*transphobia: fear of the trans mob
I rarely cry, but I couldn’t hold back the tears yesterday, as I recited the Oath of Allegiance and swore loyalty to my new and second homeland, the United States of America. The Oath Swearing Ceremony was important to me. I had given much thought to finding appropriate clothes for the occasion and managed to find a red, white, and blue outfit that I thought was both tasteful and respectable. I received my resident card over twenty years ago; the reason I was just now becoming a U.S. citizen was only because of my procrastination. But it was still a very important day in my life, up there with the unforgettable days of my children’s births.
When I returned home from the ceremony, I sat down with a cup of coffee and sent my family in Iceland a picture of the happy occasion. Then I checked my email and found a notice waiting for me from the writing platform Medium. It informed me that my account had been suspended for a violation of their rules: I had spread “hateful content.” This wasn’t the first time I had run afoul of Medium’s rules of supposed decor. The first article I published on platform, criticizing a trans activist’s libelous piece calling for depriving people of their free speech rights was deemed "hate speech" and removed (I republished the article on Substack, and it will give you a good and hilarious idea of what passes for acceptable discourse on Medium), and now I'd been "removed."
I didn’t expect Medium to do me the courtesy of explaining which written words of mine they determined to be “hate speech.” Perhaps it was that I wrote “woman,” instead of “vagina-haver” or that carriers of testicle sacks (oh, I forgot, the gender ideology cult has nothing against “man” - only “women” are offensive) could not give birth to children. But one expects neither civility nor professionalism from a platform that celebrates illiberal, anti-reality, anti-science writers, who spread lies and dangerous, pro child abuse propaganda, are too lazy to source their statements (admittedly, it is difficult to find credible sources for baseless nonsense), and are incapable of expressing their hateful rhetoric without accentuating it with four-letter swear words - the kind of writing that Medium considers the nadir of civil discourse, and it's no big loss to be kicked out of the company of its ignorant and sloppy producers. What is enraging is that platforms like Medium can flourish in the birthplace of freedom of expression, freedom that they exploit to promote their own hate speech while trampling on your free speech.
Like so many others, Medium mistakenly believes that the trans ideology the platform exists to promote is a civil rights campaign. But trans activism is not to be confused with genuine civil rights movements and "extending privileges unjustly hoarded by a favored group to a marginalized one," as Helen Joyce writes in her excellent book Trans - When Ideology Meets Reality. "It is a belief system that demands validation by others. Gender self-identification is a misnomer. It is about requiring others to identify you as a member of the sex you proclaim." As civil-rights wannabes, trans activists also desperately ride on the coattails of the gay rights movement (while denouncing gay and lesbian alliances as bigoted “hate groups"). Gays, however, just want to be accepted for who they are; trans activists demand to be accepted for who they are not. Or else.
Or else, indeed. Criticism of the trans movement is not for the faint of heart. Those who dare to do so risk their livelihoods and lives. They and their families are subjected to threats of violence and death and atrocious verbal abuse campaigns on social media. It is not just public figures and celebrities that are "canceled" and "deplatformed" - as Medium knows, busy stamping on the free speech rights of ordinary nobodies like myself with 2 1/2 Twitter followers, to make sure our voices cannot be heard, because we don’t support madness as a matter of public policy or simply express basic scientific facts.
Another obvious factor separates civil rights from the trans movement. The ferocious hatred and violence with which trans activists and their supporters, like Medium, ram their message down the public's throats makes it impossible to square gender ideology activism with the battles of civil rights movements. Civil rights heroes did not campaign with threats of murderous violence and death. Those tactics were, as we know, liberally employed by civil rights opponents and are now embraced by trans activism proponents.
When you have to hire life-guards for yourself and your family for disagreeing with a movement's message, like J.K. Rowling, or for writing a book about it, like Helen Joyce and Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage, or for buying an advertisement featuring the dictionary definition of "woman," like Kellie-Jay Keen, you know you are not dealing with glitter-farting unicorns but a dangerous and violent terrorist mob. Everyone knows the expression "to have cojones,” but even the heaviest cojones shrivel next to the moxie of the women who fight trans activism. They possess bravery and civic honor that we rarely come across in people of our generation, let alone among the spoiled, entitled, chicken-brained brats in the one we begat, and which populate platforms like Medium. These women are civic heroes. It is because of people like them that our democracy hasn't yet been destroyed. Yet.
Íris Erlingsdóttir Lee is an Icelandic-American writer. She lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
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Wonderfully written. I loved this. You also took me back to when I took the oath of citizenship. I was so emotional, I cried. It was such a proud moment. In America and in her values, I had found my soul’s home. I cry again now when I see its values not only trampled, but widely mocked and denigrated by the very ingrates who have most benefited and prospered from these values. Welcome, and thank you for speaking up.