Last week, Kansas lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pass a law defending biological sex, overriding a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS). Naturally, the law has gender ideologues in a panic. The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement accusing Republicans of intentionally endangering the lives of “transgender” youth, and activists pretending to be journalists at the Kansas City Star derided the Independent Women’s Forum, an organization of which I am a part, as a “national anti-trans group” because we dared to support it.
This playbook is as predictable as it is tiring. Fall ever so slightly out of line with the Left’s orthodoxy, and the accusations of bigotry, discrimination, fearmongering, genocide, and so on start rolling in.
LOUISIANA ADVANCES BILLS BANNING SEXUAL ORIENTATION DISCUSSION IN K-12 CLASSROOMSNoticeably, the critics of Kansas’s law have not bothered to try and engage with either its text or its intent. All the bill does is reaffirm the biological definitions of gender that have been accepted and agreed upon for thousands of years:
Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas:
Section 1. (a) Notwithstanding any provision of state law to the contrary, with respect to the application of an individual’s biological sex pursuant to any state law or rules and regulations, the following shall apply:
(1) An individual’s “sex” means such individual’s biological sex, either male or female, at birth;
(2) a “female” is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova, and a “male” is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female;
(3) the terms “woman” and “girl” refer to human females, and the terms “man” and “boy” refer to human males;
(4) the term “mother” means a parent of the female sex, and the term “father” means a parent of the male sex.
The law also protects women’s intimate spaces, including restrooms, locker rooms, and domestic violence shelters, from men:
Notwithstanding any provision of state law to the contrary, distinctions between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, restrooms and other areas where biology, safety or privacy are implicated that result in separate accommodations are substantially related to the important governmental objectives of protecting the health, safety and privacy of individuals in such circumstances.
Which part of the law do gender activists find so offensive? The part that says women have the right to privacy and safety or the part that rebuffs the Left’s efforts to turn sex into a meaningless free-for-all?
Kansas’s law is both accurate and necessary. Just last week, a boy who claimed to identify as a girl walked into a California high school’s girls’ locker room, exposed his genitals to a group of girls, and spat on them. He then physically attacked one of the girls after she confronted him.
A similar incident occurred in Wisconsin the week prior. According to reports , an 18-year-old boy “fully undressed” in front of four 14-year-old girls in the girls’ locker room and, standing fully naked, told them, “I’m trans, by the way.”
Do women’s rights matter or don't they? Kansas’s law makes it clear that they do. The gender activists who oppose it, on the other hand, would subject every single sex-exclusive space in the country, and every woman who depends on them, to male intrusion. That is bigotry.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICAKaylee McGhee White is the editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.