Which Side Are You On?
A response to an Instagram post of someone I sort of kind of know-ish
The other day I saw this post on Instagram. The author is someone I went to college with, but didn’t know there. (He was anointed the next Walker Evans while my advisor, with her shock of electric white hair and violet eyes, drawled in her patrician accent: “You’re not a writer.”) But coincidentally we have non-college friends in common, and the other day I heard him on the radio, discussing how anti-trans hate is riling the Republicans. Thus, well, I responded, even though it’s probably not good for my social life to do so.
It went as expected. “I’d love to hear more about what you think the life-threatening elements are, if you’d be willing to discuss,” I wrote. (Did I, though, or was I just trying to lay the groundwork for my consistent argument that how to treat gender issues shouldn’t be framed as left/right?) He said he’d written a book about it. I pushed back a little.
He responded with: “as I say, I’ve written a book about the threats I’ve seen firsthand as a reporter, and faced at the wrong end of a gun. They are many. Against trans folks is one. I’ve seen and heard it firsthand. I’m not talking Brooklyn, I’m talking armed people. I try to stay available for conversations, but with respect for others I’m just not available for a discussion on the realness of threats against trans people, including my kid and my dearest friends. I don’t have it in me. I believe this is, unfortunately, a which side are you on moment. There are men with guns outside libraries. There are kids inside. Which side are you on? Are ‘questions’ more important than standing with those who literally have guns pointed at them? I’m not talking Brooklyn.”
Below is my response, which I posted in parts on Insta (because there must be a word minimum). I hope that this kind of plea, along with articles like Helen Lewis’s recent one in The Atlantic, which features me pleading for a bipartisan commission and to stop fighting and get data, will eventually sway some media-makers—and some lefties. As I say in Lewis’s piece, “Staking your claim on supporting drag-queen story hour, as opposed to a $25 minimum wage, is really silly.”
@xxxx: I share your fear of the far right, and especially extremists on the right, rolling back decades of progress with respect to gender and sexuality. It’s why I want to wrest the issue from politics, and from the hands of the extreme left: I don’t want to replace rad with trad. I want liberals to reform the medical, educational, psychological and legal fields that have been overtaken by a radical minority of bad actors—not with guns, but with policies, guidelines, fear, intimidation, and threats to families under the guise of “affirmation.”
That said, I would never lump old school “compassionate conservative” types in with the radical militias you’ve observed, nor would I discount the way the radical left has inflamed those militias through our support of unscientific and dangerous gender ideas that we should be scrutinizing ourselves. There is bipartisan objection to those ideas and the policies and laws they lead to—from liberals and LGBT folks, as I’ve documented.
We—liberals and the reasonable left—need to be the ones to reform, to pull back, to be honest and to stop stoking the flames by imposing quasi-religious ideas about gender onto people who do not want them and, according to you, will stop at nothing to combat them.
The Proud Boys displays you refer to aren’t happening in Brooklyn, you and I both admit. Indeed, I would love for you to understand what’s happening in places like New York City, or states like California and Oregon where laws have been passed in the name of protecting vulnerable children, but which do the opposite. I’ve been interviewing kids and their families all across America for years now—kids and families given terrible care under the affirmative model. I’d love for you to hear their stories.
I’d love you to talk to Abigail Martinez, whose daughter was taken from her by the state because of her reluctance to “affirm;” the daughter later committed suicide.
I would love for you to read the Cass Independent Review, which explains the issue of diagnostic overshadowing—kids with complex mental health problems not getting the support they need once gender comes into the picture. The doctors who wield suicide stats in ways that should get them fired, but instead they testify at state hearings—doctors who have told children to their faces that they will kill themselves if they don’t transition.
I would love you to talk to the detransitioners who have had breasts removed, whose bodies are forever changed from testosterone, who realized later that they were autistic, depressed, lonely, and/or confused and never should have been allowed such medical interventions.
I would love for you to talk to the desisters, who socially transitioned and realized even that was a massive, controversial psychological intervention—one being facilitated, in secret, by schools.
I’d love you to read about the shift in perspective and policy in many European countries—based on evidence, on the new cohort of teen girls with no history of childhood gender dysphoria, on detransitioners. I would love you to strip politics away and look at what’s happening.
Your response underscored my point that accusations of moral failing are not arguments—rather than explain, you said it’s a question of which side I’m on, the assumption being that you’re on the right side, and I’m on the wrong.
I’m on the side of kids and families, of schools and doctors helping them thrive, rather than triangulating between them and unraveling the family fabric. I’m on the side of science and evidence, which does not support medical transition. I’m on the side of real journalism, telling people what they need to know so they can make informed decisions. I’m on the side of gender nonconforming people, who need space to be different, not to be interfered with medically so they conform, who are deeply misunderstood by both the left and the right, and who are told constantly by well-meaning lefties that they are hated and in danger, ignoring that, as The New York Times actually admitted the other day, “This is the best time in American history to be L.G.B.T.Q.” I’m on the side of not telling children they are fragile and helpless because of their innate sexual orientation, or because of an identity they’ve chosen—even as I understand that it is gender nonconformity, not gender identity, that sometimes does instill anger, hatred, even violence.
I’m on the side of truth, which is neither left nor right. Anyone with a child with gender-related distress owes it to that kid to be fully informed. Any pundit telling other people on the left how they should understand these issues owes it to all of us to be fully informed. That’s why I spend all my time trying to inform journalists, and why I have reached out to you.
Which side are you on?
I am really curious to see how this someone will respond. I've gotten increasingly cynical in the last while with regards to good faith conversations, but I really admire and root for individuals like you, Lisa, who are still continuing the good fight. Also Julia Malott - she's pretty amazing up here in Canada.
“Staking your claim on supporting drag-queen story hour, as opposed to a $25 minimum wage, is really silly.”
Hear, Hear!