The fight over transgender ideology has jumped to the forefront over the last several years and for very good reason. Far from the “we just want to be left alone” approach that gay marriage advocates once took a decade ago, the transgender movement has taken a far more militant posture.
It’s not enough to tolerate the fact that some people are delusional enough to truly believe they can change their gender, or just as nonsensically, that they have no gender at all. Affirmation and subjugation are the demands of the radical leftwing push toward transgender “acceptance.” According to transgender ideology, which is accepted and pushed at the highest levels of the federal government, actual women no longer have a right to privacy. Instead, their ability to consent has been canceled in order to ensure the comfort of men who wear dresses and mutilate their bodies.
For years, podcast host and former Fox News star Megyn Kelly went along with that regime. Things have changed for her, though, and she explained in detail why she not only no longer sympathizes with transgender ideology, but why she’s ceasing to use “preferred pronouns” as well.
KELLY: Look at this. A pregnant woman who purports to call herself a man, complete with facial hair, on the cover of Glamour magazine. She says, “Giving birth made her very dysphoric. That will happen when you calling yourself a man while giving birth to a baby to the point where she demanded a c-section. I for one will not be celebrating this dishonesty. In fact, I’m in a very different place when it comes to this entire issue. And that is the subject of today’s opening. Why I’m done with preferred pronouns.
I was an early proponent of using preferred pronouns as far back as the early 2000’s. Of saying “she” when I knew the truth was “he.” It seemed harmless and I had no wish to cause offense. Trans people were tortured enough, it seemed to me, by nature of their dysphoria and society’s disdain for them in general. So I complied. I went along with it. I didn’t see the harm.
By 2016 we were debating bills to stop trans access to certain bathrooms which I covered from the news desk, siding with the trans community. How does it affect our lives as women if here or there a trans person uses a stall in our bathroom? These people aren’t bothering anyone. Why wouldn’t we accommodate them? I didn’t see the harm.
She continues from there describing how she eventually found herself at NBC News promoting the transitioning of children, something she wasn’t sure was right but that she felt was a way to help those suffering. By 2020, she began to see the “warning signs,” though.
Kelly cites Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage (which was eventually banned from Amazon) as a turning point in helping her understand the immense harm being caused by transgender ideology. Why is it acceptable to erase womanhood in order to affirm the mental illness of men? Does objective truth have any place in society anymore? And does no one care about what’s being done to children in the name of transgenderism?
Eventually, Kelly found herself on the other side of the issue, and she explained where she is today in the second part of her monologue.
KELLY: It is beyond time to stand up to the trans lobby that means to deprive women of their spaces and rights. To the men who pose as trans women to gain access to places like sorority houses only to exploit the women strong-armed into welcoming them.
To the men who grow their hair long, throw on a dress, pop on their TikTok filter and then threaten to kill us if we object to them coming into our private spaces. To the mutilation of our children by money-driven doctors and the rape of our imprisoned sisters and the theft of our medals and opportunities to win.
How can we stand up to any of this if we are complicit? How can we fight for facts if we participate in this fiction that a man *can* become a woman, that “transitioning” is possible. And then we try to say no, “she” cannot come into our locker rooms or bathrooms or swimming lanes or sororities?
We try to say no, Target, “she” can buy “her” bathing suit with the extra fabric to hide “her penis” in some other store? It doesn’t make sense because it isn’t true. And we know it’s not true, and to pretend that it is true is to foster a lie that’s hurting too many people, almost all of them, girls. Women and girls.
“How can we stand up to any of this if we are complicit” is a statement that needs to be read verbatim to many outlets on the right. Fox News, for example, continues to use “preferred pronouns” in their news articles, even when a piece is being written to point out the absurdity of transgender ideology. As I’ve said before, you can’t straddle the fence on transgenderism. If you accept its initial premise, even out of a desire to be kind and accommodating, it will consume everything.
That realization led Kelly to stop using “preferred pronouns,” something that she now calls a “rhetorical trick” to force normal people to cede the argument.
KELLY: For these reasons, I have resolved to base my conversations around gender on the same tenets that already govern my life: truth and reality. I will not use preferred pronouns, a decision motivated by a growing alarm over women’s rights and the safety of children.
I will speak to a trans person kindly and with empathy. In their presence I will likely try to avoid pronouns altogether as I have no wish to intentionally provoke or upset anyone.
But I will not take this gateway drug anymore. Because I have a daughter. Because I am a woman, an adult human female.
To that extent, Kelly is a little more soft on the pronoun issue than I am. I also used to feel the pressure (not from anyone at RedState) to avoid pronoun usage altogether when writing on transgender issues in order to avoid controversy. In the end, though, I decided that I was helping no one by obscuring the truth of the matter. In no other situation would I mislabel a person or avoid labeling them at all just because they claim to be something they aren’t. Why should I do it when it comes to transgenderism?
Still, despite that slight disagreement on degree, I’m glad to see Kelly has been awakened to what’s really going on. We need all the influential voices we can get on the side of sanity and reality when it comes to transgender ideology.
