Frenemies & Feminist Advocacy: Whatever Happened to Women's Liberation?
Reflections on successful political organizing in a deeply polarized country - and whether working with frenemies of feminists can advance women's liberation.
The deep partisan divide of the American electorate in recent decades has forced activists to rethink their organizing and to develop strategies for bringing together citizens with diverse political perspectives to achieve specific goals. In some cases, as I describe below, they have been successful. Alarmed by the impact of gender identity policy on rights and protections for women and girls, and faced with the Democrats’ seeming intransigence on this issue, some feminists have tried to advocate for women by working with anti-feminist organizations on that specific issue. But will this strategy advance women’s liberation?
This essay traces the evolution in my thinking about political organizing over the last ten years, beginning with our stunning defeat in Wisconsin in 2011, through my recent experiences with what was then Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC USA), now Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA).
Organizing Across Difference That Worked
In February of 2011 what came to be called the “Wisconsin Uprising” erupted in Madison, with tens of thousands of protestors in the streets and an occupation of our statehouse that lasted two weeks. Newly elected governor, and Tea Party candidate Scott Walker, had introduced what he called a “budget repair bill,” legislation that reflected an American Legal Exchange Council (ALEC) agenda. The bill included “power grabs” such as removing control over changes to Medicaid from the legislature to a gubernatorial appointee, proposed sale of public land without bids, cuts in health care and pension benefits for public employees, and restrictions that effectively gutted collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. Many of the provisions went far beyond what he had campaigned on.
I lived in Madison then, and we went every day to the protests. It was the place to be - and what a ride it was! Raucous, intense, exhilarating - and hopeful. At last, I thought, the people have risen up! The positive energy was palpable, and in the beginning, it really seemed that defeat was impossible. Eventually, however, using bully boy tactics, and violating open meetings law, the Republicans forced the legislation through. It was a bitter defeat. Years later, when I’d have a community screening of my documentary, Divided We Fall, about the events, invariably, someone would come up to me afterwards, voice choked with emotion, and say things like, “I knew you were at the film fest. I knew you had screened at the Barrymore. I just couldn’t bring myself to relive it until now.”
Shell-shocked by the loss, many local activists sought to understand what went wrong - and how we could change the politics in our state. Wisconsin is famously a “swing state,” where the rural/urban divide is exploited to create a polarized electorate almost evenly divided between Republican and Democratic voters. Presidential elections are fiercely contested; in 2016 Donald Trump won the state by only 23,000 votes.
The summer following the protests, local activists organized a Democracy Convention, with speakers from across the country, to explore progressive political organizing around a number of issues. I was most impressed with the talk Ruth Caplan, then with Alliance for Democracy, gave describing her experiences helping to organize citizens in rural areas to oppose corporate control of their water. Ruth spoke of bringing together people with diverse political perspectives, such as a Rastafarian biodynamic gardener and a Vietnam vet who voted for George Bush, to successfully institute an ordinance in Barnstead, New Hampshire that protected water as a community resource for both people and the environment:
We the people of Barnstead declare that all our water is held in the public trust as a common resource to be used for the benefit of Barnstead residents and of the natural eco-systems of which they are a part. We believe that the corporatization of water supplies in this community, placing water in the hands of a corporate few, rather than the community, would usurp democratic processes and result in tyranny and that we the people are therefore duty-bound under the New Hampshire constitution to oppose such usurpation and tyranny.
Caplan said similar ordinances had been instituted in three other communities in New Hampshire and two in Maine, and that face-to-face organizing was key.
A year earlier, Jane Kleeb was faced with a different challenge than the one we faced in a swing state: How to move a progressive agenda in a Republican stronghold like Nebraska? The answer, she realized, was to create a grassroots organization independent of the Democratic party. She founded Bold Nebraska, an alliance of ranchers, farmers, environmentalists, Democrats, and indigenous people, to fight the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
The planned pipeline would carry heavy tar sands through the delicate ecosystem of the Nebraska Sandhills, a national natural landmark, and through the Ogallala aquifer, one of the world’s largest, that underlies portions of eight states, including South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. Tar sands pipelines have been found to leak at three times the rate of those carrying conventional crude, and tar sand is more difficult to clean up.
First Nations people in Alberta, Canada, where the tar sands are extracted, had already been resisting tar sand pipeline construction for a decade. Though defeated in Canada, Clayton Thomas-Müller and his colleagues organized US tribes to pass resolutions to oppose Keystone XL, and these tribes presented their demands to Barack Obama during their annual White House dinner with the president.
Jane Kleeb reached out to the cowboy and Indian alliance, after learning during a summit on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, that they had successfully stopped uranium mining in the 1980s.
I went to tribal leaders and said we should revive the cowboy and Indian alliance and do events along the pipeline route. We did a concert with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, and ‘Reject and Protect’ on the Mall.
The environmental group 350.org invited these grassroots groups for a number of protests in Washington, DC. Ultimately, they were successful in blocking the pipeline. President Obama refused to grant the cross-border permit; President Trump issued the permit; and President Joe Biden revoked it permanently. In June of 2021, TransCanada dropped plans for the Keystone XL.
WDI USA, the Big Ocean Women, and the Reality of Working with the Right
These are some of the experiences and events that influenced my thinking when I joined what was then called Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC USA), now Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA). Though a life-long progressive and feminist, I thought that perhaps cross-partisan organizing might be the way to go to defeat gender identity policies that are infringing on rights and protections for women and girls, given the Democrats’ deaf ear to our concerns. The reality, however, proved more challenging than I first imagined, and ultimately, I realized, unfeasible.
An early skirmish illustrates the problems. Before we had organized a steering committee, when were just a group of signatories to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, (the founding document of WDI), meeting together, Valerie Hudson, a political science professor and the George HW Bush Chair in the Department of International Affairs at Texas A & M university, reached out to our country contact1 and expressed an interest in getting involved with WDI USA. Hudson told our CC that she might be able to bring in the Big Ocean women, a group of Mormon self-described feminists. Our CC believed this would be a great opportunity for the group; assistance from a well-placed, influential insider and a potential two thousand increase in US signatories to the Declaration. At the time, US signatories numbered about one thousand; in one fell swoop, we could potentially triple that total.
Others of us saw red flags and began doing a little research. Hudson, who describes herself as a feminist, seeks to improve the status of women globally, as she believes that is the key to security and prosperity for a country. Her lens, however, is the “traditional” family. In response to a New York Times op-ed defending gay marriage, Hudson wrote:
The gender arrangements privileged by the state determine its potential for democracy, peace, and gender equality. There is only one form of gender arrangement–companionate heterosexual monogamous marriage—that provides the sustainable foundation for these public goods. The state will be harmed if it fails to privilege the only gender arrangement that promotes such profound public benefits.
The “feminism” of the Big Ocean women is similarly aligned; founder Carolina Allen describes her mission as “hijacking” feminism and replacing it with their brand of “maternal feminism.”
Some of us thought the inclusion of these conservative women in our fledgling organization would conflict with our feminist goals. They were anti-abortion, and how would their promotion of the traditional family affect lesbian issues? Others argued that we should work with anyone to defeat harmful gender identity legislation and policy. At the time we had several conservative signatories attending the meetings, who wanted to know why we were interested in abortion at all? Why didn’t we just get on with work on the gender identity issue? One was a Catholic anti-abortion activist who expressed great enthusiasm for bringing in a “conservative feminist” like Hudson.
Clearly, some of us assumed WDI was intended as a feminist organization; we knew that the authors of the Declaration are feminists.2 Others, however, seemed to assume that WDI is a single-issue organization. It didn’t help that Article 3 of the Declaration does not explicitly affirm abortion rights. An anti-abortion conservative could sign it without feeling she is going against her beliefs.
The text states simply:
States should ensure that the full reproductive rights of women and girls, and unhindered access to comprehensive reproductive services, are upheld.
(Leadership of WDI confirmed for this post that Article 3 is intended to affirm abortion rights.)
Unlike Bold Nebraska, or the small towns where citizens of diverse political persuasions came together to assert water rights, our diverse group of women met over zoom and had only our political goals to unite us - and we hadn’t agreed on what specifically those were, or how we would get there. In contrast, the farmers, ranchers, environmentalists, and other opponents to the Keystone XL pipeline that Jane Kleeb sought to organize had a common identity as Nebraskans and a shared attachment to the land. She also took the time to build a grassroots organization, meeting with rural people in their communities to talk about the issues and hear their concerns.
We never had those conversations in WDI USA, nor did we work out a long-term strategy with short- and long-term goals. Rather than operating from an agreed-upon feminist framework, with a set of inter-related issues that we wished to address to accomplish female liberation, we operated in the moment, reacting to whatever aspect of gender identity policy arose in the latest news cycle, or which piece of upcoming legislation the Title IX coalition, (which included anti-feminist organizations such as Concerned Women for America and Alliance Defending Freedom), had identified as something we might want to address.
By default, WDI USA evolved as a single issue organization, prioritizing one feminist issue over all others. This is most apparent in WDI USA’s recent statement on the Women’s Health Protection Act, pending federal legislation which would grant abortion rights. At a political moment when it appears likely the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v Wade, when Texas has passed a law offering $10,000 to citizens for successful lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion, when Missouri lawmakers are attempting to pass a law to ban termination of ectopic pregnancies, WDI USA refuses to support the WHPA.
WDI USA concedes that:
Having a woman’s right to abortion codified in federal legislation, enforceable in every state, is a crucial milestone for women’s rights.
Their objections are that WHPA “protects a woman’s right to abortion only until the fetus is ‘viable,’” and that language in the bill “enshrines so-called ‘gender identity’ into the WHPA.” Although “all people with the capacity for pregnancy” is ridiculous language, the necessity for protecting women’s health through ensuring access to abortion in this political climate should surely override battles over language, especially considering, unlike sports, for example, the language does not cause infringement of women’s rights. WDI USA’s blog post does not indicate whether they support WHPA, so I asked directly and they did not respond to this question.
We also did not discuss, as we were forming our organization, what “working with the right” means, what implications that might have for overall women’s liberation, nor what limitations, if any, there should be to working with groups opposed to feminist issues other than gender identity policy. “Working with the right” could mean small groups, where some individual women are conservative, to achieve some specific goal in their local communities.
It could also mean working with powerful, well-funded groups such as Concerned Women for America (CWA), Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and Heritage Foundation, that are part of the Coalition for National Policy (CNP) and whose theocratic goals are inimical to feminist objectives. This is the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) strategy that former WoLF board member Kara Dansky brought to WDI USA, the organization of which she is now president - with majority support. Although we did ultimately vote against inviting the Big Ocean women to join us back in 2020, virtually all of the women involved with WDI USA at the time, many of whom had been members of WoLF or friends with WoLF women, were on board with WoLF’s practice.
The image at the top of this piece depicts a touching moment between then WoLF president Natasha Chart and CEO of Concerned Women for America Penny Nance. After Chart’s tearful speech at a rally in front of the Supreme Court in October of 2019, Nance stepped up to give her emotional colleague a warm embrace. It was a sincere gesture, I believe; one woman offering comfort to another woman in distress. Nevertheless, I am certain that Nance, however kindly as an individual woman she feels towards another individual woman, never forgets for a moment her institutional role and the mission of her organization.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) was founded in 1979 by Beverly LaHaye specifically to oppose the women’s movement and the National Organization for Women (NOW). Their stated mission is to “protect and promote Biblical values” and to “impact the culture for Christ through education and public policy.” CWA has consistently opposed the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and continues to do so, “meeting regularly with Senate offices” to lobby against it. Although Americans were involved in creating the convention, the United States is the only industrialized democracy, and one of a handful of UN member states, that have not ratified CEDAW. The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, the founding document for WDI, draws on CEDAW to articulate nine articles affirming sex-based rights for women and girls.
CWA also regularly lobbies against re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) - and did so even before the language was changed from “women” to “adults.” In 2012, for example, Janice Shaw Crouse, a senior fellow at CWA’s research arm, the Beverly LaHaye Institute, railed against VAWA, calling it a “boondoggle” for feminists and an attack on men. And, of course, CWA also opposes homosexuality and abortion rights.
Further, CWA is part of a network of organizations, including media and think tanks, called the Council for National Policy (CNP). Founded in 1981, CNP seeks to advance corporate interests and theocratic goals in what journalist Anne Nelson (Shadow Network, 2019) calls a “pluto-theocracy.”
Bold Nebraska, and Ruth Caplan’s groups working for water rights, brought together constituencies of roughly equal footing (e.g. ranchers, environmentalists) to fight against powerful political players; specifically, corporate interests that destroy our environment and seek to control natural resources. WoLF and WDI USA, on the other hand, work with organizations significantly more powerful than their own, and that are part of a larger network seeking to uphold and extend a patriarchal system, and even to take back the gains we have made.
One of the mantras of those advocating such a strategy is that we need to “put aside our differences” and just focus on “gender identity.” While I agree that gender identity policy is a serious threat to women’s rights and privacy, the call to put aside the rest of our feminist agenda depoliticizes our work and disempowers any movement to advance women’s liberation. It means that we can’t talk about, or effectively advocate for, our other issues. It limits our ability to address the systemic nature of our oppression. It fractures our work and blunts our mission. And if our organizations become dependent on our more powerful, senior partners, we risk co-optation.
In an extraordinary weeks-long tweet storm about her experiences with WoLF, former leader Natasha Chart reported that during the six-month period prior to her ouster, she raised $1.5 million cash in hand and pledged future donations for the organization!
She also shared an image of a WoLF bank statement showing nearly $500k in their account.
It is highly unlikely that this lavish sum of money was raised from the feminist community. This kind of funding does not come without strings attached. WoLF appears to be seriously compromised; their credibility damaged, perhaps beyond repair.
Advancing our project of female liberation will not be achieved through compromising our mission to gain the favor of our “frenemies.” We need an independent women’s movement, built from the ground up, as Jane Kleeb and her fellow citizens did with Bold Nebraska. To paraphrase Audre Lorde, The master's organizations and political networks will never dismantle the master’s patriarchal house.
To launch country chapters, WDI provides the woman who has volunteered to be “country contact” with a list of signatories from her country to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, the founding document of WDI. The country contact then reaches out to those signatories to get something organized.
WDI does not state on its website that it is a feminist organization; however, leadership contacted for this article confirm that it is.