Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Saturday, August 30, 2025
·
33 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of days. Every time I’ve thought to write this I “hear” Stormy ask my I’m hurting myself in my head. However I’ve finally found the piece I was missing. So I’m going for it.
Please understand one thing before I begin: I don’t expect to change one mind. In fact, this is mostly the opposite, it’s a fuck you scream into the void. Many of you will dig in and rationalize ways to tell me I’m wrong. Especially the men. The men lacking in moral clarity and purpose. If you men find yourself reading this and thinking “well not me and getting mad”. Fuck you, yes you.
To the women reading this, think back to your first time. Think back to the worst time. Think back to all the fucking times men told you, in so many ways, to not talk about it because they were disgusted by it. Maybe contemplate some solidarity right now and talk about it here.
When you read this, recall the other day when Reynolds told me I’m a man. A man with a man’s body. Gischer agreed. Two men with skin in the game bereft of moral clarity. You’re both cowards.
I started my medical transition when I was 40. I started in January of that year. I wasn’t out to anyone except family and a few close friends. I was still presenting as a guy. For safety and because I was afraid. By June of that year I had breasts and had to wear a bra under my suit.
I had court the first time it happened. While I was driving into the Loop for court I just started crying for no reason. I didn’t think much of it, I cry a lot. Court was a property tax deed matter. It was me and two other women. Opposing counsel was pregnant. By the end of the hearing her and I were hissing at each other. I couldn’t understand why I was so angry with her. The judge was probably in her 60’s and very confused.
After court I had to walk to a CLE class & lunch. On the way there I was super emotional and I started getting these weird butterflies in my stomach. I figured I was hungry. Got to the class, ate lunch, and the butterflies didn’t go away.
They got worse. Then my breasts started to hurt worse than they usually did. Then my emotions started going haywire. I was crying in the class for no reason. I was confused and embarrassed. Then I got this severe pain in my stomach. It hurt so bad. It didn’t feel like any stomach ache I’ve ever had. It felt like all my guts were trying to pull my body down.
I was texting with a friend of mine about some real estate work. I told her I couldn’t think because what was going on. I was out to her. She asked me if I was getting my period.
It was the first time anyone even suggested it was possible. The doctors never did. The community never talked about it. I’ve been in and around the trans community since I was about 13. It was never discussed.
Since then it’s been fairly irregular. I’m sure that some days it’s happening and I just don’t notice. I don’t have a uterus, so I don’t bleed, so sometimes it’s easy not to notice. But when it’s intense enough to notice, it always starts with butterflies that I think are a stomachache. Every time. Except once.
The day that Reynolds proclaimed that I’m little more than a delusional man with a man’s body, I was sitting at the table on my laptop. I felt the butterflies start, but they were so intense that I immediately knew I was getting my period. That never happens. It always takes me an hour or more to figure it out.
Within minutes it hurt so bad I couldn’t stand up. My daughter got scared and brought me a blanket. She’s freaked out about getting her period now. She’s 9. I sat there in agony as it got worse.
My partner brought me midol and helped me to the couch. The midol did nothing. It got worse. It felt like every muscle in my body was pulling down to the black hole where my uterus should be. It doesn’t know it’s a male body. It just knows that it’s time to menstruate and it has a job to do.
The pain got so bad I couldn’t open my eyes. It was just waves of the absolute worst cramps. Waves and waves pulling down. I blacked out. I blacked out again. I’ve broken my neck. I’ve had diverticulitis. I’ve had my gallbladder fail. I blacked out again. It was more painful than any of those things.
The midol, CBD, and eventually edibles didn’t do anything. Hours of just waves of cramps pulling down. I hurt and I cried. The thing is, through all of it I knew that this is something women just go through. Cis women will just get 30-40 years of this. Most of the time downplaying it for the comfort of men that either won’t listen to them or who will be so disgusting that they’ll flee at the very thought of a tampon. Fucking cowards.
Most of the time my periods only last about a day. This time I felt the tiny waves of cramps for a good chunk of the next day. They hurt, but I just pushed through. Cause that’s what women are taught to do. There’s work to be done and male comfort to be attended to.
Again, I don’t expect to change any minds. I’ve absolutely failed at that here. It’s entirely pointless. I’m at the point where suicide is definitely on the table. I’ve work so hard and come this far and it’s not worth it to spend the next 20-30 years listening to small minded idiots tell me I’m a man. I’m not. But you are an idiot who singularly refuses to understand the world is not what you think it is. It’s far more messy, complicated and beautiful.
What brings me out of my exile, because I feel neither accepted nor welcome here, is this. I particularly want Reynolds and Gischer to read it and understand that they are cowards. You should be leaders. But you’re not. You’re cowards who will sacrifice us. You will lose the world and gain nothing but ashes.
This is not an attempt to change minds. This is a fuck you.
@Beth:
I said no such thing. You are a liar.
ETA: Neither did Gischer. Produce the quotes, they should be right here on the site, and you apparently have six other people who upvoted you. So, maybe they can help you search for the non-existent receipts.
@Michael Reynolds:
Michael,
Ever since Beth’s dead Floridians post, I have mostly avoided reading her. Maybe you should do the same.
@Michael Reynolds:
Don’t you know there are some people around here who would upvote a ham sandwich.
I can appreciate that maybe you thought that’s what I meant. I did not mean that. That is coming from you.
Frankly, all I’m trying to say is that the issue of trans people is big and complicated and very hard to have when there is so much bad faith in the air, and we are better off discussing the denial of medical care. That’s it. Not that you are a man.
I also said that you are beautiful and lovable. I’ll say it as long as I can move my fingers to type.
@Michael Reynolds: She isn’t lying. She believes it, which makes it something other than lying.
@Jay L. Gischer:
You’re a generous guy.
Reynolds, 8/20 @ 11:07
“There is not a single city, county or state where the trans vote matters. The only trans political force is trans allies, which is why I’ve been begging trans folks to get off the sports issue because it alienates a vast number of allies.
The trans movement has lost everything it gained in the last decade and more. They need a reboot and a process of rebuilding alliances.”
Gischer 8/20 @ 11:26
“While the sports issue is a dumb as the rest of the anti-trans stuff, I stayed away from it during the last cycle, because I thought the push to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors was more alarming, and an easier sell.
So I basically agree.”
Reynolds 8/20 @ 12:53
“A tactical withdrawal – when you can’t hold the line, you fall back to a more defensible position.”
Reynolds 8/21 @ 8:35 (Wed Forum)
“We are trying to fight for you. But we cannot defend on the athletics issue, because you’re just wrong. People with male bodies should not be engaging in sports with people who have female bodies.”
“Admit defeat on athletics. And find a compromise formula on minors. Those are the two killer issues, and neither is a must-win.”
Gavin Newsom
“You can’t serve the country until you’re 18, you can’t buy a gun, you can’t serve alcohol until you’re 21, and I mean to make that big of a decision as a kid,” said Shawn Ryan.
“Totally get it,” replied Newsom.
“You also could be destroying a lot of lives as well, your brain isn’t even fully developed,” continued Ryan.
“You got it, until 26, so that’s even further with the brain. Look, I come to this very much, more open minded than I’ve ever been, more receptive, because a lot of the pushback came from folks that I didn’t respect. That never respected the gay community period. People opposed to basic rights, so the natural inclination was to just dismiss. But now I recognize more fully and deeply, and I think the sports issue really opened that up for me.”
Source
Riley Gaines (I’m quoting an article which contains quotes from her):
“For Gaines, who testified in favor of Montana’s anti-trans “bathroom bill” in January, opposing trans women in women’s sports is a vehicle to dismantle trans activism, restrict gender-affirming medical care, and encourage cisgender people to stop accepting trans people. “The gender ideology movement is a house of cards,” Gaines told the Times this week, using a euphemism frequently deployed by the Trump administration. Gaines added that she believes sports participation “will be the card that makes all of it crumble,” opening the door to convince the general public that trans women are not truly women and gender-affirming medical care for trans youth should be restricted.“
@Michael Reynolds:
So. Are your own words sufficient to show you agree with Gavin Newsom and Riley Gaines that I’m a man? That my rights and the rights of other trans people should be curtailed? Or should I shut up cause I’m a narcissist and a liar. Or did you not say those things?
@Jay L. Gischer: Would you like a chance to explain away your agreement with Reynolds about me and my “male” body. I believe it, because he said it and you said you agreed with him.
@Bill Jempty:
If you will allow me to model honesty and respect, I said that. I fully acknowledge and accept the pain that statement caused. I wish I was a better person, but I’m not. I say all this not to deflect, minimize or glorify what I said. I’m not even retracting it. I respect your humanity enough to be honest. I don’t expect this to change anything.
Gischer, did you read through that Bluesky thread? Reynolds is a lost cause. Do you understand the hurt you two cause?
“The thing about accepting Newsom’s depravity against trans people or the homeless on the grounds of “Yeah, that’s bad, but we have to beat Trump or it’ll be worse.” is that by accepting it, you mark it as acceptable, both within your mind and in the larger world around you.”
US-Venezuela tensions rise as US warships arrive in Southern Caribbean (Reuters)
It’s giving ‘wag the dog.’
@Beth:
Your dishonesty is matched only by your narcissism.
No, my words were not about you at all, Beth, we were discussing the issue of trans athletes. My daughter is 6′, weight proportional. Her girlfriend is taller than my daughter, as big as me. I would lose a fight with either of them. Mia Hamm is 5’5″, neither my daughter nor the friend should be running at full speed into Mia Hamm on a soccer field. Physics is a thing, which is why Mini Coopers do not win battles with Lincoln Navigators. And why we have weight classes in boxing – because it would be wrong to match a 250 heavyweight against a 110 pound flyweight.
It is a symptom of your narcissism that you imagine that you – some person on the internet – play a larger part in my attitudes toward trans people than does my daughter (who I love) or her friend (who I like a lot, largely for her dry wit) or my niece who is a minor and struggling, along with her parents, with getting care.
You, Beth, are not my problem except as a fellow human. As writers both my wife and I are working in the ways we can, to counter Rowling’s demagoguery. It seems there may be a TV deal coming for the book series we wrote, so I also have the issue of whether the streamer in question will deliberately suppress elements that have been so encouraging to so many trans readers. Will we know? Will we be able to push back? If we did, would it help or hurt?
As a father I am desperately concerned for my daughter’s safety and happiness. I carry her as an employee and we pay her well enough to live in a safe building. We hope. I push her to use Uber (at my expense) even for long trips around the Bay Area because I think it’s safer than public transport. (She disagrees.) Obviously I would buy her a car if she would allow me to.
As an uncle and a brother-in-law (and financier of last resort) I am war-gaming how to help my niece in the event that things in Illinois get worse. How do we get meds from Canada? Is it illegal to transport them across international borders? Better to FedEx or hand-carry over the border? Will she need Canadian doctors to write the necessary prescriptions? Will this be as time-consuming a process as it tends to be in the States?
But no, none of that matters, Beth, it’s all about you and your feelings.
I see no evidence that you GAF about anyone or anything beyond yourself. That’s why it is fruitless talking politics with you. Politics is not just all about you. And my relationship with the trans community is about my lovely, brilliant daughter, and my niece, and her parents, and our fans, and the broader publishing community, and not at all about you.
The trans women in sports is a amazing (to me) wedge issue. It causes sharp, intense divisions between people who share many beliefs. The actual numbers of trans women athletes is pretty small. Iga Swiatek has nothing to fear from transgender athletes, and I don’t think that Femke Bol’s career is threatened. It is unlikely that someone would subject himself to major surgery and hormonal meds in order to get into a women’s locker room. Sexual abuse is a serious problem, but the offenders are coaches, ministers, and family members. Let’s make peace in our ranks and not allow the bad guys to define the agenda for our public discourse.
@Beth:
For what it’s worth, you’ve changed my mind on a lot of things.
I’m definitely much more supportive of trans health care for minors because of you and knowing how much more difficult your transition has been because you started as an adult.
And whether it was contact with you and other trans and trans adjacent folks here, or whether it’s just been watching the world, I am far, far less likely to think of trans folks as separate from the rest of the queer community, and I’m not willing to support someone who isn’t willing to try to stop attacks on trans folks. (I don’t demand perfection, but at least trying to keep things from getting worse). There’s the basic human decency element, and the clear self-preservation element as I know the attacks on trans folks are a prelude to the attacks on everyone else in my community.
I’m not willing to vote for Newsom if he gets the nomination. If my community isn’t safe, why should anyone else’s be?
If it was just sports, I wouldn’t give a shit, because I don’t give a shit about sports and there are so few people affected — but it’s not just sports. You can also find Newsom happily chatting with and agreeing with people who are saying that health care should be restricted well into adulthood. That’s not misplaced concern about children*, that’s a desire to find one reason after another to completely prevent trans people from existing. That’s a part of my community being unsafe, and likely the rest of the community — the slippery slope is getting pretty steep there even if it’s not perfectly frictionless.
But I also live in Washington State, so it’s not like my vote matters anyway.
——
*: I’m squishy on healthcare for minors. But blockers have to be available at the least, to maintain the kids’ options going forward.
——
ETA: Also, buck up, little soldier! (there was no reason for me to add this)
@Michael Reynolds:
At the risk of giving a shit about sports, I’d just like to point out that there are cisgender women over 6’ tall, and cisgender men under 5’5”.
Also, I don’t think soccer involves tackling people. I think that’s generally a no-no.
@Bill Jempty:
Does that mean many of your posts are spam sandwiches?
@Kurtz:
No its those posts defending a commenter’s use of the word impotent towards me because I said things like the Democrats would lose last November, that Biden was losing his marbles and things like that. They get far more up votes than I get for writing about my personal stuff. We know how my and the commenters views turned out to be correct or incorrect.
So what is it about upvoting ham sandwiches?
@Bill Jempty:
False. I said that we here were all impotent and powerless to force Biden out of the race, because contrary to the Extremely Online egomania often on display here, none of us here are all that important or have any outsized individual political power, and the OTB comments section is not so serious as some think.
My use of the word impotent had nothing to do with you personally, and nothing to do with your political predictions, nor your lies about Biden’s mental state.
You stubbornly insist on playing the victim and taking it as a personal attack — immaturely obsessing over this irrelevance over a year later — because you seem to harbor a hilariously bloated and mistaken sense of self-importance, and an insecurity around your medical issues to which I am not privy.
Perhaps you misrememher all this because you are losing your marbles?
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t think you said that Beth is a man with a man’s body. But even so, show some fucking humanity for fuck’s sake.
@Bill Jempty:
You fucking ghoul.
@Gustopher:
You said something similar about Biden lady year. This purity politics ‘if I can’t have 100% of what I want’ mindset is, of course, why liberals often lose elections they should win. Oh well. Apparently they like the consequences.
Leftists building a permission structure for folks to not vote for the candidate who is preferable on every issue does matter and has an impact in every state, no matter where they live personally. Did “Uncommitted” and “Fuck Joe Biden” and “Genocide Joe” and “Kamala the Cop” help trans people? Is our community safer now?
What white people left and right should do — but won’t — is simply join black voters (who have never been safe in America no matter who wins) in supporting the Democratic nominee at a 85%+ clip, in every state. As this is obviously the best political path to progress, however incremental. But of course, white folk will continue to not do this, insisting their way is better even though it is clearly not and is instead making everything worse.
Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan insists black people are genetically less intelligent. Okay, sure. Possibly, maybe, compared to white Europeans. Compared to white Americans? Pfft lol no ma’am.
@DK: Your psychoanalysis is as bad as your use of words and political wisdom. You thought NOBODY, not just people at this forum, could get Biden to bow out of the race.
You couldn’t stand what I said and resorted to personal attacks. Which you are still doing now and that only proves your total insincerity last year.
@Bill Jempty: Angry tantruming in Trumpesque ALL CAPS can’t make false statements true. I said nobody here had the power to force Biden out, which is true, despite your egomania. I said the decision would have to come from him and his inner circle. Which it did.
My use of the word impotent was not a personal attack, you’re just a self-absorbed, insecure manbaby.
@DK: You just further prove my case. By calling me names. Impotent was an insult last year and whole lot of forum members were wrong in defending you. They voted for a ham sandwich.
Your last sentence is a laughingly hysterical example of irony. First you claim something wasn’t a personal attack and then launch into one.
@Bill Jempty: Your insistence on stubbornly repeating your crybaby victimhood lie proves my point. Yes, the reason “a whole lot of forum members” “defended me” (aka, explained the context how and why my use of the word impotent was clearly not a personal individualized attack on you) was not because you were wrong. You’re never wrong, huh? Everybody else was wrong, and only poor, marginalized, always-right know-it-all Bill Jempty was right, as always. Yeah, that’s it. Any other scenario is impossible.
What a frikkin narcissist. The most insecure in the room typically are. Trump vibes.
@Bill Jempty: P.S. They weren’t “defending me.” They were defending the obvious. Plenty here who don’t particularly like “me” or my style still told the truth about what I did and didn’t say and do, because the reality doesn’t budge based on who says it.
Everything is not always about me me me. Maybe after so many decades it’s time for you to finally learn that? Yes, you too can be wrong about something, as you are on this. Shocking, I know.
Gee, I go off for the day and OTB’s forum morphed into a faculty senate facebook group.
@Sleeping Dog: Indeed, and thank you. These OTB threads are usually pretty civil. Today a little grace and charity would go a long way.
I’m gonna bookmark this thread for the next person who claims OTB is an “echo chamber.”
If you’ve never seen The Duellists, I strongly recommend a watch. It’s Ridley Scott’s first movie, in which two Napoleonic-era soldiers (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel) engage in a decades-long rivalry, punctuated by duels that no one ever really wins. I remember loving it when it first came out, thinking, “Wow, I’d like to see more from this Ridley Scott fellow.”
The moral of the story is, unsurprisingly, that the mindless duels of honor between the two main characters was silly and destructive. Carradine is the closest thing to a protagonist, and if memory serves, he keeps getting challenged by Keitel. Carradine could have declined, whenever Keitel threw down the gauntlet, but he didn’t. Even though he disagreed with Keitel to his bones (for example, Keitel was an unreformed Bonapartist), he could have had the confidence and humanity to walk away. He didn’t…But I don’t want to spoil the excellent ending, if you haven’t seen it.
Anyway, thought I’d make this movie recommendation, apropos of nothing this Saturday.
@Bill Jempty:
Once again, thanks for the reminder of your successful predictions. I keep forgetting, despite the number of times you have mentioned them.
Ya know, I walked outside the other day, and thought to myself, “it is going to rain soon.” It did. That has happened a few times. One of those times, I looked up the forecast by the local news outlet. They had a zero percent chance of liquid precipitation for that day.
I called them. E-mailed them. Taped handwritten notes on fancy stationary to the station’s door. For some reason, they don’t seem to give a shit.
@drj: I don’t think you said that Beth is a man with a man’s body.
I think saying “people with male bodies should not be engaging in sports with people who have female bodies” is close. I think it’s lazy. A trans girl who is 16 and taking puberty blockers has a trans girl’s body.
Nuance doesn’t matter to a lot of people, but I would assume that most people here use nuance on a regular basis.
Mein Gott, meine damen und herren!
Several people (either with malice intent or clumsiness) * hit a known hot button for Beth. Knowing that she’s coping with the failure of her homeland to continue to provide her inalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that is part of the social contract, this was mean spirited.
In return, Beth obviously found a couple of sore bunions in cheap, ill-fitting shoes.
But Luddite’s gotta admit, watching this multi-car pile-up in the third turn at Talladega was eye-opening, to say the least.
Beth, you just keep being you. Miss you and I’m still bemoaning the fact that I never got to be Della to your Perry. Everyone else, please keep providing entertainment for the peanuts over here in the gallery.**
* While I’m willing to entertain the idea of malice intent, given the parties, my money’s on simple “oops, never mind” clumsiness. But then again, I’m not carrying the justifiable levels of pain, rage and hurt that Beth is.
** The reference to faculty meetings seems waaaayy too appropriate to Luddite. My exposure was brief, but painfully memorable.
Looks in.
Oh my.
Buggers off to listen to the proms.
@JohnSF:
Hang on John, lemmie grab my coat, I’ll buy the first round.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I’m drinking calvados.
Make that scrumpy cider with calvados chasers.
First one to fall off the stool loses.
Cue up Senseless Things “Hold it Down”.