As women have long been seen as the fairer and “weaker” sex, it comes as no surprise that they are often abused or mistreated more than their male counterparts. Naturally, this has led to quite a few movements to protect women and their rights.
One of the most successful of these was the congressionally passed Violence Against Women Act, first proposed in 1994.
However, over the years, the Act has been transformed into something that isn’t so much about protecting women but merely promoting a specific political agenda. In fact, if allowed to pass in its current Biden and liberal-backed form, it could actually allow more harm to women in days to come.
How?
To answer that, we must first look at the VAWA in its original form and see how it has progressed.
As The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, a group for the advancement of women’s equality, points out that the original VAWA was passed simultaneously that the now-controversial Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 did so.
It quite simply put measures in place to help and prevent domestic and sexual abuse against women. This meant increasing things like shelters for women and support services for victims, as well as putting together a series of grant programs for such victims.
In 2000 and again in 2005, the VAWA was reauthorized or expanded to include those same protections in immigrant and minority communities. That’s not to say that violence against women wasn’t a priority there before. But the sad reality is that many minority and immigrant communities tend to get overlooked, mainly if those are also low-income communities.
Like is said before, it all sounds good, right?
Here’s where things get a bit sticky, to say the least.
Like many laws and policies, the VAWA and the federal funding allowing it to function as intended must be renewed and refunded every so often. This was supposed to happen in 2018. But due to an increased interest by Congress in matters like gender identity issues and gun control, the VAWA was put on the back burner.
Now, however, it is being brought out again and put in the spotlight.
On April 28, in President Joe Biden’s first official address to Congress, he proposed that the VAWA be reauthorized again to “save some lives.”
Once again, this a good thing, right?
Well, maybe not so much.
You see, while the VAWA would be refunded and more efforts made to improve the lives of women who may have victimized, the 2021 VAWA wants to do some more expanding. And this specific expansion could wind up hurting women more than helping them, as it will now give precedence to transgender women and allow them to be housed in the same facilities where biological women and their families stay.
According to the Daily Signal, any man who identifies as a female will, under the new VAWA, now live in the same shelter as women who have fled violent situations. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any provisions about just how sincere these trans women are about their gender identity or past abuses.
And the same rule will also be followed in women’s prisons, where males who supposedly identify as female will now be allowed to be transferred to and become cellmates with biological women.
Now, I’m not saying that these trans females shouldn’t necessarily be given these same opportunities and serves, should they be actual abuse victims.
But what happens when a predatory male fakes his gender identity to gain access to vulnerable women?
Those women, whom this law is supposed to be protecting, will be put directly in harm’s way with nowhere else to run.
And don’t tell me this is just my pessimistic mind drawing conclusions. We’ve already seen similar results happen.
Take the Washington Corrections Center for Women, for example.
According to KIRO-FM, it was reported in March that the state allowed a man and a known sexual predator who claimed to identify as a female to be transferred there and housed with female cellmates in the mental health unit. Mere weeks after his arrival, it became clear the man was lying about his gender identity and used his position to prey on his female cellmates, raping one of them.
This could just as easily happen in any women’s shelter around the nation should the reauthorization of VAWA in its current form pass.
We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.