A Debate Question for Kamala Harris

"What is a woman?

Given Harris's commanding lead with women voters, I explain why so much rides on her answer in my piece just published in the NY Post (reprinted below in full) https://nypost.com/2024/09/10/opinion/whats-riding-on-kamala-harris-answer-to-a-simple-question-what-is-a-woman/

What is a woman?

It’s a question Kamala Harris will ghost unless asked at Tuesday’s presidential debate.

And if queried, will she dodge it as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did in her 2022 Senate confirmation hearing, saying, “I’m not a biologist”?

There’s much more at stake than semantics.

Harris has a commanding lead over Donald Trump among female voters everywhere, including the critical swing states. Her answer would indicate if her administration would gut Title IX protections for women’s sports and green-light gender ideologues who want children and adolescents to have easier access to medical interventions while erecting legal barriers between parents and children.

Harris, as with many major issues, has not expressly addressed gender identification. She’s never been put on the spot to say if she considers biology outdated and a person’s gender is whatever he or she declares it to be.

That doesn’t mean her position is a secret to her supporters. In her failed 2020 presidential run, she backed a radical program: taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries for prison inmates and illegal immigrants.

Advocates for Trans Equality enthusiastically endorsed her in July. A Slate article concluded that “on trans issues, her record is surprisingly consistent, especially compared to other politicians” — “she’s been very progressive on this issue for 20 years.” The country’s oldest and largest LGBT publication, The Advocate, declared last month that Harris has “a long and strong record of support for LGBTQ+ equality” and would “most likely be the most pro-LGBTQ+ president.”

The Biden-Harris administration has shown its support for LGBT+ issues by policies allowing gender to trump biological sex. On its first day, it issued a landmark executive order mandating all federal agencies enforce antidiscrimination policies based on “gender identity or sexual orientation.”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission followed up by issuing expanded guidelines for sexual-harassment complaints that included intentionally calling an employee by the wrong name or pronoun or denying access to bathrooms or other single-sex facilities to an employee who identifies as a different gender.

The Biden administration also injected gender identification into the landmark 1972 Title IX rules banning sex discrimination in education. Title IX opened up opportunities for girls and women in athletic competition. Allowing boys and men who identify as female to participate would be the effective end of women’s sports.

And the White House, aware of the potential political fallout, has delayed final determination on how it will treat transgender athletes until after the election. But it’s not hard to read the tea leaves for a Harris administration. House Republicans narrowly advanced a measure to block the Biden gender modifications to Title IX in July, 210-205, with every Democrat voting against.

In Harris’ native California, where she served as San Francisco district attorney and state attorney general, legal protections for gender self-identification have effectively ended the rights of women to have protected single-sex spaces. Since 2021, male convicts, including sex offenders who identify as women, can transfer to women’s prisons. Would Harris support the right of men who identify as women to get housing at shelters for battered women?

The vice president’s response to “What is a woman?” would answer other questions too. Might a President Harris promote Rachel Levine, America’s first transgender admiral, from assistant health secretary to Health and Human Services chief — making history and burnishing her progressive credentials with the first transgender cabinet officer.

Levine, a member in good standing of the partisan World Professional Association for Transgender Health, advocates “gender-affirming care” for minors. WPATH emails made public in litigation in June revealed it was Levine who successfully lobbied the organization to drop its minimum age limits for treating children with hormones and surgeries.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July making the Golden State the first in the nation to bar schools from notifying parents if their children want to change their pronouns or express interest in a different gender. Blocking parents from knowing if their children are enamored with the transgender contagion and simultaneously removing age limits for medicalizing that interest seems a particularly dangerous combination.

“What is a woman?” is a simple enough question. Getting an answer from Harris will provide the best clue as to whether she intends to be a president who protects women’s rights and those of children and parents or instead further dilute the hard-won rights of biological women and encourage gender-affirming care for minors by embracing a left-wing ideology that someone’s gender is a matter of ever-changing personal preference.