57 Comments

Thanks, Lisa, as always, for your thoughts. You so often sum up where I am on these questions.

And thanks, especially, today, for this term, which I've never heard before: psychological androgyny.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Eureka, that's it, a perfect capsule phrase that expresses what I have long tried to describe in a series of fumbling, rambling half-sentences ("I seem to have certain, um, emotional and communicative characteristics that, um, are considered by society to be more 'female' and, um...."). My wife, with her usual succinctness, just tells her friends that she's married to a man who is "part chick."

But the "chick" elements are all entirely interior. There is nothing about my "presentation" or demeanor that would ever lead anyone to say, "Oh, that guy is kind of androgynous." On the other hand, I have all these supposedly "female" traits—I'm the verbal processor, the communicator, the lover of words, written and spoken; I like therapy, for real (my wife is not a big fan); I am effusive, perhaps even "flamboyant" (but not in a "gay" way); I love colors (though I couldn't care less about fashion, and am very much a dirtbag/surfer type, I really do care about "all the pretty colors," as I like to say); I need more touch/nurturance/affection; and on and on.

So again, thanks. Nobody has ever, or would ever, mistake me for a female, but honestly, I relish the above and other so-called "feminine" traits in myself.

I'm one who believes the current trans mania is inherently misogynistic and anti-gay. It is, more or less, Christian conversion therapy dressed up as the new progressive orthodoxy.

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I’m glad you’re here and glad to hear about your experiences! Kids have so few models of gender nonconformity.

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Thank you for this lovely piece Lisa.

My daughter, now 19, has been IDing as a male (now a gay male!) for about five years now. Pride month, which I didn’t used to mind so much, has become a horror. Especially in Toronto Canada.

It seems to be that the argument in favour of Pride has been that the other 11 months of the year are, by default, a celebration of heterosexuality.

But Pride feels different now, with its celebration of gender dysphoria and transition.

I work at a “progressive” employer. A few years ago, we had a Pride fundraiser for an organization that runs an Underground Railroad for people fleeing countries where homosexuality is illegal. This year, the ask is for us to donate makeup for trans youth (surely not the trans men though, right?)

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“A few years ago, we had a Pride fundraiser for an organization that runs an Underground Railroad for people fleeing countries where homosexuality is illegal. This year, the ask is for us to donate makeup for trans youth.”

This slide from the material to the immaterial is indicative of the entire American political left over the last 15 years. It’s disheartening, but there are signs it’s coming back.

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I was just there. Drove through Gay Village a couple of times on the way to downtown. I noticed not that many new flags in the village by small businesses. Corporate, on the other hand, is all in on the new one. The rainbow sides walks were not painted with the new colors. I took this as a good sign.

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We have a trans flag that was painted at a crosswalk in our smallish town a year ago and the paint has almost all crumbled away and there are no signs of them repainting it. Everytime I cross it with my trans kid, I secretly relish this fact that it's almost gone. Seems apt. A flash in the pan, I hope, and this all just goes away.

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"What if we found gender diversity unremarkable? What if we accepted the reality of biological sex and allowed the categories of male and female to include feminine and masculine people, respectively?" Yes, indeed, that would be the desired goal!

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I live in a city across the Hudson river from NYC and there are lots of Pride events this weekend. I offered to attend a Pride festival with my 16 yr old daughter who IDs as a gay man like Sad_Moms. But then I worried, what if there's a planned parenthood table... would I be able to walk by? Where would the lesbian section be? Maybe there would be a table for gays against groomers? I'm thinking of having a talk with her about how everyone represented in the PRIDE category doesn't agree about everything. Lesbians have lost their spaces. PP has muddied themselves by distributing HRT to anyone who wants it using informed consent without concern for long term effects. On top of it all the threat of violent encounters by TRAs might keep people who hold different beliefs but would otherwise happily sit under that rainbow, from attending PRIDE. Is that what PRIDE means? I think not.

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Lisa,

You continue to be a voice of sanity in these crazy times. Thank you for all you do. We need your voice.

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When I first came out in my 20s I loved Pride (NYC). As the years went by and I continued to live my life as an unapologetic lesbian, Pride interested me less and less. Perhaps because society continued to accept me more and more, I didn’t need “Pride.” Life has certainly gotten easier over the years (I’m almost 50 now) and I’m grateful that I don’t feel shame around the choices I’ve made for myself. Now, sadly, I loathe Pride because it’s so wrapped up in gender identity. 10-year-olds are celebrating Pride because they’re taught in school to be allies, or worse, that they’re part of it because they feel “different” from other kids. On June 1 when my wife said “Happy Pride!” to me, I practically snarled. And that’s a shame.

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Yes 100%. The real opposite of shame is not pride, but acceptance. We need to accept that some people have qualities that are less common than others (like being gay or a feminine male or masculine female). These are not things to be “proud” of, as much as they are things to simply accept. Yes, we can be proud of those who fully express themselves despite society’s ridicule - but society is now “rewarding” such courage with wholly unnecessary medical interventions instead of simply recognizing that it was wrong to make such a big deal of uncommon behaviors and preferences in the first place. No pride - no shame - just acceptance is where we need to strive to be.

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Great piece, Lisa! From a 73 year-old lesbian.

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Regarding Pride- it has been somewhat hijacked, I know. I love Pride!! The history is important to me-I marched in my first Pride Parade in 1977, shortly after I came out. I now live in a county that is over 60% Republican, and full of evangelical Christian and Mormon churches. We had to be protected by law enforcement at our Pride event last year. Pride is important in our county. The discrimination here is very real. I love representing for the youth!

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Superb writing. But I'd like to add.

One thing which has evanescenced from the script on pride is sex. It’s not peripheral, it’s central. Speaking as someone involved both in frequent gay sex and in annual gay prides for over 60 years, there's something everyone misses.

Men kiss and hold hands walking down the street in Saudi Arabia, but suffer cqpital punishment for homosexual sex. Ma Rainey could declare she didn't like men in song, but actually having sex with women got her arrested.

Pride wasn't about rainbows and holding hands, it was in essence about the right to meet, enjoy the company of, love, and _have sex_ with the person you were attracted to, without public shaming, loss of job, arrest, extortion, torture, castration, hard labor or life in prison (seriously folks, it's still illegal in, say, Kentucky). Aids was stigmatized primarily because it was seen as a disease of gay sex, not gay holding hands. Overcoming frantic, fearful reactions to the possibility homosexual sex is the center.

Today It's been repackaged as a not sexual, somewhat family event (I'm bemused), and this very conversation is evidence why remembering the gay, lesbian, and bisexual _right to have sex_ aspect of it is imoortant.

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I love this comment and context, thank you.

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Who is Pride really for?

This, from Andrew Doyle, is excellent (and witty): https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-is-pride-really-for/ Here's an excerpt, but the whole is definitely worth reading.

"[W]ho is Pride really for? With equal rights for gay people long established, Pride has gradually morphed into a self-satirising celebration of narcissism, where avaricious corporations can pose as virtuous by merely flying a flag and tossing off a few hashtags. Whereas the struggle for equality for those who are innately same-sex attracted was tangible and important, we are now expected to show solidarity for heterosexuals with a kink. This week the British Library decided to celebrate Pride by tweeting about hermaphroditic fish, and holding an event that will ‘celebrate nature in all its queerness’. The very concept of a ‘2SLGBTQIA+ community’ and all its attendant absurdities has made Pride a laughing stock.

"A new ideology has hijacked the Pride movement, one whose commissars are obsessed with group identity and the belief that gender is more important than sex. This has grave consequences for gay people. In her book Time to Think, Hannah Barnes found that between 80 to 90 per cent of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic in 2012 were same-sex attracted. Studies have long confirmed a correlation between gender non-conformity in youth and homosexuality in later life. At the Tavistock, staff used to joke that soon ‘there would be no gay people left’. Somehow, the medicalisation and sterilisation of homosexuals has been reframed as ‘progressive’.

"Even Stonewall – the UK’s foremost LGBT charity – has defined the word ‘homosexual’ on its website and promotional materials to mean ‘same-gender attracted’. Its CEO Nancy Kelley has claimed that women who exclude biological males from their dating pool are akin to ‘sexual racists’. There has been an intense resurgence of old homophobic tropes online from gender ideologues who believe that ‘genital preferences are transphobic’ and that lesbians who aren’t interested in penises must be suffering from ‘trauma’. Gay rights were secured by recognising that a minority of people are instinctively attracted to members of their own sex. The new ideology of gender identity rejects this notion, and actively shames gay people for their orientation."

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As a young lesbian, in the 70s and 80s, I loved the Gay Pride parades. I never felt ashamed of being a lesbian. Quite the opposite, to be a lesbian was, and remains, a source of great joy, and I would never want it any other way. The Gay Pride Parades were a chance for us as lesbians to come together in a huge celebration of our beautiful lives, all decked out in our lesbian gear (Dykes on Bikes at the front of the parade, even), huge numbers of us marching down the streets, cheering one another on, pouring out into Greenwich Village, where we would hang out together, laugh and sing and dance. One year, it ended up pouring rain. We all lifted our heads to the sky, dripping from head to toe, and just laughed and laughed and laughed. The chance to come together in a great clamorous (and amorous) celebration like that has been stolen from gays and lesbians, and I want it back.

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What's so odd about Pride now is that it's presented as a family event (maybe that's a post gay-marriage shift, and also with more same-sex couples having kids) but it's also really explicitly sexual now, with, like, butt plugs next to the rainbow stickers. That might be part of some of the backlash—more of "they came for the kids," or people who don't want kids to be around sexually explicit displays. I dunno. It's not for me to write but I want someone to.

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Interesting. Fetishistic elements did sometimes latch on to the parade, even back then, but they were very small in number. I don't remember any fetishistic gear at all. (I do remember seeing a small NAMBLA contingent one year and thinking, what the h are they doing here? I want absolutely nothing to do with that.) Anyway, the last one we attended was in 2016; the Orlando gay club massacre had occurred that month, so that occasioned a particularly strong outpouring of love and support. It sounds as if, since then, the fetishists have taken over completely. Fred Sargent may be a good one to ask about that. I'm going to send you by email some photos of 2016; it was a joyous, loving event, but I wouldn't go anywhere near a pride parade now. For one, not only does it have nothing whatsoever to do with those of us who are same-sex attracted, but also I don't want to be associated in any way what it has come to represent. That grotesque flag alone is a desecration of the original intent.

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Me again , Lisa. Josie pointed out to me an article by Simon Edge that, while from a UK perspective, describes at least some of how Pride morphed into something completely unrelated to its original intent. https://unherd.com/2023/06/pride-is-no-place-for-homosexuals/

I’m also reminded again, by this, of another person’s earlier comment about the importance of separating “LGB,” which is about same sex attraction, from “T” and the other letters, which are about identities. Bev Jackson, the head of the LGB Alliance in the UK, does a nice job of explaining why this is so important, including the very serious issue of transing away the gay: https://youtu.be/cD5px59nXy8

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Same here, but in San Francisco.

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There are so many reasons why someone feels they are trans which I think is hard to help someone realize they have been indoctrinated into an ideology. It seems that many of the teens/YA caught up in this are gender conforming based on meeting other parents.

As for androgyny, two points:

On the Gender Wider Lens,

1. Sasha Ayad talked about a "test" that found many with a high IQ tended towards androgyny.

2. I think with the Anne Lawrence interview, Lawrence is moving more towards androgyny rather than trans.

Your last two paragraphs really should be shouted from every rooftop.

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Such a great point: we need to get beyond shame and shadows but also pride and self-devotion. We need to move to a new place.

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This is a great piece Lisa, and really struck me, along with an article you wrote earlier that I just re-read on the inappropriateness of “I am Jazz” as a school book. I have a question for the group...My daughter was gender questioning for 2 years or so, and I think we are on the other side now. When I think back to her journey, the celebration and pure fantasy of trans culture really sucked her in - and I think our elementary school unwittingly played a big part (along with the internet, covid, puberty etc. I am certainly not trying to lay blame on school). Our upper elementary school partners with Welcoming Schools and I am planning, as part of a response to a district school survey, on discussing my daughter’s journey and how I think the school needs to revisit this curriculum. Does anyone have any links to articles about what is problematic with Welcoming Schools? And a suggestion for a good alternative? Note I’m in a liberal east coast town and attempting to be nuanced and thoughtful in my communication...

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Cat Mom, I've been looking into this too and, I agree, Lisa's piece on "I am Jazz" is right on. My kids are college kids now, but I work alongside a lot of educators and have been trying to find good resources. There isn't much. I've started exploring Genspect's offerings (under guidance for schools), but haven't found much in a US context. The teachers and school librarians I know are very frightened to speak out. A friend in the DoE says there is no openness there to alternative views (of reality). A local private school parted ways with a family for their concerns. I would welcome a "Sold a Story" type investigation, like the excellent podcast exploration of how we teach reading, for the teaching of sex/gender.

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I'll look into Welcoming Schools. (Who funds it?) Right now I only know about Genspect's work, and Gender: Wider Lens consulting. Thumbs up to both. I'm working on something, slowly...

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Welcoming Schools is a project of the Human Rights Campaign

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And someone just sent me this "Werkshop" at the Boston JCC - "play with gender" by learning how to do your make-up from a drag queen...? https://www.bostonjcc.org/calendar/drag-make-up-werkshop/

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Agree - I am no expert at all, and I historically a super-lefty, but I really worry that presenting being a "trans" kid as all sunshine and rainbows is giving false hope and could potentially lead to medicalization, versus acknowledging the many ways of being different. Welcoming Schools on the surface looks great, acceptance! anti-bullying! etc etc. But the devil is the details and the details here are wrong...

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Cat mom, what about contacting the F.A.I.R. Organization?

https://open.substack.com/pub/fairforall/p/weekly-roundup-7e9?r=e338n&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

They might be able to help with educational materials.

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Thank you! They have this posted on their website, which I will share! These are the sorts of things I would want our schools to focus on -

https://www.fairforall.org/content/pdfs/fair-pro-human-learning-standards.pdf

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Cat Mom, I thought of you today when I listened to the most recent episode of Gender A Wider Lens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1mDcu6P620) which is a discussion about gender and schools. Maybe of interest?

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Thank you! I admittedly haven't listened to that podcast in awhile, but it was so helpful when we were in the thick of it! I have decided to take a rather gentle approach with my school (I think they are well intentioned for the most part), with focus on specifics. Here is what I have drafted: (I'm also getting feedback from the wonderful community at Megan Daum's UnSpeakeasy).

When my daughter was in 5th grade she began a gender-questioning journey and declared herself to be both gender-fluid (with pronouns changing daily depending on her mood) and pan-sexual (despite not yet having any sexual feelings towards others). For her, this was very much a way to deal with social exclusion, discomfort with bodily changes during puberty, and a way to be part of a celebrated community. She struggled with her gender identity for close to two years. While I am supportive and accepting of differing sexual orientations and means of gender expression, my child’s struggle was not actually about any innate sense of gender identity. And yet, our society is quick to tell us we must validate any such feelings our kids present.

I am certainly not laying blame with the school for her struggles (social media, covid, etc all had an impact), however I do believe that the school environment and curriculum played a part. I urge the district to take a serious and nuanced look at the messaging around gender identity that is being delivered in our schools, particularly to elementary and middle school students.

The curriculum at MSS included materials from Welcoming Schools (part of the Human Rights Campaign which is arguably an activist organization). These materials are not grounded in biological reality and also reinforce rigid gender stereotypes. I believe the concept of a “gender identity” is confusing, particularly for children (as it was for my daughter). I take issue with Welcoming Schools claim that “gender is your internal sense of being a girl, boy, both or neither” and would hope instead that our schools focus acceptance of a wide means of personal expression – that you can love tutus and mermaids as a boy, and eschew skirts and makeup as a girl. I believe our schools do this, but I fear that a focus on “gender identity” muddies that message with detrimental effect.

The reality is that many kids who struggle with gender identity go on to socially transition to a different gender and that many kids who socially transition ultimately medically transition as well. I do not know if the district has a policy around communicating with parents on topics of gender identity, but I hope the school will support parents’ right to be informed about their children's gender issues, should they arise.

Further helpful insight into youth transition can be found in this series from Reuters. Youth in Transition (reuters.com). Additionally, I think it is noteworthy that many European countries are now rethinking the standard of care for gender questioning youth, as noted in this article from The Economist. What America has got wrong about gender medicine (economist.com).

I realize that this letter addresses a lot of culture war hot spots – I am not asking the school district to dive into a cultural battle. Rather I am asking the district to continue the great work it already does in caring for all students, and in maintaining strong ties to parents. That can be achieved by a thorough review of gender related curriculum, as well as ensuring parents are informed regarding any name/pronoun changes their child may be requesting.

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Great work! And new paper by Dr. Stephen B. Levine and E. Abbruzzese published April 2023 points out all the flaws and fallacies in cross-sex ideology. Girls on high school sports teams were boys are ideating and playing, in the locker rooms and etc, are going to 1) get seriously hurt while playing against males 2) get pregnant by boys claiming to be "girls" and claiming they are on estrogen so will not cause a pregnancy with their "female penis." Here's Drs. Levine and Abbruzzese link:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11930-023-00358-x

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Very wise perspective, Lisa. I hope that your optimism about softening on the progressive side is accurate. I do not see it yet.

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