Pamela Paul at The Wall Street Journal on the gender rebellion:

But when [Benjamin] Appel later enrolled at Columbia University, eager to learn about the theories behind his activism, the rhetoric he encountered felt more like dogma than inquiry. “According to queer theory, if you’re a man who behaves in ‘unmasculine’ ways or wears eyeliner you must be a woman inside, which I thought was regressive,” Appel, who graduated in 2020, recalled. “Saying that those superficial attributes are what make women women, and that any variation on the rough he-man stereotype means you’re not a man, reinforces these rigid sex roles, and I thought we were supposed to be against those.”

In his book “Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic,” which comes out next week, Appel argues that gender ideology is “illiberal, regressive and anti-gay”—as much a cult as Lambs of God, the fundamentalist sect in which Appel was raised—and one that he and an increasingly vocal group of gay men, lesbians and bisexual people reject. 

And anti-woman. Extremely, wildly, maddeningly anti-woman.

While gay and lesbian people emphasized that they oppose discrimination and harassment of transgender adults, they resent being “force teamed,” “taken over” or “erased” by trans and queer ideologues, especially when gay people constitute 90% of those Gallup categorizes as LGBTQ+. In private chat groups and burgeoning LGB organizations and on podcasts, many question whether same-sex attracted people should have allied themselves with trans and queer identities in the first place. To most LGBTQ+ groups this attitude is nothing short of trans exclusion and antithetical to their principles.  

Which, of course, is just the same problem recirculated. As always. There is no “LGBTQ+” that is a coherent or natural grouping, there is only the obstinate determination to mash the LGB and the TQ+ together, which is where we started.

We are allowed to exclude categories from other categories. We are allowed to exclude baseball from a discussion of climate change, and vice versa. We are allowed to notice and mention differences. It’s not automatically hostile or unfair to talk about X without adding any Y or & or cat emoji.

These disagreements stem from radically different ways of viewing identity. Gay people typically see their homosexuality as fundamentally grounded in biology and based on attraction to people of the same sex. Transgender people instead prioritize gender identity, defined by the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, as “one’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither.”

Note the goopy coercive “innermost” – the trans version of “sacred”. If it’s “innermost” no one can dispute it, because hey, it’s innermost – so inner you can’t see it or hear it, so you just have to shut up and believe it.

No we don’t.

“For those of us who work in this field as advocacy-focused political activists, these are hard conversations we have to have as a movement,” said Cathy Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, which was founded in 1973 as the National Gay Task Force. “To me, this is often about fear of the other, and nobody understands that better than queer people.” As for gay people who don’t believe in gender identity, Renna says, “It’s fine not to believe in it, but why do you have to impose what you believe on everyone else?”

Oooooh, that’s the easiest question I’ve seen in a long time. Because they are imposing it on us. Because if we don’t believe in it and say so, we are bullied and ostracized and punished and fired from jobs. That’s why. We’re not the ones imposing “what we believe” on everyone else, we’re the ones resisting being forced to adhere to a childish magical belief in disembodied gender.

“Everyone is hellbent on sticking together because they think there’s strength and validation in numbers, but that’s not true,” says Arielle Scarcella, a 39-year-old Brooklyn-based YouTuber who frequently posts videos critiquing gender theory and trans activism to her 800,000 followers. “I think there’s safety in sanity, because people can understand things that make sense, and none of this makes sense. You now have straight people calling themselves queer because they have purple hair and are non-monogamous.”  

Everybody wants to be special.

Many gays and lesbians say gender identity strips same-sex attraction of its meaning. “Transgender and queer activists have disappeared the idea of sex, and that means getting rid of the idea of sexual orientation and the whole basis of being gay,” says Ann Menasche, 72, a civil-rights lawyer and lifelong gay rights activist based in San Diego. “I’m on the far left, but this really is not progressive.”

In 2022 Menasche was fired from her job at Disability Rights California after objecting to the omission of the word “women” in a statement her employer put out in favor of abortion rights and speaking out about sex-based rights. “I was called a bigot and a transphobe and such a danger to staff that I was refused unemployment,” she said.

Because she said women should not be omitted from statements on abortion rights. How did we get here?