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!
Hi Elizabeth, I think we've met. Or at least we're in some of the same local networks on-line. I'm in Seattle. I've lost all sorts of friends and colleagues for speaking up. And I sing. Let's gather people to sing some time!
Yay! Yes, we both testified against 1956, I think that is when we met online. I was at the Tacoma Speaker's Corner too, but not sure if you were there or not. I am pretty sure I have your email somewhere in one of those group emails, or please find me!
I use my channel on YouTube, Ute Heggen, to post a mix of brief videos, some simply nature shorts, as well as my experience as a trans widow, whose grown sons have pushed me away because they now want to pretend their father's abandonment and deceit didn't happen.
I feel so lucky to be 61-- my kids are safe, and my peer group generally knows this is horseshit! (Or I pick logical skeptical friends.) My friends are very left wing as well. There is no consensus on the left.
Every conversation I have had with friends, they are relieved-- and we are in agreement.
We all grew up in the 60s/70s...and then our kids all grew up in the 90s/00s-- both eras with far better mental health... and-- the word 'gender' was never spoken. How is it now some tentpole of identity?
Our society has delegated childrearing out, and we've lost "common knowledge" track of how children tick.
I speak up a lot. I've tweeted a lot about the issues I see as a CASA. Banned for this from Twitter. (If anyone cares to amplify my appeal, @haynes-wiley is my handle. Stephanie Winn tweeted about my case.)
Lately I've been haranguing my alma mater, Brown-- great for all of us to do this as alumni wherever we studied, I think. I've been emailing/ forwarding links to the President of the Univ and the Dean of the Med School on the idiotic, grandiose malignity of Michelle Forcier and Jason Rafferty. and how Brown will OWN 'sterile foster youth' due to these professors' bad positions and unquestioned, but terrible, evidence. There are ZERO degrees of separation for Brown and it enrages me. I have been begging them to conduct a systematic review internally and 'blow the whistle' on themselves to prevent damage to the University.
I speak as a heartbroken alumna watching Brown countenance Lia T, and spout BS in the med school. I talk about how traumatic it is to watch my beloved and trusted institution, which changed my life in fabulous ways, turn away from reality.
Having received a reply (I am sure she regrets that!) I have kept on sending links, etc as they come along. I sent the Leor S debunk of Rafferty, for example. I've sent the info on Sweden and Finland.
WE NEED TO MAKE THIS HARD TO GO ALONG WITH. University people assume that "chain of trust" in research is not falsified or misread. We need to show them that this has happened and the only way out is to U TURN.
Tell them you are refocusing your donation budget. I have done with all of my alma maters. I gave annually for more than 20 years. i've informed them of my situation. My now ex husband was "diagnosed" in one, initial appointment and fast tracked for surgery way back in the 1990s. The "sexologist" demonized me and stated in a sworn affidavit that my refusal to stay in the marriage "forced' him to "decide to live full-time as female." I still have the signed document, which basically disproves the "since birth" idea of internal identity. Does anyone remember Patty Hearst? I give to Heifer International, an organization that does not use "pronouns" and which helps rural poor people all over the world with starter animals and expertise for growing local.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
I am also a singer (classical) and interested in your writing. I subscribed to you substack but the link to your website is broken. I’m on the west coast. Where are you based? Laurawayte.com I blogged for a while about music but have fallen off. Have a great day and thanks for all you do!
Hey, thanks. I am on the East coast. My blog is at wordpress, uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com and my youtube channel is simply Ute Heggen. I'll probably have a short video with Exulansic up soon, as she's visiting. (Royalty in the GC crowd)
Hi! I did see your comment in my email, thanks for that. I agree about how great Lisa is. I didn't mention it, but one of my early goals towards "speaking up" was simply to support the journalists like Lisa in any way I could, including financially at times, including jumping in on comments. So I think that should be a "speaking up" category, because it amplifies the voices of those journalists. It's noble, urgently important work, maybe even more important now that the right media in the US has taken over this issue. Some of that reporting is totally fine (more fine than I knew it would be back when I stayed in my lefty lane!) but some of it is fear mongering, making it dangerous for gays, lesbians and trans-identified people. That's nothing I signed up for.
Lisa has taken a great hit to be so brave, but she is breaking through! I love to write and have written a few articles, but I am not a journalist. I have also decided I have no wish to monetize any contributions I may make to this fight, outside of donations to my music someone may sometimes feel like making. Simply what I've always done as an artist. I am actually not a parent or a grandparent, so really don't have a dog in this fight! (Editing this to add--of course I am a woman so I do have THAT big dog in the fight, but because I am older, these issues don't affect me much personally.) I am just an artist and a person with a basic moral compass. Thought that would be more common that it seems to be! But I agree with you about the mothers especially being the leaders, which is why I wrote a song Icy Storm for the parents. I know it doesn't erase the pain or end the problem, but I wanted them to know someone hears them. I hear you! Keep listening to the Dixies, take care of yourself.
Elizabeth, thank you for stepping into this even though you don’t have kids who are affected. I look around at the women and men like you (or with older kids or grand parents) in my life who could get involved but don’t and I feel such frustration. If all the level headed people just said, “Hey, this is all a bit out of control. What about the rights of women?” We could really get somewhere. So thank you.
Ah, thank you Laura. That means a lot to me. Please be in touch via email if you have any interest in collaborating musically!! I'm very interested in finding musical people of like mind and good heart. Working on a slew of women's empowerment songs right now and could use some singers! I work with a symphonic bass player and have worked with cellists in the past. I know it's a completely different kind of music (folk/folk rock) so I tot understand if not your thing, but think about it! You're just one state away...:) Let's at least connect, it might be good to imagine a northwest feminist music hub. First last name at yahoo! :)
Yes, the fear is real! I only discuss this stuff with my husband. I am an academic who has been surrounded by gender ideology for decades--I used to shrug it off, but now I am waiting for the moment when I am revealed as an apostate and shunned. I have only recently even mentioned to my 26 year old daughter that I have serious doubts about it. And I have not been brave enough to say anything publicly. I started by following lots of "gender critical" (I'm not a big fan of the phrase) folks on Twitter. Then I became brave enough to "like" their tweets, so anyone who looks through my likes or follows will see what I think. (Of course, Twitter might cease being a place for this discourse.)
So, *yes* I would love to see someone organize a National Speaking Up Day--then all of us scaredy cats would feel more comfortable speaking up!
BTW, I studied the Spiral of Silence theory in grad school (when the majority is afraid to speak because of the domination of a violent or hostile minority)--I thought it was nonsense then! Today, I think about the theory almost daily because I feel like I'm living it.
I’ve been thinking about this very issue so much lately: How can I help, how can I start speaking out, which avenues should I take? In fact, I had a dream the other night that I met up with other GC people and spoke my mind and it was the most liberating feeling. I woke up in such a good mood! To that end I’d love to meet in person with similar minded people in Brooklyn. I’d love to strategize ways we can start speaking out. I’ve been thinking about making an Instagram post but I am worried about backlash at my job. I’m really interested to hear what others have to say on this topic... (As always, thank you Lisa!)
I'm feeling inspired. Here's what I want to say on National Speaking Up Day:
I believe in judging people based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. When you reduce someone to their race, their sex, or any other characteristic outside their control, you are being a bigot, full stop. Even if someone's ancestors were mean to your ancestors, that doesn't justify you being mean to them. Two wrongs don't make a right.
I believe that everyone is born just the way they were meant to be. I have no problem with people who choose to modify their bodies, be that via tattoos, piercings, top surgery, or vaginoplasty. Unless you're a burn victim getting a skin graft, however, I reject the idea that any cosmetic surgery is medically necessary. We should be teaching our children to love themselves for who they are, *especially* if they have trouble fitting in. I faced gender dysphoria and beat it, and with the right encouragement, I believe many if not all of my gender-nonconforming brothers and sisters can too.
I believe that every idea contains a grain of truth. There are two sides to every issue; both sides contain truth, and both sides contain falsehood. The process of seeking truth is not to determine which narrative is true, but rather, to identify the truth in both and bring those truths together. When you reject an idea outright without considering it, you only serve to deny yourself the opportunity to learn something new.
This stuff is so hard. Conspirituality Podcast did a piece this week on The Daily Wire and Matt Walsh. I posted how sad it is how people like him are the only high profile people out there raising concerns about gender affirming care. I encouraged them to explore the similarities of this current movement to other subjects that they have covered including repressed memory and "the satanic panic." I was hoping for a modicum of curiosity but what I got back is EXACTLY my concern. "These are horrible people dismiss everything they have to say." People of good will, kindness, and care need to speak up
or our concerns will continue to be dismissed as manufactured right wing outrage.
As a trans widow, who left a 14 year marriage because I didn't agree faking myself as a lesbian. I've lost friends, and my grown sons refuse to talk to me after I was open about writing and self-publishing a memoir of my experience. (In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow, iuniverse) I feel for my sons, and occasionally feel quite despondent about the power their father has over them since the magical year of "affirmation," 2015. I discovered his cross-dressing diaries exactly 30 years ago last August, as our sons were 1 and 4. The PhD "sexologist" diagnosed him in the first appointment. This could not have been long enough to even do the health history. There's often an inflammation story--his involved rheumatoid arthritis, as well as physical or sexual abuse from childhood--his father beat the children with a belt. I've been cut off in mid-sentence, cursed at, accused of violence (I'm a retired Kindergarten teacher) and trolls on my youtube channel (Ute Heggen) have instructed me to lie down in rush hour traffic. It is a cult. It passes all the tests. Here's a link to one of Jonathan Streeter's YouTube interviews with detransitioner, Michelle Alleva:
How about doing it on "April Fools" -- to underline the foolishness of treating mental/right brain issues-- self hatred, dysmorphia, lack of robust self, etc-- cosmetically?
Our Constitution’s Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, so let’s make every December 15th a national day to celebrate and champion them -- focusing especially on our Freedom of Speech.
I welcome a Speak Freely Day!! As the mother of a teenager in Virginia, I am appalled at the lack of common sense. Every single professional adult in my child’s life failed her on every level. This child ran away at 14, rescued by FBI in Maryland. Maryland refuses to let her come home with me because I used her “ dead name”. Neglected to give her proper medical care after being rescued from a sex trafficking ring. Maryland places her in a boy’s home (being the only girl), loses her on their watch three months later. She is once again subjected to more horror at the hands on yet another trafficker in Texas. Rescued again and placed in a locked facility that intended to medically transition her. This mother fought to get her discharged AMA and she is finally home. 344 days later. With a diagnosis of severe PTSD. Had my legal parental rights been honored, this child would not need therapy for the rest of her life. So will I speak up and out? You bet I will! To anyone and everyone that will listen. Any time. Please let me!
That "destabilized" feeling is why I keep an 8x10" production publicity still from the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," signed by Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy, right on the wall next to the place where I tweet. Strange, isn't it,. to see so many people on "your own side" turn into space aliens.
This is something I stuggle with constantly, especially since I'm in PDX, USA. Finding people of a non-woke, heterodox mindset open to difficult & productive discussions IRL can often feel like looking for a universal needle in a haystack made almost entirely of ballpoint ones. I'm stubborn however😁
Any fellow readers of Broadview (local or otherwise) are always welcome in my inbox.
I am so grateful that you're here and participating in discussions! I'm glad it worked out for your son and that you're still able to talk about the risks and about the research. Such a nuanced voice is very valuable in this crazy culture war. If your son would ever be willing to talk to me, or the both of you would like to do an interview, let me know.
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!
Hi Elizabeth, I think we've met. Or at least we're in some of the same local networks on-line. I'm in Seattle. I've lost all sorts of friends and colleagues for speaking up. And I sing. Let's gather people to sing some time!
Yay! Yes, we both testified against 1956, I think that is when we met online. I was at the Tacoma Speaker's Corner too, but not sure if you were there or not. I am pretty sure I have your email somewhere in one of those group emails, or please find me!
I use my channel on YouTube, Ute Heggen, to post a mix of brief videos, some simply nature shorts, as well as my experience as a trans widow, whose grown sons have pushed me away because they now want to pretend their father's abandonment and deceit didn't happen.
I feel so lucky to be 61-- my kids are safe, and my peer group generally knows this is horseshit! (Or I pick logical skeptical friends.) My friends are very left wing as well. There is no consensus on the left.
Every conversation I have had with friends, they are relieved-- and we are in agreement.
We all grew up in the 60s/70s...and then our kids all grew up in the 90s/00s-- both eras with far better mental health... and-- the word 'gender' was never spoken. How is it now some tentpole of identity?
Our society has delegated childrearing out, and we've lost "common knowledge" track of how children tick.
I speak up a lot. I've tweeted a lot about the issues I see as a CASA. Banned for this from Twitter. (If anyone cares to amplify my appeal, @haynes-wiley is my handle. Stephanie Winn tweeted about my case.)
Lately I've been haranguing my alma mater, Brown-- great for all of us to do this as alumni wherever we studied, I think. I've been emailing/ forwarding links to the President of the Univ and the Dean of the Med School on the idiotic, grandiose malignity of Michelle Forcier and Jason Rafferty. and how Brown will OWN 'sterile foster youth' due to these professors' bad positions and unquestioned, but terrible, evidence. There are ZERO degrees of separation for Brown and it enrages me. I have been begging them to conduct a systematic review internally and 'blow the whistle' on themselves to prevent damage to the University.
I speak as a heartbroken alumna watching Brown countenance Lia T, and spout BS in the med school. I talk about how traumatic it is to watch my beloved and trusted institution, which changed my life in fabulous ways, turn away from reality.
Having received a reply (I am sure she regrets that!) I have kept on sending links, etc as they come along. I sent the Leor S debunk of Rafferty, for example. I've sent the info on Sweden and Finland.
WE NEED TO MAKE THIS HARD TO GO ALONG WITH. University people assume that "chain of trust" in research is not falsified or misread. We need to show them that this has happened and the only way out is to U TURN.
Tell them you are refocusing your donation budget. I have done with all of my alma maters. I gave annually for more than 20 years. i've informed them of my situation. My now ex husband was "diagnosed" in one, initial appointment and fast tracked for surgery way back in the 1990s. The "sexologist" demonized me and stated in a sworn affidavit that my refusal to stay in the marriage "forced' him to "decide to live full-time as female." I still have the signed document, which basically disproves the "since birth" idea of internal identity. Does anyone remember Patty Hearst? I give to Heifer International, an organization that does not use "pronouns" and which helps rural poor people all over the world with starter animals and expertise for growing local.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
I am also a singer (classical) and interested in your writing. I subscribed to you substack but the link to your website is broken. I’m on the west coast. Where are you based? Laurawayte.com I blogged for a while about music but have fallen off. Have a great day and thanks for all you do!
Hey Laura, nice to meet you! I am in Olympia, WA, looks like you are in OR? I just checked my website, seems to be working. Is this what you tried?
http://elizabethhummel.com/
Let me know if you can't open it and I'll do more troubleshooting. Would love to connect via email. Will try to connect via your site.
Hey, thanks. I am on the East coast. My blog is at wordpress, uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com and my youtube channel is simply Ute Heggen. I'll probably have a short video with Exulansic up soon, as she's visiting. (Royalty in the GC crowd)
OOPS typo: @haynes_wiley is my Twitter handle.
I’m sorry it’s been so hard!!! Oregon is a difficult place right now. ❤️
Hi! I did see your comment in my email, thanks for that. I agree about how great Lisa is. I didn't mention it, but one of my early goals towards "speaking up" was simply to support the journalists like Lisa in any way I could, including financially at times, including jumping in on comments. So I think that should be a "speaking up" category, because it amplifies the voices of those journalists. It's noble, urgently important work, maybe even more important now that the right media in the US has taken over this issue. Some of that reporting is totally fine (more fine than I knew it would be back when I stayed in my lefty lane!) but some of it is fear mongering, making it dangerous for gays, lesbians and trans-identified people. That's nothing I signed up for.
Lisa has taken a great hit to be so brave, but she is breaking through! I love to write and have written a few articles, but I am not a journalist. I have also decided I have no wish to monetize any contributions I may make to this fight, outside of donations to my music someone may sometimes feel like making. Simply what I've always done as an artist. I am actually not a parent or a grandparent, so really don't have a dog in this fight! (Editing this to add--of course I am a woman so I do have THAT big dog in the fight, but because I am older, these issues don't affect me much personally.) I am just an artist and a person with a basic moral compass. Thought that would be more common that it seems to be! But I agree with you about the mothers especially being the leaders, which is why I wrote a song Icy Storm for the parents. I know it doesn't erase the pain or end the problem, but I wanted them to know someone hears them. I hear you! Keep listening to the Dixies, take care of yourself.
Elizabeth, thank you for stepping into this even though you don’t have kids who are affected. I look around at the women and men like you (or with older kids or grand parents) in my life who could get involved but don’t and I feel such frustration. If all the level headed people just said, “Hey, this is all a bit out of control. What about the rights of women?” We could really get somewhere. So thank you.
Ah, thank you Laura. That means a lot to me. Please be in touch via email if you have any interest in collaborating musically!! I'm very interested in finding musical people of like mind and good heart. Working on a slew of women's empowerment songs right now and could use some singers! I work with a symphonic bass player and have worked with cellists in the past. I know it's a completely different kind of music (folk/folk rock) so I tot understand if not your thing, but think about it! You're just one state away...:) Let's at least connect, it might be good to imagine a northwest feminist music hub. First last name at yahoo! :)
Yes, the fear is real! I only discuss this stuff with my husband. I am an academic who has been surrounded by gender ideology for decades--I used to shrug it off, but now I am waiting for the moment when I am revealed as an apostate and shunned. I have only recently even mentioned to my 26 year old daughter that I have serious doubts about it. And I have not been brave enough to say anything publicly. I started by following lots of "gender critical" (I'm not a big fan of the phrase) folks on Twitter. Then I became brave enough to "like" their tweets, so anyone who looks through my likes or follows will see what I think. (Of course, Twitter might cease being a place for this discourse.)
So, *yes* I would love to see someone organize a National Speaking Up Day--then all of us scaredy cats would feel more comfortable speaking up!
BTW, I studied the Spiral of Silence theory in grad school (when the majority is afraid to speak because of the domination of a violent or hostile minority)--I thought it was nonsense then! Today, I think about the theory almost daily because I feel like I'm living it.
I’ve been thinking about this very issue so much lately: How can I help, how can I start speaking out, which avenues should I take? In fact, I had a dream the other night that I met up with other GC people and spoke my mind and it was the most liberating feeling. I woke up in such a good mood! To that end I’d love to meet in person with similar minded people in Brooklyn. I’d love to strategize ways we can start speaking out. I’ve been thinking about making an Instagram post but I am worried about backlash at my job. I’m really interested to hear what others have to say on this topic... (As always, thank you Lisa!)
No way, I'm also in Brooklyn! I'd also be interested in that. I wonder how many other readers live in the area?
In Manhattan. Close enough - and definitely want to get these reasonable messages out there.
I'm feeling inspired. Here's what I want to say on National Speaking Up Day:
I believe in judging people based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. When you reduce someone to their race, their sex, or any other characteristic outside their control, you are being a bigot, full stop. Even if someone's ancestors were mean to your ancestors, that doesn't justify you being mean to them. Two wrongs don't make a right.
I believe that everyone is born just the way they were meant to be. I have no problem with people who choose to modify their bodies, be that via tattoos, piercings, top surgery, or vaginoplasty. Unless you're a burn victim getting a skin graft, however, I reject the idea that any cosmetic surgery is medically necessary. We should be teaching our children to love themselves for who they are, *especially* if they have trouble fitting in. I faced gender dysphoria and beat it, and with the right encouragement, I believe many if not all of my gender-nonconforming brothers and sisters can too.
I believe that every idea contains a grain of truth. There are two sides to every issue; both sides contain truth, and both sides contain falsehood. The process of seeking truth is not to determine which narrative is true, but rather, to identify the truth in both and bring those truths together. When you reject an idea outright without considering it, you only serve to deny yourself the opportunity to learn something new.
This stuff is so hard. Conspirituality Podcast did a piece this week on The Daily Wire and Matt Walsh. I posted how sad it is how people like him are the only high profile people out there raising concerns about gender affirming care. I encouraged them to explore the similarities of this current movement to other subjects that they have covered including repressed memory and "the satanic panic." I was hoping for a modicum of curiosity but what I got back is EXACTLY my concern. "These are horrible people dismiss everything they have to say." People of good will, kindness, and care need to speak up
or our concerns will continue to be dismissed as manufactured right wing outrage.
As a trans widow, who left a 14 year marriage because I didn't agree faking myself as a lesbian. I've lost friends, and my grown sons refuse to talk to me after I was open about writing and self-publishing a memoir of my experience. (In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow, iuniverse) I feel for my sons, and occasionally feel quite despondent about the power their father has over them since the magical year of "affirmation," 2015. I discovered his cross-dressing diaries exactly 30 years ago last August, as our sons were 1 and 4. The PhD "sexologist" diagnosed him in the first appointment. This could not have been long enough to even do the health history. There's often an inflammation story--his involved rheumatoid arthritis, as well as physical or sexual abuse from childhood--his father beat the children with a belt. I've been cut off in mid-sentence, cursed at, accused of violence (I'm a retired Kindergarten teacher) and trolls on my youtube channel (Ute Heggen) have instructed me to lie down in rush hour traffic. It is a cult. It passes all the tests. Here's a link to one of Jonathan Streeter's YouTube interviews with detransitioner, Michelle Alleva:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXS5urnHvNY&list=PLevx2DAlF-YCdMOY2rxvE3e0_CYIziq7G
How about doing it on "April Fools" -- to underline the foolishness of treating mental/right brain issues-- self hatred, dysmorphia, lack of robust self, etc-- cosmetically?
We need that 'The Emperor is Naked' moment!
Our Constitution’s Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, so let’s make every December 15th a national day to celebrate and champion them -- focusing especially on our Freedom of Speech.
I welcome a Speak Freely Day!! As the mother of a teenager in Virginia, I am appalled at the lack of common sense. Every single professional adult in my child’s life failed her on every level. This child ran away at 14, rescued by FBI in Maryland. Maryland refuses to let her come home with me because I used her “ dead name”. Neglected to give her proper medical care after being rescued from a sex trafficking ring. Maryland places her in a boy’s home (being the only girl), loses her on their watch three months later. She is once again subjected to more horror at the hands on yet another trafficker in Texas. Rescued again and placed in a locked facility that intended to medically transition her. This mother fought to get her discharged AMA and she is finally home. 344 days later. With a diagnosis of severe PTSD. Had my legal parental rights been honored, this child would not need therapy for the rest of her life. So will I speak up and out? You bet I will! To anyone and everyone that will listen. Any time. Please let me!
Lisa, yes! If a variety of different groups would endorse the idea, and a date could be named the would be great.
That "destabilized" feeling is why I keep an 8x10" production publicity still from the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," signed by Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy, right on the wall next to the place where I tweet. Strange, isn't it,. to see so many people on "your own side" turn into space aliens.
Another thought: how can the left follow up the vaccine debate where they said “ follow the science” and not do the same here?
Beautifully written agree with it all can we pick a day? We can be like Horton hears a who?
This is something I stuggle with constantly, especially since I'm in PDX, USA. Finding people of a non-woke, heterodox mindset open to difficult & productive discussions IRL can often feel like looking for a universal needle in a haystack made almost entirely of ballpoint ones. I'm stubborn however😁
Any fellow readers of Broadview (local or otherwise) are always welcome in my inbox.
I am so grateful that you're here and participating in discussions! I'm glad it worked out for your son and that you're still able to talk about the risks and about the research. Such a nuanced voice is very valuable in this crazy culture war. If your son would ever be willing to talk to me, or the both of you would like to do an interview, let me know.