Thanks, Lisa, as always, for your thoughts. You so often sum up where I am on these questions.
And thanks, especially, today, for this term, which I've never heard before: psychological androgyny.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Eureka, that's it, a perfect capsule phrase that expresses what I have long tried to describe in a series of fumbling, rambling half-sentences ("I seem to have certain, um, emotional and communicative characteristics that, um, are considered by society to be more 'female' and, um...."). My wife, with her usual succinctness, just tells her friends that she's married to a man who is "part chick."
But the "chick" elements are all entirely interior. There is nothing about my "presentation" or demeanor that would ever lead anyone to say, "Oh, that guy is kind of androgynous." On the other hand, I have all these supposedly "female" traits—I'm the verbal processor, the communicator, the lover of words, written and spoken; I like therapy, for real (my wife is not a big fan); I am effusive, perhaps even "flamboyant" (but not in a "gay" way); I love colors (though I couldn't care less about fashion, and am very much a dirtbag/surfer type, I really do care about "all the pretty colors," as I like to say); I need more touch/nurturance/affection; and on and on.
So again, thanks. Nobody has ever, or would ever, mistake me for a female, but honestly, I relish the above and other so-called "feminine" traits in myself.
I'm one who believes the current trans mania is inherently misogynistic and anti-gay. It is, more or less, Christian conversion therapy dressed up as the new progressive orthodoxy.
My daughter, now 19, has been IDing as a male (now a gay male!) for about five years now. Pride month, which I didn’t used to mind so much, has become a horror. Especially in Toronto Canada.
It seems to be that the argument in favour of Pride has been that the other 11 months of the year are, by default, a celebration of heterosexuality.
But Pride feels different now, with its celebration of gender dysphoria and transition.
I work at a “progressive” employer. A few years ago, we had a Pride fundraiser for an organization that runs an Underground Railroad for people fleeing countries where homosexuality is illegal. This year, the ask is for us to donate makeup for trans youth (surely not the trans men though, right?)
"What if we found gender diversity unremarkable? What if we accepted the reality of biological sex and allowed the categories of male and female to include feminine and masculine people, respectively?" Yes, indeed, that would be the desired goal!
I live in a city across the Hudson river from NYC and there are lots of Pride events this weekend. I offered to attend a Pride festival with my 16 yr old daughter who IDs as a gay man like Sad_Moms. But then I worried, what if there's a planned parenthood table... would I be able to walk by? Where would the lesbian section be? Maybe there would be a table for gays against groomers? I'm thinking of having a talk with her about how everyone represented in the PRIDE category doesn't agree about everything. Lesbians have lost their spaces. PP has muddied themselves by distributing HRT to anyone who wants it using informed consent without concern for long term effects. On top of it all the threat of violent encounters by TRAs might keep people who hold different beliefs but would otherwise happily sit under that rainbow, from attending PRIDE. Is that what PRIDE means? I think not.
When I first came out in my 20s I loved Pride (NYC). As the years went by and I continued to live my life as an unapologetic lesbian, Pride interested me less and less. Perhaps because society continued to accept me more and more, I didn’t need “Pride.” Life has certainly gotten easier over the years (I’m almost 50 now) and I’m grateful that I don’t feel shame around the choices I’ve made for myself. Now, sadly, I loathe Pride because it’s so wrapped up in gender identity. 10-year-olds are celebrating Pride because they’re taught in school to be allies, or worse, that they’re part of it because they feel “different” from other kids. On June 1 when my wife said “Happy Pride!” to me, I practically snarled. And that’s a shame.
Yes 100%. The real opposite of shame is not pride, but acceptance. We need to accept that some people have qualities that are less common than others (like being gay or a feminine male or masculine female). These are not things to be “proud” of, as much as they are things to simply accept. Yes, we can be proud of those who fully express themselves despite society’s ridicule - but society is now “rewarding” such courage with wholly unnecessary medical interventions instead of simply recognizing that it was wrong to make such a big deal of uncommon behaviors and preferences in the first place. No pride - no shame - just acceptance is where we need to strive to be.
One thing which has evanescenced from the script on pride is sex. It’s not peripheral, it’s central. Speaking as someone involved both in frequent gay sex and in annual gay prides for over 60 years, there's something everyone misses.
Men kiss and hold hands walking down the street in Saudi Arabia, but suffer cqpital punishment for homosexual sex. Ma Rainey could declare she didn't like men in song, but actually having sex with women got her arrested.
Pride wasn't about rainbows and holding hands, it was in essence about the right to meet, enjoy the company of, love, and _have sex_ with the person you were attracted to, without public shaming, loss of job, arrest, extortion, torture, castration, hard labor or life in prison (seriously folks, it's still illegal in, say, Kentucky). Aids was stigmatized primarily because it was seen as a disease of gay sex, not gay holding hands. Overcoming frantic, fearful reactions to the possibility homosexual sex is the center.
Today It's been repackaged as a not sexual, somewhat family event (I'm bemused), and this very conversation is evidence why remembering the gay, lesbian, and bisexual _right to have sex_ aspect of it is imoortant.
"[W]ho is Pride really for? With equal rights for gay people long established, Pride has gradually morphed into a self-satirising celebration of narcissism, where avaricious corporations can pose as virtuous by merely flying a flag and tossing off a few hashtags. Whereas the struggle for equality for those who are innately same-sex attracted was tangible and important, we are now expected to show solidarity for heterosexuals with a kink. This week the British Library decided to celebrate Pride by tweeting about hermaphroditic fish, and holding an event that will ‘celebrate nature in all its queerness’. The very concept of a ‘2SLGBTQIA+ community’ and all its attendant absurdities has made Pride a laughing stock.
"A new ideology has hijacked the Pride movement, one whose commissars are obsessed with group identity and the belief that gender is more important than sex. This has grave consequences for gay people. In her book Time to Think, Hannah Barnes found that between 80 to 90 per cent of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic in 2012 were same-sex attracted. Studies have long confirmed a correlation between gender non-conformity in youth and homosexuality in later life. At the Tavistock, staff used to joke that soon ‘there would be no gay people left’. Somehow, the medicalisation and sterilisation of homosexuals has been reframed as ‘progressive’.
"Even Stonewall – the UK’s foremost LGBT charity – has defined the word ‘homosexual’ on its website and promotional materials to mean ‘same-gender attracted’. Its CEO Nancy Kelley has claimed that women who exclude biological males from their dating pool are akin to ‘sexual racists’. There has been an intense resurgence of old homophobic tropes online from gender ideologues who believe that ‘genital preferences are transphobic’ and that lesbians who aren’t interested in penises must be suffering from ‘trauma’. Gay rights were secured by recognising that a minority of people are instinctively attracted to members of their own sex. The new ideology of gender identity rejects this notion, and actively shames gay people for their orientation."
As a young lesbian, in the 70s and 80s, I loved the Gay Pride parades. I never felt ashamed of being a lesbian. Quite the opposite, to be a lesbian was, and remains, a source of great joy, and I would never want it any other way. The Gay Pride Parades were a chance for us as lesbians to come together in a huge celebration of our beautiful lives, all decked out in our lesbian gear (Dykes on Bikes at the front of the parade, even), huge numbers of us marching down the streets, cheering one another on, pouring out into Greenwich Village, where we would hang out together, laugh and sing and dance. One year, it ended up pouring rain. We all lifted our heads to the sky, dripping from head to toe, and just laughed and laughed and laughed. The chance to come together in a great clamorous (and amorous) celebration like that has been stolen from gays and lesbians, and I want it back.
There are so many reasons why someone feels they are trans which I think is hard to help someone realize they have been indoctrinated into an ideology. It seems that many of the teens/YA caught up in this are gender conforming based on meeting other parents.
As for androgyny, two points:
On the Gender Wider Lens,
1. Sasha Ayad talked about a "test" that found many with a high IQ tended towards androgyny.
2. I think with the Anne Lawrence interview, Lawrence is moving more towards androgyny rather than trans.
Your last two paragraphs really should be shouted from every rooftop.
This is a great piece Lisa, and really struck me, along with an article you wrote earlier that I just re-read on the inappropriateness of “I am Jazz” as a school book. I have a question for the group...My daughter was gender questioning for 2 years or so, and I think we are on the other side now. When I think back to her journey, the celebration and pure fantasy of trans culture really sucked her in - and I think our elementary school unwittingly played a big part (along with the internet, covid, puberty etc. I am certainly not trying to lay blame on school). Our upper elementary school partners with Welcoming Schools and I am planning, as part of a response to a district school survey, on discussing my daughter’s journey and how I think the school needs to revisit this curriculum. Does anyone have any links to articles about what is problematic with Welcoming Schools? And a suggestion for a good alternative? Note I’m in a liberal east coast town and attempting to be nuanced and thoughtful in my communication...
Great work! And new paper by Dr. Stephen B. Levine and E. Abbruzzese published April 2023 points out all the flaws and fallacies in cross-sex ideology. Girls on high school sports teams were boys are ideating and playing, in the locker rooms and etc, are going to 1) get seriously hurt while playing against males 2) get pregnant by boys claiming to be "girls" and claiming they are on estrogen so will not cause a pregnancy with their "female penis." Here's Drs. Levine and Abbruzzese link:
Thanks, Lisa, as always, for your thoughts. You so often sum up where I am on these questions.
And thanks, especially, today, for this term, which I've never heard before: psychological androgyny.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Eureka, that's it, a perfect capsule phrase that expresses what I have long tried to describe in a series of fumbling, rambling half-sentences ("I seem to have certain, um, emotional and communicative characteristics that, um, are considered by society to be more 'female' and, um...."). My wife, with her usual succinctness, just tells her friends that she's married to a man who is "part chick."
But the "chick" elements are all entirely interior. There is nothing about my "presentation" or demeanor that would ever lead anyone to say, "Oh, that guy is kind of androgynous." On the other hand, I have all these supposedly "female" traits—I'm the verbal processor, the communicator, the lover of words, written and spoken; I like therapy, for real (my wife is not a big fan); I am effusive, perhaps even "flamboyant" (but not in a "gay" way); I love colors (though I couldn't care less about fashion, and am very much a dirtbag/surfer type, I really do care about "all the pretty colors," as I like to say); I need more touch/nurturance/affection; and on and on.
So again, thanks. Nobody has ever, or would ever, mistake me for a female, but honestly, I relish the above and other so-called "feminine" traits in myself.
I'm one who believes the current trans mania is inherently misogynistic and anti-gay. It is, more or less, Christian conversion therapy dressed up as the new progressive orthodoxy.
Thank you for this lovely piece Lisa.
My daughter, now 19, has been IDing as a male (now a gay male!) for about five years now. Pride month, which I didn’t used to mind so much, has become a horror. Especially in Toronto Canada.
It seems to be that the argument in favour of Pride has been that the other 11 months of the year are, by default, a celebration of heterosexuality.
But Pride feels different now, with its celebration of gender dysphoria and transition.
I work at a “progressive” employer. A few years ago, we had a Pride fundraiser for an organization that runs an Underground Railroad for people fleeing countries where homosexuality is illegal. This year, the ask is for us to donate makeup for trans youth (surely not the trans men though, right?)
"What if we found gender diversity unremarkable? What if we accepted the reality of biological sex and allowed the categories of male and female to include feminine and masculine people, respectively?" Yes, indeed, that would be the desired goal!
I live in a city across the Hudson river from NYC and there are lots of Pride events this weekend. I offered to attend a Pride festival with my 16 yr old daughter who IDs as a gay man like Sad_Moms. But then I worried, what if there's a planned parenthood table... would I be able to walk by? Where would the lesbian section be? Maybe there would be a table for gays against groomers? I'm thinking of having a talk with her about how everyone represented in the PRIDE category doesn't agree about everything. Lesbians have lost their spaces. PP has muddied themselves by distributing HRT to anyone who wants it using informed consent without concern for long term effects. On top of it all the threat of violent encounters by TRAs might keep people who hold different beliefs but would otherwise happily sit under that rainbow, from attending PRIDE. Is that what PRIDE means? I think not.
Lisa,
You continue to be a voice of sanity in these crazy times. Thank you for all you do. We need your voice.
When I first came out in my 20s I loved Pride (NYC). As the years went by and I continued to live my life as an unapologetic lesbian, Pride interested me less and less. Perhaps because society continued to accept me more and more, I didn’t need “Pride.” Life has certainly gotten easier over the years (I’m almost 50 now) and I’m grateful that I don’t feel shame around the choices I’ve made for myself. Now, sadly, I loathe Pride because it’s so wrapped up in gender identity. 10-year-olds are celebrating Pride because they’re taught in school to be allies, or worse, that they’re part of it because they feel “different” from other kids. On June 1 when my wife said “Happy Pride!” to me, I practically snarled. And that’s a shame.
Yes 100%. The real opposite of shame is not pride, but acceptance. We need to accept that some people have qualities that are less common than others (like being gay or a feminine male or masculine female). These are not things to be “proud” of, as much as they are things to simply accept. Yes, we can be proud of those who fully express themselves despite society’s ridicule - but society is now “rewarding” such courage with wholly unnecessary medical interventions instead of simply recognizing that it was wrong to make such a big deal of uncommon behaviors and preferences in the first place. No pride - no shame - just acceptance is where we need to strive to be.
Great piece, Lisa! From a 73 year-old lesbian.
Superb writing. But I'd like to add.
One thing which has evanescenced from the script on pride is sex. It’s not peripheral, it’s central. Speaking as someone involved both in frequent gay sex and in annual gay prides for over 60 years, there's something everyone misses.
Men kiss and hold hands walking down the street in Saudi Arabia, but suffer cqpital punishment for homosexual sex. Ma Rainey could declare she didn't like men in song, but actually having sex with women got her arrested.
Pride wasn't about rainbows and holding hands, it was in essence about the right to meet, enjoy the company of, love, and _have sex_ with the person you were attracted to, without public shaming, loss of job, arrest, extortion, torture, castration, hard labor or life in prison (seriously folks, it's still illegal in, say, Kentucky). Aids was stigmatized primarily because it was seen as a disease of gay sex, not gay holding hands. Overcoming frantic, fearful reactions to the possibility homosexual sex is the center.
Today It's been repackaged as a not sexual, somewhat family event (I'm bemused), and this very conversation is evidence why remembering the gay, lesbian, and bisexual _right to have sex_ aspect of it is imoortant.
Who is Pride really for?
This, from Andrew Doyle, is excellent (and witty): https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-is-pride-really-for/ Here's an excerpt, but the whole is definitely worth reading.
"[W]ho is Pride really for? With equal rights for gay people long established, Pride has gradually morphed into a self-satirising celebration of narcissism, where avaricious corporations can pose as virtuous by merely flying a flag and tossing off a few hashtags. Whereas the struggle for equality for those who are innately same-sex attracted was tangible and important, we are now expected to show solidarity for heterosexuals with a kink. This week the British Library decided to celebrate Pride by tweeting about hermaphroditic fish, and holding an event that will ‘celebrate nature in all its queerness’. The very concept of a ‘2SLGBTQIA+ community’ and all its attendant absurdities has made Pride a laughing stock.
"A new ideology has hijacked the Pride movement, one whose commissars are obsessed with group identity and the belief that gender is more important than sex. This has grave consequences for gay people. In her book Time to Think, Hannah Barnes found that between 80 to 90 per cent of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic in 2012 were same-sex attracted. Studies have long confirmed a correlation between gender non-conformity in youth and homosexuality in later life. At the Tavistock, staff used to joke that soon ‘there would be no gay people left’. Somehow, the medicalisation and sterilisation of homosexuals has been reframed as ‘progressive’.
"Even Stonewall – the UK’s foremost LGBT charity – has defined the word ‘homosexual’ on its website and promotional materials to mean ‘same-gender attracted’. Its CEO Nancy Kelley has claimed that women who exclude biological males from their dating pool are akin to ‘sexual racists’. There has been an intense resurgence of old homophobic tropes online from gender ideologues who believe that ‘genital preferences are transphobic’ and that lesbians who aren’t interested in penises must be suffering from ‘trauma’. Gay rights were secured by recognising that a minority of people are instinctively attracted to members of their own sex. The new ideology of gender identity rejects this notion, and actively shames gay people for their orientation."
As a young lesbian, in the 70s and 80s, I loved the Gay Pride parades. I never felt ashamed of being a lesbian. Quite the opposite, to be a lesbian was, and remains, a source of great joy, and I would never want it any other way. The Gay Pride Parades were a chance for us as lesbians to come together in a huge celebration of our beautiful lives, all decked out in our lesbian gear (Dykes on Bikes at the front of the parade, even), huge numbers of us marching down the streets, cheering one another on, pouring out into Greenwich Village, where we would hang out together, laugh and sing and dance. One year, it ended up pouring rain. We all lifted our heads to the sky, dripping from head to toe, and just laughed and laughed and laughed. The chance to come together in a great clamorous (and amorous) celebration like that has been stolen from gays and lesbians, and I want it back.
There are so many reasons why someone feels they are trans which I think is hard to help someone realize they have been indoctrinated into an ideology. It seems that many of the teens/YA caught up in this are gender conforming based on meeting other parents.
As for androgyny, two points:
On the Gender Wider Lens,
1. Sasha Ayad talked about a "test" that found many with a high IQ tended towards androgyny.
2. I think with the Anne Lawrence interview, Lawrence is moving more towards androgyny rather than trans.
Your last two paragraphs really should be shouted from every rooftop.
Such a great point: we need to get beyond shame and shadows but also pride and self-devotion. We need to move to a new place.
This is a great piece Lisa, and really struck me, along with an article you wrote earlier that I just re-read on the inappropriateness of “I am Jazz” as a school book. I have a question for the group...My daughter was gender questioning for 2 years or so, and I think we are on the other side now. When I think back to her journey, the celebration and pure fantasy of trans culture really sucked her in - and I think our elementary school unwittingly played a big part (along with the internet, covid, puberty etc. I am certainly not trying to lay blame on school). Our upper elementary school partners with Welcoming Schools and I am planning, as part of a response to a district school survey, on discussing my daughter’s journey and how I think the school needs to revisit this curriculum. Does anyone have any links to articles about what is problematic with Welcoming Schools? And a suggestion for a good alternative? Note I’m in a liberal east coast town and attempting to be nuanced and thoughtful in my communication...
Great work! And new paper by Dr. Stephen B. Levine and E. Abbruzzese published April 2023 points out all the flaws and fallacies in cross-sex ideology. Girls on high school sports teams were boys are ideating and playing, in the locker rooms and etc, are going to 1) get seriously hurt while playing against males 2) get pregnant by boys claiming to be "girls" and claiming they are on estrogen so will not cause a pregnancy with their "female penis." Here's Drs. Levine and Abbruzzese link:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11930-023-00358-x
Very wise perspective, Lisa. I hope that your optimism about softening on the progressive side is accurate. I do not see it yet.