How Trans Activism Defeated Itself

On civil disobedience and Peru's new transgender law

A man who is a man, wrote Henry David Thoreau, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through. In other words, he stands up for his beliefs and is brave. But also, he stands straight in his beliefs and is decent. Put another way, how you choose to fight matters just as much as what you choose to fight.

This line about having a backbone comes from the greatest work of protest literature ever written—Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience.” In July 1846, Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay six years of back taxes because he didn’t want to support slavery or the Mexican–American War. The next morning, his aunt bailed him out against his wishes, but that single night in Concord Jail changed the course of human history.

Thoreau went on to give a series of lectures that he later developed into his essay, arguing that good citizens have a moral duty to disobey unjust laws. He also said how you disobey matters as much as why. He was therefore appalled that while the United States preached freedom, it practiced slavery.

Not to make the same mistake himself, Thoreau argued that if you struggle for peace and justice then you must be peaceful and just in your struggle.

Mahatma Gandhi later credited Thoreau’s essay as being “the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America” and described Thoreau himself as “one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced.” It was Thoreau who inspired Gandhi’s own brand of nonviolent resistance known as satyagraha and helped lead the people of India to liberation. It was Thoreau who influenced the nonviolence philosophy of Leo Tolstoy. It was also Thoreau that inspired Martin Luther King Jr., who in his autobiography described reading the essay multiple times and becoming fully committed to “the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system.” Indeed, to hear King tell it, the civil rights movement itself was the flowering of Thoreau’s philosophy:

The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau’s insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.

In April 1963, King was also jailed for civil disobedience, and that experience led him to write what is perhaps the second-greatest work of protest literature, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In this essay, King was responding to another open letter titled “A Call for Unity,” written just days before by eight white clergymen. Their letter has been maligned in the decades since as a racist tract that opposed the civil rights movement coming to their neck of the Alabama woods, but that’s not true. Yes, one of the signatories was Bishop Charles Carpenter, who in 2015, celebrated Jefferson Davis’ birthday by consecrating the mace of the University of the South to the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. But another signatory was Methodist bishop Nolan Bailey Harman, who spoke out against Governor George Wallace’s notorious attempts to stop black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama. Another signatory was the Jewish rabbi Milton Grafman. Another was the Baptist minister Earl Stallings, a civil rights activist whom King praised in his response letter for opening his church to black worshippers.

Nor did their letter oppose civil rights progress. Rather, it criticized the involvement of “outsiders,” a not-so-subtle reference to King, while urging activists to go through the courts rather than the streets. In a sense, they were arguing what Thoreau had argued. They wanted the methods to be as moral as the message. In his letter, King replied that the courts may never dispense justice, and so the people had to take “direct action.” And yes, he was an “outsider,” he admitted, famously adding that it should not matter because “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

His universal sense of compassion is inspiring. But above all, we celebrate and honor him for his enlightened methods, his Thoreauvian dedication to nonviolence, and Christ-like love of humanity. In the face of unspeakable injustice, he showed spine in both senses of the word. He stood up for his beliefs and stood tall in himself.

But it is easy to forget such simple truths. Pro-Palestine organizers, BLM protesters, and trans activists often cite the Haitian Revolution—in which black Haitian slaves rose up and slaughtered their masters—as evidence for why harsh methods are needed to overcome harsh oppression. But unlike Harvard University students in keffiyeh hanging out with friends in North Face tents, Haitians themselves were literally enslaved and brutalized, and still their response was not entirely justified.

No doubt, a proportional response would have been justified, but contrary to popular misconception, that is not the same as causing an amount of harm equal to what was inflicted upon you, which is a depraved interpretation of the phrase. Rather, a proportional response is one where you only do what is necessary to achieve your goal. In Haiti’s case, the slaughter of as many white masters as needed to free themselves.

But even after slavery was abolished and France withdrew, the ex-slave Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared all French people barbarians and ordered their total slaughter. Most Haitians outside the capital were content to be free, not to mention they were not psychopaths, so they had no interest in murdering their neighbors. Dessalines therefore traveled from town to town to ensure that his genocidal decree was carried out. Ultimately, they massacred almost every single white person in the country.

There was, of course, absolutely no need for this. The black people of Haiti already had their freedom. They ran the country now too. Any belligerent whites were either dead, fled to Europe, or could be individually picked off if they started trouble. Dessalines was now an emperor and could have chosen peace. But he chose genocidal vengeance and even ended up killing whites who had supported the revolution.

We see the same thing with Gaza and useful idiots in the West arguing that the oppressive circumstances of the Gazan people justify absolutely anything, never mind that before October 7, Gaza was home to fine dining restaurants, luxury hotels, and beach resorts that would make your mouth water. Still, even if we pretend that it was in fact an “open-air prison” or a concentration camp, this would only justify whatever means required to break free. Not even the Holocaust justifies killing all Germans.

People may scoff at arguments for respectability, but respectability and proportionality are not merely morally righteous, but practically necessary. Otherwise, you risk alienating everyone and losing everything. Consider trans activism.

Peru officially classified trans identities as mental health conditions last week. Like many others, they are concerned with trans radicalism and taking steps to address it.

The presidential decree said this will make treatment for trans-related mental health problems eligible for health insurance, adding that “Everyone has the right to the protection of their health” and “the protection of health is of public interest,” therefore “it is the responsibility of the state to regulate, monitor, and promote it.”

The decree applies to “transsexualism,” “dual-role transvestism” (people who cross-dress but don’t want surgery), “childhood gender identity disorder,” “other gender identity disorders,” “unspecified gender identity disorder,” “transvestite fetishism” (people who are turned on by cross-dressing), and “ego-dystonic sexual orientation” (people whose sexual orientation is not what they would like it to be).

Trans activists were immediately outraged and Western outlets predictably reported the story without bothering to get the details right.

“The decree could also give legitimacy to ‘conversion practices’,” reported Christian Cabrera, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) who focuses on gender and sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean. The decree may indeed result in people subjecting trans individuals to conversion therapy and citing the decree as justification. Peru is a conservative country that does not even recognize same-sex marriage, so this is a reasonable concern. But Cabrera made no mention of the fact that Peru’s Ministry of Health clearly advised against this.

“The sexual orientation and gender identity of a person does not constitute in itself a physical or mental health disorder,” the ministry said, “and, therefore, they should not be subjected to treatment or medical care or to so-called reconversion therapies.”

This is one of the most important details in the story, yet most of the Western reports I looked at completely left it out. What this means is that being a gay man or trans woman does not indicate a mental health condition. But if you are a gay man who experiences severe depression because you wish you were straight, or if you are a trans woman who threatens to rape anyone who misgenders you, these are mental health conditions and the treatment for them is now covered by insurance in Peru.

But that is not how the media covered this in the West. “Peru officially classifies trans people as ‘mentally ill,’” reported The Telegraph. This is false. The health ministry was quite clear that trans identity itself is not a disorder. The headline for Cabrera’s report read, “Peru Chooses Bigotry in Medical Services.” The New York Post ran the headline, “Peru classifies transgender, nonbinary and intersex people as ‘mentally ill.’” This is also false. As you can see from the identities I listed above, nonbinary and intersex were not included. Nor would it make any sense to include intersex since that is a genetic condition and has nothing to do with mental health. This poor reporting has confused readers and understandably led the writer Wesley Yang to wonder whether the Peruvian government even knows what “intersex” means.

As far as I can tell, the only reason nonbinary was included by Western reporters is because in the United States, this is considered a type of trans identity. I found this out while working at The Seattle Times, when the paper invited Gender Reveal podcast host and trans activist Tuck Woodstock to talk to us about best practices when it comes to reporting on trans issues. Most of the seminar seemed like common sense, but some folks in the newsroom got a lot out of it. Afterwards, I reached out to Woodstock to say thanks for the session and to ask about a remark that Woodstock had made suggesting that all nonbinary individuals are trans.

This was a follow-up to a question I had asked during the session about gender essentialism and the ontological nature of trans identity. Woodstock didn’t understand the question at the time, so when I followed up, I asked the question in simpler terms. Namely, it is gender essentialist and wrong to say that liking blue makes you a boy or playing with dolls makes you a girl, but this appears to be foundational when it comes to trans identity, and that’s a problem. Also, rejecting the gender binary on the basis that all gender boils down to essentialism might technically make you nonbinary, but it does not make you trans.

Once it was clear that I was talking about my own beliefs, Woodstock replied that not only am I trans, but I am a self-hating trans person. News to me. But also, aren’t trans people supposed to be opposed to telling others what their gender identity is? When I looked into it, I found that a lot of trans activists categorize nonbinary as a sub-genre of trans. Why? Because otherwise they have a real problem. The nonbinary argument against gender essentialism undermines cis but also trans identities. How do you know you’re a trans woman? Because you like pink? Because you wear dresses? Reasons like these are not only absurd but sexist. The problem is, there really are no other reasons. It’s either a social construct or it all comes down to vibes.

As a result, nonbinary identity poses a threat to the legitimacy of trans identity. This is solved for if you redefine transness to mean anyone who does not identify as their biological sex, which to be what some are trying to do. But this makes no sense because trans literally means “other,” as in the other sex, so it cannot include an identity that rejects both sexes, but also, trans inherently depends upon the binary. A trans woman wants to be and to be regarded as a woman, so any arguments against the binary are in intrinsically transphobic.

NBC Montana was the only outlet I saw that got it right, with a reasonable headline—“Peru adds ‘transsexualism’ as mental health disorder covered by insurance”—and citing both the presidential decree and the health ministry’s statement. It also noted, helpfully, that the decree is merely following the release of the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) by the World Health Organization. Cabrera and other Western press failed to include this detail, as well.

Some have pointed out that the ICD-10 was replaced in 2022 by the ICD-11, which depathologizes these identities. But here again, important context is being left out. Namely, that Peru is right now in the process of adopting the ICD-11, but updating this is various government healthcare systems, not mention training health personnel in the new standards, will take time.

In the meantime, it is worth noting that the trans issue in Peru must not be seen through an American lens. My wife is Peruvian, I speak Spanish, and I have lived for some time in Peru. We were married by our good friend, who happens to be a lesbian, and one of my oldest friends in Lima is a lesbian activist. So I have some sense of Peruvian culture and am more familiar than most with the LGBT activist community in the country. Wokeness does not exist there as it does in the United States. This was not an anti-woke decision so much as an attempt to update the law and get more people treated for problems, which is why critics of the decree focus on how it might be abused rather than alleging any sinister intentions.

But in America, what Peru has done can only be interpreted as sheer bigotry and pathological hatred of all trans people. The trans movement has become so unhinged it is probably beyond saving at this point. Consider for instance that trans activists have chosen as their favorite hate object none other than J.K. Rowling, trying to make this eloquent feminist into some kind of Nazi figure. Generally, I observe two types of trans people. The first are those who identify as the other sex and simply want the same rights as everyone else and to be left alone in peace, and God bless them.

The second type believe they literally are the other sex and want more rights than anyone else. While the rest of us go to bathrooms or join sports teams based on our biology, they want the right to choose which bathrooms they will use or teams they will join, and are often hysterical and belligerent in their “activism,” such as by threatening to rape TERFs or sending endless death threats to people like J.K. Rowling for saying “sex is real” or for mocking the phrase “people who menstruate.”

We did this to ourselves by allowing the slow creep of this movement to inch ever further away from reality. Consider the trans man Elliot Page remarking, “Every day you’re seeing our existence debated. Transgender people are so very real.” As if anyone has ever questioned the literal existence of trans people. Or consider the trans athlete Veronica Ivy who appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and claimed to literally be a biological woman, saying, “I’m not biological somehow? Like, I don’t think I’m a cyborg. So, like, this idea that, like, oh, you’re not a biological woman. Well, I am a woman. That’s a fact. I am female. So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records all say female. Right? And I’m pretty sure I’m made of biological stuff. So I’m a biological female, as well.”

This is the kind of logic that one encounters all the time among literalists. Imagine if a five-year-old boy claimed to be a dragon. Imagine if the rest of us allowed him to obtain identity records that said he was a dragon. And then when asked, he’d cite those records and say, “I am made of biological stuff. And dragons are biological. So I’m literally a dragon.”

Sure, we can change the meaning of the word woman to include trans women, but this doesn’t change the fact that a trans woman still is not an adult female. This is a linguistic change, not a biological one, and the original categories remain distinct even if we give them both the same name.

After years of dishonest reporting like the examples above and increasingly insane trans literalism, whatever goodwill we had has been spent and now the tide is reversing. In March, a Kansas judge ruled it is not unconstitutional to refuse to change driver’s licenses to match trans people’s identities. In January, Florida barred transgender residents from changing their gender on their driver’s licenses. Also that month, Ohio banned trans surgery and hormone blockers for minors and banned biological males from girls’ and women’s sports at the K-12 and collegiate levels.

Unlike in Peru, these decisions are a consciously reaction against trans radicalism. Thanks to the literalists, people have subjected children to dangerous and irrevocable surgical procedures, influenced impressionable kids without the consent of their parents, refuted biological facts, and above all, done so with a despicable demeanor. This has completely turned off many people and made quite a few who formerly didn’t care now aggressively opposed. The literalists are the worst thing that ever happened to trans-identifying people. Peru, you see, has a point—certain manifestations of trans identity are a form of mental illness, none more than literalism.

In his poem “The Mask of Anarchy,” Percy Bysshe Shelley describes a wartime victory parade in which the ruling elites become the personifications of Murder, Fraud, and Hypocrisy, all led by the personification of Anarchy. I find it difficult to read this poem now and not think of the parade of anti-Western anarchists marching through Western societies. Shelley describes how the parade harms anyone who gets in its way, bashing out children’s brains and leaving whole swaths of England in utter ruin.

They are aggressive, smug, and arrogant, disturbing the social order and making life miserable for others simply to make life more comfortable for themselves. The parade is eventually confronted by the personification of Hope in the body of a woman who lays down on the road in an act of nonviolent resistance, inspiring many more to follow, and eventually spelling the defeat of the parade.

Let this be the lesson. We must remain civil in our opposition to injustice, but united in our opposition to incivility. This is not just a matter of respectability politics. The mask of anarchy is slipping and now is the time, as Thoreau wrote, to show some backbone. Or as Shelley calls to us in the final lines of his poem:

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.