FFS Friday: Carilyn Johnson

January 2, 2026

Happy New Year! Here is a special paid-only Happy New Year post that went out yesterday.

FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. Thanks so much to Amy Sousa (@KnownHeretic on X) for a lovely post appreciating the series.

FFS Friday posts are free and shareable. A paid subscription gets you regular access to much more content and the ability to comment and engage in conversation with other thoughtful people.

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Today’s FFS Friday celebrates Carilyn Johnson, a civil rights lawyer and former prosecutor, mother, and ultrarunner.

Carilyn has been speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls for several years. You can find her on X here. Give her a follow if you’re on X!

She serves on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Sports Union. That organization was founded by Sharron Davies MBE (an Olympic swimmer who competed in three Olympic Games in three different decades and won medals at all major internationals) and Tracy Edwards MBE (a round-the-world sailor who skippered the Maiden, the first all-female crew to ever sail around the world).

Carilyn writes about ultrarunning on her blog page. When she isn’t running ultramarathons or working, she’s being a mom to twins. Earlier this week she posted this on X:

When my twins were little, their grandma (a first grade teacher) told them, “Books are not a luxury. They are a necessity. Use your allowance to buy them. Check them out of the library. Borrow them from friends. Ask for them from Santa. They never break, or go out of style. And once you’ve read them, they can never be ‘stolen’ or ‘lost’.”

My twins graduated from college at 17 - both have masters degrees, one has a J.D., and the other has a Ph.D. in quantum physics. They went to public school in a “poor” city.

But, they READ. We READ as a family. I READ to them. They still READ.

Books are not a luxury. They are a necessity.

This woman works hard! I don’t know how she does it.

And she spent a lot of time posting TERFy things on X in the days leading up to New Years. On December 30, she posted:

My litmus test for 2026:

You think women are “making a big deal out of” men pretending to be women.

Versus…

You absolutely understand why women are terrified that men are pretending to be women.

And she also posted:

I resigned from @KappaKappaGamma after they supported a man over their female members. I cannot believe that sororities - institutions designed specifically for the advancement, protection, and empowerment of women - would choose to prioritize a man over the safety of its female members. I wish every woman who has pledged a sorority, or supported a daughter who has, would speak out. This ridiculousness (and danger) would end immediately if every woman spoke out.

That last post is very close to my heart.

According to the feminist magazine Reduxx, in 2023:

A group of sorority sisters at the University of Wyoming involved in legal action against leadership at Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) claim they were made to change the definition of ‘woman’ in order to facilitate the admission of a 6’2″ man who identifies as transgender and calls himself Artemis Langford.

The sorority sisters were suing KKG for violating its own bylaws by admitting a man.

Again, as reported by Reduxx

The suit claims that Langford’s behavior in the sorority house has been voyeuristic, with allegations that he has watched the women undress, and would sit on a couch for hours while “staring at them without talking.” The young women say that Langford had been voyeuristically peeping on them while they were in intimate situations, and, on at least one occasion, had a visible erection while doing so.

They lost at the district court level and appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, where the group Women’s Declaration International filed a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief in support of them. They lost there on technical grounds. Hope is not lost, however. They have filed an amended complaint and are again before the 10th Circuit, awaiting a decision. WDI USA has filed another brief in the case.

I did not realize until I read Carilyn’s post from earlier this week that she was a KKG member who left the sorority over all of this. Good for her!

The truth is that the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls just continues to grow. As more and more women become aware of the stakes, they start to speak out more and more. People thought we would just get tired and go away. How wrong they were!

Carilyn, I am in awe of you for running ultramarathons! Thank you for speaking out in support of the sex-based rights of women and girls. Today’s FFS Friday is for you.