A Possible solution for the Politically Homeless American Woman
As a lifelong left-of-center American woman, I had always felt a home within the Democratic Party. I felt assured that the Democrats had my back, my rights as a priority. I haven't, however felt that way for the past few years. I have a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and Psychology, a Master's in Public Policy. I know that the right-wing GOP is not for me, it's in stark contrast to so many of my values, but I cannot and will not continue to ignoré the rampant misogyny that has become fashionable on the American Left. I know I'm not imagining it.
I'm not imagining, as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, the violent event denil of Hamas supporting leftists who demand their right to see footage of Israeli Jewish women & girls raped before they’ll stop denying that Hamas raped anyone on October 7.
I’m not imagining those leftists claiming that even if Jewish women and girls were raped by Hamas, they stand with the “resistance” of “freedom fighters” regardless.
I am not imagining as a female athlete, all my life, President Joe Biden unlawfully rewriting Title IX (originally an academic and - athletic equal rights for females act of congress, the forty-sixth president reduced the female sex class to an identity, creating provisions that would punish female athletes & female students who challenge males in school female bathrooms, sports, “as guilty of sexual harassment”…the females. Not the males invading sports and spaces for females.
I’m not imagining- as a lesbian, the bullying of female homosexuals by males who “identify as” lesbians, sending hideous threats of violence for reaffirming our right to organize and gather in public and online- without including men.
Nonetheless, I was raised by an old school tolerant liberal. I know several women who remember what it was like before Roe v Wade. I feel sick when I read stories of women and girls in red states being denied abortions in cases of rape, incest, and pregnancy complications that threaten the life of the mother. While I’m glad to see conservatives advocating for saving female’s rights to single-sex spaces and sports, in my heart, I know there is no home for me in the GOP.
But it’s time for so many women and girls to acknowledge the Democrats have betrayed us, as well.
I believe there is a solution that would give the 51% of the American population that are female, to take back a home in the two party system we have, and with which we are indisputably stuck.
The Tea Party/Freedom Caucus, from 2010-2016, were able to remake the GOP with a strategy of primary-challenging Congressional Republicans nationwide.
For women like me, lifelong Democrats like Erin Friday, Kim Russell McGinness, Kara Dansky, and countless others I believe the solution lies in borrowing this strategy to create a Female Rights Caucus- in challenging the authoritarian, misogynistic, and antisemitic extremists who have taken over the American left. (The Reckoning and Why I Remain a Democrat) ("At least Ted Cruz understands men don’t belong in women’s prisons")
Too many Americans do not feel represented by the extremists who have hijacked both parties. Too many American women feel that neither party is free of woman-hating agendas. We feel politically homeless.
In the United Kingdom, female-rights campaigner Kellie Jay Keene has registered a new political party, the Party of Women. While I am quite inspired by this and the women candidates across the pond, I understand that would work in a unitary parliamentary system of proportional representation will not work in our federal presidential system with a two-party duopoly and a first past the post system.
https://www.partyofwomen.org/
This is why I believe that a strategy to recreate a political home for ourselves is essential.
Countless women voters have tried to persuade the policymakers we already have to return to the values of the old school Democrats. They have ignored us. Too many Jewish Americans have tried to get the Democrats to care about October 7, to care about and feel outraged by the vicious sexual assault of Jewish women and we have been faced with hideous comparisons to the Nazis.
Let’s do what conservative men had no doubt about doing successfully- and let’s take back the American left for women and girls, for all female rights, rather than accepting the choice between two parties as they currently stand- making the 51% of the American population play the Hunger Games for some, but not all, of females’ rights.
A Female Rights Caucus and strategy of congressional primary challengers would be a start on creating something like the Party of Women that would be realistic and effective within the American political system. Whether your priority is reproductive rights or the boys cheating your daughters in their own sports, ending the cruel and unusual punishment of permitting violent male offenders in women’s prisons, our sex-based rights must be restored for all of the above.
As American attorney Kara Dansky writes in her book, The Reckoning: How The Democrats & The Left Betrayed Women & Girls,
The rights- all rights, of females in the United States, were built and won on the basis of biological sex. (Think of Justice Ginsberg’s career- the many discrimination cases she brought… “on the basis of sex”)
The entire history of women’s rights as well as the oppression from which feminism sought to liberate females- is on the basis of sex. Including abortion. The dangers of altering law and policies that afford protections and rights on the basis of sex- to be replaced with gender/gender identity cannot be overstated. Kara explains her front row seat to this while working at the ACLU, and the indignities being inflicted on women and girls as a result, so grave that she left her job.
This is as true for policies like Title IX as much as it is of abortion. What is a more uniquely female condition than pregnancy? The erasure of legal protections for the female sex class is yet another obstacle created to federal protections for female reproductive autonomy, (this one served up to the extreme right by the Democrats- whether they admit it or not.)
The vast bipartisan more than 2/3s majority of Americans stand opposed to males in female-only sports, single-sex spaces- (Gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/507023/say-birth-gender-dictate-sports-participation.aspx , Rasmussen, IPSOS, NBC/WaPo, ADF links below to see more polling)
The vast bipartisan greater than 2/3s majority of Americans believe abortion should be federally protected, too. ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/383496/ )
The vast majority of Americans are crying out for a political option that won’t hurt the women and girls in their lives in the vein of fringe extremists dictating policy for this great country.
Let’s give them - & ourselves as females that option. If we work together, we could be prepared with a strategy and women candidates nationwide for the 2026 midterms.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna88940
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_d92e61d6-4184-11ee-b811-8f28243a04e6.amp.html
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/npr-transgender-issues-2022