Political homelessness
The piece below and here was originally published in The American Conservative on April 18, 2018, anonymously.
A female reader (whose name I know) writes:
I recently came across this post of yours (“Gender Madness Alienates Democratic Insider”), which I found to be fascinating.
I am a life-long Democrat and a feminist. In my almost thirty years of voting, I have voted consistently Democrat. I proudly voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. And I deplore what my party is pushing on the “gender identity” front.
I won’t address the pronoun issue, which your reader addressed at length in your previous post. Instead, I would like to share some thoughts on a few other aspects of “gender identity” tyranny that were not addressed in that commentary, but which have also contributed to feelings of isolation and alienation among many Democratic feminists:
Feminists have been fighting back against gender roles for at least decades, if not centuries. It is extremely disheartening for us to see gender being enshrined into law and glorified by the political left. Gender is a prison of sex-based stereotypes that the political left has, historically, fought against. We on the left typically see you, conservatives, maintaining strict gender hierarchies, and we have, historically, railed against them. No longer. Today, the left fully embraces gender in the form of “gender identity” ideology. Women are being erased. Girls are being told that if they are uncomfortable with their female bodies, they are actually boys. They are being given hormones and told that they must bind their breasts in order to feel comfortable with who they are. This is extremely damaging from a feminist perspective, and yet the political left encourages it. The civil rights of women and girls are being eroded. Under President Obama (whom I adore), schools were instructed to construe the word “sex” to mean “gender identity” for the purpose of interpreting Title IX — a law enacted in 1972 to protect women and girls (female humans) in the educational arena. Men are now allowed to compete in women’s sports, which is unbelievably unfair to women, yet the left embraces this.Sexism is rampant on the political left, and it is depressing for Democratic feminist women. My male friends, for the most part, think that they are enlightened and not remotely sexist. They’re wrong. Men on the political left, for the most part, support an environment of unlimited sexual exploitation of women, in the forms of pornography and prostitution.I work with a group of parents in my area who are struggling with kids who have decided that they are “trans.” These parents are traumatized and terrified by what they are seeing. They are almost all liberal, and all of them report that until their kids starting demanding hormones and surgery, they assumed that “gender identity” was an important civil rights struggle. They supported it. They adopted a very typically liberal “live and let live” attitude. Now they are questioning everything. It is absolutely heart-breaking to see what they are going through.I have made relationships with some Republican women who share my concerns about “gender identity” ideology. I disagree with these women with every fiber of my being on issues like reproductive rights and marriage equality. And yet we have made alliances to fight back against “gender identity” ideology because we understand all of the ways in which “gender identity” ideology invades women’s rights and privacy. I never imagined that I would work with Republicans, but this is what my party has done to me.
I have thought long and hard about whether to share my name here, and I have decided that the risks are too great. I am in leftist social circles, and if my friends knew I was posting this on your site, I would be socially ostracized. I am in Democratic online communities that I value because we have riveting conversations about the 2018 midterms and the 2020 Presidential election. I if they knew I was posting this on your site, they would kick me out. Professionally, I tend to work with leftist organizations, and if they knew I was posting this on your site, they would probably never work with me again, which would mean professional and financial ruin.
I cannot vote Republican because I cannot vote for any person or platform that would deny me the right to contraception or the right to an abortion, or that would deprive my lesbian sisters of the right to marriage (among other reasons). And yet I feel isolated and alienated in my own party. Because of “gender identity” ideology, which is regressive, sexist, and (frankly) utterly lacking in any coherence, the Democratic party has made many Democratic women feel politically homeless. This is the state we are in.
Most of this is still true, but a lot has also changed since 2018.
Today, we know more about the “gender identity” industry than we did then. No one is better than Jennifer Bilek at explaining the extent to which the industry commercializes and commodifies our healthy sexed bodies and works to turn us all into borgs. The information was available in 2018, but the speed and the ferocity with which the industry has been able to normalize fetishism is astonishing.
I have also been thinking a lot about right and left. I am captivated by something that UK feminist Louise Perry said on the matter in November 2020. She stated that “[T]here are enough important similarities between women to give them a coherent set of political interests.” I think that this is true. We don’t need to agree on everything. We don’t even need to like each other. What we need to do is understand that there are enough similarities among women to create an authentic movement based on the common interests of women, as women. In 2018, I was thinking a lot about the ups and downs of working across the political aisle. In 2021, I am thinking more about the potential of women working together beyond the political aisle entirely.
Let’s do this.