Open Letter: Why Compromise on Reality Is Neither Possible nor Strategic

November 8, 2025

This letter is for the women who’ve recently joined the fight, especially those brave enough to speak publicly for the first time. You’re doing vital work, often at great personal cost. Many of us have walked the same path: the shock of realizing what’s happening, the anger, the instinct to find common ground and say, surely there’s a reasonable middle way.

It’s completely understandable to want compromise. But those of us who’ve been in this battle longer have learned through experience that compromise here doesn’t work. It always leads to the same outcome: the erasure of sex in law and public life.

1. “Transsexual” Isn’t a Middle Ground

Some propose recognizing “transsexual” as a distinct category, acknowledging biological sex while still offering legal recognition to people who medically “transition.” It sounds measured. In practice, it creates a new protected class that immediately collides with women’s rights. The moment “gender identity” or “transsexual status” becomes a legal category, sex-based boundaries crumble. The law can’t uphold both.

2. The Activists Don’t Want Compromise

School districts that built “third spaces” were still sued for keeping single-sex bathrooms. Sports bodies that opened “inclusive” categories found no takers. Activists have ensured that federal prison policies leave no room for middle ground by explicitly prohibiting the creation of third spaces for trans-identified males. In California, lawmakers recently rejected such a proposal that would have allowed male sex offenders to be housed separately from women, even comparing it to Jim Crow. The aim isn’t accommodation; it’s total validation of the claim that sex can change.

3. Sex Is Material Reality, Not a Belief System

You can’t negotiate reality. Sex is binary, immutable, and foundational to fairness, safety, and human rights. Trying to meet halfway between truth and fiction always drags us toward fiction.

The desire to be fair and compassionate is noble, in fact, it’s what brought many of us here. But the path forward isn’t compromise. It’s clarity. We can and must defend the rights of every person without rewriting the meaning of male and female in law.

Women must always be able to call a man a man. We must be able to point out and acknowledge a man’s sex. Most men can kill an average woman with their bare hands. He cannot be granted a right to hide his sex from her, not in locker rooms, not in sports.

With respect and solidarity to every woman finding her voice: welcome to the fight. Stay rooted in truth. You don’t need to yield an inch.

Signed,

Jane Berns, Women Are Real

Kara Dansky, The TERF Report

Jennifer Sey, XX-XY Athletics

Kim Jones, ICONS