Will the NY Times Ever Publish a TERFy Letter?
December 14, 2022
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On December 4, 2022, the New York Times published a piece called “Free to Be You and Me. Or Not.” It’s a really great piece, in my view, and I wrote to the author to thank her for it. It celebrates the 1972 release of the album “Free to Be You and Me,” which encouraged girls and boys alike to break free from sex stereotypes. I remember it well from my own childhood.
Then it goes on to criticize contemporary society’s embrace of sex stereotypes under the guise of “gender identity.” It contains gems like this:
Now we risk losing those advances. In lieu of liberating children from gender, some educators have doubled down, offering children a smorgasbord of labels — gender identity, gender role, gender performance and gender expression — to affix to themselves from a young age. Some go so far as to suggest that not only is gender “assigned” to people at birth but that sex in humans is a spectrum (even though accepted science holds that sex in humans is fundamentally binary, with a tiny number of people having intersex traits). The effect of all this is that today we are defining people — especially children — by gender more than ever before, rather than trying to free both sexes from gender stereotypes.
I liked the piece so much that I immediately went about the task of writing a letter to the editor about it. My letter, submitted on December 5, said this:
To the Editor,
Pamela Paul’s December 4 piece, “Free to be You and Me. Or Not,” explains the conflicts between sex and gender exceptionally well.
All 8 billion human beings on the planet are either female or male. As Paul correctly notes, there is a tiny fraction of human beings who have anomalous chromosomal conditions (differences of sexual development); all such people are still either female or male.
From a leftist feminist perspective, gender is a prison of sex-stereotypes that are designed to keep women (including lesbians) in positions of submission and subservience. The contemporary “gender identity” movement is simply a newer version of the same misogyny because it further entrenches sex-stereotypes in the law and throughout society.
Our society should allow girls and boys alike to explore their tastes, preferences, and personalities without society (and our schools) telling them that doing so means that they’re the opposite sex. Human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals. None of us can change sex, regardless of identity. Good on Paul for saying so.
Kara Dansky
Kara Dansky is the president of the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International and the author of the book, The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls.
I received nothing in response, other than the usual automatic response telling me that it had been received.
The NY Times’s letter to the editor submission guidelines contain this:
Writers of letters selected for publication will be notified within a week.
Letters may be edited and shortened for space.
Due to the large volume of submissions we receive, we cannot personally acknowledge each submission.
If we decide not to publish your letter, you will receive an automated email reply.
It has been well over a week since I submitted my letter, so it’s clear that they are not going to publish it.
I completely understand that the NY times is under no obligation to publish any letter to the editor, ever. I know that it has complete discretion to determine which letters to publish and that very few submissions make it past their letters editor. I understand that they are under no obligation to publish letters from TERFs. But I sure wish they would.