What does parroting gender ideology have to do with fighting climate change?
It's hard to imagine feeling welcome on the left anymore, though my own politics haven't changed. I haven't left the left, but it feels like it's left me. I looked for a climate-action group to join and found all kinds of ideological expectations I couldn't submit to (e.g., climate-action groups dictating "transwomen are women"). After years of donating to Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, I had to walk away from both organizations. Planned Parenthood wouldn't ensure that my donations would go to abortion and contraception and I refuse to fund PP's involvement in what I see as a huge medical scandal: transitioning young people. 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?
Rewind five or six years. Did I ever imagine that an ideology would come between some of my closest friends and me, and that rather than sorting through it, those friends would refuse to hear a word I said? No, I couldn't imagine anything like that. Nor could I imagine that friends who were writers and artists and intellectuals and creative people would express themselves not with their own words and ideas but through slogans that stop thought in its tracks. Did I ever think I would be rejected or repelled by the activist circles where I spent so much time? That issues as diverse and urgent as climate change and racial justice 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 does this requirement do but divide the left?
Just a few years ago, I couldn't have foreseen any of this. Yet it's plowed through the left like a runaway freight train. Where's this really coming from? Where's it headed?