Biden has completely obliterated woman’s sex based protections as he said he would do.

[yourfaceisaforeignfood]

www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-preventing-and-combating-discrimination-on-basis-of-gender-identity-or-sexual-orientation/

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports."

Biden just passed all the worst parts of the Equality Act by executive order (so without going through any legislation at all). It is limited in effect to agencies (I think) but those agencies include the Bureau of Prisons, Dept of Housing and Urban Development, Dept of Education, Dept of Labor etc

This will of course be unchallenged, even welcomed by the media. It will likely have a knock on effect around the world.

And I am so angry. So so angry. He was never the ‘least worst option’ he is the absolute worst option.

As Abigail Shriner says
twitter.com/abigailshrier/status/1352121732723666946?s=21

ODFOD!!!

@ktp100

ODFOD!!!

@Jux I was struggling to understand the issue as well. However after spending time thinking about it and reading other posts, my understanding is this - but I could be entirely wrong!

Abortion is a woman's issue, a woman's right. To wipe the right to abortion out is to wipe one of the rights of a woman out. Hard to do when there is legislation and laws against sex based discrimination. However when the definition of woman is opened up to any human being, then you can't argue an issue as a woman's issue anymore; it then becomes an issue that affects everyone. So therefore the issue can't be protected as a sex based right anymore. So it then becomes harder to protect. So on the context of abortion, should there be any detrimental changes to abortion rights, we don't have the backing and support of our sex based rights to protect us. So what protection do we have....?

As I say, perhaps I've misunderstood but this is my understanding.

@Tootsweets23

I've observed that progressives in the US do not think about any of the detail. This is a civil rights issue for them, and therefore to even engage in questioning or seeking logic is in itself bigoted. So super bright intelligent people are vigorously and vehemently arguing for trans rights and dismissing any questioners or fact seekers. This is very common in social justice activism where group think and homogeneity of thought is part of the identity. It gives you a club to belong to, and it ask questions of the club is a sin. If there are only two tribes, then you don't want to leave your tribe as who the hell wants to be in the other one with trump and evangelical Christians and rioters and fascists?

I've seen this all over twitter this morning. People who I assume are otherwise of at least average intelligence saying things like "what's the issue? There won't be any males in those spaces - TWAW"

The group think and lack of critical thought is astounding.

@Whatwouldscullydo

Except you would have to be living under a rock to not have heard about ir know about potential issues.

Are we supoosed to believe a man set to run a country hasn't picked up a newspaper or a phone the entire time.

What have his staff all been doing?

Seems to me that in the US an issue doesn't exist unless it's on CNN or in the WaPo. Biden and his staffers won't be reading Mumsnet and they won't have heard of the likes of Yaniv because that only gets reported by niche publications. Social media as we know operates via algorithms so they probably are just in a feedback loop. The only place they might have heard complaints is Fox News and to everyone in the Biden administration Fox News = Faux News.

Hypothetical scenario:
Two people are made redundant when they announce their pregnancy at work. They sue their former company for sexism. They lose the case because both men and women get pregnant, therefore it was not sexism.

To those of you implying that we are all overreacting, such as Quaagars how do you respond to that scenario? Who was right in this scenario?

Sorry, just backtracking a second, but I'm still laughing about this from the top of page 6.

Gosh many on this board are illiterate

What a way to flag up that you're not the most reliable narrator.

@zanahoria or anybody else might know, who is likely to challenge this in court? A private individual? Or does it have to be a politician?

@nauticant

Some clarification about challenging Executive Orders:

Congress may try to overturn an executive order by passing a bill that blocks it. But the president can veto that bill. Congress would then need to override that veto to pass the bill. Also, the Supreme Court can declare an executive order unconstitutional.

www.usa.gov/how-laws-are-made#item-35862

Obviously Congress will be a no-go for the foreseeable future so it looks like any challenge would have to go up to the Supreme Court.

Who could make such a challenge? Is access to the legal system in the US dependent on wealth?

I would be very interested in supporting a court case if they need resources etc, I hope they get the backing they need to take this all the way franke

Do we even think there are groups/voices/movements that are prepared to challenge this Executive Order? It would be good to know who they are if anyone knows.

Seems to me that in the US an issue doesn't exist unless it's on CNN or in the WaPo. Biden and his staffers won't be reading Mumsnet and they won't have heard of the likes of Yaniv because that only gets reported by niche publications. Social media as we know operates via algorithms so they probably are just in a feedback loop. The only place they might have heard complaints is Fox News and to everyone in the Biden administration Fox News = Faux News

Nah I'm.done buying the faux ignorance.

Know enough to have this written up to bring in the day after you are elected whilst simultaneously not having heard of even one opposing view...nah

You expect even children to be able to discuss opposing sides of an argument.

That was funny to be fair absinthe

My guess Franke is that it would need to be a person ("person" can include a legal entity such as a company) who is adversely effected. This is called having "standing", "locus standi" in Latin.

Have a look at the "Standing requirements" here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)#United_States

As I wrote above TheWordWomanIsTaken, I think going down the Supreme Court route, the action would require someone adversely effected and bucketloads of money, or a legal firm deciding to pursue it heavily discounted/for free for some reason.

As an aside, the US Collegiate sports system, helps many people from disadvantaged backgrounds into D1 colleges via sports scholarships.

How would you feel if your athletically gifted daughter had an athletics scholarship to an Ivy league college.

How would you then feel, if during the trials for said scholarship, she was competing against 'girls' who were running 1.5 seconds quicker in the 100m.

Your daughter then loses her scholarship, and if you can't find the huge amount of money, loses her education.

I know there are lots of discussion as to what constitutes males and females.

But lets look at some hard and fast numbers

'Mens' 100m world record 9.58
'Womens' 100m World record 10.49

The womens world record would not have even qualified for the mens semi final in 2012 Olympics. To put it into context, she would not even be the fastest person on the Suriname Olympic squad.

That is not a level playing field.

I haven't read this thread but as I said on a similar thread started yesterday this was promised months ago.

US gender critical feminists have been campaigning against this.

They held zoom meetings.

They wrote explanatory papers about the damage to women and girls.

So if anyone today is surprised it just indicates that in fact posting info on mumsnet clearly doesn't have much of an impact.

And yes of course a lot of women who say they are feminists are saying the priority is / was getting rid of trump. As always women's rights are never equal with others rights, they only happen when there is nothing else to do.

So like the GRA, because we weren't paying attention, this has now happened and not many people care or now despite the efforts of US campaigners.

@feelingquitehopeful

Do we even think there are groups/voices/movements that are prepared to challenge this Executive Order? It would be good to know who they are if anyone knows.

At the moment there's WoLF. That's about it outside of right wing orgs.

I don't think women in the US are organised enough to tackle this yet. That's not meant as a criticism, more an observation. They have bigger hurdles to overcome than we did in the UK and nothing like the framework of the Equality Act to hang it on.

Beyond that even things like geography pose a problem. Here in the UK you can pretty much travel anywhere in the space of a day. Certainly in pre Covid times this was a big advantage.

If I was to make a suggestion I think they need something like the ReSisters network state by state.

Isn't this just democracy in action? He said repeatedly he would do this, it was a central plank of his campaign and he had a resounding election win, so isn't it right that politicians actually carry out the policies they were elected to pursue?

I very much doubt most people in the US will notice. Many states have had protections like these in place for years - New York has had laws ensuring trans inclusion in single sex spaces for a decade without incident. I'm pretty sure women still exist in New York. It's not actually that much different from the UK protections for trans people in the Equalities Act.

Anyway to widen this protection is a good thing for all LGBT people and it's good to see that he has carried out his pledges so far on both LGBT rights and the Paris Agreement. Hopefully he will now insist the UK Government pledges to protect trans inclusion here as part of any future trade deal. Boris sure looks nervous, I expect Truss is even more perturbed :)

@nauticant

As I wrote above TheWordWomanIsTaken, I think going down the Supreme Court route, the action would require someone adversely effected and bucketloads of money, or a legal firm deciding to pursue it heavily discounted/for free for some reason.

This is my worry, if you are wealthy enough to access the legal system to challenge this then college fees are unlikely to be troubling. So it would need to be a crowd funding/legal pro bono type thing. I am ready to dig when our US sisters need me to do so.

Isn't this just democracy in action? He said repeatedly he would do this, it was a central plank of his campaign and he had a resounding election win, so isn't it right that politicians actually carry out the policies they were elected to pursue?

This
People knew what he was "for", he still won, so he's getting on straight away with doing stuff he'd said he'd do.

Hopefully he will now insist the UK Government pledges to protect trans inclusion here as part of any future trade deal. Boris sure looks nervous, I expect Truss is even more perturbed

Really? You're smugly hoping that he blackmails the UK into destroying women's rights here too? I mean, I'm not surprised, I've never, ever seen you express the tiniest dot of sympathy for actual women, but...wow.

Trans people already have rights and protections under UK law.

Suggesting a president interferes with a foreign power...

I doubt Truss will be at all perturbed and Boris has his hands full, so apart from a congratulatory call as is customary I suspect business goes on as normal, as normal as can be during a pandemic.

The U.K. is not the USA.