A blunt, no-nonsense look at speech, gender reality, and why refusing to adopt linguistic tricks matters in today’s culture wars.
I’m turning 43 and I’ve learned a thing or two about not caring what strangers think, especially when it comes to blunt speech on controversial topics. That freedom to speak plainly has pushed me to call out what I see as contradictions in the trans debate, rather than softening language to appease powerful activist currents. Speaking plainly often gets you labeled rude, but it also lets you keep a clear line between facts and fashionable ideology.
I refuse to pretend that “Trans women” are women in the biological sense any more than I will pretend that “trans men” are women. “Trans women” are men, and “trans men” are women. I will not be forced into euphemisms like “egg producers” or “birthing persons” to spare someone’s feelings. That’s not me being mean; it’s me insisting on basic biological reality and on the right to name things as they are.
My stance isn’t dramatic bravado. I’m a Midwest mom who writes for a living, not a celebrity. Plenty of people with more to lose spoke up before I did, and they paid a price. One clear example is British screenwriter and comedian Graham Linehan, who faced armed police when he returned to London in September and was arrested over social media posts deemed “hateful.”
Linehan’s ordeal landed him in the hospital with high blood pressure, and although the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges in October, he is pursuing legal action against the police for what he says was persecution. Former friends admitted he might have had a point, calling him “too blunt” but acknowledging there was something to his argument.
If you’ve watched how public opinion shifts, the trans movement often looks less like conviction and more like a social fashion that many buy into when it’s trendy. People who once cheered loudly for “the transgender community” have quietly backpedaled as the heat turned up. A few high-profile figures have reversed or softened their earlier positions once the consequences became personal rather than social.
Emma Watson is a useful example of that flip. During the height of the controversy she sided against the woman who made her famous, and later said she still loves that person while wanting to “keep loving people who [she] don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.” The targeted author responded coldly, and the tension reflected a larger cultural split where celebrities’ first instincts were often political convenience.
Rowling, too, responded to the notion that Linehan was “too blunt” and outlined the strategy many activists use: insisting on linguistic changes to steer debate.
From the start, a key tactic of the gender identitarians has been linguistic prescription, and it’s proved shockingly successful. Trans activists’ shibboleths and euphemisms have been allowed to penetrate the upper echelons of our culture with devastating consequences to freedom of speech and belief. Huge swathes of liberal media, the arts, academia and publishing have thrown themselves with gusto into the defence of a quasi-religious belief causing provable real world harm, and in their arrogance they’ve been outraged when people they assumed were part of their In Group have refused to march meekly along in lock step.
Time and again, I’ve seen and heard well-educated people who consider themselves critical thinkers and bold truth-tellers squirm when put on the spot. ‘Well, yes, maybe there’s something in what you’re saying, but it’s hateful/provocative/rude not to use the approved language/pretend people can literally change sex/keep drawing attention to medical malpractice or opportunistic sexual predators. Why can’t you be nice? Why won’t you pretend? We thought you were one of us! Don’t you realise we have sophisticated new words and phrases these days that obviate the necessity of thinking any of this through?’
I’ve always pushed back against linguistic prescription because I don’t take kindly to being told what words I must use. Insisting on new euphemisms often functions less like nuance and more like a demand for ideological conformity. Refusing to play along isn’t cruelty; it’s defense of free speech and of an objective sense of reality.
There are also physical realities you cannot paper over. Hormones, surgery, and social transition change presentation, but they don’t rewrite DNA or the reproductive facts that differentiate the sexes. No amount of rhetoric can make a person biologically capable of giving birth or lactation if they lack the necessary biology. Saying that frankly is an assertion about biology, not an attack on individuals.
The cost of not speaking plainly is high, because obfuscation allows policy and culture to drift toward extremes without honest debate. We have seen violent pushback in some cases and government overreach in others, especially when speech is policed by institutions that claim neutrality but enforce a single orthodoxy. Standing firm on reality and on the right to speak about it plainly is not just political theater; it’s a defense against coercion and a statement that words still matter.
My view is straightforward: call things what they are, defend the right to say so, and don’t be bullied into linguistic surrender when the stakes are freedom of expression and clear public policy. The time for being blunt was yesterday, and the time to keep being blunt is now.
