From A Peaked Former Ally
“My advice for anyone who is having trouble breaking their silence is to first get off of social media.”
I was supportive of "trans rights" when I didn't know what was being claimed or what was being requested. I knew it had been added to "LGB," which I supported, and I knew there were men who preferred to think of themselves as women. I thought these men were all same-sex attracted, and I had in my mind an image of the "drag" or "ballroom" subculture portrayed in the documentary "Paris is Burning." I could not imagine a liberal-minded person having a problem with such men, who, as far as I knew, only wanted to live free of harassment and discrimination while expressing themselves creatively.
It was in a mainstream sex advice column, in about 2018, that I first read the phrase, "Transwomen are women." The columnist was admonishing a man who wanted to try dating "transwomen," but wasn't sure how to proceed. I thought, "Transwomen are women" was a wildly hyperbolic statement, but I assumed this was simply the personal view of the columnist and that not many people shared it. I don't mind if some people believe something I don't believe.
A little while after this, a friend told me about Jessica Yaniv (the Canadian man who sued women for declining to wax his genitalia) and about the "cotton ceiling," the phenomenon in which men insist that lesbians must date them if the men claim to be "transwomen." It was the first I was hearing that heterosexual men could even be "trans," never mind that they were treating lesbians this way.
I suppose you could say this is when I "peaked," though it wasn't until 2020 that I became aware of just how widespread the belief that "transwomen are women" really is, and what the legislative and policy goals of the movement are. I read the full text of the Equality Act, which I had been told that was a simple anti-discrimination bill, and I saw that it would give men the right to be considered women under the law and to enter every space that had been set aside for the privacy and safety of women and girls. It wasn't just "special" men, either. There was no mention of surgery or a certification process; it was any man who considered himself to have the "gender identity" of a woman.
I looked around and saw that many educated, left-leaning women and men really did seem to understand the claim and still supported it. A female acquaintance, whom I always assumed was supportive of feminism, declared on social media that anyone who likes JK Rowling should be exposed and then ex-communicated. I found that a member of my own family believes that each person has an inner "gender" that is the equivalent of, and yet somehow a replacement for, sex; she even believes that it is okay to perform medical procedures on kids in an attempt to bring forth this inner "gender."
Apparently, a lot of people do. In November of 2020, we elected a President who does. Nearly my entire political party believes that some children were born in the wrong bodies. I don't have time to type the whole list, and you probably don't have time to read it, but I will highlight some particular disappointments. Bernie Sanders is one. Like many leftists, I worshiped Bernie. It turns out that he is a co-sponsor of the Equality Act. While this only makes him the equivalent of nearly every other Democrat, Bernie was supposed to be different.
Gloria Steinem, it turns out, believes that men can be women. Our most famous "feminist" doesn't even support women's sports. There was a time when my two favorite comedians were Eddie Izzard and Wanda Sykes. I'm sure that my disappointment in Izzard can be understood without further comment, but as for Sykes, she signed the same letter that Gloria Steinem signed, denouncing feminists who believe that only women are women.
Those who have not disappointed me directly have disappointed me with their silence. I am talking about nearly every journalist in the United States and every celebrity who once took on worthy causes, from medical marijuana to sexual harassment, but who is now ignoring the hundreds of "gender clinics" that are sterilizing and mutilating children, and accepting, either directly or through silence, the big lie that some men and boys are properly called "transgender women and girls."
Businesses and non-profit organizations, too, are lined up against women't sex-based rights and child safeguarding. I am talking about everyone from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Academy of Pediatrics and from the Southern Poverty Law Center to the Business Coalition for the Equality Act (which includes Amazon, Target, Google, and a long list of other businesses). If want to find any semblance of sanity, I have to go either to religious conservatives (something I never thought I'd say) or to a feminist movement so small that most of us know each other by name.
Meanwhile, in the real world of my East Coast metropolitan area, I am receiving newsletters saying that children of "all genders" ("all" indicating more than two) are welcome to come explore the woods at our local nature center. A friend who volunteered as a poll worker in November reports that when she went to use the girls' restroom at the middle school that was serving as a polling place, she found a urinal inside. When I hear from old friends whom I once considered to be strong and vocal feminists, I see that they now buy into the idea that they owe men such submission that they should be required to include pronouns in their email signatures if they want to be considered women at all.
As for me, I am not silent. I've never been one to wear my politics on a tee shirt, but I have become active in feminist organizing. I have put my full name on letters intended for publication, I have attended real-life protests, and I have let most of my friends know about my activist work.
My advice for anyone who is having trouble breaking their silence is to first get off of social media. While Facebook may be a necessary evil for those who find it an indispensable tool for keeping a feminist group together, it is also a tool being used against all of us and is warping the minds of otherwise intelligent and decent people. If watching what this groupthink-making machine is doing to your friends is depressing you, you don't have to stay and watch. Removing your presence may be the best thing, not only for your mental health, but for the people you care about. A social media site that hardly anyone uses will not hold much attraction or power, and the time you once devoted to scrolling through memes will, once again, be yours.
When you are no longer living in a fishbowl, you may find that putting your name on a letter to the editor is no big deal. You may find that the "Adult Human Female" button you inadvertently left on your jacket after a feminist event offends no one in real life. If you're too nervous to wear it to Whole Foods (which is owned by Amazon, anyway), wear it to a discount grocery store where people earning less than $100,000 a year actually shop.
Another thing I've been doing is taking Mr. Rogers' advice and looking for the helpers. As an activist, I work with some of the best women I've ever known. Women's Liberation Front, the Women's Human Rights Campaign, and particularly in the UK, LGB Alliance, are doing excellent work. Academics including Donna Hughes are coming out in favor of material reality and of women's sex-based rights. Beth Stelzer of Save Women's Sports is traveling the country educating state legislators on basic scientific facts, and feminists are standing in front of women's prisons protesting the admittance of male criminals who "identify" as women. I try to keep my eyes on women like these, as well as on those men who are willing to help, including Robert Hoogland and Arty Morty in Canada and Graham Linehan in the UK.
Letters From the Front is a new series from WoLF curating stories from women about how “gender identity” ideology has impacted them. We’ll share new letters, submitted anonymously, each week. Write in to share your own story!
WoLF does not necessarily endorse the content of Letters.
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