Gender:
Women's Rights in the Crossfire
Democracy in Crisis and the Erosion of Science
Jasmin Faulk
International Women’s Day, 2025 - after well over a century of having this day secured in most calendars around the world, some corporations/organizations in the United States, under the Trump administration, elected to remove it from calendars along with the entire month celebrating Women’s achievements and many other historic dates/months such as Black History Month, Holocaust Day of Remembrance, and Pride, among others.
I did not realize how intensely I’d be impacted by this decision. I am sure the impact is felt by many other women, maybe also the very women who stood around Trump when he declared he would keep women’s sports safe from men and elevate Women’s protections.
My position on most political issues impacting gender rights and equality may not fall under the sentiment of most leftists, perhaps it aligns with some liberals like myself, but either way very little courage is displayed on both sides of the isle when it comes to finding compromising common ground and common sense.
I know much of what I will write about will be labeled as “TERF” views (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), Trans-phobic, and I may even be accused of siding with the radical alt-right, which I believe the only commonality we share is the mere fact that as complex living organisms, we require oxygen to stay alive.
I am not sure when we decided that our social fights had to be ranked in importance and value, but in my 5 decades of life I have witnessed a regression in so many movements that had made strides prior to social media.
Growing up as a young girl in a closed-off society where patriarchy is alive and well and where a combination of religion, culture, and tradition provides justification to oppress, cover, and silence women in every aspect of their existence, I feel some level of entitlement and lived experience as a woman to address some concerns that have been weighing heavily on my mind, even as I happily attend Pride events, and offer LGBTQ Safe Zone Trainings.
Women remain the most challenged and marginalized members of any society, including Western societies. They hold little to no power in governments and organizations, they are compensated/paid less than men, and they are socially seen as decorative ornaments or sacred jewels to be kept in hidden captivity.
Each time the plight of feminism or women’s liberation moves a step forward, some movement or entity in power makes the intentional or unintentional decision that overrides what little progress has been made, shifting the focus on another issue, and keeping women at bay. In recent years, sadly, this threat has come from the very movement for which feminists, gays, and People Of Color fought for and stood by. The Queer/Trans movement has become one of the most provocative movements to threaten the integrity of other social justice plights, despite the unbelievably small percentage of individuals within its community. Let me disclose my view right away before I unpack this last statement: queer and trans folks have every right to exist with dignity, safety, liberty, and respect. They should be assured equal rights under the law like every other member of society so they too may succeed in life. This all has not been an issue, for me and many other liberals (even some conservatives), until it crossed over into women’s rights and safety.
I personally feel no threat sharing a bathroom with trans women, and even men, but I am not the product of a traumatized lived experience where I have been violated and experienced a life-threatening event that causes me to feel “triggered” (a word often used in the trans/queer community) and unsafe at the thought of a biological male body present in a safe space designated for women.
As a Women’s Rights activist, I will defend the right for women’s voices to be heard and their needs to be met on this issue. When was it ok to discount women’s concerns without even basic consideration? For what reason? How does a small percentage of trans women (many of whom still live with intact male biology) have this much power? Throughout history women have had to fight men to feel safe, and now many of them see this as an extension of that very fight: men appropriating their lived experience as women in order to impose on them and their safe spaces. I will not argue with that, I think trans women have a right to exist and they deserve to feel safe, however, I unapologetically believe that women MUST be heard and their concerns cannot be dismissed by the very people WOMEN fought to liberate and protect. There have been many solutions proposed for the bathroom problem, from gender natural bathrooms, to single bathrooms, to 3 labeled bathrooms. All of those work because they offer safety not only for women, but for trans women and trans men as well.
Great! Problem solved! Or is it? What about sports? What about prisons? What about lesbian spaces? Let’s just say, these have all been areas women needed to secure in order to feel safe and/or succeed. I believe women’s sports should not include biological males, I believe prisons should provide a gender neutral section (for trans and non-binary individuals), I believe lesbians should be allowed to have women only (biological women) spaces, and both gay and straight women should not be obliged to feel attracted to trans women or trans men for fear of being accused of being transphobic (and let’s stop using the word “phobic”, none of this is an irrational fear of anyone, and in this case, it is not hate or discrimination either).
Here’s where I will lose anyone on the left with common sense who so far has agreed with my views (I know most have despised everything I’ve said)—I might potentially gain applause from those who feel no empathy for the trans community, how sad— but I am not desperate for the approval of the bullies in any community, and I feel called to spell out some obvious realities that many have chosen to simply avoid. It is unfortunate that this issue is seen by both sides as one of ONLY two ways this can be addressed. I have no issue saying trans women should feel as joyful in their bodies, clothes, experiences, and live as women — but I also believe they are trans women, not women, and some aspects of womanhood will never be part of their experience or give them the right to speak on behalf of women with said lived experiences. Leaving aside all the controversy around the social topics mentioned above (sports, prisons, dating, etc.) we must address the outright basics: health.
While a tiny percentage of trans women will experience some type of breast cancer (like men), the impact of this disease as well as other reproductive organ diseases will not be something they will ever experience or understand like a woman does, including reproductive rights, and childbirth (and no, men do not give birth, a trans man who gives birth is a biological female). As a breast cancer survivor myself, I can tell you that I have been exposed to shocking conversations around how language is expected to change around women’s health. In some places the word “woman” is no longer acceptable; we’ve been asked to use: assigned at birth, female body, menstruator, womb or uterus havers, people with vagina, breast feeders, and the list goes on. Cambridge dictionary defined a woman/female as someone “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male” — well then what the hell is a male? This is not only absurd and ridiculous, it is insulting and dangerous.
I have seen statistics reflecting a decrease in some reproductive organ cancers in women, such as ovarian, uterine, breast, and cervical — something to celebrate one would think, but not when the statistics include trans women (as small a number as that may be — and many of whom identify as trans women without any medical transition). This alters the biological/medical accuracy of these statistics and in turn effects research, funding, and treatment for women as they continue to be diagnosed younger and at higher percentages still today, despite survival rates getting better or statistics being altered.
How have we gotten to this place? How have we allowed a social issue to become a biological and political issue? I refute whole heartedly that the biology of male and female is not scientifically real. I am more than happy to adjust and accommodate social change and even some linguistic tweaks, but I think we have reached a new level of radicalism when on one extreme we have believers claiming the earth is flat, and on the other extreme we have people who do not believe in the biology of 2 sexes/genders.
Gender! As the title of this article states, it all boils down to this word. The trigger word which has deeply harmed women. Let us go back to the beginning: gender and sex have been used interchangeably throughout history. Some argue there is no distinction, others claim they mean different things. Sex is the biology, while gender is the social attributes. Regardless of whether there is common agreement or not, it is elemental that we agree both are rooted in the distinction of a binary prospect. The social construct of gender is based on traits that derive from the understanding of female and male (both biological). Many don’t agree with this view, but around the world, for centuries, gender and sex have been used to mean the same thing; gender was seen as a more “polite” way to refer to the body parts one is born with, since the word sex brings to mind two individuals going at it. Etymological and social history shows us the use of the word gender dating as far back as the 12th century; sometimes used to mean biological sex, other times meaning social/cultural attributes of men and women.
The phrase "gender role" was introduced by New Zealand-American sexologist John Money, making its first appearance in written form in 1955. Money described it as encompassing everything an individual expresses or performs to reveal their identity as a boy or man, or as a girl or woman — maintaining the foundation of the argument rooted in the binary biology of male and female. Money’s work has been praised by many as revolutionary in sexology, while others have accused his methods and theories for being cruel and inhumane; I encourage the reader to research Money’s controversial treatment in the tragic twins John/Joan Case of the 1960s.
If gender meant “roles and attributes” already, why did Money have to coin the phrase “Gender Role”? isn’t it redundant? Perhaps not, since gender had become synonymous with sex. Feminists and sociologists in the late 20th century have used the term “gender roles” — later shortened to gender, once again in the 21st century— to address its damage on women’s freedoms and place in society. Gender roles as a social construct was meant to address the stereotypes that men and women, boys and girls are expected to adhere to in order to be “normal”; boys like trucks, girls like dolls, men go to work, women cook and clean. This distinction was crucial in shaping the transformation of old fashioned lifestyles into a more liberated and equal society. Instead, once shortened (again), we have lost the original meaning, and replaced it with an alternate reality that now claims gender and sex are vastly uncorrelated and we find ourselves opening up doors to fantasy worlds where we have multiple genders and sexes on a biological level — and not just the widely accepted “gender spectrum”, which affirms fluidity between male and female ways of expressing (including androgyny or non-binary spectrum). I believe in the gender spectrum, and I think it is a valid aspect of the human experience, one we’ve seen throughout time and cultures— so long it does not erase, replace, negate, and attack the common and biological fact of the male and female truth.
I won’t address “intersex” because it is a medical condition that develops for various biological/environmental reasons and occurs in very rare human and animal cases. It is not a third gender/sex or one of hundreds of genders/sexes (as has been declared in a BBC documentary, or even downsizing to 5 sexes as sexologist Anne Fausto-Sterling asserts), it is a biological anomaly which should not be weaponized in the name of and in defense of trans/queer issues.
So where do we go from here? It is unfortunate that we got so carried away with this issue that democrats ended up losing all political power, over an issue impacting a SMALL percentage of society, yet takes so much space in every aspect of our lives: movies, social media, stores, brands, classrooms, the economy, organizations, sports, etc., etc.
We now live with the consequences of all of this madness.
I say madness because anyone claiming, questioning, discussing, debating, challenging, researching anything on the topic of gender, transsexuality, and queerism is automatically cancelled, shunned, punished, and labeled (hence my newly acquired label TERF because of my simple commitment to discourse and my longstanding role as a Women’s Rights activist)
Let’s pause and consider that this issue is very much an issue of privilege and elitism. Yes, I said it. Nowhere else in the world are democracies collapsing because they are questioning the existence of biological sexes, in fact nowhere else in the world (outside of the elite West) is anyone questioning or confused about biological sex. We have bypassed our commitment to racial, ethnic, and cultural safety and integrity and asserted this fictionalized version of science as the one issue to supersede all other human rights violations. It is offensive and insulting to many traditions, to many religious practices, and to historic societies who have yet to experience freedom from the grip of colonial intrusions. Today they are victims of ideological colonialism and manipulation. Through social media, conflating any human rights issues, political and social issues with queer/trans victimhood is a self-serving and self-indulgent tactic.
I have spent many years doing this research — I don’t speak, write, and debate these things to be inflammatory, disrespectful, or even controversial. I sat quietly and observed, I supported the trans/queer community without hesitation, and when I witnessed and experienced the damage caused to the liberation of women and the progress of Women’s Rights I decided it was time to address it. I have many trans people in my life whom I love dearly, several of whom agree with me and actually taught me some of the assertions I stated. I want them safe, happy, and I celebrate who they are every single day. But just like I have and continue to call out the wrongs and dangers of parts of my oppressive cultural/religious upbringing, while celebrating the beautiful parts of being Arab and aspects of the gifts that some religious practices offer, I invite all trans/queer activists and advocates to call out the wrongs and damages of some aspects of these beliefs —which resemble a cult mentality — and instead, offer a balanced view of what is truly beautiful and worthy of celebration, being authentic, while also having a grip on reality; not forgetting that when we’ve seen facts and science ignored or rewritten throughout history it was due to political/religious oppression — silencing, censorship, and denying facts is never the answer.
When we die and only bones are left, many things cannot be scientifically proven because they are social constructs: our race, our skin color, our religion, our ethnicity, our job title, our marital status, and our economic wealth (or lack there of); the only thing we can confirm scientifically—without a doubt— because it is NOT a social construct— is which one of the two biological sexes (genders) we were born as.
