Was the Election of VA Gov Youngkin a "Win" for Women and Girls?
Was the Election of VA Gov Youngkin a "Win" for Women and Girls?
Loudoun county made national headlines during the 2021 gubernatorial election due to controversy over a proposed gender identity policy for schools. But was the outcome a win for feminists?
During the run-up to the 2021 gubernatorial election, contentious school board meetings in Loudoun county, Virginia made national headlines and became a cause célèbre for feminists fighting gender identity policy. At last, many hoped, the issue of gender identity policy, and its harms to women and girls, would get the kind of attention that might finally slow the trans lobby juggernaut. But has the election of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin produced any wins for feminists?
In May of 2021, the Loudoun county school board proposed a policy that would allow trans-identified students to use restrooms and locker rooms, and participate in school activities, based on their gender identity, rather than their sex. Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA) board president Kara Dansky took a special interest in the case, encouraged by a local activist, Natassia Grover, with whom she had previously worked in Hands Across the Aisle, a coalition group of Christian conservatives and feminists.
In June of 2021, Grover’s 14-year-old daughter Jolene made an impassioned plea to the Loudoun county school board calling for single single sex spaces:
Your proposed policies are dangerous and rooted in sexism…
You do this in the name of inclusivity while ignoring the girls who will pay the price. Your policies choose boys’ wants over girls’ needs.
The following day, Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) and WDI USA, (then WHRC USA), issued a joint statement in support of Jolene Grover and urging the board to vote down the proposed policy 8040. The controversy escalated when it came to light that a 15-year-old girl had been raped in a girls’ restroom by a boy wearing a skirt, that the school board covered it up, then transferred the boy to another school, where he sexually assaulted another girl in a classroom.
Although it is unclear whether the boy is trans-identified - the girl he was convicted of raping says he is “nonbinary” and his mother says he is just “trying to find himself” - the incident confirmed the worst fears of those opposed to males claiming female identity entering private female spaces: If any male can assert that he is female, even if not every day, as “nonbinary” persons do, access private female spaces, and to question him would be “transphobic,” a huge opportunity has been created for predatory males.
The volatile situation reached a climax when the father of the girl who had been raped angrily confronted the school board about the cover-up, got into a heated exchange with another parent, and was dragged out of the meeting by police. The school board then postponed the June vote on the policy until August.
The next day, June 23rd, WoLF special advisory board member Kellie-Jay Keen took to youtube to advise her listeners to check out “right wing alternative news” such as the Daily Wire, the Christian Post, Ben Shapiro, and Stephen Crowder for stories about how parents’ groups are “making a difference.” She implored her listeners, in apocalyptic terms worthy of American right wing radio, (Keen is British), to “take back control” of their schools.
I think that is how you take back the United States, away from the brink of complete and utter end-of-civilization-type chaos.
Outside the August board meeting, at the invitation of Natassia Grover, Kara Dansky spoke against the gender identity policy for a rally of Loudoun county parents concerned about a number of issues that also included mask mandates and curriculum about US race relations and history which they call “critical race theory” (CRT). Later she and Grover testified against the gender identity policy, with Dansky telling the board that her organization was nonpartisan, that she was a “lifelong Democrat,” and that she was speaking for herself, not WDI USA. She continued:
LCPS claims to be committed to providing an equitable, safe, and inclusive learning environment for all students. To do this you must protect female students as a distinct category.
The following day the board voted to approve policy 8040.
In late October, one week prior to the gubernatorial election, Dansky returned to Loudoun county, this time with WDI USA board member Lauren Levey and several other women, to participate in a protest about the newly-adopted policy. On her blog, Dansky insists that the rally was only about the gender identity policy, although parents concerned about other issues, such as CRT, were also in attendance.
That same week, WDI USA posted favorable comments about the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, on Facebook. Echoing right-wing rhetoric about parents and schools, they wrote:
Youngkin frames himself as a candidate who supports "parents' rights" and paints McAuliffe and Democrats as an obstacle standing between voters and their children's education.
Whatever happens, it is past time to put parents first when it comes to their children's education. This is a welcome trend!
On election night, WoLF special advisory board member Kellie-Jay Keen, after an extended rant about “the left,” also spoke favorably of a potential Youngkin victory on her youtube channel:
I really, really hope that… Mr Youngkin is victorious… I hope that he is one of the first of very many genuine victories.
I really do hope at the end of this evening… you feel that your children are a little safer. I hope you feel that the times are about to change for the better. I hope you feel that you finally have been listened to and that your fight and your struggle is actually paying off.
If we can keep our heads above this oily snake pit of liars and cheats and people that want access to our children, then I really do think we can win.
Keen got her wish: Although incumbent Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe won Loudoun county, he was defeated in his bid for re-election by Youngkin. Post election media coverage focused on the role opposition to CRT made to the outcome. Irritated that gender identity issues, and the October protest, got virtually no attention, Dansky complained that “the media isn’t telling us what happened” in Virginia.
The media, however, were not far off the mark. CRT had emerged as a key issue in the “culture wars” the year prior and remained a primary focus of Republican operatives throughout 2021. Identified as a potent weapon for the 2022 midterm elections, Politico reports that:
Former top aides to President Donald Trump have begun an aggressive push to combat the teaching of critical race theory and capitalize on the issue politically, confident that a backlash will vault them back into power…
“I look at this and say, ‘Hey, this is how we are going to win.’ I see 50 [House Republican] seats in 2022. Keep this up,” [Steve] Bannon said. “I think you’re going to see a lot more emphasis from Trump on it and DeSantis and others. People who are serious in 2024 and beyond are going to focus on it.”
The many different groups organizing around school issues, especially CRT, include Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and No Left Turn in Education. While they may originate with grassroots activists, behind the scenes, established right-wing organizations offer “legal help, research, organizing tools and media training.”
Although she campaigned with Dansky against gender identity policy in the summer of 2021, Natassia Grover had already removed her children from public school in August of 2020, citing objections to “critical race theory.” She told a local news outlet:
Little kids don’t have a racial identity until they’re taught one and I know this from my own experience… My kids didn’t even know what race was until they went into the public schools where then they learned the terminology. They did not know that their little friend was Black…
Based on what racial identity they are taught, they are pitched against each other.
Youngkin campaigned against CRT, and immediately prior to the election, 1776 Action, another anti-CRT group, mass-texted independents, telling them that “Loudoun County has become ground zero in the fight over Critical Race Theory-inspired curriculum,” and linking to a webpage indicating that Youngkin had taken the group’s anti-CRT pledge.
The new governor’s political agenda reflected prioritization of CRT over gender identity issues. The day Youngkin took office, he issued 9 executive orders and 2 executive directives. Executive Order Number One is a ban on critical race theory. Executive Order Number Two is a ban on mask mandates. (He has since been sued by numerous school boards and parents groups, including a parents of disabled children group, over the ban on mask mandates.) The third culture wars issue in the school board triumvirate, gender identity, did not merit an executive order, or even a mention in one. Executive Order Number Four requests an investigation by the attorney general into the Loudoun county rape that was covered up by the school board, but that order does not reference policy 8040 or gender identity at all.
Other women’s issues on Youngkin’s agenda include abortion rights and sex trafficking. During the election, Youngkin described himself as “pro-life” but was reluctant to reveal his true agenda. Speaking to an undercover pro-choice advocate during his campaign, he said:
When I’m governor and I have a majority in the House, we can start going on offense [on abortion restrictions]... But as a campaign topic, sadly, that in fact won’t win my independent votes that I have to get…. I will not go squishy, but I got to win in order to stand up for the unborn.
After his election he:
]R]eversed Virginia’s formal opposition to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, represented by a friend-of-the-court brief his Democratic predecessor filed along with 23 other attorneys general, instead urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Upon taking office, the new Republican attorney general for Virginia, Jason Miyares, fired 17 lawyers and 13 staffers, including those working on sex trafficking, saying there was “a new sheriff in town.” Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order Number Seven establishes a new Commission on Human Trafficking which will be staffed by his appointees. It remains to be seen whether the new Commission will better address trafficking, but the firings were almost certainly political.
One of those fired was Tim Heaphy, University of Virginia counsel hired in 2018 “after he conducted an independent investigation of the infamous ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville in 2017 that left one protester dead and dozens others injured.” At the time he was fired, Heaphy was on leave from his University post to work as top staff investigator for the House Select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
It defies credulity to view the election of Youngkin as any kind of “win” for women concerned about the harms of gender identity policy for women and girls, and certainly is not a win for any true feminist agenda. The Youngkin election serves as a template for the upcoming midterm elections. Feminists justifiably angry with the Democrats over gender identity policy and law will not be well-served by promoting contemporary Republicans. We need to develop an independent, strong, collective voice to effectively advocate for our interests, and to avoid getting subsumed by, and abetting, a far-right agenda.