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.
Great essay! Wish I could have been at that conference! I was recently in a heated conversation with a recent college graduate (a family member). She is liberal (her Ivy League education took care of that, plus she's in the creative world), but probably largely thanks to my many conversations with her about this topic, she does admit she agrees with me about the injustice of male bodies competing against female bodies. However, she believes that not using a person's desired pronouns makes one a "hateful bigot" and she launches into impassioned statements about how much prejudice and hate the transgender community have faced. I fully agree with your point that we need to speak up, to protect girls and women, and I believe one of the most effective ways to do so is in one-on-one conversations with people who know us to the extent that it may be harder for them to immediately judge us to be bigoted a-holes. Because I think that's one of the reasons more of us don't speak up. We don't want to be misinterpreted, and considered awful people - in part because that's a painful rejection, in part because that makes us less effective. Your statement, "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" - resonated as I had brought this up in my discussion with this young woman. I'm a therapist, and I said, "If I know you are female, but if out of 'respect' I call you a 'he,' how is that any different from my agreeing with an anorexic client that she needs to lose weight, or with someone whose grip on reality is tenuous that they are indeed being spied on by the government? And if you agree that that is problematic and dishonest, as a therapist - is it possible that it may also be problematic and dishonest of me as a human outside the therapy office?"
I think if we could create and communicate a Venn diagram with the following, maybe that's how we build more bridges: 1) compassionate, tolerant person 2) person who is grounded in scientific reality 3) policies that protect the vulnerable and that are fair and just. Because both can be true - I can be compassionate and tolerant, while being grounded in reality and believe in biology, etc - and we can create policies that protect the vulnerable while not doing so at the cost of hard-earned rights and need for safety.
I think the most important thing to remember in having conversations is to stop trying to make all the points and get people to understand every issue at once. Changing a deeply held belief is hard, even painful, and isn’t going to happen on one conversation. Pushing too hard makes people dig in more.
In my experiences in a very liberal area, everyone, even those posting and saying all the familiar activist talking points, feels uncomfortable and concerned about what’s going on with teen girls. They actually seem relieved to have another liberal bring it up and give them the opportunity to say something doesn’t feel right about what’s happening with teen girls. But don’t use that to start pushing every other issue - sports, bathrooms, prisons - all at once. People need a lot of time thinking and talking about why the issue that seems so obviously concerning to them - the spike in teen girls - is a completely taboo topic their trusted media won’t report on accurately. Stay with that.
Keep in mind that most liberals who are privately concerned about teen girls still believe in the “born in the wrong body” child who was obviously gender nonconforming since the moment they could walk and talk and has been consistent, insistent, and persistent. They assume those children are carefully monitored and assessed and have to transition because they will never grow out of it. Be prepared to share the studies showing ~80% of children will outgrow dysphoria during puberty. This was a big shock for a friend I shared this with who thought blockers were necessary for young dysphoric children. But here’s the key and the hard part: don’t jump into your opinions or the issues around the 20% who *don’t* outgrow it. Those are later conversations and potential places for allowing disagreement. One step at a time, and people don’t have to agree on everything. Trying to push perfect agreement creates even less agreement and recognition of common ground.
I once heard someone say that a person’s beliefs on this topic are based on the experiences of the happiest trans person that they personally know. I think that is key to remember and to respect and have compassion for in conversations.
Finally, although the sports issue, especially Lia Thomas, often peaks people, sports does NOT seem to work for people who are deeply dug into their beliefs. We have found they will acknowledge issues of safety and fairness, but because it’s an area of cognitive dissonance they have already recognized in themselves and feel uncomfortable with not being able to reconcile. it’s the topic they are most resistant to discussing.