The Daily Signal - #448: Growing Up, She Thought She Was a Man. Now She’s Fighting the Patriarchy.

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

Joining us today is Eliana Bookbinder, a young woman who is a member of the Women’s Liberation Front and who had her own gender-identity struggle as a young adult Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, April 26th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Transgenderism has surged as an ideology these past few years, and it's putting feminists, even radical feminists, on the outs. Today we sit down with Eliana Bookbinder, a woman who once struggled with her gender, but now rejects transgenderism as a radical feminist. We'll hear her story. Plus, Twitter can be quite an ugly place, but the good news is it's not representative

of Americans. by a long shot. We'll take a look at a new study from Pew. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes. We're almost up to 150, so thank you to all of you who already have rated us. And please subscribe and ask others to subscribe so we can keep growing. Now on to our top news. Well, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with Vladimir Putin on Thursday, but he left without any promise of getting economic assistance from Russia. North Korea has been burdened by sanctions from the U.S. as talks with the Trump administration have stalled over North Korea's

refusal to denuclearize. Putin said Russia and North Korea would seek closer ties, but kept things pretty vague. North Korea once relied heavily on the Soviet Union during the Cold War for financial assistance, but in recent years, this relied more on China. Citing anonymous sources, the Washington Post reports the Trump administration told North Korea, it would pay $2 million for the medical costs of caring for Otto Wormbeyer, the American college student who was captured by North Korea and held captive until he was released in a vegetative state in 2017. The Post reports it's unclear if the Trump administration ever actually paid the $2 million. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, we do not comment

on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration. Well, the Mueller report has put Trump in the clear, at least legally speaking, but it contains other allegations that Trump doesn't seem to appreciate very much. Among them, it says Trump attempted to have Robert Mueller fired. Trump is now disputing that. It's a claim that Mueller says he got from Don McGahn, the president's former attorney. McGahn told Mueller that Trump asked him to fire Mueller, but he didn't go through with it. President Trump responded to that claim on Twitter Thursday, saying, quote, as has been incorrectly reported, by the fake news media, I never told then White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller,

even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn't need McGahn to do it. I could have done it myself. Former Vice President Joe Biden announced he is running for president on Thursday. The core values of this nation are standing in the world, our very democracy. Everything that has made America America is at stake. That's why I'm today I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. Folks, America's an idea, an idea that's stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It gives hope to the most desperate people on earth.

It guarantees that everyone is treated with dignity and gives hate, no safe harbor. It instills in every person in this country the belief that no matter where you start in life, there's nothing you can achieve if you work at it. Well, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went to the U.S.-Mexico border recently, and he came back seeming to agree with President Trump, at least on the question of a wall. Here's what he said on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. When you say, though, you want a high wall with a big gate, a smart gate, but a high wall, that's going to sound to a lot of folks out there.

That's what Donald Trump was. Well, I think you've got to control the border. when you have an increase of illegal apprehensions of illegal entries by 374% since October. Obviously, you've got a situation where the border security is not sufficient, and that's going to drive people who we should want to be pro-immigration against immigration. Democrats have been willing to fund more border security, okay? I'm for a high wall with a big gate, a compassionate, a smart gate, so we can keep immigration going, but you're not going to do that.

Wolf, if people think people can just walk into this country, they're not going to support the immigration that we need. California teachers may soon be facing new restrictions when it comes to disciplining kids who are misbehaving. A bill passed the state Senate that would curb what teachers can do. According to CBS's Sacramento affiliate, quote, under the new version of Senate Bill 419, students in grades 4 through 8 wouldn't be suspended for disrupting school activities or will fully defying school authorities, including teachers and staff.

The bill would also ban schools from suspending students in grades 9 through 12 for the same thing until January 1st, 2025, end quote. However, Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, did veto a similar bill last session, so it's possible that even if it passes both chambers, it won't go anywhere. Up next, we'll talk to Eliana Bookbinder, who once identified as a man, but has since desisted. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Joining us today is Eliana Bookbinder, a young woman who is a member of the Women's Liberation Front and who had her own gender identity struggle as a young adult.

Eliana, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Okay, so when did you first start to think that you were a man? And what made you think that? Probably I started thinking that around when I was 12 or 13. I'd had a lot of issues. I had very masculine interests. I wasn't super comfortable with my body. I was very, very uncomfortable with feminine clothing and makeup, things like that. And I sort of started to think, okay, maybe I'm not actually a girl. Maybe I'm actually a boy. And did you talk to anyone about feeling that, like tell your friends or your parents or anything? I didn't. I kept it mostly to myself, I think entirely to myself until a few years later.

I did read a lot about it online, although I never actually mustered up the nerve to post and receive feedback. So when did you begin to actually identify as a man and how did that process? come about. What happened was I was reading a lot. I was on Tumblr and Facebook and also a blogging sort of community that I followed. And I was seeing a lot of stuff about how, you know, being trans, you know, is about not fitting in with the gender roles you're assigned, you know, not being very feminine woman or very masculine man. And like, it's all about how, you know, you feel about your gender identity. And I remember thinking, you know, I don't feel. I don't feel. like a woman and I don't I'm not very comfortable with sort of feminine femininity and I'm much more

comfortable with sort of traditionally masculine activities and clothing so I guess I'm a boy and it was definitely influenced a lot by the blogs I was reading and the people I followed on Tumblr and Facebook and when you decided you were a boy did that that affect what your name was? Did it affect how you dressed? What did that actually mean? So I never quite got out, got to like coming out. I started thinking, you know, I picked out a name. I was just going to go by, I think, Eli, because it's a shortening of Eliana. And, but I never actually got, I would always dress, you know, T-shirt, jeans, shorts, things like that. So it didn't only change how I dressed, because I already dressed in a very masculine way. I never got to the point

of actually, you know, getting a binder, but I was looking around online for where to find one. There are disturbingly places where you can actually get used binders from older trans-identified women or donated if you're a young woman who can't get one herself, which is kind of disturbing. So how did your, you know, family and friends take to the transition that you had? I never, I sort of came to my senses before I really told many of them. I think I maybe told my brother who was kind of more confused about it than anything else. Hearing about it later, my parents were really like, you know, how could this have happened to our kid? Because they thought I was, you know, pretty well insulated from it.

I was homeschooled. I didn't have that much, like, I didn't have any, you know, in real life friends who were transitioning or anything like that. But I had enough friends and sort of contact with people who were transitioning online that I heard about it. So you now identify as female, correct? I now accept that I am a female human being. Okay. So what sort of changed you to that, or not changed you to that? you are biologically that, but what made you accept it?

It was actually, it was two things. One was the blogging community I followed that had some trans people and some non-trans people in it sort of had a major schism around someone saying, well, trans women aren't just women full stop. Like, that's not what those words mean, which, you know, I was a little budding scientist. I was like, yeah, you know, if you're transitioning from A to B, be, that means you're not be. Like, that doesn't make sense.

And I sort of from there started to see a lot of the logical fallacies in the trans ideology. I also started working at Boy Scout camp, which doesn't sound like it'd be a, you know, great place for a little, you know, someone who thinks they're trans, a little trans-identified girl. But for me, it was the first place where I'd been, you know, really valid. for my, you know, masculine interests. I was very interested in science.

I was, you know, really good at starting fires. I was physically strong. I was valued for all of those things. Those were valuable skills in this, you know, community at Boy Scout camp, but I was also definitely female. Like I was in the girls campsite,

you know, there were other girls and women who were, you know, very masculine. We were valued, but we weren't men. And that's so interesting because I think, you know, having been a teenage girl myself, it is such a turbulent weird period

where you feel so much pressure to conform to a certain image. And it does seem that increasingly it's a very narrow image. Like you must be interested in all these things. And yeah, I remember that I wasn't very interested in makeup. And it's funny how you can be under so much pressure for something like that. Yeah, it's really weird because it's like I, you know, among other things, makeup just makes my eyes water a lot, so I don't like wearing it. Yeah, it's tough if you have allergies.

Yeah, so it's like I wasn't interested in it. I like being able to, you know, run around and move freely. Got in a lot of trouble and I was little, because I had a dress for going to a friend's, my parents' friend's wedding. I was like, okay, I guess I'm going bicycle riding in this. She did not end well. So what about after that in college? Did you join a feminist group on campus?

No. I went to Erlem College, which is a little liberal art school in rural Indiana run by Quakers. And there wasn't really a particularly, there wasn't really a feminist group on campus. There was the Action Against Sexual Violence Coalition, Action Against Sexual Violence, something. And they were, you know, they had a mission working on sexual violence. and our women's center actually got renamed my junior year, the Center for Inclusive Gender Identities. So it was not a very, you know, radical feminist-friendly place. So what was your college experience?

Did you share your prior gender identity struggle? Did you talk about how you felt that trans women were not, you know, women in exactly the same way that women are? And how did those conversations go? Not well. I kept mostly quiet, but like even just posting on Facebook that, you know, I did think that, you know, people who are obviously men wearing dresses aren't women. I had people ask mutual acquaintances if I was dangerous, like if I was physically dangerous, which was really funny because I was walking around with a cane. I still have a cane. And I had hate mail slipped under my door. It was not a good time. I got excluded from a lot of like on-campus social stuff because I was considered dangerous. And this was just because of your views on gender. Yes.

Just circling back to, you know, we were just talking about makeup and all that. And one of the things that I've noticed is, yeah, like this huge pressure from society that if you're a certain way, if you're a boy who likes musicals, you know, you're probably gay or maybe trans. If you're a girl who likes, you know, wearing shorts and T-shirts and doesn't want to wear dresses. you might be a trans guy. And I'm just sort of curious, what do you think can be done to our culture? How do we make it so we don't make these boxes so narrow? Like I just find it so interesting that you talked about at Boy Scouts camp,

that you were able to do all these things. And you felt valued for doing all these things, but you felt valued as a woman. And I just feel like our society right now, they act like they're all woke, but we have such narrow boxes. I don't fully know. I think definitely working on like decoupling femininity from what it means to be female. I don't fully know. It's something that I think about a lot, but it's not something I have any good answers for.

I think honestly a lot of it is accepting, you know, working on showing young girls and boys that, yes, there are, you know, adult men who like musicals and there are adult women who, you know, chop wood and. and, you know, make fires and, you know, build stuff and showing that there's not showing them, you know, gender non-conforming adults who are still okay in their bodies. Right, because, I mean, I would just say at the end of the day, what makes you, your gender, it's not liking to wear dresses or something. It's much deeper and much more innate than that. Yeah, it's like what makes me a woman is the fact that I am an adult human, female.

So tell us about the women's liberation from, and how it fits into the larger, I guess, LGBT movement? So the Women's Liberation Front, or Wolf, is a radical feminist organization. We work to basically liberate women from the patriarchy, and our view is that sex role stereotypes or gender are fundamentally the – what's the phrasing here? the part of the hierarchy that puts men over women, the patriarchy, and that they, you know, we should abolish them. We shouldn't have sexual stereotypes. I wouldn't say that they're necessarily part of the LGBT movement.

Yeah. There, a lot of the LGBT movement actually doesn't really like us very much. We're more part of the, you know, feminism movement. But we're kind of, we're our own. little thing. And why does the LGBT movement reject groups like yours? Because we, you know, are against transgender ideology. We don't think that a man can become a woman like in any sort of very meaningful way. Particularly, we don't think that what makes a woman a woman is, you know, the makeup and the hair and plastic surgery and things like that. Well, I wanted to ask you about a bill that's getting a lot of

Well, among House Democrats, Nancy Pelosi is pushing a bill called the Equality Act, and it would advance kind of transgender theory across the country in so many ways, including in education. And it would basically make gender defined by your own kind of mental state rather than anything objective that people can just observe. Do you have any thoughts about that bill? The equality bill is kind of a train wreck, honestly. It's a, like, it poses a direct danger to women and girls because of how it takes sex, which we all know to mean, you know, male and female, and replaces it with gender identity, which is this sort of intangible, like, spirit that people just know in themselves. There's no external way of validating it. there's no, you know, sort of reality check, whereas, you know, we can tell if someone's, you know, 99% of people, we can tell if they're male or female.

It also makes it so that you could just say, you know, I'm a man, I'm a woman, there wouldn't be any sort of, you know, requirement that you at least have had a diagnosis from a medical professional. And this bill really, really negatively impact or would negatively impact the safety of women and girls. it would make it so that I couldn't request a female doctor because if I requested a female doctor, I could also get a male doctor who says he's female. Same for chaperones, handling intimate care at a hospital, supervising drug tests.

That's actually happened a few times. Also for supervising children on overnight trips, I would not be able to say, you know, if I had children, and I want my female children supervised by a female caregiver because I could request that, but the person they consider a female caregiver could be a man who just says he's a woman. It would also desegregate based on sex hospital rooms, locker rooms and group showers where people are naked, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, all these places where women and children are vulnerable would be open to any male, any man who says that they're a woman.

Does the Women's Liberation Front share your view officially? Have they come out against the bill or if not? I'm holding our U.S. Equality Act Gender Identity Impact Summary. So, yes, they are officially against the U.S. Equality Act. And circling back, you know, where you see anecdotally more and more. teens are struggling with their gender identity nowadays. And, you know, schools are reporting unprecedented numbers of kids, you know, wondering if they're trans, et cetera. What would you say, you know, if a girl around 13, 14 came to you and said, I'm struggling with my gender identity?

I would say that, yes, being a woman in a patriarchal society can suck. It can feel like you're trapped in a box. There are no good, like there are no good options. And, like, there are no good options. And, You are like a freak for not wanting to be feminine. It can feel like, you know, maybe if you were a boy, people would take you seriously. Maybe if you were a boy, you could, you know, do what you wanted to do. But that is just another form of the patriarchy. What it's trying to do is trying to get you to mutilate your body and, you know, reject your body, which is like the embodiment of who you are instead of rejecting sexist ideology.

and that it's okay to be uncomfortable with your body. I'm still uncomfortable with my body often. Just because you're uncomfortable with your body doesn't mean that your body is the problem. The problem is sexism and misogyny. You can work on, you know, you can work on accepting your body and having your interests. You don't have to either change your interests or your body

to fit into sexist ideology. All right. Well, Eliana, we really appreciate you coming in and being on and sharing your story. Thank you guys for having me. Do you own an Amazon Echo? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily Alexa Flash briefing. It's easy to do.

Just open your Amazon Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your Flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Twitter is not real life. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center,

Quote, Twitter users are younger, more likely to identify as Democrats, more highly educated, and have higher incomes than U.S. adults overall. Twitter users also differ from the broader population on some key social issues. For instance, Twitter users are somewhat more likely to say that immigrants strengthen rather than weak in the country and to see evidence of racial and gender-based inequalities in society, end quote. Furthermore, 10% of Twitter users are responsible for a whopping 80% of tweets. Why does it matter? Well, a lot of journalists spend a lot of time on Twitter.

There's also, as we're seeing with young adult books being pulled from publication, real effects in the real world, from Twitter mobs. So, Daniel, what's up? You know, I think this is part of a broader trend that you see in kind of the public square. you see it on campus, which is that some of the loudest voices are actually a small percentage of the population. And yet they are the loudest voices. They project and make it seem like society is completely divided, that things are really hostile. And I appreciate that this Pew study is showing that America is actually not as polarized and not as ideological,

at least ideologically driven, as Twitter would suggest. I mean, Twitter is, and you and I are both on Twitter. You should follow us. A little plug. I mean, yeah, it can be an annoying place. There's a lot of trolls, you know, a lot of Russian bots, I guess, you know, Twitter's trying to get rid of those. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of a fake, the more I'm on it,

the more I realize, you know, this is a helpful tool, but it's also kind of a fake reality. And you don't want to live in it so much that you start to think that this is real life. Right. And it's actually interesting for me personally because in my prior job as a reporter for National Review, I was on Twitter all the time. And when I came to the Daily Signal, just what my day-to-day job duties were changed dramatically. And it sort of meant that I would, you know, talk Twitter a few times a day. But it was no longer, like, I always had the window popped up.

Like, I was very aware of what was going on. Your mental health must have shot way up. So interestingly, I was talking to a friend last night. And I was saying every time I go on Twitter, I just feel like there's some. much anger. And it just really alienates me and I feel like it's pointless and it's stupid and no one is changing anyone's mind. Wow, I've really grown to hate the platform. But, you know, what I think would be an interesting experiment, I don't know how, I mean, it's never going to happen. But it would be really interesting to see if they could force all journalists to go off Twitter

for a year and see what happened to the news coverage. Yeah. I mean, that would be interesting. And I think Twitter is one of those things that rewards kind of outrageousness. Oh, for sure. And it rewards, you know, it's kind of like Facebook, any social media, really. You get likes for what you say. And so it can kind of devolve into this, try to out-own the other person. And that's never productive. And it doesn't help for, you know, any society.

But it's also, it's just not our society. And I think the problem is that, you know, journalists often, like what I used to do when I was at National and review is if something I said or wrote got retweeted a lot, I would think this should make a good article. And, you know, whatever, I'm proud of my work there. But it's interesting now, and I mean, of course, it's changed in the years since. But like, I don't necessarily think a tweet going viral is a good indication of how relevant an article is. I mean, of course, we're always happy when it happens. But it doesn't mean that it actually was something meaningful for people in the real world, you know, not Twitter people to find out about.

Yeah, I think that's totally true. And it just reinforces, you know, the D.C. bubble and everyone's hot takes. Like, it's just reinforcing the sort of conventional wisdom that isn't rooted in interactions with most of the country. Yeah, but it is nice to know that when you see something going viral on Twitter that you disagree with, you can just think, okay, take a step back. This isn't the majority of the country. True, but if it affects news coverage and it affects how people think, like the loudest voices can win in the long run potentially. Yeah, it's not disconnected from the country, but it is a very amped up version. We will leave it there for today.

Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud. And please leave us a review or a five-star rating on iTunes to give us feedback. unless you love Twitter and hated this segment. Rob in Virginia will be with you on Monday. You've been listening to The Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden,

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