Woodland school board member who called ‘transgenderism’ a ‘social contagion’ faces recall
A group of parents in the Woodland Joint Unified High School District say they have collected enough signatures for a measure on the March 5 ballot to recall school board trustee Emily MacDonald for “prejudicial” comments she made about “transgenderism” at a meeting last summer.
Laura Brubaker and Karen Bayne organized the recall effort after MacDonald spoke about the “social contagion” of “transgender identification” at a June 15 board discussion of the district’s PRIDE Month resolution.
“While I share with everyone here tremendous respect for the achievements and contributions of Americans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, this coalition forces acceptance of every aspect of transgenderism in order to be considered an ally of the others, and that is wrong,” said MacDonald, who was elected in 2022 to a four-year term.
“The political needs and aims of these groups have always been divergent,” she continued. “Women who love women have little in common with women who wish to have a mastectomy, take testosterone, and live as men. Men who love men have little in common with men who wish to take estrogen and live as women.”
She said the board “must act with great caution in order to protect the increasing numbers of children who are experiencing transgender procedures as a result of social contagion without sacrificing the tiny number of individuals who would identify as transgender even without social contagion, education campaigns, and the social cache attached to a transgender identity in the present.”
MacDonald’s comments incited an immediate response, which grew into a recall movement.
“I remember watching (the meeting) and being absolutely devastated by what she said,” Brubaker, a parent of two students in the district, told the The Bee. “There were members of our community who came to see the PRIDE Month resolution, including students and staff, who left that meeting in tears.”
Dozens of community members went to the next school board meeting to share why MacDonald’s comments were so harmful — but MacDonald was absent.
“You don’t seem to be taking this job seriously,” said Nili Kirschner, a Woodland resident and professor at Woodland Community College, to McDonald at a July 27 session that MacDonald did attend. “You broke our trust, so you can’t be a trustee.”
“You should apologize,” said Jessie Lauren, an area teacher and parent, to MacDonald for her “abhorrent comments.”
Brubaker and her fellow recall organizer Karen Bayne, a former WJUHSD trustee who raised two children in the district, and whose husband is a teacher in the district, encouraged MacDonald to resign.
“She was very adamant that she did not want to do that,” Bayne said.
“As a former board member, I told her that her words hurt a lot of people, and that many people felt that she did not support all students, and she said, ‘I definitely support all students.’”
However, at another board meeting in August, MacDonald was the sole vote against a “Resolution Reaffirming Support for All Woodland Youth.”
“At that point,” said Bayne, “I was all in.”
The Bee reached out to MacDonald who could not be reached before publication.
‘People told us we shouldn’t do it’
Pursuing a recall is a costly and time-consuming. Knocking on hundreds of doors, raising funds, and rallying volunteers all require the same amount of time as any other political campaign. Some Woodland parents and community members, while equally disturbed by MacDonald’s comments, wondered if it was worth the effort, especially because she is one voice on the seven-person board.
“People told us we shouldn’t do it, and I remember thinking, ‘So, a little bit of prejudice is okay?’” said Bayne.
Bayne also said that MacDonald’s troubling comments about ethnic studies solidified her decision to organize the recall.
She called Ethnic Studies a “luxury item,” despite it being a graduation requirement in the state of California. Plus, as Bayne pointed out, it was a requirement at WJUHSD before the state adopted it.
“Ethnic Studies has a tremendous amount of support in our community,” Bayne said. “We’ve been leaders on that front.”
The recall committee needed 1,078 signatures from MacDonald’s district by the November 4th deadline to get the recall on the ballot. They received more than 1,300 — far more than the 820 votes she received to earn her seat. The Yolo County elections office has 30 days to verify at the signatures, at which point it will formally be on the March 5 ballot.
Regardless of how the district votes next spring, Brubaker and Bayne say the campaign is their way of showing the LGBTQ community that there are people in the district who support them.
“We started this because we thought there was a chance we’d succeed,” said Brubaker. “But we also thought, if nothing else, we will show our LGBTQ youth that our community, a good number of us, are supportive of them.”
Trans rights take center stage in Yolo County
MacDonald represents only a small number of Woodland constituents in Yolo County. But the move to recall her is part of a larger push back at the county level among proponents of LGBTQ rights against groups like Moms for Liberty, who support “parents’ rights” and parental notification policies that would force district staff to “out” trans or gender nonconforming students to their parents.
“The parents’ rights groups are not asking to be notified because they want to nurture their child’s (transition),” Bayne said. “They want to be notified so they can do whatever it takes to stop their children from being transgender.”
Moms for Liberty and similar groups don’t believe that gender dysphoria — the condition in which a person is born into the biological sex that does not match their gender identity — is a real thing.
In Yolo County, the Moms for Liberty chapter president, Beth Bourne, has organized parents who think that public schools are promoting “transgenderism.” Bourne has a child who identifies as trans, and was recently served a restraining order on behalf the Davis Joint Union High School District. The district accuses her of harassing public school teachers in Davis, Woodland’s neighbor, which has seen its own tension around the topic.
In August, while Brubaker and Bayne were canvassing for signatures to recall MacDonald, Moms for Liberty hosted an event at the Mary L. Stephens Davis Library about trans women in sports. Close to 30 supporters of trans rights protested outside. Inside, the event’s speaker, Sophia Lorey, called trans women athletes “men.” A library official told Lorey not to misgender trans athletes. “If that happens, it’s not following our code of conduct and we will ask the person who says it to leave immediately.”
Lorey then referred to a trans women as “biological men,” at which point library staff asked her to leave.
Davis schools and the library have since received several bomb threats. Davis also hosted a visit from a national figure against the rights of trans women, Riley Gaines, who spoke at UC Davis earlier this month.
“Voters need to keep a close eye on their school boards,” said Brubaker, “because if this can happen in our pretty heavily Democrat community, then this can happen anywhere.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
