On October 23, Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted about the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality (NSGEE). The strategy outlines ten areas of concentration, ranging from closing the pay gap, eliminating “gender-based violence,” “protecting access to healthcare,” equal opportunities in hiring, and full participation in public life.
Some Helpful Categories?
Some of these concentrations are helpful, though admittedly apparent areas, that one would hope would not require specific federal policies to recognize for a society to act. Take, for instance, the “elimination of gender-based violence.” Who couldn’t get behind this type of policy? Unfortunately, if you are hoping that such a policy would seek to curb the well-documented epidemic of violence toward women in the pornography industry, you would sadly be mistaken. Apparently, as long as the violence comes with a contract and is consumed by millions of people over the internet, that type of “gender-based violence” is permissible and protected under current legal precedents and this national strategy.
It is not, however, only sins of omission, like the neglect of gender-based violence in the pornography industry, that makes this national strategy problematic. There are also actual sins of commission with which a moral, freedom-valuing society should be concerned.
The Issues
First, the “national strategy” is full of language that appears helpful on the surface but is ultimately rooted in the worldview of intersectionality that often prioritizes personal feelings over verifiable facts. The Biden Administration is self-aware in its affirmation of the intersectional worldview, which ultimately destroys its own.
Second, the strategy represents an ever-expanding role of the federal government in public life. Political conservatives should be alarmed any time a government writes itself a blank check like the one found in this strategy. More government will not solve our national problems.
Third, the strategy feigns concern for minority women while continuing to argue that abortion is healthcare. Abortion, however, is singlehandedly the greatest systemic injustice ever perpetrated against minority women in the United States. A policy cannot claim to be pro-minority women while also supporting policies that encourage their exploitation and abuse by men. Abortion is abuse, not healthcare.
It Does Not Work Like That
These three issues alone would be worth the rejection of the NSGEE, but there is a more fundamental issue at play that cannot be overlooked: the issue of so-called gender justice in a world where gender can supposedly change at a moment’s notice.
Here is what I mean: If the category of “woman” is endlessly fluid and able to be appropriated by anyone within society apart from any objective, transcendent standard, then any strategy that aims to bring about “equality” and “equity” for all who identify as a “woman” is bound to fail. The strategy has no actual, achievable destination because the destination (i.e., – “equality” and “equity” for “women”) has no fixed relationship to reality.
Strategies like the one put forth by the Biden administration have no definable end because the categories they are using are always subject to change based upon the preferences and self-determination of the participants. Such a policy is fundamentally unjust, which is ironic because the strategy claims to work for justice. Justice requires a fixed standard.
Real Injustice
Those who care about justice and fairness for women should oppose policies like the NSGEE that allow for the functional erasure of women because of the embrace of transgender ideology. The category of “woman” must have some transcendent, fixed meaning if a government is going to work for the good of those who belong to such a category. If the category is constantly subject to rule changes and amendments, then true justice is unachievable. Where the category of “woman” is definitionally subject to the whims of a culture that is drunk on gender confusion, actual women will be the ones who are hurt.
The NSGEE is fundamentally unjust toward actual women. A society cannot work for justice and equality for women if it doesn’t even know what a “woman” is.
