De-platformed: The Musical!

(OK, this is not a musical, but de-platforming is a good subject for one)

“You liked a tweet…” the executive director began.

I didn’t let him finish. “Are you serious?” I asked. I was in the middle of what I thought was a bad bout of the flu (but I now think was a breakthrough Covid case, considering I lost my appetite and food tasted strange two weeks later, and I have been a nap-needer in the weeks since). I was feverish, raspy-voiced and aching everywhere, but my physical symptoms gave way to a body-rumbling incredulity.

I am quick to anger anyway, but as he began to list the tweets of mine that had led to my being uninvited to speak at the gender conference he oversaw, I arrived at outrage immediately, without stopping to consider how politic my responses needed to be, how carefully I needed to tread. Being uninvited to give my talk on the history and evolving impact of childhood gender norms because of a tweet felt Orwellian, or Kafkaesque, or just shitty. (Admittedly, he was very professional, gracious and apologetic about it.) As I wrote him later in one of three ridiculously desperate emails I sent, I had worked very hard to make my workshop inclusive of people of all gender identities; it was a giant bummer to be excluded.

The tweet in question was one I liked not because I agreed with its contents, but because I wanted to keep track of it—I am interested in, and disturbed by, the increasing censorship in the media around sex and gender, and had heard that people have been kicked off Twitter for stating their belief in the reality of biological sex. As a reluctant and mostly ignored Twitterer (I’m old, I’m more of a Facebook person), I was unaware of the bookmark feature, so I liked a tweet about what is known as “The Slaniland Question.”

It was once asked on Twitter by a woman named Helen Staniland, about whom I know almost nothing except that she was kicked off of Twitter for asking it. My understanding is that she is part of what’s known as the “gender-critical” movement—a movement that I think is fascinating and worthy of media coverage, and is based on the belief that biological sex should fall higher in the cultural hierarchy than gender identity. I follow lots of trans people on Twitter, and I also follow lots of gender-critical people (and there are plenty of trans gender-critical people) because I hope to write about them someday.

Here’s the Staniland Question: “Do you believe that male-bodied people with a penis should have the right to undress in front of women and young girls?”

Some in the gender-critical movement have brought up that one reason we have separate female spaces is to protect women and girls from the predations of some males—not because every male is dangerous, but because structures are needed to handle those who are. Another reason is likely vestigial Victorian prudishness and believing women’s bodies need to be hidden from men, but most of us were raised in a society that divides by sex in these spaces, and many still want that or feel more comfortable with that version of the world.

Example: the Wi Spa incident, in which allegedly a person with a penis did undress in front of women and young girls. I’m not sure why the media decided this was a hoax—what happened to “believe women?” But calling it that prevents us from asking how we address that some people want to divide by sex and others by gender identity, and we can’t just assume that 1) one population’s needs are more important because this population is smaller in number and 2) no one will abuse these policies and laws that protect the smaller population. People who advocate for sex-based rights (who are of every political persuasion, and not just right-wing as the media has decided) generally have to adjust now that in many places people can legally access spaces based on gender identity, not sex. In the case of Wi Spa, it’s perfectly legal for a person with a male body who identifies as a women to change in the women and girls’ locker room because California law prohibits discrimination against trans people.

Laws like that are important, because girls and women are not the only vulnerable people in bathrooms and locker rooms. Because our society is so intolerant of gender nonconformity, and because feminine men and trans women are often not safe in male-only spaces, many want to use the women’s room as a haven—we rarely hear stories about trans men battling to use men’s bathrooms and locker rooms. “It’s not safe for trans women to go into male spaces, and to be forced into those areas puts them at risk,” nonbinary author Dianna Anderson told the Washington Post. “The bigger threat here is that trans women will be assaulted over this stuff.”

And what about the threats that masculine women and feminine men face? They are still not particularly tolerated, celebrated or protected if they have cisgender identities. I feel they are still deeply misunderstood and few people advocate for them or make space for them in society.

I’ve been hung up on trying to find synthesis between thesis—the old idea that we should divide the world by biological sex—and antithesis: the new idea that we should divide the world by gender identity. Maybe it’s naïve and there is no path toward synthesis, but I believe we should try. Yet understanding and empathizing with multiple perspectives, in our current version of the world, is not only a liability, it’s considered by some to be a sin. “There is no both sides-ing this issue,” I often see on Twitter, and certainly the mainstream and left-wing press seems to agree (the great bulk of gender-critical people are not, as the press reports, right-wing, but old-fashioned liberals). Maybe the problem is the binary of “both sides.” Maybe we should all-sides it.

I know that’s hard to do, and that there are high stakes. There are places where trans rights and women’s rights overlap and places where they directly threaten one another. But we can’t assume one side is right without hearing from the other side, or many other sides. Favoring women’s rights doesn’t automatically make you transphobic any more than favoring trans’ rights automatically makes you misogynistic.

We’ve seen a major zeitgeist shift, in which being a member of a majority group or holding views associated with a majority is automatically problematic, because we have a moral responsibility to solve for the problems of the people with the least power. This is both progressive and regressive. Women have always been a majority with less power, and many people feel the relatively small-in-number trans population has tremendous power to sway both the legal system and the public mind. If you have been asked your preferred pronouns or your kids have been taught in school that some girls have penises and some boys have vaginas (as mine have), well, that’s the result of trans activism, which has increased awareness of and tolerance for trans folks and has made a huge impact on our society, despite being a small minority. On the other hand, women still make up only 27 percent of Congress, despite being 51% of the population, and that’s with a record number of women sworn in after the #MeToo movement. That is, size and power aren’t in a direct relationship.

I don’t know how to answer the Staniland question, but I believe in the right to ask it, and to do so without getting canceled or silenced or kicked off of social media. I understand that it feels like a threat to some trans people, just as I understand that not asking it feels like a threat to some women. But I also believe that shutting down conversation is dangerous. And I believe that what I have to say about the history and current impact of gender norms, and how we decide what’s for girls and what’s for boys, is critically important for young people learning about gender today, and especially for gender-questioning kids and the professionals who work with them. It’s a shame that my liking the wrong tweet kept that community from learning what I have to offer. It’s a shame that the battle lines are drawn so that anyone who deviates slightly from them is considered an enemy, even when you’re on the same side.

Photo: Flickr/Creative Commons

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