I am immensely grateful for the integrity, eloquence, erudition, courage and leadership you are showing on this issue Tina.
Know that you speak for me and for many, many others too. This is a masterpiece of writing on a most complex and contentious issue. Thank you for your brave and considerate analysis of it and for generously sharing it with us. Ursula
Thank you Ursula. It's knowing that I have the support of people I trust and respect that gives me the courage I need to speak out. You have been a significant influence on my understanding over the years, and I'm so grateful for the insights you've offered me. They are very much part of my learning process on these issues. x
Thank you indeed Tina for all that you have shared so honestly, eloquently and bravely. All that you say resonates deeply with me, though I could never have found the depth and breadth of words with which you express it. I agree with all you say and offer you my 100% support.
As I read it came to mind that there were 2 versions of the Upper Room, the last Supper Upper Room, where the disciples were of the "we are right" brigade, swearing allegiance to Jesus unto death, confident he would restore them to power, unable to listen to his different narrative. The Pentecostal Upper Room gathers those who recognise they were wrong, who come broken, having abandoned Jesus and his truth, in need of healing, needing to understand a different narrative. I suggest that the Upper Room that you left is the former, pre death/Resurrection and Pentecost room. I can't enter that room for all of the reasons you so eloquently set out in your final paragraph. I applaud you and others who have left it. I believe it is not in that room but in the Pentecostal Upper Room that the Spirit is active, healing, emboldening, uniting, reconciling. it is here that the Spirit invites us to speak our truth and hear other truths and journey together towards wholeness. As you hold out your hand it is, I believe, to ask us to abandon the Upper Room of the "we are right" brigade and come instead into that Pentecostal Upper Room, which is where the Spirit can weave her wondrous creation. Thank you for the invitation. Ann
Ann, this is such a thoughtful and sustaining comment - thank you. Your support means a great deal to me, and your development of the dynamics and relationships in that Upper Room is so insightful. In fact, James Keenan's reflections also explore some of these issues, which he writes about at more length in an article in America magazine - and without relating it to the LGBTQA+ community. He writes:
"[T]he Upper Room serves as a shared space for mourning and gathering reports. The disciples’ grief was not an obstacle to them recognizing Jesus, but rather, the passageway itself to the recognition. Through their grief, they became more vulnerable in their love for Jesus, which enabled them to recognize his risen, vulnerable presence. These words—grief, vulnerability and recognition—are thus inextricably linked to the Pentecost story and, in particular, to the role the Spirit plays in their lives and our lives in the church."
Mercy there is so much info. I don’t understand why you are lining up all groups in opposition to self sufficient white women ? That certainly suggests essentialism. Are all self sufficient white women a monolith?
Here’s my experience of Tina. She ran herself raged making it possible for ”women” all over the world to contribute to and attend the CWS book roll out in Rome That included trying to fund it
My own essay was only included after enormous patience on Tina’s part to revise it. She wanted the voices of unhoused single mothers to be heard.
When in Rome Tina clearly warned all white western women to forgo being interviewed by journalists and news reporters as we always have access in sharing a public voice. At first I felt it was a bit prejudiced. When I thought about it I realized she was right!
So while you may not know it Tina not only is an advocate and employs a preferential option for ALL WOMEN but also GLBTQUIA+ persons. Because she is a public person she puts her money where her mouth is.
I hope these experiences add to understanding.
I think you are preaching to the choir Mercy Your heart is in the right place as is Tina’s along with her actions
Exactly my point Therese! I agree “White women” are not a monolith, just as “women” in general are not a monolith… which is why I wrote: “‘ woman’ as a noun needs to be often qualified depending upon the context; if you’re writing about the privileged, educated, white, all-limbs, all body-parts, heart and soul intact woman, versus, those privileged, but heartless, soulless, vs. those brown, or those in western ghettos, or those picking strawberries in California, or those in wheelchairs, in nursing homes, context matters. Not all the concerns of these varying groups conform to each other, whether with respect to biology, to affordable healthcare, or with respect to income-earning possibilities etc.. And now there’s the additional context of gender. “
This was my response to the fear expressed in Jane Clare Jones’ post on the “Annals of the TERF Wars” on the erasure of the word “woman” - seems to be a British feminist fear - maybe I don’t know enough but I don’t hear poor and needy women in developing countries or their spokespeople fighting with TRANS or other gender-nonconforming marginalized minorities - they’re just all struggling together for help on their day to day needs for survival… it’s only the well-to-do with time on their hands who spend their energy and imagination on satire, and plays with words - so my comment was addressed to them!
I think it’s interesting that as we struggle to define “difference” and challenge essentialism, yet individuals and different cultural groups can become political and “essentialists” themselves, afraid to suggest that not everything is right for everyone. Not every gay person is into S & M or spikes or whips. Why should it be present in a kid’s book? How would you feel about condoms or dildos in a child’s book. A difference in one group can stand without suggesting those decisions are right for everyone,and suggesting that everything is a human construction. Time is a human construction and space, clocks, maps, street names are constructions based on a social need and reality. Biology is very fascinating. I watched Charlie Rose Series on the Brain 2015. Ben Barres a transgender doctor was interviewed. It was fascinating. He discussed changes that happen intra-utero which may account for transgender identify,
To me the the fundamental flaw of seeing you as a terf, Tina. Is that you have questions and you have differences. You are engaged in the dialogue. If the response to questions and dialogue is name calling and exclusion, the accusatory cultural group has become the very thing they abhor. They are political and ideological essentialists afraid of difference and questions - at the expense of others who are trying to develop their voice and sense of agency related to questions of gender and are fundamentally in support of respecting difference.
There may be very young children who are clearly trans at a very young age. Loving parents have discovered this and cooperate with teams of specialists to pave the way for their children’s transition. It is deplorabe that in our country politicians have worked to change rules so that these parents cannot follow up with the decisions they have made with reputabe doctors related to sex transitions. There are also tons of teens who are vulnerable and trying to discern who they are. This is a great challenge. I think half or more of the women I know married because they felt the pull of erotica and believed only within the sacrament of marriage is any expression of this desire legitimate. The divorce rate speaks to this. We are an evolving body of humanity. I am in agreement with Tina that we are responsible to protect children during the phase of wondering about gender.
As a Christian I know in heaven there is neither male nor female. Gender will have been fulfilled into something far greater. However, we are on earth just now. No doubt we feel the tensions of who we are and nothing about us or in us is permanent. There are so many questions. We have a right to dialogue without being called names.
Women’s neglect and concerns worldwide are increasingly in jeopardy. There must be a space to discuss and work together for justice. I worked with a client who was very distressed as a group she formed in NYC for lesbians was “being taken over by trans issues” and not attending to the many questions the lesbian women have.
I was a pioneer in AIDS work for many many years. I supported trans women who had AIDS. Wonderful people. One woman in particular, (I will call her Meredith) comes to mind. She was African American from the south - about 6 feet tall, gorgeous sweet and soft spoken. She told me her fear was that she would end up like people she knew who were trans, all cut up!. We spoke a lot about safety. One day she was recalling that her grandparents raised her. I could see the love in her eyes in talking about them. They were devout Baptists. “They used to tell me, you are a very special child. God made you to be very very special.” - and she was! Her grandparents’ love transcended norms and mores. I loved her too and she told me she loved me.
While people have a right to question and dialogue with you Tina, they are mistaken and ignorant if they call you a terf. I admire your forthrightness and transparency. That isn’t easy as a public person. But there is a river of knowledge running under each of us that will be heard in time. The truth always surfaces. Meanwhile we know “With the measure that you measure it will be measured to you.” We answer to a higher calling. True Love.
Tina this is Mercy from Catholic Women Speak. Sorry if this comment is a little long and not as adulatory as that from your other commenters.
At the outset I want to say I have always admired your energy, your passion and your activism, not to mention the fluidity with which you tease apart and write about the things on your mind. So, I write this from a place of respect and love, and to keep the debate pure and ego-less, as also with a bit of fear and trepidation for speaking out so.
I do admire your speaking up and reaching out, with all your “self-doubt” and, I hope, love, to the people in the Upper Room; I love your quote from Padraig "Because to speak about the place where I’m right is to imply the place where other people are wrong. And there are things that I don’t want to be wrong about, hard-won things …" However might it not also mean that you may need to withdraw some of your assertions/caveats, because you (or for that matter, I) are not in the shoes of the people who have these experiences (to whit, ”if I reject the claim that some lesbians have penises; if I think it’s not possible to be born in the wrong body;") assertions such as those seem either, to be straw-men (women?) - (I don’t know if you have actually encountered someone who claims these) - or they come from an "I'm right...other people are wrong" space, (“can’t say…a trans woman is a woman”, what is so special about women other than their organs? trans-women and sport – couldn’t it depend on the particular trans-woman’s physique and the particular sport? You are neither sports-medicine specialist nor and ob-gyn and so may not be privy to all the nuances of the bodies of trans-people.) As I have shared before, someone with your large follower base on social media, will always be quoted and used by the ideologically driven to drive policy and law for those whose real experiences are exactly these that you reject, merely because you have not experienced them, nor know of someone who has. I think the world is filled with so many, many, MANY people of such diverse bodily and other characteristics that we might be well-served to keep an open, listening mind and heart if we truly claim to be speaking from love in the heart.
As far as the “protection of children” is concerned, I fear it may be a red-herring for stirrers of typical “Moral panic” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic) - I.e. those who aim to speak for the “establishment” for e.g. book banners. Clearly you are not so pro-establishment, at least for the purely “female-only” constituency, that I gather that you are comfortable advocating for; I feel each of the letters of the LGBTQ+ - the ‘alphabet soup’, as you slightly disparagingly call it - seems to represent at least one living human being that seems to be identified by the features documented by that letter, and each of them are as deserving at least of an establishment-agnostic support from you - of all people. None of them willed such an existence on themselves. The acknowledgement of their reality should not harm children, in general, if children’s exposure to it is made in an age-appropriate fashion - what if some children have such persons as siblings, as parents, as classmates, as neighbors…? Are children to be so sheltered that they cannot be explained the weirder facts of our increasingly complex, information-flooded world? For example, there are children of alcoholics or people with other addictions, whose shock and trauma could be softened by caring adults who intervene with age-appropriate explanations of the addiction concerned, instead of ignoring or dismissing their lived reality with, say, fairy-tales that they’re in la-La land where nothing bad happens - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil even if addictions are the elephant in the room - thus retraumatizing an already traumatized child; in the same way children can easily be explained the age-appropriate nuances of each of the letters of the “alphabet-soup” without hurting their sense of reality or innocence. I believe children are much more resilient than we, bourgeois parents might presume; now if you’re talking of children in the Syrian or Gaza warzones, we may be on an entirely different footing…. Though even there, Sesame Street has an early childhood project to help overcome some of such children’s brutalized sense of the world (https://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/sesame-workshop-and-international-rescue-committee-awarded-100-million-early-childhood-education-syrian-refugees.)
On your argument that increasingly adolescent children are being confused about gender identity because of the "alphabet soup’s” activism, I am not surprised; I believe it is because adults are not being straight with them, and so they are relying on information from the rumor mill, or the internet where every malady is cancer, or schizophrenia, or gender fluidity. Like Thomas Maule writing in his book 'Truth Held Forth and Maintained' in 1695, about the now debunked Salem Witch Trials "it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a Witch", so also it's better that every adolescent think carefully about their gender identity, with counselling if needed, and come out at the other side going through the same purgatory that LGBTQ+ adolescents go through - they will come out the richer for it, and so will our society.
So, with all due respect, I discard the main argument you present in your article on Grandpa’s Pride - without going into elaborate detail and using your own statement elsewhere of staying “accepting of the multitudinous ways in which red-blooded adults get their kicks” - I don’t believe that the picture in that referenced book is so damaging to children - without taking to it the analytical microscope you used, which I believe hardly any child would be likely to. If you can remember nursery rhymes that we grew up with, had far more hidden tongue-in-cheek, vulgar and politically incorrect meanings that we as children were happily unaware of and grew up unscathed.
Also a few other nitpicks: you often cite your being a mother and grandmother as affording an authority for the opinions you hold. That is really neither here nor there from the POV of a true progressive - Phyllis Schafly is likely a grandmother or great grandmother! Grandmothers such as Phyllis Schafly are often key defenders of the establishment, including but not limited to patriarchy alone. And your advocacy for your female-only constituency, in spite of being vilified by the Vatican and other Catholic academic institutions is admirable, but if it is only because you yourself are female and if you cannot see beyond that particular group’s marginalization, by offering a similar argument for the many other alphabet soups of marginalized constituencies, then I would say your feminine advocacy springs from self-interest rather than true generosity of spirit. Further to say you are a supporter of LGBTQ+ because you count individuals in that community amongst your friends and supporters, is like the infamous statement, I have a Black friend, so I can’t be accused of being against Blacks; I have a Jewish friend… can’t be against Jews. Your complaints such as the commercialization of Pride month - another one already upon us! - for example! Isn't Christmas over-commercialized? Are you railing against and turning against Christians and Catholics about that? Your comment about LGBTQ+ community being a Trojan horse of people capable of sexual violence, misogyny… etc., can you think of a few other communities who are thus capable? And isn’t this how stereo-typing begins by tarring members of a community with the worst acts of some of the black sheep in their community – Muslims and hijacking, Blacks and crime, etc. etc. Except I have much higher standards for you!
Though I might add as a reminder to myself, that all this arm-chair philosophizing or even fundraising for the rights and wrongs owed to various marginalized communities is just that: intellectual posturing - since our brains and even purse-books can handle such posturing; it’s quite different from fighting in the trenches, administering front-line aid like a Mother Teresa might, but that’s another topic altogether. Still, one should not dismiss the benefits of armchair philosophizing ‘cos that is how public awareness is built and barriers are broken down… and that is why I write to you.
So, in short, I do think Tina that you can afford to be a little more generous by holding back your complaints, petty and otherwise, about this particular “LGBTQ+ alphabet-soup” and the people behind those letters who identify as such, by holding out your hand to the Upper Room without any outright caveats, without ifs, ands, or buts, yes, with a willing suspension of disbelief.
I am reminded of the words of Rev. James Forbes (former pastor of Riverside Church in New York City) who spoke at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary’s commencement service in 2010 (https://sojo.net/articles/listening-act-love):
“He spoke of it as a time of confusion of languages, of an inability to hear one another, of an inability to be civil and to listen. But, he said, the Holy Spirit is moving.
How do we know? Well, because everything is confusing.
The Spirit is doing a new thing. The Spirit troubles the water. God’s Spirit is in the world and it is up us to learn how to listen for it, and how to listen to one another.”
Thanks - and accept my apologies, in advance, if anything I said doesn’t agree with you.
Thank you for taking the time to write this very long post Mercy, not all of which is relevant and some of which makes unwarranted assumptions about my research and experience. In Britain, we try to avoid getting sucked into US culture wars, and most of us are well aware of how the Far Right muscles in on these issues. I am also familiar with the term "moral panic", so no need to give me a link to Wikipedia!
I don't know how closely you've followed developments in this field. Several European countries now restrict the use of puberty blockers, for example: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/04/gender-affirming-care-debate-europe-dutch-protocol/673890/. Did you look at the Cass Review, linked in my article? It makes for profoundly disturbing reading. It is a high quality independent review by a respected British paediatrician, which raises serious concerns about transitioning among children and adolescents.
Did you note that one of the people I quoted was a founder of Stonewall (Simon Fanshawe)?
Of course I'll leave your comment here, and undoubtedly there are those who will agree with you. But nothing you have said is likely to change my mind, not because I'm closed to the arguments, but because I have researched, reflected and read very extensively around these issues, and in the end I changed my position. When there's a conflict between the rights of women and children and the demands of men for access, inclusivity and participation, I'll always put women and children first. And when a growing number of young adults are questioning their adolescent decisions to make irreversible changes to their developing bodies, I think adults have a profound responsibility to speak out. The only people who really benefit from this are the pharmaceutical corporations and their ideological networks.
Tina, in my effort to understand your position on this substack, I did some research:
First I must report reading this astonishing and incredibly clever satire by Jane Clare Jones - The Annals of the TERF-Wars (https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/) - and immediately your entire way of thinking became crystal clear to me - in how closely this spoof mirrored every single one of your arguments. Firstly I feel sorry for the hell British feminists are going through. It is identical in spirit, though much more sophisticated, to the ALL LIVEs MATTER activists in the US who responded in agitated panic, afraid of total erasure by the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement. (I need not explain which side of the aisle the ALL LIVES MATTER people come from.) We in the US, are also not immune from the assault of similar people who are clever with their pens, but entirely soulless from a human perspective - people like Frank Luntz who gave George Bush, of Iraq War fame, the compassionate conservative” slogan. So I beg you, do not fall prey to such fears.
Second That said, thank you for directing me to the 388 page Cass Study, which according to you was “profoundly disturbing reading.” I hope you realize per the author’s own admission as “of 31 January 2023, it had become evident that the full outputs from the study, including resulting peer-reviewed papers, would not be available in time to be published alongside my (their) final report.” (See pg 384) and from John Stewart, NHS Director’s letter to her “the necessary cooperation from the clinical leads within those services has not been forthcoming, and consequently the University of York has advised that as things currently stand, it is not appropriate to yet begin the next stage of the study.” (Pg 379-380) So basically her study does NOT have data from the 7 NHS trusts that offer GIDS services. And her only closing observation seems to be that it has “been heartbreaking to hear the struggles that young people and their families face trying to navigate their way to care. Over a number of years, the children and young people at the heart of this review have been bypassed by local services“ (pg 252.) Thus her study is like a Roscharch test offering an image that exactly reflects the mindset one brings in to the evaluation of the picture.
So if anything what I am reading from her report is that NHS is swamped and unable to adequately handle the rising number of likely legitimate requests from affected children and their parents.
Instead of using this incomplete study as basis for any scary assumptions, let us examine whatever factual statements have been presented therein:
a) For one thing the total number of children and adolescents referred to GIDS between 2009 and 2016 (see Fig 2, which is same as Fig 10!) grew from a very small base of 51 in 2009 to 1,766 in 2016 - at a compound annual growth of 66%. (This growth rate in absolute terms seems high but IMHO it is a reflection of rising awareness and availability of clinical help, just like increases in diagnosis of all kinds of diseases, from formerly obscure cancers to other rare maladies such as muscular dystrophy, COPD, you name it.)
d) Using the same 0.3% ratio above (unless you think India has a particularly high number of transgenders??), of the 12,023,605 children below 18 years in the UK in 2019 noted above, there are likely to be 27,593 children experiencing some form of gender nonconformity, that is nearly 4 to 16 times the number of children actually appearing in GIDS clinics (in 2016 it was 1,766 kids, and in the 3 years thereafter it could be projected at ~6,200, depending on whether the GIDS numbers have continued in the same trajectory since 2016) - even more “profoundly disturbing reading.”!!
So instead of the imaginary fear that normal CIS gender kids are being overtaken by gender-transitioning propaganda, maybe we should, as a community, try to provide the nurturing climate required for the missing 21K to 25K kids in UK who are NOT reporting themselves in the GIDS clinic for gender affirming care, likely due to fear of being stigmatized, or from shame, or other negative emotion which should have no place in today’s modern world.
Third In support of my plea, I echo Margaret Atwood’s words in her 2020 Twitter post “Some science here: "When Sex and Gender Collide." https://scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-science-of-sex-and-gender/ #TransGenderWomen Biology doesn't deal in sealed Either/Or compartments. We're all part of a flowing Bell curve. Respect that! Rejoice in Nature's infinite variety!” And “Nobody has said there aren't "men"+ "women." But gender and sex are two different things. Here is a thorough run-down: Addressing what was said by JK Rowling in her essay. Follow Shaaba: https://youtube.com/Shaaba17 Reference list: https://ww... http://youtube.com” (https://x.com/margaretatwood/status/1280262917506641922), and https://x.com/MargaretAtwood/status/1280341387737739264) and applaud her support of trans rights as one of 1200 signatories in their 2020 letter of solidarity (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/stephen-king-margaret-atwood-transgender-open-letter-jk-rowling-b912344.html); even if there was some borderline panic from activists on both sides of the issue who were confused by her posting Rosie DiManno’s article on the limits to the use of the noun “woman”, to which I say yeah, “woman” as a noun needs to be often qualified depending upon the context; if you’re writing about the privileged, educated, white, all-limbs, all body-parts, heart and soul intact woman, versus, those privileged, but heartless, soulless, vs. those brown, or those in western ghettos, or those picking strawberries in California, or those in wheelchairs, in nursing homes, context matters. Not all the concerns of these varying groups conform to each other, whether with respect to biology, to affordable healthcare, or with respect to income-earning possibilities etc.. And now there’s the additional context of gender. So white women relax, you are not being erased. Your place on boardrooms will be fought for and won, your healthcare, breast cancer research, cardiac care, will all be taken care of. Contraception? Well… we poor browns, and trans, and LGBTQ+/ABCDs can’t help, but we’ll try. The entire mid-upper-level management of NIH, govt institutions,as well as private sector is increasingly female! Brava! I say to that - being an upstanding female myself!.
Finally for those of your followers who really want to put their money where their mouth is, and who believe they follow Christ’s words in Matthew 25:35-40 “For I was … a stranger and you invited me in, I … was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”, I know they don’t need a reminder from me, who am totally unlettered in the intricacies of the gospel, that the “stranger”, the ”sick”, the “imprisoned”, those less fortunate than you in mind, body, health, or wealth, or any other varying garb taken by Christ is equally used by Him in bodies and spirits of Trans folks as well as every other folk represented in each of the letters of the LGBTQ “alphabet-soup”.
I know the pendulum swings one way, and then the other way, so maybe the LGBTQ wave alongwith other minority, marginalized community waves are cresting because the demands on our generosity, and empathy, and kindness, not to mention our purse strings, are getting too much out of hand. But the force of the majority, the privileged, and the self-sufficient, always takes the pendulum wildly off-center, as we saw in 1914, in 1940s, and many other periods in many other pockets of the world, and it usually harbors ill for those crushed under its weight. So as a woman who seems to be a thinking woman, who claims to be a woman with a heart, and courage please I beg you, look with kindness on those who fight with equal spirit for affiliates in their marginalized communities where Newton’s Third Law of Physics is alive and well – Every action having an equal and opposite reaction.
I will n ot be posting any more on this topic (tho' haha I think I may have made this promise on this site earlier !!)
I still respect and admire you please don't forget that!
Mercy, when you have so much to say may I suggest you start your own Substack site? I think anyone who takes the time to read your two very long posts will make their own minds up about your position and your representation of my views. Thank you for assuring me that you won't be posting any more here, though you are perfectly free to air your views elsewhere.
I am immensely grateful for the integrity, eloquence, erudition, courage and leadership you are showing on this issue Tina.
Know that you speak for me and for many, many others too. This is a masterpiece of writing on a most complex and contentious issue. Thank you for your brave and considerate analysis of it and for generously sharing it with us. Ursula
Thank you Ursula. It's knowing that I have the support of people I trust and respect that gives me the courage I need to speak out. You have been a significant influence on my understanding over the years, and I'm so grateful for the insights you've offered me. They are very much part of my learning process on these issues. x
Thank you indeed Tina for all that you have shared so honestly, eloquently and bravely. All that you say resonates deeply with me, though I could never have found the depth and breadth of words with which you express it. I agree with all you say and offer you my 100% support.
As I read it came to mind that there were 2 versions of the Upper Room, the last Supper Upper Room, where the disciples were of the "we are right" brigade, swearing allegiance to Jesus unto death, confident he would restore them to power, unable to listen to his different narrative. The Pentecostal Upper Room gathers those who recognise they were wrong, who come broken, having abandoned Jesus and his truth, in need of healing, needing to understand a different narrative. I suggest that the Upper Room that you left is the former, pre death/Resurrection and Pentecost room. I can't enter that room for all of the reasons you so eloquently set out in your final paragraph. I applaud you and others who have left it. I believe it is not in that room but in the Pentecostal Upper Room that the Spirit is active, healing, emboldening, uniting, reconciling. it is here that the Spirit invites us to speak our truth and hear other truths and journey together towards wholeness. As you hold out your hand it is, I believe, to ask us to abandon the Upper Room of the "we are right" brigade and come instead into that Pentecostal Upper Room, which is where the Spirit can weave her wondrous creation. Thank you for the invitation. Ann
Ann, this is such a thoughtful and sustaining comment - thank you. Your support means a great deal to me, and your development of the dynamics and relationships in that Upper Room is so insightful. In fact, James Keenan's reflections also explore some of these issues, which he writes about at more length in an article in America magazine - and without relating it to the LGBTQA+ community. He writes:
"[T]he Upper Room serves as a shared space for mourning and gathering reports. The disciples’ grief was not an obstacle to them recognizing Jesus, but rather, the passageway itself to the recognition. Through their grief, they became more vulnerable in their love for Jesus, which enabled them to recognize his risen, vulnerable presence. These words—grief, vulnerability and recognition—are thus inextricably linked to the Pentecost story and, in particular, to the role the Spirit plays in their lives and our lives in the church."
I found this longer version very helpful as an aid to reflection: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/04/12/keenan-theology-vulnerability-resurrection-247674.
Thank you again. Without the support of people like yourself and Ursula, I'd never find a voice to say these things!
Mercy there is so much info. I don’t understand why you are lining up all groups in opposition to self sufficient white women ? That certainly suggests essentialism. Are all self sufficient white women a monolith?
Here’s my experience of Tina. She ran herself raged making it possible for ”women” all over the world to contribute to and attend the CWS book roll out in Rome That included trying to fund it
My own essay was only included after enormous patience on Tina’s part to revise it. She wanted the voices of unhoused single mothers to be heard.
When in Rome Tina clearly warned all white western women to forgo being interviewed by journalists and news reporters as we always have access in sharing a public voice. At first I felt it was a bit prejudiced. When I thought about it I realized she was right!
So while you may not know it Tina not only is an advocate and employs a preferential option for ALL WOMEN but also GLBTQUIA+ persons. Because she is a public person she puts her money where her mouth is.
I hope these experiences add to understanding.
I think you are preaching to the choir Mercy Your heart is in the right place as is Tina’s along with her actions
Thank you Therese. x
Exactly my point Therese! I agree “White women” are not a monolith, just as “women” in general are not a monolith… which is why I wrote: “‘ woman’ as a noun needs to be often qualified depending upon the context; if you’re writing about the privileged, educated, white, all-limbs, all body-parts, heart and soul intact woman, versus, those privileged, but heartless, soulless, vs. those brown, or those in western ghettos, or those picking strawberries in California, or those in wheelchairs, in nursing homes, context matters. Not all the concerns of these varying groups conform to each other, whether with respect to biology, to affordable healthcare, or with respect to income-earning possibilities etc.. And now there’s the additional context of gender. “
This was my response to the fear expressed in Jane Clare Jones’ post on the “Annals of the TERF Wars” on the erasure of the word “woman” - seems to be a British feminist fear - maybe I don’t know enough but I don’t hear poor and needy women in developing countries or their spokespeople fighting with TRANS or other gender-nonconforming marginalized minorities - they’re just all struggling together for help on their day to day needs for survival… it’s only the well-to-do with time on their hands who spend their energy and imagination on satire, and plays with words - so my comment was addressed to them!
I think it’s interesting that as we struggle to define “difference” and challenge essentialism, yet individuals and different cultural groups can become political and “essentialists” themselves, afraid to suggest that not everything is right for everyone. Not every gay person is into S & M or spikes or whips. Why should it be present in a kid’s book? How would you feel about condoms or dildos in a child’s book. A difference in one group can stand without suggesting those decisions are right for everyone,and suggesting that everything is a human construction. Time is a human construction and space, clocks, maps, street names are constructions based on a social need and reality. Biology is very fascinating. I watched Charlie Rose Series on the Brain 2015. Ben Barres a transgender doctor was interviewed. It was fascinating. He discussed changes that happen intra-utero which may account for transgender identify,
To me the the fundamental flaw of seeing you as a terf, Tina. Is that you have questions and you have differences. You are engaged in the dialogue. If the response to questions and dialogue is name calling and exclusion, the accusatory cultural group has become the very thing they abhor. They are political and ideological essentialists afraid of difference and questions - at the expense of others who are trying to develop their voice and sense of agency related to questions of gender and are fundamentally in support of respecting difference.
There may be very young children who are clearly trans at a very young age. Loving parents have discovered this and cooperate with teams of specialists to pave the way for their children’s transition. It is deplorabe that in our country politicians have worked to change rules so that these parents cannot follow up with the decisions they have made with reputabe doctors related to sex transitions. There are also tons of teens who are vulnerable and trying to discern who they are. This is a great challenge. I think half or more of the women I know married because they felt the pull of erotica and believed only within the sacrament of marriage is any expression of this desire legitimate. The divorce rate speaks to this. We are an evolving body of humanity. I am in agreement with Tina that we are responsible to protect children during the phase of wondering about gender.
As a Christian I know in heaven there is neither male nor female. Gender will have been fulfilled into something far greater. However, we are on earth just now. No doubt we feel the tensions of who we are and nothing about us or in us is permanent. There are so many questions. We have a right to dialogue without being called names.
Women’s neglect and concerns worldwide are increasingly in jeopardy. There must be a space to discuss and work together for justice. I worked with a client who was very distressed as a group she formed in NYC for lesbians was “being taken over by trans issues” and not attending to the many questions the lesbian women have.
I was a pioneer in AIDS work for many many years. I supported trans women who had AIDS. Wonderful people. One woman in particular, (I will call her Meredith) comes to mind. She was African American from the south - about 6 feet tall, gorgeous sweet and soft spoken. She told me her fear was that she would end up like people she knew who were trans, all cut up!. We spoke a lot about safety. One day she was recalling that her grandparents raised her. I could see the love in her eyes in talking about them. They were devout Baptists. “They used to tell me, you are a very special child. God made you to be very very special.” - and she was! Her grandparents’ love transcended norms and mores. I loved her too and she told me she loved me.
While people have a right to question and dialogue with you Tina, they are mistaken and ignorant if they call you a terf. I admire your forthrightness and transparency. That isn’t easy as a public person. But there is a river of knowledge running under each of us that will be heard in time. The truth always surfaces. Meanwhile we know “With the measure that you measure it will be measured to you.” We answer to a higher calling. True Love.
Tina this is Mercy from Catholic Women Speak. Sorry if this comment is a little long and not as adulatory as that from your other commenters.
At the outset I want to say I have always admired your energy, your passion and your activism, not to mention the fluidity with which you tease apart and write about the things on your mind. So, I write this from a place of respect and love, and to keep the debate pure and ego-less, as also with a bit of fear and trepidation for speaking out so.
I do admire your speaking up and reaching out, with all your “self-doubt” and, I hope, love, to the people in the Upper Room; I love your quote from Padraig "Because to speak about the place where I’m right is to imply the place where other people are wrong. And there are things that I don’t want to be wrong about, hard-won things …" However might it not also mean that you may need to withdraw some of your assertions/caveats, because you (or for that matter, I) are not in the shoes of the people who have these experiences (to whit, ”if I reject the claim that some lesbians have penises; if I think it’s not possible to be born in the wrong body;") assertions such as those seem either, to be straw-men (women?) - (I don’t know if you have actually encountered someone who claims these) - or they come from an "I'm right...other people are wrong" space, (“can’t say…a trans woman is a woman”, what is so special about women other than their organs? trans-women and sport – couldn’t it depend on the particular trans-woman’s physique and the particular sport? You are neither sports-medicine specialist nor and ob-gyn and so may not be privy to all the nuances of the bodies of trans-people.) As I have shared before, someone with your large follower base on social media, will always be quoted and used by the ideologically driven to drive policy and law for those whose real experiences are exactly these that you reject, merely because you have not experienced them, nor know of someone who has. I think the world is filled with so many, many, MANY people of such diverse bodily and other characteristics that we might be well-served to keep an open, listening mind and heart if we truly claim to be speaking from love in the heart.
As far as the “protection of children” is concerned, I fear it may be a red-herring for stirrers of typical “Moral panic” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic) - I.e. those who aim to speak for the “establishment” for e.g. book banners. Clearly you are not so pro-establishment, at least for the purely “female-only” constituency, that I gather that you are comfortable advocating for; I feel each of the letters of the LGBTQ+ - the ‘alphabet soup’, as you slightly disparagingly call it - seems to represent at least one living human being that seems to be identified by the features documented by that letter, and each of them are as deserving at least of an establishment-agnostic support from you - of all people. None of them willed such an existence on themselves. The acknowledgement of their reality should not harm children, in general, if children’s exposure to it is made in an age-appropriate fashion - what if some children have such persons as siblings, as parents, as classmates, as neighbors…? Are children to be so sheltered that they cannot be explained the weirder facts of our increasingly complex, information-flooded world? For example, there are children of alcoholics or people with other addictions, whose shock and trauma could be softened by caring adults who intervene with age-appropriate explanations of the addiction concerned, instead of ignoring or dismissing their lived reality with, say, fairy-tales that they’re in la-La land where nothing bad happens - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil even if addictions are the elephant in the room - thus retraumatizing an already traumatized child; in the same way children can easily be explained the age-appropriate nuances of each of the letters of the “alphabet-soup” without hurting their sense of reality or innocence. I believe children are much more resilient than we, bourgeois parents might presume; now if you’re talking of children in the Syrian or Gaza warzones, we may be on an entirely different footing…. Though even there, Sesame Street has an early childhood project to help overcome some of such children’s brutalized sense of the world (https://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/sesame-workshop-and-international-rescue-committee-awarded-100-million-early-childhood-education-syrian-refugees.)
On your argument that increasingly adolescent children are being confused about gender identity because of the "alphabet soup’s” activism, I am not surprised; I believe it is because adults are not being straight with them, and so they are relying on information from the rumor mill, or the internet where every malady is cancer, or schizophrenia, or gender fluidity. Like Thomas Maule writing in his book 'Truth Held Forth and Maintained' in 1695, about the now debunked Salem Witch Trials "it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a Witch", so also it's better that every adolescent think carefully about their gender identity, with counselling if needed, and come out at the other side going through the same purgatory that LGBTQ+ adolescents go through - they will come out the richer for it, and so will our society.
So, with all due respect, I discard the main argument you present in your article on Grandpa’s Pride - without going into elaborate detail and using your own statement elsewhere of staying “accepting of the multitudinous ways in which red-blooded adults get their kicks” - I don’t believe that the picture in that referenced book is so damaging to children - without taking to it the analytical microscope you used, which I believe hardly any child would be likely to. If you can remember nursery rhymes that we grew up with, had far more hidden tongue-in-cheek, vulgar and politically incorrect meanings that we as children were happily unaware of and grew up unscathed.
Also a few other nitpicks: you often cite your being a mother and grandmother as affording an authority for the opinions you hold. That is really neither here nor there from the POV of a true progressive - Phyllis Schafly is likely a grandmother or great grandmother! Grandmothers such as Phyllis Schafly are often key defenders of the establishment, including but not limited to patriarchy alone. And your advocacy for your female-only constituency, in spite of being vilified by the Vatican and other Catholic academic institutions is admirable, but if it is only because you yourself are female and if you cannot see beyond that particular group’s marginalization, by offering a similar argument for the many other alphabet soups of marginalized constituencies, then I would say your feminine advocacy springs from self-interest rather than true generosity of spirit. Further to say you are a supporter of LGBTQ+ because you count individuals in that community amongst your friends and supporters, is like the infamous statement, I have a Black friend, so I can’t be accused of being against Blacks; I have a Jewish friend… can’t be against Jews. Your complaints such as the commercialization of Pride month - another one already upon us! - for example! Isn't Christmas over-commercialized? Are you railing against and turning against Christians and Catholics about that? Your comment about LGBTQ+ community being a Trojan horse of people capable of sexual violence, misogyny… etc., can you think of a few other communities who are thus capable? And isn’t this how stereo-typing begins by tarring members of a community with the worst acts of some of the black sheep in their community – Muslims and hijacking, Blacks and crime, etc. etc. Except I have much higher standards for you!
Though I might add as a reminder to myself, that all this arm-chair philosophizing or even fundraising for the rights and wrongs owed to various marginalized communities is just that: intellectual posturing - since our brains and even purse-books can handle such posturing; it’s quite different from fighting in the trenches, administering front-line aid like a Mother Teresa might, but that’s another topic altogether. Still, one should not dismiss the benefits of armchair philosophizing ‘cos that is how public awareness is built and barriers are broken down… and that is why I write to you.
So, in short, I do think Tina that you can afford to be a little more generous by holding back your complaints, petty and otherwise, about this particular “LGBTQ+ alphabet-soup” and the people behind those letters who identify as such, by holding out your hand to the Upper Room without any outright caveats, without ifs, ands, or buts, yes, with a willing suspension of disbelief.
I am reminded of the words of Rev. James Forbes (former pastor of Riverside Church in New York City) who spoke at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary’s commencement service in 2010 (https://sojo.net/articles/listening-act-love):
“He spoke of it as a time of confusion of languages, of an inability to hear one another, of an inability to be civil and to listen. But, he said, the Holy Spirit is moving.
How do we know? Well, because everything is confusing.
The Spirit is doing a new thing. The Spirit troubles the water. God’s Spirit is in the world and it is up us to learn how to listen for it, and how to listen to one another.”
Thanks - and accept my apologies, in advance, if anything I said doesn’t agree with you.
Mercy"
Thank you for taking the time to write this very long post Mercy, not all of which is relevant and some of which makes unwarranted assumptions about my research and experience. In Britain, we try to avoid getting sucked into US culture wars, and most of us are well aware of how the Far Right muscles in on these issues. I am also familiar with the term "moral panic", so no need to give me a link to Wikipedia!
I don't know how closely you've followed developments in this field. Several European countries now restrict the use of puberty blockers, for example: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/04/gender-affirming-care-debate-europe-dutch-protocol/673890/. Did you look at the Cass Review, linked in my article? It makes for profoundly disturbing reading. It is a high quality independent review by a respected British paediatrician, which raises serious concerns about transitioning among children and adolescents.
Did you note that one of the people I quoted was a founder of Stonewall (Simon Fanshawe)?
Of course I'll leave your comment here, and undoubtedly there are those who will agree with you. But nothing you have said is likely to change my mind, not because I'm closed to the arguments, but because I have researched, reflected and read very extensively around these issues, and in the end I changed my position. When there's a conflict between the rights of women and children and the demands of men for access, inclusivity and participation, I'll always put women and children first. And when a growing number of young adults are questioning their adolescent decisions to make irreversible changes to their developing bodies, I think adults have a profound responsibility to speak out. The only people who really benefit from this are the pharmaceutical corporations and their ideological networks.
Thank you again for posting.
Tina, in my effort to understand your position on this substack, I did some research:
First I must report reading this astonishing and incredibly clever satire by Jane Clare Jones - The Annals of the TERF-Wars (https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/) - and immediately your entire way of thinking became crystal clear to me - in how closely this spoof mirrored every single one of your arguments. Firstly I feel sorry for the hell British feminists are going through. It is identical in spirit, though much more sophisticated, to the ALL LIVEs MATTER activists in the US who responded in agitated panic, afraid of total erasure by the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement. (I need not explain which side of the aisle the ALL LIVES MATTER people come from.) We in the US, are also not immune from the assault of similar people who are clever with their pens, but entirely soulless from a human perspective - people like Frank Luntz who gave George Bush, of Iraq War fame, the compassionate conservative” slogan. So I beg you, do not fall prey to such fears.
Second That said, thank you for directing me to the 388 page Cass Study, which according to you was “profoundly disturbing reading.” I hope you realize per the author’s own admission as “of 31 January 2023, it had become evident that the full outputs from the study, including resulting peer-reviewed papers, would not be available in time to be published alongside my (their) final report.” (See pg 384) and from John Stewart, NHS Director’s letter to her “the necessary cooperation from the clinical leads within those services has not been forthcoming, and consequently the University of York has advised that as things currently stand, it is not appropriate to yet begin the next stage of the study.” (Pg 379-380) So basically her study does NOT have data from the 7 NHS trusts that offer GIDS services. And her only closing observation seems to be that it has “been heartbreaking to hear the struggles that young people and their families face trying to navigate their way to care. Over a number of years, the children and young people at the heart of this review have been bypassed by local services“ (pg 252.) Thus her study is like a Roscharch test offering an image that exactly reflects the mindset one brings in to the evaluation of the picture.
So if anything what I am reading from her report is that NHS is swamped and unable to adequately handle the rising number of likely legitimate requests from affected children and their parents.
Instead of using this incomplete study as basis for any scary assumptions, let us examine whatever factual statements have been presented therein:
a) For one thing the total number of children and adolescents referred to GIDS between 2009 and 2016 (see Fig 2, which is same as Fig 10!) grew from a very small base of 51 in 2009 to 1,766 in 2016 - at a compound annual growth of 66%. (This growth rate in absolute terms seems high but IMHO it is a reflection of rising awareness and availability of clinical help, just like increases in diagnosis of all kinds of diseases, from formerly obscure cancers to other rare maladies such as muscular dystrophy, COPD, you name it.)
b) Per UK population statistics, there was a total number of 66,797,807 people in the UK in 2019, accounting for approximately 12,023,605 children below 18 years (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/january2021).
c) According to Wikipedia there were approximately 3 million Hijras (transgenders) in India in 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)), out of a total population of 1,307,246,509 in same year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India) - a ratio of approximately 0.3% (0.2295% to be exact). That is 0.3% of total Indian population are Hijras.
d) Using the same 0.3% ratio above (unless you think India has a particularly high number of transgenders??), of the 12,023,605 children below 18 years in the UK in 2019 noted above, there are likely to be 27,593 children experiencing some form of gender nonconformity, that is nearly 4 to 16 times the number of children actually appearing in GIDS clinics (in 2016 it was 1,766 kids, and in the 3 years thereafter it could be projected at ~6,200, depending on whether the GIDS numbers have continued in the same trajectory since 2016) - even more “profoundly disturbing reading.”!!
So instead of the imaginary fear that normal CIS gender kids are being overtaken by gender-transitioning propaganda, maybe we should, as a community, try to provide the nurturing climate required for the missing 21K to 25K kids in UK who are NOT reporting themselves in the GIDS clinic for gender affirming care, likely due to fear of being stigmatized, or from shame, or other negative emotion which should have no place in today’s modern world.
Third In support of my plea, I echo Margaret Atwood’s words in her 2020 Twitter post “Some science here: "When Sex and Gender Collide." https://scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-science-of-sex-and-gender/ #TransGenderWomen Biology doesn't deal in sealed Either/Or compartments. We're all part of a flowing Bell curve. Respect that! Rejoice in Nature's infinite variety!” And “Nobody has said there aren't "men"+ "women." But gender and sex are two different things. Here is a thorough run-down: Addressing what was said by JK Rowling in her essay. Follow Shaaba: https://youtube.com/Shaaba17 Reference list: https://ww... http://youtube.com” (https://x.com/margaretatwood/status/1280262917506641922), and https://x.com/MargaretAtwood/status/1280341387737739264) and applaud her support of trans rights as one of 1200 signatories in their 2020 letter of solidarity (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/stephen-king-margaret-atwood-transgender-open-letter-jk-rowling-b912344.html); even if there was some borderline panic from activists on both sides of the issue who were confused by her posting Rosie DiManno’s article on the limits to the use of the noun “woman”, to which I say yeah, “woman” as a noun needs to be often qualified depending upon the context; if you’re writing about the privileged, educated, white, all-limbs, all body-parts, heart and soul intact woman, versus, those privileged, but heartless, soulless, vs. those brown, or those in western ghettos, or those picking strawberries in California, or those in wheelchairs, in nursing homes, context matters. Not all the concerns of these varying groups conform to each other, whether with respect to biology, to affordable healthcare, or with respect to income-earning possibilities etc.. And now there’s the additional context of gender. So white women relax, you are not being erased. Your place on boardrooms will be fought for and won, your healthcare, breast cancer research, cardiac care, will all be taken care of. Contraception? Well… we poor browns, and trans, and LGBTQ+/ABCDs can’t help, but we’ll try. The entire mid-upper-level management of NIH, govt institutions,as well as private sector is increasingly female! Brava! I say to that - being an upstanding female myself!.
Finally for those of your followers who really want to put their money where their mouth is, and who believe they follow Christ’s words in Matthew 25:35-40 “For I was … a stranger and you invited me in, I … was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”, I know they don’t need a reminder from me, who am totally unlettered in the intricacies of the gospel, that the “stranger”, the ”sick”, the “imprisoned”, those less fortunate than you in mind, body, health, or wealth, or any other varying garb taken by Christ is equally used by Him in bodies and spirits of Trans folks as well as every other folk represented in each of the letters of the LGBTQ “alphabet-soup”.
I know the pendulum swings one way, and then the other way, so maybe the LGBTQ wave alongwith other minority, marginalized community waves are cresting because the demands on our generosity, and empathy, and kindness, not to mention our purse strings, are getting too much out of hand. But the force of the majority, the privileged, and the self-sufficient, always takes the pendulum wildly off-center, as we saw in 1914, in 1940s, and many other periods in many other pockets of the world, and it usually harbors ill for those crushed under its weight. So as a woman who seems to be a thinking woman, who claims to be a woman with a heart, and courage please I beg you, look with kindness on those who fight with equal spirit for affiliates in their marginalized communities where Newton’s Third Law of Physics is alive and well – Every action having an equal and opposite reaction.
I will n ot be posting any more on this topic (tho' haha I think I may have made this promise on this site earlier !!)
I still respect and admire you please don't forget that!
Mercy, when you have so much to say may I suggest you start your own Substack site? I think anyone who takes the time to read your two very long posts will make their own minds up about your position and your representation of my views. Thank you for assuring me that you won't be posting any more here, though you are perfectly free to air your views elsewhere.