On trans rights – Gopnik interviewing Masha Gessen:

‘And in your own life that’s the case? Absolutely. I remember getting on my bike in Manhattan, maybe four or five years ago, and suddenly realizing that this sense that I am unrecognizable, unintelligible to the world in which I live, was gone. I would bike down the Hudson River Greenway, and people would see a transgender, or gender-nonconforming, person, riding down the Hudson River Greenway. And maybe there would still be children tugging their parents’ sleeves and saying, Is that a man or a woman? But fewer. And the parent would probably be able to say, “Well, that’s probably a transgender person.” Because the society has changed.
Because the society has changed, yeah. I haven’t changed that much in appearance in my life. But, into my fifties, I was somebody who was unintelligible to the world. Suddenly, that was no longer the case.
Masha, whether it’s the tumult at the New York Times about its coverage of trans issues, or at Netflix about Dave Chappelle and his comedy, to say nothing of the political world, there are so many ways that make it clear that this is a difficult topic for people to talk about. How would you approach talking about trans people? What is the state of the conversation? Where are we? Why is it so fraught and so often painful? I think it’s so painful and so fraught because it is very difficult, in discussing transness, in covering transness, to avoid engaging with the argument about whether trans people actually exist or have the right to exist. That is deeply painful to trans people—and, I would imagine, to people who love trans people. That’s actually something that should be off limits. But it is very hard, because, for example, in Emily Bazelon’s excellent piece in the New York Times Magazinelast summer about the battle over transgender treatment, there’s a [paraphrased] quote from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative gay journalist, who says, Well, maybe these people would’ve been gay—implying they’re really gay and not really transgender. That really clearly veers into the territory of saying “These people don’t exist. They’re not who they say they are.” So that’s why it’s so painful.
So you’re saying that Emily Bazelon should not have referenced Andrew Sullivan on that? I think it was a paraphrase of Sullivan rather than a quotation.
I wouldn’t have. I think that piece would’ve been even better without that. As journalists, we’re not under obligation to quote every single view on an issue. I think we have the right to exclude the view that somebody’s not who they say they are.
I think it’s even true, Masha—correct me if I’m wrong—that even you, as a trans person, writing about trans issues, have not escaped getting whacked.
Absolutely. Yes, I was cancelled by trans Twitter once.’

(…)

‘How much do you care about eruptions of conversation and Twitter furor when it comes to, say, J. K. Rowling or Dave Chappelle? Are these important moments in the development of the way we talk about trans people? Oh. I’m going to get myself into so much trouble. Twitter furor is not generally a useful tool for cultural sense-making. Dave Chappelle, to my mind, is fascinating. I’ve watched, I think, all or most of his trans jokes recently because I needed to discuss them with somebody, and I found them brilliant and radical. The way, for example, he talks about bathroom bills is quite incredible. So basically the point that I heard him making was that he would rather share the bathroom with a man with a vagina than a woman with a penis. That is a completely next-level, trans-accepting kind of humor. And then I was speaking to a very prominent trans woman writer who was so upset that I liked the Dave Chappelle special because all she heard him say was that her vagina was an Impossible Burger. And I can understand that. I mean, I thought that was funny, but I also didn’t take it personally. If we could sit down and discuss these things, especially with Dave Chappelle, I think that would move the conversation forward.’

(…)

‘What are the biggest mistakes that well-meaning people make when they talk about trans people? I think probably the biggest mistake is not recognizing that there are different ideas about transness within the trans community. Probably different trans communities. Certainly different experiences of transness. That, for some people, it’s an essential part of themselves. Some people are truly binary. Some people are truly nonbinary. Some people are still in negotiation with their identity.
What do you hope for our own publication as we move forward and we write about this, grapple with this, think about this? What should we be doing, and how do we get better? I think one thing that I’m really happy to have been able to do is just write about trans people as though there’s nothing unusual about trans people.
Where the transness is almost incidental to what you’re writing.
Exactly. We have to wade into this controversy, which does exist. Some of the criticism of trans coverage in the Times and elsewhere has said, Oh, it’s a manufactured culture war. Well, of course. All culture wars are manufactured, but this one is happening. So we have to figure out a way to cover it, I think, in a complicated way.’

Read the interview here.

A very insightful interview.

There are different ideas about Jewishness in the Jewish community.

Name a community and we can discuss the discord.

Probably conversations about trans are so emotional because many people feel threatened by the idea that their identity is based on not so stable grounds.
Everything is based on instability - deal with it.

What humor is permitted and what not will always be very difficult.
The safest bet is no humor at all. Politeness. Sincere politeness, as far as politeness can be sincere.

And people can be wrong about who they think they are.
Don Quixote didn’t exist for nothing.