As a progressive left woman, I spent countless years supporting the US Democratic party just to watch them concede important women's issues over and over. Our needs were always sacrificed for the sake of compromise. It's clear now that the party always had the ability to fight for controversial legislation, it just lacked the desire. It would rather cater to a minuscule number of men who think they're woman than actual adult human females.
This pseudo science gender identity nonsense is the last straw! The audacious behavior of usurping all women fought and created for themselves and handing it over to men lays bare the misogyny of the left. I am officially done supporting a party that doesn't support women. I used to wonder why the left had such a hard time figuring out why they lost elections, but seeing how they can't recognize material reality, it makes perfect sense. Enjoy losing the next election! I've pulled my donations for Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. Every time they send an envelope to me asking for money I send it back with a reason why I regretfully (and understand it's true regret) will not be sending them money.
I've also discontinued my membership the the NSTA (National Science Teacher Association) which has been a reliable advocate of democratic causes that I believe in such as education and action about climate change. Now even they have published material suggesting that biology teachers change their language around genetics lessons. I've fought the good fight making sure students understand climate change and evolution in the face of pushback from conservative families and organizations. I can't believe I now have to fight with the left, and TRANS is the big issue they want to prioritize. 2/28/2021 The gender identity ideology seems less about acceptance of ourselves and others and more about forcing others to agreeRead Now I’m a disabled LGB woman who has leaned far to the liberal left my entire life. I’ve been a voting member of the US Democratic Party since the 2000 Presidential elections. I was involved in Gay rights activism in the 90’s and 00’s, I protested the Iraq war, and have been a disabled rights activist for the last dozen years. I’m a Democratic socialist who resisted Trump and boosted the DP’s candidates. I’ve voted straight Democrat every ticket of my adult life. I have a bachelors in science and believe in the promise of the scientific method. I believe in diplomacy over violence. I believe in tolerance and open debate.
However, I no longer feel that my party represents me. As a disabled woman, I depend on sex-based laws and medical research that accounts for the material difference between male and female patients. There is already a disparity in medical research and healthcare outcomes for women. Now the Biden administration is further diminishing sex-based legal protections. Major medical institutions around the world are erasing the language of biological sex and the liberal government parties around the world are facilitating the process. It goes against science and will cause disproportionate harm to the human beings most dependent on medical care: the disabled. I have no problem with trans identified individuals. They should be able to dress and call themselves what they want. They should have the same rights as anyone else. However, that is not what I see happening in the trans rights movement. I don’t see people being accepted for who they are. I see people, including young children, being encouraged to change their bodies with hormones and surgery if they don’t fit snugly into rigidly-defined gender roles. I see the social pressure on young people to identify their gender driving them to deep depression and searing anxiety. I see families torn apart when a kid comes home from school one day demanding to be called by a new name and itching to call their parents abusers if they have any questions before putting their child on the path to medical transition. I see culture wars breaking out all over the world over this issue, and anyone with doubts or quest being branded as a right-wing bigot. I see women being called TERF for using the word ‘woman.’ I see women deplatformed, doxxed, harassed, fired, and threatened with death and ‘corrective’ rape for saying only people born female can menstruate or get cervical cancer. Or for asking what safeguards are in place to prevent children being accidentally treated for gender identity disorder. I see people with whom I once shared a political party and tolerant world-view accept this kind of behavior because they think the target of such harassment is transphobic and therefore barely human. I see women being told to make room in their legal protections, sports, changing rooms, domestic violence shelters, trauma support groups, rape crisis centers, and online spaces for any male born individual who self-identifies as a woman. Regardless of whether or not this person has done anything to transition, if a male claims to feel female, they should be allowed to bunk with a battered woman in a rape crisis center or be moved to a women’s prison. I have no problem with trans identified people having equal protections, third spaces in sensitive situations like jail, hospital rooms, changing rooms, and trauma support groups. I would love to see more peer-reviewed and replicable research on gender and more effective treatments for dysphoria. I would willingly donate my money and volunteer my time to make these things a reality. I want everyone to live their safest and most authentic life. They should have the same access to healthcare, housing, and gainful employment as their countrymen. Equal, not superior access. Equal, not superior social status. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening. The gender identity ideology seems less about acceptance of ourselves and others and more about forcing others to agree. That behavior is not compatible with a liberal Democratic society. I would not support such means regardless of the end. I can’t support self-ID laws. I can’t support the erosion of women’s sex-based rights. If that one principle is enough to convince you that I am no longer a member or the liberal left and have joined the authoritarian right, you may have a shallow or distorted view of the issues involved in the gender identity debate. I align with Democrats on so much, and still half-heartedly vote for them, but I cannot throw my money at them (or organizations like the ACLU) any longer. I can't be part of my own erasure.
I'm a software engineer. To have fought against sexism in pursuing my technical interests since I was a child is far beyond the experience of any "trans woman" who became a principal engineer before coming out in "her" 30s. I am willing to meet the trans community halfway, but I'm at the point where I can't point out that there are only two gametes before being called a bigot. I am willing to separate biological classification from social classification (which is why I stood with the trans community 10 years ago), but I am not willing to erase biology when it's a fundamental part of how I am treated. I am willing to allow transwomen in my safe spaces, but only after they have met a certain bar, far beyond that of mere stated self-ID. I am willing to call trans people by their preferred pronouns, but I am unwilling to pretend that self-identification is infallible, and I am unwilling to ignore or trample the growing body of detrans people (primarily gnc girls/women like I was/am) who have been deeply harmed by the lack of medical standards around diagnosis. I've redirected my financial support towards charities that fight FGM and sex trafficking. 2/28/2021 Third generation American Democrat who cannot in good conscious continue to support the Democratic PartyRead Now Third generation American Democrat who cannot in good conscious continue to support the Democratic Party. How can a party bark on about science, but also support magical thinking/delusions about "women trapped in men's bodies." It's not just politically unsound... it's downright batshit crazy!
For starters, I have embraced the idea that sexism is, in fact, bipartisan. This movement, on making sex nonexistent on a biological basis, has prompted me to look elsewhere and be more active on social media with the truth that I know. I have strongly considered continuing the legacy that Flo Kennedy left behind. She founded a political party, called 'The Feminist Party', and I now believe it to be our best bet at combating misogyny. Both the left and the right have evaded any responsibility of sexism and misogyny for far too long in U.S. history. I think sex-based and sex-motivated political sociology and philosophy (i.e. real feminism) is our best way forward for our sisters and brothers. The denial of existence of sex from the left as a singular oppressing problem, has prompted me to reconsider what is truly in our best interests as women and as people.
It's hard to imagine feeling welcome on the left anymore, though my own politics haven't changed. I haven't left the left, but it feels like it's left me. I looked for a climate-action group to join and found all kinds of ideological expectations I couldn't submit to (e.g., climate-action groups dictating "transwomen are women"). After years of donating to Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, I had to walk away from both organizations. Planned Parenthood wouldn't ensure that my donations would go to abortion and contraception and I refuse to fund PP's involvement in what I see as a huge medical scandal: transitioning young people. It's hard not to feel cynical about who benefits from these divisions, this sapping of energy that could go to something practical and material but instead spins endlessly around matters of identitarian decorum. Why is trans activism such an effective instrument of division within the Left and destruction of women’s rights, yet such a poor vehicle for delivering actual services and protections that trans people need?
Rewind five or six years. Did I ever imagine that an ideology would come between some of my closest friends and me, and that rather than sorting through it, those friends would refuse to hear a word I said? No, I couldn't imagine anything like that. Nor could I imagine that friends who were writers and artists and intellectuals and creative people would express themselves not with their own words and ideas but through slogans that stop thought in its tracks. Did I ever think I would be rejected or repelled by the activist circles where I spent so much time? That issues as diverse and urgent as climate change and racial justice would expect me to submit to a set of ideological beliefs about gender? What does parroting gender ideology have to do with fighting climate change? What does this requirement do but divide the left? Just a few years ago, I couldn't have foreseen any of this. Yet it's plowed through the left like a runaway freight train. Where's this really coming from? Where's it headed? 2/27/2021 As a desisting teenage social transitioner, the idea of access for under 18 medical transition... is terrifyingRead Now I feel safer at events with large conservative populations than Pride events. Gun shows, the rural gym I go to, the trade school I'm in. People are likely carrying in the first two places but they aren't brandishing weapons with a threat behind them, meanwhile, if I go into the city nearest to me during pride there's nearly always armed trans demonstrators, brandishing their weapons as a threat, baseball bats, hand on holster open carrying. I've also left the democratic party, stopped being involved in on campus LGBT (really TQIA) groups. I'm definitely more wary out in public than before. I'm focusing more on being aware of my surroundings because local TIMs have become so charged up LOOKING for fights. They've been especially emboldened by Dr Levine's recent nomination, moreso than when Dr Levine became our Health Secretary in PA. My stance on the democratic party became more firmly against when Senator Rand Paul actually made sense for the first time when he raised child safe guarding at Dr Levine's hearing and the reactionary stance most if not all democrats took on the issue. As a desisting teenage social transitioner, the idea of access for adolescents and pediatrics for under 18 medical transition and off label, unresearched puberty blockers is terrifying. I would not say I am a republican, though I do find after leaving the democratic party I am likely more in line with constitutional moderates and libertarians
2/27/2021 Intersectional feminism exposes the deep rooted seam of misogyny that taints the majority of Leftist movementsRead Now I was lucky enough to be part of the second wave of feminism in the early 80s. I was motivated to join the movement by my experiences of being talked over/down to at SWP meetings (Well before their appalling treatment of two young female victims of abuse at the hands of a male senior member of the central committee).
Some groups, such as lesbians and black feminists, felt their concerns were not being listened to. In response the Feminist movement implemented forums for these groups so that they could clarify the issues and feed back to main meetings. All members were expected to listen and act on those concerns. There were many black and/or lesbian feminists who made huge advances to the cause of women's equality. Too many to mention. Fast forward to 2015. I was invited to a meeting of International Socialists (morphed from SWP as they wanted to avoid the guilt by association with that organisation's rape apologist past). I sat in silence as men declared that Feminism's second wave was driven by and for middle class white women. That the way forward was intersection feminism which was for everyone and I, as a cis-female, was born into privilege. I waited patiently for my turn to speak which, due to me being female was when all the men had spoken. I informed them that they were denying the existence and victories of thousands of black second wave feminists, that my upbringing in a misogynistic religious state refuted the assertion that there is no such thing as patriarchy and that ultimately the term intersectional feminism appropriated by the left was stolen from a black feminist ( Kimberly Crenshaw)who coined the term to describe her oppression both as a woman and black woman. As ever, women do the work and men take the credit. I kept going,despite being constantly interrupted, until I said all I needed to say. I was not informed of any further meetings. Intersectional feminism exposes the deep rooted seam of misogyny that taints the majority of Leftist movements. I have always been a feminist, since I was a child, being a tomboy (now called gender non-conforming). I was free to do things that traditionally were viewed as for boys. I did not believe in that non-sense. That attitude was what led me to being a far-left Democrat. Until last year, when I learned that Democrats betrayed us. How they allowed language to be changed, compelling us to censor our speech, our thinking, and going so far to criminalize people for saying things that are biologically true. Then I fell hard when I learned public education has drunk deeply of gender ideology so deeply that my daughters came home thinking they are boys when in truth they are gender non-conforming. Learning that the way law is set up, the way technological companies, the healthcare, and many more are geared toward gender-affirming children without any regard to typical child and adolescent development, to medicalize their usual feelings of discomfort over growing up, to finding out that the allies of gender ideology are not friends to women and children has torn me out of my allegiance to the Democrat Party, and I still can't find myself aligned with the Republican Party because there are a lot of issues I do not agree with in that party. So I am politically homeless, and I am angry. I am angry that so many people who have-not taken the time to think critically how gender ideology has caused them harm, has caused them to be compelled to call us terfs for asking legitimate questions. Then I find out UN, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, so many more that I have donating to, have joined in the kool-aid of gender cult. It is clear to me that both political parties and human rights organizations view women and children as sub-human. That certainly is nothing new, something we have been fighting for a long long long time. Every right we won for the women and children, we lose it. I am taking my vote and money to a party and organizations that prioritize women and children. Every single one of you on Earth came from a woman. Gender ideology means you spit on every single mother that bore you.
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