Kamala Harris Is No Feminist | Opinion

Kamala Harris, we are told, embodies what women voters have been waiting for. With a chance to become America’s first female president, she sought to assure us in her convention speech that “in matters of heart and home” (meaning, apparently, just abortion), she is the only logical choice. But women are not nearly so primitive. Even those who subscribe to identity politics can see that Harris is no feminist. In fact, it is entirely fair to deduce from her record that Kamala Harris is anti-woman.
As vice president, Kamala Harris has co-led the first administration in American history that cannot definitively say what a woman is. Her administration’s uncertainty over this biological certainty has not just been philosophical. Within the first 100 days of taking office, Joe Biden and Harris unveiled Executive Order 13988 to “prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.” Veiled in faulty legal analysis, the directive set the entire federal government on a crusade for genderlessness in every aspect of American society—including employment, housing, health care, and education—the practical effect of which has been decidedly bad for women and girls.
Take, for example, Biden and Harris’ attempted hijacking of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National School Lunch Program, which provides free lunches to low-income school children in public and nonprofit schools around the country. In May 2022, the USDA announced that the program’s prohibition on sex discrimination would now extend to discrimination based on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” While the announcement was coupled with no examples of schools denying access to free lunches for eligible students of any persuasion, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack explained that “LGBTQ+ students needed to be provided with an avenue to grieve any discrimination they face.”
In other words, a male student identifying as female could now hold his school’s free lunch program hostage if denied access to the girl’s restroom. Ms. Harris remained characteristically silent as school administrators were forced to weigh whether to have a cafeteria full of hungry low-income children or a girl’s bathroom full of boys.
The administration then announced that USDA’s WIC (Women, Infants, Children) program would also prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. WIC, of course, is a special supplemental nutrition program that serves low-income pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women, as well as infants and children up to age five. States, all of which administer the USDA program through their health departments, were asked to confirm that they had adopted policies to support the needs of pregnant and “breastfeeding/chestfeeding” parents with diverse gender identities, including “updated bathroom signage to be more inclusive of all gender identities” as well as “counseling tailored to individuals to be more inclusive of all gender identities.” Again, Kamala Harris said nothing as pregnant and nursing mothers were told to shut up and share government assistance, and clinic restrooms, with gender-confused men.
Harris then enlisted her hand-picked Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to the cause. In October, the EEOC issued new Title VII guidance informing America’s employers that it would now be considered sexual harassment to intentionally refer to an employee by the wrong name or pronoun or to deny access to bathrooms or other sex-segregated facilities consistent with an employee’s gender identity. Aside from exposing companies to limitless liability, the guidance failed to consider how the proposal would damage employee morale and productivity or acknowledge the extreme psychological toll this experiment would exact on women in the workplace.
These were mere inconveniences, however, compared with the grand election-year finale. In April of this year, the Biden-Harris administration announced its comprehensive rewrite of Title IX, the celebrated federal law passed in 1972 to protect women from discrimination in education. The rewrite memorialized the Biden-Harris decree that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination was to be read to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
In other words, every K-12 public school in the country was to become gender-free by the start of the 2024 school year if federal funding was to continue. While conspicuously staying mum on sports, the administration’s policy mandated absurdities ranging from boys in girls’ restrooms and locker room showers, to boys in girls’ hotel rooms on overnight school trips.
Here again, the safety and comfort of America’s young women were readily sacrificed—either in favor of boys struggling with gender dysphoria or simply to satisfy the whims of the fanatical Left.
Kamala Harris hails herself as the only candidate who can be trusted to protect a woman’s right to privacy, while trailblazing an unprecedented attack on women and their privacy throughout her tenure as vice president. Just two weeks ago, the administration touted the Biden-Harris record on “women’s equality” despite focusing its efforts on the fluid concept of “gender equity.” This, again, revealed Harris’ reluctance to advocate for women on any issue other than abortion. While Kamala believes she’s said all she must to secure women’s votes, her silence speaks volumes.
Liz Murrill is Louisiana’s 46th Attorney General. Katherine Robertson serves as Chief Counsel to the Alabama Attorney General.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.