This Saturday morning, I am writing this while listening to the 2022 Built To Spill album When the Wind Forgets Your Name.
I’ll unmask myself as a liberal, white, straight male in Minnesota. I’m an atheist and an active director of a local Democratic district committee. Some of the more “kind” people would refer to me as a cishet white guy with he/him pronouns, and that I really should stay in my own lane and keep my nose out of the business of trans issues because they claim that what I say is uninformed bigotry. I don’t have any of the necessary lived experience to know what I’m talking about, and besides, nothing that they are doing has any effect on my life.
That is a common response to those of us who are on the “TERF” side of life when we make known our objections to this social movement. “What’s the harm in using someone’s preferred pronouns?” I’m asked, “It’s a way of showing respect.”
“How does it hurt anyone if a transwoman uses the women’s restroom?” Is another question, meant to make me look like a control-freak who cares where other people pee or poop. “They just want to be safe!”
“Transwomen are treated horribly in men’s prisons. Why does it matter to you if they are housed where it’s safer for them?”
How does it affect me if a trans ID male1 is acandidate for Labour in Sheffield? That’s in England, and I’m an American. What does it matter? Indeed, what does it matter for Lily Madigan to be Constituency Labour Womens’ Party Officer if I’m a director all the way in Minnesota?
All this is quite right, on one level. I could live my life obliviously passing on comment or research in the issue that takes up most of my social media time. It would certainly free me to catch up on my reading. I’m currently holding on to 33 books that I purchased with the full intention of reading them. That was a doable task before I found the internet, and I could have knocked them out in a year’s time.
Well, I must also unmask myself as a quasi-social justice warrior. I do support the people an animals who are being oppressed, and I also recognize as an atheist when social forces attempt to oppress me. I would like to see “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, because I can’t be honest in pledging as long as it’s there even when I skip over it.
I have supported women’s rights since I was in fourth grade and wrote a stupid essay on why women shouldn’t be astronauts. It was dumb, but I was trying to get laughs from the boys in my class, which I did. I showed it to my sister and she asked me why I thought any of it was funny, and I couldn’t answer because I knew it was wrong and it was based on negative stereotypes. This was long before Sally Ride made history for the United States, but long after Valentina Tereshkova blasted off into history as the first woman to be a cosmonaut. Since then I have volunteered in many activities including at an abortion clinic, marched in parades, signed petitions, spoken up, and done whatever I can to support feminists who are fighting to gain rights and safety for women and girls.
It may be fairly assumed that I am trying to make up for the look on my sister’s face when she read the essay, to wipe away the guilt. But I also see the benefit to society in unleashing women to achieve their individual aims unfettered by gender’s role in holding them back. It seems like a waste of personal resources to tell half of our members to sit down and shut up while men take care of things.
I have similar attitudes towards racism, as the practice of excluding people from power based on their race is a waste, but it’s also an injustice to place social burdens on people to actively prevent them from achieving their goals, dreams, and aspirations. And here in the United States, the land of the free, etc etc, we have a longstanding practice of placing barriers in the way of racial minorities. I’ve been accused of being a self-hating white person for discussing these issues, but that’s not actually true. I just want society to benefit all of our members, and we can’t own the future if we disown the past.
And I recognize the historic injustices against gays and lesbians. I have a bisexual daughter, and I can see how that’s been difficult for her in many ways. I lived at the corner of Pine and Polk Streets in San Francisco in the 1980’s, which is at the east end of the Tenderloin but more importantly a largely gay neighborhood at the time. I knew gay men who were affected by the shut down of the baths in an effort to stop the spread of AIDS. I knew a man from casually saying hello to him every time I saw him, until he was found dead on the street, beaten and bleeding. It was some kids who had come down from Richmond to “roll a fag,” which was apparently one of the high school sports in the suburban Bay Area in the 1980s. I had a friend and co-worker who died of AIDS. One of the friends who helped me recover my sense of worth after my first marriage ended, was a lesbian woman who was happy to just hang out with me while we laughed and joked about how absurd life is.2
As a kid, I did a lot of exploring around gender. I played with dolls with my twin sister and she also played with boy toys. As an adult, I helped a girlfriend with her project on fashion and gender segregation by cross-dressing and getting photographed. I am not sure if I did as good a job as the guys The Kids in the Hall, but it didn’t really bother me. So, I am not on the masculine end of the “gender spectrum,” and I think that allows me as much of a right as Emma Corrin to declare myself “non-binary” and make you refer to me as “they” in the 3rd person.
So, while I have no “lived experience” as a woman, a member of a racial minority, or LGB, I still have an interest in them attaining and preserving their places as full participants in society as they choose and aspire.
Just after I peaked, I read a Facebook post from a former friend, who said that sexual orientation is really just a “gender preference” that can be unlearned. That friend’s partner is, a trans ID person, and I was never clear on their sex, and he claimed that I was putting his friend in danger by publicly stating my skepticism. Or, people in a similar position. He told me that he was really disappointed in me, and in return I just told him to fuck off.
I couldn’t resolve the homophobia of “gender preference.”
I had followed several writes who were posting their transgender journeys in blogs and on other social media, and before peaking had echoed the adulation of their other followers and commenters. I thought “how courageous of them to post this story so that other Gender non-Conforming people can feel like they are seen and not alone.” I did, I did, I did, consider myself a good trans ally and even played the pronoun game to show my steadfastness.
But, after I peaked 3 a veil was lifted and I could finally see how woman are affected by it. I could see how gays and lesbians are affected by it. I could see how children were affected by it.
And I remain as much of a liberal social justice warrior as I always have been. I can’t go against my lifelong support for LGB, for women, for GNC adults and children, and I can see how the transgender ideological claim is damaging to all of these groups I’ve always supported.
Part-time trans, part-time cis, based on where the money is coming from.
The only thing we disagreed on was that she did not like The Pretenders and I think they were a great rock and roll band. She gave me a table that she no longer needed and even though I lost touch with her when I left SF, I kept the table as long as I could.
It took a while and there were several events that led up to an “a-ha” moment. For another article, perhaps, but not today.