Resignation Review: Covid! Masks! Birdsong!

Your letters and thoughts about my letter and thoughts

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Thank you for all the feedback last week about my resignation letter to the Democrats. I hear they had a party last night. Who won the Oscar?

I thought I’d respond to some of the critiques and suggestions you took the trouble to offer.

I was startled to see someone tweet the letter out, calling me a “former Democrat.” I guess I don’t see resigning from the party as no longer being a Democrat. Transgender is something you do, not something you are. Maybe, too, “Democrat” is about who you vote for, not your values, not your essence. There isn’t really a chance for those to overlap neatly (for me) in the current iteration of the party. Right now, in order to summon my voice, in order to finish the book I’ve been slogging through for over a year, I need to declare my independence. I need to feel no fealty to either side; that’s the only way I can do the story justice. That doesn’t mean I’m becoming a Republican or won’t vote for whoever is Not Trump.

Primaries
I had not considered one commenter’s caution that I could no longer vote in primaries in local elections, where, in theory, my vote counts. But the truth is, no one I’ve voted for in primaries in the last few years has made it through. I voted for mayoral and city council candidates based on policy, not identity, but the race or religion or sex of the candidates—the things we’re not supposed to discriminate based on—seem to be what mattered to voters. Some candidates ran almost entirely on identity. If I were to buy the line that only someone who shares my identity can understand or empathize with me, I’d have to elect someone who shares my background. But I don’t believe that. That’s the lie that has perpetuated a lot of—dare I use this overused word?—harm.

Covid
What did I mean when I said “Republicans were right about Covid”? For one thing, I don’t think their stances were rooted in science any more than ours were; I think they were accidentally right that we shouldn’t have closed schools; that there was merit to the lab leak theory; that we should not have mandated vaccines. The director of the CDC went around saying vaccines prevented people from getting and spreading Covid. That was not true! So many of us gave these vaccines to our kids when kids were the lowest risk group. I have seen no acknowledgement of just how bad, how authoritarian, how unscientific the Democrats’ decision-making has been. We cannot call ourselves the party of science anymore. Oh, wait, I’m not a we!

Masking
So many notes about masking. Some people sent studies “showing” that masks work. I looked at the methodology. Some of them were based on mannequins. Some where the control group was the same as the experimental group. Sure, yes, I’m willing to concede that if you have an N-95 mask fitted to your face that you do not remove for eating or chatting, it lowers the spread of disease. But when I walked into the Park Slope Food Co-op earlier this year, unaware that they had mandatory mask days, I saw people with Jesse James-style stick-em-up cotton bandanas over their noses, the bottoms willowing on their chins. Seeing a person with a loose slab of cotton over her mouth at a reading, which she removed, I just thought: Our side has not realized how misinformed we are.

We made toddlers wear masks, okay? Let’s admit we had it wrong.

Birdsong
You’re all completely correct. This is not a ten-dollar word. This is a seventy-five cent word. I just find it pretentious.

You can always send a “letter to the editor” (which would be me) if you want me to publish your response to something I’ve written. I would love to host opposing perspectives here.

Thank you all for your continued support—which includes criticisms!