This is the best clarification of the historical record of Pauli Murray that I have seen, by far. I really appreciate your deep dive and challenge of the back-projected mythologization which ignores the climate of homophobia she grappled with. Your points about the disrespect to her own self-expression over the course of her life are well-taken, and the first time I have seen the suggestion that, if that trans interpretation was to be taken seriously, then she would be detran. Great work.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts, Max! I haven't seen any gender-critical critiques on Pauli Murray's life! I understand that perspectives that mirror my own, are not as easy to find as those pushing a trans narrative. I appreciate your support 🌺🙏🏾🌺
Wow. Stunning piece of writing. I was recommended to read it on spinster.xyz
As a 64 year old Tomboy who went through gender-distress (and extensive bullying) as a child and teenager, I deeply sympathize with this amazing lady.
I'm glad for her that, like me, she lived before this insane modern craze to delete masculine-appearing women from society. We're here, we're proud, and we're activists!
Thank you so much! I appreciate you reading and sharing your thoughts. Although we're from different generations, I'm so grateful that we were both born before this craze. I'm also grateful you are able to see a glimpse of your own experiences reflected through Pauli Murray's life 🌺
Thank you so much for this important history and for protecting Black Lesbians, Butches, and women from the trans cult erasing females in every way they can. I'm a Euro-descent Lifelong Butch, but Black Lesbians and women and Butches have been in the forefront of creating Lesbian and Feminist culture, writing, art, ... everything, across the earth. Pauli Murray's life and history is so important for all girls and women to know. It should be a shock, but this male supremacist cult has been trying to wipe out every Lesbian and woman they can. I would have hoped that there would be more respect for someone like Pauli Murray, whose life and history is so important to know and never forget. How dare they? But these are the same men who send rape and death threats to any woman who says no to them, plus their women collaborators, so no surprise. (They have killed too many of us already and still are called women and put into women's prisons.)
It's like they want to skin us and wear our skins, and I worry for all of us that they will re-write our lives when we die. (I've been in the fight against the trans cult appropriating us since 1973, print, in our book, and at my blogs and my life is constantly slandered.)
It's so important to know Pauli's life for many reasons, including how she made choices that harmed her, that we can understand more knowing who she was and the ways she was oppressed as a courageous Black Butch. (Not "masculine," when being so Butch and Lesbian is as female as a woman can be.) In our book, Dykes-Loving-Dykes, we tried to describe the harm of a lifetime of such oppression as Pauli went through and her story is so important too because she survived and they didn't stop her. How dare they erase her like this? (Most of our book and my later articles, including about the trans cult appropriating us is at: https://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com
Hi Bev, thank you so much for sharing your heartfelt thoughts. Your words really touch me. Especially because-honestly-I have feared the same as well, being revised in history, especially with the amount of public record I've shared over the years about my mental health and personal life.
I wrote this for Pauli because I would want a woman in my image to do the same for me after I died, if my story had fallen into the wrong hands and I am being re-characterized. It just had to be done. And we have to continue standing up for ourselves and each other. **deep sigh**
I don't characterize masculinity as synonymous with maleness. I think female masculinity exists, and it's one characteristic of butchness. Being butch, or masculine, doesn't make a woman any less of a woman. But Yes, being butch or stud is an exclusively female trait. I too, would describe Pauli as butch-but because she didn't identify herself that way, I didn't want to put words in her mouth.
I definitely would love to read a copy of your book sometime! Thank you for sharing 🌺
Thank you again! You're right that it is terrifying to be altered after we are dead and used by those who are our worst enemies. The man still stalking me (he picked a name as close to mine as he could and then lied to "off our backs" to get them to print his article, "Lesbian Sex") is just one example of how much they want to erase us but also re-write our history. His latest ploy was being interviewed by Mr. Susan Stryker in Sinister Wisdom to describe a sexual relationship we never had -- If he can't kill me and wear my skin, he wants to erase my history as a Lifelong Lesbian who said no to him. My mistake was feeling sorry for him, which I think is what so many women have done, so I tried to be friends at a distance for a couple of years. (Sorry to go on, but I know this has happened to other Lesbians and want no one to feel alone in this.) Even saying yes as a friend to these men puts us in serious danger, like the interracial couple with their African-born son who were horrifically murdered in Oakland, and almost no one here knows about it. And of course that male sadist is in a women's prison. https://mandystadtmiller.substack.com/p/rabbitholed-78-dana-rivers-is-the
(I hope that link still works!) Eva Kurilova posted my response to his recent slander at her substack that links to my article: https://bevjo.substack.com
We have to protect each other now even after we die, so it's wonderful and so important you are doing that for Pauli. We need a strong community of all ages, so those younger can keep these men from appropriating us when we can't say no any longer. It must be done for you too!
I can't not think of "masculine" as being male and, since most women refer to Butches as male, I keep trying to counter it. I think being Butch means being closer to what we all would be without patriarchy and more female, if anything. I was resistant to identifying as Butch when young because of being told it meant being male and I wanted nothing to do with males. But we have so few words to describe ourselves. And now, many women pose as Butch in a kind of male caricature who aren't Butch. But we are truly the world over. I have friends who I recognize as being Butch, just from a photograph, from Iran, India, Mexico, China... all over the world. And Pauli is so clearly recognizable. I wish she hadn't had such a hard life, but she also did so much and is being remembered wonderfully by those who treasure her and who care.
That is most of our book at my first blog, but I do have a solid copy too. I wish I could just hand it to you! And thank you again. What you are doing is so important!
Hi Bev, I am really sorry to hear about this man who made you to feel unsafe and tried to rewrite your work. 💜 The thing is, lies are unsustainable and dishonorable-people can’t really get away with them forever. They will always be found out.
“I think butch is closer to what we would all be without patriarchy”
Gosh, I hope not! I love butch women and the distinctiveness they carry. I like how it differs from my expression and I enjoy the balanced dynamic it creates in a relationship. I think butchness (in its true form) is innate, and it’s definitely linked to homosexuality—so I don’t think most women can be butch even if they tried, and that’s okay! Butchness is unique.
There is room to celebrate us in all of our natural expression. There's room for us to have healthy expressions of masculinity and femininity without adhering to damaging ideas of what these things mean.
I want room to be created in our culture so all women can take off the mask and be who we really are without the pressure to fit inside a box. Luckily, some women are living examples of what this can look like by healing and simply being true to themselves. 🌺
Thank you so much. I think who we are is chosen very young, but I've known some Butches who didn't come out as Lesbians (and were het and married for decades) until later in life. So it IS complicated. I so agree and again, so appreciate your work.
Fascinating post! Thank you. It is sad indeed to realize that today Pauli would have been immediately given testosterone, etc. instead of the chance to figure things out on her own.
Of course the modern transgender movement is not progressive.
It is based on victimhood and coercion towards others' free speech and behaviour.
That people have to back up their insecurity by attributing pronouns and misinformation inappropriately and decietfully is evidence enough of this for me.
Thank you for a fascinating article.
Let's keep referring to women as we have always done.
This is an absolutely brilliant piece. You unpack and demolish every major trick and linguistic sleight of hand in the trans activist playbook, and with such clarity and logic! You rightly point out that the seemingly innocuous practice of calling “she/her” “feminine” rather than “female” pronouns is highly regressive. Your argument that historical revisionism is happening because the concept of transgenderism itself is historically and geographically bounded rings true. Closest to my heart is your full-throated rejection of what I believe to be the central idea upon which gender ideology rests: that femaleness itself is maliciously exclusionary because it doesn’t include males. That idea is the essence of female erasure. Trans activism has completely mangled the righteous notion of inclusion, which implores us to recognize the femaleness of all women, and in particular those who don’t conform to sex stereotypes. I look forward to sharing your wonderful piece. Thank you.
Oh, thank yew! Your comment is so heartwarming and this in-depth feedback means a lot to me. I really appreciate you taking the time to support and share 💜
Thank you for all the work you are putting in to communicating this perspective. I inhabit an artistic world in which it is very dangerous to express concern over this sort of thing, but as a student of history and the sister of both a lesbian and gay man who would most certainly have been confused by, and perhaps harmed by, Trans messaging had it existed when they were children, I am very concerned indeed by this ideological claiming of our ancestors' experience. It is very clear to me that there is a conflict of interest between feminism and the Trans rights movement, which can't be untangled unless we acknowledge it. It is galling to be labeled as a cruel person for pointing thus out. You seem to be making a very clear case for the way in which Pauli's legacy is to most truthfully and respectfully be regarded, which could be very helpful to the entire project of protecting all our ancestors from anachronism.
Hi Carolyn, thank you for reading, and so articulately sharing your thoughts and appreciation. I am an Artist too, so I understand. Really-the authoritarianism on this topic stretches to various sectors of life. P.s. I learned a new word! Anachronism. I agree. 🙏🏾
I've never heard of this person - thank you for making me aware of someone I haven't previously read about. And yes, I agree with you about the "borrowing of faked history" to drive present ideological agendas.
Your work is always on point and the receipts are always receipting! But honestly thank you for applying critical thinking and nuance to your research findings. I plan to send this to a few black feminist publications who continue to push and sell the gender fallacy.
Thank you so much 🥰 I appreciate you reading. Also, yes! I designed this for people who are not privy to these concepts to read and learn-so please feel free to share away. I'm ready lol
Pauli Murray was a unique and brilliant woman, and it’s certainly dispiriting to witness the highly narcissistic and anachronistic appropriation of her struggles with identity. I recently picked up her book Dark Testament and found the complexity of her vision remarkable — check out this short lyric:
Anguish
Two things have sorrowed me this day—
A face like death
Where peace has come to rest
And captive love has fled;
The other, wild thing
Torn free, to seek
A sterile breast
Where dwells no memory.
One thing feels sure to me: she would not appreciate others defining and labeling and categorizing her to fit their stories and trends and agendas. Reducing her to a talking point, in a vain effort to reverse-engineer a history that does not really exist, shows no respect — and is an affront to the self-determination so central to her life and her words.
Wow, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and this lyric from Pauli's poetry book. Her poetry is not something I studied in-depth, so it's such a treat to receive this...she was certainly a true Artist.
I agree, and I really identify with Pauli in this way....In many ways, my calling to do this work was so deeply personal, because I can see myself leaving a similar legacy, and I do have that same independent spirit about myself as she did...and I have always been adamant about not wanting my history to be hijacked and distorted (I even have a clause about this in the introduction of my memoir).
So I am just taking up the reins for her, in the way I would want a young woman in my image to do for me, and starting/continuing a rich tradition of us standing up for each other. 🌺
It's so disrespectful to the past and terrible what modern "writers" and "historians" are doing. When I was writing my own snarky little piece on this matter, I imagine I missed dozens of people because they have since been mislabeled as the opposite sex. And, somehow, the rewriting of history makes history all the more uninteresting, while still being decisive.
It is absolutely disrespectful. I think the blatant "transing" they are doing to Murray is only achievable because of how they've hijacked her historical records. She is a very unique case, it's easy to re-contextualize pieces of her archive, and I think that's all the more reason why it's important to address it head-on. Those who mislabel her do not want to be transparent about her records, and honestly convey what she actually said and did.
What an absolutely brilliant and profound piece of writing. Thank you so much for these inspiring thoughts and ideas. I feel vindicated after reading this.
One thing that stood out to me, looking at this from a bird's eye perspective, is how the nature of wokeism is similar to religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that truth is transcendental, so that which is true now will be true forever, and was true in the past. Everything past, present or future must conform to this religious truth, which is why Murray's life must be revised.
What's more, this transcendent character of truth also shapes the character of what sorts of ideas can be considered true, which fits perfectly for wokeism. Both fundamentalist truths and woke ideas have the same form in that they both ignore the relevant material reality associated with the idea. So just as truth is separated from historical material and social context, so too is sexuality from the physical body. They are ethereal concepts that lack grounding. It's what allows those who are trying to revise Murray's life to ignore that social context in which she lived, and into whose norms she did not fit. Acknowledging these realities could reveal that we are today doing the same thing.
Instead of challenging the stereotypes and accepting people for their uniqueness, we are accepting and reinforcing oppressive stereotypes, ignoring the material reality of both biological sex and the categorical structures of gender that lead young people to believe they are born in the wrong body.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! I’m happy you got a lot out of my writing. 🌺 I totally agree that gender ideology ironically reflects a lot of the harms of religious fundamentalism. It’s definitely a modern day cult, and while some people are knee-deep lost in it, most people don’t really understand its true nature. Really important for us to continue shedding light on the realities of it for those who are ready to listen. 🙏🏾
This is the best clarification of the historical record of Pauli Murray that I have seen, by far. I really appreciate your deep dive and challenge of the back-projected mythologization which ignores the climate of homophobia she grappled with. Your points about the disrespect to her own self-expression over the course of her life are well-taken, and the first time I have seen the suggestion that, if that trans interpretation was to be taken seriously, then she would be detran. Great work.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts, Max! I haven't seen any gender-critical critiques on Pauli Murray's life! I understand that perspectives that mirror my own, are not as easy to find as those pushing a trans narrative. I appreciate your support 🌺🙏🏾🌺
Wow. Stunning piece of writing. I was recommended to read it on spinster.xyz
As a 64 year old Tomboy who went through gender-distress (and extensive bullying) as a child and teenager, I deeply sympathize with this amazing lady.
I'm glad for her that, like me, she lived before this insane modern craze to delete masculine-appearing women from society. We're here, we're proud, and we're activists!
Thank you so much! I appreciate you reading and sharing your thoughts. Although we're from different generations, I'm so grateful that we were both born before this craze. I'm also grateful you are able to see a glimpse of your own experiences reflected through Pauli Murray's life 🌺
Thank you so much for this important history and for protecting Black Lesbians, Butches, and women from the trans cult erasing females in every way they can. I'm a Euro-descent Lifelong Butch, but Black Lesbians and women and Butches have been in the forefront of creating Lesbian and Feminist culture, writing, art, ... everything, across the earth. Pauli Murray's life and history is so important for all girls and women to know. It should be a shock, but this male supremacist cult has been trying to wipe out every Lesbian and woman they can. I would have hoped that there would be more respect for someone like Pauli Murray, whose life and history is so important to know and never forget. How dare they? But these are the same men who send rape and death threats to any woman who says no to them, plus their women collaborators, so no surprise. (They have killed too many of us already and still are called women and put into women's prisons.)
It's like they want to skin us and wear our skins, and I worry for all of us that they will re-write our lives when we die. (I've been in the fight against the trans cult appropriating us since 1973, print, in our book, and at my blogs and my life is constantly slandered.)
It's so important to know Pauli's life for many reasons, including how she made choices that harmed her, that we can understand more knowing who she was and the ways she was oppressed as a courageous Black Butch. (Not "masculine," when being so Butch and Lesbian is as female as a woman can be.) In our book, Dykes-Loving-Dykes, we tried to describe the harm of a lifetime of such oppression as Pauli went through and her story is so important too because she survived and they didn't stop her. How dare they erase her like this? (Most of our book and my later articles, including about the trans cult appropriating us is at: https://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com
Thank you so much again for your brilliant work!
Hi Bev, thank you so much for sharing your heartfelt thoughts. Your words really touch me. Especially because-honestly-I have feared the same as well, being revised in history, especially with the amount of public record I've shared over the years about my mental health and personal life.
I wrote this for Pauli because I would want a woman in my image to do the same for me after I died, if my story had fallen into the wrong hands and I am being re-characterized. It just had to be done. And we have to continue standing up for ourselves and each other. **deep sigh**
I don't characterize masculinity as synonymous with maleness. I think female masculinity exists, and it's one characteristic of butchness. Being butch, or masculine, doesn't make a woman any less of a woman. But Yes, being butch or stud is an exclusively female trait. I too, would describe Pauli as butch-but because she didn't identify herself that way, I didn't want to put words in her mouth.
I definitely would love to read a copy of your book sometime! Thank you for sharing 🌺
Thank you again! You're right that it is terrifying to be altered after we are dead and used by those who are our worst enemies. The man still stalking me (he picked a name as close to mine as he could and then lied to "off our backs" to get them to print his article, "Lesbian Sex") is just one example of how much they want to erase us but also re-write our history. His latest ploy was being interviewed by Mr. Susan Stryker in Sinister Wisdom to describe a sexual relationship we never had -- If he can't kill me and wear my skin, he wants to erase my history as a Lifelong Lesbian who said no to him. My mistake was feeling sorry for him, which I think is what so many women have done, so I tried to be friends at a distance for a couple of years. (Sorry to go on, but I know this has happened to other Lesbians and want no one to feel alone in this.) Even saying yes as a friend to these men puts us in serious danger, like the interracial couple with their African-born son who were horrifically murdered in Oakland, and almost no one here knows about it. And of course that male sadist is in a women's prison. https://mandystadtmiller.substack.com/p/rabbitholed-78-dana-rivers-is-the
(I hope that link still works!) Eva Kurilova posted my response to his recent slander at her substack that links to my article: https://bevjo.substack.com
We have to protect each other now even after we die, so it's wonderful and so important you are doing that for Pauli. We need a strong community of all ages, so those younger can keep these men from appropriating us when we can't say no any longer. It must be done for you too!
I can't not think of "masculine" as being male and, since most women refer to Butches as male, I keep trying to counter it. I think being Butch means being closer to what we all would be without patriarchy and more female, if anything. I was resistant to identifying as Butch when young because of being told it meant being male and I wanted nothing to do with males. But we have so few words to describe ourselves. And now, many women pose as Butch in a kind of male caricature who aren't Butch. But we are truly the world over. I have friends who I recognize as being Butch, just from a photograph, from Iran, India, Mexico, China... all over the world. And Pauli is so clearly recognizable. I wish she hadn't had such a hard life, but she also did so much and is being remembered wonderfully by those who treasure her and who care.
That is most of our book at my first blog, but I do have a solid copy too. I wish I could just hand it to you! And thank you again. What you are doing is so important!
Hi Bev, I am really sorry to hear about this man who made you to feel unsafe and tried to rewrite your work. 💜 The thing is, lies are unsustainable and dishonorable-people can’t really get away with them forever. They will always be found out.
“I think butch is closer to what we would all be without patriarchy”
Gosh, I hope not! I love butch women and the distinctiveness they carry. I like how it differs from my expression and I enjoy the balanced dynamic it creates in a relationship. I think butchness (in its true form) is innate, and it’s definitely linked to homosexuality—so I don’t think most women can be butch even if they tried, and that’s okay! Butchness is unique.
There is room to celebrate us in all of our natural expression. There's room for us to have healthy expressions of masculinity and femininity without adhering to damaging ideas of what these things mean.
I want room to be created in our culture so all women can take off the mask and be who we really are without the pressure to fit inside a box. Luckily, some women are living examples of what this can look like by healing and simply being true to themselves. 🌺
Thanks again for your support 😉
Thank you so much. I think who we are is chosen very young, but I've known some Butches who didn't come out as Lesbians (and were het and married for decades) until later in life. So it IS complicated. I so agree and again, so appreciate your work.
Fascinating post! Thank you. It is sad indeed to realize that today Pauli would have been immediately given testosterone, etc. instead of the chance to figure things out on her own.
Thank you for reading. And yes, I agree.
Superb, I look forward to your book.
I’d be happy to buy it.
This is the lesbian world we are missing.
Thank you!
Of course the modern transgender movement is not progressive.
It is based on victimhood and coercion towards others' free speech and behaviour.
That people have to back up their insecurity by attributing pronouns and misinformation inappropriately and decietfully is evidence enough of this for me.
Thank you for a fascinating article.
Let's keep referring to women as we have always done.
Trying to fit this unique woman into today’s categories makes no sense and deprives her of her individual personhood.
This is an absolutely brilliant piece. You unpack and demolish every major trick and linguistic sleight of hand in the trans activist playbook, and with such clarity and logic! You rightly point out that the seemingly innocuous practice of calling “she/her” “feminine” rather than “female” pronouns is highly regressive. Your argument that historical revisionism is happening because the concept of transgenderism itself is historically and geographically bounded rings true. Closest to my heart is your full-throated rejection of what I believe to be the central idea upon which gender ideology rests: that femaleness itself is maliciously exclusionary because it doesn’t include males. That idea is the essence of female erasure. Trans activism has completely mangled the righteous notion of inclusion, which implores us to recognize the femaleness of all women, and in particular those who don’t conform to sex stereotypes. I look forward to sharing your wonderful piece. Thank you.
Oh, thank yew! Your comment is so heartwarming and this in-depth feedback means a lot to me. I really appreciate you taking the time to support and share 💜
Thank you for all the work you are putting in to communicating this perspective. I inhabit an artistic world in which it is very dangerous to express concern over this sort of thing, but as a student of history and the sister of both a lesbian and gay man who would most certainly have been confused by, and perhaps harmed by, Trans messaging had it existed when they were children, I am very concerned indeed by this ideological claiming of our ancestors' experience. It is very clear to me that there is a conflict of interest between feminism and the Trans rights movement, which can't be untangled unless we acknowledge it. It is galling to be labeled as a cruel person for pointing thus out. You seem to be making a very clear case for the way in which Pauli's legacy is to most truthfully and respectfully be regarded, which could be very helpful to the entire project of protecting all our ancestors from anachronism.
Hi Carolyn, thank you for reading, and so articulately sharing your thoughts and appreciation. I am an Artist too, so I understand. Really-the authoritarianism on this topic stretches to various sectors of life. P.s. I learned a new word! Anachronism. I agree. 🙏🏾
This is just painful. Thank you so much for you continuous work on documenting Black lesbian herstory.
Thank you. I hope looking at the painful parts can be an entryway for us to heal 🌺🙏🏾
I've never heard of this person - thank you for making me aware of someone I haven't previously read about. And yes, I agree with you about the "borrowing of faked history" to drive present ideological agendas.
Thank you for reading 🙏🏾
Your work is always on point and the receipts are always receipting! But honestly thank you for applying critical thinking and nuance to your research findings. I plan to send this to a few black feminist publications who continue to push and sell the gender fallacy.
Thank you so much 🥰 I appreciate you reading. Also, yes! I designed this for people who are not privy to these concepts to read and learn-so please feel free to share away. I'm ready lol
Pauli Murray was a unique and brilliant woman, and it’s certainly dispiriting to witness the highly narcissistic and anachronistic appropriation of her struggles with identity. I recently picked up her book Dark Testament and found the complexity of her vision remarkable — check out this short lyric:
Anguish
Two things have sorrowed me this day—
A face like death
Where peace has come to rest
And captive love has fled;
The other, wild thing
Torn free, to seek
A sterile breast
Where dwells no memory.
One thing feels sure to me: she would not appreciate others defining and labeling and categorizing her to fit their stories and trends and agendas. Reducing her to a talking point, in a vain effort to reverse-engineer a history that does not really exist, shows no respect — and is an affront to the self-determination so central to her life and her words.
You have done her an important service here.
Wow, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and this lyric from Pauli's poetry book. Her poetry is not something I studied in-depth, so it's such a treat to receive this...she was certainly a true Artist.
I agree, and I really identify with Pauli in this way....In many ways, my calling to do this work was so deeply personal, because I can see myself leaving a similar legacy, and I do have that same independent spirit about myself as she did...and I have always been adamant about not wanting my history to be hijacked and distorted (I even have a clause about this in the introduction of my memoir).
So I am just taking up the reins for her, in the way I would want a young woman in my image to do for me, and starting/continuing a rich tradition of us standing up for each other. 🌺
It's so disrespectful to the past and terrible what modern "writers" and "historians" are doing. When I was writing my own snarky little piece on this matter, I imagine I missed dozens of people because they have since been mislabeled as the opposite sex. And, somehow, the rewriting of history makes history all the more uninteresting, while still being decisive.
It is absolutely disrespectful. I think the blatant "transing" they are doing to Murray is only achievable because of how they've hijacked her historical records. She is a very unique case, it's easy to re-contextualize pieces of her archive, and I think that's all the more reason why it's important to address it head-on. Those who mislabel her do not want to be transparent about her records, and honestly convey what she actually said and did.
This is such an important piece of work! Thank you !
Thank you! 🌺
And so well researched and written!
What an absolutely brilliant and profound piece of writing. Thank you so much for these inspiring thoughts and ideas. I feel vindicated after reading this.
One thing that stood out to me, looking at this from a bird's eye perspective, is how the nature of wokeism is similar to religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that truth is transcendental, so that which is true now will be true forever, and was true in the past. Everything past, present or future must conform to this religious truth, which is why Murray's life must be revised.
What's more, this transcendent character of truth also shapes the character of what sorts of ideas can be considered true, which fits perfectly for wokeism. Both fundamentalist truths and woke ideas have the same form in that they both ignore the relevant material reality associated with the idea. So just as truth is separated from historical material and social context, so too is sexuality from the physical body. They are ethereal concepts that lack grounding. It's what allows those who are trying to revise Murray's life to ignore that social context in which she lived, and into whose norms she did not fit. Acknowledging these realities could reveal that we are today doing the same thing.
Instead of challenging the stereotypes and accepting people for their uniqueness, we are accepting and reinforcing oppressive stereotypes, ignoring the material reality of both biological sex and the categorical structures of gender that lead young people to believe they are born in the wrong body.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! I’m happy you got a lot out of my writing. 🌺 I totally agree that gender ideology ironically reflects a lot of the harms of religious fundamentalism. It’s definitely a modern day cult, and while some people are knee-deep lost in it, most people don’t really understand its true nature. Really important for us to continue shedding light on the realities of it for those who are ready to listen. 🙏🏾