March 31, 2024
Happy Easter to those who celebrate. Also, I hear it’s Trans Day of Visibility? Haha. No. Finally, welcome to new and old subscribers. It’s great to have you here. Please consider buying a coffee or a paid subscription if you value this content. I appreciate it!
Below is a post from October 2022, when my house was in active turmoil due to my political departure from the deranged left. I am thankful to be able to say that things are calm now. Case in point: last week Mr. Miller and I attended a jazz concert of Miller Junior’s, held in West Philly at an arts center. Before the music began an MC welcomed us all by lecturing the audience about how Jazz was a black art form, and that it had been hijacked and repressed here in the USA, but was alive in Europe and the Middle East. Then from a plastic takeout container flicked drops of water at the old wooden floor and shouted a prayer for us which was actually a tirade against white people. I wish I’d recorded it. Miller Junior, my husband and myself were the only white people in the venue. We’d paid $30 apiece for the honor of being told we were scum. And my son, now twenty, who as a teen called me racist, transphobic and homophobic, stood there onstage clutching his bass feeling really awkward for being white in a quote-unquote black man’s space. I said nothing of course, having learned my lesson to keep my damn mouth shut. But I was so very gratified to hear that he hated the speech rant and thought it was ridiculous. And THAT is the left I left. Bada boom.
*
October 28, 2022
I read this article by a gender-critical therapist. It tells me that the reason my daughter shares her problems with counselors and not her own mom isn’t because I’m a transphobic bigot. It’s because she thinks I’m too stressed to handle it. I’m too fragile to be “put upon.”
Miller Jr. is my oldest—my 18 year-old son off at college, the one person left in the family I can talk to. Junior is the only non-LGBTQIA++ person in his entire friend group. He’s always shared everything with me. Yes he thinks I should use his sister’s pronouns, but he doesn’t hold it against me that I avoid any and all labels when it comes to Miss Miller. He gets me.
I send him the article. I text, “When you get a chance can you read this and let me know if it sounds true to you, and if so, do you think it applies to us? Thank you, Love you.”
A few minutes later my phone buzzes.
My son didn’t read the entire article, only enough to determine that it’s not my instability that keeps his sister from confiding in me. It is indeed my transphobia and bigotry.
He says, “I’m worried about you, Mom. I’m afraid you’re going to turn into someone I don’t like.”
My jaw clatters to the floor. He’s never said anything like this to me. In fact, the thought of him not liking me is crushing. I mean I know your kids aren’t supposed to “like” you, but when they’re almost grown up and you finally enjoy each other’s company it is one of the most gratifying experiences life offers. So the thought of us no longer sharing the same sardonic wit, of no longer being each other’s favorite banter partner, of no longer grinning at one another with amused delight, of no longer feeling enormously lucky to simply like each other so damn much, could quite possibly end me.
Junior tells me that I am following some evil people. He mentions Jordan Peterson. I ask if he’s ever read his work or listened to him.
“I don’t have to,” he says. “I already know what he believes.”
This is the problem, I think. No one will even consider the content of my views because they have already condemned the messenger. Whoever I follow has already been tarred and feathered by whichever left-wing mouthpiece my son—and my husband—listen to. Ironically Miss Miller doesn’t even follow politics. Just the trendiness of trans as it pertains to contrived neurodivergence, pronouns and fashion.
“Dad and I talked about it,” my son continues. “He says it’s no use talking to you, that you believe what you believe. But you should maybe stop following Jordan Peterson. He’s not a good person. And just use their pronouns.”
I can hear Miss Miller in her room. This is not a good time.
It occurs to me that the reason I feel put upon is because I’m barely there—a ghost, a pile of scraps. I can’t hold a thing if I’m not solid. Maybe all I need is someone to listen to make me real. My family failed to listen when I was young—all that divorce, dysfunction, disorder. And they’re not listening now—not in my home, not at Miss Miller’s school, not in the mainstream media, not in therapist’s offices, doctor’s offices, the government…
I tell Junior that we will talk further, later. He heads to the basement to practice his bass. I go to find Mr. Miller.
“I just had a disturbing call with Junior,” I say quietly, before realizing that Mr. Miller is on the phone. He’s at his desk on the front porch where he works from home. I pivot from foot to foot, waiting, then leave the house through the back door. In the driveway I sweep dead leaves into the sewer grate that separates our house from our neighbor’s. A minute or so later he joins me.
Being a solid human is one of Mr. Miller’s strengths. It’s the number two reason I married him. Right behind his kindness. He shows me both strength and kindness now, setting the record straight and clarifying that he never told our son that it’s no use talking to me. He never said I was too far gone. He knows I am not a bigot, that Miller Jr. is prone to worry deeply about others, often to everyone’s detriment, and that he will talk to him. He also apologizes for talking about me behind my back with our son.
Standing there in the waning afternoon sun I feel something new and strange: solid. Parts that have fallen from me skitter back to reattach themselves. This is what it means to collect myself.
It’s so good to hear those two words, coming from my husband’s mouth, towards me: I’m sorry.
Later, my husband calls my son. He reports back during our nightly dog walk. Mr. Miller made it clear that Junior must treat me with respect, and that it is not his place to school me. He smothers the fire of my son’s alarm and I am placated, for now.
Still, there’s a need I can’t shake, a naive itch to make it inescapably clear that I am not the problem. Because I remember another thing my son told me during our phone conversation. He said, “Mom, you’re the only one out of the four of us who thinks these things. Doesn’t that tell you something? The problem is you.”
Amala Ekpunobi comes to mind. She’s utterly unlike Jordan Peterson in age, sex, color and vibe. She’s been an island in this paradigm storm because she too left the left. So when I happen upon this video, in which Amala reminisces with Dave Rubin and Larry Elder about how both she and Dave were disabused of their former leftist beliefs by Elder, it seems like the perfect illustration to share with Junior.
To this end, I text the video to my son—and to Mr. Miller—so he can be up to date on the conversation. My text reads: “Some of what I’m learning along the way… I would appreciate it if you could take the time to watch the whole thing…thank you.”
The response from my son? Crickets.
From Mr. Miller: “Maybe it’s not a good idea to send videos of your point of view? It only makes it look like Junior is right about you.”
“I’m just trying to illustrate where I’m coming from,” I say, exasperated all over again.
My husband says, “Yeah but Larry Elder and Dave Rubin are controversial figures. Larry Elder claimed voter fraud during his election against Gavin Newsom.”
Mr. Miller is making my point yet again, shutting down my point because the people making it have been vilified by the left. My view is problematic. It’s already been decided.
“Did you even watch it?” I ask.
“Just the first minute,” he says.
The next day Mr. Miller and I go camping on Assateague Island, just the two of us. We haven’t been away together in years. In the car on the way down I initiate the conversation.
“Are we going to talk about what’s going on or are we going to agree not to talk about it?” I ask.
Mr. Miller agrees to talk.
“Did you watch the rest of the video?” I ask.
He tells me he did, but it looked staged, fake. He says that Rubin’s argument was weak and that he could have offered pre-civil rights segregation laws and won the argument against Elder, who posits that systemic racism does not in fact exist in 2015.
I offer Elder's take as calmly as I can without arguing that Elder is talking about present day racism, not Jim Crow racism, which we all agree was real, and terrible.
Then I clarify the reason my husband refuses to research the harms of gender ideology, the issue that launched the first missile at our once happy home. My husband reaffirms that yes, he scared himself away from talking politics in 2016 when he spent every free moment arguing with Trump supporters on Twitter.
“I saw a side of me that I didn’t like,” he says.
Something is not adding up for me, but I honestly can’t figure it out. My brains feel fried, chaotic. He agrees that our daughter is not trans, and we’re both skeptical of the entire trend. Yet when I talk about gender ideology at length—or any parallel progressive issue—he won’t listen to anything I say, and then accuses me of simply wanting him to agree with me.
I’m left with zero feelings of reassurance that this marriage is not somehow doomed, but the thought of this being the beginning of the end is something I can’t face. Maybe that’s one thing we can agree on, because we race to conclude that our marriage is strong enough to withstand my political shift. After all, we’ve been together since 1991.
Maybe there’s even something good about it, I muse. Maybe like Miss Miller, I too am individuating—becoming my own person.
That night I lay awake inside our tent. Those famous island horses whinny in the distance while the Atlantic Ocean crashes on the other side of our neighboring sand dune and a fierce wind whips at the thin nylon that separates us from the boundless night. I huddle deeper in my sleeping bag, listening.
A memory surfaces.
I am sixteen years old, just like Miss Miller. I’m on the train. The Chicago L. The railcar is empty, except for a friend of mine, and a few strangers to my left. One of the men has a deck of cards. He’s playing Three-card Monte with another passenger. The dealer has his back to me but I can see the cards on his milk crate, and I can see an extra card bent and tucked into the contour of his large palm. I watch, riveted, as the swindler cheats the other man out of his money with his trick card. The injustice of it moves me to speak.
“No!” I shout. “He’s cheating! I can see the card in his hand! Don’t play with him! He’s cheating you!”
My stop arrives. I stand to exit the train. The Three-card Monte guy follows me. He gets in my face, inches away. He growls, “If I had a sister, I’d have her kick yo ass.”
My heart pounds in my throat. I stand there frozen in a cigarette-scented bubble of terror. Finally my legs move. I turn and walk away toward the stairs on shaky legs. But he was cheating, I think, tears stinging my eyes.
Now, despite this rickety bridge of harmony I’ve forged with Mr. Miller, I realize I am that same naive girl screaming warnings at innocent passengers on a train barreling toward the destruction of all that is good and right and true. I’m shouting at my husband and son, screaming into the wind, at the local high school, at the therapists and at my daughter.
They’re cheating! They’re liars! They’re tricking you!
But they dismiss me, glaring, pitying, clucking their tongues. And they reach in their pockets to fork over another dollar to the conman, thinking as they frown at me, that they’re the lucky ones.
♣️
My husband and I often wonder, how is it that so few of us are immune to the brainwashing. Is there something in the water or food? It all defies logic and reason, yet “we” are the crazy ones. I admire your tenacity. But if you don’t fight for Miss Miller, who will?
Oh my god, Mrs. This just tugged at my heartstrings. I tried to avoid a) knowing and b) talking about what is going on in the world with various friends and loved ones, and either way, I feel isolated and alone. I don't have kids, but I feel empathy towards what you are going through, because if I DID have kids, I would be going through it. Where do you live? I think we should have coffee some time! :)