How my Pussy Hat Led to Glenn Loury Publishing Me on His Substack
What a long, strange trip it's been
Welcome to the new subscribers! And hello to all my long-time members of my mailing list. So happy to have you all here. I hope you will enjoy my music and writing.
How did a liberal, feminist singer-songwriter from the “left coast” come to write a letter about gender ideology to Glenn Loury, conservative intellectual giant and host of The Glenn Show?
It all began with the pink pussy hat my sister knit for me to attend the first International Women’s March, the day after Donald Trump took office in 2017. I took my mother Betty to the March in Olympia. Mom wanted to join in the pussy hat fun, so she sewed a little hat out of a pink washcloth. It was a joyful event, with a serious inspiration: many women did not approve of this person elected to the highest office of the land who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. We didn’t vote for him. We wanted to peacefully exercise our first amendment constitutional right to make a point of saying so. It felt like feminism was abloom again. Women marched at the state capitol holding our signs and chanting, a sea of pussy hats of every shape and hue of pink.
There was a second Women’s March in 2018, a year into Donald Trump’s presidency. I started to see Facebook posts and articles telling me that my beloved mohair pussy hat, knitted lovingly by my own sister, was now forbidden. There would be no pussy hats at the 2018 event. My pussy hat was now racist because “not all pussies are pink.” I remember the shock that coursed through my body, and then the flush of shame. To be told we are racist is the worst thing EVER, and now an event I associated with sisterhood and solidarity and female joy was permanently tarred. It had never occurred to me that the pinkness of the pussy hats had anything to do with anyone’s skin color on anyone’s nether regions. Pink was playful, ironically girly, that is all.
I was also shocked to be told that my pussy hat was now transphobic as well because “not all women have pussies.” I guess I was a bit late to the woke party, but that is the first time I heard such a flabbergasting statement. This was long before I heard about “birthing bodies” and “menstruators.” In all the cities where the Women’s March was happening, the organizing and leadership was taken over by “trans women.” “Cis women” were told to shut the F up and stand aside.
I did not attend the second Women’s March. My education of gender identity ideology slowly began.
On May 14, 2022, after studying this issue for years, I sent a letter in an email to Glenn Loury discussing the harm of gender ideology to children. Glenn is a black* economist at Brown University who also has a long-running project called “The Glenn Show” where he interviews people, often from positions challenging mainstream orthodoxy and the “successor ideology” (wokeness) paradigms of our time. Glenn has many other impressive academic and intellectual credentials. In the past year, the Glenn Show has become a prominent and successful Substack. A regular guest on Glenn’s show is John McWhorter, a linguist from Columbia and regular columnist for the New York Times. Together, they are “The Black Guys,” often talking about race issues in the US.
I first started following John and Glenn’s fascinating chats after I read Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped from the Beginning in 2016, so even before my rude awakening about my racist, transphobic pussy hat. We had ordered the book in advance—I couldn’t wait! I wanted to learn, to be a “better” white person. It’s ok, you can laugh. But I am not ashamed of that earnest wish, silly as it seems in some ways to me now. Being better is a good thing to strive for, after all. I was raised in a Democratic-voting household and was taught by my parents from a very early age that racism is wrong. Our country has a horrific history of brutality against people of color, much of it committed by white people. I figured I had stuff to learn.
So I eagerly read the book, hoping to learn and grow, hoping to raise my consciousness. While there were aspects of Kendi’s thinking and writing about historical figures I found to be intriguing, there were also foundational ideas that deeply troubled me. I questioned the whole “antiracism” concept. It seemed so…black and white. You are either racist, or you are anti-racist; there is no other ground for being in this landscape. It seemed so bleak. For example, he wrote about “assimilationists” being racist. I thought about that movie Hidden Figures: how could those women make life better for themselves and for other black women coming after them if they did not “assimilate” into a culture where they could be brilliant mathematicians?
Human culture is always assimilating. That’s the beauty (and maybe a curse) of our amazing species. It’s kind of what we do: adapt, improvise, create. As a musician and a songwriter, I don’t buy the idea that we must stay in our racial/ethnic/cultural/sexual lane to make art or create structures of thought. I will never buy that idea. It is impossible, even if we pretend to try. Music borrows, blends, re-invents, just as food does, just as language does. Just as humans all over the planet do and always have done in all aspects of culture. It’s full of beauty and color, and Kendi’s vision of reality seemed grey and grim to me.
But I could only get so far struggling to make sense of my reservations of Kendi on my own. Everybody on NPR, MSNBC, and the New York Times was gushing about him. He was winning prestigious awards. He had cool hair. Was there something I was missing? I needed help to understand my own (forbidden) thoughts and my responses to Kendi.
One progressive “rule” when it comes to understanding race that still makes some sense to me is: “listen to black people!”
So I looked up John McWhorter to see if he had any views on this stuff. Brian and I had been long-time fans of his work as a linguist, giving lectures for the Teaching Company. I admired him as an intellectual who also happened to be black. John led me to Glenn, and that began a new education for me from these brilliant and engaging thinkers. John wrote a great book called Woke Racism in 2021. You should read it. They have both been part of my intellectual (and actual) exit from progressive society. I am grateful to them both for teaching me to think in better ways, outside of dogma and tribe. Needless to say for my fellow Glenn followers, I found out that neither of them are big fans of Ibram Kendi. They helped me better understand my disagreements.
I believe Glenn Loury is one of the deepest, broadest thinkers alive. He is a true intellectual, one who questions everything, often off the top of his head in impeccable and elegant, even musical phrasing. He’s humble and bold, heartfelt and gutsy. He’s more conservative than me, but so what. I am not even sure what that means anymore. I admire him greatly. So imagine my honor and delight when he responded to my May 14th email by saying “This is an amazing letter Elizabeth, which I would love to publish at my Substack.”
It took a month to schedule, but it was finally published last week. There was a great response from Glenn’s many subscribers; it seemed to hit a nerve. 228 comments as of today, many of them insightful and knowledgeable. This letter is also a good follow-up to my previous post, A Letter to My Former Bandmates because it contains hyperlinks to sources that have influenced my thinking about gender identity ideology. You can read my letter to Glenn Loury here.
*Note: I usually capitalize the word “black” when referring to black people as it seems to be the publishing norm, but because both John and Glenn have expressed that they don’t like that recent convention, and because I am talking about them, I have not capitalized the word here.
I would love to hear your thoughts here in the comments, or you can just reply to this email if you want to send me a private note.
I leave you with a special song I wrote and recorded a few years ago, commissioned by a loving father for his son as he grows up. I wrote it for Fayd and his son, but today I listened to it and it feels like it’s for me. Here is the chorus:
And I would tell you, if I could
How to always go exactly where you want to
But life ain’t like that
It twists and turns back
And only you can walk on your own path
No one else can walk your special path
It might be a long, strange trip, but my path is mine. And yours is yours.
Be well,
Elizabeth
Forgot to link to the NYT article. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html
I think the primary issue that the article alludes to, but doesn't make clear, is that on transgender issues, many professionals are bringing their own agendas to a medical issue that needs to remain
evidence based. We don't offer controversial medical treatments with lots of side effects to patients until we can prove efficacy. Why are we doing this to KIDS?
Thanks so much for your work on this issue, and your letter to Glenn. I follow Glenn and John, and am now subscribing to your substack. Your letter on trans issues was amazing!
Like Glenn, my views on the trans issues are evolving. But this recent NYT article was eye opening, and made it clear that many medical providers are putting their own perspectives ahead of the health of adolescents.
I'm a family/ emergency physican, and I've recently become incredibly concerned about what we are doing to adolescents who have gender dysphoria. Started reading and trying to figure out how in the hell the medical establishment let this happen ( eg. why isn't the medical community following long standing adages of " first do no harm". Why aren't we practicing " evidence based medicine?). These kids need help, but we've let a radical agenda push medicine to the point that we are hurting kids. Is there anything I can do to help you?