Conservatives warn bill authorizing women’s museum could allow exhibits honoring biological men

Legislation to authorize a women’s history museum would also allow men who identify as women to be featured, some conservatives warn.

The House Committee on Natural Resources is holding a legislative hearing on Tuesday for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Act, which would permit the Smithsonian women’s museum to be located on the National Mall.

The museum was created in 2020, but Congress still needs to authorize the land for the facility.

However, the bill doesn’t include a definition of a woman, opening the door for displays dedicated to men who identify as women, according to May Mailman, senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and former White House adviser. The museum’s website already features several biological men who identify as women.

While “woman” shouldn’t need a definition, it would be helpful to make sure that judges and administrators “don’t monkey around” by honoring men at the museum, Mailman said.

“The way that language works is that language has to have a meaning, and a woman can’t be a man, otherwise it has no meaning,” she told The Daily Signal.

Mailman said the Trump administration should require lawmakers to define woman based on biology, as a condition of the museum receiving federal land.

“I would say not a square inch of land shall be allocated, if I was the Trump administration, for the Women’s History Museum, until and unless Congress clarifies that the definition of woman is woman,” she told The Daily Signal. “Essentially, like a contract that this land shall be allocated under the clear directive that the Women’s History Museum is for women.”

Featuring men in the Women’s History Museum “lacks any logical basis,” Mailman said.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The Trump administration has been pushing the Smithsonian to back off “divisive narratives” for months.

The president’s next target should be ensuring the same protocols at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, a conservative operative said.

“Unfortunately, this museum might not be about American women at all, rather, men dressed as women,” the operative told The Daily Signal. “There is nothing in the bill creating the museum nor this bill to grant the land authorization to prevent a national museum dedicated to telling the story of female contributions to American history from promoting or featuring biological men.”

The simple fix is to include a biological definition of woman in the bill, but the operative doubts progressive members of Congress will know how to define the term.

The museum’s website includes tributes to female-identifying males, such as activists Jazz Jennings, Marsha P. Johnson, Cecilia Chung, and Sylvia Rivera, and tennis player Richard Raskind, who underwent sex-reassignment surgery and changed his name to Renee Richards.

Concerned Women for America also distrusts the Smithsonian’s agenda.

“In its American History Museum exhibit titled ‘Girlhood,’ the singular example of a girl was a male child,” said Maggie McKneely, director of government relations at Concerned Women for America. “This is not an institution that has proved it is willing to be either accurate or objective.”

“It is going to take explicit language and vigorous congressional oversight for any women’s history museum run by the Smithsonian to pass the accountability test,” she told The Daily Signal.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]