With a liberal sensibility

Matt Taibbi talks to Kara Dansky:

Kara Dansky, a former WoLF board member and the author of The Abolition of Sex, may be the most outspoken feminist in America when it comes to criticizing popular current beliefs about gender identity. A former ACLU public defender, she’s focused heavily on the presence of biological men in women’s jails, and for her troubles has been essentially booted out of mainstream progressive politics.

Taibbi admits having sat on an interview with Dansky for months because of fear of we know very well what. He apologizes for doing that.

Matt Taibbi: I’ve known some people who identified as trans or as women in my life, who wanted to be called she. As somebody who’s grown up with a liberal sensibility, my first thought is, “Well, if that’s the way they feel, I respect that,” and so I go along with it. I always felt like that was the right moral thing to do. Is it not?

I grew up with a liberal sensibility too but that’s not my first thought, and never has been. My first thought, if it’s a man who wants to be called she, is the same as all the subsequent thoughts. It’s just no. Men are by definition adults; adults don’t get to tell or ask other adults to call them something they manifestly are not. Specifying the non-pejorative way to mention women, Black people, lesbians, gay men, and so on, is one thing, and asking to be called Your Majesty or Doctor or Admiral or Marilyn Monroe when you’re not any of those things is another. That’s first. Second is what Kara says: doing so conditions us to believe the lie.

Kara Dansky: Yeah, a couple things. I really think the use of so-called preferred pronouns, I think it messes with our head. Just as you were saying that, I noticed you kind of struggling with it, because I know that you want to use she to describe your male friends who identify as women to be kind, but it’s not easy. There’s a conflict in your own mind about that. I think that’s very deliberate, not by your friend. I think it’s a deliberate move by this whole gender identity movement to get us to be confused and to question our own understanding of the truth.

Such a simple little thing, but so powerful.

Matt Taibbi: Here’s the disconnect for me. There’s so much attention and sensitivity to the issue of violence against women in all other arenas — except this one. Do you have an explanation for that?

Kara Dansky: It is astonishing. Well, I don’t really get to ask that question to people on the left or media. When I ask that question to conservatives, they’re blown away. They agree with the question, and they don’t understand it either. But you’re right. If a man exposes himself on a bus, he will be charged with a crime, rightfully so. The victim of that crime is going to say, “This is an example of Me Too.” But if a man exposes himself in the naked section of a women’s spa, under California law, he gets to be validated as stunning and brave.

So all the guys on the bus will just say they’re trans laydeez.

There’s much more: read the whole thing.

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