“I would still be a woman even if I chose not to wear lipstick, dresses, or high heels. I would still be a woman even if I chose not to have children. I would still be a woman even if I took cross sex hormones, removed body parts, had my birth certificate changed, or decided to call myself Max.”

IN MEMORY OF STEVE

I'm an ordinary, straight, married woman, almost 70. Last year, I learned my very first boyfriend, who later became a brilliant physician and medical researcher, was dying of cancer. I sent Steve an email, and he wrote back, telling me about how proud he was of his "four wonderful daughters," all of whom were in their early 20s and college students or recent graduates of a top Ivy League university. He enclosed a family photo that showed the four young women, all displaying youthful health and vitality. To me it was obvious his daughters were the light of his life.

One month later, I was heartbroken to learn this very special man had died. Steve's death announcement referred to four children, one of whom now had a man's name. And a few weeks after that, I was stunned to discover a second daughter had also officially transitioned. From photos I later saw, it was obvious that both were on cross sex hormones and either bound their breasts or had double mastectomies. What on earth had made these young women do these unspeakably horrible things to themselves?

These revelations threw me for a loop. One gender transition in a single family would be regrettable. But two was unbelievable and tragic. My old boyfriend was never politically conservative. But knowing Steve as I did a half a century ago, I was certain he must had been demoralized and bewildered. If he accepted or was even neutral about the transitions, he never would have referred to "four daughters." He would have simply said he had four children and left it at that.

I am sure Steve's last months were devastating. Not only was he dying a painful death from cancer, but two of his daughters, the babies he raised from birth were making the most serious mistake, one he knew they would live to regret. As a medical doctor and highly respected scientist, he would have known or researched the many risks of cross sex hormones and invasive gender bending surgeries. I often think about how he must have felt. I imagine him lying awake at night, knowing the dangers but feeling powerless to stop the inevitable train wreck.

Steve's life is over, but mine continues. And I like to think he'd take comfort from my attempt to learn about the dangers that aggressive transgender activists pose to young girls, women, families, and the larger society. I've watched gender critical videos, read books (Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier and Trans by Helen Joyce) and participated on Bari Weiss's Substack which frequently covers this topic.

The aggressive transgender movement, funded by a dark network of high tech billionaires, threatens everyone, but it threatens girls and women most of all. It threatens all women, regardless of whether they're young or old, rich or poor, gay or straight.

The aggressive transgender movement threatens young girls, many of whom have emotional problems, by convincing them their problems would be solved if they took puberty blockers and gave themselves boy's names. It threatens teenage girls by convincing them to take cross sex hormones, cut off their breasts, have hysterectomies, and disfiguring phalloplasties. Then it threatens desisters and detransitioners by cutting off all the previous love bombing and shunning them as transphobes.

The aggressive transgender movement threatens lesbians by pressuring them to have sex with "trans women," biological men with intact penises who may not even be on hormones or present as women. Those gay women who refuse are then labeled as "transphobic." When I learned about this, I was shocked and appalled. What kind of nightmare world are we living in? Not even Margaret Atwood could have dreamed this one up.

The aggressive transgender movement threatens the health of all women by disregarding the reality of biological differences between the sexes. Today's medical students are no longer taught about the sex based differences in diseases or in responses to drugs. If biological men are allowed to contaminate research studies involving biological women, we lose information on biological sex differences that could cost the lives of countless biological women everywhere. This is madness and I'm sure poor Steve is rolling in his grave to think how the medical science he devoted his life and career to is now being destroyed by gender zealots.

The aggressive transgender movement threatens all women in jails and prisons. In California, any violent male inmate with an intact penis can get himself transferred into a women's prison by merely claiming to be a "woman." He will then be assigned to bunk with a biological female inmate, whom he can assault, rape and impregnate. What makes this even more infuriating is that women inmates, most of whom are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, are not even allowed to complain. They know that if they do complain, they will be labeled as "transphobic" and their sentences will be lengthened. And if the Orwellian named Equality Act is ever passed, this misogyny will spread to the rest of the US.

And of course, the aggressive transgender movement threatens women's sports, women's shelters, and other women's spaces such as spas, anyplace where women gather. But more than that, the aggressive transgender movement threatens the reality of what it means to be a biological woman and that frightens me most of all. When one of the most important words in any language, the word "mother" becomes forbidden, we have entered the land of insanity. It is highly offensive to refer to any biological woman as a "birthing person," a "chest feeder," a lactator," a "gestator," a "menstruator," a "pregnant person," a "birthing person" or the bearer of a "fronthole." I cringe whenever I read or hear the hideous phrase "pregnant person." No biological human male in the history of the earth has ever been even a little bit pregnant.

So Steve, if you're listening from the great beyond, this one's for you. I am a woman, a female adult human. I would still be a woman even if I chose not to wear lipstick, dresses, or high heels. I would still be a woman even if I chose not to have children. I would still be a woman even if I took cross sex hormones, removed body parts, had my birth certificate changed, or decided to call myself Max. I would still be a woman because I was born female. My sex was not "assigned" at birth. It was created the moment I was conceived as an XX, not an XY. I will always be a woman, and nothing the trans mob claims can ever change that.