What Does the Left Most Need to Understand?
Your suggestions, please
This weekend, I was away with 39 other people (we used to be a smaller group but there’s been a lot of procreation over the last 15 years!). I’ve known them all for many years, but don’t see them much between our annual outing. Last year during this trip, I was in a bad place, and when I tried to talk about “the issue,” I didn’t have any tools to explain it, and the generally lefty crowd didn’t seem so open.
This year, some people still stared at their laps when I brought it up, but others were more open. A couple of them said things like, “So, I know you’re working on gender stuff, but what’s the general problem?”
I started to explain: the crummy research, the new cohort, the rise of detransitioners—what other countries have reacted to with new, careful guidelines, and which we’ve reacted to here with Democratic denial or Republican bans. (Believe me, I know it’s more complicated than that—still working on the bans piece).
Most people just blinked at me when I listed these problems. But then I said, “You’ve known my kid her whole life. Do you think it’s a good message for gender nonconforming kids that they might be born in the wrong body?”
That created more of an aha moment than any data or proof. That got them thinking. These are proper liberals, mostly white ladies who want to be kind and good, who care about racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and social justice. They want to do the right thing. And some of them are just beginning to consider the possibility that what we’ve been doing—what we’ve been telling kids about sex and gender, how we’ve been treating them medically and psychologically—might not be the right thing. But it’s hard for them to see how.
So I’m curious: If we could get the left media to report one dissenting aspect of this story well, or if you could hammer one important point home that complicates the oversimplified narrative, what would it be? If you had one brief chance to explain, what would you say?
Comments are open. Curious to hear your thoughts.
More juicy reported pieces on the way. I’m weirdly slow right now.
People are always surprised when I tell them that the effects of testosterone are irreversible. But I've been most successful in starting, as you did, with, "Isn't is sexist to tell gender non-conforming girls that they must really be boys?"
I think the left needs more voices like yours, clearly pointing out that gender ideology is NOT a progressive continuation of the idea that strict gender roles and gender stereotyping are regressive- instead, it’s directly in contradiction to those ideas. My sense is that the type of people you describe (sounds like my social circle!) see the evolution of progressive ideas in the realm of “gender” as following a smooth curve from “Free to Be You and Me” to “Protect Trans Kids” without realizing that “Protect Trans Kids”, when it means both reifying the category “trans kid” and supporting affirmation-only and a medicalized pathway, is actually a slogan directly in opposition to the idea that kids should be free to be themselves whether they are female or male.
This contradiction needs to be repeatedly pointed out by people that progressives trust. I don’t see any other way out of this mess in the US.
I hope that makes sense, it’s early!