19 Comments

Thank you, much appreciated! It’s been awhile since I participated on this thread.

I’suspect transphobia and identity hatred of all kinds will have less potency as today’s young people mature and take positions of power. Anyone who was school age during the pandemic (from pre-school to college) are not like us. We’ve only scratched the surface on understanding how they are different.

With the ugly state of our country and planet, I only hope we make it long enough for them to lead.

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It is heartening to hear of public conservatives trying out compassion for gay people on for size, thank you for sharing that. I hope it’s sincere, not at anyone’s expense and continues - it’s so needed and sincerely welcomed.

But the erasure “argument” remains as bizarre to me as it ever has. It is, in fact, exactly the same as someone saying gay marriage is somehow “erasing” their heterosexual marriage. It’s nonsensical and the jaw drops: the projection so pristine, the mind boggles,

Who is erasing who? The married people minding their own business or the busybodies trying to disappear their marriage? It’s unhinged.

Tell me how a transgender woman erases you. I’m genuinely curious. The reality is, nothing outside of yourself can erase you. Since we’re being honest and worrying about indoctrination - how is this concept not right wing gender indoctrination, this paranoia about being erased? It’s disassociation and crazy making.

Please convince me otherwise, you’re a smart fellow and a deep thinker. It makes no sense to me so far. I hear you loud and clear on the self-esteem issues with gay youth, I’m very familiar as a social worker who has worked with them for years.

I also have an 18 year old son with a rainbow friend group of everything and everybody that practically lives at my house. I do love them.

My cis het son did not feel erased when his gay best friend came out as a trans girl. Nothing changed in their friendship except for the pronouns and name. They are closer than ever. About three years ago, my son put a picture on the fridge of her wearing her first dress. “I’ve never seen her so happy,” he said beaming.

They are still thick as thieves and now with my son’s girlfriend too. They were on the all gender wrestling team together three years in a row..

The hysteria from any ideology around LGBTQ youth doesn’t enter our lives. We’re a supportive community indoctrinating no one. We’re too busy with day to day life, helping these kids apply to college and survive adolescents in 2023. Im just tired of extremism from anyone. It doesn’t reflect the lived experiences of most people. Please be careful about that.

All the best -

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Hello, this article is several months old but I just discovered your work.

You never once use the word “woke,” which differentiates you in the best way. Woke is a meaningless word that’s devolved in to a lazy slur that amusingly parrots exactly what it’s trying to attack. Any point the user of the word is floundering around trying to is instantly lost. Ask someone, anyone, to define the word “woke” and they’ll ignore you or scoff at you as smugly as any identity warrior.

You’re all the more persuasive for moving beyond it and actually thinking instead of speechifying to the choir. I’m not quite as concerned as you are by the identity issues you cover, but I do remember going to Columbia later in life myself and feeling stifled too.

I’d attended the New School in Greenwich Village before Columbia, and they ran circles around Columbia in every way - academically and certainly with any type of orthodoxy. Anyone who speechified liberal orthodoxy in class expecting for it to end there was quickly disabused of the notion. I say this as a liberal - it was delightful. Professors demanded that anyone support their contentions with tight, well-supported facts, not cant, whatever their ideology.

Despite the progressive reputation of the New School, the few conservatives that were there were always more than welcome to discuss whatever they wanted to, as long as they defended their case logically. Not so once I got to Columbia. The thinking was much flabbier there.

I look forward to reading more of your work, you’re an outstanding writer!

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One side of this debate is forty year old lesbians who want gender to be a construct so they don’t have to be around male energies, the other side of this debate is young gay guys who resent they can’t sleep with the emotionally damaged and vulnerable young person who says, I’m a woman, not a gay man. Me in the middle, I’m avoiding both of these people, because I think they are ridiculous.

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Sep 6, 2022Liked by Ben Appel

The term "faggot" doesn't bother me any more, but then I am in my fifties and much wiser about the world and myself than I was thirty years ago, when it laid me out. That said, Chase Strangio has a lot of nerve trying to own the word, but then he is an ACLU lawyer who announced his intention to suppress distribution of a book. So, I consider the source.

I'm looking forward to the book, BTW. Apparently, cis white gay men are now The Oppressors, so it's about time we had a book about us. ;-)

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Sep 5, 2022Liked by Ben Appel

Your criticism of "faggot" is right on target. I think the same about queer. The situation with that word may be even worse. Hardly a day goes by without somebody on NPR carrying on about "queer" something or other or someone labeling themselves as "queer". To me the two words are and always have been hate speech, fully as much "verbal violence" as the forbidden N-word. A couple weeks ago I heard a report on NPR that a large majority of the people who identify as "queer" are in fact entirely heterosexual in their history and current behavior! (Sorry. I can't give the exact numbers or source. I was only half listening while I made coffee.) It solidified my suspicion that all the "queers" running around nowadays are a bunch of over privileged 30 somethings who think the world began when they dropped down the chute circa 1990 and feel the need to borrow some of the cachet of oppression. I doubt they know anything of oppression except what they learned in their Grievance Studies classes. Here endeth the rant.

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Sep 4, 2022Liked by Ben Appel

You. Thank goodness for you and Lisa Selin Davis and Meghan Daum and Andrew Sullivan and Corinna Cohn and all the other ‘heretics’ out here writing about this Gender Land. I am a female. I am a mother. An actor and a writer. I don’t ’identify’ as ‘cis’. I don’t understand what ‘gender’ is but I will call someone whatever they want to be called and I understand that there is suffering being experienced by folks and that is real.

We need to be able to speak with one another and we need to stop demonizing folks that have different opinions.

Thank you Ben.

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Sep 4, 2022Liked by Ben Appel

Several years ago I told a friend that the biggest threats to gays would be coming from left-wing ideology, not the right. He a straight progressive rolled his eyes in disbelief.

I came out in the 1970s and have never been ashamed of being gay, although have been fully aware of the price paid. Many of my friends now are relatively affluent, to substantially affluent gay men in their 50s and 60s. It's amazing to talk to them about politics.....it's as if their mental frame of reference is 20 years behind. Several are big time donors to HRC.

Mostly clueless of gender theory and the effect that is having on women and gays and lesbians. Not just clueless, but in many ways, recalcintrantly clueless. And dismissive of ideas that challenge "right side of history" teleology.

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deletedSep 5, 2022Liked by Ben Appel
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