While all of Christendom honored the passion and death of Jesus Christ for the redemption of all mankind on Good Friday, Democratic governor Ralph Northam decided to sign into law two legislative acts that will make women and girls in Virginia more vulnerable to predation and physical harm, each in different ways. Northam, of course, insists his actions will “make women and families safer.” He is inexcusably wrong.

The Madness That Ate Women

I’m through being polite. It is disgusting and offensive to get orders claiming to benefit and protect women from those who cannot even define “woman” objectively, scientifically, rationally.

Northam, like the rest of the elite ruling class that now serves at the pleasure of the gender-identity agenda, wants to force all women and girls to pretend there is no difference between males and females, and to sacrifice their own privacy and safety so that delusional or predatory men can have the rights of women.

The new law, which becomes effective July 1, 2020, reads:

It is an unlawful discriminatory practice for any person, including the owner, lessee, proprietor, manager, superintendent, agent, or employee of any place of public accommodation, to refuse, withhold from, or deny any individual, or to attempt to refuse, withhold from, or deny any individual, directly or indirectly, any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services, or privileges made available in any place of public accommodation … to any individual on the basis of … gender identity.

In plain language, this effectively means there can be no such thing as a women’s restroom, dressing room, shower, locker room, or shelter. Every public space reserved only for women is officially discriminatory. Women no longer have the right to separate themselves from men for any reason. Women no longer have any right to privacy or safety while in a public restroom or a store’s dressing room or the showers at the gym or the homeless shelter.

How Dare You, Governor?

Listen up, Governor, and listen well. You have no right to force any woman to accept conditions that will place her in the presence and company of men while she is in any state of undress, or while she is vulnerable to harm. You have no right to demand that I swallow my objection to this immoral invasion of privacy. You have no right to demand that our daughters just get over their discomfort at sharing intimate spaces with strange men. How dare you legislate such indecency and misogyny?

How dare you claim to care about women as you dictatorially erase from public existence every space and facility designed to ensure the privacy, safety, and equal rights of women? Let me explain it to you in simple terms. A woman is an adult human female.

There is no male on planet Earth who is now or ever can be a woman. There is no male in existence who has any “right” to occupy and use facilities designated for women and girls. Your law allows the feelings and claims of men to annihilate the reality of womanhood and the genuine rights of women.

You Can’t Protect People From Sex-Based Discrimination and Say Sex Is Meaningless

Your own law is a ridiculous contradiction and irrational nonsense. In one sentence it claims to “Safeguard all individuals within the Commonwealth from unlawful discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex … gender identity.”

Then it goes on to state, “The term ‘gender identity,’ when used in reference to discrimination in the Code and acts of the General Assembly, means the gender-related identity, appearance, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.”

How can the law recognize the reality of biological sex as the basis of outlawing unlawful discrimination, and in the next breath claim that biological sex is irrelevant, inadmissible, and essentially meaningless since it is merely “designated” at birth? How can something be both recognized and protected by law and utterly immaterial at the same time? How can the objective reality being protected from discrimination suddenly become the source of discrimination?

This is pure madness. Women and girls are not made up only of feelings and appearances. We are female — a biological, objective human reality. Not a costume for a man to put on, or an “identity” for a man to claim.

Calling Kermit …

Northam also signed the so-called Reproductive Health Protection Act which wipes out several protections in the law regarding abortion, making women more vulnerable, not more protected. No longer is it required that abortions be performed by a doctor. Physician assistants and nurse practitioners will be allowed to perform them.

The new law also removes all requirements that women be given the accurate medical explanation of the abortion procedure, with all risks associated. It removes the requirement that an ultrasound be done prior to the abortion and women offered the option to see that ultrasound. It eliminates all requirements that abortion clinics must adhere to hospital safety and cleanliness standards.

See for yourself the stricken paragraphs in the law and ask yourself if this protects women or the abortion industry.

Northam and the Democrats think women should not be fully informed about what an abortion procedure involves and all the risks thereof. They believe women should not see the ultrasound images of their babies. Women should not even be offered the chance to see such an image. Women do not warrant the care of a doctor, or the safety and sanitary standards of a hospital.

Gosnell is good enough.

Politically Correct Misogyny

Governor Northam had the gall to boast, “No more will legislators in Richmond — most of whom are men — be telling women what they should and should not be doing with their bodies.”

The irony is thick. You, Governor, (a man) are telling the women of Virginia exactly what they must do with their bodies by requiring them to share female-only public spaces and facilities with men who claim to be women. You’ve made every girl and woman in Virginia vulnerable. You’ve left them without recourse or protection. That makes you a public villain, not a hero.

 

Jennifer Hartline is a senior contributor to The Stream. You can follow her at @jenniehartline.