Last Tuesday, October 26th, nearly ten women drove to Loudoun County, Virginia, from all over the state and the country to join a non-partisan parents’ rally. Loudoun is one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and parents there have become outraged over the school board’s mishandling of a rape case. Read more about it here.
The first assault took place in a girls’ restroom in the school, and the perpetrator was allegedly wearing a skirt. Whether he identified as ‘genderfluid’ or some other flavor of trans is at this point unclear. The school board members have been accused by parents of covering up these cases for political reasons, in order to pass a controversial gender identity policy. On the day the assault happened, the superintendent, Scott Ziegler, emailed school board members to tell them about the attack. However, in a school board meeting weeks later, regarding the gender identity policy, he claimed that Loudoun officials “don’t have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
Unfortunately, similarly overlooked bathroom assaults have also occurred elsewhere. In North Carolina in 2016, for example, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district implemented a policy allowing students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their ‘gender identity.’ Now, on 11/4/2021, feminist press 4W has published an article about a female student being assaulted in a bathroom at school, and subsequently being suspended by school administrators for reporting it. The link between ‘inclusive’ ‘gender identity’ policies and unsafe spaces for school girls is one that goes beyond Loudoun County. Students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, as in Loudoun, are also protesting the school board’s mishandling of the case. Read more about it here.
Though the Loudoun County school board is no longer allowing non-residents into meetings, a group of women wanted to attend the parents’ rally outside the meeting to show support for the female students and to bring a feminist perspective to the event and to coverage of it. While the Women’s Human Rights Campaign is a non-partisan organization, women in the group attended as individuals, and bore an assortment of explicitly partisan and feminist signs. Some of these signs included:
“Women and girls are not shields for male violence”
“This Democrat supports female-only spaces”
“This Democrat says boys out of girls’ spaces”
“Women and girls are not collateral damage”
“Leftist gay woman for female-only spaces”
“Protect girls, not gender”
As soon as the group of women arrived and set up with their signs, they drew interest from other attendees, photographers, and reporters. They conversed with many of these other attendees, many of whom expressed appreciation for their feminist perspective as well as their criticism of the Democratic Party from within. As a unit of nearly ten women, they were the largest individual group among the attendees of the rally, which drew attention and led to multiple interviews which Kara Dansky and Lauren Levey conducted brilliantly. The most complete interview and coverage can be seen in the Federalist here.
The Daily Mail has also been covering this issue continually, and the group of feminists is included in their coverage here.
Photos of the group also feature in assorted other media coverage, including more Daily Mail articles and on Fox News.
