Let's Plan National Speaking Up Day
If everybody did it, we wouldn't be in the minority
I am so appreciative of the private emails and anonymous comments that I receive every day, supporting my work and my mission—to create room for gender nonconformity and to report honestly on the science of gender-affirming care, and the experiences of those young people and families partaking of it. So many of those supportive people wish they could speak up, but they rightfully fear the repercussions of doing so. They worry about getting fired, about losing friends, about the impact on their reputations. Most of all, they worry about losing their connection to their children—legally, emotionally, or both—who’ve embraced a worldview about gender which they don’t share. Most of these are people with moderate views. In this age when the loudest voices are the most extreme, the moderate voices are the quietest.
A majority of Americans don’t feel comfortable expressing their political views, and censorship and self-censorship are both painful and prevalent. To hold heterodox viewpoints in a culture which demands ideological fealty is to be destabilized, uncertain, and isolated, to experience your own personal gaslighting. It’s psychologically taxing.
But what would happen if all the people who held those moderate yet unspeakable views—supporting gender diversity, but urging caution about medicalization—expressed them? Surely a majority of Americans believe that children should be properly evaluated before being psychologically or medially transitioned, and a majority believe that biological sex is real. How else did they all arrive on the planet, if not for the male and female parts colliding? Surely some viewpoints painted as unorthodox are actually quite common.
How do we create the environment in which more people speak up? I don’t have the answer, but I have some thoughts.
One is to organize, in advance, a supportive community. Find others who feel similarly, or support your right to feel as you do. Sometimes people meet each other through the comments sections of podcasts, at chapter meetings of places like the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, at places like the Unspeakeasy, retreats for freethinking women. Set up your support system in advance.
Ironically, though, another way to facilitate such a community is by speaking up. It’s the catch-22 of this censorious environment: you gain community by speaking up, but it’s hard to speak up without community. I was heartened to see New York magazine finally addressing the point I’ve been trying to make for the last two years: that dissent is not hate, and the media presenting it that way actually gets in the way of being honest about the science of gender-affirming care. This helps pave the way for compassionate, informed dissent, and helps people find their community.
Last weekend, I wrote a piece for The New York Post about my attempts to undo this situation over the last two years—although I was attempting to shift the media narrative in places like The New York Times, because that’s the audience I need to reach. As I was chronicling my attempt to shift the liberal media narrative, the Times published yet another article portraying the battle as right versus left, not science versus belief, and ignoring the voices of dissent and questioning from within the left. They also repeated the false statement that “The treatments offered to transgender children…have been shown to reduce suicide risk.” In reality, some really low-quality research suggests there may be a correlation between these treatments and reduced attempts of suicidal ideation or attempts, but there’s no evidence that transition reduces the rate of actual suicide.
Which makes my next suggestion all the more difficult.
Another way to create this speaking-up environment is by remaining curious and compassionate when you do express yourselves. Acknowledge that some people disagree, and affirm their right to do so. It’s really hard to do when you see misinformation spreading and want desperately for people to consider your point of view.
I was listening to NPR (old habit) last week, and two women called in to discuss with a Staten Island councilwoman recent protests at Drag Queen Story Hour. What could they do about these protestors? I expected the councilwoman to say, “They have a legal right to be there, just as the Museum has a right to host Drag Queen Story Hour.” Harassment? Intimidation? No. But objecting to this event, protesting it? You’re allowed. You’re also allowed to just not go if it’s not your thing, a message the Proud Boys seem immune to.
She didn’t say that. She used many buzz words: inclusive and addressing hate and celebrating diversity. But few in my camp seem to celebrate ideological diversity. Maybe we shouldn’t dismiss all protest as hate.
Of course, those trying to silence, intimidate, and threaten medical providers and partakers of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgeries make my proposition just as difficult. And by silence, intimidate, and threaten I don’t mean objecting online, which the left has painted as “literal violence.” I mean bomb threats and showing up with guns exposed (or, for that matter, concealed). Extremists on both sides, with the media colluding to make those sides seem like the only options—that’s how this became a culture war instead of a debate about healthcare.
More than anything, I think what would help is having the grownups in the room, wherever they are, prioritize and create space for viewpoint diversity. Help people understand that differing belief systems aren’t always rooted in bigotry. Maybe, you know, have a national holiday dedicated to celebrating free speech, in which people can express the ideas they’re too frightened to utter, not because they’re hate-filled but because they are unpopular. That will, in turn, broaden their community, embolden them to be honest, and to work towards a world in which people can disagree without tearing each other down.
Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Would you like to tear this idea down? Please leave a note. I’ll open the comments to non-paying subscribers, but, as always, please consider becoming a paid one because even though you don’t get a tote bag, you’ll help me keep going.
This problem of not being able to speak publicly about these issues is one of the many reasons I'm such a fan of what Lisa is doing on her Substack. There are several writers I admire who are addressing these topics, but Lisa has a way of addressing them in this even-handed, thoughtful way that doesn't feel like doomscreaming or handwringing, and she's never flippant or "trollish." She's honest about what we know, even when we know something inconvenient; and she's honest about what we *don't* know, even if we wish we knew that thing, or *feel* that we know it in our bones. I feel like her writing is important now, self-evidently--but I also feel it's going to be just as important when all of this is over, and people are wondering what the hell we just experienced, how it could have happened at all.
One reason this is so hard to talk about publicly is that, in North America and the UK, it seems to be the Left's "test issue" for feeling out a workable etiquette around social media--something we are very much not finished doing. So there are aspects of gender ideology that can be harmful on their own, but when you pair this movement with the way we're all stumbling around in the dark, trying to find a way to live in a world with this new technology, then ugh, you get a perfect storm of Orwellian awfulness.
The good-adjacent news is, I don't think this way of handling public discourse is at all sustainable, and although gender ideology did not *choose* to hitch its wagon to this odd technological moment, it *is* hitched to it, and it will lose power over people around the time we start to collectively reject this Panopticon crap. Speaking out is something becoming more permissible every day, as more evidence rolls in, including the evidence of our eyes.
Another note of hope: whatever the "next big thing" turns out to be, it will have comparatively less power over people, because we'll have been through this awful Wonder Twins from Hell moment that paired gender ideology with a society that was 100% unprepared to absorb the impact of what amounts to computer-assisted telepathy.
I'm genuinely interested how social media's "baby steps" nightmare is playing out in other cultures. I am sure that every society that has to wrangle with this technology will experience a different manifestation of this "virtual Stasi" phenomenon. It's like the end of "Little Shop of Horrors" (stage version) when the chorus comes out and tells you that similar versions of the story you just watched have been happening all over the world. My question: what form did Audrey II take in Turkey?
As someone who is open with my views, I can attest to how terrifying, sometimes lonely, depressing, very destabilizing, but also liberating, connecting and thrilling the experience has been. A very mixed bag, as there are very real consequences for "speaking up." I have felt them, they have changed me forever. It's different for everyone, with different costs and benefits. I very much like the idea of this Lisa, perhaps with different levels of suggestions for what it means to speak out. The first step can just be: talk to my spouse/partner/close friend/sister/brother. The first things I ever did beyond that: write letters to Rachel Maddow, NPR, and the New York Times. Then letters to my congressional representatives. Then I started by talking to more friends. I lost some of them and I won't lie, it still hurts. But others trusted me, dug into the subject and became better informed. Some donated to places like WoLF's legal fund. Then I wrote a song about the terrible law of self-ID in women's prisons. I posted it on Youtube but didn't share the link anywhere! That was scary enough. Then I testified publicly about a self-ID law in my own state. Then I wrote another song for the parents at PITT. Then I wrote some articles and got them published. I kept talking to people I know. I kept reaching some, losing others. Some long-time fans (decades!) unsubscribed from my mailing list, others wrote me "right on!" private notes. Some dear ones still do not agree with me, but have pledged their loyalty to our friendship anyway, and have conceded a small point or two. After JK Rowling quote tweeted one of my articles, I warned a well-known musician friend of mine that he should be prepared to distance himself from me to protect his career. I suggested he just say, "her views are her own," or something like that. His response, without hesitation: "I will tell anyone that I like people who think for themselves." Just yesterday, a 25-year-old woman who I started singing with a few months ago stopped me on a walk to tell me she had discovered my Substack with some writings about gender. I had been dreading "the conversation" with this lovely new friend and possible musical collaborator (I had lost my entire band due to coming out with my views), but I had known I needed to have it. Turns out she avidly read all my posts and listened to all my songs because she 100% agrees. She cannot be public because of her work, but she told me she is more inspired to take the risks she can make. Her views have been informed not by reading Lisa S. Davis or Julie Bindel or Helen Joyce, but by watching gender ideology harm her friends. It was so heartening, because I have been wondering if my work has made any real difference. If it can empower young people like my friend to turn the tide, I know that it has. And it makes all the painful aspects worth it!