Why I Unsubscribed from Andrew Sullivan’s *The Weekly Dish*

AI generated image based on the writing below. Another case (see here and here) of the young Andrew Sullivan lying about Trans* desire.

Today, I ended my paid subscription to Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish. I did so because his anti-Trans* click- and rage-baiting is evil.

Politically, I describe myself as a pragmatic liberal. By pragmatic, I generally mean that I think our politics should be attuned to what we human beings can and want to do to make our lives better. When politics refers more narrowly to a campaign to win electoral votes, I think pragmatism means championing progressive values that most Americans support.

For example, a recent poll by The Argument, led by Jerusalem Demsas, shows that the vast majority of Americans support legislation making it illegal to discriminate against Trans* people in employment and housing.

There is less fortunate news in this same poll.

In a recent clump of words about Trans* desire, Sullivan rightly points out that support for Trans* freedom has narrowed. According to Demsas’s poll, most Americans now support legislation to make use of public restrooms and participation in sports dependent on one’s birth sex and banning safe and reasonable healthcare that supports a minor’s desire to transition from one sex and/or gender to the other.

What this means pragmatically is that the next Democratic nominee for President should focus their campaign on ending discrimination against Trans* people in employment and housing.

Focus is not the same thing as “selling out.”

If Trans* rights and freedoms are important to you, then yes — winning elections is everything. That requires focusing on what the American public is willing to support.

Can a Democrat veto legislation limiting the rights of supportive parents of Trans* children if she doesn’t win enough electoral votes to become President? Obviously, no.

Pragmatism, however, is not always about what is “true.” It is almost always about what works for a person or group of people. And this is where the liberal in my self-description as a pragmatic liberal comes in.

By liberal, I mean, to echo John Rawls, a form of political power based on reason and reasons that may, at least in principle, be accepted by all citizens as justification for a particular action. By reason, Rawls means “public reason” or “political reason,” and such reason excludes metaphysics.

Religious reason, for example, is, in its own way, reasonable, but it is not a form of public reason. It is not public or political reason, reason all citizens are, in principle, capable of exercising because all the information we need to assess to make the case for some kind of action is not commonly available.

So, a Democratic candidate can make a pragmatic and reasonable case for making it illegal to discriminate agianst Trans* people in the workplace and in housing.

Sullivan also makes a few pragmatic and reasonable points in his post.

As I noted above, support for Trans* freedom has narrowed. Sullivan is absolutely right about that. Sullivan is right about a second thing, too: “the real world keeps intervening.”

“Readers keep telling me to shut up about this topic,” Sullivan writes. “I’ve lost some good friends. . . . [M]y social life has shrunk.” The real world is rejecting Sullivan’s unreasonable, unconscious fantasy of Trans* desire as justification for political action.

The real world is telling Sullivan it is unpersuaded by his fantasy of gay kids being forced to transition by evil, greedy doctors. Furthermore, it rejects the idea that because a majority of Americans support legislation banning Trans* discrimination in the workplace and in housing, Trans* people “already have [those protections].”

The real world, moreover, thinks it is unreasonable to ignore Trans* people. Pace Sullivan: “And so what sacred trans people say they want [Sullivan is opposed to sacralizing minorities, by which he seems to mean taking what minorities want for their own lives seriously] . . . is all that matters” (emphasis original).

What Trans* people are asking their fellow citizens to do is to listen honestly and openly to their testimonies. And it is in this context that Sullivan makes a third good point: some Trans* stories are not pretty.

In his recent post, Sullivan describes a tragic figure named “Mike.” “Mike” represents Sullivan’s most potent fantasy: that of Trans* terrorists — doctors, parents, therapists — destroying (“castrating”) the lives of genuinely gay male kids.

My contention is not that “Mike” doesn’t regret transitioning, but rather that his regret does not establish that he was forced into transitioning. Frankly, Sullivan is, on this point, lying to us. There is simply no reasonable evidence that “Mike” was forced into or thoughtlessly and recklessly offered Trans* healthcare.

Surely, some people regret transitioning. I feel for them. I am interested in hearing the facts of their cases.

Yet their stories do not amount to a reasonable basis for public policy decisions, because they are not representative cases. In fact, it is Sullivan who does “Mike” a great disservice by misleading the public about the facts of his specific case.

Of course, Sullivan is free to fob off to his own fantasy. But his picture of Trans* desire is simply not politically reasonable. It betrays the evidence any of us can assess with our eyes and ears, provided that we have eyes to see and ears to hear as citizens.

Unfortunately, Sullivan is committed to the same mind-snapped-shut-mentality that he attributes to his opponents (Sullivan’s reference to “a bunch of synapses” may be his way of calling his opponents “bird-brained.” The epithet is rooted in ignorance, as bird brains are bunches, if you will, of synapses–and birds are extremely intelligent. Close-mindedness, however, is something found in both stupid and smart people).

I think the only thing that will open Sullivan’s mind is another real-world intervention: a significant drop in his paid subscribers.

If you have a paid subscription to The Weekly Dish, I humbly ask you to consider unsubscribing. Unsubscribing is even easier than subscribing.

Unsubscribe from Sullivan. And consider other opportunities to unsubscribe, too.