Democrats Really Are for They/Them. Who's for Us?

Liberals must stop trying to be seen as good people, and start trying to do the right thing.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Recently, I went to a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. I paid the minimum—$100—to experience a bit of “pay-to-play,” hoping he’d hear me out about gender issues. My goal was to get him to invite me to come speak to him in more depth later, and to be open to the possibility that my concerns had merit—even if he disagreed with what I had to say.

Granted, I’m not the best messenger—at least not in person. While I take on a persona of Mrs. Reasonable (or Mx. Nuanced) in my writing, and firmly believe that we must always leave a little wiggle room to be wrong, when I’m actually with people who have no idea about the scandal of gender-affirming care and gender identity, I come on too strong, too ranty, too certain of my own scientific and philosophical rectitude.

Thus, as soon as I entered the event, held at a private Brooklyn home, I marched straight up to him and came out swinging. I told him why we need to consider the implications of prizing subjective gender identity above objective sex; why many feminists, liberals, lesbians and gays are concerned about kids transitioning to live as the opposite or neither sex; how there’s no good evidence on the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care. I told him that objecting to boys who identify as girls on girls’ teams is not bigotry. I told him that gender identity was a theory.

With every next word I spoke, he looked more suspicious, doubtful, and finally, disgusted. “I have many transgender staffers who go by they/them,” he said, “and I’m concerned about their comfort and safety.”

I shook my head at this, unsure how to answer—why couldn’t we debate the fairness of males on female sports teams, or the theory of gender identity, just because he had staffers with nouveau pronouns? But I pushed past, continuing our discussion, or argument. Eventually he told me that he didn’t believe that those of us speaking out about gender identity really cared about the issues—children, fairness, the reality of biological sex. Rather, he felt certain the motivation was to “wage a culture war.” To prove this, he beckoned over a teen girl to ask her if she cared about trans girls on her sports team, but I cut him off, and told him it was inappropriate to put her on the spot like that.

I grew increasingly agitated, arguing more forcefully and desperately. I might have partially been losing my shit, but the other part of me was doing research: what further dismissive, ignorant, anti-scientific, and close-minded things might he say to me if I continued? What other dick moves?

Finally came the doozy. He backed away from me slowly, with a hint of bemusement on his face: disinterest tinged with certainty and boredom. He said: “I don’t think I’m the candidate for you.”

For once in my life, I was speechless. Without realizing it, he had, over the seven minutes or so that we’d interacted, repackaged the tagline from the most effective series of political advertisements in recent history: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” That messaging capitalized on the larger societal malaise toward identity politics, with its relentless focus on whether one belongs to the oppressor class, or the oppressed—and the accompanying idea that what you can say, think, feel, or believe depends on which of those classes you're in.

This would-be mayor of New York City was now communicating—out loud!—that he was more concerned with his they/them staffers, and with elites in general, than with the everyday New Yorkers who share my views—which, if we extrapolate from political polling, would be many millions of them, likely including entire neighborhoods of Brooklyn and almost all of Staten Island. I couldn’t be sure if he was telling me that he wouldn’t act as our mayor, wouldn’t represent or fight for us—but he was certainly saying he didn’t consider it worth his time to earn our votes.

Perhaps even more shocking was his inability to learn anything from the reelection of Donald Trump. The mayoral candidate told me that in large part, those who voted for Trump were concerned about the same things he was: the economy, crime, schools. The working class, he insisted, don’t care about these niche gender issues—regardless of the success of those they/them ads.

Here's what I think Democrats are missing: disdain for gender issues, for “wokeness” of all flavors, is the same thing as concerns about the economy, crime, schools. That’s what the tagline means: You care more about the subjective identity of elites than you do the very real issues that affect most people. Identitarians and everyday folks don’t mix well. Democrats may very well have to choose. And which they choose may determine whether they win or lose.

So how do we tell Democratic politicians that it’s okay to choose us, not they/them, especially when they suspect our motives to be impure? As long as they insist that we’re motivated by bigotry, rather than the same concerns they are—science, fairness, and children’s safety—they can dismiss us.

First we have to understand their tenacious clinging to the left/right, good/bad framing, their defiant certainty about gender issues.

Perhaps they’ve become so used to their young, woke staffers’ mindsets that they’ve mistaken them for the way the average voter feels, conflating niche NPR listeners with pervasive NFL watchers.

Perhaps they’ve invested so much emotionally, politically and financially that they don’t feel they can afford to turn away.

Perhaps they see what’s happened to those of us who’ve been red-pilled by this issue, how destabilizing it has been for us, how we no longer trust The New York Times or the Department of Education or medical associations to tell the truth. How we’ve become politically homeless and, in some cases, found new homes all the way over on the MAGA side. How cynical we’ve come, how prone to ranting about wokeness. How we sound like conspiracy theorists, even when we’re stating the obvious—like that biological sex is real.

Or perhaps they truly believe in gender identity and the ability to change sex, and they’re choosing principles over party, over strategy, over victory.

But I don’t think so for the latter. I think most Democrats suffer from a disease I like to call “liberalitis”—the fear of being seen as a bad person. They want to be on the right side of history, and they don’t yet realize that they’re not. They don’t want to have their worlds turned upside down, and have lost too much perspective to realize that it already has been: they are living in the upside-down, trading science for dogma, caring more about men’s rights than women’s, endangering children—doing all the things they accuse Republicans of doing. And we, the dissenters, are infected, impure—they don’t want to soil themselves by association. Even listening to us in good faith could taint them, and imperil their chances of seeming good.

Thus, they don’t want to be enlightened; they want to belong. And that means shunning those who’d compromise their status as Good. They’ve chosen belonging over truth.

Thus, the invitation to come speak to the Democratic mayoral candidate about these issues later didn’t come.

Let me contrast this experience with one I had just the day before. I’d been in Washington DC to watch the Supreme Court hear the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti, about whether banning transgender treatments for minors constitutes sex discrimination. After the hearing, many people were invited to a right-wing think tank for a reception. Feminists, liberals, gays and lesbians milled about with lobbyists from the far-right Family Council and Republican politicians, brought together over their shared concerns. It’s the kind of thing that once would have energized liberals—these rare moments of bipartisanship—but now would be seen as treason.

At the think tank, I approached a representative from the Family Council with the same zealousness that I approached the Democrat the next day—nervous, winded, emphatic. But I wasn’t asking him to hear my concerns about the science of youth gender medicine, or changing the definition of sex to include gender identity, which allows boys and men in women’s spaces and activities. I already knew he shared those concerns. Instead, I was asking him if Republicans would shift in their messaging. Would they be willing to talk about how many gender dysphoric children recover from the distress by the end of puberty, and grow up to be gay? Would they consider publicly expressing concern for proto-gay kids, as many of us who’d been invited there had done.

“I don’t know much about that, but I’d like to know more,” he said, handing me his card, and asking me to make an appointment to talk. “And if we don’t feel comfortable saying it, there might be a way that we can support you to say it.”

I have repeatedly been treated with dignity by Republicans and conservatives, who know full well that this may be one of the only things we agree on. I left there feeling hopeful, even though I know that both parties suffer from tremendous weaknesses—the Dems bowing down to the woke minority, the Republicans to Trump. But whatever hope I’d generated was dashed the next night, at the Democratic candidate’s fundraiser.

Perhaps some Republicans’ welcoming of a dissident liberal like me stems from their recent underdog status. A friend wrote to me: “I think that this ‘all are welcome’ attitude will always be more prevalent on the side that has less cultural power.” Now that Republicans are in the driver’s seat, will we leftugees wear out our welcome with them? Will they drop us off at the bus stop without so much as the fare? Now that Dems are behind, will they become the welcome brigade to those of us who dissented and defected? Will they call the shunned home, uncancel the canceled?

No idea. I hope so. Either way, it’s going to be an interesting year.