You touch on it here, but the rhetorical dodge, “why do you care about this, it affects a tiny tiny fraction of people” will never not drive me up a wall.
Entire structures of society were changed for ideological reasons, demands were imposed and were uncritically accepted for that infinitesimal population. They are the party that made this the paramount cause, and now they are hand waving it away as not a big deal. As if it doesn’t even matter because the people to whom this mattered are essentially a rounding error?
And we're not out of the woods yet. The reason they choose silence over repudiation or denial is because they know they're going to go right back to it if they can win back the legislative and/or executive branches. Only if they're held down another cycle, or preferably two, will they switch to denial. Claiming they never said what they said then, when confronted with evidence, they'll fall back to that they were forced to say things but they never really believed them in their heart of hearts.
"powerless minority" ? Is he kidding? This "minority" has managed to get states, schools, prisons, athletics in allowing for biological men to enter women's spaces; bathrooms, locker rooms, all types of sports, women's prisons etc. This has been achieved thru policies and laws along with forced speech. So forgive me to say but Bernie Sanders is doing nothing here but trying to gas light the public.
Before I peaked, I really thought the seeming rapid acceptance in society of trans people was a wonderful sign of how tolerant we'd grown to be. ...Then I realized that this was happening because not unlike Dave Chappelle said, white guys were doing it!
Agreed. It gave me a better understanding at the beginning. Now they've over played their hand and all that's done is create more intolerance which of course just keeps the complex humming.
Is it because some of the people raising the alarm about this issue are of the “wrong” identity (white middle aged females”)? I don’t usually think in those terms but your description of how you were so casually dismissed at this event makes me wonder.
They have a powerful weapon against dissenters: just intone “MAGA” and the dissenters vanish into irrelevance.
Funny how similar this is to what happened during Covid. "White women" were the ones clamoring to open the schools, and they were contemptuously dismissed as stay-at-home moms who couldn't wait to get back to their yoga classes. And, of course, anyone who questioned the lockdowns or masks was MAGA.
Yes! I think the schools not reopening was my gateway to being skeptical about gender identity. It was my first break from my tribe. When the left not only didn’t help me or my kids as we struggled at home even after vaccines came out, but was vilified for thinking that schools were essential child care.
Thank you, Lisa, for attending WelcomeFest, for attempting to have sensible conversations—at which you are expert—and for reporting back. I am sadly not surprised at what you found. I particularly appreciate that you quoted extensively from Bernie Sanders. There are too many, even among our sex realist ranks, who give this guy a pass. None of us should. (That goes for the “manly” stuff as well.)
A couple things to note:
>Post-election polling: I am concerned that the post-election Blueprint survey of swing voters may no longer pertain, given the increasing (and I would say deserved) unpopularity of the current administration. Michael Baharaeen would be the best one to ask, but I would not be surprised if sex v. gender identity-related issues have dropped way down as a matter of concern.
That said, Musai al-Gharbi’s analysis of results post-election deserves more attention than it is getting. Here’s a link, and below is a key excerpt: https://substack.com/@musaalgharbi/p-151489437
“Between 2016 and 2024, men shifted roughly 1 percentage points towards the GOP. Women shifted 5 percentage points away from the Democratic Party over that same period – i.e. several times as much! Yet, the post-election focus has been overwhelmingly on men for some reason. (Emphasis added.)
“So let me put it bluntly: the most accurate story about the role of gender in this race is that Democrats lost in 2024 because Harris performed extremely poorly with women. Going all the way back to 1996 (when the partisan gender divide kicked into high gear), there has been only one Democrat who performed worse with women than Kamala did: John Kerry in 2004.”
So far as I know, these results have not been examined to find out why women shifted away from the Democratic Party. I don’t think we have enough information to determine the reasons for this drop, but it would sure be nice if someone would pick this up and analyze the results to determine what the reasons were. (Though I suspect it’s not the full story, given the numbers, your note about the black/white divide may well have something to do with it, so it would be worth knowing more about that, too.)
>Sex realist strategy and tactics: I do think there is some merit to the candidate’s observation that “the answer to that question [what is a woman] depended on who one’s constituents were.” I would like it to be otherwise, but what we know is politicians are generally followers, not leaders. Along with dollars (which we all know are way too prominent, particularly since Citizens United), they count votes. It is necessary, therefore, to reach what Carol Tavris refers to as a “tipping point” where the number of constituents raising objections reaches a critical mass sufficient to cause the politician to sit up, take note, and change course. (This is known in the “biz” as creating a “preference cascade.”)
We are nowhere near that point, and the political organizing needed to get there appears to be sadly lacking. From the work I have done with sex realist organizations, it does not appear there is strong experience with grassroots political organizing. Rather, it appears many, if not most, sex realist activists came of age after the mode of advocacy shifted from in-person membership organizations to professionally managed advocacy groups, which typically have no engaged, active membership at all. Theda Skocpol’s presidential address at a meeting of the American Political Science Association is extremely helpful to understand this shift and its consequences. The address is called “Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy,” and can be found at this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231964713_Voice_and_Inequality_The_Transformation_of_American_Civic_Democracy
In addition, my own view, out of my efforts to volunteer, is that the emphasis in much sex realist advocacy is not helpful to reach the Democratic side. What we need, in my view, borrowing again from Carol Tavris, are strategy and tactics that are “pro-woman and anti-MAGA.” I have set down my thoughts about how sex realists might recalibrate to do that here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IdTky1QfTutWUHBOfAys4Dzrds-kpDSOFTGCkP_87Kk/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for all your hard, good, persistent, courageous work to address these issues—and for being the truly lovely, thoughtful, empathetic person you so clearly are.
My recent experience with how this issue plays out politically is 2 fold:. the first is that it is almost impossible to move liberal/progressives on this issue without having one on one conversations to cut through the misinformation and point out the cognitive dissonance people have around this issue. The issue is personal in the sense that people who live in blue areas, or who move in blue political circles, all know at least 1 person who has a trans child, or knows someone who does. They want to support their friends and their children. They do not want to believe that these people have harmed their children, or that there was an alternative path to the child's happiness and well-being.
The second is that "gender critical" or "sex realist" advocacy too often positions protecting "trans" people from discrimination in employment, housing, as crime victims, etc., as incompatible with sex based rights. Rhetoric about removing anti-discrimination protections for "gender identity" are non-starters in blue circles. You are not going to suceed in 2026 in convincing even centrist Democrats that it should be ok to fire someone for being trans.
If that is the end goal, to banish the concept of gender identity from the law and society, if that is the rhetoric people on the left hear from "sex realists" you are going to fail. GC/sex realists have to stop buying into the TRA argument that it is gender identity discrimination to maintain sex based classifications for things like sports, locker rooms, medical care, etc. It is very much possible to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity while preserving single sex-spaces and rights. Maybe at some point in the distant future the concept of gender identity will fall out of favor in society, but we don't need to wait for that to happen to protect sex-based rights, and trying to force that to happen now is just further hardening the left against any kind of change. If people on the left the sex realist position means trans people can be fired or kicked out of restaurants, they're never going to accept it.
The problem is the areas where gender ideology conflicts with women’s rights and our responsibility to young people are serious issues—women’s safety and equal opportunities, safeguarding youth from medical harm—not getting excluded from jobs or kicked out of restaurants. No one is getting fired or kicked out of restaurants in the liberal urban areas where trans rights are a prominent issue. But lots of young women are getting mastectomies of their healthy breasts and taking testosterone. Bernie saying no one under 12 is getting mastectomies is a joke. As if it’s ok at 13, 16, or even 18! That is where you get moms like me rethinking our politics.
I hear you. I’m really glad Lisa called out Bernie. He’s the one, more than anyone on the Dem side, who is in a position to speak up, but instead, he’s clearly drunk the Kool-Aid.
On the issue of getting excluded from jobs, eg, one thing I’d point to where this is the case is the Trump EO on military service. In line with Elizabeth Adinolfi’s comment, I do think it’s important that we, as sex realists, make clear we don’t support discrimination in, eg, employment on the basis of “trans” status alone. Here are some excellent observations from Carol Tavris on that EO:
“Going forward, if we want to say that trans people have a mental disorder/mental illness/delusion/illusion/PTSD/other ‘mental problem,’ then I think we need to acknowledge all of the millions of other people with other mental disorders/etc., who nonetheless are gainfully employed, doing good jobs, carrying on as best they can, all while believing whatever illusions or delusions serve them. Frankly, I’d rather the military get rid of delusional conspiracy theorists or UFO chasers or Christian believers in Armageddon before ejecting the thousands of trans people who have served nobly and well to date.”
(With apologies, Substack isn’t allowing a direct link to Carol’s comment, so I’ve pulled and quoted it here.)
I’m not an expert on military readiness, but I know people are excluded from military service for all kinds of health-related reasons. Being dependent on exogenous hormones well might present issues if a person is deployed.
However I cant see this issue as being a barrier to acceptance of sex-based rights in liberal areas. Their kids are not joining the military. Their daughters are, however, transing themselves. This is where I think change will come.
Once people are in the military, there are a host of policies that allow people to remain despite having chronic health conditions that require medication.
You can be refused for military service for all sorts of minor medical issues, like because you have psoriasis. The medical load of endless exogenous hormones and surgeries required by transgenderism is way heavier. Letting transgender people in the service isn't treating them equally, it's giving them a special pass.
The military has different standards for letting people join and separating them once they are in. That is why a federal court enjoined the part of the policy that applies to people on the military but not those who want to join.
"The second is that "gender critical" or "sex realist" advocacy too often positions protecting "trans" people from discrimination in employment, housing, as crime victims, etc., as incompatible with sex based rights. Rhetoric about removing anti-discrimination protections for "gender identity" are non-starters in blue circles. You are not going to suceed in 2026 in convincing even centrist Democrats that it should be ok to fire someone for being trans."
I have to say I don't think I've ever heard GC feminists argue for this, let alone have it as a policy platform.
"The issue is personal in the sense that people who live in blue areas, or who move in blue political circles, all know at least 1 person who has a trans child, or knows someone who does. They want to support their friends and their children. They do not want to believe that these people have harmed their children, or that there was an alternative path to the child's happiness and well-being."
These people all also know someone whose kid used to identify as trans, but recovered, or whose family is currently still hoping for recovery, but those friends aren't plastering it all over their social media walls or talking about it every time they open their mouths. Families who have gone through, or who are going through, the struggle of a sensitive, nerdy kid suddenly seeing a trans identity as the explanation for all their social disconnection don't talk about it with all and sundry.
From what I have seen, especially in areas where children transition at younger and younger ages, the detransition wave hasn't hit yet. What I have seen happen makes it more difficult for people to break out, kids who were dabbling for lack of a better word, who maybe cut their hair, changed how they dressed, who were clearly struggling, but then desisted. This reinforces the idea of "true trans" especially when their child's peers are still happy in their transition, or appear to be. It is really hard to break through the cognitive dissonance people can tolerate around this issue, "my kid wasn't really trans, but Jane's "son" Kai is so much happier now, he is really trans." They can't bring themselves to see that there was an alternative path to happiness for Kai than transition the way there was for their kid.
How does one prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” while maintaining single sex spaces? If you have a way to square this circle, I’m all ears. I have yet to hear anyone actually even provide a coherent definition of gender identity, for one thing, which makes it impossible to productively discuss, let alone make any laws about it. The UK law used to prohibit discrimination on the basis of transgender status, which in my understanding was almost like a disability, like, some people have a psychological condition that makes them think they’re the opposite sex and you can’t discriminate against them on that basis. You can maybe swing that, because it’s describing a real thing—some people do indeed sincerely believe they are the sex they are not, although trans activists will never accept that framework because it does not provide a path to their desired discursive and policy outcome, which is that everyone actually IS whatever sex they think they are and should be treated accordingly. The primary function of the idea of gender identity is to supplant sex where sex is relevant. If you have a woman gender identity, that’s what makes you a woman, and therefore you belong in the women’s bathroom and sports team and prison.
This is exactly what I am talking about. You are buying into the TRA argument that turns anti-discrimination law on its head. Discrimination requires causation. The action alleged to be discriminatory has to be motivated by the characteristic. Not letting Lia Thomas swim on the men's team would be discrimination because of gender identity. Not letting Lia Thomas swim on the women's team is discrimination based on sex, which the law allows. I dont have an issue with the law prohibiting men like Lia Thomas from being denied opportunities available to other men because of their gender identity. I have a problem with laws that deny opportunities to "cis" men that are granted to trans identifying men, like allowing TIMs access to women's spas but not other men, because that is discrimination based on gender identity.
There are some States, NJ is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, that explicitly says in its anti-discrimination law that access to single sex spaces should be granted in the basis of gender identity. Which I think proves the point, a law that lacks such a provision shouldn't be interpreted as if it does. Unfortunately TRAs have influenced the administrative agencies, like state Human Rights Commissions, to read their statutes like they include that language. And too many attorneys litigating this issue have not even tried to make this argument. They start with the assumption that the misinterpretation of the law is actually correct, and try to get an exemption. The Olympus Spa case in Washington is the best example of this.
I don’t disagree with you on what could be the practice: banning discrimination on the basis of transgender status. I have no problem with protecting Lia Thomas’s right to swim on the men’s team, as Lia Thomas is a man. I think that’s meaningfully different than banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The whole idea of gender identity is that 1) everyone has one and 2) it’s what makes you what you are for purposes of society and law, and 3) it’s conveniently without a non-circular definition. That is, it is meant to replace sex on the basis of precisely nothing. That’s very different than the idea of transgender status, which again would function like a disability, in that not everyone has one, it’s an extra thing, and it’s not considered a suspect class under American law.
But at the end of the day, if the people whom you’re ostensibly trying to protect consider your way of going about it (protecting TIMs from discrimination in male spaces) to be genocide, what’s the point of advocating for it? They don’t want to be protected in male spaces, they want to be protected in female spaces, because the idea underpinning their entire worldview is that one’s self-declared gender identity is what determines one’s access to sexed spaces. They don’t want to be protected on the basis that they’re a weird man but it’s fine to be weird; they reject that entirely. They want to be protected on the basis that they’re a woman because they say so, and they want me to be a woman because I say so too, not because I am female.
What I can never wrap my mind around is the Dems’ arguing that “the trans issue affects such a miniscule number of people” on the one hand (as exemplified by Sanders’ remarks)…and on the other hand the apparent willingness of many Dems to make it a hill they’re prepared to die on, thus gifting a powerful wedge issue to the Republicans. As opposed to, y’know, an actual hill worth dying on…such as the fight for civil rights, which affected the lives of tens of millions of Americans.
It's because they view it as their moral duty to protect minorities who they believe are oppressed. The smaller the number, the stronger the MINORITY status, and the more oppressed they allegedly are, the more essential it is for Dems to protect them. Meanwhile, the fact that the numbers are allegedly so small is supposed to prove that society at large is not being seriously affected by the changes in policies, and must therefore shut up. Never mind that policies that do away with the most fundamental reality of human existence - sex - affect every single one of us.
It's bad math and myopia. In the "minuscule number" argument, only certain people are counted as being affected. For example, if there's a track meet with one trans-identifying boy on the podium, only that boy is being counted as affected, not the dozens or hundreds of girls who are affected by being knocked down in the rankings or having to watch him swanning his junk around the locker room or being threatened with expulsion for even talking about it.
At the very least, centrist Dems appear to be terrified of being attacked by progressives and others even further to the left if they openly disagree with the Democratic Party's embrace of gender ideology and the trans agenda. I think it is as simple as that.
Centrists' "it only affects a few people" and "the voters don't care" lines are conversation-stopping rhetorical dodges. They say it so consistently that it is enough to make a person think Democrats have finally discovered message discipline.
My guestimate is that ~80% of Democrats in office are true believers in the transqueer cult, and the other ~20% are terrified (and rightly so!) of being primaried by the cult if they go against it in any way.
I think it is the other way around. I don't think most elected Dems have given it much thought past what the major medical associations and organizations like GLAAD and Planned Parenthood tell them.
I agree they haven't given it much thought, but I think Mark is right that they do truly believe that some people are truly "trans", because the orgs you reference have told them so.
I think someone can believe people can be "truly trans" and still not think that means sex is no longer a relevant category, that trans women are women, instead of being transwomen, or that children are able to understand what it means to be trans and start transitioning. I don't really care if a politician believes that gender identity is real, I care if they understand there is still a meaningful distinction between gender identity and sex, and that gender identity is too complex and issue for children to transition.
Maybe. But if they do believe that some people are "truly trans", they are likely to believe that access to women's spaces/sports as well as access to "healthcare" in the form of sex trait modification are civil rights issues for this special category of human beings. They may agree that the problem is that it may be hard to identify those "true trans" children, or that the sports situation poses a fairness issue, but they will still believe that those are civil rights issues and they will find it hard to navigate them.
I think those are the 20%, not the 80%. I think most Democrats go along with that because that is what they are being told it means to be a good Democrat, but I have had too many people privately tell me that while they believe trans people exist and should be protected, they don't believe that transwomen are really women, and that transwomen should be in women's spaces or compete in women's sports. I think the 20% have the 80% too afraid to say so.
Yes. Watching most dem politicians answer they hem and haw in a way that makes clear they dont really believe it, but also that they aren't going to stand up to it.
"Why do you care about this?" or rather, "why are you so obsessed with this?" is what I get any time I bring it up. Also: "This doesn't affect you." This is not just the strategy of Democratic politicians, but of their voters. I always feel like they are afraid to find out more, because they probably sense that they, too, might not like what they learn, and then they might have to view their friends' "trans" children in a different light. So much easier to dismiss it as Fox News talking points, refuse to educate yourself, and change the topic, while pathologizing those who care.
My gay brother-in-law has always fancied himself a champion of women's rights and is very upset that my sons think Charlie Kirk was pretty cool (hello, teen rebellion against progressive indoctrination at school). In the same conversation, he will dismiss concerns about the undermining of women's rights by "gender identity"-based policies as a fake issue. He doesn't see the irony of a man telling a woman not to care about the infringement on her rights while simultaneously worrying that his nephews might turn into patriarchal misogynists by listening to Charlie Kirk (whom he, by the way, is probably confusing with Andrew Tate).
The Oregon numbers are quite different, as you note.
It does seem that the argument is now going to be "it's not a big deal" and I wonder how they are going to treat all the kids with major health problems, in the only bodies they will ever have, for the rest of their lives, who say, well, actually, it is a big deal and it is your fault...Ignoring them will lose more voters, I'm meeting more and more people saying they know someone or someone's kid who started on this...who is not doing well.
Damn it, Lisa. I was holding out hope that my Bernie - yes, that's how I liked to think of him - while not speaking out to protect vulnerable youth from these "treatments" - was at least not going to engage with the activists and spout nonsense that can (and likely will) only lead to much more harm. That is highly disappointing.
But, seriously, thanks for attending the conference, for bringing this sad news, and for helping so many of us stay up to date on the insanity that is gender ideology.
Also, I really appreciate this sentence, which should be plastered everywhere: "Some people who transition feel better after—even in the long-term. But we will never know if they would have felt better anyway." And the rest of that paragraph is also good. So true!!!
While I am certain that some people who transition end up living decent lives, there is no reason to believe that such people would not also have led decent lives without lying to the world about their sex and without doing at least some medical harm to their bodies. And there is every reason to believe that the detriments (health issues and having to live a lie and all of the consequent psychological harm) far outweigh the benefits (making a fantasy come true in that others believe you're the opposite sex, and you, at least at a point in time, like that idea and your appearance) for most individuals who make the choice to live as the opposite sex and medically alter their appearance through chemicals and/or surgeries - based on logic, medical science, what we know of psychology and the human condition. In fact, I can't imagine a case where the benefits outweigh the detriments, but only a case where someone lives a decent life despite the detriments.
Democrats have allowed themselves to be held hostage by an incredibly tiny minority and they want the rest of us to ignore that. "Move along.......".
With trans kids , I think it's not just more acceptance in white families, but I would bet it's also related to class. I think this is a white, middle class progressive thing.
My goodness, what a hate-filled & authoritarian point of view, Lisa.
Some progressive you are — you’ll have to give up your quaint attachment to liberalism if you’re ever going to make progress. Don’t worry, we’ll bring it back when we’ve got the MAGA problem under control — trust me, bro!
/s
In all seriousness, thank you from your Northern friends for continuing to push this water uphill in the US: Every drip of facts and rationality contributes to the erosion of unreasoned positions, even if it’s imperceptible in real time.
***
Few things grind my gears like being ignored when highlighting strategic risks in advance, then being blamed for the consequences of those warnings being ignored 🤬
A prior boss: “Don’t stress, DC. If this is important, someone will tell us.”
Me: “Yeah, that someone is me, right now.”
“You worry too much.”
“I’m your Information Risk Manager!”
…
“So about the $25M fines & the compliance agreement …”
“Yes? Am I getting the $5M earmarked in the agreement to remediate the underlying issues? No? Well, that’s going be an issue 🤷♂️”
Of course, this isn’t a fight I’m willing to walk away from, unlike my decision that I’d sacrificed enough trying to force the military industrial complex into a little less corruption and a little less vulnerability to national security threats…
"Few things grind my gears like being ignored when highlighting strategic risks in advance, then being blamed for the consequences of those warnings being ignored."
You, like many of us sex realists in this fight, are a Cassandra. And people hate Cassandras, as the Ancient Greeks taught us long ago.
I had come across a link to this hearing from another gender critical source. And watching it, my heart just SANK.
In 2016/2020, I was a Berner. And like *most* of his supporters, there's a reason we've moved on from the one note. He certainly didn't listen very well to the distraught youth testifying in front of him. She was a damaged person, not a political operative, for gosh sakes.
And being formerly from Madison, voting for Tammy Baldwin for her first STATE position (as a local LGB hero), I can barely contain my disappointment.
ALL of the Dems looked OLD and OUT-OF-TOUCH. Life's moving pretty fast and they barely seem able to keep up with anything not resembling Red-Blue tribalism.
The GOPers, on the other hand, seemed more prepared to recognize Chloe's humanity. They really didn't seem like they were using her just as a convenient prop. And then to top it all off, the Dems handed Josh Hawley ANOTHER golden opportunistic media sound bite of "speaking truth to power" and pushing back against THE NEW JIM CROW.
I asked a Deep Blue normie Dem acquaintance of mine when the last time he watched a political hearing where up was down, left was right and black was white, because that's what it felt like watching this hearing outside the tribe-vibe frame.
Remarkable. And the cognitive dissonance continues to break my brain...
Just more evidence that anyone who ACTUALLY CARES about women's rights, and about stopping the ongoing crime against humanity of "gender affirming care", will be working for, campaigning for, contributing to, and voting for REPUBLICANS.
If you are not doing that, then you care more about something else. I don't know what it is, but it's not women's rights, and it's not stopping the mutilation of children.
The happiest guys around are the GOP operatives that know that their assholery will cement our tribe to this issue. The interplay here being bad faith on the GOP side and dig in your heels on our side. They are trying to make us the party of trans and we are happy to oblige them.
You touch on it here, but the rhetorical dodge, “why do you care about this, it affects a tiny tiny fraction of people” will never not drive me up a wall.
Entire structures of society were changed for ideological reasons, demands were imposed and were uncritically accepted for that infinitesimal population. They are the party that made this the paramount cause, and now they are hand waving it away as not a big deal. As if it doesn’t even matter because the people to whom this mattered are essentially a rounding error?
Absolutely not!
Exactly
And we're not out of the woods yet. The reason they choose silence over repudiation or denial is because they know they're going to go right back to it if they can win back the legislative and/or executive branches. Only if they're held down another cycle, or preferably two, will they switch to denial. Claiming they never said what they said then, when confronted with evidence, they'll fall back to that they were forced to say things but they never really believed them in their heart of hearts.
When I respond, “it’s not such a small numbers peak trans, it was 3% of adolescents and more in blue areas” they don’t believe me.
Just look at the numbers out of Oregon, the number of teens girls on testosterone.
"powerless minority" ? Is he kidding? This "minority" has managed to get states, schools, prisons, athletics in allowing for biological men to enter women's spaces; bathrooms, locker rooms, all types of sports, women's prisons etc. This has been achieved thru policies and laws along with forced speech. So forgive me to say but Bernie Sanders is doing nothing here but trying to gas light the public.
And happened in record time, too. How long did women have to fight for the vote?
Excellent point!
Before I peaked, I really thought the seeming rapid acceptance in society of trans people was a wonderful sign of how tolerant we'd grown to be. ...Then I realized that this was happening because not unlike Dave Chappelle said, white guys were doing it!
Agreed. It gave me a better understanding at the beginning. Now they've over played their hand and all that's done is create more intolerance which of course just keeps the complex humming.
Is it because some of the people raising the alarm about this issue are of the “wrong” identity (white middle aged females”)? I don’t usually think in those terms but your description of how you were so casually dismissed at this event makes me wonder.
They have a powerful weapon against dissenters: just intone “MAGA” and the dissenters vanish into irrelevance.
Funny how similar this is to what happened during Covid. "White women" were the ones clamoring to open the schools, and they were contemptuously dismissed as stay-at-home moms who couldn't wait to get back to their yoga classes. And, of course, anyone who questioned the lockdowns or masks was MAGA.
Yes! I think the schools not reopening was my gateway to being skeptical about gender identity. It was my first break from my tribe. When the left not only didn’t help me or my kids as we struggled at home even after vaccines came out, but was vilified for thinking that schools were essential child care.
The book "Hags" by Victoria Smith addresses the way middle-aged women are dismissed like this.
Thank you, Lisa, for attending WelcomeFest, for attempting to have sensible conversations—at which you are expert—and for reporting back. I am sadly not surprised at what you found. I particularly appreciate that you quoted extensively from Bernie Sanders. There are too many, even among our sex realist ranks, who give this guy a pass. None of us should. (That goes for the “manly” stuff as well.)
A couple things to note:
>Post-election polling: I am concerned that the post-election Blueprint survey of swing voters may no longer pertain, given the increasing (and I would say deserved) unpopularity of the current administration. Michael Baharaeen would be the best one to ask, but I would not be surprised if sex v. gender identity-related issues have dropped way down as a matter of concern.
That said, Musai al-Gharbi’s analysis of results post-election deserves more attention than it is getting. Here’s a link, and below is a key excerpt: https://substack.com/@musaalgharbi/p-151489437
“Between 2016 and 2024, men shifted roughly 1 percentage points towards the GOP. Women shifted 5 percentage points away from the Democratic Party over that same period – i.e. several times as much! Yet, the post-election focus has been overwhelmingly on men for some reason. (Emphasis added.)
“So let me put it bluntly: the most accurate story about the role of gender in this race is that Democrats lost in 2024 because Harris performed extremely poorly with women. Going all the way back to 1996 (when the partisan gender divide kicked into high gear), there has been only one Democrat who performed worse with women than Kamala did: John Kerry in 2004.”
So far as I know, these results have not been examined to find out why women shifted away from the Democratic Party. I don’t think we have enough information to determine the reasons for this drop, but it would sure be nice if someone would pick this up and analyze the results to determine what the reasons were. (Though I suspect it’s not the full story, given the numbers, your note about the black/white divide may well have something to do with it, so it would be worth knowing more about that, too.)
>Sex realist strategy and tactics: I do think there is some merit to the candidate’s observation that “the answer to that question [what is a woman] depended on who one’s constituents were.” I would like it to be otherwise, but what we know is politicians are generally followers, not leaders. Along with dollars (which we all know are way too prominent, particularly since Citizens United), they count votes. It is necessary, therefore, to reach what Carol Tavris refers to as a “tipping point” where the number of constituents raising objections reaches a critical mass sufficient to cause the politician to sit up, take note, and change course. (This is known in the “biz” as creating a “preference cascade.”)
We are nowhere near that point, and the political organizing needed to get there appears to be sadly lacking. From the work I have done with sex realist organizations, it does not appear there is strong experience with grassroots political organizing. Rather, it appears many, if not most, sex realist activists came of age after the mode of advocacy shifted from in-person membership organizations to professionally managed advocacy groups, which typically have no engaged, active membership at all. Theda Skocpol’s presidential address at a meeting of the American Political Science Association is extremely helpful to understand this shift and its consequences. The address is called “Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy,” and can be found at this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231964713_Voice_and_Inequality_The_Transformation_of_American_Civic_Democracy
In addition, my own view, out of my efforts to volunteer, is that the emphasis in much sex realist advocacy is not helpful to reach the Democratic side. What we need, in my view, borrowing again from Carol Tavris, are strategy and tactics that are “pro-woman and anti-MAGA.” I have set down my thoughts about how sex realists might recalibrate to do that here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IdTky1QfTutWUHBOfAys4Dzrds-kpDSOFTGCkP_87Kk/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for all your hard, good, persistent, courageous work to address these issues—and for being the truly lovely, thoughtful, empathetic person you so clearly are.
My recent experience with how this issue plays out politically is 2 fold:. the first is that it is almost impossible to move liberal/progressives on this issue without having one on one conversations to cut through the misinformation and point out the cognitive dissonance people have around this issue. The issue is personal in the sense that people who live in blue areas, or who move in blue political circles, all know at least 1 person who has a trans child, or knows someone who does. They want to support their friends and their children. They do not want to believe that these people have harmed their children, or that there was an alternative path to the child's happiness and well-being.
The second is that "gender critical" or "sex realist" advocacy too often positions protecting "trans" people from discrimination in employment, housing, as crime victims, etc., as incompatible with sex based rights. Rhetoric about removing anti-discrimination protections for "gender identity" are non-starters in blue circles. You are not going to suceed in 2026 in convincing even centrist Democrats that it should be ok to fire someone for being trans.
If that is the end goal, to banish the concept of gender identity from the law and society, if that is the rhetoric people on the left hear from "sex realists" you are going to fail. GC/sex realists have to stop buying into the TRA argument that it is gender identity discrimination to maintain sex based classifications for things like sports, locker rooms, medical care, etc. It is very much possible to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity while preserving single sex-spaces and rights. Maybe at some point in the distant future the concept of gender identity will fall out of favor in society, but we don't need to wait for that to happen to protect sex-based rights, and trying to force that to happen now is just further hardening the left against any kind of change. If people on the left the sex realist position means trans people can be fired or kicked out of restaurants, they're never going to accept it.
The problem is the areas where gender ideology conflicts with women’s rights and our responsibility to young people are serious issues—women’s safety and equal opportunities, safeguarding youth from medical harm—not getting excluded from jobs or kicked out of restaurants. No one is getting fired or kicked out of restaurants in the liberal urban areas where trans rights are a prominent issue. But lots of young women are getting mastectomies of their healthy breasts and taking testosterone. Bernie saying no one under 12 is getting mastectomies is a joke. As if it’s ok at 13, 16, or even 18! That is where you get moms like me rethinking our politics.
I hear you. I’m really glad Lisa called out Bernie. He’s the one, more than anyone on the Dem side, who is in a position to speak up, but instead, he’s clearly drunk the Kool-Aid.
On the issue of getting excluded from jobs, eg, one thing I’d point to where this is the case is the Trump EO on military service. In line with Elizabeth Adinolfi’s comment, I do think it’s important that we, as sex realists, make clear we don’t support discrimination in, eg, employment on the basis of “trans” status alone. Here are some excellent observations from Carol Tavris on that EO:
“Going forward, if we want to say that trans people have a mental disorder/mental illness/delusion/illusion/PTSD/other ‘mental problem,’ then I think we need to acknowledge all of the millions of other people with other mental disorders/etc., who nonetheless are gainfully employed, doing good jobs, carrying on as best they can, all while believing whatever illusions or delusions serve them. Frankly, I’d rather the military get rid of delusional conspiracy theorists or UFO chasers or Christian believers in Armageddon before ejecting the thousands of trans people who have served nobly and well to date.”
(With apologies, Substack isn’t allowing a direct link to Carol’s comment, so I’ve pulled and quoted it here.)
I’m not an expert on military readiness, but I know people are excluded from military service for all kinds of health-related reasons. Being dependent on exogenous hormones well might present issues if a person is deployed.
However I cant see this issue as being a barrier to acceptance of sex-based rights in liberal areas. Their kids are not joining the military. Their daughters are, however, transing themselves. This is where I think change will come.
Once people are in the military, there are a host of policies that allow people to remain despite having chronic health conditions that require medication.
All reasonable points.
You can be refused for military service for all sorts of minor medical issues, like because you have psoriasis. The medical load of endless exogenous hormones and surgeries required by transgenderism is way heavier. Letting transgender people in the service isn't treating them equally, it's giving them a special pass.
The military has different standards for letting people join and separating them once they are in. That is why a federal court enjoined the part of the policy that applies to people on the military but not those who want to join.
"The second is that "gender critical" or "sex realist" advocacy too often positions protecting "trans" people from discrimination in employment, housing, as crime victims, etc., as incompatible with sex based rights. Rhetoric about removing anti-discrimination protections for "gender identity" are non-starters in blue circles. You are not going to suceed in 2026 in convincing even centrist Democrats that it should be ok to fire someone for being trans."
I have to say I don't think I've ever heard GC feminists argue for this, let alone have it as a policy platform.
I have seen it, repeatedly, and definitely in responses to the military EO.
Read some of the amicus briefs submitted by WoLF and WDI. Read any prominent GC feminist's take on the Bostock decision.
"The issue is personal in the sense that people who live in blue areas, or who move in blue political circles, all know at least 1 person who has a trans child, or knows someone who does. They want to support their friends and their children. They do not want to believe that these people have harmed their children, or that there was an alternative path to the child's happiness and well-being."
These people all also know someone whose kid used to identify as trans, but recovered, or whose family is currently still hoping for recovery, but those friends aren't plastering it all over their social media walls or talking about it every time they open their mouths. Families who have gone through, or who are going through, the struggle of a sensitive, nerdy kid suddenly seeing a trans identity as the explanation for all their social disconnection don't talk about it with all and sundry.
From what I have seen, especially in areas where children transition at younger and younger ages, the detransition wave hasn't hit yet. What I have seen happen makes it more difficult for people to break out, kids who were dabbling for lack of a better word, who maybe cut their hair, changed how they dressed, who were clearly struggling, but then desisted. This reinforces the idea of "true trans" especially when their child's peers are still happy in their transition, or appear to be. It is really hard to break through the cognitive dissonance people can tolerate around this issue, "my kid wasn't really trans, but Jane's "son" Kai is so much happier now, he is really trans." They can't bring themselves to see that there was an alternative path to happiness for Kai than transition the way there was for their kid.
How does one prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” while maintaining single sex spaces? If you have a way to square this circle, I’m all ears. I have yet to hear anyone actually even provide a coherent definition of gender identity, for one thing, which makes it impossible to productively discuss, let alone make any laws about it. The UK law used to prohibit discrimination on the basis of transgender status, which in my understanding was almost like a disability, like, some people have a psychological condition that makes them think they’re the opposite sex and you can’t discriminate against them on that basis. You can maybe swing that, because it’s describing a real thing—some people do indeed sincerely believe they are the sex they are not, although trans activists will never accept that framework because it does not provide a path to their desired discursive and policy outcome, which is that everyone actually IS whatever sex they think they are and should be treated accordingly. The primary function of the idea of gender identity is to supplant sex where sex is relevant. If you have a woman gender identity, that’s what makes you a woman, and therefore you belong in the women’s bathroom and sports team and prison.
This is exactly what I am talking about. You are buying into the TRA argument that turns anti-discrimination law on its head. Discrimination requires causation. The action alleged to be discriminatory has to be motivated by the characteristic. Not letting Lia Thomas swim on the men's team would be discrimination because of gender identity. Not letting Lia Thomas swim on the women's team is discrimination based on sex, which the law allows. I dont have an issue with the law prohibiting men like Lia Thomas from being denied opportunities available to other men because of their gender identity. I have a problem with laws that deny opportunities to "cis" men that are granted to trans identifying men, like allowing TIMs access to women's spas but not other men, because that is discrimination based on gender identity.
There are some States, NJ is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, that explicitly says in its anti-discrimination law that access to single sex spaces should be granted in the basis of gender identity. Which I think proves the point, a law that lacks such a provision shouldn't be interpreted as if it does. Unfortunately TRAs have influenced the administrative agencies, like state Human Rights Commissions, to read their statutes like they include that language. And too many attorneys litigating this issue have not even tried to make this argument. They start with the assumption that the misinterpretation of the law is actually correct, and try to get an exemption. The Olympus Spa case in Washington is the best example of this.
I don’t disagree with you on what could be the practice: banning discrimination on the basis of transgender status. I have no problem with protecting Lia Thomas’s right to swim on the men’s team, as Lia Thomas is a man. I think that’s meaningfully different than banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The whole idea of gender identity is that 1) everyone has one and 2) it’s what makes you what you are for purposes of society and law, and 3) it’s conveniently without a non-circular definition. That is, it is meant to replace sex on the basis of precisely nothing. That’s very different than the idea of transgender status, which again would function like a disability, in that not everyone has one, it’s an extra thing, and it’s not considered a suspect class under American law.
But at the end of the day, if the people whom you’re ostensibly trying to protect consider your way of going about it (protecting TIMs from discrimination in male spaces) to be genocide, what’s the point of advocating for it? They don’t want to be protected in male spaces, they want to be protected in female spaces, because the idea underpinning their entire worldview is that one’s self-declared gender identity is what determines one’s access to sexed spaces. They don’t want to be protected on the basis that they’re a weird man but it’s fine to be weird; they reject that entirely. They want to be protected on the basis that they’re a woman because they say so, and they want me to be a woman because I say so too, not because I am female.
Which GC person advocated any of that?
Read some of the amicus briefs submitted by WoLF and WDI. Read any prominent GC feminist's take on the Bostock decision.
Excellent observations, with which I completely agree.
What I can never wrap my mind around is the Dems’ arguing that “the trans issue affects such a miniscule number of people” on the one hand (as exemplified by Sanders’ remarks)…and on the other hand the apparent willingness of many Dems to make it a hill they’re prepared to die on, thus gifting a powerful wedge issue to the Republicans. As opposed to, y’know, an actual hill worth dying on…such as the fight for civil rights, which affected the lives of tens of millions of Americans.
It's because they view it as their moral duty to protect minorities who they believe are oppressed. The smaller the number, the stronger the MINORITY status, and the more oppressed they allegedly are, the more essential it is for Dems to protect them. Meanwhile, the fact that the numbers are allegedly so small is supposed to prove that society at large is not being seriously affected by the changes in policies, and must therefore shut up. Never mind that policies that do away with the most fundamental reality of human existence - sex - affect every single one of us.
I'm the most oppressed minority in the world, because there's only one of me!
It's bad math and myopia. In the "minuscule number" argument, only certain people are counted as being affected. For example, if there's a track meet with one trans-identifying boy on the podium, only that boy is being counted as affected, not the dozens or hundreds of girls who are affected by being knocked down in the rankings or having to watch him swanning his junk around the locker room or being threatened with expulsion for even talking about it.
Yes, thank you for saying this
At the very least, centrist Dems appear to be terrified of being attacked by progressives and others even further to the left if they openly disagree with the Democratic Party's embrace of gender ideology and the trans agenda. I think it is as simple as that.
Centrists' "it only affects a few people" and "the voters don't care" lines are conversation-stopping rhetorical dodges. They say it so consistently that it is enough to make a person think Democrats have finally discovered message discipline.
My guestimate is that ~80% of Democrats in office are true believers in the transqueer cult, and the other ~20% are terrified (and rightly so!) of being primaried by the cult if they go against it in any way.
I think it is the other way around. I don't think most elected Dems have given it much thought past what the major medical associations and organizations like GLAAD and Planned Parenthood tell them.
I agree they haven't given it much thought, but I think Mark is right that they do truly believe that some people are truly "trans", because the orgs you reference have told them so.
I think someone can believe people can be "truly trans" and still not think that means sex is no longer a relevant category, that trans women are women, instead of being transwomen, or that children are able to understand what it means to be trans and start transitioning. I don't really care if a politician believes that gender identity is real, I care if they understand there is still a meaningful distinction between gender identity and sex, and that gender identity is too complex and issue for children to transition.
Maybe. But if they do believe that some people are "truly trans", they are likely to believe that access to women's spaces/sports as well as access to "healthcare" in the form of sex trait modification are civil rights issues for this special category of human beings. They may agree that the problem is that it may be hard to identify those "true trans" children, or that the sports situation poses a fairness issue, but they will still believe that those are civil rights issues and they will find it hard to navigate them.
I think those are the 20%, not the 80%. I think most Democrats go along with that because that is what they are being told it means to be a good Democrat, but I have had too many people privately tell me that while they believe trans people exist and should be protected, they don't believe that transwomen are really women, and that transwomen should be in women's spaces or compete in women's sports. I think the 20% have the 80% too afraid to say so.
Yes. Watching most dem politicians answer they hem and haw in a way that makes clear they dont really believe it, but also that they aren't going to stand up to it.
And this is why I’m now an unaffiliated voter, voting R for the first time after 40 years. The beatings will continue until morale improves!
LOL!
"Why do you care about this?" or rather, "why are you so obsessed with this?" is what I get any time I bring it up. Also: "This doesn't affect you." This is not just the strategy of Democratic politicians, but of their voters. I always feel like they are afraid to find out more, because they probably sense that they, too, might not like what they learn, and then they might have to view their friends' "trans" children in a different light. So much easier to dismiss it as Fox News talking points, refuse to educate yourself, and change the topic, while pathologizing those who care.
My gay brother-in-law has always fancied himself a champion of women's rights and is very upset that my sons think Charlie Kirk was pretty cool (hello, teen rebellion against progressive indoctrination at school). In the same conversation, he will dismiss concerns about the undermining of women's rights by "gender identity"-based policies as a fake issue. He doesn't see the irony of a man telling a woman not to care about the infringement on her rights while simultaneously worrying that his nephews might turn into patriarchal misogynists by listening to Charlie Kirk (whom he, by the way, is probably confusing with Andrew Tate).
Thank you-very interesting! Thank you for going and thank you for reporting on it!
You can quote also Reuters as far as number of kids on medication, already in 2022, they are well recognized and respected. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-care/
As far as the small numbers, Ben Ryan worked through this. For instance, the surgery study compared breast reduction surgeries which is not the usual ftm surgery (which is a double mastectomy), it allowed them to ignore many of the relevant surgeries. https://benryan.substack.com/p/how-harvard-teed-up-the-false-claim?utm_source=publication-search
The Oregon numbers are quite different, as you note.
It does seem that the argument is now going to be "it's not a big deal" and I wonder how they are going to treat all the kids with major health problems, in the only bodies they will ever have, for the rest of their lives, who say, well, actually, it is a big deal and it is your fault...Ignoring them will lose more voters, I'm meeting more and more people saying they know someone or someone's kid who started on this...who is not doing well.
Damn it, Lisa. I was holding out hope that my Bernie - yes, that's how I liked to think of him - while not speaking out to protect vulnerable youth from these "treatments" - was at least not going to engage with the activists and spout nonsense that can (and likely will) only lead to much more harm. That is highly disappointing.
But, seriously, thanks for attending the conference, for bringing this sad news, and for helping so many of us stay up to date on the insanity that is gender ideology.
Also, I really appreciate this sentence, which should be plastered everywhere: "Some people who transition feel better after—even in the long-term. But we will never know if they would have felt better anyway." And the rest of that paragraph is also good. So true!!!
While I am certain that some people who transition end up living decent lives, there is no reason to believe that such people would not also have led decent lives without lying to the world about their sex and without doing at least some medical harm to their bodies. And there is every reason to believe that the detriments (health issues and having to live a lie and all of the consequent psychological harm) far outweigh the benefits (making a fantasy come true in that others believe you're the opposite sex, and you, at least at a point in time, like that idea and your appearance) for most individuals who make the choice to live as the opposite sex and medically alter their appearance through chemicals and/or surgeries - based on logic, medical science, what we know of psychology and the human condition. In fact, I can't imagine a case where the benefits outweigh the detriments, but only a case where someone lives a decent life despite the detriments.
Democrats have allowed themselves to be held hostage by an incredibly tiny minority and they want the rest of us to ignore that. "Move along.......".
With trans kids , I think it's not just more acceptance in white families, but I would bet it's also related to class. I think this is a white, middle class progressive thing.
There is an attempt to make it happen across class/race/ etc divides. Reminds me of the virginia slims ads to get women to smoke....
The vast majority of Democrats in office are not being held hostage, rather they are true believers in the tenets of the transqueer cult.
My goodness, what a hate-filled & authoritarian point of view, Lisa.
Some progressive you are — you’ll have to give up your quaint attachment to liberalism if you’re ever going to make progress. Don’t worry, we’ll bring it back when we’ve got the MAGA problem under control — trust me, bro!
/s
In all seriousness, thank you from your Northern friends for continuing to push this water uphill in the US: Every drip of facts and rationality contributes to the erosion of unreasoned positions, even if it’s imperceptible in real time.
***
Few things grind my gears like being ignored when highlighting strategic risks in advance, then being blamed for the consequences of those warnings being ignored 🤬
A prior boss: “Don’t stress, DC. If this is important, someone will tell us.”
Me: “Yeah, that someone is me, right now.”
“You worry too much.”
“I’m your Information Risk Manager!”
…
“So about the $25M fines & the compliance agreement …”
“Yes? Am I getting the $5M earmarked in the agreement to remediate the underlying issues? No? Well, that’s going be an issue 🤷♂️”
Of course, this isn’t a fight I’m willing to walk away from, unlike my decision that I’d sacrificed enough trying to force the military industrial complex into a little less corruption and a little less vulnerability to national security threats…
"Few things grind my gears like being ignored when highlighting strategic risks in advance, then being blamed for the consequences of those warnings being ignored."
You, like many of us sex realists in this fight, are a Cassandra. And people hate Cassandras, as the Ancient Greeks taught us long ago.
Thanks for this update, Lisa.
I had come across a link to this hearing from another gender critical source. And watching it, my heart just SANK.
In 2016/2020, I was a Berner. And like *most* of his supporters, there's a reason we've moved on from the one note. He certainly didn't listen very well to the distraught youth testifying in front of him. She was a damaged person, not a political operative, for gosh sakes.
And being formerly from Madison, voting for Tammy Baldwin for her first STATE position (as a local LGB hero), I can barely contain my disappointment.
ALL of the Dems looked OLD and OUT-OF-TOUCH. Life's moving pretty fast and they barely seem able to keep up with anything not resembling Red-Blue tribalism.
The GOPers, on the other hand, seemed more prepared to recognize Chloe's humanity. They really didn't seem like they were using her just as a convenient prop. And then to top it all off, the Dems handed Josh Hawley ANOTHER golden opportunistic media sound bite of "speaking truth to power" and pushing back against THE NEW JIM CROW.
I asked a Deep Blue normie Dem acquaintance of mine when the last time he watched a political hearing where up was down, left was right and black was white, because that's what it felt like watching this hearing outside the tribe-vibe frame.
Remarkable. And the cognitive dissonance continues to break my brain...
Just more evidence that anyone who ACTUALLY CARES about women's rights, and about stopping the ongoing crime against humanity of "gender affirming care", will be working for, campaigning for, contributing to, and voting for REPUBLICANS.
If you are not doing that, then you care more about something else. I don't know what it is, but it's not women's rights, and it's not stopping the mutilation of children.
And this is why I’m now an unaffiliated voter, voting R for the first time after 40 years. The beatings will continue until morale improves!
The happiest guys around are the GOP operatives that know that their assholery will cement our tribe to this issue. The interplay here being bad faith on the GOP side and dig in your heels on our side. They are trying to make us the party of trans and we are happy to oblige them.
David, yes, the most blunt, succinct summation of our predicament.