The Democratic Party has lost its collective mind over this issue. They've thrown women and girls under the bus so that a few males can cause chaos in women's sports and changing rooms. When Gavin Newsom suggested a few months ago that this policy was "deeply unfair", I thought things were going to change. A few weeks later he allowed AB Hernandez to compete in the girls' category at the California State Championships, where "she" won two gold medals in track and field. The governor kindly allowed the girls who came in second and third (the real winners) to share the podium with a long-haired male wearing makeup. That's his idea of "compromise".
Girls are now being awarded "consolation prizes" in their own sports category. All it takes is three transpeople to completely eliminate females from gold and silver medals. This has already happened at two recent cycling events.
Lisa Selin Davis’s vision of “cultural compassion and legal clarity” is a welcome corrective to the ideological capture of gender policy. Grounding law in biological sex while allowing space for gender nonconformity is, in theory, a fair and reasonable compromise. But in practice, it still leaves unresolved a central problem: can males who identify as women be relied upon to respect boundaries when interacting with real women in workplaces and other shared environments?
Even when legal categories remain sex-based, social norms and expectations don’t automatically follow. Many trans-identifying males retain the habits of male socialization—entitlement to space, deference, and affirmation. In workplace disputes, locker room conflicts, and sports controversies, it’s rarely women making demands. It’s men insisting that others recognize and validate their self-perception, often at women’s expense.
While Davis rightly calls for ending legal fictions, social coercion will persist unless explicitly addressed. Women will still be pressured to “perform inclusion” in daily life—whether that means sharing changing rooms, holding back criticism, or suppressing discomfort. A small but transgressive subset of men will exploit this ambiguity, and women will continue to pay the price for any resistance.
What’s more, even in ostensibly “gender-critical” models, women are often expected to justify or negotiate their own boundaries—a burden men rarely bear. Without firm cultural support for women’s right to exclude males from certain contexts, legal clarity risks becoming a hollow victory.
Davis’s framework is a step forward—but only if it’s accompanied by a frank acknowledgment that male self-perception should never override women’s right to safety, dignity, and free association. Compassion for gender nonconformity must not come at the cost of women's freedom to say no.
“What’s more, even in ostensibly “gender-critical” models, women are often expected to justify or negotiate their own boundaries—a burden men rarely bear. Without firm cultural support for women’s right to exclude males from certain contexts, legal clarity risks becoming a hollow victory.” Very well stated 👌
It would also mean admitting that they’ve been 100% dead wrong on this issue for years and that they’ve facilitated permanent harm to thousands of kids and their families. And that they’ve gutted women’s rights. I can’t think of a single Democratic leader on the national stage who is brave enough to go there.
Yes and no. Politicians of all stripes rarely admit they were wrong, so let's send that fond hope right to bed. However, they will subtly shift position over time, so that they end up far from where they started. Gavin Newsome has already begun this process. Is he genuine? Probably not, but then if I were to search for authenticity, I would not look for it among the political class.
It will take years for the likes of Gavin Newsome to get to “we have always been at war with eastasia.” I’m from MA and couldn’t be more disappointed in Seth Moulton’s vote on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. Didn’t take long for him to back down. There are a few brave elected officials at the state representative level, like Jonah Wheeler in NH, who seem willing to take a genuinely principled stand. I think the solution on this issue is to vote the old guard out or (gulp) vote Republican.
Well, as you like, but for myself, I'm not voting for the party that nominated a convicted felon for the presidency. Some things are more important than gender issues.
For me, a registered Democrat for 50 years, the fact that 99% of the office holders in my party enthusiastically back pure medical quackery that physically mutilates over a thousand children each and every year here in the good ole U S of A (and chemically damages many thousands more) simply means that they get a hard NO from me. It also shows, contrary to what I believed for most of those 50 years, that my party is not at all the party of "science", but just a collection of whackadoos with no more brains than that other party.
I get it, but I’m having an increasingly hard time supporting a party that won’t acknowledge biological reality. If they’re that far gone on this issue, how can I trust them? And exactly who was acting as President during the last couple of years of Biden’s term? It surely wasn’t him (and Biden’s administration did a tremendous amount of damage to the party on this issue).
My point is that the party needs a hard reset, sooner rather than later, on all things trans or they are going to continue hemorrhaging voters. I don’t care about any one Democratic politician necessarily making a highly personal admission of fault, but one or more party heavyweights need to step up and say “we, as a party, have been wrong about this.” Maybe someone says that they met with a group of detransitioners and/or parents which caused them to rethink the party’s position. Or that they read the Cass Review over the weekend. (Or, wishful thinking, maybe a Democrat actually reads the public filings in Skrmetti since at least two of the Supreme Court justices clearly did not). Short of this, the Dems are going to continue to repel centrist voters. This isn’t going away.
None of the things you suggest will work. Plenty of Democrats in the state legislature of California (and many other blue states) have listened in person to the heartfelt testimony of detransitioners during legislative hearings on bills promoting the transqueer agenda (such as removing the rights of parents to deny "gender affirming care" for their own children, which is now the law in most blue states). They listen passively, and then they go vote unanimously for the transqueer bill. They dismiss the testimony they heard as right-wing propaganda.
IMO, the ONLY thing that will work is sustained, massive losses at the ballot box for multiple election cycles, losses that polling shows can be clearly blamed on this issue.
I don’t have any illusions about most of these politicians actually having scruples; if they did things wouldn’t have gotten this far.. I’m just hoping that some self interested soul will finally start to read the room.
Gavin Newsom sent up a trial balloon that was instantly shredded by anti-aircraft fire from the transqueers and their billionaire backers. He learned his lesson and will never bring it up again. Ditto Seth Moulton. Any Democrats in office who do not vote with the transqueers are primaried and removed, like Shawn Nicole Thierry in Texas. This will continue for the forseeable future. It is going to take massive multiple election losses for a new cohort of Dem office seekers to arise.
Well, my crystal ball is not so clear as yours, so I'm going to decline to predict the future. I will say this, though; Newsome wouldn't have said boo on the topic if he didn't think there was at least some wiggle room. I intend to wait and see what happens, but you are of course free to be certain that you already know.
I am reminded of what I learned from podcaster and public intellectual Coleman Hughes about the lesser known civil rights figure Bayard Rustin (see https://www.thefp.com/p/the-free-press-the-prophets-bayard-rustin ). I remember finding on YouTube -- alas, I cannot re-find it -- some grainy black and white footage of Rustin declaring that he would seek the time of day even from a racist who had a watch because he so valued knowing the correct time. Indeed Rustin, a gay man at a time where those fighting for their civil rights were incapable of seeing that same-sex attracted individuals deserve them too (MLK Jr. harbored his own bigotries too), demonstrates a rare maturity and pragmatism as he nevertheless worked so hard for the interests he had in common with his fellow imperfect human beings.
I find myself fuming to myself over and over to myself that we Americans just need to freakin' be GROWNUPs like Rustin was! Unfortunately, hard times only sometimes prompts the self-reflection and self-improvement that is part of leaving childhood and fully growing into adulthood.
And I often include myself as needing to take to heart that same admonishment. I'll provide an example of my most recent failure to illustrate. This crash-and-burn of mine was in my interaction with a trans believer via social media, a venue which probably doomed my attempt from the start. A friend from back in my college days apparently was piqued by one of my (arguably foolish) Facebook posts, in which I said "nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that ... binary sex isn't a material fact." and posted to me: "I don't believe binary sex is a fact. I believe there are humans and animals whose sex falls somewhere between male and/or female. They have unusual chromosomes or hormones or whatever. Nature doesn't care whether it fits into our limited worldview or language constructs. Though I will concede that perhaps I'm not sane." I replied in way too strident a fashion and made assumptions about what she was thinking, rather than gently inquiring about her reasoning and allowing her to see the flaws and assumptions she was making instead. (I think it was the "or whatever" that really stung me. I have little patience for unserious people who think their opinions deserve respect.) I was impatient and showered her with all this material, so naturally she didn't take it well. (BTW, I saved the entire exchange and used an AI Chatbot to analyse it for me, to spot the strategic errors I made. That kinda' helps. Am burdened with the temperament I have, but that doesn't mean I have to stop trying to overcome it to be more persuasive the next time an opportunity like that falls into my lap.)
Anyhoo . . . that's what Lisa's latest accurate insights into our current plight as a nation: At a time when we need a strong, pragmatic, yet principled "loyal opposition" to the current Administration in the U.S., we have today's Democratic Party, which -- sadly -- is none of these (with a few rare exceptions, such as Jonah Wheeler in NH). Here's hoping there are enough Jonah Wheelers (in both the Republican and Democratic parties) talented and foolhardy enough to expose and wrest control away from these hadow party elites. We can be sure that there are backroom battles occurring; and hopefully the hubris and tone-deafness of those embracing ideologies out of touch with hard cold realities make an inevitable defeat happen quicker than we can anticipate at the moment.
I had just read a conversation between Yascha Mounk and Steven Teles about Democrats rebooting themselves via a left-leaning alignment of cultural normies with the "abundance/YIMBY" agenda. I think that is the way forward. I identify with both. And, yet, I am a lesbian. How does that work - casting my lot with the "cultural normies" while being abnormal? Well, humility, I think. Realizing that heterosexuality is normal. Understanding that life should be organized around the norm, and it is my job to fit into that. Now, I long argued for gay rights meaning the right to not be the norm - to be treated fairly as a citizen under our constitution. But I always - still - recognize that there are a lot of people who have a problem with that and I (and the movement as a whole) had to convince them that I wasn't a threat to their deep values and wouldn't impinge on their own life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I was completely happy that the baker who didn't want to make the cake for the gay couple won at the Supreme Court. Go to another baker. Let them alone and they will leave us alone. Then trans happened, and I am so pissed. And, Lisa, I so appreciate all that you do!
Earlier this year, your podcast co-host, and my hero, Cori Cohn delivered a script-flipping message about inclusion (in testimony in Nevada & in Ep. 18 of Informed Dissent)—then came Mariah Burton Nelson’s write-up about it (with a great graphic!) here: https://open.substack.com/pub/strongerwomen/p/will-male-athletes-welcome-girly …with Nelson describing it as “a beautiful invitation.”
And that was after I’d seen BigTomBoye’s message, “The mensroom is safe for trans!🌼🕊”
Tom adds, “GNC dudes / femme gays / transsexuals / transvestites / drag queens are all perfectly safe in the mensroom! 🚹✨️
“It was fine for BoyGeorge in the 80s; CaitlynJenner & LiaThomas can handle it today! 💪😀”
So I’ve been thinking this message is the positive solution I need to be articulating for my friends and colleagues on the left (and the following may sound like I borrowed it from your post here! but it’s a sentence I composed last week): When sex is relevant, we should foster inclusion and the acceptance, within each sex, of diverse expression and non-conformity among the members of their sex.
Democrats have a tough road ahead unless they explicitly disavow the idea that "gender identity" should supersede biological sex, and admit they got this wrong (which I don't see happening anytime soon). A lot of trust has been broken. Sex is such a fundamental aspect of human life that even people who are not deep in the weeds on this issue, but who are not captured by the "kindness and inclusion" mantra either, will intuitively distrust people who lie about it. If they lie about something so fundamental and obvious as sex, what else are they lying about? That's why I think the polls don't accurately reflect the damage this issue has done to Democrats. People might not even be consciously aware how much this has contributed to their loss of trust.
Couldn’t agree more. How can you trust a party that won’t admit sex is real? The longer the Dems hold on to this, the more credibility they lose with moderates of all stripes. I guess the “shadow party” explanation makes sense, but I can’t imagine how they think this is a viable long term strategy.
Thanks so much for the great work you do. I just wanted to mention that the way you felt after 9/11 may also have been influenced by your being a young Democrat at the time, and it sounds off-putting to ask what America did to provoke jihadism, like blaming a victim of rape for wearing a short skirt (the “yes, of course” rape is bad doesn’t really negate the analogy). While we may have been mistaken about the weapons of mass destruction, there were reasonable discussions about how to respond to the terrorists, even if you don’t agree with how they proceeded. Gender identity discussions among Democrats, when they’re allowed which is rare, are NOT reasonable. All your suggestions are good ones, but the only hope for them is if normal, sensible, thinking people eschew party loyalty and join other normal sensible people to bring the country to its senses.
One place in the political discussion is to address "state intervention". That is, Democrats in Congress and also in public comments in media tend to assert that the state should not intervene in "private" medical decisions. I've heard, for example, Praymila Jaypal say this on medicalizing children with GD, "why aren't these just private medical decisions". This is a dishonest position (or, to be more charitable, a poorly informed framing of the topic) because Blue States have enormously invasive laws that intervene in the "private" decisions of families who do not favor medicalization and who do not believe in the gender religion. If Democrats would at least admit that theirs is not a laissez-faire policy but in fact amounts to as much if not more state intervention than in Red states, then we might start a real conversation.
It was my life dream but it'll never happen. And that's okay! Actually, I used to want to work for the real estate section. I though the Nick Confessore article was great, and hope to see them return to doing good work.
“Transgender athletes” aren’t being “banned” from competing (so long as they’re not taking performance-enhancing drugs, as would be the case for a female taking testosterone in an attempt to “transition”). They’re welcome to compete against others of their own sex.
Just a word about Sept. 11, 2001, which I witnessed across the East River in Brooklyn, where the sound impact of the first crash was at first thought to be a helicopter crash on the roof of the elementary school where I worked in Cobble Hill. There was intelligence indicating that very cell who hijacked all the planes (Wahabist Saudi terrorists, not Iraqis) was known and should have been monitored, should have been detained at the airports. The Dept. of Homeland Security was formed in response to our oversights, the lack of inter agency communication. Later that month, I attended more than a half dozen funerals of the firefighters my colleagues were married to. I will never, ever disgrace their memories with flip statements about US foreign policy.
As to the Democrats' inability to face facts about the medical malpractice of "gender affirming care," the clarity of those who testified July 9 at the Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov/media/danger-gender-affirming-care-minors) tell everything you need to know. I found Dr. Laffert's testimony most revealing and compelling. It will take the Dems years to admit that "bottom surgery" being listed and billed as "medically necessary reconstructive surgery" is fraudulent billing, fraudulent advertising and medical malpractice. I took hours to transcribe his 40 minutes, part 1 here:
You are right that terms involving the word "gender" are circular. The word should be thrown out. Originally it only had to do with grammar; the word "sex" was used (along with its sexual meaning) for categorizing male vs. female vs. physically intersex. The word used for the behavior of people behaving like a typical person of their sex was "sex role." People were understood to conform, or not, to sex roles. It was not required to change one's sex in order to reject part or all of a sex role. And there was no requirement to state one's sex role or be identified with a certain sex role, like there seems to be in terms of announcing one's "gender." Why choose a role? Be masculine, be feminine, be androgynous! If someone objects, ignore them! On the other hand, if it's your body you're uncomfortable with, then that's a different issue and maybe you need to have your body altered for the sake of your mental health. But be sure you're mature enough to make the decision, because the consequences can be disastrous (e.g., no orgasm, ever).
The Democratic Party has lost its collective mind over this issue. They've thrown women and girls under the bus so that a few males can cause chaos in women's sports and changing rooms. When Gavin Newsom suggested a few months ago that this policy was "deeply unfair", I thought things were going to change. A few weeks later he allowed AB Hernandez to compete in the girls' category at the California State Championships, where "she" won two gold medals in track and field. The governor kindly allowed the girls who came in second and third (the real winners) to share the podium with a long-haired male wearing makeup. That's his idea of "compromise".
Girls are now being awarded "consolation prizes" in their own sports category. All it takes is three transpeople to completely eliminate females from gold and silver medals. This has already happened at two recent cycling events.
Yep, so far it's all talk, no action!
Lisa Selin Davis’s vision of “cultural compassion and legal clarity” is a welcome corrective to the ideological capture of gender policy. Grounding law in biological sex while allowing space for gender nonconformity is, in theory, a fair and reasonable compromise. But in practice, it still leaves unresolved a central problem: can males who identify as women be relied upon to respect boundaries when interacting with real women in workplaces and other shared environments?
Even when legal categories remain sex-based, social norms and expectations don’t automatically follow. Many trans-identifying males retain the habits of male socialization—entitlement to space, deference, and affirmation. In workplace disputes, locker room conflicts, and sports controversies, it’s rarely women making demands. It’s men insisting that others recognize and validate their self-perception, often at women’s expense.
While Davis rightly calls for ending legal fictions, social coercion will persist unless explicitly addressed. Women will still be pressured to “perform inclusion” in daily life—whether that means sharing changing rooms, holding back criticism, or suppressing discomfort. A small but transgressive subset of men will exploit this ambiguity, and women will continue to pay the price for any resistance.
What’s more, even in ostensibly “gender-critical” models, women are often expected to justify or negotiate their own boundaries—a burden men rarely bear. Without firm cultural support for women’s right to exclude males from certain contexts, legal clarity risks becoming a hollow victory.
Davis’s framework is a step forward—but only if it’s accompanied by a frank acknowledgment that male self-perception should never override women’s right to safety, dignity, and free association. Compassion for gender nonconformity must not come at the cost of women's freedom to say no.
I like this response! Nicely done!
“What’s more, even in ostensibly “gender-critical” models, women are often expected to justify or negotiate their own boundaries—a burden men rarely bear. Without firm cultural support for women’s right to exclude males from certain contexts, legal clarity risks becoming a hollow victory.” Very well stated 👌
It would also mean admitting that they’ve been 100% dead wrong on this issue for years and that they’ve facilitated permanent harm to thousands of kids and their families. And that they’ve gutted women’s rights. I can’t think of a single Democratic leader on the national stage who is brave enough to go there.
Yes and no. Politicians of all stripes rarely admit they were wrong, so let's send that fond hope right to bed. However, they will subtly shift position over time, so that they end up far from where they started. Gavin Newsome has already begun this process. Is he genuine? Probably not, but then if I were to search for authenticity, I would not look for it among the political class.
It will take years for the likes of Gavin Newsome to get to “we have always been at war with eastasia.” I’m from MA and couldn’t be more disappointed in Seth Moulton’s vote on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. Didn’t take long for him to back down. There are a few brave elected officials at the state representative level, like Jonah Wheeler in NH, who seem willing to take a genuinely principled stand. I think the solution on this issue is to vote the old guard out or (gulp) vote Republican.
Well, as you like, but for myself, I'm not voting for the party that nominated a convicted felon for the presidency. Some things are more important than gender issues.
For me, a registered Democrat for 50 years, the fact that 99% of the office holders in my party enthusiastically back pure medical quackery that physically mutilates over a thousand children each and every year here in the good ole U S of A (and chemically damages many thousands more) simply means that they get a hard NO from me. It also shows, contrary to what I believed for most of those 50 years, that my party is not at all the party of "science", but just a collection of whackadoos with no more brains than that other party.
I get it, but I’m having an increasingly hard time supporting a party that won’t acknowledge biological reality. If they’re that far gone on this issue, how can I trust them? And exactly who was acting as President during the last couple of years of Biden’s term? It surely wasn’t him (and Biden’s administration did a tremendous amount of damage to the party on this issue).
My point is that the party needs a hard reset, sooner rather than later, on all things trans or they are going to continue hemorrhaging voters. I don’t care about any one Democratic politician necessarily making a highly personal admission of fault, but one or more party heavyweights need to step up and say “we, as a party, have been wrong about this.” Maybe someone says that they met with a group of detransitioners and/or parents which caused them to rethink the party’s position. Or that they read the Cass Review over the weekend. (Or, wishful thinking, maybe a Democrat actually reads the public filings in Skrmetti since at least two of the Supreme Court justices clearly did not). Short of this, the Dems are going to continue to repel centrist voters. This isn’t going away.
None of the things you suggest will work. Plenty of Democrats in the state legislature of California (and many other blue states) have listened in person to the heartfelt testimony of detransitioners during legislative hearings on bills promoting the transqueer agenda (such as removing the rights of parents to deny "gender affirming care" for their own children, which is now the law in most blue states). They listen passively, and then they go vote unanimously for the transqueer bill. They dismiss the testimony they heard as right-wing propaganda.
IMO, the ONLY thing that will work is sustained, massive losses at the ballot box for multiple election cycles, losses that polling shows can be clearly blamed on this issue.
I don’t have any illusions about most of these politicians actually having scruples; if they did things wouldn’t have gotten this far.. I’m just hoping that some self interested soul will finally start to read the room.
Gavin Newsom sent up a trial balloon that was instantly shredded by anti-aircraft fire from the transqueers and their billionaire backers. He learned his lesson and will never bring it up again. Ditto Seth Moulton. Any Democrats in office who do not vote with the transqueers are primaried and removed, like Shawn Nicole Thierry in Texas. This will continue for the forseeable future. It is going to take massive multiple election losses for a new cohort of Dem office seekers to arise.
Well, my crystal ball is not so clear as yours, so I'm going to decline to predict the future. I will say this, though; Newsome wouldn't have said boo on the topic if he didn't think there was at least some wiggle room. I intend to wait and see what happens, but you are of course free to be certain that you already know.
To all who have read this, and agree with Lisa, as I do 110%, please join us at Di-Ag.org
I am reminded of what I learned from podcaster and public intellectual Coleman Hughes about the lesser known civil rights figure Bayard Rustin (see https://www.thefp.com/p/the-free-press-the-prophets-bayard-rustin ). I remember finding on YouTube -- alas, I cannot re-find it -- some grainy black and white footage of Rustin declaring that he would seek the time of day even from a racist who had a watch because he so valued knowing the correct time. Indeed Rustin, a gay man at a time where those fighting for their civil rights were incapable of seeing that same-sex attracted individuals deserve them too (MLK Jr. harbored his own bigotries too), demonstrates a rare maturity and pragmatism as he nevertheless worked so hard for the interests he had in common with his fellow imperfect human beings.
I find myself fuming to myself over and over to myself that we Americans just need to freakin' be GROWNUPs like Rustin was! Unfortunately, hard times only sometimes prompts the self-reflection and self-improvement that is part of leaving childhood and fully growing into adulthood.
And I often include myself as needing to take to heart that same admonishment. I'll provide an example of my most recent failure to illustrate. This crash-and-burn of mine was in my interaction with a trans believer via social media, a venue which probably doomed my attempt from the start. A friend from back in my college days apparently was piqued by one of my (arguably foolish) Facebook posts, in which I said "nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that ... binary sex isn't a material fact." and posted to me: "I don't believe binary sex is a fact. I believe there are humans and animals whose sex falls somewhere between male and/or female. They have unusual chromosomes or hormones or whatever. Nature doesn't care whether it fits into our limited worldview or language constructs. Though I will concede that perhaps I'm not sane." I replied in way too strident a fashion and made assumptions about what she was thinking, rather than gently inquiring about her reasoning and allowing her to see the flaws and assumptions she was making instead. (I think it was the "or whatever" that really stung me. I have little patience for unserious people who think their opinions deserve respect.) I was impatient and showered her with all this material, so naturally she didn't take it well. (BTW, I saved the entire exchange and used an AI Chatbot to analyse it for me, to spot the strategic errors I made. That kinda' helps. Am burdened with the temperament I have, but that doesn't mean I have to stop trying to overcome it to be more persuasive the next time an opportunity like that falls into my lap.)
Anyhoo . . . that's what Lisa's latest accurate insights into our current plight as a nation: At a time when we need a strong, pragmatic, yet principled "loyal opposition" to the current Administration in the U.S., we have today's Democratic Party, which -- sadly -- is none of these (with a few rare exceptions, such as Jonah Wheeler in NH). Here's hoping there are enough Jonah Wheelers (in both the Republican and Democratic parties) talented and foolhardy enough to expose and wrest control away from these hadow party elites. We can be sure that there are backroom battles occurring; and hopefully the hubris and tone-deafness of those embracing ideologies out of touch with hard cold realities make an inevitable defeat happen quicker than we can anticipate at the moment.
So well observed. Thank you.
I had just read a conversation between Yascha Mounk and Steven Teles about Democrats rebooting themselves via a left-leaning alignment of cultural normies with the "abundance/YIMBY" agenda. I think that is the way forward. I identify with both. And, yet, I am a lesbian. How does that work - casting my lot with the "cultural normies" while being abnormal? Well, humility, I think. Realizing that heterosexuality is normal. Understanding that life should be organized around the norm, and it is my job to fit into that. Now, I long argued for gay rights meaning the right to not be the norm - to be treated fairly as a citizen under our constitution. But I always - still - recognize that there are a lot of people who have a problem with that and I (and the movement as a whole) had to convince them that I wasn't a threat to their deep values and wouldn't impinge on their own life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I was completely happy that the baker who didn't want to make the cake for the gay couple won at the Supreme Court. Go to another baker. Let them alone and they will leave us alone. Then trans happened, and I am so pissed. And, Lisa, I so appreciate all that you do!
The cake was a big mistake! I think it had more impact than we know.
I love this, Lisa. Thank you.
Earlier this year, your podcast co-host, and my hero, Cori Cohn delivered a script-flipping message about inclusion (in testimony in Nevada & in Ep. 18 of Informed Dissent)—then came Mariah Burton Nelson’s write-up about it (with a great graphic!) here: https://open.substack.com/pub/strongerwomen/p/will-male-athletes-welcome-girly …with Nelson describing it as “a beautiful invitation.”
And that was after I’d seen BigTomBoye’s message, “The mensroom is safe for trans!🌼🕊”
(this links to BigTomBoye’s short video-message):
https://x.com/bigtomboye/status/1705412211609342063?
Tom adds, “GNC dudes / femme gays / transsexuals / transvestites / drag queens are all perfectly safe in the mensroom! 🚹✨️
“It was fine for BoyGeorge in the 80s; CaitlynJenner & LiaThomas can handle it today! 💪😀”
So I’ve been thinking this message is the positive solution I need to be articulating for my friends and colleagues on the left (and the following may sound like I borrowed it from your post here! but it’s a sentence I composed last week): When sex is relevant, we should foster inclusion and the acceptance, within each sex, of diverse expression and non-conformity among the members of their sex.
Cori is my hero, too.
And, yeah, you know my idea about "gender" education: "Boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways." The end.
Democrats have a tough road ahead unless they explicitly disavow the idea that "gender identity" should supersede biological sex, and admit they got this wrong (which I don't see happening anytime soon). A lot of trust has been broken. Sex is such a fundamental aspect of human life that even people who are not deep in the weeds on this issue, but who are not captured by the "kindness and inclusion" mantra either, will intuitively distrust people who lie about it. If they lie about something so fundamental and obvious as sex, what else are they lying about? That's why I think the polls don't accurately reflect the damage this issue has done to Democrats. People might not even be consciously aware how much this has contributed to their loss of trust.
Couldn’t agree more. How can you trust a party that won’t admit sex is real? The longer the Dems hold on to this, the more credibility they lose with moderates of all stripes. I guess the “shadow party” explanation makes sense, but I can’t imagine how they think this is a viable long term strategy.
Thanks so much for the great work you do. I just wanted to mention that the way you felt after 9/11 may also have been influenced by your being a young Democrat at the time, and it sounds off-putting to ask what America did to provoke jihadism, like blaming a victim of rape for wearing a short skirt (the “yes, of course” rape is bad doesn’t really negate the analogy). While we may have been mistaken about the weapons of mass destruction, there were reasonable discussions about how to respond to the terrorists, even if you don’t agree with how they proceeded. Gender identity discussions among Democrats, when they’re allowed which is rare, are NOT reasonable. All your suggestions are good ones, but the only hope for them is if normal, sensible, thinking people eschew party loyalty and join other normal sensible people to bring the country to its senses.
Could be! Except we have a lot of terrible foreign policies, and I probably didn't know nearly enough about them, and didn't learn then.
So fair. We’re all learning a lot together!
Hi Lisa, thanks for this.
One place in the political discussion is to address "state intervention". That is, Democrats in Congress and also in public comments in media tend to assert that the state should not intervene in "private" medical decisions. I've heard, for example, Praymila Jaypal say this on medicalizing children with GD, "why aren't these just private medical decisions". This is a dishonest position (or, to be more charitable, a poorly informed framing of the topic) because Blue States have enormously invasive laws that intervene in the "private" decisions of families who do not favor medicalization and who do not believe in the gender religion. If Democrats would at least admit that theirs is not a laissez-faire policy but in fact amounts to as much if not more state intervention than in Red states, then we might start a real conversation.
About Representative Pramila Jayapal, as you may be aware, she is—according to her “About” page, as well as other public statements—the mother of a “transgender daughter”. https://web.archive.org/web/20230115064854/https://jayapal.house.gov/about-me/
Pitch-perfect. I have restacked. Our mutual local “paper of record” needs to hire you as an Op-Ed columnist and member of the editorial board. 👏🔥👏🔥👏
It was my life dream but it'll never happen. And that's okay! Actually, I used to want to work for the real estate section. I though the Nick Confessore article was great, and hope to see them return to doing good work.
You are the best!❤️
“Transgender athletes” aren’t being “banned” from competing (so long as they’re not taking performance-enhancing drugs, as would be the case for a female taking testosterone in an attempt to “transition”). They’re welcome to compete against others of their own sex.
Just a word about Sept. 11, 2001, which I witnessed across the East River in Brooklyn, where the sound impact of the first crash was at first thought to be a helicopter crash on the roof of the elementary school where I worked in Cobble Hill. There was intelligence indicating that very cell who hijacked all the planes (Wahabist Saudi terrorists, not Iraqis) was known and should have been monitored, should have been detained at the airports. The Dept. of Homeland Security was formed in response to our oversights, the lack of inter agency communication. Later that month, I attended more than a half dozen funerals of the firefighters my colleagues were married to. I will never, ever disgrace their memories with flip statements about US foreign policy.
As to the Democrats' inability to face facts about the medical malpractice of "gender affirming care," the clarity of those who testified July 9 at the Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov/media/danger-gender-affirming-care-minors) tell everything you need to know. I found Dr. Laffert's testimony most revealing and compelling. It will take the Dems years to admit that "bottom surgery" being listed and billed as "medically necessary reconstructive surgery" is fraudulent billing, fraudulent advertising and medical malpractice. I took hours to transcribe his 40 minutes, part 1 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5k4Ousv4sI&t=212s
Look what happened to the Democrat in Texas who did that though, Thierry?
You are right that terms involving the word "gender" are circular. The word should be thrown out. Originally it only had to do with grammar; the word "sex" was used (along with its sexual meaning) for categorizing male vs. female vs. physically intersex. The word used for the behavior of people behaving like a typical person of their sex was "sex role." People were understood to conform, or not, to sex roles. It was not required to change one's sex in order to reject part or all of a sex role. And there was no requirement to state one's sex role or be identified with a certain sex role, like there seems to be in terms of announcing one's "gender." Why choose a role? Be masculine, be feminine, be androgynous! If someone objects, ignore them! On the other hand, if it's your body you're uncomfortable with, then that's a different issue and maybe you need to have your body altered for the sake of your mental health. But be sure you're mature enough to make the decision, because the consequences can be disastrous (e.g., no orgasm, ever).
No most normal Americans did not navel gaze to ‘understand ‘ what we did to make Al Queda hate us. That’s bizarre.