No to Ideological Totalism in the Green Party!

I received a communication today from Lavender Greens, the caucus for LGBT members of the Green Party of the United States, asking me to join them in demanding the Georgia Green Party repudiate their recent endorsement of a statement titled "The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights."

They further demand the state party's leaders submit to "training" about "the necessity of gender affirmation to protect the lives of trans youth and trans adults," that any leader who refuses to do so be expelled, and that, if the state party doesn't accede to these demands, it be disaffiliated from the national party.

I found this development alarming and responded with this letter to the national office:

I am strongly opposed to the campaign by Lavender Greens to impose ideological conformity on the Georgia State Green Party over their endorsement of a declaration reflecting a divergent interpretation of the Key Value of "feminism and gender equity." As a bisexual and past participant in Lavender Greens, I am not in complete agreement with either of these interpretations, but I reject entirely the notion that such differences should be addressed  by means of Stalinist-style "self-criticism" and "re-education." Please refrain from interfering with the Georgia party's autonomy on this question.

I read the Declaration thoroughly before composing this letter, because I sensed I would likely not be in ideological agreement with either side of the dispute. And, indeed, I am not.

Although the Declaration uses the language of human rights, what it's really about is an ideology of group rights. And so is the Lavender Greens' counterposed position. Both express identitarian politics -- in one case identitarianism based on biological sex, and in the other based on subjective gender identity. So, for instance, it says that "[t]he inclusion of men who claim a female 'gender identity' within the legal category of mother erodes the social significance of maternity," without offering any explanation of how this would practically handicap cisgender women. That's because it's not really about protecting the human rights of individuals -- it's about protecting the "rights" of an abstraction, the identity "woman."

Similarly, the Lavender Greens' statement purports to be about "protect[ing] the lives of trans youth and trans adults," but it doesn't support this claim with facts. Instead it simply cites a document titled

"Health considerations for gender non-conforming children and transgender adolescents." Is this a peer-reviewed paper? Not at all. It appears on the website of the UCSF Transgender Care Navigation Center -- that is, a facility dedicated to a certain kind of treatment that is supported by a particular kind of ideology. A vested interest, in other words. Clearly Lavender Greens chose to link to it simply because it endorses a position that's ideologically amenable to them. This approach is not supported by empirical research on outcomes for trans-identifying youth, notwithstanding the American Academy of Pediatrics' claim to the contrary. You can read here how the AAP misrepresents the data to justify their ideology-driven position: www.jamescantor.org/uploads/6/2/9/3/62939641/cantor_fact-check_of_aap.pdf

The reason this matters is that many trans-identifying youth have actually been harmed by the assumption that all they need is drugs and "affirmation," rather than "watchful waiting" as practiced in most of the world, and therapy to help them clarify the roots of their gender dysphoria. A number of women who identified as trans men for a period, only to subsequently desist from doing so, have spoken out on how more encouragement to introspect, instead of rushing into medical transition, would have served them better. You can find some of their stories here: www. piqueresproject.com.