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The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls

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Democrats and the establishment Left have abandoned and betrayed American women and girls on the altar of “gender identity,” doing untold damage in the process. It’s time for liberals and progressives—especially feminists and free speech advocates—to hold them accountable.

In The Reckoning, Kara Dansky, a radical feminist and lifelong Democrat, exposes the invasion by men into female-only spaces, the harming of children, and the silencing, punishment, cancellation and even violence against women who speak out. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, which claims to represent the interests of women, ignores the problem, while its allies in the organized Left and mainstream media paint all opposition to the “trans” agenda as “right wing.”

But radical feminists are not “right wing.” They are leftists who know that sex is real and are not afraid to demand women’s hard-won rights to safe spaces and privacy. The Democrat-Left wing establishment knows all the ways in which “gender identity” harms women and girls—and plenty of boys. Yet they are sacrificing women and children to a vicious profit-driven industry that allows men to invade women’s spaces and sports, denies that sex is real, and slices up children’s bodies.

Now the Democrats are facing a reckoning. Detransitioners are starting to speak out, clinicians are blowing the whistle, and women and girls, including many lesbians, have had it. Even now, the tide of common sense and decency is starting to turn in other countries that have banned harmful medical and surgical procedures for underage children and a handful of Democrats are bucking the trend at the state level. Elected Democrats will later claim they didn’t know, that they couldn’t have known, that the science has changed. But they knew. They have known all along. This book provides the evidence.

366 pages, Paperback

Published November 9, 2023

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255 people want to read

About the author

Kara Dansky

2 books57 followers
Kara Dansky is a public speaker, writer, and consultant who is committed to protecting the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls on the basis of sex in law and throughout society.

She currently serves on the steering committee of the U.S. chapter of the Women's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), which seeks to promote the Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights. She also serves as the Chair of the Committee on Law and Legislation for WHRC globally. She served on the board of the Women's Liberation Front from 2016 to 2020.

Kara is also an attorney with a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University, and an extensive background in criminal justice law and policy.

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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Profile Image for Lisa J Shultz.
Author 15 books93 followers
January 15, 2024
To potential Democrat readers, don't be afraid to read this book because it is written by a Democrat: Kara Dansky. She is concerned about what is happening on the political left because her party has betrayed women and girls. If you don't know how that has happened or you want to learn about the damage happening to women's rights, read this book.
As a reader, I was already clear about the disturbing trend in the regression of how women are treated. I learned the history of the latest assault on women's rights and who is responsible. Because the US is now in an election year, it is important that everyone knows what is going on so adjustments and a "reckoning" can occur before women lose even more rights.
Dansky has done her research. I hope anyone from any party who cares about women will read this book. It is important to know what is happening before more damage is done.  
Profile Image for Marie.
40 reviews1 follower
November 29, 2023
Fabulous! Explains much better than I could why I left the Democratic party.
Profile Image for Dav.
959 reviews9 followers
February 12, 2024
.

The Reckoning, pub in 2023 by Kara Dansky.
How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls.

Book Blurb - edited:
"Democrats and the establishment Left have abandoned and betrayed American women and girls on the altar of “gender identity,” doing untold damage in the process. It’s time for liberals and progressives—especially feminists and free speech advocates—to hold them accountable.

Kara Dansky, a radical feminist and lifelong Democrat, exposes the invasion by men into female-only spaces, the harming of children, and the silencing, punishment, cancellation and even violence against women who speak out.

The Democrat-Left wing establishment knows all the ways in which “gender identity” harms women and girls—and plenty of boys. Yet they are sacrificing women and children to a vicious profit-driven industry that allows men to invade women’s spaces and sports, denies that sex is real, and slices up children’s bodies.

Now the Democrats are facing a reckoning. Detransitioners are starting to speak out, clinicians are blowing the whistle, and women and girls, including many lesbians, have had it. Even now, the tide of common sense and decency is starting to turn in other countries that have banned harmful medical and surgical procedures for underage children and a handful of Democrats are bucking the trend at the state level.

Elected Democrats will later claim they didn’t know, that they couldn’t have known, that the science has changed. But they knew. They have known all along. This book provides the evidence."


..

Worth reading,
but I think the devout leftist author (Kara Dansky) is far too optimistic about her party of loony lefty Dems coming to their senses. Kara has been interviewed a number of times by the other side, Republicans & conservatives. Although she and members of the Right disagree on many issues, they are united on protections for women.

Today, Biden & his Dems are planning a rewrite of Title 9 (which primarily prevented discrimination against girls and women in school sports). The changes would further erode the rights of female athletes.

Wiki: "Republicans have been holding hearings entitled 'The Importance of Protecting Female Athletics and Title IX,' to speak against trans sports participation under the expected updates. At the hearing, both Greene and Barker blamed Democrats for trying to harm women’s sports by “forcing” cis female athletes to play against “biological men.”

I suspect it'll have to get a lot worse before voters are outraged enough to put moral leaders back in charge of the government.

.


The book is divided into 4 parts with a total of 10 chapters.

The need for a reckoning.
Chapter 1 is about the betrayal by democrat party leaders.

Victims.
Ch. 2, Women and girls as a sex class.
3, Gender-affirming care, savagery.

The perpetrators.
4, Queering of the American political left.
5, A corrupt media and indoctrination at schools.
6, Medical ghouls and Pharma.
7, Accomplices.

The resistance.
8, Democrat defectors.
9, The judges.
10, TERF, which stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.
And may also mean, "Telling Everyone Real Facts," or "Tired of Explaining Reality to Fu*kwits," etc.

In the preface the author writes:
"It is, of course, only Congressional Republicans who are taking steps to protect women's spaces and sports and to stop the sterilization and mutilation of healthy young people at the federal level (though some Democrats are taking similar steps at the state level) and only conservative media outlets are having even slightly honest conversations about these things.

But that's because Congressional Democrats and liberal media outlets have allowed that to happen by refusing to step up on behalf of women and girls. If a single Congressional Democrat would take it upon herself to say, 'Men are not women and should not have access to women's bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, or prisons,' we would not be in this position."




..
Profile Image for Angel Avery.
42 reviews1 follower
April 20, 2024
Clear and concise wake up call to Democrats on the risk they are taking by not supporting women's rights. In a word, sanity.
Profile Image for Jane.
1,142 reviews20 followers
November 30, 2025
Kara Dansky's "The Reckoning" delves even deeper than "The Abolition of Sex" into the whole trans ideology madness that is plaguing our world right now. Mostly this focuses on what is happening in the USA but does touch on the issue globally. it is well written and Dansky's writing style keeps the reader turning the pages. Published in 2023 before the 2024 US election, Dansky starts out by discussing the US Democratic Party and it's embrace of "trans rights" over the rights of women and girls, a move that, in my view, did lead to the election of Trump in 2024. She goes on to discuss the rights of women and girls as a sex class and the horrors of "gender-affirming care", as well as the perpetrators of the ideology and the loss of rights based on sex. By the time the reader gets to the chapter about Big Pharma and the medical establishment, it is not rocket science to understand why western society is still under the grip of this horrible ideology, despite the release of the WPATH files and the Cass review, both of which should have revealed the medical scandal that it is. Money. People in power have a huge financial interest in Big Pharma and the medical establishment in general. The book concludes with hope and a discussion of the resistance from the average woman involved in grassroots radical feminism to politicians speaking out and judges ruling on relevant court cases.

This book belongs on every gender critical bookshelf along ide Helen Joyce's "Trans" and Abigail Shrier's "Irreversible Harm".
Profile Image for Tri.
267 reviews2 followers
December 11, 2024
*For an extended commentary and citations, please view the highlights*

To start, I had gone in assuming the author would go in-depth in the various ways current and former democrat voters feel disenchanted by their politicians- A lack of addressing and changing systematic violence against black communities, no push for universal healthcare, a focus on pushing more money towards war and military spending…just to name a few.
However, the author seems to believe that the one issue- and largest issue- is trans women. Not trans people, because trans men are sparsely mentioned in this book. It’s trans women.

Throughout the book, trans women of any and all backgrounds, mannerisms, political affiliation, etc are pulled through the wringer. Not a single ounce of empathy or humanity is offered, and pity is the only humanizing emotion, but that’s saved for trans men exclusively.
The Heritage Foundation, as a right-wing organization that proudly vocalizes its suppression for women’s rights, is offered more nuance by this book than it does for any trans person mentioned.

Speaking of, the author gladly slams any philanthropy towards LGBT (or just T) orgs, but said *nothing* in regards to the encroachment of The Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups on nearly every single anti-trans org named throughout. I mention THF specifically because the author applauded them for platforming her, an act of which she doesn’t seem to take a critical eye to as a self-proclaimed feminist.

On the matter humanizing trans women- As if calling them by their non-legal names and interpreting innocent phrases as hyper-sexual isn’t demeaning enough for the author, she also quotes old comedy skits in which trans women are the butt of the joke- they’re called ‘tranny’ and that prostitution is a part of the ‘humor’ in these skits.
Don’t believe me?
“…”For instance, how many times have I accidentally picked up a tranny hooker at a truck-stop?”…In other words, at one point both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a sense of humor about all of this and weren’t afraid to joke”
I don’t believe there’s anything more deplorable than finding it humorous to call people forced into selling their bodies slurs, but so-called feminist Kara Dansky thinks it’s funny.

Putting aside the book’s content itself for a moment, this book really needed an editor. Several sentences and phrases are repeated verbatim throughout, sometimes within the same subchapter.
A sentence or so briefly describing Magdalen Berns is repeated at least three times, ‘Men are invading women’s prisons, women’s sports, and women’s intimate spaces like bathrooms,’ is used roughly four times, and ‘The problem with Jon Stewart is not that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The problem with Jon Stewart is that he does.’ is used at least three times.

The book also doesn’t have citations, only a few anecdotal footnotes. Meaning if the book says ‘This information from xyz’, half the time the author doesn’t mention where she got the info from, what website, or what the full information actually says. Sometimes she does, but most of the time I had to look things up myself, which is something I’d imagine most readers wouldn’t end up doing in the first place.

I could make a bingo card with all the repeated points that this book has that I’ve found word-for-word in other anti-trans books. It’s tiring how the arguments remain the same.
The book regurgitates the same fear-mongering talking points without offering any long-term solutions for trans people navigating the world. It won’t even acknowledge trans people as an existing phenomena.
The struggles and oppression that trans people faced and continue to face go unnoticed by the author, as it doesn’t seem to occur to her that violent physical and sexual violence, employment and housing discrimination, and other forms of endangering acts happen to trans people as a result of dehumanizing them on all levels.

I’m glad anti-trans books have been taking a nosedive in terms of review numbers, especially ones that feel emboldened to kick down.
Profile Image for L.A. Starks.
Author 12 books733 followers
December 18, 2023
Although encyclopedic, Kara Dansky brings crystal-clear thought, logic, and calls to action to the topic of "gender identity", including but not limited to topics like woman-identifying men in women-only private spaces and children being given wrong-sex hormones that can render them infertile.

A feminist, she takes to task the US Democratic Party, media, pharma, and many other complicit organizations,

This book is a follow-on to The Abolition of Sex and serves as both history and reference. While Dansky reasonably and modestly wishes for women with larger platforms than hers to take up the cause against erasing women and girls, this book puts her front and center as a leader of third wave feminism, as important to our time as Gloria Steinem was to hers.

The Reckoning is written to Democrats, but I also recommend it to conservatives, feminists, and parents of girls, which are sometimes-overlapping categories.

Note journalist Tucker Carlson was one of the first to bring wider attention to Dansky's work.

For those interested in the topic this book is a must-read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Betsy.
3 reviews
December 29, 2024
This book cuts to the heart of the matter where thinly disguised misogyny works to erase the progress women have made in the last half century. In the process of erasing progress the transgender agenda also strives to erase the very category of women; suppressing the use of the words "woman, girl, mother". "Don't say woman!" Instead they replace females with "chestfeeders, cervix havers, people with front holes" regressively reducing females to body parts. Trans identified men are invading battered women's shelters, rape crises centers, women's sports, women's bathrooms so women will have nowhere to turn for privacy, or safety in situations where they are vulnerable to male violence. All sports become men's sports, all prisons become men's prisons because there is no reciprocal move of trans identified women joining men's sports teams like the Patriots, the Mets, the Angels, the Cubs, etc. The Reckoning by kara dansky is meticulously documented and presents a convincing argument that the "male" left iis a sham and really functions as a "covert-right."
Profile Image for Barrie.
5 reviews
November 8, 2024
“Lifelong Democrat” Kara Dansky has announced in every election for over 10 years that she isn’t voting for Democrats. She works with Alliance Defending Freedom and Independent Women’s Forum. The people who worked to overturn Roe and are about to demolish health care and the country. Raped little girls giving birth. Women dying.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews

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