An Open Letter to Michael Knowles

Mr. Knowles,

You said, from a stage, that you wanted what you call “transgenderism” eradicated from public life, and then objected that you meant the ideology, not the people. I want to take the distinction seriously, because words matter and I have no interest in misquoting you.

So here is the trouble with it. There is no “transgenderism” floating free of actual trans people. It is not a doctrine I signed up for; it is a fact of how I have existed since before I had the words for it. To eradicate it from public life is to eradicate me from public life — to push people like me back into the silence that nearly killed a great many of us. You cannot erase the noun and spare the people who are the noun.

I am in public life, Mr. Knowles, and I intend to stay there. Not as an ideology to be debated off the stage. As a person you are going to have to share a country with.