Liz Wheeler’s speech was harmful to the transgender community

MARY MABRY a message from mary Freedom: a simple idea, but often more nuanced than what meets the eye. For Liz Wheeler, a conservative commentator, freedom meant coming to JMU on Wednesday to promote her ideas. However, she simultaneously promoted a lack of freedom for transgender individuals.

Wheeler’s speech, “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” seemed to enforce the gender binary and invalidate transgender identities.

These words and ideas are harmful to the transgender community at JMU. Although not hate speech, it’s hateful speech, junior Heather Dueñas — who organized a peaceful demonstration in support of the transgender community — said.

Misconceptions

Wheeler has many misconceptions about gender and the transgender community. Although the UN recognizes the difference between sex and gender, Wheeler doesn’t.

The UN website states, “Gender identity refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth.”

A 2022 article published in Innovations of Clinical Neuroscience echoes this, saying, “It has been well established that gender is a social construct, not an inborn reality of biology, nor is it binary. This is contrasted with sex, which is generally defined as the biological characteristics.” The article also says sex can be male, female or nonbinary because of those born intersex.

Wheeler doesn’t see a distinction between the two.

“Men cannot be women — even if they want to identify as women — and women cannot be men, even if they feel that they are,” Wheeler said. “Sex is binary: male and female. [Queer theorists] tell you that it’s fluid.”

These contrasting ideas explain why Wheeler doesn’t believe there’s anything beyond being cisgender. Because of this, Wheeler said, “the transgender ideology is a lie” — immediately refuting the idea that someone can identify as a gender they weren’t assigned at birth.

A “noise-complaint” dart to Pheasant Run apartments for having thin walls.

From someone who is tired of hearing someone else’s music.

Transgender people are left feeling unseen and misunderstood. Senior Ken Kensky, graduating president of Madison Equality and a transgender man, said Wheeler’s view of gender is a “fundamental misunderstanding of biology and of human nature” that ignores intersex individuals or those who don’t feel they fit into the gender binary and the gender norms associated with them.

Another misconception Wheeler has is about the oppression transgender people face.

Wheeler said queer theory “poses the idea that LGBTQ+ people are so marginalized — they’re so oppressed — that their only recourse is to revolt against their so-called oppressors” and that its goal “is to pit one demographic of people against another demographic of people in our country in order to create chaos and revolution.”

She also said transgender people are victims of a cult and are tricked into thinking they’re oppressed.

Wheeler’s words ignore the oppression that transgender people in this country face and imply that queer people try to create divisiveness.

In reality, this divisiveness exists because violence is inflicted upon transgender individuals. According to the UN, transgender people are “caught in a spiral of exclusion and [marginalization]: often bullied at school, rejected by their family, pushed out onto the streets and denied access to employment” as well as facing violence in healthcare settings.

For example, Everytown Research and Policy states transgender people are 2.5 times as likely to be victims of violence as cisgender people.

The Center for American Progress says nearly one in three transgender adults have experienced homelessness during their lifetime and nearly half of transgender adults report having negative or discriminatory experiences with a health care provider.

Denying the oppression that transgender people face only further solidifies this oppression; it denies them the space to heal from violence and have their experiences validated.

Although Wheeler stated she cares deeply about the transgender community, she lacks compassion by not recognizing the pain and adversity they’ve faced throughout history.

Rhetoric

“The Ideology of Transgenderism” is a poor choice of words.

“To hear someone call my identity an ideology is pretty crazy — to call it an ‘ism’ as if it’s something that exists separate from me is very dehumanizing,” Kensky said.

Wheeler used the term “ideology” throughout her speech. She described it as evil and said transgender people are being used and damaged by this ideology.

Continuing this sentiment, Wheeler said transgender people need a “cult deprogrammer” and this truth will “set you free.”

The way Wheeler describes transgender individuals and speaks to them as an audience is belittling.

Dueñas said she believes individuals like Wheeler lack understanding, and she wants to “bring them in rather than call them out and have a conversation about these things.”

Wheeler also used fearmongering speech to villainize the LGBTQ+ community — the path of queer theory “leads to oppression, tyranny and death,” she said.

She also used this language in an attempt to tell the transgender community at JMU how they feel.

“You long to find your true selves and you desperately want to escape the way you feel just so you can have control of yourself again, so nobody else can hurt you,” Wheeler said. “That’s why you’re so angry right now.”

Kensky said he’s hurt by the fact that his peers at JMU, people he knows and has talked to, invited Wheeler — “who is so openly transphobic and homophobic” — to campus, and described Wheeler’s online content as “disturbing and disheartening.”

Call to action

Wheeler’s words imply a call to action. She continually said queer theory has a political agenda that’s a threat to young people and uses transgender people as pawns to be abandoned.

This, along with scare tactics, expresses a movement that needs to be stopped.

When asked about this so-called political agenda, Kensky said transgender identities becoming politicized wasn’t by choice.

“If I could have my identity not be a political statement I would, but because people are trying to take away fundamental rights that I have, like health care, access to education, housing … we’re forced to take a political stance against people who are using politics to try to take away our rights,” Kensky said.

Dueñas said human rights aren’t a political agenda, and theories such as queer theory and critical race theories are “there to help focus on people who have, for a very long time, not been heard.”

Wheeler framed a fight for rights and lack of discrimination as something evil that should be rejected. This is hurtful to the transgender community and aims to prevent them from overcoming the violence they already face in this country.

“YAF individuals have a right to have these ideas, but they should take a step back and consider the impact of the ideologies they’re trying to spread have on JMU and the community,” Kensky said.

You are loved and supported. “It can be very isolating a lot of times to be queer, but just know there is community out there for you and there are allies out there, even if you don’t necessarily know it,” Kensky said.

You’re beautiful, and there’s a community at JMU that’s fighting for you, Dueñas said.

CONTACT Mary Mabry at mabrymm@dukes. jmu.edu. For more editorials regarding the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the opinion desk on Instagram and Twitter @Breeze_Opinion.