Yes. The election results have shown that women's sex-based rights are simply not important enough to a large enough percentage of voters to significantly impact most elections. See especially the Virigina governor's race.
Keeping Republican control of the Senate is now absolutely essential to preventing President Newsom from signing the Equality Act into law in January 2029.
there must be a movement to refound and re-center the "progressive" intellectual world...we, by which i mean you (all), are largely still stuck in a place where you recognize the insanity and unworkability of genderist ideas, but you don't follow the sick vine back to its roots, and you don't really accept the idea that everyone who fails to recognize the sickness can never be trusted again.
there are a fair number of "conservative intellectuals" at this point, like christopher rufo, who are making names for themselves (and money too) by "refounding" institutions, or founding new ones, on new terms, which they intend to preclude the genderism and racialism that came to dominate academic environments and spread from there to the rest of society.
where is this from the heterodox liberal? when will they move past supporting a few independent voices here and there, and truly recognize that the big names they used to revere -- harvard, yale, the new york times, the aclu, etc -- are beyond redemption?
yesterday's election results should not mean a thing to anyone who recognizes the true scale of the problem we are facing.
i am tired of waiting. i will be founding the city university of new jersey next year. (they're merging off new jersey city university into masters'-mill kean, giving me an excellent opportunity.) if there will be no one else, there will be me.
I laughed out loud at this: "You say you’ll be mayor for all, yet if I identify as asexual—which, considering I am a middle-aged lady, I could easily do—I am considered oppressed, and you’ll direct $87 million to give me special housing and services?"
Women are not well prepared to deal with the dramatic fall off of desire in their middle years--too many marriages founder on that rock--so, yes, we need some special attention!
If we turn every form of sexual dysfunction into an identity, we could all enter the oppression stack and loot the treasury.
Okay--fellow menopausal women, let's lobby for more money too! /s
Thanks for this incisive critique of Mamdani's costly, regressive, misogynistic and homophobic initiative against the rights of women, girls and LGB folk.
Lisa, I would really like to know more of your perspective on this. I guess since Mamdani is mayor, he has the power to turn NYC into a sanctuary city, and spend money on all this “gender affirming” care.
Is there anyone/any organizations that could challenge this? And if so, how? Through the courts? On what possible grounds?
Not a lawyer but there could be cases that challenge state law vs federal law. A very tricky area since federalism requires states to regulate many things (like medical standards) so a case would need to be made that federal law would supersede state law.
Skirmetti and Dobbs decisions reaffirmed a state's right to make a law banning or legalizing a medical procedure--so abortion and gender medicine were not federal matters as per constitutional rights.
I'm hoping that someone out there is working on some legal angles, but my impression is it could be a long uphill battle.
Not a single person in my extended trad blue voting family thinks it's a good idea for my child to medicalize, yet none of them have ever considered voting red. They all assure me they 'get it.'. All but one have a hard time with my declaration to vote red. It's a 'niche' issue for them, even though it's their familial flesh and bone affected.
I just wish Mamdami could understand that "GAC" is HARMING young people, NOT helping them. I get his desire to protect the vulnerable, but he is not helping by making it EASIER to chemically and surgically alter young vulnerable people's bodies based on the belief that they are a special breed of humans that need to alter their bodies to appear the opposite sex and be referred to and treated as if they are the opposite sex to have any semblance of happiness
He doesn't get it, and neither do most people who think they're being kind by lying to these people and chemically and surgically altering their bodies.
It seems the election of Mamdani (unlike some other Dems who won yesterday) is a cry for help from the soul of the Democratic Party for independents and the heterodox to speak up to save the only party with some intelligence from the abandonment of common sense on so-called cultural issues that resulted in the 2024 defeats. Too bad there are only two parties.
People need to make their positions clear and appealing to good sense for the next round. It's not enough to have the majority on your side. That woman who has sold all those books appealing to the young seems to have a real talent for doing that.
I do find the contrast between Mamdani's positions on Israel and gender medicine interesting.
On both subjects the Democratic Party is out of step with their base and the population as a whole, but it's also a case where Mamdani is half in with the people (on Israel, the issue where he has the least influence) and half out.
I really hope he focuses on the bread and butter issues he campaigned on, the issues which got him elected, and not the scientifically spurious and identity-driven T-medicine platform pushed by activists. I believe he can be an ally for and defender of LGBT New Yorkers and all NYC workers without committing the same errors as the party mainstream.
I'm completely with you on the gender craze. Let's hope Mamdani is just pandering to the wokery in his activist base on this topic. It was the excellent bread-and-butter stuff, which all rational people like, that gave him the win, not this esoteric superstition. But it is quite a craze, these days, and still an uphill struggle against it. I was sorry, though, that you rather muddied the waters by dragging horrid Israel into the picture. That train has really left the station, and Zionism has become utterly disreputable, especially among younger people. A tin can that nobody should want tied to his tail.
The 2 issues (gender, Israel/Palestine), are unrelated and she just jumped from one to the other without a coherent explanation. I guess she lumps them together, under the general heading of "too far Left". I don't buy this. "Muddied the waters" is right! There are so many murky over-generalizations and cliches in this kind of argument I don't know where to start pulling them apart.
Right? I mean…what the actual fuck!? This is total insanity! I’m out. Thanks, Lisa for all your work exposing this issue. Unfortunately , when push came to shove you did the literal opposite of what is needed to correct course. I am so disappointed!!
At a guess, I would imagine that Lisa is coming at things from a broadly "conservative" or "right-wing" point of view. I use these terms not to be disparaging, but merely descriptive. I'm about as left-wing myself as left-wing gets but I don't have any problem making common cause with people on the Right when there's something we agree about. Tucker Carlson on Israel, for example. Or Lisa on gender. It's true that the two topics have nothing to do with each other except insofar as those who are broadly on the Right tend statistically to have one set of views, and those who are (even more broadly) on the Left tend to have the opposite ones, but who cares? We're allowed to pick and choose.
But then, lefty heritage owes a lot to Soviet Russia, which invented and exported the whole Zionism-is-colonialism discourse before expelling or killing all of their own Jews, and back in the 60s your illustrious leftist ancestors thought Leila Khaled was a chic radical hero, so I guess the egg’s on my face for being surprised by it all 🤦🏻♀️
I always said I hoped eventually the right and the left would be less divided. I didn’t think they’d finally come together over hating Jews.* 😒 #damn #becarefulwhatyouwishfor
*at least the Jews who refuse to denounce the one country that won’t eventually turn on them for being the wrong type of Jew
This is silly, and it's not working any more. That is, it's unnecessary to point out, any more, that detesting Israel (as I do) doesn't mean hating Jews. Every child understands this, now. But I'm saying it anyway, because I'm a patient man.
Actually, you’re wrong! Been on the internet lately? Read any comments under videos pertaining to Israel/Palestine? Two years ago at least people were pretending it was only about anti-Zionism. Masks are off now though. A couple years ago Jewish people could still be in lefty spaces if they were willing to denounce Netanyahu and the settler movement. Now you’ve gotta have a complete eliminationist stance toward Israel, which if you know anything about the Arab world, is not a metaphor. Now you’ve gotta say there’s no such thing as an Israeli civilian to be a good lefty. And of course, the right is going full Nazi. Good times!
Anyone who's ever read the parable of Brer Rabbit & the Tar Baby will understand why I decline to throw any more punches in this silly & frivolous exchange.
Whataboutism is the second-dumbest tactic in the hasbara toollkit. And of course it's closely related -- a stepping-stone, in fact -- to the number-one dumbest, which is of course calling people anti-Semites. Clumsy expression. We need something compact, analogous to "takfir".
I might add that in my lexicon, gender is a quintessentially *liberal* cause, and I make a sharp distinction between liberals on the one hand, and what I consider real Lefties on the other. Old joke: A reactionary thinks that women are inferior to men. A radical thinks women are equal to men. A liberal thinks the truth lies somewhere in between.
The only way to achieve an affordable New York is to invent a time machine the size of the five boroughs. We’d have to rewind to before the financialization of housing, before zoning ossified development, before every square foot was leveraged as an investment asset. Pretending we can retrofit affordability onto a hyper-gentrified city with boutique policy experiments and utopian slogans is fantasy. The ship sailed decades ago—and it was luxury real estate that bought the ticket.
In any case, tt’s good to put Mamdani on notice before he takes office that he’s on the losing side of the culture war over gender identity ideology. That will become even clearer in hindsight—especially if he proceeds to give queer and trans activists everything they demand, and perhaps more. The real rallying cry today isn’t his victory—it’s this Substack piece. Lisa Selin Davis has articulated, with clarity and courage, what many are afraid to say out loud: that medicalizing childhood nonconformity and enforcing belief in gender identity as a universal truth are not progressive acts—they are betrayals of reason, evidence, and democratic pluralism. This letter gives voice to the silenced majority. It will age well.
As for him, history shows that brocialists like Mamdani eventually get fired by fed-up voters. Ask two failed progressive district attorneys, SF's red prince, Chesa Boudin and Mamdani's fellow pretty boy, Portland's Mike Schmidt.
I am typically a very naive optimist, but it's very difficult not to despair today.
Yes. The election results have shown that women's sex-based rights are simply not important enough to a large enough percentage of voters to significantly impact most elections. See especially the Virigina governor's race.
Keeping Republican control of the Senate is now absolutely essential to preventing President Newsom from signing the Equality Act into law in January 2029.
there must be a movement to refound and re-center the "progressive" intellectual world...we, by which i mean you (all), are largely still stuck in a place where you recognize the insanity and unworkability of genderist ideas, but you don't follow the sick vine back to its roots, and you don't really accept the idea that everyone who fails to recognize the sickness can never be trusted again.
there are a fair number of "conservative intellectuals" at this point, like christopher rufo, who are making names for themselves (and money too) by "refounding" institutions, or founding new ones, on new terms, which they intend to preclude the genderism and racialism that came to dominate academic environments and spread from there to the rest of society.
where is this from the heterodox liberal? when will they move past supporting a few independent voices here and there, and truly recognize that the big names they used to revere -- harvard, yale, the new york times, the aclu, etc -- are beyond redemption?
yesterday's election results should not mean a thing to anyone who recognizes the true scale of the problem we are facing.
i am tired of waiting. i will be founding the city university of new jersey next year. (they're merging off new jersey city university into masters'-mill kean, giving me an excellent opportunity.) if there will be no one else, there will be me.
I laughed out loud at this: "You say you’ll be mayor for all, yet if I identify as asexual—which, considering I am a middle-aged lady, I could easily do—I am considered oppressed, and you’ll direct $87 million to give me special housing and services?"
Women are not well prepared to deal with the dramatic fall off of desire in their middle years--too many marriages founder on that rock--so, yes, we need some special attention!
If we turn every form of sexual dysfunction into an identity, we could all enter the oppression stack and loot the treasury.
Okay--fellow menopausal women, let's lobby for more money too! /s
Thanks for this incisive critique of Mamdani's costly, regressive, misogynistic and homophobic initiative against the rights of women, girls and LGB folk.
Thank you, Lisa. Your letter closes with two *very* important questions.
I’d encourage Zohran and his staff to watch this debate, hosted last month by Braver Angels: https://youtu.be/u39b32VZFko?
Different viewpoints/life experiences are represented, and everyone is treated with respect.
Lisa, I would really like to know more of your perspective on this. I guess since Mamdani is mayor, he has the power to turn NYC into a sanctuary city, and spend money on all this “gender affirming” care.
Is there anyone/any organizations that could challenge this? And if so, how? Through the courts? On what possible grounds?
Not a lawyer but there could be cases that challenge state law vs federal law. A very tricky area since federalism requires states to regulate many things (like medical standards) so a case would need to be made that federal law would supersede state law.
Skirmetti and Dobbs decisions reaffirmed a state's right to make a law banning or legalizing a medical procedure--so abortion and gender medicine were not federal matters as per constitutional rights.
I'm hoping that someone out there is working on some legal angles, but my impression is it could be a long uphill battle.
Voters COULD HAVE challenged this. But, as illustrated by Lisa’s confounding admission, at least one voter blew it.
Not a single person in my extended trad blue voting family thinks it's a good idea for my child to medicalize, yet none of them have ever considered voting red. They all assure me they 'get it.'. All but one have a hard time with my declaration to vote red. It's a 'niche' issue for them, even though it's their familial flesh and bone affected.
I just wish Mamdami could understand that "GAC" is HARMING young people, NOT helping them. I get his desire to protect the vulnerable, but he is not helping by making it EASIER to chemically and surgically alter young vulnerable people's bodies based on the belief that they are a special breed of humans that need to alter their bodies to appear the opposite sex and be referred to and treated as if they are the opposite sex to have any semblance of happiness
He doesn't get it, and neither do most people who think they're being kind by lying to these people and chemically and surgically altering their bodies.
Govern with reality? We’ll see. I watched his victory speech and liked him even less.
It’s the Gender Taliban! Coming to a borough near you.
Beautifully stated, Lisa. I appreciate you.🙏❤️🙏
If GAC is discredited and shut down as the result of detransitioners’ lawsuits, there will be nothing he can do about it.
It seems the election of Mamdani (unlike some other Dems who won yesterday) is a cry for help from the soul of the Democratic Party for independents and the heterodox to speak up to save the only party with some intelligence from the abandonment of common sense on so-called cultural issues that resulted in the 2024 defeats. Too bad there are only two parties.
People need to make their positions clear and appealing to good sense for the next round. It's not enough to have the majority on your side. That woman who has sold all those books appealing to the young seems to have a real talent for doing that.
Thanks for writing this.
I do find the contrast between Mamdani's positions on Israel and gender medicine interesting.
On both subjects the Democratic Party is out of step with their base and the population as a whole, but it's also a case where Mamdani is half in with the people (on Israel, the issue where he has the least influence) and half out.
I really hope he focuses on the bread and butter issues he campaigned on, the issues which got him elected, and not the scientifically spurious and identity-driven T-medicine platform pushed by activists. I believe he can be an ally for and defender of LGBT New Yorkers and all NYC workers without committing the same errors as the party mainstream.
I'm completely with you on the gender craze. Let's hope Mamdani is just pandering to the wokery in his activist base on this topic. It was the excellent bread-and-butter stuff, which all rational people like, that gave him the win, not this esoteric superstition. But it is quite a craze, these days, and still an uphill struggle against it. I was sorry, though, that you rather muddied the waters by dragging horrid Israel into the picture. That train has really left the station, and Zionism has become utterly disreputable, especially among younger people. A tin can that nobody should want tied to his tail.
The 2 issues (gender, Israel/Palestine), are unrelated and she just jumped from one to the other without a coherent explanation. I guess she lumps them together, under the general heading of "too far Left". I don't buy this. "Muddied the waters" is right! There are so many murky over-generalizations and cliches in this kind of argument I don't know where to start pulling them apart.
What I lumped is his assuming his beliefs should be transformed into policy, and that people who don't share them are bad.
Don't we all think our beliefs should become policy, though? I certainly do.
Right? I mean…what the actual fuck!? This is total insanity! I’m out. Thanks, Lisa for all your work exposing this issue. Unfortunately , when push came to shove you did the literal opposite of what is needed to correct course. I am so disappointed!!
Wow. This thread right here is so telling. This is why I don’t consider myself a Democrat anymore.
At a guess, I would imagine that Lisa is coming at things from a broadly "conservative" or "right-wing" point of view. I use these terms not to be disparaging, but merely descriptive. I'm about as left-wing myself as left-wing gets but I don't have any problem making common cause with people on the Right when there's something we agree about. Tucker Carlson on Israel, for example. Or Lisa on gender. It's true that the two topics have nothing to do with each other except insofar as those who are broadly on the Right tend statistically to have one set of views, and those who are (even more broadly) on the Left tend to have the opposite ones, but who cares? We're allowed to pick and choose.
But then, lefty heritage owes a lot to Soviet Russia, which invented and exported the whole Zionism-is-colonialism discourse before expelling or killing all of their own Jews, and back in the 60s your illustrious leftist ancestors thought Leila Khaled was a chic radical hero, so I guess the egg’s on my face for being surprised by it all 🤦🏻♀️
I always said I hoped eventually the right and the left would be less divided. I didn’t think they’d finally come together over hating Jews.* 😒 #damn #becarefulwhatyouwishfor
*at least the Jews who refuse to denounce the one country that won’t eventually turn on them for being the wrong type of Jew
This is silly, and it's not working any more. That is, it's unnecessary to point out, any more, that detesting Israel (as I do) doesn't mean hating Jews. Every child understands this, now. But I'm saying it anyway, because I'm a patient man.
Actually, you’re wrong! Been on the internet lately? Read any comments under videos pertaining to Israel/Palestine? Two years ago at least people were pretending it was only about anti-Zionism. Masks are off now though. A couple years ago Jewish people could still be in lefty spaces if they were willing to denounce Netanyahu and the settler movement. Now you’ve gotta have a complete eliminationist stance toward Israel, which if you know anything about the Arab world, is not a metaphor. Now you’ve gotta say there’s no such thing as an Israeli civilian to be a good lefty. And of course, the right is going full Nazi. Good times!
Anyone who's ever read the parable of Brer Rabbit & the Tar Baby will understand why I decline to throw any more punches in this silly & frivolous exchange.
curious if you also detest every other country that is at war? ... how about other countries that have killed Muslims? ... how about Islamists?
where does your hatred start and stop?
humanity has many forms of barbarism. Harboring hatred chief among them.
Whataboutism is the second-dumbest tactic in the hasbara toollkit. And of course it's closely related -- a stepping-stone, in fact -- to the number-one dumbest, which is of course calling people anti-Semites. Clumsy expression. We need something compact, analogous to "takfir".
I might add that in my lexicon, gender is a quintessentially *liberal* cause, and I make a sharp distinction between liberals on the one hand, and what I consider real Lefties on the other. Old joke: A reactionary thinks that women are inferior to men. A radical thinks women are equal to men. A liberal thinks the truth lies somewhere in between.
He needed to include all this LGBT rhetoric to get their votes but do you really think his Islamic constituents will allow this??
LOL. check out what happens to gay people in Iran: they are compelled into sex change surgeries if they won't renounce being gay.
Iran is a pioneer in sex change procedures, so, yes, Islamists can adapt to trans-medicalization quite quickly.
What I’m saying, Lisa, is that was a campaign promise. There are much bigger things to worry about.
The only way to achieve an affordable New York is to invent a time machine the size of the five boroughs. We’d have to rewind to before the financialization of housing, before zoning ossified development, before every square foot was leveraged as an investment asset. Pretending we can retrofit affordability onto a hyper-gentrified city with boutique policy experiments and utopian slogans is fantasy. The ship sailed decades ago—and it was luxury real estate that bought the ticket.
In any case, tt’s good to put Mamdani on notice before he takes office that he’s on the losing side of the culture war over gender identity ideology. That will become even clearer in hindsight—especially if he proceeds to give queer and trans activists everything they demand, and perhaps more. The real rallying cry today isn’t his victory—it’s this Substack piece. Lisa Selin Davis has articulated, with clarity and courage, what many are afraid to say out loud: that medicalizing childhood nonconformity and enforcing belief in gender identity as a universal truth are not progressive acts—they are betrayals of reason, evidence, and democratic pluralism. This letter gives voice to the silenced majority. It will age well.
As for him, history shows that brocialists like Mamdani eventually get fired by fed-up voters. Ask two failed progressive district attorneys, SF's red prince, Chesa Boudin and Mamdani's fellow pretty boy, Portland's Mike Schmidt.