9 Comments

Lisa, your writing and analysis is always rational, compassionate, grounded, and factual. This is another excellent example of that. Media outlets should be looking at your coverage as a model of the balanced, fact-based writing that we all should be able to access in any newspaper or news program. Thank you for your work.

Expand full comment
founding

Again and again I say: Yes Lisa. You are writing with clarity and compassion. Thank you.

What about the reality of language when it comes to 'transmen' and 'transwomen'?

Why do we need to say that transwomen are women?

Why do we need to deny reality with that kind of language?

When Lia Thomas states that she is a woman and therefore should race against women the simple answer and the answer grounded in reality is: No Lia. You are a transwoman and it would be unfair for you to compete against women. Sports are separated by biological sex categories and not by gender categories.

Reality.

Why is it considered hateful to say that transwomen are transwomen?

I am against prejudice and I am for reality.

2+2=4

We can be compassionate and still be pro reality.

No conflict there.

Expand full comment

This is a very thoughtful and interesting essay. I agree that the ambiguities of language are being used more as a smokescreen than as a mechanism of honest communication. This is the case in a variety of controversial issues (including the abortion debates). I think that that the disingenuous use of language has become a goal — in and of itself — for many people.

Expand full comment

"Or what if we said “elective gender-based cosmetic interventions” instead of the slippery and ill-defined “gender affirming care?” "

Fantastic!

This will be my new phrase for sure. Absolutely true, every word.

Thank you Lisa!

Expand full comment
Jul 26, 2022·edited Jul 26, 2022

avoid disinformation on “rapid onset gender dysphoria”

· do not emphasize detransitioning or report disinformation on those who stop transition-related care

So I'm all for avoiding disinformation on these things! But reporting on rogd isn't disinformation.

They could stop saying the number who detransition is small since no one knows what it is. Saying it is small is disinformation!

Great article!

And great suggestions!

Thank you!

Expand full comment

What if instead of "dead name", we said "birth name"? It's more accurate, but it doesn't have quite the same pathos or drama, does it?

Another great article. I'm so glad I came across your substack after I bought your book recently.

Expand full comment

Here's another word that Tucker Carlson called "trans care for minors" last night:

"Criminal".

He said, "Castrating children is criminal"...in any culture, at any time...whether chemical or surgical castration, it is all "criminal".

(I watch Carlson to hear what the Right-wing crazies are talking about. And, watch MSNBC to hear what the Left-wing crazies are saying....equal opportunity for crazies on my tv).

Expand full comment

"gender-affirming care" is one thing. But when the upshot is "sex-denial harm" then maybe that's a bridge too far?

Not sure we're doing "young people" any favors by helping them "to 'pass' as the opposite sex" - particularly when that entails mangling their bodies. I geddit that the onset of puberty can be a "challenge" for many, particularly girls and young women who wind up with "unwelcome attentions" from boys and men. But giving any sort of credence to beliefs on their part that they've actually changed sex seems rather "counter-productive" at best; falling down in a "duty of care".

Substacker Elisa Mondegreen had a post recently that speaks to a somewhat unrelated aspect of that, although it may applicable here also:

"I’ve found Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s bare-minimum standard of 'personal non-participation in lies' valuable here:

AS: "And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold 'not through me!' ...." ...."

https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/but-let-us-at-least-refuse-to-say

Part of my comment there which quotes something from Philip Wylie's "Generation of Vipers":

".... [Man] would learn that when he kids himself, or believes a lie, or deceives another man, he commits a crime as real and as destructive as the crime of deliberately running down a person with an automobile."

https://vultureofcritique.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/philip-wylie-generation-of-vipers.pdf

https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/but-let-us-at-least-refuse-to-say/comment/7898561

And, ICYMI, an old article from 2015 by Michelle Goldberg

"Yet [transwoman Helen Highwater] has come to reject the idea that she is truly female or that she ever will be. Though 'trans women are women' has become a trans rights rallying cry, Highwater writes, it primes trans women for failure, disappointment, and cognitive dissonance. She calls it a 'vicious lie.' ...."

https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/gender-critical-trans-women-the-apostates-of-the-trans-rights-movement.html

Watched a movie about Joan of Arc the other day in which Joan was stripped and forcibly put into men's clothes - apparently a capital crime then - as a pretext to executing her. Not sure how historically accurate that is, but maybe the general solution is for everyone to wear unisex clothes? 😉

Expand full comment