There was a time in my life when I went to a lot of protests. It didn’t hurt that I lived just over a mile from the state capitol or that I worked in policy research and advocacy or that I was young and full of naïve hopes and that I sometimes had more time than I knew what to do with.
What I felt then—what I don’t feel anymore—is that I understood what I was protesting. Though I’ve never felt comfortable chanting slogans or repeating after anybody, I found other ways to get involved. I campaigned for local Democrats, circulated petitions, tabled at community events, testified for or against legislation, wrote talking points and newsletters, painted protest signs, staffed an abortion hotline, documented protests and sent the photos away to newspapers and magazines… I never struggled for words to describe what I supported.
A lot has changed since those days. I’ve become more cynical, surely. I’ve moved so many times over the past five years that I haven’t had a chance to put down roots. But it’s not all me. Seven or eight years ago, it was enough to agree on the particulars: stop this invasion, free that prisoner, block this bill. Clear, discrete asks, in other words.
But now I get the sense that many social movements I might once have joined expect my assent to a much broader agenda, one they’re not eager for me to understand. The objectives have gotten vaguer. Rather than protesting forever wars, activists seem to be launching them—putting nebulous concepts under relentless siege and ejecting anybody who asks for the details. If you want to pick and choose what the causes you lend your name to, your support isn’t welcome (what kind of ally picks and chooses?). You’re not supposed to say: “That’s not my problem.” Or “What does X have to do with Y?” Or “Do we have to agree on everything or can we disagree and still work together on this one thing?” Solidarity across difference is out. Allyship and blank checks are in.
I admit I never thought I’d be rejected or repelled by the activist circles where I once spent so much time, or that issues as diverse and urgent as environmental conservation and immigration reform would expect me to submit to a set of ideological beliefs about gender. What does parroting gender ideology have to do with fighting climate change? What do requirements like this do but divide the left against itself? It's hard not to feel cynical about who benefits from these divisions, this sapping of energy that could go to something practical and material but instead spins endlessly around matters of identitarian decorum. Why is trans activism such an effective instrument of division within the left and destruction of women’s rights, yet such a poor vehicle for delivering actual services and protections that trans people need?
Women’s activism, an area where I expended a lot of my youthful time and energy, has changed beyond recognition. Now when women try to organize on their own behalf, they get dogpiled, mostly for excluding the very special men but also for the mere suggestion they might be, say, insufficiently anti-carceral about men drugging them in order to sexually assault them. Intersectionality denies young women the language and standing to say: "This protest isn’t about you, it’s about us and men spiking our drinks and even sticking us with needles!” Or “This isn’t about you, it’s about abortion and you’ll never need one! If you've got a grievance, organize your own damn protest!" Instead of being encouraged to declare clear asks and set boundaries, young progressive activists—who know a cause when they see one, who have energy and ideas and the desire to organize—are being indoctrinated to believe that being 'exclusionary' is a more serious charge (no matter how inflated) than being ineffective. We lost but at least nobody felt left out! There goes the left, huh?
When I first entered the world of activism, I remember the faith that powered me: I believed—really and truly believed, had to believe, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary—that if people understood what was happening (in Darfur, in Detroit, across the poverty line, deep in the Amazon, wherever) that they would care and act. What’s happening now in progressive activism is quite different. The public isn’t trusted to understand. The desire of the public to understand—what they’re being asked to support, what their kids are being taught, etc.—is often treated with open contempt. With some causes—and trans activism is a prime example—activists know that the less the public understands, the more successful the campaign will be. Understanding isn't what's being sought. The entire campaign to enshrine gender ideology in our societies defies the possibility of understanding and celebrates the abdication of independent judgment: "They know better than you" about sums it up.
Compliance is what's being pursued here, enforced by social, economic, and legal sanctions, if necessary. Gender ideology seeks to destroy the very possibility of good-faith disagreement and public dialogue. The message to the public boils down to: "Don't look too closely. You're not capable of understanding what you see. Just trust us. Or don’t trust us—why should we care?—but do shut up.”
Trans activism is, indeed, quite difficult for the laity to make sense of. If gender is fluid and can change over time, why do we carry out untested and often irreversible medical procedures on kids at younger and younger ages? Why should women be redefined as a mixed-sex class based on gender identity that privileges the identity claims of male people over the lived experiences of female people? Why is there so much lying, obscuring, silencing, and manipulating by trans activists to prop up false claims, enforce anti-scientific dogmas, and shut down debate?
So, it's true that the claims and demands extreme trans activism makes are hard for the insufficiently indoctrinated to understand. I get the prohibitions and taboos that activists have piled around their holy wars. An ideology like theirs that refuses to be understood, that refuses to submit to questions and inquiry, is hard to square with liberal societies and liberal institutions. Perhaps that’s why every institution and social movement and individual who embraces gender ideology ends up warped beyond recognition. Perhaps that’s why so much of the advice for ‘allies’ focuses on managing your own questions and doubts:
Just because you don’t understand X doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with X.
As a ______ person, you might not be capable of understanding X. That doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility to support ____________.
X is supposed to make you uncomfortable. Discomfort is a sign that you need to challenge yourself and grow.
If you were a better ally, you’d understand why X is necessary and why it’s offensive to question X.
"Repeat after me: trans rights are human rights! Transwomen are women!"
You learn to discount your own intuition and second-guess your perceptions, when your intuition and perceptions contradict activist dogma. You struggle to learn a language that’s unfamiliar and always shifting, so you never know what you can and can’t say. And this new language makes it almost impossible to think and communicate clearly about the concepts you’re expected to accept. And you watch other people ask reasonable questions and make innocuous—even supportive—comments and pay the price for their ideological noncompliance: losing friends, losing work, weathering rape and death threats. Is it any wonder many progressives hesitate even to broach the touchy subjects sitting at the center of our national discourse, or do anything other than nod along?
And how many people—who would give generously of their time and energy and resources if only they were permitted to ask questions, form strategic (and limited) alliances, make clear asks, pick and choose their battles—are sitting on the sidelines like me because we’re not comfortable writing blank checks? When will the left wonder where we are?
It is so energy sapping and ineffective. I joined the undemocratic single issue Extinction Rebellion only for the nonleader leaders to argue that social justice demands we unthinkingly support of the slogan TWAW. The only good thing is that I can give time and donate money to the cause that sex is real and immutable. It annoys the activists that we are single-minded on this issue without it occuring to them that they have hearded us into this issue by taking over all other causes! And we have some excellent thinkers (who think for themselves) and fighters (who refused to be silenced).
Another aspect that is troubling me is that when I say I support sex differentiated sport, people assume I am a far right conservative bc they are also against men infiltrating women’s sport but with a totally different agenda. I believe in fighting for women’s equity in a male dominated patriarchy and the conservatives do not believe that. Conservatives are using the Lia Thomas issue as a weapon to rile their hateful christian base in order to gain or maintain power. The exhaustion/anxiety of it all keeps me firmly in bed with covers over my head.