by Katherine M Acosta
In what has been called a “record breaking year,” more than 100 bills affecting sex-based rights for women and girls have been introduced in 33 state legislatures since January 2021.
“When we saw what was happening at the state legislative level,” Kara Dansky says, “we knew we had to act.”
Already connected with a network of groups working to protect women’s sex-based rights, through her prior work with Hands Across the Aisle, Dansky represented WHRC USA “in a national coalition to protect women’s sports, loosely referred to as the Title IX coalition.” The group included Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), Save Women’s Sports, and “a handful of conservative organizations with whom we disagree on many topics.”
Dansky says she and other feminists work effectively and strategically with these conservatives because “we are disciplined; we don’t try to change each others’ minds on issues with which we disagree. We stick to the issue at hand.” At regular meetings, coalition members shared information about bills that were advancing and on which it might be useful to take a stand.
Dansky pulled together a team of three women who had never met each other before, nor written legislative testimony, including Lauren Levey, Tracye Bennis-Sine and Elisa Turner. Together the women tackled the tsunami of legislation headed their way.
“It was like whac-a-mole!” Levey recalls. “We were busy every day with multiple bills at one point.” Nevertheless, the women dove into the work.
“I had to teach myself,” Bennis-Sine recalls. “I looked online for other written testimonies to see what they looked like, and with some feedback from Kara, went on from there.”
The team determined which bills to support or oppose largely based on whether they “fit the language and intent” of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, Turner remembers.
“We looked for an absence of language that reinforces transgender ideology,” Levey said. “Cis, for example, isn’t language we’d support.”
They also avoided bills that used “gender” to refer to biological sex. Sometimes, when tipped off that a legislator might be amenable to a change in language, they asked for revision, and on one occasion, they got it.
“We found that a lot of the legislators were receptive to what we had to say,” Turner said. “They wanted our feedback.” Over time, the women were able to be choosier about which bills to support. “This came from the realization that our voice mattered and was being heard, so we might as well ask for exactly what we wanted,” Levey observed.
To date, the State Legislative Advocacy Team has written testimony on 27 bills in 16 states, most during an intense 3-month period – a remarkable achievement for a small and previously inexperienced team.
“Honestly, it feels good,” Bennis-Sine enthused. “There’s hope in the states. People, not necessarily feminists, just thinking, rational people, want single-sex spaces and sports.”
Levey came away from the experience “impressed with the advocacy skills of conservative people, including women. We’ve learned from each other. They appreciate our radical feminist point of view.”
Turner says she was “really anxious about getting involved. I’d never done anything like this before. But the women involved are really helpful.” Turner encourages others to “jump in and try it out.”
“We always have to keep in mind that our elected officials are just people. Neither they, nor their staff, can be experts on all issues,” Dansky says. “If we are feminists fighting for the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, we know more about this issue than they do. For that reason, we should not feel intimidated or afraid.”
*Please note that the Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA (WHRC-USA) is now officially known as Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI-USA)
Thank you all so much for your hard work and for giving our state teams the information that they need to do their important lobbying and advocacy work.
We are all learning as we go. The most important step is to back these bills. We can work on the fine details after that!
Thanks for all your efforts. At least 2 of us in Massachusetts submitted written testimony against a proposed bill that would essentially allow self ID (submitting an affidavit would be all that is required). The proposed bill also conflates the words sex & gender.
I wasn’t available to listen to the Zoomed oral testimony, so no idea what was said.
Keep the faith!
Fantastic! Was it your first time submitting testimony on a bill?
Yes, actually although I have attended hearings on environment related bills.