Of all the topics that are hardest for LGBTQ+ communities to fully, openly and authentically discuss, gender identity is perhaps the hardest.
Sure, we cheer for it at protests. We revel in it at drag shows. We appear on TV to offer tiny soundbites that bemoan the agony of “anti-trans” or “anti-LGBTQ+” executive orders, court rulings or legislative bills.
But we don’t really talk about the deeper, more complex questions about gender identity, and the many layered topics related to it.
This is why MainStream is starting a new section titled the Gender Identity Fact-Based Forum. This new section will be all about gender identity: research, policy, law, personal development, mental health, physical health, resources and diverse perspectives that are fact-based.
It’ll be a lot like other key topics we’re focusing on because of their relevance to modern-day society, such as our HIV And …., Green Wave, and Spirituality sections.
At first, the Gender Identity Fact-Based Forum is a simple inventory of all gender identity-related articles and essays we’ve published since 2019. You’ll find mostly softer pieces about community groups and events, with the occasional in-depth coverage.
You’ll see lots of articles you missed — and also , will notice that WE missed some key articles over the years. This new section is part of our effort to make it a priority and do better.
More consistent, expansive coverage of gender identity topics coming
Soon, you’ll see meatier coverage of gender identity topics — including some really tough stuff like the Cass Review and diagnostic overshadowing.
As everyone, MainStream included, learns more about gender transition and its medications and procedures, we’ll share that with you.
Within a few months, even if you encounter information that challenges your assumptions (whatever they may be), I’m confident this section earns your trust. We’ll do that through compassion, attention to detail and other basics of good journalism.
We’ve always been there for transgender rights, visibility
You may also have noticed, or heard, of a series of columns I’ve written over the past year for the Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest daily newspaper, about gender identity. Two appeared just today, in the Opinion section online and in print. Another appeared in March.
All of the essays press for new and different ways to talk about and make decisions about gender identity, and also some bad patterns we’ve fallen into over the topic.
You might be tempted, or encouraged by others, to pull out that “transphobic” label because questions are being raised. Give yourself a chance to see beyond that impulse. I believe that reading with an open mind, you’ll find love and respect for everyone involved, and especially all facets of the LGBTQ+ community, trans’ folks included.
You should also know that I first began making this love and respect part of my entire life about 27 years ago. That’s when I started the first iteration of MainStream in southwest Florida, when the internet was just born, and marriage equality was still 19 years in the future. Back then, MainStream was one of the first publications to actually cover transgender and transsexual topics in-depth.
Nine years ago, freshly relocated back to Iowa City after 25 years in Florida, the LGBTQ+ community’s overall apathy about transgender issues was one inspiration to publish MainStream anew. I was attending a “Coming Out” event in Iowa City in 2017, while gathering with very few fellow attendees (that’s the way it was back in the mid 2010s, an apathetic time).
As we munched on our homemade rainbow layer cake, and shared our thoughts, I said I felt we were ill-prepared for the far right’s coming attack on our trans’ community members. I still remember the blank stares and empty response I received, as though I was speaking a different language.
And now, here we are, facing the crisis that first emerged directly for me almost a decade ago and helped inspire this publication and website.
Reaching for a new level of ‘woke’
But something changed in recent years. Community and moral support for our transgender community members somehow became synonymous with political maneuvers on their behalf. Gender identity became the overriding cause. It became oversimplified in all of the activism.
This toxic stew of politics, peer pressure and oversimplification has left some of us especially uneasy. This would include folks like me, who rejected the two-party system decades ago for matters of principle about structured conflict. and now find themselves somewhat locked out of their communities because of their beyond-partisan beliefs.
I’ve watched all of this grow for years. I’ve even spoken privately with community leaders, pleading for different approaches. No one has really responded.
So I now feel a wee bit stuck with that mission of writers: to write things that others are unable to say. We’re putting it all out there, melding our gender identity coverage of the past with a more critical, detailed, fact-based approach in the future.
I hope we also help some basic human truths to be seen as self-evident. For starters:
- You can believe in everyone’s right to be who they really are, including transgender people’s right to choose a gender identity different than their born gender/sex, without abandoning the biological definitions of male and female.
- You can believe in the rights of all transgender people to enjoy and benefit from sports participation, and you can help make those opportunities possible – while also believing that people who identify as transgender women and girls should not compete in some women’s and girls’ sports, in the interests of fairness.
- You can love, respect, glorify and even perform drag and also believe it tends to glorify traditional gender stereotypes and feature risque moves and attire, and therefore should generally be reserved for adults rather than children.
We can talk, really, talk about these topics and differences without constantly diminishing our community, literally creating “enemies within,” or silencing its members. I hope you’ll give us this chance! Please take a moment to peruse the coverage we’ve already provided, those Des Moines Register columns, and the thoughtful pieces we’ll be providing here on a regular basis.
