Opinion: Radical Trans Activists Are Tearing The LGBT Community Apart
Originally published on thepostmillennial.com
Rachel McKinnon, a biological male, won the women’s 200-meter sprint at the Masters Track Cycling World Championships for the second year in a row last weekend. While many LGBT advocates are celebrating this as a triumph, I, a lesbian healthcare professional, find myself deeply worried.
When I watch the course the contemporary transgender movement has taken, I see a movement that can’t possibly endure. And, since that movement has hitched itself aggressively to the cause of homosexuals such as myself, I fear what the backlash will mean for our hard-won liberties.
I’ve only had the right to marry for the last four years in the U.S. I remember that struggle vividly, and I don’t take for granted the freedoms won. Living in the rural American South, I’m reminded regularly of how many people remain wary or disapproving of certain legal rights for gays and lesbians. I’m also aware of how much my friends and I rely on our marriage and parental rights, and on the non-discrimination policies that allow us to be protected from violence and harassment.
Homosexuals won recognition of our civil rights because we were able to exercise our rights without requiring much participation from those outside our communities. The average person’s life changed very little when gays began to marry and live our lives more openly. We asked for inaction in the form of others not seeking to punish us for our personal lives.
These goals contrast sharply with those set by the radical gender movement. Rather than asking for basic protections, the same rights that are common to all people, the movement demands all society make extreme changes to language, personal habits, parenting, medicine, scientific practices, and more. Nothing short of total compliance through words, deeds, and policies is considered adequate. They aren’t asking people for tolerance, but for obedience.
And the consequences for disobedience are severe.
Many outspoken gender-critical women like me have been ostracized from our communities, fired from our jobs, threatened with violence, and even physically attacked. I write under a pseudonym due to my own fear for myself and my family, and my need to stay employed to support them.
I’ve never personally believed in gender ideology, this idea that “man” and “woman” are internal feelings separate from chromosomal and reproductive sex. But I supported trans people anyway because I was able to support them personally and advocate for their respectful inclusion in society without needing to submit to their doctrine. I used their pronouns to be polite, and because I could do so without implying I thought they were literally that biological sex.
But things have changed, and the message sent now is that a transgender woman is literally a biologically female who was mistakenly “assigned” the male sex at birth. As a healthcare professional, I know this to be scientifically false. But for many within the gender movement, saying “she” now equals unreserved agreement with that ubiquitous mantra, “Trans women are women.” By this logic, biological women aren’t entitled to any spaces, opportunities, or protections distinct from males who identify as women. And that is something I do not agree with and cannot affirm.
So, I don’t do the pronouns anymore. For me, the demands of the movement became unsustainable, and I had to withdraw my support.
If these demands are driving away people like me, how can the transgender community hope to maintain any sort of broader public acceptance? I’m a hardcore lesbian feminist, and I used to lead teachings for healthcare workers on providing respectful care to transgender and gender-nonconforming patients. If I feel bullied by the demands being made, I can’t imagine how enraged people are who were never comfortable with this population to begin with.
The gender movement in its current form is unstable because it requires brute social and political force to maintain. It’s estimated that approximately half a percent of the U.S. population identifies as transgender. A group that deeply in the minority cannot succeed in securing their rights in the long term if that success is upheld by a public saying and doing things they don’t agree with.
The power this movement holds today is an opportunity, much like that experienced by the suffragettes in 1920 and homosexuals in 2015. It’s a chance to create reform to benefit transgender people, but those reforms will be little more than a historical blip if they can’t be maintained once power shifts. And it always shifts.
By escalating demands to a level that even progressives are finding invasive, leaders of the movement are wasting their opportunity and gambling with the hard-won rights of others. People who care about the future of not only transgender rights but also the rights of homosexuals and women need to stop and reflect on what goals are reasonable and sustainable. The protections we ask for must allow for belief systems other than our own.
Today’s radical gender movement is a movement without perspective or empathy. It disdains compromise and ignores any interests it doesn’t share. While most people, given time, will learn to tolerate policies and belief systems they don’t agree with, no group will work against its own interests indefinitely. And this is why, if nothing changes soon, the gender movement will fail.
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17 Comments
Mitch
December 04, 12:25????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
This piece is everything!!!!!
Unfortunately, trans activists and rhetoric chanters and quasi-intellectual ‘liberals’ won’t still see reason. It’s to chant rhetoric and scream “Transphobia” at all and sundry who question the legitimacy and logicality and sensibility of what it means to be trans.
Wó, I’m tired of engaging them.
This tide too shall pass.
That’s when they’d see the true extent of damage they’ve done.
Rehoboth
December 04, 13:26Apt.
Terra
December 04, 14:12I still think that when it comes to sports, anatomy and physiology should all that matters
Black Dynasty
December 04, 14:55Excellently written! I thought i was the only one who thought this.
When political correctness superceded logic in an attempt to be “faux woke”, we started down a very slippery slope that will cause issues in the near future.
A trans woman running in women’s race is illogical. The inherent physical benefits of being a former male can’t be wiped out and thus an unfair advantage vs cis women which can be scientifically proven.
Haiku
December 06, 11:44Very true
Former tennis player Martina Navratilova said a similar thing. So logical. She was forced to apologize… That’s like 2 years ago and I wonder…what she had to apologize for: speaking the truth!
I was sad she succumbed to the “outcry” and apologized …
One day logic will prevail
Black Dynasty
December 06, 18:46I remember her statements, they were admittedly harsh and a bit extreme but i got what she was trying to say overall. I think an apology was due for the tone of the message but not the point of the message.
Harmony
December 04, 15:41So true
Astar
December 04, 23:29Good to know I’m not alone in thinking that transexuals are demanding too much from the society. It’s irrational to allow a biological male compete with biological females in sports. It’s actually unfair and takes the fun out the game each such person wins. If they must demand inclusiveness in such matters, let transexuals be transexuals and not necessarily females.
Andy
December 05, 18:30It’s funny how when a transman beat a cisman in a boxing match there wasn’t a lot of chatter about it but transwomen engage in sports and there’s an uproar and there are articles online that dispels this notion that transwomen have an unfair advantage over ciswomen when they transition,you can Google it.
Anyways conversations can be had about trans politics but saying they are too demanding just echoes the same sentiments homophobes have been holding,be careful so you don’t become the oppressor you denounce.
Pink Panther
December 06, 04:11Has there been any reports of a transman beating a cisman in a boxing match?
Andy
December 06, 11:24Yes Patricio Manuel,he was the first transgender man to compete in a professional boxing match and he won his debut match
Pink Panther
December 06, 11:36Perhaps the reason why there’s no such outcry is because there’s no movement by trans men to persistently take over cis men spaces or insert themselves in cis men’s spaces.
Maybe the reason there’s no such backlash is because cis men are not a protected class. They’re not marginalized, and as such there’s so real threat to them by trans men.
Ever noticed how the trans movement is almost always about trans women and their insistence on occupying cis women’s spaces. You don’t hear trans activists saying “trans men are men”. But there’s this almost religious determination to make our societies accept that trans women are women.
It is always about trans women. Maybe that’s the reason the push back is concentrated on them.
Andy
December 06, 12:22I do agree that transmen are not perceived as threatening and they clearly aren’t as visible as transwomen but that doesn’t detract from the fact that transmen identify as men.
So transwomen trying to assimilate into ciswomen spaces hurts them How?
Anyways I don’t think this is a conversation for cismen to have anyways,it doesn’t involve us.
Pink Panther
December 06, 12:51“So trans women trying to assimilate into cis women spaces hurts them how?”
You’re right. You shouldn’t have this conversation, because you clearly have no range for it.
Black Dynasty
December 06, 17:47You do realise the primary reason men have better endurance, speed, muscular structure to match those is directly related to the amount of testosterone right?
Now based on this fact, do you understand why a trans woman competing in cis women’s sports is not the same as a trans man competing in cis men’s sports.
Malik
December 05, 09:01“A trans woman is a trans woman.”
Delle
December 05, 20:13Amen to this piece!!!