Great thoughtful article. As a 74 year old woman, I’ve been through those days as gays and lesbians were increasingly accepted as part of our culture and society, some were and are friends. I also was there for the early days of Women’s Liberation, and I benefited from it. I’m horrified by what the “trans” movement is pushing on all of us. As you pointed out, lesbians are now being trashed for not wanting sex with trans women! The trans women (second class male athletes) pushing women out of sports accomplishments….it goes on and on….and it sometimes does seem that our culture/the trans movement is indeed trying to wipe out women altogether except for a bizarre parody of “womanhood”.
No doubt. When we start hearing speakers apologizing for using the word cervix and changes it to "front hole" or AOC saying "pregnant people" or Cambridge redefining the meaning of woman as "an adult who lives and identifies as female and then a Supreme Court Justice who refuses to answer the question "what is a woman "? . IMO this has serious consequences. Biden has already destroyed title IX that's step one which opens up the door for the next step. It's so unsettling and just downright maddening.
There are many parts of this discussion that I agree with. However, the author left out a part of gay culture which is increasingly questionable - drag. Drag is a gay activity where men dress as exaggerated women, and make sexually edgy jokes and behaviors. In adults-only spaces, this is fine. But the recent 10 years or so, drag has been expanded to children. In addition, the "queer" sensibility of "embarrass the bourgeois" is part of drag. These make a toxic mix for children.
Drag story hours, drag performances in schools, drag public performances - these are all unacceptable. Drag is not for children. Children should not be seeing fake butt sex in public, and the variety of other edgy actions.
Put drag back in the closet or the nightclub. No more reading to children, or getting children to stick money in the pants of adult men. That kind of thing is part of the backlash.
Thank you, George. I completely agree with your concerns and actually did address this issue in my piece:
"LGBTQ+ activists also fail to recognize that the cavalcade of gender identities has brought an aspect to advocacy efforts not previously part of the LGB movement: an emphasis on educating children about sexual orientation and gender.
As the LGBTQ+ movement has become louder, a dramatic shift has occurred in schools. Students are encouraged to express their preferred pronouns in an effort to embrace transgender and nonbinary identities. Several states now require schools to teach LGBT history. Drag queens have become the focus of “kid-oriented pride events,” and local libraries offer drag queen story hour for children."
I probably could have placed more emphasis on this point, but the essay was spilling over 2,100 words! Lol.
Totally agree! I find drag offensive as demeaning "woman face" mockery, but wouldn't ban it as adult entertainment. Seeing it promoted to children makes my blood boil. Its overt sexuality is inappropriate for kids, and it imprints harmful, degrading stereotypes about women to impressionable minds. Toxic indeed.
To each his/her own - I have always thought that the core of drag’s humor is that the performative femininity is *inherently masculine*. I think about drag performers like Bob the Drag Queen or Divine. The core of drag is a (usually) gay man - someone who is often not terribly in touch with his masculine side in a traditional way, often a bit fey or sissy - liberating his masculine traits by disguising them behind a female persona. This is why drag queens are so often embodying stereotypically male traits - physically and sexually aggressive, disagreeable, lewd, etc. It’s a performance of irony.
Agree with a lot of this. People can be offended by drag queens if they wish, but drag performers never (or perhaps only rarely) intend to demean women. That´s not what it´s about. Those who take it that way just aren´t understanding.
The conflation of trans/'queer' ideology with gay rights seems almost certainly to have been done to damage the gay rights cause. I bet that 99% of the people who burnt pride flags would say that they have no problem with gay people but they object to the sexualisation of children and the normalisation of things like furry culture, and other things that look like borderline paedophilia. Those unsavoury groups then use their LGBTQ+ status to hide behind the genuine victimisation that gay people have experienced.
The best thing the gay community could do to reclaim its identity would be go back to using the acronym LGB, but boy will they get called bigots if they do that
I agree with this comment, but I’d I say not “almost certainly,” but “definitely” the conflation of trans/queer with gay rights seeks to eradicate gays. Trans denies the sexual binary, the reproductive strategy of the human race. If there’s no such thing as biological sex, then homosexuality is meaningless. According to that dogma, I as a lesbian should be ready and willing to have a male partner who identifies as a woman. It doesn’t work that way.
Trans activism takes advantage of the good will of heterosexuals, using gays as a trojan horse to promote an agenda that would have us believe that a two year-old knows they have a “gender identity” that is different from their sex. What a scam.
Gay is not trans. As a lesbian, I am not a member of any LGBTQetc. “community”. Never was, never will be.
Yes, it's always seemed pretty obvious that trans ideology is inherently misogynistic. Women are called bigots for demanding female spaces, and lesbians are called TERFs for refusing to have relationships with 'trans women'. It's one of those things that's so obvious, that one wonders what the people going along with it (especially the women) are actually getting out of it
That's a very good point. All the backlash, IMO, is more than likely about the trans movement being shoved down our throats and has nothing to do with gay movement. I honestly don't know any of my gay friends who participate in pride anymore and I live in SF.
The one trans (or rather 'non binary') person I know is like a caricature of all the things people dislike about trans culture: he's a man who wears women's clothes, surrounds himself (or rather 'themself') with plush toys and My Little Pony crap, and posts on social media about how important Pride Month is for 'us'.
I don't think he's part of any grand conspiracy, I just think he's a bit of a weirdo, but you can see how people like that would gravitate towards an identity that allows them to be as provocative as they like and still claim victim status. He's not gay and has a daughter btw 😳
Sounds exactly like the local we see at our coffee shop who has a few kids. He looks so ridiculous with his pink and green eye shadow and really bad outfits, yet he uses his victim status to be outright rude to the staff. The manager of the coffee shop however won't put up with any of his bullshit and last time told him/her/they/them needed to leave. The manager is a gay man so he doesn't get any pushback.
I agree 100% about him being gay shouldn't matter but I think it was relevant because I'm not sure if the Manager were straight, he or she would be given the same grace on their actions of telling the ridiculous person to leave. This is in San Francisco and the liberal meter runs high.
Given the grace by whom? If people would stand up for an antisocial bully simply because he's trans, I'd say they're part of the problem. I feel like this state of affairs can't go on much longer
I completely agree. We won the freedom to marry by showing society we were no threat, nor were we really any different than they were. It seems the trans movement wants the complete opposite. I say let them have it and let us take back our movement from them, HRC, and all the other homophobes who have infiltrated the gay movement.
Yes, it really feels like they're gaslighting by acting threateningly but then demanding love and acceptance, kinda like they WANT the inevitable backlash.
I had to look up who HRC were, and I see their office in DC says on the facade in huge lettering 'Black Lives Matter | Black Trans Lives Matter'. Real inclusive!
What a fabulous column. It hit every point. Anticipated almost every concern. Our neighbors gave away pride flags and I wouldn't take one because lately, I can't stomach TQ part of the organization. Not the actual people, I will respect any adult that makes that choice, but the constant pushing and propaganda that is infecting our elementary schools and libraries. I took my kids out of CCD at the Catholic church when they showed them abortion films at grade one because it wasn't appropriate. I feel the same way about promoting gender confusion and the hard sell of hormones and surgery. Thirteen year olds make stupid decisions. Adults have to start acting like adults.
I agree with your perspective on this issue. It’s important to protect children from inappropriate content and let them make informed decisions when they’re older.
Agree completely. As a 69-year old lesbian, I won't participate anymore in the travesty that is "Pride". Straight, left-leaning people seem to love it. I was just traveling around the nation and my various hosts oohed and aahed at the many buildings - including the Trump tower in Chicago - awash with the rainbow colors. I just want it to go back to the event being one day at whatever town you are in. That said, as long as the non-gays rule the roost, it's their parade/pride not mine.
I understand where you’re coming from. It can be frustrating when something that was meant to be inclusive starts to feel commercialized or co-opted by those outside the community.
Your article a superb summary of the concerns of a growing number of traditional liberals who have long supported human and civil rights for sexual minorities. We are fed up with the narcissism of fanatical activists . Legal protections and tolerance are the essential goals in a pluralistic society, not hegemony of thought.
Hear, hear! Thanks very much, Patrick. We in FAIR were very much hoping that our series of PRIDE articles this month would highlight that many of us -- inside and outside the LGBTQ+ "community" -- have the same concerns.
Good article, thanks. As a straight woman I share the concerns I've been hearing from my lesbian sisters and frankly, think that an elite of powerful men with certain sexual perversions have been responsible for turning what is actually a very rare psychiatric condition (gender dysphoria) into the false notion that we can "choose" our gender. How else can you explain the relatively sudden explosion of encouraging transgenderism in schools... its embrace by large corporations and the medical and psychology fields? After reading about the possible complications of transitioning surgically from male to female I can't explain how doctors, sworn to "do no harm", could endorse these horrific procedures. Why are they pushing drag queens on children in schools, libraries, women's restrooms and public events? At the risk of being labelled a conspiracy theorist, I think this elite-from-hell simply wants to normalize their own perversions (ranging from cross-dressing to pedophilia) and recruit more bodies to "play" with and/or traffic for profit. I don't have children but if I did, I would not allow them to attend a school where gender ideology is taught. Prior to the "transgender explosion" few hetero people that I know were worried about gay or lesbian indoctrination of our youth. Now, the entire LGB community is being slandered.
This is the third excellent article I’ve read this week on PRIDE et al. My particular interest is as an Episcopalian, a faith that welcomes ALL. And we DO. But these articles have educated me on the need for PRIDE (the 1st article) AND also acknowledged my unease with PRIDE, (the second two articles). Thank you, FAIR.
I see the T part of the acronym as the same thing as those who used to push for conversion therapy for gay youth. To the the TRAs if you are a female who likes other females, you aren't actually a female but a male. That way you are actually NOT a homosexual . So they are just transing away the gay instead of praying it away like in the old days. They are no friend to the LGB community.
Yes: "Even the most tolerant heterosexual may question why they’re seeing Pride flags at their local hardware store or plastered on a bag of Doritos." Forced teaming has caused harm to the LGB community, and that makes me sad. Throat shoving has gone too far, and it too is causing harm. Trans activism has gone too extreme. But perhaps it had to go off the rails before others could question it and make a course correction?
I am hoping with all my heart that we can steer this train back on course before it veers over a cliff. I also worry that the same dynamic has gripped the black community. Throat shoving has its limits with respect to all of the myriad victim groups who are being exploited.
So well said. Perhaps initial good intentions went so extreme and then off the rails that it has all backfired for many groups. I hope it can all find its way back to a better place.
I think much of the backlash is not against Pride itself, but rather to the commercialization of it. Its similar to people who bemoan the secularization of Christmas.
In my zeal to jump into the conversation, I neglected to thank you for writing this article. It is very well-written, even-handed, and sober. I am sharing it with some of my conservative gay friends.
I so appreciate that, Milo. I think it's very important that as many members of the LGB community as possible understand the need to speak up. We need to let those outside our community know that we are not uniformly in agreement with the direction the movement is heading.
Perhaps somewhat, but the imposition of "queer" sensibility on Pride is also an issue. In queer sensibility, the main impetus is "épater les bourgeois" - shock or embarrass the middle-class. Every Pride festival is MORE MORE MORE - more shocking, more nudity, more in-your-face gay outrage. People are encouraged to bring children and then get this kind of offensive shit shoved down their throats. It's vile and disgusting.
It's not just about shock value. Queer is a totalitarian religious doctrine that claims a moral imperative to destroy all concepts of normal and all boundaries.
One of the strategies is to intensify the shock value until no one is capable of being shocked by anything. It's a desensitizing technique. Shock is a major mechanism for boundaries of all kinds.
I was at a small protest against transing bathrooms and locker rooms at a local high school ahead of a school board meeting on Monday night. There was a lone counter-protester—a 17 year old boy—who engaged me in a calm conversation. I explained to him that my position is that it is one thing for an individual to make their own gender identity more important than their biological sex, but there was no justification to create public policy that puts everyone in that position. He argued that identity is reality. I asked him if he remembered the case of Rachel Dolezal. While he did not remember the name, he remembered the controversy. I asked him, "what if I identified as white?" His response was, "you can be white if you want to be."
Milo, I think this argument needs to be made much more vigorously because it really tests the logic (or lack thereof) in gender theory.
If gender is a construct, then why isn't race? There are far more innate biological and genetic differences between males and females than there are between Black and White people.
The young man you engaged clearly has a dim recollection of Dolezal's experience. She wasn't allowed to identify as Black, so why in the world would you be allowed to identify as White? I would have pushed him to explain this double standard.
There is no "reality" to this viewpoint. There is nothing which can be called "truth". It's all intersectional victimhood. Your buddy there does not understand how much he is violating the Hierarchy of True Victimhood. If he had the temerity to make this statement in front of a group of black lesbians, he would be beaten to a pulp.
I totally agree with that. I have often criticized Pride events as being too much about sexuality, and not enough (hardly at all, actually) about the history and achievements of sexual minorities. Maybe decades of Black History Month have set the bar a bit high in my mind.
I've seen many commentaries on the dissonance between LGB and T in the past few years, and they have also illuminated the conclusion that LGB and T is a shotgun marriage. That's been reinforced by the emergence of the term "genital preference" when matters of sexual orientation are referenced - as if one's private bits are irrelevant to orientation.
This is wacky, but that doesn't mean that the loudest activist voices aren't saying it.
Great article though I'd disagree that the movement was spawned only by Stomewall.
One thing you wrote:
LGBTQ+ activists also fail to recognize that the cavalcade of gender identities has brought an aspect to advocacy efforts not previously part of the LGB movement: an emphasis on educating children about sexual orientation and gender.
When I was a child, my anxiety about being gay and the questions from children about me and my husband (25th anniversary; married in Holland) have been not how we have sex, or sexual orientation, it was marriage. That's what children first see - the two parent household and the expectation they will be in one. I thought I would only be married if I became a girl.
A six year old daughter of a Dutch colleqgue who asks - "Are A and B married?" "Yes". "But they're boys". "Men and Women can marry; men can also marry men, and women can marry women". "Oh OK. What's for lunch".
No sex or gender, just a reassurance of facts at the level that makes sense. For gay boys and lesbian girls, I suspect that feeling they will find the right boy or girl is all the reassurance they need to feel belonging, and not isolated. Anything else is disorientatig because teaching children the mechanics of sex (not reproduction) is for the most part not something they can comprehend until puberty.
A friend of mine who is an Anthropologist of note feels the TQ+ side is a wedge issue which will be used increasingly attack the GLB side; she certainly has experienced it as a feminist for decades. I have to agree with her.
In the US we need a parade June 26 to celebrate the ruling on federal decriminalization of gay and lesbian sex (2003), federal recognition of marriage (2013), and same-sex marriage as a right (2015) - all of which occured on the same day; full civil rights as any other citizen.
That's all by, for, and about GLB freedom, and needs no month, week, or day of festivities.
And it's close enough to the Stonewall Riots kickoff date of June 28, 1969, which is what the original pride-like event in NYC was commemorating the following year.
I am generating a 50 book series tracing a half century of gay life through the eyes of 8 men going to fire island each summer.
I’ll release tiny eye candy videos here made from chapter summaries with “what also happened” voiceover, there is so much going on in the background it’s amazing.
Let’s not forget that the real goal - not of the useful idiots - but of the funding sources and power wielding elites- is the destabilization of the family as the social unit, and so, what seems like obviously NOT OKAY behaviors - not “pride” but instead “shoving it down your throat” - is exactly what they want to do until they’ve compromised enough children, enough youth, enough of the reproductive futures of so many females, that no one blinks an eye when pharma/medical big tech runs and continues its monopoly, financial and otherwise, of “human” reproduction. See, Pritzker et al.
Spot on. It used to be a parade, now it's a purity test (especially w/ Pride Committees excluding Jews & gay officers). Ironically, all this inclusion is actually excluding an entire group, whom I call "People of Fun". Remember fun?
Honestly? A homophobe couldn't even PLAN such an act of sabotage. Sadly, it was the attention-seekers from within our own ranks who've f'd this up. We need new leadership, ASAP.
Great thoughtful article. As a 74 year old woman, I’ve been through those days as gays and lesbians were increasingly accepted as part of our culture and society, some were and are friends. I also was there for the early days of Women’s Liberation, and I benefited from it. I’m horrified by what the “trans” movement is pushing on all of us. As you pointed out, lesbians are now being trashed for not wanting sex with trans women! The trans women (second class male athletes) pushing women out of sports accomplishments….it goes on and on….and it sometimes does seem that our culture/the trans movement is indeed trying to wipe out women altogether except for a bizarre parody of “womanhood”.
No doubt. When we start hearing speakers apologizing for using the word cervix and changes it to "front hole" or AOC saying "pregnant people" or Cambridge redefining the meaning of woman as "an adult who lives and identifies as female and then a Supreme Court Justice who refuses to answer the question "what is a woman "? . IMO this has serious consequences. Biden has already destroyed title IX that's step one which opens up the door for the next step. It's so unsettling and just downright maddening.
Biden was blocked by the appeals court.
Thank you for sharing your perspective on this issue. It’s important to have open conversations about these complex topics.
There are many parts of this discussion that I agree with. However, the author left out a part of gay culture which is increasingly questionable - drag. Drag is a gay activity where men dress as exaggerated women, and make sexually edgy jokes and behaviors. In adults-only spaces, this is fine. But the recent 10 years or so, drag has been expanded to children. In addition, the "queer" sensibility of "embarrass the bourgeois" is part of drag. These make a toxic mix for children.
Drag story hours, drag performances in schools, drag public performances - these are all unacceptable. Drag is not for children. Children should not be seeing fake butt sex in public, and the variety of other edgy actions.
Put drag back in the closet or the nightclub. No more reading to children, or getting children to stick money in the pants of adult men. That kind of thing is part of the backlash.
Thank you, George. I completely agree with your concerns and actually did address this issue in my piece:
"LGBTQ+ activists also fail to recognize that the cavalcade of gender identities has brought an aspect to advocacy efforts not previously part of the LGB movement: an emphasis on educating children about sexual orientation and gender.
As the LGBTQ+ movement has become louder, a dramatic shift has occurred in schools. Students are encouraged to express their preferred pronouns in an effort to embrace transgender and nonbinary identities. Several states now require schools to teach LGBT history. Drag queens have become the focus of “kid-oriented pride events,” and local libraries offer drag queen story hour for children."
I probably could have placed more emphasis on this point, but the essay was spilling over 2,100 words! Lol.
I understand. It's not possible to do everything in a brief essay. Thanks for your response.
Totally agree! I find drag offensive as demeaning "woman face" mockery, but wouldn't ban it as adult entertainment. Seeing it promoted to children makes my blood boil. Its overt sexuality is inappropriate for kids, and it imprints harmful, degrading stereotypes about women to impressionable minds. Toxic indeed.
To each his/her own - I have always thought that the core of drag’s humor is that the performative femininity is *inherently masculine*. I think about drag performers like Bob the Drag Queen or Divine. The core of drag is a (usually) gay man - someone who is often not terribly in touch with his masculine side in a traditional way, often a bit fey or sissy - liberating his masculine traits by disguising them behind a female persona. This is why drag queens are so often embodying stereotypically male traits - physically and sexually aggressive, disagreeable, lewd, etc. It’s a performance of irony.
Agree with a lot of this. People can be offended by drag queens if they wish, but drag performers never (or perhaps only rarely) intend to demean women. That´s not what it´s about. Those who take it that way just aren´t understanding.
I see your point about drag performances not being appropriate for children. It’s important to consider the age-appropriateness of such activities.
The conflation of trans/'queer' ideology with gay rights seems almost certainly to have been done to damage the gay rights cause. I bet that 99% of the people who burnt pride flags would say that they have no problem with gay people but they object to the sexualisation of children and the normalisation of things like furry culture, and other things that look like borderline paedophilia. Those unsavoury groups then use their LGBTQ+ status to hide behind the genuine victimisation that gay people have experienced.
The best thing the gay community could do to reclaim its identity would be go back to using the acronym LGB, but boy will they get called bigots if they do that
I agree with this comment, but I’d I say not “almost certainly,” but “definitely” the conflation of trans/queer with gay rights seeks to eradicate gays. Trans denies the sexual binary, the reproductive strategy of the human race. If there’s no such thing as biological sex, then homosexuality is meaningless. According to that dogma, I as a lesbian should be ready and willing to have a male partner who identifies as a woman. It doesn’t work that way.
Trans activism takes advantage of the good will of heterosexuals, using gays as a trojan horse to promote an agenda that would have us believe that a two year-old knows they have a “gender identity” that is different from their sex. What a scam.
Gay is not trans. As a lesbian, I am not a member of any LGBTQetc. “community”. Never was, never will be.
Yes, it's always seemed pretty obvious that trans ideology is inherently misogynistic. Women are called bigots for demanding female spaces, and lesbians are called TERFs for refusing to have relationships with 'trans women'. It's one of those things that's so obvious, that one wonders what the people going along with it (especially the women) are actually getting out of it
That's a very good point. All the backlash, IMO, is more than likely about the trans movement being shoved down our throats and has nothing to do with gay movement. I honestly don't know any of my gay friends who participate in pride anymore and I live in SF.
The one trans (or rather 'non binary') person I know is like a caricature of all the things people dislike about trans culture: he's a man who wears women's clothes, surrounds himself (or rather 'themself') with plush toys and My Little Pony crap, and posts on social media about how important Pride Month is for 'us'.
I don't think he's part of any grand conspiracy, I just think he's a bit of a weirdo, but you can see how people like that would gravitate towards an identity that allows them to be as provocative as they like and still claim victim status. He's not gay and has a daughter btw 😳
Sounds exactly like the local we see at our coffee shop who has a few kids. He looks so ridiculous with his pink and green eye shadow and really bad outfits, yet he uses his victim status to be outright rude to the staff. The manager of the coffee shop however won't put up with any of his bullshit and last time told him/her/they/them needed to leave. The manager is a gay man so he doesn't get any pushback.
That's good that the manager stood up to him, but it really shouldn't matter that he's gay. These people are just antisocial and unpleasant.
When people with kids do it it's a whole other level of horrific. I have a post about exactly that in my drafts that I will finish sooner or later
I agree 100% about him being gay shouldn't matter but I think it was relevant because I'm not sure if the Manager were straight, he or she would be given the same grace on their actions of telling the ridiculous person to leave. This is in San Francisco and the liberal meter runs high.
Given the grace by whom? If people would stand up for an antisocial bully simply because he's trans, I'd say they're part of the problem. I feel like this state of affairs can't go on much longer
I completely agree. We won the freedom to marry by showing society we were no threat, nor were we really any different than they were. It seems the trans movement wants the complete opposite. I say let them have it and let us take back our movement from them, HRC, and all the other homophobes who have infiltrated the gay movement.
Yes, it really feels like they're gaslighting by acting threateningly but then demanding love and acceptance, kinda like they WANT the inevitable backlash.
I had to look up who HRC were, and I see their office in DC says on the facade in huge lettering 'Black Lives Matter | Black Trans Lives Matter'. Real inclusive!
LGB Alliance and LGB Without the T already do that. I support them.
What a fabulous column. It hit every point. Anticipated almost every concern. Our neighbors gave away pride flags and I wouldn't take one because lately, I can't stomach TQ part of the organization. Not the actual people, I will respect any adult that makes that choice, but the constant pushing and propaganda that is infecting our elementary schools and libraries. I took my kids out of CCD at the Catholic church when they showed them abortion films at grade one because it wasn't appropriate. I feel the same way about promoting gender confusion and the hard sell of hormones and surgery. Thirteen year olds make stupid decisions. Adults have to start acting like adults.
I also won't accept the new flags, only the original rainbow flag.
I agree with your perspective on this issue. It’s important to protect children from inappropriate content and let them make informed decisions when they’re older.
Agree completely. As a 69-year old lesbian, I won't participate anymore in the travesty that is "Pride". Straight, left-leaning people seem to love it. I was just traveling around the nation and my various hosts oohed and aahed at the many buildings - including the Trump tower in Chicago - awash with the rainbow colors. I just want it to go back to the event being one day at whatever town you are in. That said, as long as the non-gays rule the roost, it's their parade/pride not mine.
I understand where you’re coming from. It can be frustrating when something that was meant to be inclusive starts to feel commercialized or co-opted by those outside the community.
Your article a superb summary of the concerns of a growing number of traditional liberals who have long supported human and civil rights for sexual minorities. We are fed up with the narcissism of fanatical activists . Legal protections and tolerance are the essential goals in a pluralistic society, not hegemony of thought.
Hear, hear! Thanks very much, Patrick. We in FAIR were very much hoping that our series of PRIDE articles this month would highlight that many of us -- inside and outside the LGBTQ+ "community" -- have the same concerns.
Good article, thanks. As a straight woman I share the concerns I've been hearing from my lesbian sisters and frankly, think that an elite of powerful men with certain sexual perversions have been responsible for turning what is actually a very rare psychiatric condition (gender dysphoria) into the false notion that we can "choose" our gender. How else can you explain the relatively sudden explosion of encouraging transgenderism in schools... its embrace by large corporations and the medical and psychology fields? After reading about the possible complications of transitioning surgically from male to female I can't explain how doctors, sworn to "do no harm", could endorse these horrific procedures. Why are they pushing drag queens on children in schools, libraries, women's restrooms and public events? At the risk of being labelled a conspiracy theorist, I think this elite-from-hell simply wants to normalize their own perversions (ranging from cross-dressing to pedophilia) and recruit more bodies to "play" with and/or traffic for profit. I don't have children but if I did, I would not allow them to attend a school where gender ideology is taught. Prior to the "transgender explosion" few hetero people that I know were worried about gay or lesbian indoctrination of our youth. Now, the entire LGB community is being slandered.
This is the third excellent article I’ve read this week on PRIDE et al. My particular interest is as an Episcopalian, a faith that welcomes ALL. And we DO. But these articles have educated me on the need for PRIDE (the 1st article) AND also acknowledged my unease with PRIDE, (the second two articles). Thank you, FAIR.
Thank you, Libbie. We in FAIR appreciate your support!
I see the T part of the acronym as the same thing as those who used to push for conversion therapy for gay youth. To the the TRAs if you are a female who likes other females, you aren't actually a female but a male. That way you are actually NOT a homosexual . So they are just transing away the gay instead of praying it away like in the old days. They are no friend to the LGB community.
Exactly! Promoting medical transitioning in youths suffering from gender dysphoria (who are more than likely gay) is actually homophobic.
Yes: "Even the most tolerant heterosexual may question why they’re seeing Pride flags at their local hardware store or plastered on a bag of Doritos." Forced teaming has caused harm to the LGB community, and that makes me sad. Throat shoving has gone too far, and it too is causing harm. Trans activism has gone too extreme. But perhaps it had to go off the rails before others could question it and make a course correction?
I am hoping with all my heart that we can steer this train back on course before it veers over a cliff. I also worry that the same dynamic has gripped the black community. Throat shoving has its limits with respect to all of the myriad victim groups who are being exploited.
So well said. Perhaps initial good intentions went so extreme and then off the rails that it has all backfired for many groups. I hope it can all find its way back to a better place.
I think much of the backlash is not against Pride itself, but rather to the commercialization of it. Its similar to people who bemoan the secularization of Christmas.
Couldn't agree more, Milo -- hence my analogy to the holiday-drenched season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's become nauseating.
Hi Monica,
In my zeal to jump into the conversation, I neglected to thank you for writing this article. It is very well-written, even-handed, and sober. I am sharing it with some of my conservative gay friends.
I so appreciate that, Milo. I think it's very important that as many members of the LGB community as possible understand the need to speak up. We need to let those outside our community know that we are not uniformly in agreement with the direction the movement is heading.
Perhaps somewhat, but the imposition of "queer" sensibility on Pride is also an issue. In queer sensibility, the main impetus is "épater les bourgeois" - shock or embarrass the middle-class. Every Pride festival is MORE MORE MORE - more shocking, more nudity, more in-your-face gay outrage. People are encouraged to bring children and then get this kind of offensive shit shoved down their throats. It's vile and disgusting.
It's not just about shock value. Queer is a totalitarian religious doctrine that claims a moral imperative to destroy all concepts of normal and all boundaries.
One of the strategies is to intensify the shock value until no one is capable of being shocked by anything. It's a desensitizing technique. Shock is a major mechanism for boundaries of all kinds.
The technique is working on far too many people.
I was at a small protest against transing bathrooms and locker rooms at a local high school ahead of a school board meeting on Monday night. There was a lone counter-protester—a 17 year old boy—who engaged me in a calm conversation. I explained to him that my position is that it is one thing for an individual to make their own gender identity more important than their biological sex, but there was no justification to create public policy that puts everyone in that position. He argued that identity is reality. I asked him if he remembered the case of Rachel Dolezal. While he did not remember the name, he remembered the controversy. I asked him, "what if I identified as white?" His response was, "you can be white if you want to be."
Milo, I think this argument needs to be made much more vigorously because it really tests the logic (or lack thereof) in gender theory.
If gender is a construct, then why isn't race? There are far more innate biological and genetic differences between males and females than there are between Black and White people.
The young man you engaged clearly has a dim recollection of Dolezal's experience. She wasn't allowed to identify as Black, so why in the world would you be allowed to identify as White? I would have pushed him to explain this double standard.
There is no "reality" to this viewpoint. There is nothing which can be called "truth". It's all intersectional victimhood. Your buddy there does not understand how much he is violating the Hierarchy of True Victimhood. If he had the temerity to make this statement in front of a group of black lesbians, he would be beaten to a pulp.
The long-term objective is normalization of pedophilia, or at least lowering the age of consent. I agree with you.
I totally agree with that. I have often criticized Pride events as being too much about sexuality, and not enough (hardly at all, actually) about the history and achievements of sexual minorities. Maybe decades of Black History Month have set the bar a bit high in my mind.
I've seen many commentaries on the dissonance between LGB and T in the past few years, and they have also illuminated the conclusion that LGB and T is a shotgun marriage. That's been reinforced by the emergence of the term "genital preference" when matters of sexual orientation are referenced - as if one's private bits are irrelevant to orientation.
This is wacky, but that doesn't mean that the loudest activist voices aren't saying it.
Trans is a deeply homophobic movement.
Great article though I'd disagree that the movement was spawned only by Stomewall.
One thing you wrote:
LGBTQ+ activists also fail to recognize that the cavalcade of gender identities has brought an aspect to advocacy efforts not previously part of the LGB movement: an emphasis on educating children about sexual orientation and gender.
When I was a child, my anxiety about being gay and the questions from children about me and my husband (25th anniversary; married in Holland) have been not how we have sex, or sexual orientation, it was marriage. That's what children first see - the two parent household and the expectation they will be in one. I thought I would only be married if I became a girl.
A six year old daughter of a Dutch colleqgue who asks - "Are A and B married?" "Yes". "But they're boys". "Men and Women can marry; men can also marry men, and women can marry women". "Oh OK. What's for lunch".
No sex or gender, just a reassurance of facts at the level that makes sense. For gay boys and lesbian girls, I suspect that feeling they will find the right boy or girl is all the reassurance they need to feel belonging, and not isolated. Anything else is disorientatig because teaching children the mechanics of sex (not reproduction) is for the most part not something they can comprehend until puberty.
A friend of mine who is an Anthropologist of note feels the TQ+ side is a wedge issue which will be used increasingly attack the GLB side; she certainly has experienced it as a feminist for decades. I have to agree with her.
In the US we need a parade June 26 to celebrate the ruling on federal decriminalization of gay and lesbian sex (2003), federal recognition of marriage (2013), and same-sex marriage as a right (2015) - all of which occured on the same day; full civil rights as any other citizen.
That's all by, for, and about GLB freedom, and needs no month, week, or day of festivities.
And it's close enough to the Stonewall Riots kickoff date of June 28, 1969, which is what the original pride-like event in NYC was commemorating the following year.
I am generating a 50 book series tracing a half century of gay life through the eyes of 8 men going to fire island each summer.
I’ll release tiny eye candy videos here made from chapter summaries with “what also happened” voiceover, there is so much going on in the background it’s amazing.
Yep.
Let’s not forget that the real goal - not of the useful idiots - but of the funding sources and power wielding elites- is the destabilization of the family as the social unit, and so, what seems like obviously NOT OKAY behaviors - not “pride” but instead “shoving it down your throat” - is exactly what they want to do until they’ve compromised enough children, enough youth, enough of the reproductive futures of so many females, that no one blinks an eye when pharma/medical big tech runs and continues its monopoly, financial and otherwise, of “human” reproduction. See, Pritzker et al.
Also, I am supportive of LGB. They are two separate groups from my perspective. And, it's not fair to judge all based on the tq+2S
Spot on. It used to be a parade, now it's a purity test (especially w/ Pride Committees excluding Jews & gay officers). Ironically, all this inclusion is actually excluding an entire group, whom I call "People of Fun". Remember fun?
Honestly? A homophobe couldn't even PLAN such an act of sabotage. Sadly, it was the attention-seekers from within our own ranks who've f'd this up. We need new leadership, ASAP.
I am not just sad about this, I'm angry.