(This is carried over from comments on a facebook post)

Hi again Ben! Thank you for engaging with the post and even more so with my comments. I really appreciate that.

First, I want to say that it sounds like you know personally and care about trans identifying people. There cannot be enough of that in the world, so that makes me glad to hear that you are willing to carry their concerns in this way. I too have a trans person in my life, who, though we seemed to be estranged at the moment, still matters very much to me and whom I care about more than I care about most people in the world, and it grieves me deeply and has cost me a great deal to be in conflict with them. It is because of this person that I began paying attention to this issue in the first place.

You make several points in your comment, many of which, unfortunately, I must contend with. I thought it easiest to just go through them one by one here on my blog, rather than over tax the comments on facebook. I hope that is ok!

1.) Ben: I, as I noted, live in the SF Bay Area. As a result of living here I have had the chance to know and be friends with many trans-women and trans-men. Not one of them that chose to share their story with me had reasons for transitioning anything like that.

Lee: No doubt every Trans identifying person has a unique story all their own, and I am sorry if anything I have said has led you to believe that I know or question the motives of Trans identifying people as a whole for making what I can only imagine are the most excruciating kinds of decisions a person can possibly make. That is in no way my intention when I criticize self-id specifically and queer theory in general.

But it is necessary to point out what the real-world consequences for women and children are when those who advocate self-id drill down on the misnomer that “Trans women are women,” and then insist that this means no door can be closed to them. There are many trans people who are just as appalled at this development, but unfortunately, ever more men (dysphoric or not) are taking the new, politically correct mantra to its logical conclusion ad absurdum. Sports, prisons, shelters, hospitals, changing rooms, quotas, criminal statistics, to name only some of the areas effected.

2) If you believe science points to a binary system of sexuality you are definitely not reading the same articles I am. From what I have read both biological and personality traits related to sex and gender exist on a spectrum, not within a binary. Yes most of us express within the binary due to biological averages and societal pressures but definitely not all of us.

2.)”Not reading same science”: where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah, climate change deniers, creationists, covid-deniers, and flat-earthers.🥴 Of course this kind of statement pulls the plug on any dialogue. To simply claim a “different science” as an authoritative voice to again try to silence legitimate questions and concerns. Science has and still does acknowledge only two sexes. I won’t dive into the actual science of sexed bodies (Brett Weinstein & Heather Heying, evolutionary biologists, do that better than I can in their book “A Hunter Gatherers Guide to the 21st Century,” as does Helen Joyce in “Trans.” My point is that THIS has been and IS the accepted science, and until there is sufficient, broad-based, independently peer reviewed reasons to over-turn it, which certainly has happened in the past in many areas, I, nor is anyone, obliged, nor likely, to suppress the overwhelming amount of salient reasons to keep the categories male and female as they are, as strictly describing biological bodies (which can be objectively verified) and not inner feelings (which cannot). Again, it is a most useful category, has considerable social, reproductive, statistical, and medical implications, and is one that I believe does more harm than good to erase.

What I believe it is less helpful to do is to attach extremely narrow, role-specific, and confining behavioral definitions to our sexed bodies, and then to blame a person’s body for not aligning with that stereotype. This is, and has been, the main tenant of feminism. I think Queer theory is making a confused jumble out of several different kinds of categories: the physical realities we all face (as healthy/normative & non-normative); the force of sex-roles in evolution; impossible, idealized stereotypes; hyper-sexualization of our culture; personality traits (as listed by either the big 5 or Cloninger’s 4 habit systems for example); Character (again, see Cloninger, Seligman, the Stoics, or just about any religion); the process and states of becoming/being an adult/not yet being an adult; individuation & belonging vs non-conformity & conformity (cynicism / group-think); Extroversion vs. Introversion; self-ideation (narcissism) vs self-transcendence (having values far above and outside of the self/self-forgetfulness (flow)); high vs. low sensitivity; intuitional vs. rational; Trauma and our responses to that trauma; attachment theory; and, and, and. All of these and more play a role in forming our personalities and how we express those personalities. And yet Queer theory wants to force all of these aspects of our identity and make them thread this one tiny needle, the relatively recently developed concept of “Gender,” making that the arbiter of absolutely everything else. I think it is tragic that we have a whole generation of young people pre-occupied with trying to pin down some unique and more eccentric gender than the next person, rather than learning how to come to terms with the reality they were born into (time, location, family, body), internalizing responsibility for positive, transformational growth for themselves and their immediate communities, and learning how to collaborate creatively and seek healthy, intimate friendship with those who may be very different from themselves, physically, cognitively, emotionally, economically, ideologically, and geographically.

So I do not think in terms of gender (except when I am speaking German, and I stumble over every noun!). I think in terms of men and women. And within those two groups, there is an infinite and fabulous assortment of individuals. And I suppose many of the traits, proclivities, and limitations these men and women have, and the contributions they make, overlap in a myriad of ways in all kinds of Venn diagrams that are always shifting and reconfiguring- much like a kaleidoscope. And though some might find it amusing to give every new variance a specific name, it is a fools errand to bully the entire world at gun-point to submit to this new and mercurial nomenclature.

3) Making other oppressed people your enemies is the oldest trick in the book.

3) “Making other oppressed people your enemies…” you lost me here. I’m not sure how you got here? From our conversation so far, you began your first comment on my post by not only aligning yourself with those in the Bay area who revile women who insist on their right to name themselves & protect their own (and their children’s) interests and boundaries, but also by condoning the aggressive and pernicious use of the slurs TERF & SWERF to dismiss, intimidate, and silence us. I believe labeling people in that way is very seductive, but never productive (just as true of using the word “woke” in the same derogatory way).

I have made no-one my enemy. I work very hard to keep my heart open, curious, and soft toward even those who treat me as their enemy. It is a spiritual practice I take very seriously, and I imagine it as a posture of standing with my arms open wide (as if on a cross) in an invitation to embrace, embrace me in my limitations, my interests, my boundaries (“This is not OK for me!”), my unique vantage point, my hopes and dreams, my unique contributions, my vision for what a community of just-harmony (beauty) might look like, and my failures to live up to that vision. And for those who cannot accept this invitation to embrace in vulnerability, to let them go in peace and forgiveness and the hope our journeys will one day lead us closer in the future. And though I often tire of holding those “inner-arms” up, I am deliberate about being held accountable to re-assuming this posture when I have let them fall.

We may be in conflict over this issue, but that need not make us enemies. It only means we have “difference with tension,” the best definition of conflict I have yet come across. Our interests appear to be tugging in different directions causing us to feel a tension on whatever chord there may be that connects us (in our case our shared past at high-school and facebook). The tension is uncomfortable, and the temptation is to relieve the tension by either dropping my own hold on the chord (negating/silencing myself) or severing the other from the chord (negating/silencing the other). I believe conflict, difference with tension, always brings a revelatory possibility with it. If we stay the course, withstand the tension while looking for a way forward, we might just find a greener pasture for all of us which may well surpass the kinds of solutions either one of us can imagine alone. And usually, that means a willingness to go wide, by gathering as much information as possible from all interested parties, and deep, going below the surface and getting to the actual heart or well-spring of the problem by finding out what the real unmet needs driving this movement and counter movement are.

4)Feminism is constantly being attacked by the ideologies and power centers of the status quo that want to discredit it. Those attackers exploit the topics of the day to focus attention on flashy divisive issues and away from issues that affect their power, like abortion rights or equal compensation. Of course a wedge has developed over transitioning. It’s an easily exploitable issue focused on a small group of people who do not fit the status quo and don’t have much power to fight back at a cultural scale.

Here we have some overlap. Though this does sound a bit like “mansplaining” -you, as a man, telling me, a woman who has born the stigma and consequences of being a (sometimes the only vocal) feminist in my conservative family and communities for a couple of decades now, about how unpopular feminism is! I know, I know! Believe me I know!

And, yes, I am very perturbed that instead of pushing forward on the already exhausting list of issues that women and girls are up against because of our sexed bodies and because of male entitlement, male appeasement, and male violence, we find ourselves faced with yet another form of male entitlement, infringement, and violence, which is targeting our economic livelihoods, our reproductive capabilities & selections, and even our personal sovereignty! But let me ask you this: who is diverting whose attention here? It is not Radical Feminists who have the infinite funds that have been bankrolling and secretly lobbying state and industrial institutions over the last decade to bring about such a dramatic cultural shift in record-breaking time. Being a “Trans-Ally” is the new virtue signaling for the Elite-left, the ‘smoke & mirrors’ that keeps those with power and money from having to address any of the issues that would actually cost them some skin (reproductive care and protection, maternity leave, pre+post natal care, domestic violence, equal pay, equal representation, and on and on). “Trans-Rights” is to the Elite Left, what ‘Pro-Life’ is to the Right, and both are harming women and allowing the rich to get richer. And just now SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade!)

5) Insisting that people are defined as who you say they are not who they say they are does not have a good history around here, in San Francisco and Berkeley. We’ve all seen directly how those concepts are regularly used against people, especially those in marginalized groups.

Gender is a concept. Sex is a reality. No one gets to define themselves alone. It sucks, but it is the truth. We don’t live in a vacuum, and whether we like it or not, our identities will always be shaped as much by others as by ourselves. (“Am ‘du’ werde ich mich selbst!”) “Only on the ‘other’ do I become myself!” Only narcissists claim absolute editorial control of their identities. I am observing and naming what I see, the physical and tangible reality that I have access to, and responding in a way that is prudent, safe, and, I believe, empowering for both men and women. I have the personal sovereignty to do that. So do you. Any trans-woman who refuses to acknowledge and take responsibility for the obvious negative implications self-id has for women’s protected status will never be woman enough for me. I have empathy for the tension they feel, but anyone trying to relieve that tension by replacing definitions and removing protections from women rather than the more difficult task of stretching the perimeter of how men can express themselves is avoiding the task of growing-up and shifting the costs for their inner conflict onto women and girls specifically and onto society as a whole, and it will have disastrous consequences if it continues.

6) Is there a discussion to be had about what being trans means and how that relates to feminism? Sure, with trans people included in the dialog.

I am not sure if you have just not been following what has transpired the last 5-10 years, which is completely understandable (I was totally oblivious until two years ago!), or which window you are looking out of, but insinuating that trans people are being kept out of the conversation is flipping reality on its head. Unless you mean the trans people who are speaking out against self-id and de-transitioners, who are just as reviled by those pushing queer ideology as we women are. This whole ‘discussion’ began as a secret lobby campaign by trans activists, and once the reality of the institutional capture of their successful lobbying became visible to regular people who were alarmed over the implications for women and children of this new ‘group think,’ that had come about without any input from women’s rights activists, these women’s activists have been most aggressively and violently bullied, hounded, and smeared in every way possible to try and completely silence any contrary input. On top of that, the most aggressive and most vocal trans-activists have refused to come to the table with people like Julie Bindel, Helen Joyce, and Kathleen Stock, all solid liberals, to have good faith dialogue! I will give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, and assume you just don’t know, because otherwise, this would be just about the most infuriating part of your comments.

If someone is starting from the position of having already decided who can be part of the conversation or adopts TERF as a badge of honor, making it part of their identity to exclude someone we will have a hard time finding common ground even if on many things we have similar goals.

Again, I really don’t know what to do with this. You brought up TERF as a slur, and I wrote that these kinds of labels are cheap and only meant to silence the other. Now you are turning it around and insinuating that I not only consider myself a TERF (which I don’t), but that I wear it as a badge of honor? If I was less gracious, I could believe that you were deliberately trying to turn the tables on me. Women did not come up with the term TERF. Because women who are honestly and prudently looking at the Big Picture and asking good questions about what the ramifications are for self-id and the life-long medicalization of children in all areas of our society, know that finding a way forward that helps dysphoric people live their best lives, while not jeopardizing anyone else’s, is not at all exclusionary of trans people, period! Continuing to insist that I, and others who hold my views, are trying to exclude anyone is a character smear and is simply unacceptable.

They are questioning others validity as people because they don’t fit into their classification system. I don’t understand that.

That is a pretty huge jump to go from “humans that have penises are not women” equals “humans with penises that think they are women are not people”! I know that I am not saying that, thinking that, or in anyway supporting the dehumanization of trans people, so I am wondering how you got there? I wish I could say it went both ways. But women who are against self-id, the medicalization of children, and affirmative only mental health care have faced the most vile forms of verbal abuse, ostracization, threats of violence and actual violence for stating things that are facts believed for thousands and thousands of years, and for daring to question if what seems good to trans activists is actually good for women, children, or even trans-people themselves.

Look, if there is one thing I have learned in my 56 years on this earth, and believe me, I have learned it the hard way, it is this:

It is NOT MY JOB TO VALIDATE anyone’s idea of themselves!!

Not my boss’s, not a pastor’s, not my husband’s, not even my own children’s! To assume it is anyone’s job to validate your idea of your identity (“or else!”), or even your worth, is abusive and manipulative. This need for validation is the foundation of co-dependent and abusive relationships. I believe every person is a precious child of God and I do my fallible best to treat them as such, but as far as our self-worth is concerned, each of us has to figure that shit out on our own. It’s called growing up: 1) Accepting the reality of my situation with all its light & shadows, plusses & minuses, opportunities & limitations; 2) internalizing responsibility to creatively move myself and community to more fully realize our inherent potential; and 3) reaching out for mutually edifying and collaborative relationships. I am happy to welcome anyone who is committed to this journey, and I stand with outstretched arms inviting every man and woman to join it.