Lessons in Transgender Rights

(as learned by a cis-gendered woman)

The original impetus for starting this Substack was Megan Phelps-Roper’s podcast, “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.” I gave thanks to JKR in my first post, and now I’ll delve deeper into the main controversy.

Megan’s aim was to construct a civil dialogue around a highly contentious issue. Many critics have said her podcast was completely one-sided in favor of JKR. Only two trans people were interviewed, and that was in Episode Six out of seven. I think that’s fair pushback. So even though I lean toward JKR’s side, in the spirit of dialogue, I watched the YouTube video by one of the two trans spokespeople: Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints.

The video is about two hours long, so like the podcast, it’s a commitment, but it’s very well-made, so it’s worth your time. I left a compliment for Natalie in the comments section, which I’ll elaborate on here. First, I told her she’s as articulate as a college professor. In two hours, she delivers a lecture you might get in a Queer Studies class, designed to familiarize the unfamiliar like me. But her presentation is way more engaging than anything you’d have to sit through in a college lecture hall. She peppers in lots of jokes, enhanced by costume changes and props. Her style ranges from whimsy to gut-punching gallows humor.

Here are my shifts in attitude after listening to Natalie both on Megan’s podcast and on ContraPoints:

Bathrooms

The main objection most people raise to allowing trans women into women’s bathrooms is safety. JKR cited a horrific case in which a ten-year-old girl was raped by a trans woman in a public bathroom in Scotland. Natalie agrees that the particular instance was a travesty, but she contends that the problem is not trans people, but predators. Society needs to devise better ways of identifying them and protecting the rest of us.

She also points out that trans women put themselves in danger when they go into men’s bathrooms. They might get beaten up by some rage-filled, toxically masculine bully. Trans women in male prisons are routinely abused. All of them have a right to protection.

JKR asked why one small group’s safety should be prioritized over that of half the population. Well, that gets into the weeds of statistics. The percentage of trans women is small, and the percentage of trans women predators is smaller, but should we just rely on odds when it comes to safety?

I have only one idea, and it isn’t terribly practical. When I take my elderly mother into a public bathroom, we both benefit from the presence of an extra-wide stall with safety bars. Disability activists agitated for those accommodations, and I am grateful to them. No doubt they faced resistance, and no doubt, that was because of the expense. My answer to the current bathroom problem is also costly: replace stall-style public bathrooms with more solitary unisex ones. But until that happens, people of all ages and sexes should go into public bathrooms with a buddy if possible.

Medical Treatments for Gender Dysphoria

Another area of dispute is the treatments trans people receive in order to transition. JKR argued that young people are being pressured into receiving these medical interventions way too young. I was inclined to believe it because I’m of the opinion that the practice of psychology in general is over-medicalized. I have lots of friends who appreciate the medications they’ve been prescribed, but I believe the critics who say that meds cause long-term dependency and create more problems than they solve. Still feeling down? Let’s up your dosage. Or change up your cocktail. The practitioners, with Big Pharma behind them, have no incentive to wean people off or help them learn to live without.

Well, I for one haven’t joined the Prozac Nation. I resisted the lithium pushed on me in my 20’s, and I refused Ritalin for my son. I don’t regret either decision.

But Noah, the trans man interviewed in Megan’s podcast, gave me a new perspective. His interview helped me understand gender dysphoria as never before. Megan pointed out that puberty is uncomfortable, if not miserable, for everybody. It certainly was for me. But for sufferers of gender dysphoria, puberty is an absolute hellscape. That is why the medical interventions have to occur before the age of majority. Puberty blockers can save people intense suffering.

Requiring parental consent seems like the obvious answer, but many gender dysphoric kids are estranged from their parents - often specifically because of their divergent gender identity. Noah has supportive parents, which must be why he sounded so well-adjusted regarding his own transition. But who should advise the kids who lack that? Social workers and psychologists? And what happens to runaways who end up on the streets?

Waiving adult consent altogether sounds reckless to me, but Natalie argues that cis kids are trusted to know their gender identity at very early ages. Cis kids certainly react to being misgendered. My sons, who didn’t grow up with sisters and attended boys-only yeshivos, weren’t accustomed to using the pronoun “she” when they were little. So when they described one of their cousin’s friends as a “he,” the girls laughed like it was the most absurd mistake they’d ever heard.

To a gender dysphoric kid, that wouldn’t be funny. It would be another painful reminder of how they aren’t comfortable in their own skin. Kids in that situation need help, and nobody has the right to deny it to them.

The Word “Woman”

Pronouns aside, my opinion has not shifted on the use of the word “woman.” One of JKR’s tweets that caused an especially big uproar was her response to the phrase “people who menstruate.” It originally appeared in the title of an article about health initiatives during the pandemic.

Now, I understand the philosophy behind inclusive language. Not all women menstruate. Post-menopausal women don’t. Neither do trans women. Conversely, some people who menstruate don’t identify as women, such as non-binary and agender people, as well as some trans men, depending on the stage they’re in with their hormone treatments. But since the majority of “people who menstruate” are cis women, it sounds ridiculously awkward to avoid the word. The phrase “pregnant people,” which I’ve frequently heard in discussions about abortion, is just as clumsy. The speakers feel compelled to bend over backwards to conform to these language demands, as though the words “women” and “mothers” are offensive or taboo.

“A women’s movement that will no longer use the word ‘women’ is in a pretty sad state,” said journalist Nina Burleigh in an interview with Greg Olear. Burleigh went so far as to conjecture that the trend was introduced as an anti-democratic psy op to sow discord among feminists, thereby weakening progress. Given the current climate of the world, I could easily believe it. Only when I listened to ContraPoints did I begin to have doubts. Evidently, Betty Friedan or one of her contemporaries made a similar conjecture regarding lesbian activists, except instead of a foreign power, she suspected CIA infiltration.

Psy ops or not, I don’t think the word “woman” is something to be avoided, especially not in the name of inclusivity. It ends up excluding nearly half the human race! To quote JKR, “. . .erasing the concept of sex [ie, biological femininity] removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth. . .my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

Neither do I. Pregnancy and childbirth are life-defining experiences for the women who undergo them. Nobody can or should take that away from us. Even Natalie seemed to acknowledge as much at the end of her video. She must recognize how alienating this language policing is. It turns people off to the trans movement.

Civil Dialogue

But ultimately, my biggest disagreement with Natalie isn’t over her opposition to JKR. I understand where that comes from. She feels her identity has been attacked. It isn’t about trans rights, either. I’m trying to keep an open mind about that, which I hope this post proves. What bothered me was the way she lambasted Megan’s mission of constructive dialogue. She walks it back in the end, but not without bashing the concept to pieces first.

Anyone paying attention to what’s going on in the world can see that our collective dialogue has degraded into intolerance, if not outright hatred. Insults and threats pass for debate. The goal isn’t to communicate a viewpoint, but to “own” or “cancel” the other side.

Episode Three of Megan’s podcast captured the problem grippingly. With audio clips, it traces the growth of online toxicity from the P.C. police on Tumblr to the performative offensiveness on 4chan. It also went into the conspiracy theories that gave us Donald Trump and Brexit. That episode had me absolutely riveted. It summed up the world we’re living in, asking the most pressing question we face: is social media destroying democracy?

I’m afraid the answer is yes, so I was very glad that the podcast included a cameo from one of the most informed voices on this subject, social media critic and computer scientist Jaron Lanier. The Internet is here to stay, he argues, so we’d better restructure the way we interact on it. Otherwise, society will implode.

I’m not an expert like him, so I’m in no position to advise on global changes, but I do know what works for me as an individual. It’s pretty simple really. Don’t abuse people. Don’t join in on witch hunts or pile-ons. And when there’s disagreement, which there inevitably will be, strive for civil dialogue. It’s the world’s best hope.

Natalie argued that marginalized groups can’t afford to be civil. They have no choice but to fight for their rights. She has a point. Standing up to people in power is often necessary. But if you want to reach the average citizen, whose only power is a vote and a voice, dialogue is the way to go. People need a chance to change their minds. Shaming them for their opinions makes them dig in. And public shaming makes the shamers look just as bad.

Fundamentally, ContraPoints is all about dialogue, which is why her dismissal of Megan seemed so unfair. I never would have heard of ContraPoints if not for Megan’s podcast, and I might not have bothered with the rebuttal video if not for the reminder to listen to the opposing point of view. So I’ve gotten a lesson in trans rights, thanks to ContraPoints, and I’ve processed my thoughts through this post. It’s Hegelian dialectics in action: from thesis and antithesis come synthesis. Dialogue builds democracy. And the world needs all of us to uphold it.

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