Behold the "Progressive Trans Ally"
Final Twists and Lessons as the Unitarians Ban Gender Critics
This article shares new developments in the surreal story of Unitarians expelling my partner Bruce and me because of our gender critical views.
It also offers a profile of self-proclaimed “progressive trans allies” based on our experiences. Marching in lockstep with one another, people in our former community were extraordinarily consistent in the things they said and did as they supported expulsion and censorship. Their toxic mindset is prevalent among progressives everywhere and affects all sorts of issues beyond those associated with gender ideology. It serves powerful forces wreaking havoc in our world, and must be acknowledged and challenged head on.
Watch for my upcoming article (Working Title: Cliff Notes for My Progressive Friends) which connects what we experienced with “progressive” Unitarians to the broader issues of our day.
Here's What Happened Next
When last I wrote, Bruce and I had been ejected because of our gender critical views from the Unitarian community known as “Eliot” and told we could no longer attend an annual family camp we’d gone to for decades. We had sent an Open Letter to about 160 community members explaining what had occurred and urging people to object. Here's what happened next.
With Friends Like These…..Obnoxious Responses to our Open Letter
Three individuals let us know that they would express objections to the Board on our behalf. Twelve sent us messages indicating they approved of our expulsion. Many of those messages were quite obnoxious. More on that in a second. Everyone else blew us off.
The Board “Clarifies” Things for the Community
On July 7th, the Board and its “Safe Community Team” (SCT) sent an email to the entire Eliot community. Their email provided links to materials the Board and the SCT had given to Bruce and me, but did not provide links to any of the documents we had submitted in response.
In its letter, the Board maintained that Bruce and I had not been banished from camp. We could have signed their statement confessing guilt and agreeing to self-censor. So our exclusion was our fault, not theirs. This makes as much sense as the Catholic Church claiming that it never banished Galileo and his ideas because all he had to do to avoid punishment was agree to an Earth-centric model of the universe.
The Board also insisted that people were free to express gender critical views at camp. This was disingenuous because it has defined the core tenet of gender criticism—disagreement with sex self-ID and its imposition on others—as inherently disrespectful. Disrespect is not tolerated, and results in expulsion. The document they had wanted us to sign was very clear about that.
The Safe Community Team never mentioned or provided evidence of us engaging in supposedly problematic behaviors beyond expressing disagreement with sex self-ID and its imposition on others. Eliot leaders object to gender critical perspectives, period, no matter how civilly these are expressed. By vaguely referring to our failure to comply with unspecified “behavioral expectations”, the Board’s July 7th message smeared us by innuendo.
An Eliot community member sent an email to the Board questioning our expulsion, and received a reply from a Board member. That reply reiterated that gender critical views are supposedly welcome at camp, again insinuating that there was something disrespectful beyond being gender critics that warranted Bruce and my banishment. As a an example of that supposed disrespect, the Board member noted that “When they [Carol and Bruce] were told that their views and behavior hurt other people, they only defended their actions.” In other words, the fact that we defended ourselves against false charges was offered as evidence of unacceptable behavior. Failing to admit guilt, in the Board’s view, makes us disrespectful and unworthy of community membership. The Board member’s letter also bizarrely cited our fact-based rebuttal of gender ideology materials as further evidence of our bad behavior, a matter which is discussed below.
A Gender Critic Attends Camp…and is Evicted within 24 hours!
If there was ever any doubt that the Board did not want to see gender critical views expressed, that doubt evaporated on the second day of the Eliot camp in August. A gender critical friend of ours, Jess Grant, had registered to attend camp long before Bruce and I were summoned by the Safe Community Team and expelled. After our expulsion, we assumed Jess would cancel his registration. To our surprise, he decided to still attend camp, intending to share gender critical perspectives and information.
I had a slight hope that Jess would not be kicked out. After all, the Board was now claiming that gender critical views were welcome. There was a chance they realized how bad their treatment of Bruce and me looked, and they wanted to make sure to not expel anyone else.
No such luck. Jess lasted less than 24 hours at camp. On the second day, he set up a small table with a sign that said, “No one is born in the wrong body. Prove me wrong.” He hoped to have a respectful exchange of ideas regarding one of the core tenets of gender ideology. His approach was meant to enable those who wanted to engage to do so, while allowing others to walk on by.
Not long after Jess set up his table, however, eight camp leaders (the “deans” and several Board members) showed up to tell him there had been complaints. They declared him to be in violation of the Eliot Covenant and told him that he had to leave. The team escorted Jess to his room and then to his car. “Shame on you” one of the deans said to Jess. For more details on what happened, read Jess’s account here.
The Board Again Contacts the “Community.”
On September 6th, the Eliot Board sent an additional communication to the Eliot community. You can see that letter and its attachments here:
This letter was not sent to Bruce, me or Jess and we’ve been unable to defend ourselves against the Board’s errors, lies and innuendo.
In its letter, the Board claimed to have responded to “acts of transphobia.” It said that “In our broader culture, some believe that their right to ‘free speech’ permits them to debate the worth and dignity of our beloved trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming community members.” We believe nothing of the sort. Ironically, we ourselves are gender nonconforming and have been so since long before gender ideology became a thing. It’s odd and telling that the Board derides the term “free speech” by putting it in quotation marks.
The Board went on to say that “These persons debate, for example, others’ rights to play sports [No, we believe trans-identifying people have the same right to play sports as anyone else. We simply insist that males must participate in the male, not the female, category], which bathroom to use [Yes, we hold that sex-based rights matter and that all males, whether or not they identify as transgender, should be excluded from female spaces] and what medical care decisions parents can make. [Yes, we do oppose harmful medicalization of children for which there is no credible evidence of benefits. We also point out that the wishes of parents who want to protect their children from social transition, gender affirmation, and sketchy medical procedures are often ignored.]
In the next sentence, the letter really laid on the smears: “These ‘debates’ and ‘questions’ are thinly disguised hate speech that suggest that trans and gender nonconforming people should not participate in society, or even exist.” Nothing Bruce, Jess, or I have ever said or done warrants these hyperbolic assertions which are clearly designed to rev up hatred against us. We have never said that trans-identifying and gender non-conforming people should be prevented from participating in society or existing. Nor would we ever say such a thing. We simply maintain that their participation must not negate or harm the rights of others.
The Board was eager to plant the idea in people’s minds that Bruce and I solicited Jess to attend camp and directed him to speak on our behalf. As noted earlier, Jess signed up for camp long before the Board went after Bruce and me. We didn’t solicit his attendance. And while we see nothing wrong with Jess’s activities at camp, his ideas and actions were his own. The Eliot board’s portrayal of Jess as some kind of Manchurian puppet under our control is a transparent attempt to sensationalize truly benign events, while suggesting that no one could possibly criticize gender ideology unless someone else nefariously puts them up to it.
“While in his room he was on the phone with someone, perhaps Bruce and Carol, which leads us to speculate that this was a planned and coordinated activity,” the Board’s letter noted. Jess wasn’t on the phone with us. His action was not a planned and coordinated activity. The Board speculated that he was talking with us, and then based further speculation on that first speculation as if it were fact.
Before an attachment in its email, the Board included a hefty warning labeled: “Content/Trigger Warning.: Transphobia.” The warning went on and on about how upcoming words might trigger people and be traumatizing. It encouraged people to use harm-reduction strategies. Have a friend present when you read the attachment. Read it in small chunks. Breathe, take a walk, or let days pass between reading those chunks. Be prepared to reach out to a therapist.
Peruse the trigger warning and then look at the attachment. It talks about Jess setting up his table with the sign that said, “No one is born in the wrong body. Convince me I’m wrong.” That’s it. That’s the horror-of-horrors trauma-inducing language for which the Board so dramatically prepared people. To encourage and condone such extreme fragility is unhealthy and infantilizing. To banish people in response to that fragility is outrageous.
The Board reported that 50 people had contacted them about our expulsion. It said that 90% of them supported the Board’s action. An additional “less than 5%” said that the Board had not gone far enough in protecting the community from people like Bruce and me. And another “less than 5%” said the Board had “gone too far.”
Ominously, in its letter, the Board said it intends to do more to protect the community from wrong-thinkers like Bruce, me and Jess. What might that entail? Will they pre-screen anyone who wants to attend camp? Perhaps they can have everyone sign a loyalty oath akin to those people were forced to sign during the Joe McCarthy era. “I do not now, nor have I ever, held views critical of Gender Identity Ideology. I promise to never question that ideology and its tenets. I will never maintain that no child is born in the wrong body. Nor will I object to trans-identifying males entering female-only spaces and sports. I will join with others in dismissing the Cass Review and other systematic reviews of the evidence underpinning gender affirmation medicine, declaring these to be biased and false.” And so on and so forth. Since so many statements are viewed by gender ideologues as transphobic and triggering, the hypothetical oath offered here is obviously just a partial draft, subject to extensive expansion.
Behold the “Progressive Trans Ally”
It may be quite some time before the insanity of the regressive gender identity agenda is visible to all and that ideology is relegated to the dustbin of history. But it’s not too soon to begin analyzing how things got so bad so fast. Toward that end, based on striking parallels observed in the statements and behaviors of those who applauded our ouster from camp, I offer a profile of the typical self-proclaimed “progressive trans ally.” For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to the idea of trans-identifying men (“trans women”) being treated as women, as shorthand for all the variations on that theme central to gender ideology, including trans-identifying women being treated as men, and people of either sex being treated as both sexes, sexless, or some mythical third sex.
1. Progressive trans allies classify anyone who doesn’t agree that “trans women are women” as hateful, and thus worthy of hateful mistreatment.
The Safe Community Team declared Bruce and me guilty of harming trans-identifying people by virtue of our not agreeing with sex self-ID. Members of the Eliot community immediately accepted that “harmful” designation and jumped from there to considering us “hateful.” The Board’s September 6th letter to the community then solidified our status as “hateful” people by explicitly declaring that we had engaged in “hate speech.”
Bruce and I have never assaulted, harassed, sought to expel, threatened or otherwise mistreated trans-identifying individuals at Unitarian camps or elsewhere. If we had been allowed to attend the August 2024 camp, we would have happily swum, eaten, played games, sung, danced, and conversed with anyone interested in doing those things with us, including those who identify as trans. But it’s not how gender critics express our views that upsets trans allies, persuading them to label us as hateful. It is that we express our views at all.
Failure to agree that “transwomen are women” renders us “hateful”, period, and that in turn, makes it appropriate for people to engage in hateful actions against us. When someone is declared “hateful”, it’s fine, even exemplary, to do things like sit by silently as they’re maligned and punished; actively participate in their expulsion; and say cruel things to them as they’re kicked out the door.
Progressive trans allies view themselves as champions of love, bravely standing up against hate. They love to hate hatred. They are quick to see those who deviate from progressive narratives as hateful and to administer justice accordingly.
Some individuals responding to our Open letter said things like “Best Wishes” in their messages to us. They didn’t say “you’re a hateful bigot” to our faces, preferring to use a more genteel roundabout approach. They explained that they (unlike us) love trans-identifying people (which by contrast conveys the view that we hate them.) They explained that we need to let people live how they want to live as long as they don’t hurt others—a position with which they assume we don’t agree, obviously attributing to Bruce and me a different hate-based philosophy. Our former friends believe that they stand for love, and we stand against it. They’ll miss us, but hey, they can’t tolerate hatred at camp.
Other Elioteers sent responses to our Open Letter that gloated over our banishment. They made a point of coldly telling us how evil we are and that they never want to see us again:
“Thank you for this email. Without it, I wouldn’t have known the depths of your bigotry,” one person said, noting how “very glad” she is to know that we’ll never be at camp again.
One couple cc:d us on an email to Board members which thanked them profusely for protecting the sacred space of camp from us. “We ask that they [Bruce and Carol] make no effort to engage us in conversation, either via email, mail, or in person,” they said. This is a couple we’ve known for years. The husband and Bruce have interacted extensively as musicians and as Eliot volunteers.
Another person we’ve known for years called our views “bigoted vitriol.” “[P]lease remove me from your address book and any future correspondence,” he said.
Some people went all the way to comparing us to Nazis and racists:
“Don’t blame the Eliot leadership for this; you created it. If you came to camp openly spewing racism, sexism, anti Semitism, etc, it would be the same.”
“ [T]his is simply about your strongly held opinions and actions being hurtful, disrespectful, and harmful to the trans members in our community…..I have no desire to debate your cited ‘scientific evidence.’ I put this in the category of Hitler's ‘scientific evidence’ used to separate Aryans from Jews and provide him a justification for mass murder, or the ‘scientific evidence’ cited by Americans of the intellectual superiority of the Caucasian race in order to justify discrimination against blacks and other races.”
A new message to us just arrived as I finalized this article. Its author said “I wanted to tell you your no better than those folks screaming 50 years ago about ‘mixing of the races’ For some reason you care whats going on in other peopel private lives and want to make it your business. You've just found a new group to fear and hate.” [In the interest of accuracy, I didn’t correct his typos.]
Like other gender critics, Bruce and I act out of love. But “progressive trans allies” look at us and see hatred. To them, any divergence from the narrative that “trans women are women” is hateful. The only way to be loving is to agree with the narrative.
They also see “danger” when they look at us, even though we are as nonthreatening as can be. The “progressive trans allies” that populate Unitarian Universalism are grateful when “Safety Committees” ban people like us. Meanwhile, we gender critics are subjected to actual danger. We are physically attacked by seething mobs of trans rights activists, for example, and progressive trans allies pay no heed.
In short, self-proclaimed progressive trans allies are quick to condemn those who question gender identity as hateful, even to the point of comparing us to Nazis and racists, while ignoring hatred directed at us. Progressive trans allies love to hate hatred—so much so that they swiftly accept declarations of others as hateful without any real thought as to whether that makes sense. A desire to be righteous haters of hatred transforms them into people who themselves engage in hateful activities: cutting off friendships, banishing people from vital social networks, and issuing hate-filled denunciations as we are kicked to the curb.
2. Progressive trans allies are committed to never ever discussing gender ideology issues with gender critics. They proudly oppose any back and forth about facts with anyone other than proponents of gender ideology.
Obviously, everyone who told us we should never contact them again was opposed to discussing gender identity issues with us. But it wasn’t just them. Even people who were less cold as they applauded our expulsion made it clear that we should never attempt to communicate with them on gender identity issues. Every one of them. Here’s a sampling of things people said:
“I will not argue with you. My research offers different statistics and stories than yours. I know the numerous research studies you refer to in Europe. I do not want to discuss this very controversial issue which is close to my heart as I see trans friends and children that I taught now thriving.”
“We do not want to engage directly with Bruce and Carol because of the hurt their words have caused and the realization that nothing we can say will change anything.”
“As with other issues we’ve discussed I am quite certain that further discussion is not going to change your minds or mine, as much as we might all wish that the OTHER PERSON were more open to change. Such is the nature of some issues.” This same person later added that if he wanted “to learn and understand more, it will be from people with more personal experience with trans folks” rather than people like us whom he falsely assumes don’t know trans-identifying individuals, and who have other sorts of information to share, such as information on women prisoners sharing cells with trans-identifying males.
“I want you to know that I hold very different beliefs than you on these topics and I ask that you remove me from your mailing list.”
And don’t forget the person who was mentioned earlier who said “I have no desire to debate your cited ‘scientific evidence’ ” which this person likened to the scientific evidence put forth by Hitler and racists.
As you can see, some of the people prohibiting any discussion on gender identity issues claim to know what gender critics are saying and disagree with us. They boldly declare that our information and ideas are ridiculous, but they don’t explain what it is we’re supposedly getting wrong. They tell us there are rebuttals to what we say, but don’t explain what those rebuttals are and give us a chance to respond.
One former friend was particularly scathing. “[C]learly, you two see yourselves as making a compelling argument, you’re not,” he declared. “I have read both of your substacks, I have watched your video….. your ideas are non-cohesive and garbled, and even when you sift through that to get to the point you’re trying to make - you think to yourself ‘oh, no, that’s just incorrect; I guess I won’t get that time back.’” He, like all the others, has declared talking with us about these issues (or in his case anything) off limits. Protected from any need to engage on facts by this prohibition, he is oh-so-bold-and-brave in his declarations about how wrong we are about something he won’t articulate.
Those promoting gender ideology need only offer weak takedowns of anything that contradicts their agenda, safe in the knowledge that progressive trans allies will never hear rebuttals to those arguments. They’ve banned gender critics from their gatherings and events. They’ve told us that one-on-one conversations about gender ideology are strictly off limits now and forever. This is all a recipe for unfettered indoctrination.
There was one response to our Open Letter that did include some facts. But that was a special case because it came from an Eliot Board member. She referred to the spot in our Open Letter where we accurately noted that the Board had “offered no references, citations or counter arguments to the very specific facts and studies we cited.” She said she wanted to respond to that concern and provided links to materials that “fact-checked” things we had said about the Cass Review and the WPATH Files. (No attempt was made to counter anything else we had raised with the Board.) Frankly, it is clear to me that this Board member sat down at her computer and typed “Take-downs of Cass Review” or similar words in the google search field. She then selected a few of the articles that popped up to read and send on to us.
Lest we mistake her action as a sincere attempt to engage with us on the facts about gender identity ideology, the Board member said, “There is no need for you to respond to this email. I am not interested in sustained dialogue with you on this topic, because your communications indicate that you believe that if you just tell me 'the ‘facts’ long enough, eventually I will believe in your view on truth.”
Her depiction of us repeatedly beating her over the head with facts is an amusing one, since the Board’s interaction with Bruce and me on these matters was close to nil. We had reached out to the Board once early in 2024 when we discerned that it intended to aggressively promote gender ideology, but they ignored us entirely. Then in April the Board adopted a gender ideology policy without contacting us at all, let alone inviting us to meet to discuss our concerns. Immediately thereafter, the Board commenced a process to silence us.
In the months prior to the Board’s adoption of its gender ideology policy, there were extremely important developments bearing directly on that policy. But we are fairly certain that Board and SCT members had never even heard of things like the Cass Review and the WPATH Files until I referred to them in the SCT’s “struggle session” with us.
In short there were major problems with the Board’s decision-making process. Instead of acknowledging those, however, a Board member replied to our Open Letter with an email offering links to very weak rebuttals to some of the information we had shared and telling us to not reply.
To make matters worse, this Board member has since used the fact that we did reply to make the following extraordinarily twisted claim in an email to a member of the Eliot community:
They [Carol and Bruce] are also unwilling to hear other perspectives – when I attempted to share my views on the topic, and share journal articles I had found enlightening, they sent back a point-by-point rebuttal to share why my perspective is wrong, and the peer-reviewed research is wrong, and to convince me that their views are the only real truth.
In summary, the Board failed to respond at all to our fact-based concerns, adopted a policy without our input, kicked us out of camp, finally sent some links to very unimpressive rebuttals to one item we had raised, and told us not to reply. Then they had the gall, through this board member, to tell people that we are unwilling to hear other perspectives! And apparently, to them, rebutting a rebuttal is the epitome of inappropriate behavior.
Eliot leaders have evidently decided to rely on sources like WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and to join WPATH in pooh-poohing the Cass Review, and several other systematic reviews of the evidence underpinning gender affirmation. Since gender critics are banished, Eliot leaders are completely unaware of how upside down their position is. The WPATH Files and whistleblowers had already dealt a major blow to WPATH’s credibility by the time of our banishment. Now documents made public through litigation are driving home just how bad things are. It is now known that WPATH commissioned its own systematic evidence review which reached the same conclusions as Cass and other reviews, for example. But WPATH, unhappy with the results of the review, prevented publication of its own data!
Frankly, the situation is so bad that I am embarrassed for the entire Eliot community. They have gone down the wrong path to a very dark place indeed.
Moreover, even if the Board were standing on firmer ground, why should our challenging its position be viewed as a problem? Why would the Board consider it appropriate to disregard important information presented by highly informed community members like Bruce and me, including the rebuttals we offer to arguments made against us?
In summary, progressive trans allies live in a bubble and they like it there. Confronted with forthright gender critics, their response is “no discussion.” Some claim to have reviewed our positions and materials and found them inaccurate or unpersuasive, but they will never ever explain what the flaws are in our evidence and analysis. They never want to hear any rebuttals to things they’ve seen that challenge us, preferring to assume that even the shallowest of the materials they rely upon are well-reasoned. Progressive trans allies are committed to ignorance. They treat as a righteous duty the batting away of any pesky voices countering the one-sided narratives they embrace.
3. Progressive trans allies are committed to full-blown erasure of the victims of gender ideology. They see only individuals the trans lobby deems marginalized and no one else.
One of the main reasons we are so concerned about gender identity ideology is the massive harm it’s causing to large numbers of people. We discussed those harms in our communications with the Board and the Safe Community Team, and in our Open letter to the community.
What sort of response have we received regarding the victims of gender ideology? Crickets.
None of the individuals who replied to our Open Letter mentioned the victims we had discussed. “Progressive trans allies” only acknowledge and care about affirmation-seeking trans-identifying individuals. Everyone else is erased.
Some lectured us about the need to let people live how they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone, clearly not realizing that we’re speaking up precisely because sex self-ID does hurt people. “Psychological health in my opinion is to live in a way that is conducive to a sustainable sense of well-being, and not Violating others’ rights” one person told us. “The world I want to live in and help create is one in which people get to choose how they want to be seen and treated, as long as it does not harm others, and then be supported in and respected for those choices,” said another.
We sent very brief, courteous replies to four individuals, trying to make sure they realized that other people’s rights are being violated. We indicated our agreement with the philosophy of “live-and-let-live as long as actions don’t hurt others.” And we explained that others are being hurt, describing the plight of incarcerated women and others, as examples.
The response to this elucidation? Again, crickets.
If they wrote back at all, people completely ignored what we had said, reiterating that they love their trans friends. One individual did send this hurried short message: “I totally agree about bathroom scenarios in prison etc, but [that] is it’s own niche issue; there’s a risk of that leading to tails wagging dogs.” He then sent a longer message completely ignoring incarcerated women and others harmed by sex self-ID whom we had mentioned. His message ended with the declaration I already cited earlier in this article: “If I want to learn and understand more, it will be from people with more personal experience with trans folks, like” a health care provider he knows who works with trans-identifying people. In other words, he has no interest in hearing from women in prisons, female athletes deprived of their titles, lesbians harassed for refusing relationships with trans-identifying men, detransitioners, and individuals like us who work with people harmed by gender ideology.
In short, progressive trans allies readily erase people harmed by gender ideology, including extremely marginalized groups.
With women disproportionately harmed by gender ideology, I am regularly reminded of the sexism I encountered as a young woman. “Women’s rights issues need to wait while more important things are addressed,” various uncles and other men in my life told me. For centuries, women were advised to take a back seat while men’s problems were addressed. Now the feelings of males who “identify as women” are treated as the only topic worth mentioning even as women are harmed by their actions.
Think about the reasons gender critics oppose sex self-ID. We want women to be able to set boundaries, have a fair and safe playing field in sports, be able to meet in women-only groups to discuss female-specific experiences and to organize for women’s rights, feel safe at rape shelters, feel safe in female-only prisons, and more. All these things, are apparently, examples of the tail wagging the dog. Are women—51% of the population—and our civil rights struggle still considered the “tail” after all these centuries? Are the hundreds of men already in women’s prisons, and the hundreds or thousands lined up for transfers, not a big enough concern to warrant even mention?
Misogyny is alive and well, thanks substantially to gender ideology. In thrives in communities of self-proclaimed progressive trans allies, like Unitarians.
Progressive trans allies don’t just ignore the women harmed by gender ideology, of course. They ignore all the other victims as well, including, for example trans-identifying children gravely harmed by “gender affirmation care.” While they claim to stand with the “trans community”, progressive trans allies, actually acknowledge only a subset of that community—a subset that advocates a particular agenda. That agenda is rejected by other trans-identifying individuals and by vast numbers of detransitioners. It is especially harmful to sex-confused children.
4. Progressive trans allies possess exceptional DARVO skills.
Captured as they are by Gender Ideology, sequestered away from the words of gender critics, progressive trans allies are masters at getting things backwards. It’s the only way they can make sense out of what they’re seeing.
One friend complained that “As I see it your ideology means more than your friends.” Camp is “not a time for ideological advocacy directed against campers and their loved ones” he noted, wrongly casting our defense of children’s health and civil rights as being “against” trans-identifying people. Another person told us that we have no business bringing up these issues.
In reality, it is the Eliot leadership that has opted to use camp as a place to proselytize and impose an ideology. Bruce and I were forced to respond, because that ideology causes harm, especially to children. We did what caring principled people do when they see a community they’re a part of headed full speed in the wrong direction. We spoke up. Describing us as using camp to push our beliefs on people is a prime example of the phenomenon known as DARVO which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Oppressor.
Gender ideology is rife with DARVO. Women who defend their sex-based rights are said to be attacking other people’s rights. Peaceful gender critics are referred to as dangerous, even as trans activist mobs violently attack them. The Eliot Board speaks proudly of observing the Covenant, even as they thoroughly undermine a core element of that covenant: the directive to listen respectfully to people who have opinions that differ from our own. Even as they shun us and condone the cruelty of our expulsion, former friends see themselves as pinnacles of love and compassion.
The list goes on and on. Progressive trans allies are able to speak of something as a core belief, even as they act in a manner that thoroughly contradicts that belief. Their capacity for hypocrisy is impressive.
5. Progressive trans allies are proudly pro-censorship.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of progressive trans allies is that they are proudly pro-censorship. We know of only three individuals who objected to our ouster. Everybody else in a community of hundreds acquiesced in it, some applauding loudly and thanking the board for its actions against us. Self-proclaimed progressive trans allies appear to be oblivious to any of the downsides and risks associated with banning people and ideas from a community.
Our family “has not felt comfortable at an Eliot where gender critical views are espoused”, two people told the Board, expressing gratitude for participation rules that exclude the views they dislike. “All you have to do is zip it at camp,” a former friend admonished, perplexed that we wouldn’t just self-censor as required. Another person expressed hope that we would “agree to guidelines that are there to protect the dignity of marginalized groups, even though those guidelines do restrict speech that you prefer to be unrestricted.”
“Free speech is great, until it is attacking and demonizing others’ identities,” another person declared. “Then it’s not free speech anymore, but hate speech.” This person almost certainly believes there’s a hate speech exception to the First Amendment. (There isn’t, and for good reason. I will talk about this in my upcoming article.) She has no clue as to what Bruce and I actually say and do. But she is more than glad to support a ban on our attendance and to lecture us about how censorship is what we deserve.
Conclusion
There you have it: five consistent characteristics of self-proclaimed progressive trans allies. Except for a very few individuals, everyone from our former community who communicated with us after we expressed concerns about gender ideology shared these characteristics. To recap, self-proclaimed progressive trans allies:
Love to hate hatred. They are swift to perceive dissident voices as hateful and therefore deserving of hateful treatment, like insults, shunning, and expulsion.
Are committed to never engaging in a discussion with those critical of gender ideology. In other words, they are committed to remaining ignorant of information beyond that provided by the purveyors of gender ideology.
Are committed to ignoring the impacts of gender ideology on everything and everyone beyond a subset of trans-identifying people.
Have strong DARVO skills, and
Believe in censorship, without having a clue as to any of the downsides that flow from it.
Frankly, the standard profile of the self-proclaimed progressive trans ally is not a flattering one. It is a disturbing blend of willful ignorance, righteous hypocrisy, and censorship promotion. This leads to blind cruelty and a betrayal of the values progressives claim to advance. It produces outcomes that are the opposite of what progressives say they want, and precedents that will ultimately suppress them as well as those they deem suppression-worthy. It prompts distrust and disdain among other people thereby undermining progressives’ ability to build effective movements for change.
The mindset that dominates with respect to gender ideology also rules the day as self-proclaimed progressives deal with other important issues. This does not bode well for them and for our world. That’s a topic I will discuss in my next article.
In response to our prior articles, Bruce and I have been contacted by several former Unitarians. They left their congregations because of the sorts of things we described. We also received lots of supportive comments from other people including the following:
I am a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany ,and I find the gender ideology very reminiscent of what happened in Germany , where truth was sacrificed to ideology. Perhaps I’m overreacting, but I find the takeover of the gender cult absolutely frightening!
So many people have to bow down to their lies, and if you don’t go along, you will lose your job. If women try to speak, they are vilified or physically assaulted! The parallels are frightening.
Some members of our former community may be reading this article. Know that Bruce and I are more than happy to talk with you about gender identity issues. We have important information to share, and consistent with our lifelong social justice activism, we can connect you with people organizing within marginalized communities disproportionately harmed by sex self-ID. Ignoring the very real harm inflicted by gender identity policies and mandatory gender affirmation is not loving or progressive. Nor is buying into manipulative Board descriptions of Bruce, me, and Jess which describe us as advocating things we do not support.
Here are some materials on gender ideology you might want to examine:
General overviews:
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Transgender Galaxy
Speaking to Friends and Family which contains the Please Listen video
Specific Gender Ideology Issues:
Gender ideology promotion in the schools
Medicalization of children:
Miriam Grossman’s Lost in Trans Nation
The destruction of gay rights by gender ideology:
Gays Against Groomer’s new book: The Gender Trap
Go to Bruce and my substacks for more information: caroldansereau.substack.com, brucelesnick.substack.com There, you can also see our prior articles on being banned by the Unitarians.
Absolutely brilliant work, you deserve great thanks for documenting and putting all this together, which I am sure required much time and effort. Gender ideology will eventually be recognized by society as the rank nonsense that it is, and your work is such a valuable contribution towards understanding the mindset of the totalitarian liberal. Thank you!
It is a large societal-wide cult.