Freedom

By Masooma Haq and Paul Greaney

Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, said her organization has had to introduce a Women’s Bill of Rights, which defines what a woman is, in response to transgender ideology and a larger Marxist agenda that aims to destroy Western culture.

“Gender ideology is just one strand of a much bigger, radical, Marxist agenda, and that is critical theory,” she said. “So you’ve got critical race theory, critical gender theory, [and] critical class theory. That’s a bigger assault on freedom,” Sheffield told NTD on July 15 during Freedom Fest 2022.

“[Critical theory] originated in Germany at the Frankfurt School and it was to indoctrinate and to basically destroy Western civilization,” said Sheffield.

The Women’s Bill of Rights was necessary because basic scientific truths are under attack, said Sheffield, pointing to when the recently appointed Supreme Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would not define the word “woman.”

“I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said during her confirmation hearing.

“[Jackson] knew it was a hornet’s nest, no matter what she said, that it would be just torn to shreds. So she played it very cautiously. And I think that that’s unfortunate because it just showed how the left has cowed anyone from being able to just speak the most basic commonsense,” said Sheffield.

“The polling is overwhelmingly in our favor, that people say, ‘we reject allowing biological men to compete in biological female sports,’” added Sheffield.

Sheffield said she is not against anyone identifying as they wish in their personal life, but there are biological differences that should be respected, especially in law.

“There are biological realities for women, and they put us at a physical disadvantage to biological men. And the fact that we have to spell this out, I think, is unfortunate,” said Sheffield.

“The definition of what it means to be a woman is under attack, the definition of what it means to be a mother is under attack, in terms of the protections for women and girls that we have been fighting for,” said Sheffield.

Proposed Laws Could Have Opposite Results

Laws under Title IX were created to protect women but are now in jeopardy, she said.

“And now they’re under assault because some people want to allow biological men to come in and take away scholarships and championships and opportunities, and we believe that it’s counter to science and it’s counter to the law,” said Sheffield.

The transgender issue is bringing conservatives and some on the left together, said Sheffield, with the progressive Women’s Liberation Front working with Sheffield’s conservative Independent Women’s Forum.

Because transgender male prison inmates are allowed to self-identify as women and have carried out assaults, Sheffield said, “We see this as an assault on the basic safety and the civil rights of biological women to have places where we are protected, where we have equal protection under the law where civil rights were not violated.”

Democrats in Congress led by Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) are once again pushing to change the Constitution and add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that they say would ensure women’s rights. But conservatives like Sheffield say the move will harm biological women and create unfairness in areas including sports and reproduction, giving transgender males an advantage.

“As women leaders in Congress, we are here today—all these decades later—still fighting this same battle. We won’t stop until we win, when the ERA is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” said Maloney during a speech on the anniversary of the ERA on March 22.

However, Sheffield said attorney and Eagle Forum founder, Phyllis Schlafly, fought against the ERA when it was first introduced because it would achieve the opposite of what it proposes.

“What Phyllis and conservatives said at that time was that if you put this into place, you’re actually going to erase women, you’re going to force biological women into the draft, you’re going to allow men into women’s bathrooms, because it’s not going to recognize that there are actual biological distinctions,” said Sheffield.