(The Center Square) – Kindness and empathy, says the president of Independent Women’s Forum, didn’t work out. And strategies have changed out of necessity.
Lost, or arguably stolen, along the way and still getting recovered is language. Meaning, simply defining what seemed to be known since the ages of time began.
Protecting women’s spaces, particularly in sports, has soared to the forefront of American minds. President Donald Trump, in the immediate hours after the inauguration on Jan. 20, signed an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
“What the left tried to take away, and the gender ideology tried to take away, were to even have a language protecting women,” Carrie Lukas, a resident of Great Falls, Va., told The Center Square in an exclusive interview from Berlin. “What President Trump did in that executive order is take back the language so that people start being able to feel some confidence and expectation that, if we’re talking about a girls sleepaway camp, or we’re talking about a girls soccer team, or we’re talking about the girls room, we all understand that and can have some safety and security.”
Lukas – president of Independent Women’s Forum, vice president of Independent Women’s Voice and member of Independent Women’s Network – speaks of the frustration with experience, noting a 12-year-old among her three daughters.
Trump’s order defined female and male from conception, respectively, “to the sex that produces the largest reproductive cell” and “to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” It also sweeps out federal promotion of gender ideology and goes beyond sports to include protection of private spaces such as women’s detention centers.
“Everyone’s instinct was we want to be kind,” Lukas said of how things were more than five years ago. “You think about people who do struggle with gender dysphoria, or people who do have issues that make it complicated. Nobody wants to be mean. That’s where we started this conversation.
“What we realized was as it became an ideology, something that people were pushing and advancing and it became a social contagion, that you weren’t being nice or kind or inclusive to encourage people down this road, and kind of to reward people to embrace gender dysphoria. You do have to remember also that you need to be empathetic and kind and considerate of the needs of women.”
Lukas said whether it’s women in prison, locker rooms such as work facilities where showering happens in closed quarters, there’s an expense to be paid.
“There’s an instinct to be kind, they’re just not remembering who they are being kind to and who they are being very unkind to,” Lukas said. “It’s women who end up bearing the brunt of this.”
Among the leading voices, and ambassadors for Independent Women’s Forum, have been former Kentucky swimmer and 12-time All-American Riley Gaines; Penn swimmer Paula Scanlan who swam daily practices with Lia Thomas, the men’s team swimmer of three years and women’s team swimmer of one; and North Carolinians Payton McNabb, the prep volleyball player suffering a career-ending injury from a boy’s spike, and Sylvia Hatchell, national champion basketball coach at the University of North Carolina.
“We finally have a true champion for women in the White House,” Gaines, the face of the movement, said of Trump’s order.
Independent Women, Lukas said, chose reproductive potential rather than chromosomes in defining sex as female and male. She said the effort was to be sensitive to chromosomal abnormalities.
The chromosome difference works in the message, too.
Gaines, former Nevada volleyball player Sia Li’iLi’I, and taekwondo Junior Pan American champion Jaycee Bassett headline the new “Real Girls Rock” commercial advertisement for XX-XY Athletics. Released Sunday heading into the week of the 59th Super Bowl, the 107-second spot shows women athletes in training, preparing with the overlay of critical and condescending voices. And bully text messages.
It’s yet to be scheduled for the big event, when 30-second commercials can cost between $7 million and $8 million, according to Variety.
Jennifer Sey, founder and CEO of the company and famed author of “Chalked Up” and “Levi’s Unbuttoned,” on social media criticizes Nike for choosing “wokeness over women.” Nike rivals sports leagues in name recognition, never mind the significant market share. Her company’s ad is being pushed by plenty of names, too, such as J.K. Rowling, Clay Travis, Megyn Kelly and Gaines to name a few.
The company’s previous ads, “Stand Up” and “Dear Nike,” went viral, and Sunday’s release was well on its way.
“This one is special because it features my little sister, a state champion gymnast,” Gaines wrote on social media Monday morning, referring to Tennessee state champion Neely Gaines. “She’s the reason I fight.”
Lukas got extra motivation from an unexpected source.
“One of the issues that moved me the most was learning about the men and women’s prisons issue,” she said. “When you think, it’s really easy for people whether parents, brothers, sisters, daughters – anybody who has a connection to girls playing sports, you can easily figure out that’s not fair. Fewer of us are connected to someone in prison. For those that do, my goodness, the stories that we’ve heard from women in the prison system.”
Gaines, on Friday’s podcast of Better for America with host Rebecca Weber, says common sense and “sanity” have reversed with Trump’s election as president rather than Kamala Harris.
“To put it pretty plainly, there is a future for women’s sports,” Gaines said. “What we saw under the Biden administration was the most regressive, anti-woman, anti-reality pursuit we have seen thus far.”
While Trump’s orders and other reversals such as judicial rulings are big, she assures it’s only the start.
“It’s a huge first step,” Gaines said “I call it a first step because there’s certainly a lot more work to do. The biggest issue, potentially, I could see happening is people wiping their hands saying, ‘We won! It’s over!’ And they develop this sense of complacency. That would be your first mistake. It is not over.
“Lots and lots more to do. But now it looks like we finally have the opportunity to do it and get it done.”
With fair language everyone understands.
