My favourite writing on Trump, gender and the US election
A reading list for the politically lonely who want to stop feeling so alone
For those who are, or want to understand those of us who are, left-wing, feminist, anti-Trump and anti-gender ideology.
“I’m a rare Democrat who admits the loss is our fault” | Hadley Freeman, The Times, 10 November 2024.
“Gender ideology did not decide the election. But when Trump’s campaign aired an advert showing Harris in 2019 reassuring the (sigh) ACLU she would, if elected president, fund sex change surgery for transgender prisoners, accompanied by the unforgettable tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you”, it shifted the race 2.7 points in Trump’s favour.”
“The Reckoning” | Making sense with Sam Harris [Audio]. 11 November 2024. Transcript from Happy Scribe.
“…But honestly, if you wanted to account for Harris's loss and Trump's win in the briefest possible space and also indicate the hold that the far left has had over democratic politics and the Biden administration, I think it would be hard to do better than to juxtapose the following showing two facts. On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order ensuring that trans girls could have access to girls restrooms, locker rooms, and girls sports. It took him two and a half years to sign an executive order addressing the chaos at the Southern border. Why did he wait so long? Because the far left has always said that a concern about the Southern border is racist. What more needs to be said about the degree to which the Democratic Party and the Biden administration lost touch with the will of the American people? As for the topic of trans rights and gender dysphoria, what Harris needed to do, at a minimum, is express her understanding that this issue is complex, that there's a legitimate concern about social contagion, that in certain cases, there's a conflict between giving trans women and girls everything they want and protecting the rights of biological women and girls.”
Will the Democrats finally start listening to the TERFs? | Kara Dansky, The Hill, 23 November 2024.
“For years, we TERFs have been telling elected Democrats that the movement to elevate the subjective concept of “gender identity” over the material reality of sex in law and policy is not only wrong on its merits, but also a potentially significant vote-loser at the ballot box.”
What’s wrong with the British Left? It has to take feminism lessons from Donald Trump | Julie Bindel, The Telegraph, 21 January 2025.
“Any woman who reckons he’s done this because he cares about us needs to think again: the President’s record on women is appalling. In 2016, Trump called for an abortion ban with “some form of punishment” for women – which was too extreme even for many anti-abortion activists. He doesn’t like gender ideology in exactly the same way as other misogynists don’t like it – because women should be in the kitchen, barefoot, preferably pregnant, and men are men and women are women, in the most traditional and regressive way…
…Those of us on the Left have been railing against identity politics in Britain, warning the Labour government that voters will drift away in disgust unless it gets its house in order. Trump’s election is a stark lesson – and it’s one that neither the British nor (for what it’s worth) the American Left has learnt.”
The left must realise that Donald Trump's gender views strike a chord with voters | Susan Dalgety, The Scotsman, 25 January 2025.
“It’s time for UK politicians to stop blaming people who are fed up of being told they are on the wrong side of a culture war
Donald Trump is everything his opponents say he is: an authoritarian, right-wing populist with an ego the size of the “Gulf of America”. A greedy charlatan who will always put his own needs first before those of his country.
A sexual abuser who treats women as commodities. But on Monday evening, only hours after he was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States and arguably became the world’s most powerful man, he signed an executive order that is one of the most sensible pieces of public policy to come out of the United States in a generation.
His proclamation on sex and gender may have an unwieldy title – “Defending Women from Gender Ideology and Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” – but its core message is simple: a woman is an adult human female. A statement of fact that in recent years has been dismissed as bigotry by a succession of leading progressive politicians, both in the USA and here in Scotland.”
JK Rowling: Woke Left pushed President Trump to transgender ban | Tom Morgan, The Telegraph, 6 February 2025.
“‘Congratulations to every person who’s been campaigning to destroy women’s and girls’ rights,’ writer said after federal order…
…Navratilova, the 18-time major tennis champion, echoed Rowling’s sentiments. ‘I hate that the Democrats totally failed women and girls on this very clear issue of women’s sports being for females only,’ she wrote.
Rowling, meanwhile, later added: ‘The actual victims in this mess have been women and children, especially the most vulnerable, gay people who’ve resisted the movement and paid a horrible price, and regular people working in environments where one misplaced pronoun could see you vilified or constructively dismissed. Do not tell me this is about a tiny minority.’”
Sports edict makes Trump a feminist hero | Janice Turner, The Times, 7 February 2025.
“The man who used to boast about pussy-grabbing is being lauded by women after a commonsense stroke of his pen.
As a crowd of female athletes and little girls in tracksuits clustered around his desk, President Trump seemed unable to believe his luck. “What a nice picture this is,” he declared, signing his executive order entitled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” to a trilling chorus of “thank you, Mr President!”…
…Anyone could see it was unfair for female athletes to race males who, regardless of transition, retain a 10 to 50 per cent physical advantage. So why did it take Trump to say this, and why did the Democrats gift their worst enemy such an easy win, allowing Trump — who in another executive order just banned all federal funding to abortion services — to be hailed as a feminist president?”
No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague | Sonia Sodha, The Observer, 9 February 2025.
“The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change in the UK: take health secretary Wes Streeting’s admirably principled defence of the Darlington nurses, for example.
Not before time. There is a cautionary tale from across the Atlantic, where Democrats’ stubborn and unpopular defence of men’s rights to self-identify into women’s sport has dropped the unlikeliest of moral victories into President Donald Trump’s lap, allowing a man accused of serious sexual assault to somehow position himself as a defender of women’s rights. Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.”
Men are not women — at last the US is united | Hadley Freeman, The Sunday Times, 9 February 2025.
“And signing this executive order is the most popular thing Trump has ever done, supported by 79 per cent of the public. At last, America has found an issue the nation can come together on, and it is … men are not women…
It’s tragic. I’m happy for American female athletes, but needing Trump to sweep out gender ideology is like having to bulldoze your house to get rid of dry rot. He will be so destructive — to Ukrainians, to Palestinians, to Americans themselves — and the left allowed this to happen, simply by denying reality.”