
- One woman said it wasn’t fair for people not to have access to porn, and specifically mentioned her 32-year-old son, insisting that his “right” to access porn shouldn’t be limited.
- No one seemed to be able to determine what pornography was and said the language of the resolution was too vague.
- “Pornography saves lives”—specifically LBGTQ lives. Several more people spoke about the importance of porn for “queer youth,” to which one lesbian finally replied, “Our community is not defined by pornography.”
- The highlight of the session was undoubtedly a woman saying “I don’t care if Joe Plumber is inconvenienced. I don’t want kids watching strangulation for entertainment.”
The age verification resolution ultimately did not pass.
Later, in discussion of a resolution standing against book bans, a radical feminist pointed out that porn wasn’t defined in this resolution. The response was, “I know it when I see it,” a stark contrast to discussion of the age verification resolution, when multiple people had argued that that resolution was too vague to pass without a definition of pornography.
The final notable resolution discussed would have empowered lesbians to create and maintain female-only lesbians spaces, including a lesbian group, defined as female homosexuals, within the National Organization for Women. This resolution was initially introduced last year, when the conference ended suddenly on questions about the voting process and virtually all action was delayed until this year’s conference. With 20 minutes left of the conference, this resolution was brought to the floor — and promptly interrupted by demands for a re-vote on a previous resolution about young women, which had been referred for further review earlier in the day. That resolution’s earlier failure was making the young women present feel “discouraged.” After some back-and-forth about parliamentary procedure, that resolution was voted on again, this time passing, leaving fewer than ten minutes for discussion of female-only lesbian spaces. The conveniently timed revival of the young women’s resolution seemed to be a stalling tactic.
This was the last of several stalling tactics we observed throughout the proceedings. Earlier, many resolutions had been pulled from a packet that was to be voted on as a bundle, including many that were seemingly non-controversial. A single woman who had previously been seen with the conference organizer was responsible for pulling most of them. The most egregious example was the pulling of a resolution regarding the ERA. In this instance, the objecter, a known TRA, argued that the next presidential administration enacting the ERA as the 28th amendment within its first 100 days was not soon enough, and that the 100 days should be amended to 60 days, despite the fact that the plan for the first 100 days is an established and standard metric, causing a diversion of at least ten minutes. Other stalling tactics included extensive derailments regarding minor and meaningless amendments to resolutions.
The brief discussion of the lesbian spaces resolution appeared evenly split between supporters and opposition. One woman referenced the organization’s history of lesbophobia, hearkening back to the era of the lavender menace: “Things have not changed a lot in some quarters of the National Organization for Women. I have become aware of egregious treatment of some lesbians at this conference that would not have happened to any [other] minority, I am sure. As far as the LGBTQIA, this is the National Organization for Women!” Ann Menasche, speaking via the conference’s online portal, spoke concisely on lesbians’ contributions to NOW.
The most memorable statement from the opposition side was the query, “Would my transwoman friend who is a lesbian be welcome in this group?” So, another regret: that we didn’t step to the microphone to point out that a “‘transwoman’ who is a lesbian” is a heterosexual man. Seriously, there were no doubt women attending the conference who had no idea that that is exactly what that combination of words means. In any case, the stalling tactics worked, and there was not enough time to speak fully to the lesbian spaces resolution or to vote on it. By default, this resolution will go to the NOW board for discussion.
But there was still enough time to squeeze in a little more harassment! As soon as the session concluded, the conference manager of hallway-screaming fame came directly to one of the sex-realist tables and began screaming at us to leave. This despite the fact that we were clearly packing up our things while most other attendees were still in the room doing the same. When asked why she was targeting us, the conference manager turned to shout at some elderly women gathering their belongings and then turned around to us and screamed, “See? It’s not just you. It’s not just you!”
Reflections
This experience made me so proud of what we’re doing in our radical feminist organizations and networks. We are poorly funded, don’t get legacy media support, many of our groups are all-volunteer… and we’re still doing more to further women’s rights than these big legacy organizations that are all distracted by gender identity controversies. But seeing how many of the regular women in attendance were open to our viewpoint has also inspired me to stay active in the National Organization for Women despite this experience.” – Katherine
Audre Lourde wrote, “I am not free while any woman is unfree.” Within the National Organization for Women, and liberal “feminism” in general, that idea has devolved into an article of faith that women won’t be free until men are free. Seriously. We saw men’s feelings prioritized in NOW members’ support for access to porn without age verification, and for boys’ and men’s demands to play in girls’ and women’s sports, serve their sentences in women’s prisons, and violate lesbians’ boundaries. Too often, we saw the discussion of women’s issues constrained by the liberal “feminist” principle that women’s concern should be to reform society “for all.”
Yet despite how this account may make the conference sound, we had a fabulous time. The speakers at several sessions were absolutely phenomenal. A session on sex trafficking, with speakers from the organization Rights4Girls, had women staying long after the session was scheduled to end. A trio of Iranian women discussing the role of women in the Iranian revolution had women in tears. Small-group and one-on-one conversations with other attendees were fascinating and rewarding. And of course, encountering so many other lesbians, radical feminists, and other sex-realists was the best part! If you were there, let’s keep in touch!
