"What Now?" Remember the North Star

Gender diversity is real. It's how we respond to it, and understand it, that matters.

“What now?” liberals and Democrats have been asking themselves, and one another, faced with the blood-red election map, punctuated by only modest dots of blue.

A few have answered: “Take stock of why we lost, and listen to those who’ve been trying to critique us from within.” But those Democrats who’ve done so have been rebuked by their compatriots. Though others have pointed out the party’s rejection of the working class, and indifference to economic issues, the party line continues to be that last week’s stunning defeat of Kamala Harris by Donald Trump was the result of bigotry.

Thus, the vast majority have answered the “What now?” question with some version of: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”—perhaps not realizing they’re echoing Trump’s fist bump after the [first] assassination attempt.

My reaction (besides a bit of I-told-you-so-ing in The Boston Globe) was to wonder if my project was now moot. I’ve obsessively tried to pitch mainstream outlets and produce materials for liberals to share with one another, trying to create an environment in which dissent was not just tolerated but welcomed. As John Stuart Mill said, silencing expression of opinion robs those who hold opposite views, too. “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” If Democrats are still not going to allow their opinions to collide with truth—if they’re not going to see mainstream voters’ rebuke as a message they must heed—why bother with my gentle prodding?

After all, a video from last year shows Trump declaring he will put an end to youth gender medicine, or pediatric sex changes, or gender-affirming care, or cosmetic secondary sex characteristic modification, or whatever we want to call it. (A longer video includes his plan to require prayer in schools, too.) The Republicans don’t need to learn what I’ve been trying to tell liberals: that the evidence behind these drastic psychological and medical interventions is of low quality. That the transition-or-die narrative is wildly overblown and misunderstood. They already know that.

What’s less clear to me is if they’ve learned the one part of the gender discussion I’d like to keep hold of: that kids like Jazz Jennings really are “born that way.” By that, I don’t mean born transgender. Transition is something you do, not something you are. I mean that some kids emerge as extremely gender nonconforming, performing the gender role associated with the opposite sex. A minority of kids in this group will truly be non-functionally upset about their “assignment”—some would rather die than continue in the category they were born into. It’s now considered conversion therapy to try to to help them feel comfortable in their bodies.

The question remains as to how we understand these kids, and how we treat them. Telling them that they really are the opposite sex is a drastic intervention that, as far as we can intuit from what little and low-quality research we have, increases the likelihood and intensity of gender dysphoria at puberty, encouraging medical transition.

Rather than caution against this approach, because medicalizing is a worse outcome, researchers held this research up as proof that kids “knew who they were”—because not living as one’s “authentic self” was a worse outcome than invasive surgeries and a lifetime of cross-sex hormones. Rather than make room for such kids—both by accepting them, and pushing back on the limits of those gender roles—we medicated them or shoved them into the opposite role, thereby reinforcing them. By way of teaching kids about gender identity, passing laws that enshrine the idea, and embedding it in medical practice, we interpreted this approach as helping kids be true to themselves. Except it did so by way of pretending they’d changed sex, and forcing the rest of society to pretend, too. It was all hung on the beguiling idea of gender identity, this shining authentic soul that just needed to be released by way of changing the body, by way of changing reality.

There is still very little sound advice for parents raising such kids. Some of those kids aren’t distressed by their bodies or social categories. Parents can tell those kids that they are like the opposite sex, but will never be the opposite sex. They can fortify those kids for the discomfort and confusion they might cause for their classmates, and ask for the tiniest bit of accommodation—for instance, for the teacher to explain that boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways.

In the past, some of these kids were beaten to a pulp, or taunted and shamed. We don’t want to go back to that. But we’ve rewritten everything from educational guidelines to the definition of sex to accommodate them—that wasn’t the right approach, either. Hence, the backlash. It was too much.

I wanted liberals to modify because I feared the backlash if the Right took over the discussion completely—backlash against the gay community, against the kids who come out of the gate gender nonconforming, and against transsexuals who don’t deny the reality of sex nor insist on teaching preschoolers about their existence. I want there to be room for gender diversity. Really.

I remember in 2021, when North Carolina introduced the Youth Health Protection Act. Though it never advanced, it aimed to “protect” minors from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, rightly noting that kids “are incapable of comprehending” their long-term implications. But it didn’t stop there. It insisted that “government agents” report a kid to guardians if he/she exhibits “symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex.”

Responding to government overreach—forcing the use of preferred pronouns, prioritizing gender identity over sex—with more government overreach, in the opposite direction, isn’t a solution. It’s the liberal dissenter’s fear, realized. The Left conflated gender nonconformity with gender dysphoria and transgender identity. I don’t want the Right to do that, too.

I’ve spent the last few years trying to answer the question: “What the fuck happened?!” That’s what the book I’m working on is intended to do. In that work, I’ve met a lot of Republicans and right-wing folks, and I’m grateful for that experience. I’d lived in a deep blue bubble before, hardly interacting with people of different political persuasions, and I’m so glad to know many kind and thoughtful conservatives. Some of them have become more supportive of gay rights, more accepting of gender diversity, through this work. But will their voices moderate the backlash? Will it be more nuanced than what they’re responding to?

I don’t know. I would love some intel if anyone reading this has any.

In the meantime, what will happen when the supply of youth gender medicine, or whatever we want to call it, dries up before the demand is quelled—when easy access through Planned Parenthood or pediatric gender clinics gets harder, or impossible, but those who believe they need it continue that desire? If we don’t work on what we teach kids, on better guidelines, on getting medical associations to pivot, we turn off the tap while the thirst is still there.

Will young people—and adults—who were on the fence about transition rush to medicalize? Will those young people who’ve come to accept as fact the idea of gender identity, and who were raised with trans kids as a reality—rather than as a way to interpret childhood gender nonconformity—ever have the chance to rethink and relearn? Will detransition care be covered? Will those who are certain the Republicans’ stance is rooted only in transphobia and not science ever realize that the Democrats were in the wrong? Will everyone here in lib-land continue to believe that a grave injustice has been done, rather than that justice has been served?

As I digested the election results, I began to wonder how they impacted my message, and my goals. I’d spent four years trying to get liberals to change course. I tried with everything I had to push through the walls of censorship in liberal media and explain: that the science wasn’t there. That trans and gay weren’t the same thing. That gender affirming care and abortion weren’t the same causes. That it was okay, right even, to question and dissent. But I didn’t get very far. And now, without Democrats in power, conservatives don’t need a “liberal whisperer,” as I was trying to be. What is my role? What is my goal?

The truth is, even if Trump issues an executive order, reversing Title IX, or somehow banning these interventions, or preventing teaching gender identity as fact—and I’m not sure he can—they’re still deeply institutionalized in a fiercely polarized culture. The gender situation—it’s both a symptom of our political polarization, and exacerbated by it. If we really want reform, if we really want a nation to heal, we have to depolarize. So we still need liberals to come around.

And no mater what, no matter who’s in power, we have to make cultural room for gender nonconforming kids—that continues to be my North Star.

I remember talking in a writing class about when a story stops, but doesn’t end. Stopping is when you cease to type. Ending is when there’s still a sense of movement, of some life continuing off the page. It’s not the death of the story, but the moment it lives on outside of the work itself. That’s what I’m looking for with gender-affirming care. We can’t just stop it. We have to understand it.