What is a woman?
It's a question Kamala Harris will ignore unless she's asked it during Tuesday's presidential debate.
And if asked, will she avoid the question, like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during her 2022 Senate confirmation hearing, “I'm not a biologist”?
There are many things more important than semantics.
Harris holds a commanding lead over Donald Trump among women voters everywhere, including in key battleground states. Her response will signal whether the administration endorses a gender ideology that wants to gut Title IX protections for women's sports and make medical interventions more accessible to children and adolescents while erecting legal barriers between parents and children.
Harris has not explicitly addressed gender identity, as she has on many other key issues, and has never been asked whether she believes biology is outdated and that a person's gender should be whatever they declare it to be.
But that doesn't mean her positions are a secret to her supporters: During her 2020 presidential defeat, she supported the radical policy of providing taxpayer funding for sex-reassignment surgery for prison inmates and illegal immigrants.
Transgender equality advocates gave her an enthusiastic endorsement in July. Slate article “Her record on transgender issues has been remarkably consistent compared to other politicians,” it concluded, “and she has been deeply progressive on the issues for two decades.” The Advocate, the nation's oldest and largest LGBT publication, declared last month that Harris has a “longstanding and strong record of support for LGBTQ+ equality” and “will likely be the most pro-LGBTQ+ president.”
The Biden-Harris administration has demonstrated its support for LGBT+ issues with policies that prioritize gender over biological sex, and on its first day in office it issued a landmark executive order requiring all federal agencies to implement anti-discrimination policies on the basis of “gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued expanded guidelines regarding sexual harassment complaints, including intentionally calling an employee by the wrong name or pronoun or denying a gender-neutral employee access to restrooms or other gender-segregated facilities.
The Biden administration also included gender identity in the landmark 1972 Title IX rule that bans sex discrimination in education. Title IX allowed girls and women to compete in sports. Allowing boys and men who identify as female to participate would effectively end girls' sports.
Aware of the potential political ramifications, the White House has postponed a final decision on how to handle transgender athletes until after the election, but it's not hard to gauge what a Harris administration might do. House Republicans narrowly passed a bill in July that would have blocked Biden's Title IX gender change by 210-205, with all Democrats voting against it.
In her home state of California, where Harris served as San Francisco District Attorney and State Attorney General, legal protections regarding gender identity have effectively eradicated women's right to protected single-sex spaces. Starting in 2021, male inmates, including sex offenders, who identify as women may be transferred to women's prisons. Would Harris support the right of men who identify as women to enter shelters for abused women?
The VP's answer to the question, “What is a woman?” will likely answer other questions as well. President Harris may promote the nation's first transgender admiral, Rachel Levin, from undersecretary of health to secretary of health and human services, making history as the first transgender Cabinet member and further enhancing her progressive credentials.
Levin is a full member of the partisan World Association of Transgender Medical Professionals, which advocates for “gender-affirming treatment” for minors. WPATH emails unsealed in a June lawsuit revealed that Levin was the person who successfully lobbied the association to lower the minimum age limit for treating children with hormone therapy and surgery.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July, making California the first state in the nation to prohibit schools from notifying parents if their child wants to change pronouns or expresses an interest in a different gender. Preventing parents from knowing if their child is into transgender transmission while at the same time eliminating the age limit that would medicalize that interest seems like a particularly dangerous combination.
“What is a woman?” is a very simple question, and Harris' answer will give us the best clue as to whether she intends to be a president who will protect the rights of women, children and parents, or whether she will embrace the left's idea that gender is an ever-changing matter of personal preference, further weakening the hard-won rights of biological women and promoting gender-affirming care for minors.
