Women: We must not kneel before the trans patriarchy
Last week, in a stunning display of allegiance to men who identify as transgender women, actress Drew Barrymore literally got down from her seat to kneel before guest Dylan Mulvaney on an episode of her talk show. Trans activists like Dylan Mulvaney, whose painfully offensive internet content shows each day of his life of “girlhood” using outdated female stereotypes, may merit our compassion and an invitation to redemption — but Barrymore’s behavior was more akin to worship. She appeared to wholeheartedly celebrate everything that Dylan falsely proclaims himself to be, perpetuating the same façade that both she and everyone watching knew to be a lie.
Contrary to Barrymore’s example, in a culture where the existence and privacy of women are increasingly thrust into question by transgender ideology, it is more important than ever that women stick together in defending the dignity of our sex against those who parody it in the public square.
In a similar act of kneeling to transgender ideology, Wellesley College made headlines this week due to a student referendum that supported welcoming all transgender and so-called nonbinary-identifying students to the traditionally all-female institution. If adopted, this change would mark a significant departure from the original intention of the school, which was founded in 1875 with the goal of expanding higher education opportunities to women; notably, Ivy League universities didn’t accept female students until beginning in the late 1960s. In more recent years, women’s colleges have offered young women an oasis of privacy, particularly for students with a prior history of sexual trauma and a desire to minimize the risk of suffering the all-too-common experience of campus sexual assault.
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“To quote Sir Walter Scott: ‘What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,’” Dr. Carl Trueman, Grove City College professor and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Washington Stand. “What Scott noticed about lying applies to individuals and institutions determined to deny basic realities and affirm fantasies: they are going to end up tying themselves into all sorts of unnecessary and intractable knots. More to the point, they are going to do real harm to real people. If Wellesley joins the bandwagon of erasing women, what an ironic and sad tragedy that will be, with real human cost to real lives.”
The United States isn’t even a full century removed from a time when women couldn’t get a credit card without a male co-signer, and marital rape was still legal in every state. Our country has come admirably far in regard to legally recognizing the equality of the sexes and creating laws to protect women from forms of discrimination that we uniquely face. In 1978, for example, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act began prohibiting discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions.
Every shred of progress made towards protecting women from violence, harassment, and loss of opportunity is threatened, however, by allowing men claiming to be women to dominate the cultural narrative and codify their delusions into our institutions. Transgenderism is a Trojan horse of the same twisted idea of patriarchy that first and second-wave feminists desperately fought — a society where the law failed to uphold the equal dignity of women by prioritizing male whims above all else.
In a 2019 interview, Drew Barrymore said, “There are a lot of women’s movements now that I’m apprehensive about, because I don’t want to be viscerally angry at men. I love men.” She added that she hopes her daughters someday have “the empowerment to know that girls and women are worthy without wanting to take down the male race ...” In a significant sense, Barrymore’s assessment of the limitations of modern “fourth wave” feminism is spot on; women and men have inherently equal value, but there is no need to angrily tear the other sex down in the process of achieving institutional and social equality.
What Barrymore’s idea of female equality appears to miss, however, is that the erasure of women and girls is too high a price to pay for the sake of peace with all men — especially the ones who think they’re women.
Sadly, it is not merely transgender activists themselves who threaten the erasure of women — many women are also to blame for the acceptance and perpetuation of this deceitful ideology. When women, like Drew Barrymore and the students of Wellesley College, literally kneel to transgender ideology rather than stand up and acknowledge it for the sick lie that it is, it becomes immeasurably easier for the trans patriarchy to prevail.
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Joy Stockbauer serves as Policy Analyst for the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council. In this position, she assists the Director of the Center for Human Dignity in tracking and responding to current events pertaining to the dignity of the human person, as well as assisting in drafting publications and resources on human dignity.
Before serving in this role, Joy interned with FRC in the Center for Human Dignity. She also previously worked as a Research Fellow with the Institute for Faith & Freedom at Grove City College. Joy graduated magna cum laude from Grove City College with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Spanish in 2022.
