California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent flippant remark to conservative activist Charlie Kirk on his podcast made my heart sink. After four years of fighting to reinstate the most basic human rights for women in California, his casual admission that it’s “unfair” to allow boys to compete in girls’ sports left me with an overwhelming emptiness.
This is the same man who has signed bill after bill contributing to the erasure of the very concept of women and girls, the leader in the biggest step backward in the history of women’s rights. It was sickening watching him since I knew that this casual admission that biological reality exists was a strategic attempt to appear far less radical and maybe even reasonable to someone who is not familiar with the controlled culture climate in California.
I’m familiar with Newsom’s record. He is not moderate. He is not reasonable. He has been actively putting women’s safety and dignity at risk. This isn’t about female athletes but women in the California prison system.
By allowing men — including violent male sex offenders — to transfer into women’s prisons by merely claiming to identify as women, he has inflicted cruel and unusual punishment on incarcerated women. Any actual moderation will require him to champion major changes in law, reinstating protections for women, and apologize to all the women he has made suffer.
I did not fully understand the extent of the unfairness of men competing in women’s and girls’ sports until I met Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan at my first big ambassador event for Independent Women. This isn’t about scholarships and medal stands. When Paula explained that she had to repeatedly change her bathing suit in front of a boy, my blood ran cold. I immediately recognized the same evil that has allowed fully intact male-bodied prisoners to be housed in women’s prisons. It shook me when I learned these young ladies were silenced by their schools and told not to complain if they wanted to keep their spots on the team and graduate. Women in prison are also advised to shut up and keep their heads down if they want to go home. Female college students and prisoners are being pushed aside, told their rights and safety is a secondary concern to the sensibilities of men who claim to identify as women.
Women prisoners are used to feeling abandoned. As someone who spent five years in a California facility for women, I know that for all the talk about rehabilitation, too often, prisoners are seen as subhuman. We were often things to be housed, not human beings trying to pay our debt to society and to heal and become whole.
Most incarcerated women are victims of abuse, including sexual abuse. This doesn’t excuse any crime, but it should give context to the trauma that helped lead us there and the healing that we need to help us on a path to reintegrating into society and becoming healthy, productive citizens.
You don’t have to have been a female prisoner to be able to imagine how being forced to share intimate living spaces with men affects women. Women fear for their safety. Their scant privacy is further eroded. They endure other female prisoners’ reactions to having men in their shared spaces.
What has Newsom said about this?
Nothing. The governor has said nothing other than to pledge allegiance to the system that is sidelining women. He allows California to pervert data collection, so it’s hard to know how bad things are on the inside. Is the spike in “female on female” violence really women hurting other women? Or has the word “woman” been altered so the violent women are really men who have been convicted of abusing women and are now continuing their craft while incarcerated?
Democratic senators in California recently voted to reject the motion for legislation that would have recognized the definition of “sex” based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth in Title IX and ensured that women’s sports are reserved for women. That position has the support of more than 80 percent of the public, according to recent polls. Still, the Democratic Party is so committed to gender ideology that not one broke rank.
If Newsom wants to show he is moderate, that he is on the side of common sense and fairness, how about he answers a question about what’s happening to women in the prison system? How about he recognizes not the unfairness but the abject cruelty of housing male convicts with women?
Let’s hear it, Governor Newsom. Until you stand up for common sense prison policies, I will continue to see you for the radical that you are, who is willing to sacrifice women’s interests to radical gender ideology.