Thank you, Sara and Genspect. Just cross-posted to my Stronger Women subscribers. This is my local high school and community swimming pool, and I spoke to the school board and county board about it. Currently I'm boycotting due to this policy.
I'm dismayed that the Democrat running for VA Governor, Abigail Spanberger, is silent on this issue, while the Republican candidate takes a stand for women and girls. This is Trump redux: the Republicans are the only ones standing up for common sense and women's rights, which may lead to another loss for Democrats, who have traditionally been the only ones with all the right positions on every OTHER women's rights issue.
Thank you for the deep dive into the racist sign - which was held by a volunteer for Spanberger, alas. So far, that woman has not been fired from the volunteer position.
Thank you for this, it means a lot to hear from someone right there on the ground. I’m sorry you’re in the position of having to boycott your own pool just to keep your daughter safe.
Even if Spanberger has tried to distance herself from the sign, it doesn’t change the bigger problem: the policy itself. Girls are still losing their privacy and parents are still being ignored. Condemning a placard is easy. Taking a stand for safeguarding would mean something. Instead, it’s women like you paying the price for policies that put girls at risk.
Thanks too for linking your piece, I’ll read it now.
I hope Spanberger gets better informed! people in my party seem to think that if they question gender issues they no longer qualify as Democrats. Which is ridiculous.
So, we are back to the usual American history in which states violate peoples' civil rights in the name of "our values" and "our way of life" and the federal government is unwilling or unable to stop the illegal discrimination. This is precisely why the federal government had to use military force against the states that were united in their defense of racial discrimination and oppression.
I live in Oregon. I would love to see more federal law enforcement and military presence in my county, because the state government and local governments support violence against citizens who care about their cities, and against law enforcement personnel who try to preserve order.
How much are counties like Arlington and Fairfax reliant on federal funding to keep their schools open? Aren't they among the richest counties in the country?
I, too, am an Oregonian. I share your desire to topple a status quo in which "the state government and local governments support violence against citizens who care about their cities, and against law enforcement personnel who try to preserve order."
I would welcome federal law enforcement in Portland, but only if the intervention were planned and implemented in a way that would bring about effective and lasting change sooner rather than later. I lack faith in the Trump administration to accomplish that. Also, Portland did not earn the nickname of Little Beirut on the strength of its Lebanese cuisine. Given a very real shortage of cops on the Portland police force and our local elected officials' unwillingness to crack down on disorder, the usual smashy-smashy lefties would re-emerge to riot and kick downtown even closer to the brink. It does not help that our idiot Instagram Governor is actively daring the lawless Attorney General of the U.S. to lower the boom on Oregon because of the state's longstanding refusal to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration law.
Unfortunately, what the feds very likely cannot do is remove the elected socialists and their fellow travelers who are now installed in City Hall, throw the incompetents and ideologues out of Multnomah County government or clean house in the bureaucracies and nonprofits that are perpetuating our chronic problems.
The conventional wisdom is that the military are not trained to engage in law enforcement in a civilian population. The operative term is "trained." The strategies and methods that are practically reflexive among the troops are not the kind we want to see applied to members of the public in Portland.
Thanks for your response, which as always, is nuanced and well informed.
I work with law enforcement personnel and agencies and have heard very similar comments from them. The cops on the street get exhausted, burned out and demoralized by the relentless assaults by antifa and their associates in an environment where the cops are prohibited by city and state governments from doing their jobs. Law enforcement officers who have some expertise in riot control have said the same things you did about National Guard and military troops generally not being trained in domestic riot control.
And ultimately, your point about the feds not being able to fix what the local and state governments have broken is the main problem. It is the failures at those local levels, and even more, the intentionality of the enabling of urban destruction, that triggers frustration in me. At the same time, controlling urban crime is the responsibility of urban governments, unrestricted by crime enabling state governments, and federal action won't necessarily serve as a good substitute.
I am no longer a Democrat and I support most of Trump's policy decisions, but I agree he often uses a sledge hammer when a scalpel would be a better choice.
The most important distinction, too often overlooked, is that the civil rights movement was a demand for individual equal treatment under the law. It was firmly anchored in the finest traditions of our liberal constitutional democracy. Black Americans sought nothing more radical than to enjoy the same rights as every other citizen—to vote, to attend public schools, to sit at lunch counters, to walk through the front door of a hotel or courthouse. Likewise, the gay civil rights movement was a fight to remove discriminatory laws that barred gay men and women from equal participation in civic life: repealing sodomy statutes, securing employment protections, winning marriage equality. Both movements were aspirational but not alien; they asked America to live up to its own highest ideals of liberty, equality, and dignity. Though vilified in their time, they were grounded in universal human experience and constitutional principle.
By contrast, gender identity ideology has no such grounding in constitutional law or lived human need. It is not a movement for equal access to existing rights but a demand that society reshape its laws, institutions, and even its language around an unprovable inner sense of self. It does not grow out of centuries of exclusion and oppression but out of a recent academic philosophy, devised in elite enclaves, that treats sexual identity as infinitely malleable. Its goal is not to remove unjust legal impediments that once deprived Black or gay Americans of rights, but to overturn sexual norms that have structured human society across all cultures and all recorded history.
The civil rights and gay rights movements were about removing arbitrary barriers—ending segregation, repealing criminal bans, dismantling exclusions that denied people their place as equal citizens. Gender ideology, in contrast, seeks to erect new and sweeping barriers: policing speech, restricting women’s boundaries, coercing assent to beliefs about sex that many do not share. Where civil rights expanded freedom by dismantling injustice, gender ideology contracts freedom by imposing a new orthodoxy.
This is why the analogy to civil rights is not merely false but deeply corrosive. It cheapens the legacy of movements rooted in constitutional principle and lived human struggle, replacing them with a project grounded in theory, abstraction, and institutional bullying. In truth, gender identity ideology is a counter-liberal movement—a project to replace rights with ideology, equality with hierarchy, and freedom with compelled belief. To compare the right of a gay couple to marry—or a Black child’s right to attend an integrated school—to the demand that women surrender their locker rooms to men is not solidarity. It is an inversion of the very idea of rights.
The Ts hijacked the LGB rights movement, too.
Thank you, Sara and Genspect. Just cross-posted to my Stronger Women subscribers. This is my local high school and community swimming pool, and I spoke to the school board and county board about it. Currently I'm boycotting due to this policy.
I'm dismayed that the Democrat running for VA Governor, Abigail Spanberger, is silent on this issue, while the Republican candidate takes a stand for women and girls. This is Trump redux: the Republicans are the only ones standing up for common sense and women's rights, which may lead to another loss for Democrats, who have traditionally been the only ones with all the right positions on every OTHER women's rights issue.
Thank you for the deep dive into the racist sign - which was held by a volunteer for Spanberger, alas. So far, that woman has not been fired from the volunteer position.
My first story on this topic, in case anyone wants more background: https://strongerwomen.substack.com/p/transgender-man-exposes-himself-in
Thank you for this, it means a lot to hear from someone right there on the ground. I’m sorry you’re in the position of having to boycott your own pool just to keep your daughter safe.
Even if Spanberger has tried to distance herself from the sign, it doesn’t change the bigger problem: the policy itself. Girls are still losing their privacy and parents are still being ignored. Condemning a placard is easy. Taking a stand for safeguarding would mean something. Instead, it’s women like you paying the price for policies that put girls at risk.
Thanks too for linking your piece, I’ll read it now.
I hope Spanberger gets better informed! people in my party seem to think that if they question gender issues they no longer qualify as Democrats. Which is ridiculous.
Does she know about di-ag.org ?
These should not be rights only one party stands for!
So, we are back to the usual American history in which states violate peoples' civil rights in the name of "our values" and "our way of life" and the federal government is unwilling or unable to stop the illegal discrimination. This is precisely why the federal government had to use military force against the states that were united in their defense of racial discrimination and oppression.
I live in Oregon. I would love to see more federal law enforcement and military presence in my county, because the state government and local governments support violence against citizens who care about their cities, and against law enforcement personnel who try to preserve order.
How much are counties like Arlington and Fairfax reliant on federal funding to keep their schools open? Aren't they among the richest counties in the country?
I, too, am an Oregonian. I share your desire to topple a status quo in which "the state government and local governments support violence against citizens who care about their cities, and against law enforcement personnel who try to preserve order."
I would welcome federal law enforcement in Portland, but only if the intervention were planned and implemented in a way that would bring about effective and lasting change sooner rather than later. I lack faith in the Trump administration to accomplish that. Also, Portland did not earn the nickname of Little Beirut on the strength of its Lebanese cuisine. Given a very real shortage of cops on the Portland police force and our local elected officials' unwillingness to crack down on disorder, the usual smashy-smashy lefties would re-emerge to riot and kick downtown even closer to the brink. It does not help that our idiot Instagram Governor is actively daring the lawless Attorney General of the U.S. to lower the boom on Oregon because of the state's longstanding refusal to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration law.
Unfortunately, what the feds very likely cannot do is remove the elected socialists and their fellow travelers who are now installed in City Hall, throw the incompetents and ideologues out of Multnomah County government or clean house in the bureaucracies and nonprofits that are perpetuating our chronic problems.
The conventional wisdom is that the military are not trained to engage in law enforcement in a civilian population. The operative term is "trained." The strategies and methods that are practically reflexive among the troops are not the kind we want to see applied to members of the public in Portland.
Thanks for your response, which as always, is nuanced and well informed.
I work with law enforcement personnel and agencies and have heard very similar comments from them. The cops on the street get exhausted, burned out and demoralized by the relentless assaults by antifa and their associates in an environment where the cops are prohibited by city and state governments from doing their jobs. Law enforcement officers who have some expertise in riot control have said the same things you did about National Guard and military troops generally not being trained in domestic riot control.
And ultimately, your point about the feds not being able to fix what the local and state governments have broken is the main problem. It is the failures at those local levels, and even more, the intentionality of the enabling of urban destruction, that triggers frustration in me. At the same time, controlling urban crime is the responsibility of urban governments, unrestricted by crime enabling state governments, and federal action won't necessarily serve as a good substitute.
I am no longer a Democrat and I support most of Trump's policy decisions, but I agree he often uses a sledge hammer when a scalpel would be a better choice.
The most important distinction, too often overlooked, is that the civil rights movement was a demand for individual equal treatment under the law. It was firmly anchored in the finest traditions of our liberal constitutional democracy. Black Americans sought nothing more radical than to enjoy the same rights as every other citizen—to vote, to attend public schools, to sit at lunch counters, to walk through the front door of a hotel or courthouse. Likewise, the gay civil rights movement was a fight to remove discriminatory laws that barred gay men and women from equal participation in civic life: repealing sodomy statutes, securing employment protections, winning marriage equality. Both movements were aspirational but not alien; they asked America to live up to its own highest ideals of liberty, equality, and dignity. Though vilified in their time, they were grounded in universal human experience and constitutional principle.
By contrast, gender identity ideology has no such grounding in constitutional law or lived human need. It is not a movement for equal access to existing rights but a demand that society reshape its laws, institutions, and even its language around an unprovable inner sense of self. It does not grow out of centuries of exclusion and oppression but out of a recent academic philosophy, devised in elite enclaves, that treats sexual identity as infinitely malleable. Its goal is not to remove unjust legal impediments that once deprived Black or gay Americans of rights, but to overturn sexual norms that have structured human society across all cultures and all recorded history.
The civil rights and gay rights movements were about removing arbitrary barriers—ending segregation, repealing criminal bans, dismantling exclusions that denied people their place as equal citizens. Gender ideology, in contrast, seeks to erect new and sweeping barriers: policing speech, restricting women’s boundaries, coercing assent to beliefs about sex that many do not share. Where civil rights expanded freedom by dismantling injustice, gender ideology contracts freedom by imposing a new orthodoxy.
This is why the analogy to civil rights is not merely false but deeply corrosive. It cheapens the legacy of movements rooted in constitutional principle and lived human struggle, replacing them with a project grounded in theory, abstraction, and institutional bullying. In truth, gender identity ideology is a counter-liberal movement—a project to replace rights with ideology, equality with hierarchy, and freedom with compelled belief. To compare the right of a gay couple to marry—or a Black child’s right to attend an integrated school—to the demand that women surrender their locker rooms to men is not solidarity. It is an inversion of the very idea of rights.