By Staff Reporter |

The U.S. leader of a top global feminist organization, Women’s Declaration International (WDI), urged Arizona’s Democratic lawmakers to support a bill protecting women’s rights by ending gender identity codifications.

Senate Bill 1628, the Women’s Bill of Rights by Senator Sine Kerr, was passed in the House last week and will head to the governor’s desk. SB 1628 would codify new definitions for sex-based terms used in statutes, administrative rules, regulations, and public policies. It’s unlikely the bill will be codified: Governor Katie Hobbs has openly expressed her disapproval for similar bills she deems against LGBTQ+ ideology.

“The purpose of this act is to bring clarity, certainty, and uniformity to the laws of this state regarding sexual discrimination, equality of the sexes and benefits or services that are specifically provided to males and men and females and women,” read the bill.

WDI USA President Kara Dansky, a Democrat, wrote in an Arizona Daily Independent op-ed that the popularized replacement of the concept of sex with gender identity results in the discrimination and oppression of women.

“[The victories of women’s rights] are being thrown out, including by Democratic women leaders, because of the nonsensical, psuedoscientific concept of ‘gender identity’ — the idea that somehow sex isn’t real, that a person can be the opposite sex, or that there is some mysterious third sex class (there isn’t),” said Dansky. “There is nothing progressive about pretending sex isn’t real.” 

Dansky’s organization most recently filed a brief in the ongoing Washington court case determining whether a female-only nude spa may exclude men. 

Significantly, SB 1628 would declare in no uncertain terms that the term “sex” indicated the existence of only two sexes: male and female, biological truths established at birth which are “objective and fixed.” The defined term “sex” further explicitly excludes concepts like “gender identity” or similar terms, which the bill noted imparted subjective senses of self and antonymous with the term “sex.”

The legislation further clarified that differences in sex development wouldn’t establish a third sex, such as those cases in which an individual with a congenital and medically verifiable disorder or difference in sex development. In those cases, the bill specifically directs compliance with accommodations according to federal and state law. 

Other definitions given for sex-based terms included: 

• “Male,” meaning an individual who has, had, will have or would have, but for a developmental anomaly or accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces sperm for fertilization of female ova; 
• “Boy,” meaning a human male who has not yet reached adulthood; 
• “Man,” meaning an adult human of the male sex;
• “Father,” meaning a male parent of a child or children; 
• “Female,” meaning an individual who has, had, will have or would have but for developmental anomaly or accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces an ova; 
• “Girl,” meaning a human female who has not yet reached adulthood; 
• “Mother,” meaning a female parent of a child or children; 
• “Equal,” meaning the recognition of the equality of sexes but not sameness or identicality; 

With those definitions, Senate Bill 1628 would effectively root out gender identity protections by replacing the term “gender” with “sex” in all laws, rules, publications, orders, actions, programs, policies, and signage. The bill also directed the sex-based segregation of environments like bathrooms, locker rooms, living facilities, athletics, domestic violence shelters, and sexual assault crises centers. 

Further, public schools as well as those agencies that collect vital statistics related to sex would identify all individuals as either male or female.

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