Women Stand Up in Washington, D.C.

[GrinitchSpinach]

The board is, ahem, moving fast today, and some marvelous stuff is getting buried in the monster threads. I thought this might be a good place to collect reports from on the ground in D.C.

Thanks to SpartacusAutisticus for posting Natasha Chart's wonderful, raw speech outside Human Rights Campaign:
www.facebook.com/100003299679086/posts/2366913433428623/

Here is the protest outside Twitter:
m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2366769483443018&id=100003299679086&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FD8guU5XQ0R&_rdr

Well, NBC News covered the Heritage Panel, but frames the feminists as "anti-transgender" throughout, even using "TERF" as thought it is a legitimate descriptive term rather than a slur. I will complain.

www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/conservative-group-hosts-anti-transgender-panel-feminists-left-n964246

Christian Post article:

www.christianpost.com/news/to-resist-gender-transitioning-of-kids-be-willing-to-lose-friends-activists-say.html

American Spectator covers the Heritage Panel:

spectator.org/the-rocky-horror-ideology-show/

Comments are crappy, many somehow blaming homosexuals for transgender ideology (this is a v right wing publication) but I found it interesting that the only supportive comments came from (presumably right wing) women. I genuinely believe there is some room to work together with conservative women against self-ID. The men seem a lost cause.

Videos uploaded to Posie's Youtube channel now from the Sunday event at the DC Public Library:

Meghan Murphy:

Lierre Keith:

(looking forward to watching this one as I missed it on the day!)

Kara Dansky:

I'm sure Brie Jontry's speech will be uploaded soon.

Daily Mail has something on the Heritage event:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6644801/amp/Prominent-attorney-slams-transgender-activism-mens-rights-movement.html?__twitter_impression=true

In case it wasn't clear, this is why these women decided to accept the platform at Heritage. I've posted four articles so far about the Heritage event, and left out a few from super wacky right wing sites. Searched and searched for anything on Posie's event at DC Library, or the protests at HRC, Facebook and Twitter: radio silence.

Not saying everyone would or should make the same choice as the panelists who appeared at Heritage, but I can really understand why they did.

Hot damn. Posie and Julia Long walked into HRC offices to ask Sarah McBride, press secretary, what McBride has against the safety of women and girls:

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2372358492884117&id=100003299679086&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FeCD61S3C68&_rdr

Not sure I would engage in this tactic myself.

Grinitch I’m in the UK - had to just google HRC and McBride (i assumed Hillary Rodham Clinton when I first saw that !)

As much as being doorstepped must have been a shock for McBride, I think just ignoring Posie and Julia while pretending to work was appalling and tone-deaf given what they were saying.

A communications professional should be able to handle protesters and at very least should always have a simple rebuttal or simple positive message about their cause ready to make on camera. #nodebate is for people who don’t have an argument.

National Review (a conservative source) covers the week of efforts:

www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/bipartisan-womens-rights-groups-protest-the-equality-act/

Comments somewhat encouraging, with several conservatives wishing to support the feminists on this issue. [Narrowly, on this issue, Monitors]

had to just google HRC

Sorry, I should have clarified. Human Rights Campaign is one of the main LGBT organizations in the US. It is very influential and very involved in helping to write legislation and policies about trans "inclusiveness." Natasha Chart's speech in the OP took place outside HRC offices because many lesbians and bi women feel utterly betrayed by HRC's advocacy against their interests.

More coverage from the National Review today:

Anderson introduced the event by acknowledging that while he and the panel and audience likely disagreed on a range of issues from abortion to taxes, “If ‘gender identity’ becomes a protected class in federal civil-rights law, there will be serious negative consequences. That’s where we agree. And that’s where we can work together.”
...
Major health organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, are moving in the direction of a surface-level, activist-driven “medical consensus” that is anything but — and many doctors who know better are afraid to speak out.

Though Americans enjoy free speech rights, speaking out can still have serious professional and parental consequences. The state of New Jersey, for instance, encourages children to report their parents to child services if they refused to use male pronouns and names.
...
Gender-identity ideology is not a debate between Left and Right, secular and religious. It is being deployed by transgender activists who aren’t prepared to have their arguments scrutinized or tested.
www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/gender-identity-ideology-honest-inquiry-demonized/

Also, to correct an error above: people are saying that Posie's confrontation of Sarah McBride took place at the Senate, not at HRC offices, which I do think casts the video in a different light. Apology for the error.

The Advocate (major LGBT publication) covers the Heritage Panel as "anti-trans":

Some progressives criticized the alliance between TERFs and right-wingers as an unholy one. “They are capitalizing on a scarcity mind-set rhetoric … saying there aren’t enough rights to go around, and therefore we must prioritize cis women over everyone else,” Heron Greenesmith, a researcher at the liberal think tank Political Research Associates, told NBC. “That’s right out of the right’s playbook, when they say, ‘Let’s prioritize citizens over noncitizens, let’s prioritize white people over people of color.’”
www.advocate.com/transgender/2019/1/30/anti-trans-feminists-appear-panel-right-wing-heritage-foundation

So lesbians who don't want to do dick and women in general concerned about their rights are comparable to white people oppressing people of color... Don't they have any actual arguments to make, rather than calling women Nazis and fascists and white supremacists and whatever else?

At least the Advocate quotes WoLF's statement:
But WoLF, which has worked with other anti-LGBTQ groups such as Focus on the Family, defended its participation in the Heritage event. “Due to the increasing push from the lobbyists, government officials, and the medical establishment to institutionalize the medicating and surgical mutilation of gender non-conforming children and youth, of whom a majority may well be gay and lesbian children, WoLF's position is that we cannot afford to ignore those who are concerned about gender ideology, regardless of how vastly we disagree on other political issues,” the group said in a Facebook post.

“WoLF will not shy away from discussing the social contagion of gender ideology with people and organizations whose policies we otherwise do not support. Our foremost concern is the safety and bodily integrity of the women and children whose lives would be placed at risk or ruined if gender identity legally replaces sex under law.”

GrinitchSpinach - thank you so much for going to all this effort to make a real resource of this thread.

Aww, thanks, Lang! I am definitely trying to stay focused on the information and avoid the pie fights...

Here is a piece by Ryan T. Anderson, the Heritage Foundation fellow who moderated the panel there. He explains that it was an (anonymous) mother of a transitioning child who contacted Heritage first, asking them to host the panel after being turned down by countless leftist organizations. More:

Heritage’s founder, Ed Feulner, is famous for saying that it’s better to add and multiply than to divide and subtract. Undoubtedly, the people on this panel disagree about many things. I likely disagree with them about abortion, gay marriage, taxes, trade, foreign policy—just to name a few.

And that’s OK.

Just because we disagree about some things, even many things, that doesn’t mean we disagree about everything. And where we do agree, we can—and should—work together.

Because make no mistake: The current LGBT agenda is poised to affect everyone on both the left and right.

www.dailysignal.com/2019/01/28/the-left-is-shunning-liberals-with-concerns-about-transgender-agenda/

I am definitely trying to stay focused on the information and avoid the pie fights...

You have no idea how much I appreciate that! And this thread. Thank you

Brilliant thread! Great to see the work Posie, Julia and Venice are doing in Washington this week. It's also really interesting to learn more about the political system in the US, and specifically the threat to women contained within the proposed Equality Act.

Chiming in with the thanks, Grinitch It's so important to have the actual record, rather than the reports of what others have said about the record. Primary source material, always.

Thanks Grinitch I remember HRC now from Natasha Chart’s effing brilliant speech outside their offices - a must-watch!

Posie in the background was saying HRC are positioned in the US a bit like Stonewall are in the UK.

Great to see the work Posie, Julia and Venice are doing in Washington this week.

Yes, a lot of people are very pleased with what they've achieved there.

Excellent work Grinitch thanks for maintaining a clear record of the week.

I hope this is the start of a proper debate for the US.

Discovering Natasha Chart is a big plus too. She is excellent.

Thank you so much for all the kind words!

Update: apparently Rush Limbaugh (very conservative, influential radio commenter who...is not a good guy, in my estimation) is discussing the Heritage panel, Julia Beck's speech in particular, right now. I love that Kaeley Triller Haver (one of the conservative founders of Hands Across the Aisle) hopes he doesn't ruin it.

Limbaugh has an estimated listening audience of 13 million people per week. This is HUGE exposure. I just wish it could have come from Rachel Maddow (popular tv political commentator, and a lesbian) or similar. If right wing sources are the only ones to publicize these questions, so many leftists will dismiss them without another thought.

Well, she properly identified him as a guy who raped a woman — and she was accused of “violence” in the language she chose to describe the rapist. She was considered the problem in this story, not the rapist.
...
You’re asking if the guy had a penis, right, while identify as a woman?
I’ll guaran-damn-tee you he did. I don’t know it, but that’s what makes this absurd! I guarantee you. A guy rapes a woman and then says, “No-no! No-no! I’m not a guy. I — I — I — I identify as a woman. I’m transgender,” and the LGBTQ outfit supports him and accuses the woman who correctly identified what happened as engaging in violence. This is the kind of crap, folks. This is permeating schools. They’re teaching little kids now to identify things this way.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/01/31/you-wont-believe-this-headline/

Great work Grinitch!

Rush Limbaugh weighing in on this is huge (as much as I hate him). Maybe I'm wrong but didn't the UK CG wave start with conservative commentators?

Brilliant Natasha Chart writes a very long post about meetings with Congressional staff this week, and addresses Posie and Julia's questions of Sarah McBride at Cannon House Office Building, in McBride's official capacity as a lobbyist advocating the erasure of sex as a coherent legal class for civil rights protections:

McBride is also a public political figure, who was there that morning representing HRC in an official capacity at the Cannon House Office Building, encouraging Congress to support the sterilization of minor children in the guise of a human rights agenda of “acceptance” and “inclusion.” McBride was there that morning to argue that girls in school have no right to bodily privacy when changing for gym class or when first managing menstruation in what should be girls-only bathrooms. McBride was there to argue for an end to girls’ sports, because they want boys to be able to join the girls’ sports teams. McBride was there to overturn decades of women’s rights advocacy, at the head of a movement that has brutally silenced women who dissent.

McBride came to Cannon HOB as a public representative of an organization that claims to represent the human rights of all lesbian and bisexual women, including myself and Julia Long. Yet when Posie and Julia decided to see if McBride would answer their questions, this salaried advocate for the LGBTQ could not even turn around to make a single expression of sympathy to a lesbian woman who clearly felt hurt and betrayed by HRC’s policies, not even to issue a fig leaf of sorry-you-feel-that-way concern. If McBride was truly in too fragile a state to be questioned in public by quite small women then maybe they’re in the wrong line of work

To clarify for a friend: It’s okay with the left to kick Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of a restaurant on her personal time, but not okay to ask Sarah McBride a handful of questions that pertain to their job and the laws that they are currently lobbying for, during working hours, in a House office building, and then walk away to go about one’s own business? Have I got that right?

Lots lots more on the apparently productive meetings with Congressional staff:

womensliberationfront.org/posie-parker-in-the-house/