Speak Up! Plus: Don't Let a Desire for Moral Purity Get in the Way of Coalition-Building

Big Thoughts from the ICONS conference

I wasn’t sure exactly why I’d gone to the ICONS Women’s Sports Summit conference the weekend before last. I haven’t written a ton about trans-identified males competing in women’s sports, although I do believe that the story of Will/Lia Thomas peaked a lot of liberals over the last year. I knew I wanted to commune with more people, and see if I’d find anything to include in the book I’m just about to start working on—but I wasn’t sure what I’d find.

Here’s what I found: inspiration, clarity, and a desire for more broad coalitions.

The conference took place in the large meeting space of a suburban Denver hotel. I’d wager attendees were 97% female. Among the 3%-ish of males were two transsexuals, whose presence was perhaps a tad controversial for some attendees (more on that in a sec.) Never had I been surrounded by so many tall and broad-shouldered female Olympians (and some petite champions, too!), nor so many trim, blond conservative women, who were not only perfectly nice but not the least bit hesitant about communing with radical lesbian feminists with hairy legs.

That was the inspiration: some combination of strange bedfellows and heartwarming bipartisanship. This kind of cooperation was apparent on a panel about the shifting language of Title IX, from sex to gender identity. There sat a woman from a Christian right group—a group that pushed against the ratification of the ERA—and a woman from a rad fem group. They agreed on how laws, policies, and language changes that shift the meaning of woman—from biological reality to subjective feeling—endanger women and girls.

I had hoped their communing signaled that some conservatives who might otherwise dismiss feminism—which I shall define today as a person concerned with women’s rights (what’s your definition?)—were coming around to it. But a friend suggested that I was simply experiencing the overlap in the gender Venn diagram: Conservatives don’t want males changing in women’s locker rooms, either, but are fine with abortion bans. Still, there was no talk of politics or religion—only science, law, and reality. Divergent groups focused on what they could agree on, and where their values overlap. Imagine if more politicians did that!

During one panel, I asked some of the female athletes, including those who’d raced against Will/Lia, if their recent experiences had made them more aware of the importance of feminism. The answer seemed to be: sort of. I got the sense that they might not have used that word, but they were aware that our sex-based rights are fragile, and they were activated to protect them.

Here’s the clarity: It is a horrifying injustice to retroactively change the meaning of language in law. Title IX allowed for equality between the sexes, which has a clear meaning: males and females. To either replace sex with “gender identity,” or to add gender identity as a facet of sex is to erase sex-based rights. If you want to enshrine protections based on gender identity into law, go through the front door, not the back one. I learned this from Hadley Manning, of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum.

From the lefty liberal Kara Dansky, of Women’s Declaration International, I learned about the importance of using accurate sex-based language, which she describes here. I was astounded to learn from her that the US has not ratified CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. I guess I shouldn’t be astounded anymore.

When it comes to women’s rights, and what happens when we fiddle with the word woman, we need a common reality, a respect for material reality. Otherwise we have males winning in elite female sports. We have women raped by men in prisons. We have the message one man’s feelings matter more than the feelings of legions of girls.

Which is why using sex-based language in law, in journalism, in medicine, in education—it’s all paramount. We must speak of males in women’s sports, women’s prisons, women’s shelters, women’s spaces. We must speak of sex, not of identity.

And yet, as my regular readers know, I am generally a trans-inclusive human. I don’t always use sex-based pronouns in conversation, or when writing about someone whose pronouns I’ve come to accept based on my experience of them. (If you’re entitled to your own subjective reality, I’m entitled to mine.) I’m entirely willing to platform and embrace heterodox transsexuals who want to raise awareness of what’s happening to women and children due to gender identity ideology. I understand that some adults change their bodies to feel more comfortable. As long as they know the truth, and don’t expect me to subvert what I know to be true, I’m fine with that. I can handle calling someone he if that person is completely honest about being female—but I understand why others don’t want to, and am steadfastly against compelling them to do so.

Some people at the conference wanted nothing to do with trans people at all, and urged others to never interact with them; the LGB with the T, after all, is a kind of forced teaming. I totally get this and fully support LGB having their own coalitions. After all, even the L and the G together are sometimes strange bedfellows, too; the connection between lesbians and gays is fragile is its own way, a forced teaming at times of its own. LGB is about same-sex attraction. T, on the other hand, has generally been about either being attracted to oneself as the opposite sex, or about being same-sex attracted but very much like the opposite sex.

I would never argue for forced teaming. But I might argue that we should allow and support any kind of broad coalition that others want to form. After all, the connection between conservative women and rad fems is just as radical, and they’re willing to set aside differences to fight a more important battle. I recall a dialectical behavioral therapist I saw for many years, who would ask me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?”

For years, the answer was “right.” But now I want to be effective. Still, I struggle to do so. This was apparent when, the next night, I had drinks with friends which quickly devolved into an argument. I write because interpersonal communication is a challenge for me, especially with people who I feel accept ideas because they are misinformed. So I continue to need help and training to be effective. But I am more motivated than ever to try.

That’s because the overwhelming theme of the conference was this: Speak up. Call out this injustice. Tell the truth. Put yourself on the line in any way you can. Because the more people speak up, the less alone the speaker is, the easier it is for others to follow. If everyone is speaking up, it’s not such a risk. Hot tip: When rebutting certain liberal claims, reframe the conversation from trans inclusion to women’s inclusion, from the subjective reality of identities to the objective reality of bodies.

I’m leaving comments open to all. If you have a positive experience speaking up—or, heck, a negative one that you want support for—please share it below.