The Shifting Sands of Right Wing Apologia in the Gender Identity Struggle

In the wake of the Brighton SFW controversy, WDI USA president Kara Dansky suggests the political sands are "shifting" in the direction of right wing moderation. I offer a counter perspective.

In her latest blog, the president of the US chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA), Kara Dansky, weighs in on the controversy over the presence of far right activists at a recent Standing for Women (SFW) event in Brighton. No newcomer to criticism of feminists working with radical right wing organizations to fight gender identity policy, Dansky notes she has been “roped into these debates” since 2016 and finds them “tedious.” Back in 2016, she was on the board of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) when that organization accepted a grant from Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian right wing legal advocacy group dedicated to eradicating the separation of church and state. The action sparked controversy among WoLF members, causing a number of them to leave the organization.

The current controversy involves WoLF special advisory board member, and founder of SFW, Kellie-Jay Keen. SFW regularly organizes “speakers corners” events outdoors where members of the public are invited to take the mic and discuss whatever is on their mind, though their primary concern is gender identity policy. At their September 18th event in Brighton, two men from Hearts Of Oak, a far right organization, live-streamed the event. Their advertising for the livestream made it appear as if they were partnering with SFW. 

During the livestream, Hearts of Oak tweeted at the SFW twitter account.

Also spotted at the event was far right provocateur Michael Chaves and right-wing commentator Sophie Corcoran. To add to the confusion, a documentary film crew was also present, filming the event. Keen mentioned in one of her pre-event videos that a film crew would be present, but it’s not clear whether everyone knew until they arrived. Certainly Keen did not mention it in a letter she sent, (published on twitter), to high profile women she personally invited to her event.

Local Brighton and other left-oriented feminist activists raised the alarm about the far right presence and called on Keen, and some high profile women who had attended, to publicly distance themselves from the far right. They also criticized Keen for not notifying women that far right representatives would be live streaming.

Keen did not indicate whether she knew in advance of the far right presence, but certainly she has friendly relations with one of the founders of Hearts of Oak, a former member of the nationalist UK Independent party (UKIP), Carl Benjamin (aka “Sargon of Akkad”). Benjamin interviewed Keen for his youtube channel Akkad in 2020 and a podcast in 2021.

The event ignited a social media firestorm with those defending against criticism of a far right presence arguing that nothing can be done about people showing up for a public event and filming, that everyone has a right to free speech, that they are willing to work with anyone to defeat gender identity policy, and that it’s hard to know who is “far right” anyway.

Dansky similarly suggests that it is difficult to determine who is “far right;” after all, Dansky’s cousin who objects to Dansky’s politics called her a “fascist” on twitter, so who really knows? Further, Dansky notes:

Gloria Steinem worked closely with pro-choice Republican Jill Ruckelshaus on abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment. Radical feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon famously worked with conservatives in the 1980s to advance an anti-pornography law. 

The belief, widely repeated, that feminists and conservative Christians worked together on  anti-pornography legislation has been thoroughly debunked by sociologist Nancy Whittier. Her comprehensive analysis of archival materials, government documents, transcripts of hearings, amicus briefs, correspondence between anti-pornography leaders, and organization documents between 1981 and 1991 found “separate and opposed” movements that did not “publicize or praise each other’s protests, let alone coordinate or cosponsor them.” While MacKinnon did provide “backstage” advice to Christian anti-pornography leaders, she did not do so as a movement representative and was strongly criticized by other feminists. Whittier concludes:

[W]hile antipornography feminist and antipornography conservative movements shared a similar goal… they did not possess the characteristics of a coalition. They differed in the ideological and strategic bases for this goal, their ties to elites, and the specific legislative and policy changes they supported. Unlike coalitions, they did not have pre-existing ties, overlapping networks, or compatible collective identities, and they did not develop agreed-upon frames or coordinate strategically. They explicitly opposed each other’s larger social movements, ideologies, and agendas and did not engage in shared collective action.

(For an in-depth analysis of Whittier’s work, see Elizabeth Hungerford’s podcast).

Note also that Dansky substitutes “conservative” for “far right” when discussing these collaborations. It is significant that her examples hearken back to the 1970s and ‘80s. The Republican party of that era had yet to move to the far right. The social movements - antiwar, civil rights, women’s rights -  of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s had created a progressive political climate so powerful that it was difficult for the Reagan administration to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court who did not support the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). (He ultimately appointed Sandra Day O’Connor, who did support the ERA and was considered a “moderate.”) 

It wasn’t until the Council for National Policy and many of its member organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation and Concerned Women for America, started to make headway in their push to roll back the gains of those movements that the Republican party began its rightward march. Katherine Stewart, who has studied Christian nationalism for more than a decade, describes the movement as an authoritarian political ideology and says that the Republican party today is its “host vehicle.”

Dansky cites a lone contemporary example, Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), as evidence of her assertion that “some pockets of ‘the Right’ are looking less and less ‘Right.’” Dansky notes that Mace is in favor of abortion rights “under certain circumstances.” Yet Mace, along with every one of her Republican House colleagues, last July voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have enshrined abortion rights at the federal level, and failed to vote on the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act, which would have protected interstate travel to obtain an abortion.

Dansky is right that the “sands” of left and right are shifting - but not in the direction she suggests. The weight of the evidence is against her argument. As journalist Jennifer Rubin noted recently, if there are moderate Republicans today they are:

a small minority in the party. Most are all too comfortable with the extremism and violent rhetoric of their peers.

Authoritarian white nationalist movements are on the rise worldwide, including in Italy, Sweden, and even Canada. Members of far right groups have turned up at Drag Queen Story Hour protests in the UK. In the US last year, the Proud Boys turned up at contentious school board meetings about gender identity policy and critical race theory. Feminists cognizant of the larger political context within which our struggle occurs are right to be alarmed about right wing presence, influence, and attempted infiltration at women’s events. Instead, their concerns have been trivialized as “guilt by association” and “purity politics.” As UK feminist activist Jeni Harvey notes:

[W]e are at a dangerous crossroads. A movement supposedly for women and girls can allow itself to be co-opted by nationalists, racists and woman haters, therefore damaging it irreparably and rendering it unfit for purpose. Or it can draw a line.