So we've locked the comments after getting some emailed complaints — Ken in MIA and David Abbott specifically, take it down a notch. Not going to do any bans today but we won't be able to have comment threads on LGBTQ issues in the future if people aren't able to participate respectfully. I understand that people feel passionately about this, but please keep things civil.
Here's the thing: there totally >is< a conceptual reason for segregating sports leagues on the basis of sex. Men are ridiculously stronger than women, to say nothing of other physical attributes. We will never reach a consensus that there should be gender mixed leagues, because it's plainly daft. Normal people find all this stuff totally cuckoo. Democrats have handed the Republicans an easy victory. Republicans don't just have better politics here - they're correct on the merits.
One thing the school controversies over CRT and transgender issues have in common is they show the problems Democrats run into when they align themselves with identity essentializers on the left, whether it's racial identity or gender identity. It is a form of gender essentializing to hold that a person can be born with such a strong innate gender identity (a culturally defined construct!) that they require medical intervention to conform their body to the essence of the gender identity they were "born with", rather than working to break down rigid, culturally constructed and enforced gender identities, so that all people can be comfortable just being who they are, in the body they were born with. However well intentioned, identity essentializing fundamentally buys into existing culturally constructed categories, whether it's racial categories or gender roles, and tries to enforce them by law or educational instruction, which feels wrong to a lot of people and opens the door to reactionary attacks that play on the vague sense that something is off-track about the way Democrats are dealing with the issue.
My three year old son, who is (age-appropriately) very interested in all things potty and body, told me the other day “not all boys have penises.” I said, “oh is that so? Where did you hear that?” “My teacher.” “Which teacher?” (Name.) Now, I am chill as fuck, very liberal, and love his teachers and his school, which is a pricey private Montessori that’s not particularly progressive and wouldn’t be impacted by these laws anyway. And my son is an extremely unreliable narrator at this time; if I ask “which teacher” he will come up with a name. So it’s possible his teacher told him this and I wouldn’t freak out if she did because there are people in this world without penises that are, as far as my son is concerned, boys. BUT. If I were a conservative I’d probably freak the fuck out over this, and I (liberal me) can understand why. When conservatives complain about “gender ideology,” they are worried that progressives are trying to teach kids that your body doesn’t dictate your gender, that only you know your true gender and you might be a girl even if you have a penis and your parents tell you you’re a boy. When applied to well-informed adults, this stuff is all fine- live life how you wish and I will treat you with respect and use whatever pronouns you wish! But let’s be honest, this whole thing is a dramatically different way of viewing the world that is not based on science and does have the potential to really screw with kids heads. So, yeah, I understand where conservatives are coming from and I think progressives are way overplaying their hand here. I can imagine that if my son attended public schools in a district that was run by super conservative Christians who wanted to teach my son that being gay is a sin and that God created the Earth in 6 days, I’d be PISSED. They can teach their kids that at home, I’ll teach my kid moral philosophy at home, and we’ll share public school for the stuff we can mostly agree on. It cuts both ways.
Democrats should use more terms like, “Centering non-binary lived experience instead of cisnormative privilege” or we need to lecture more working class people on the need to introduce themselves with their pronouns.
Matt writes as if excluding trans men from womens’ sports is a distasteful concession to the plebs. However, defending womens’ sports is a positive good.
Womens’ sports are about female excellence. Womens’ world record times in swimming and track would be pedestrian achievements for a man— solid displays of athleticism that would rarely rank in the top 100. A world where trans men can compete as women is a world in which any female champion could be dethroned if a male also ran decided to transition. It is a world in which exemplars female excellence could hold the spotlight only at the sufferance of men. It is a world in which gender equality is subordinated to the needs of a pathetic fringe group. No thank you.
Many of these transgender in sports and bathroom issues could be solved and instead of using the outdated concept of gender, we just have homogametic bathrooms and sports teams and heterogametic bathrooms and sports teams.
In all seriousness… One of the biggest issues is the children transitioning issues. This is one that is difficult. As someone who has raised nine kids, I have seen the effects of peer and social pressure on a kids identity. There are many kids who don’t really figure out what and who they are until later high school and college. And I certainly think it is possible that there are some doctors and or parents who might be a little too quick with some interventions.
However, there are definitely kids who medical intervention is appropriate. If I was dictator, I guess I would make the law that nothing permanent could be done under the age of 16 to 18. The use of puberty blockers should require some sort of consensus between health experts. I.e. several Doctors have to sign off.
But I also suspect that some of you will think of exceptions or cases that I haven’t taken into account, and I fully acknowledge that. I am open to be convinced store learn wise one of my suggestions is wrong or should be modified.
The trans issue seems unique amongst progressive issues in the demands that it puts on other people to change the way they speak. If Mark wants to present like a woman and change his name to Mary, I’m happy to call him Mary. If I’m talking to Mark/Mary, I will use the name, I won’t be using pronouns anyway.
But when I talk about Mark/Mary to somebody else, now I must call him “her” or else I am a bad person. But this is no longer about showing respect to Mark/Mary (who likely isn’t present), this is about conforming to a new world view in which sex or gender is not grounded in objective facts about biology but rather grounded in our subjective “identities”. Well, what if I don’t believe that? Am I hateful for not believing that? Must I pretend to believe it to be a good person?
I believe in showing respect to all people, but the thing with the pronouns, “pregnant people” “they”, this is too much for me. I am old. Maybe the younger generations will agree with this.
The biggest hurdle in regards to trans rights, particularly in comparison to gay* rights, is that trans people are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. One of the most effective tactics of the 90s and 00s push for gay rights was the push for gay people to come out of the closet, so that more straight people could realize that they actually know a gay person. That they have a gay cousin or coworker or friend or child. Gay people are a very small percentage of the population, but there are enough of us that we made an impact through all the people we knew.
Trans folks are an even smaller percentage of the population, so a similar campaign of being visibly out is not nearly as effective. Even worse, it means there is a dearth of trans leaders and figures who can make the argument for their rights. This means that progressives are often in the position of speaking “on behalf of” trans folks, and when we are speaking on behalf of a group (instead of letting that group speak for itself) the biggest flubs are made.
*Using “gay” here for shorthand all the LGB folks, as that was often the shorthand we used at the time.
I know it was late breaking, but you should check out and maybe addend this to include the Utah governor’s veto statement on the bill banning trans athletes. I’m not sure how much that messaging has been tested, but I’d be shocked if it or something like it doesn’t get some purchase with centrists and non-“the cruelty is the point” Republicans. Just make every elected Democrat memorize some variations on that statement about putting kids first and “even the Republican governor of Utah can see…” because trans kids don’t necessarily need to be left out to dry here.
"Suppose a student with two moms mentions that fact about himself in a first-grade classroom, some other kid says that’s not possible, and then a teacher explains that some families have two moms or two dads. I think it is pretty unlikely, in practice, that this teacher will get in trouble with anyone."
I am not at all confident that this will be the case. I think teachers will be on edge if a question such as this is raised in a K-3 classroom. In addition, I think laws such as this one don't address the real problem than that is bullying which is highly prevalent in schools (more so in middle school than elementary school). Preventing open discussion in classrooms will lead to more of this bad behavior.
The "don't say gay" bill seems awful in the same way the "anti-CRT" bills do. They're incredibly broad, and incredibly vague and intended to chill clearly 1st amendment protected speech. However, it polls ok because people don't think legalistically, and there is in fact a phenomena occurring that many people aggressively object to.
I personally have a 4 year old cousin who is asked at the start of her day at preschool "what are your words are today"? That seems kind of horrifying, and not at all something that should be acceptable for public employees to be doing to school children (this may well be a private preschool which is obviously, legally, a different case). In some places elementary school teachers have basically embraced a psychological experiment of encouraging and promoting the formation of gender identity in young children that seems unsupported and has the potential to be outright harmful. This is different from simply creating an environment in which all students can thrive.
The basic problem with trans "rights" in the law is the Gender Identity concept. It's not at all clear scientifically that is a thing that exists at all, or who has one, who doesn't or how stable it is. It's an aggressively unpopular idea in the voting public. And much of trans activism has become about supplanting the concept of sex in the law with this concept.
There will always be activists who start with the moral high ground (“trans people are human beings who deserve respect and protection”) and push so hard that they end up in absurdist territory (“gender identity trumps biological sex in every possible context”). It’s the behavior of people who don’t expect to ever have any real power - except that right now, the activists are winning the culture war in progressive areas and there doesn’t seem to be any movement leadership willing or interested in tamping down such excesses.
I have a question. Based on the wording of the statute why would a woman teacher talking about her wife be any more of a problem than talking about her husband? I believe heterosexual is an orientation as well. It seems the way to counter this bill is to argue that the language prevents pictures or mentions of nuclear families in the classroom. No more family trees! Too much sex in those! Just need some liberal activist to sue over teacher Cindy talking about Jeff her husband.
One thing I think hurts Matt's point, is that gay marriage was itself attacked as a failure to play to win. Lots and lots of people (myself included) argued that gay rights movements should just accept civil unions, which really were marriage by another name, and so avoid offending religious people's sensibilities. But gay marriage proponents really were right that only by opening up marriage to same-sex couples would defeat the stigma that had been attached to those relationships. I think trans rights campaigners rightly see the situation in the same lens - it might sign like no big deal to stop trans women competing in sports or accessing women's refuges, but that is a clear statement that society still does not consider them women.
Matt, you do these "politicians shouldn't pick fights that are too unpopular" posts every once in a while, but I never quite know what you're prescribing. I mean, should they vote against bad bills? They should vote against them, right? Should they talk a lot about their unpopular votes against bad bills? Probably not, but politicians often don't get a lot of choice what they talk about. People ask them questions and they have to take positions, and they have to explain their positions.
I feel this could benefit from more of a case study analysis where you break down, "Here is where X politician specifically made a mistake that was possible to avoid." Otherwise I don't know what you think a "tactical retreat" looks like.
So we've locked the comments after getting some emailed complaints — Ken in MIA and David Abbott specifically, take it down a notch. Not going to do any bans today but we won't be able to have comment threads on LGBTQ issues in the future if people aren't able to participate respectfully. I understand that people feel passionately about this, but please keep things civil.
Here's the thing: there totally >is< a conceptual reason for segregating sports leagues on the basis of sex. Men are ridiculously stronger than women, to say nothing of other physical attributes. We will never reach a consensus that there should be gender mixed leagues, because it's plainly daft. Normal people find all this stuff totally cuckoo. Democrats have handed the Republicans an easy victory. Republicans don't just have better politics here - they're correct on the merits.
One thing the school controversies over CRT and transgender issues have in common is they show the problems Democrats run into when they align themselves with identity essentializers on the left, whether it's racial identity or gender identity. It is a form of gender essentializing to hold that a person can be born with such a strong innate gender identity (a culturally defined construct!) that they require medical intervention to conform their body to the essence of the gender identity they were "born with", rather than working to break down rigid, culturally constructed and enforced gender identities, so that all people can be comfortable just being who they are, in the body they were born with. However well intentioned, identity essentializing fundamentally buys into existing culturally constructed categories, whether it's racial categories or gender roles, and tries to enforce them by law or educational instruction, which feels wrong to a lot of people and opens the door to reactionary attacks that play on the vague sense that something is off-track about the way Democrats are dealing with the issue.
My three year old son, who is (age-appropriately) very interested in all things potty and body, told me the other day “not all boys have penises.” I said, “oh is that so? Where did you hear that?” “My teacher.” “Which teacher?” (Name.) Now, I am chill as fuck, very liberal, and love his teachers and his school, which is a pricey private Montessori that’s not particularly progressive and wouldn’t be impacted by these laws anyway. And my son is an extremely unreliable narrator at this time; if I ask “which teacher” he will come up with a name. So it’s possible his teacher told him this and I wouldn’t freak out if she did because there are people in this world without penises that are, as far as my son is concerned, boys. BUT. If I were a conservative I’d probably freak the fuck out over this, and I (liberal me) can understand why. When conservatives complain about “gender ideology,” they are worried that progressives are trying to teach kids that your body doesn’t dictate your gender, that only you know your true gender and you might be a girl even if you have a penis and your parents tell you you’re a boy. When applied to well-informed adults, this stuff is all fine- live life how you wish and I will treat you with respect and use whatever pronouns you wish! But let’s be honest, this whole thing is a dramatically different way of viewing the world that is not based on science and does have the potential to really screw with kids heads. So, yeah, I understand where conservatives are coming from and I think progressives are way overplaying their hand here. I can imagine that if my son attended public schools in a district that was run by super conservative Christians who wanted to teach my son that being gay is a sin and that God created the Earth in 6 days, I’d be PISSED. They can teach their kids that at home, I’ll teach my kid moral philosophy at home, and we’ll share public school for the stuff we can mostly agree on. It cuts both ways.
Democrats should use more terms like, “Centering non-binary lived experience instead of cisnormative privilege” or we need to lecture more working class people on the need to introduce themselves with their pronouns.
That is what we will probably do.
Matt writes as if excluding trans men from womens’ sports is a distasteful concession to the plebs. However, defending womens’ sports is a positive good.
Womens’ sports are about female excellence. Womens’ world record times in swimming and track would be pedestrian achievements for a man— solid displays of athleticism that would rarely rank in the top 100. A world where trans men can compete as women is a world in which any female champion could be dethroned if a male also ran decided to transition. It is a world in which exemplars female excellence could hold the spotlight only at the sufferance of men. It is a world in which gender equality is subordinated to the needs of a pathetic fringe group. No thank you.
Many of these transgender in sports and bathroom issues could be solved and instead of using the outdated concept of gender, we just have homogametic bathrooms and sports teams and heterogametic bathrooms and sports teams.
In all seriousness… One of the biggest issues is the children transitioning issues. This is one that is difficult. As someone who has raised nine kids, I have seen the effects of peer and social pressure on a kids identity. There are many kids who don’t really figure out what and who they are until later high school and college. And I certainly think it is possible that there are some doctors and or parents who might be a little too quick with some interventions.
However, there are definitely kids who medical intervention is appropriate. If I was dictator, I guess I would make the law that nothing permanent could be done under the age of 16 to 18. The use of puberty blockers should require some sort of consensus between health experts. I.e. several Doctors have to sign off.
But I also suspect that some of you will think of exceptions or cases that I haven’t taken into account, and I fully acknowledge that. I am open to be convinced store learn wise one of my suggestions is wrong or should be modified.
The trans issue seems unique amongst progressive issues in the demands that it puts on other people to change the way they speak. If Mark wants to present like a woman and change his name to Mary, I’m happy to call him Mary. If I’m talking to Mark/Mary, I will use the name, I won’t be using pronouns anyway.
But when I talk about Mark/Mary to somebody else, now I must call him “her” or else I am a bad person. But this is no longer about showing respect to Mark/Mary (who likely isn’t present), this is about conforming to a new world view in which sex or gender is not grounded in objective facts about biology but rather grounded in our subjective “identities”. Well, what if I don’t believe that? Am I hateful for not believing that? Must I pretend to believe it to be a good person?
I believe in showing respect to all people, but the thing with the pronouns, “pregnant people” “they”, this is too much for me. I am old. Maybe the younger generations will agree with this.
The biggest hurdle in regards to trans rights, particularly in comparison to gay* rights, is that trans people are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. One of the most effective tactics of the 90s and 00s push for gay rights was the push for gay people to come out of the closet, so that more straight people could realize that they actually know a gay person. That they have a gay cousin or coworker or friend or child. Gay people are a very small percentage of the population, but there are enough of us that we made an impact through all the people we knew.
Trans folks are an even smaller percentage of the population, so a similar campaign of being visibly out is not nearly as effective. Even worse, it means there is a dearth of trans leaders and figures who can make the argument for their rights. This means that progressives are often in the position of speaking “on behalf of” trans folks, and when we are speaking on behalf of a group (instead of letting that group speak for itself) the biggest flubs are made.
*Using “gay” here for shorthand all the LGB folks, as that was often the shorthand we used at the time.
I know it was late breaking, but you should check out and maybe addend this to include the Utah governor’s veto statement on the bill banning trans athletes. I’m not sure how much that messaging has been tested, but I’d be shocked if it or something like it doesn’t get some purchase with centrists and non-“the cruelty is the point” Republicans. Just make every elected Democrat memorize some variations on that statement about putting kids first and “even the Republican governor of Utah can see…” because trans kids don’t necessarily need to be left out to dry here.
"Suppose a student with two moms mentions that fact about himself in a first-grade classroom, some other kid says that’s not possible, and then a teacher explains that some families have two moms or two dads. I think it is pretty unlikely, in practice, that this teacher will get in trouble with anyone."
I am not at all confident that this will be the case. I think teachers will be on edge if a question such as this is raised in a K-3 classroom. In addition, I think laws such as this one don't address the real problem than that is bullying which is highly prevalent in schools (more so in middle school than elementary school). Preventing open discussion in classrooms will lead to more of this bad behavior.
The "don't say gay" bill seems awful in the same way the "anti-CRT" bills do. They're incredibly broad, and incredibly vague and intended to chill clearly 1st amendment protected speech. However, it polls ok because people don't think legalistically, and there is in fact a phenomena occurring that many people aggressively object to.
I personally have a 4 year old cousin who is asked at the start of her day at preschool "what are your words are today"? That seems kind of horrifying, and not at all something that should be acceptable for public employees to be doing to school children (this may well be a private preschool which is obviously, legally, a different case). In some places elementary school teachers have basically embraced a psychological experiment of encouraging and promoting the formation of gender identity in young children that seems unsupported and has the potential to be outright harmful. This is different from simply creating an environment in which all students can thrive.
The basic problem with trans "rights" in the law is the Gender Identity concept. It's not at all clear scientifically that is a thing that exists at all, or who has one, who doesn't or how stable it is. It's an aggressively unpopular idea in the voting public. And much of trans activism has become about supplanting the concept of sex in the law with this concept.
There will always be activists who start with the moral high ground (“trans people are human beings who deserve respect and protection”) and push so hard that they end up in absurdist territory (“gender identity trumps biological sex in every possible context”). It’s the behavior of people who don’t expect to ever have any real power - except that right now, the activists are winning the culture war in progressive areas and there doesn’t seem to be any movement leadership willing or interested in tamping down such excesses.
I have a question. Based on the wording of the statute why would a woman teacher talking about her wife be any more of a problem than talking about her husband? I believe heterosexual is an orientation as well. It seems the way to counter this bill is to argue that the language prevents pictures or mentions of nuclear families in the classroom. No more family trees! Too much sex in those! Just need some liberal activist to sue over teacher Cindy talking about Jeff her husband.
One thing I think hurts Matt's point, is that gay marriage was itself attacked as a failure to play to win. Lots and lots of people (myself included) argued that gay rights movements should just accept civil unions, which really were marriage by another name, and so avoid offending religious people's sensibilities. But gay marriage proponents really were right that only by opening up marriage to same-sex couples would defeat the stigma that had been attached to those relationships. I think trans rights campaigners rightly see the situation in the same lens - it might sign like no big deal to stop trans women competing in sports or accessing women's refuges, but that is a clear statement that society still does not consider them women.
Matt, you do these "politicians shouldn't pick fights that are too unpopular" posts every once in a while, but I never quite know what you're prescribing. I mean, should they vote against bad bills? They should vote against them, right? Should they talk a lot about their unpopular votes against bad bills? Probably not, but politicians often don't get a lot of choice what they talk about. People ask them questions and they have to take positions, and they have to explain their positions.
I feel this could benefit from more of a case study analysis where you break down, "Here is where X politician specifically made a mistake that was possible to avoid." Otherwise I don't know what you think a "tactical retreat" looks like.