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Richard Helppie
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge. I am your host Rich Helppie and with us today, Patricia Posner, a very renowned author, has led a very interesting life with many topics. The Common Bridge can be found of course, at substack.com. Just search for The Common Bridge. Free podcast on most outlets, YouTube TV, look us up, subscribe and join us.
Trisha Posner
Well, first of all, let me thank you and say nice to be with you.
Richard Helppie
Well, I'm very, very happy that you're doing this. You're in London today?
Trisha Posner
No, no, I'm in, actually, Miami.
Richard Helppie
Okay, you're in Miami. That's very good. So are we living in an unusual age; gender, science, medical care, perspective? We're bombarded all the time. Is it just awareness? Is it language? Is it both? And so we welcome author and commentator, Trisha Posner to talk about all this and to raise some serious questions about our language, our society and the impact on women. Trisha again, welcome. (Trisha Posner: And thank you for having me.) Your writing is amazing: 35 years, 13 books of investigative nonfiction, done the interviews, sifted through the thousands of pages of original documents that I understand your husband, Gerald Posner, helps out in that regard every now and then.
Trisha Posner
No, well, I'm the helper. Occasionally (he) does, but I find the books that we write really interesting. And this subject that you're talking about now, only came up because of a situation that I was in for medical reasons. It's been bothering me and many of my friends for quite a while. And people are just very fearful to talk about this subject.
Richard Helppie
Indeed, and I'm listening to people tiptoe around calling a "pregnant person", or a "lactating person"; it's like all of the strides women have made in my lifetime, that's all going to be tossed. You write a column about developments in women's health hormone replacement theory, you've authored a book called "This Is Not Your Mother's Menopause" and the breadth of your writing - the best seller, "The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story" - has been translated to 16 languages, that is a major lift. You've been in the Wall Street Journal, Salon, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast - and I hope all my listeners, viewers, readers, are going to hear this - not only has she been on NBC Today Show, she's been on MSNBC and Fox - must have been an era before they quit welcoming guests from the quote "other side." Trisha also maintains a no anti-Semitism Facebook page. Today we're going to dive right into a topic that's affected you personally. Her full bio, by the way, is at our substack.com page for The Common Bridge. Patricia, anything else you want to fill us in about you, your early days, your academic, maybe a little bit more about your background,
Trisha Posner
I was born in London, in England. I did not have a full education because of circumstances. I left school actually, believe it or not, at 16 - so I'm living proof. If I could have gone further in my education, I would have loved to because I just have a voracious [appetite] to learn, understand. Meeting someone like Gerald Posner, my husband, really took me into that other region where I could really dig into everything, especially with his subjects and his books. I came to America in 1978, New York, actually, and then met Gerald on a blind date. And ever since then, it's been an adventure, and as you said, 13 books later, many articles, and then we ended up here in Miami, Florida.
Richard Helppie
We could be talking about a lot of things, and hopefully you'll be willing to [be a] guest again, but for the time we've got today, let's pick on one that's more controversial. Let's see where people agree and where they don't. I think it's someplace between the Taliban on one side and the language police on the other, just to express my confusion on this. But Trisha you authored a column recently for the Wall Street Journal, and the title of it was "When Did Woman Become A Dirty Word?" What's the column about? Why'd you write it?
Trisha Posner
Well, first of all, I don't understand why this shouldn't even be controversial. As I wrote in the article, I have nothing against what your sexual desires are, who you identify as. Full disclosure, I was diagnosed last year with breast cancer. So I ended up with my first operation, and the nurse - and I don't think she meant anything bad by it whatsoever - just when you're filling in the forms, all the different things about the "chest cancer". When that came up, I was so baffled. Gerald was not with me at the time, because at that time, you could still not go into the hospitals. I didn't know what she meant, to be quite honest with you. It was just a very, very, very strange experience for me personally. I know men can get chest cancer - it's one percent - and I just kept thinking of how language had changed, like you said, and I told her, I'm a woman, I have breast cancer. But it seems to be now that it is either their way or no way. There's no compromise. So I decided to do a little research. And when I did research, I found out how the language has changed so much; different parts of the women's body. Then I did notice [it] in Biden's budget [that] he was using for the research, then there was Harvard Medical, I mean, [it] went on and on and on and on. I started speaking to people about it and I found that all my female friends just were too scared to say anything. They all felt the same, but they were just too scared they were going to be canceled. They will be called a - for some odd reason that if you talk like this - you're called a Republican for whatever reason that is, or [you're called] transphobic. Then, of course, you had JK Rowling, who really stood up to everybody, and they canceled her. But then for me, there wasn't much to cancel. So then I looked at the UK Health Project, and they had a woman with a man sitting next to her - pregnant man - it just seemed all a bit bonkers to me.
Richard Helppie
Well, you've called out some of that in your column. I can see where your investigative skills come in. You talking about a member of Congress referring to a "menstruating person body", and another talking about "birthing people". And "human milk" versus breast milk and so forth.
Trisha Posner
Human milk is just so bizarre. I find so much of this stuff so bizarre, because why do you have to keep on changing the language? You keep saying you want rights, civil rights, human rights, whatever, then just co-exist with me. I don't call it that. I mean, what about biology? What about when we had the virus, the COVID around, everybody said "science, science, science, science, we have to go with the science." But here we don't go with the science.
Richard Helppie
Every day, there are people that are born with non-specific genitalia. So for example, there are - and I've talked to OB gyns about this - that they might find a vagina, but also testicles, or a penis and also the person has ovaries - this does happen. They're very rare and we need to treat everyone with dignity. But also I did a lot of work in medical records for a long time and getting the accuracy, one of the things that you do is you take a cross-check of the diagnosis or the treatment with the gender to see if it makes sense at all. That's one of the quality checks for if the information got recorded correctly. I understand there can be exceptions to that. But to try to make everybody down this rule seems to be taking us, not only away from science, but away from clear communication. Who's backing it and why?
Trisha Posner
I don't have a problem if you're binary, bisexual or a pan-sexual, whatever you want, but just stop erasing women. There's a very strange thing that I notice. So no disrespect to men, please, okay, but back in the day, women were in the kitchen with the aprons on, washing the dishes, taking care of the kids, blah, blah, blah. So we've moved way ahead of that. Now all of a sudden, we have men, transitioning to women, doing it to us again.
Richard Helppie
So I have this theory, it's called "pulling up the drawbridge behind", that there are women today that have benefited from all of the positive actions we've taken in society to open doors to provide more opportunity and they seem to be the loudest voices in the erasure of woman.
Trisha Posner
I know. I keep saying to Gerald, my husband, where are the Gloria Steinems, where are the Jane Fondas? Why aren't the warrior women out there? It's just like we're letting this happen. It's happening on the surface, on top of the surface. When a woman can be on television and say - when they ask, can you define a woman - and the woman can say no, I can't. I mean, I got over a thousand emails and direct messages from men, women, gay, straight, bi, all different nationalities, lawyers, doctors, homemakers, and they all thanked me. Gerald was very nervous, because he thought I was going to get some really nasty people saying some horrible stuff to me and I really did not. I got a couple of transgender people that just said to me, you really don't understand what we're going through, and that was fair. It's...this silence is really dangerous, because - I don't have any children by the way, we do not have any children so it's not like I'm worrying about the next generation or my grandchildren, which I'm old enough to be a grandmother -it's very, very scary.
Richard Helppie
I believe there are people that are all of those things, non-binary. I mean, there are parts of science, there are organisms that have nine genders in one, that human beings may need to adjust their externals to agree with the internals; that does incur. But here's what, in my reading - and you can share this or not - but the enthusiastic supporters of de-gendering the language, they insist that this is like when we changed from the vernacular of "Miss" and "Mrs." and we just went to "Ms.", it's the same thing. Or we went from the polite term to refer to a person color as Negro, then Black, then African-American, now Person of Color. But I look at these and in both of these examples, the people of the population are expressing how they'd like to be identified. So are we just referring to a segment of the population? Or is what we're experiencing something different?
Trisha Posner
It's hard to say, because I think that we, because of social media - I mean, social media has been very good to us, because that's how we sell our books and everything - things become trends. What worries me [is] that this is becoming a trend; on Monday I feel like a girl and Tuesday I feel like boy. Because I do have friends that have transitioned many, many years ago - I have one girlfriend, she's a friend, she's now 68 - and so I understand what's going on. But the trending is very scary. Also, when it becomes to the point where a man can identify as a woman, when he has all the male parts, and get into a ladies room, or a dressing room, or a toilet, I think this is very scary for a lot of us women. It's scary in so many ways. If you've got safe houses for women, where they've been protected from domestic violence, a man can say I identify as a woman, and he doesn't have to be on hormones, or had any surgery whatsoever. Female prisons, look at the female prison in New Jersey, where they can not only go into the female prison, they can go back to the male prison. It's almost like a Monty Python movie or something. It's like it's not real. It's like, is this really happening?
Richard Helppie
In California recently, their law was struck down that required a certain percentage of women on corporate boards. I thought about that; what's to stop the current board from just identifying the way they wish to...I mean, it's like...it's the point of absurdity. We all want to be sensitive to people...and I've known people that were trans-sexual people, very comfortable in their own skin, and they need to be supported, they need to have all the right health care services and such and to live with dignity and not in fear, be able to live where they want to live and work where they want to work and so forth. I don't think anybody's denying that, but if you suggest that maybe we could damage other people, then you get all of the hate speech. But I also ask myself these questions, when will a Women's Studies degree become a thing of the past? And what about the degree holders? There are people out there today that have bachelor's, masters and doctorates in women's studies. I invite anybody, go look in your search engines "top ten schools for women's studies". How can you have women's studies if you can't define woman?
Trisha Posner
I think it's like women's sports, women's health care. I mean, now, in New York, you can put on your driver's license "X"; there are consequences to this. When they do a census on women and men and they're looking to do research on breast cancer, for example, uterine cancer, prostate cancer; we're going to suffer financially in those areas. Kids are kids and they'll put down "X" for their gender just to fool around. It's just, it's really...it's just crazy. I have transgender friends, and my transgender friends don't feel the way that these people are talking; the erasing women in this way. Maybe it's generational.
Richard Helppie
The political climate that we're in today is that everything is divided into teams and it's polarization, which is what we're dealing with on this podcast.
Trisha Posner
How can you have women's sports, I mean, which will be erased if you have biological full males?
Richard Helppie
Well, look, the Title IX opportunities, I think, are at risk. I have a number of older sisters and my oldest sister was a really good athlete, but there wasn't even a competitive swimming team for her to be on in high school, there wasn't a competitive softball team for her to be on. I think she was denied those opportunities just because she was seven years older than me. I think it's much better today that there's equal or better opportunities for young women to participate in sports. Yet the elephant in the room's Lea Thompson, competitors are afraid to speak out [saying] we're going to be seen as transphobic.
Trisha Posner
I just think, if I could encourage them, they should all just boycott. Does it [inaudible]. Sometimes you have to make huge sacrifices in life.
Richard Helppie
I would look at a young lady, a college swimmer, let's say she's 20. She's been in the pool a lot since she's been seven or eight years old. It takes hours and hours, you get up before school, you swim after school, you traveled to meets, you watch what you eat, and toss all of that; I think that's a big ask. There has got to be some more fair way to do this.
Trisha Posner
I don't know how because if you continue this way, biological males will dominate women's sport, there will no longer be women, girls. It will not be, it just won't happen. So there has to be an answer. You know, my answer is very strident, I understand, to say boycott. But I don't know what other way there is - a march - do something. They're not...these girls are not transphobic.
Richard Helppie
They've come out and said they're afraid if they say anything that when they go looking for a job, that that's how they're going to be interpreted. Look at professional sports. So the WNBA has really done a nice job advancing professional basketball opportunities for women and there's some nascent, professional women's hockey leagues as well. But what should the WNBA call itself? What standards should they have about eligibility to participate in that league? If you were in charge of the WNBA what would you call it? And how would you tell people whether they were eligible or ineligible?
Trisha Posner
Well if you're biologically born a male...to me, I'm sorry, I'm just very black and white on this. It is what it is. I mean, you never really hear about the other side, do we much, about a woman becoming a boy and competing. That's very...I mean, I don't know if there should be competitive or different [sports] for the trans community. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I'm not in sports. I've never been a sports person. I just see it from the outside. I mean, what happens with the Olympics eventually?
Richard Helppie
Well, I remember when they used to test the athletes. If they had too much testosterone, they weren't allowed to compete in women's weightlifting and such; that was actually a thing. I don't know what the status is of it today. And for the female to male transitioning, that's not part of what we're talking about today because what we really want to focus on is what's the impact on women when the language is trying to erase them. So I've got a really hard question for you. We had recent confirmation hearings for the justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the nominee - and now soon to be justice - Katanji Brown Jackson, had to pretend that she didn't know what a woman is. I mean, we know that she knows. But can you imagine, you're about to become one of the seven people helping us stay within the lines of the Constitution and she says, I don't know, I'm not a biologist. And you know that there was a cadre of people out there that said you can't bring in a biologist. So the question I want to ask you is, how should the nominee have responded to the question, what is a woman?
Trisha Posner
Well, first of all, let me just say, I was astounded, shocked, and I felt let down as a woman. I thought she handled herself so well, through the confirmation. I mean, what is she meant to say, born a female with a uterus? Why would they...the question for me was very odd, but I understand with the environment now...capable of giving birth? I don't know what...how one would...I mean, I can't believe we've actually got to this point where someone has to ask that question. To me it's astounding that that should even be a question, astounding that she is afraid to answer it. And this is someone who's going to be, as you say, making decisions.
Richard Helppie
And you know that she knew.
Trisha Posner
Of course she knew, she has two children sitting there. You know her husband didn't give birth to them.
Richard Helppie
Right. And birth, I don't think, is the measure of a woman necessarily. Many women choose not to have children and still other women are unable to have them, that doesn't make them any less a woman. (Trisha Posner: Absolutely not.) I just wonder, is there a middle ground here someplace, where the achievements of women and the special things about womanhood and the actual words can celebrate women, at the same time, that we're not negatively affecting people that might be perhaps not binary or trans-sexual or something; is there a middle ground here someplace?
Trisha Posner
I respect their language, they respect my language, that's all. I'm a woman. I'm a woman, I'm not a cisgender, or whatever they say - their trans-woman or trans-man - just respect it, that's it. We just have to respect each other, and co-exist, that's all. There will always be trans-women, but they are not women in the same way as I'm a woman. It's as simple as that. I don't mean disrespect to them but I was born with a uterus, I was born with ovaries, a womb. They can have that manufactured, I understand that. They're not going to get their periods, they're not going to suffer period pains, their monthly cycle, they're not going to feel the cysts that some women get when they get their periods. It's just different, the same way - and not to be crude here - I will never know what it is like to be a man, to have an erection. So a lot of...it's just common sense. It's different. I'm not taking it away from them. If they want to become a woman, they want to become a man, that's entirely up to them. I have nothing...but just stop pushing me further and further and further away, and making it look like I do not exist any longer. Yes, I do exist.
Richard Helppie
The pushback that you might get is they're not wanting quote "to become a woman" or "to become a man," they're saying, no, this is who I am, accept who I am, my external views. And I think the nuance that you're putting on that is, except this is my definition of a woman, this is what womanhood means to me. And it's okay for us to teach our young people that that is an acceptable type, that we don't have to de-gender the language, we don't have to de-gender healthcare.
Trisha Posner
In England, they've asked for a separate private space in the hospitals after they give birth when they transition. They don't want to be in a ward full of women. So the females that become the males and then get pregnant, don't want to be in the same ward as the women. Whatever reason that is, they don't feel comfortable. Now that's fine, if that's what they choose to do.
Richard Helppie
I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in that situation. What would a fair and open and inclusive society look like? What language would we be using? What would we do about the "birthing people" in the ward that were uncomfortable with the other brand of "birthing person?" What should our society look like?
Trisha Posner
I think you just have to choose your language and choose the ward you want to be in; just choose. I'm not asking you, I'm just saying to you - not to you, but to the people - I'm a woman. You choose to be whatever you like, you can use your own language, your own name, but stop trying to erase me.
Richard Helppie
After your column appeared in The Wall Street Journal, did you get any vitriol or pushback, negative commentary, coming your way?
Trisha Posner
I have to say that before I did the column I discussed it with my husband - my husband and I discuss everything, what every book he writes, every column, whatever - and he said, it's going to be very bad. And I said, okay, I'm a big girl, I can take it. And there was nothing. There was a couple of feedbacks where...I mean, I got over a thousand private [comments] on the newspaper, as you know, all over. It was maybe one or two [from the] transgender community [who] just said that I did not understand what they were going through. But they weren't mean, they were not nasty. I have to say, I didn't get cancelled by anyone. I was very, very surprised, and pleasantly surprised. Most of it was men and women coming out saying - I mean, on the Wall Street Journal, I think there was about 755 - thank you so much for doing this, you're speaking for us. We're too scared to speak - doctors, nurses, mothers, fathers, all different nationalities, young people, old people, professional, non-professional - just saying that what they felt needed to be said. But they have more to lose than me, maybe, or they're just too scared, because they're frightened they'll be canceled by their family, by their friends, let alone their jobs. Some of them have corporate jobs, and maybe the corporations would be uncomfortable. It's just, to me, this is such a ridiculous conversation, I have to tell you. This is not difficult. First of all, if there's a lady's bathroom and the man has a penis, he should be in the men's bathroom. I'm sorry. That's my feeling. Even if he feels like a woman, it's uncomfortable for us as women.
Richard Helppie
Well, obviously I don't know the experience. I could also imagine that someone that presents well as a female, going into a private stall, nobody would ever know.
Trisha Posner
No, look, I have a girlfriend that transitioned. She's had the whole thing done. As I said, she's in her 60s, she uses the ladies room, no one would know. But when you actually still have your body parts, it's very uncomfortable for us, I have to tell you, especially when you have a young mother with children; they don't know what to do.
Richard Helppie
Well, we've had that in various salons and things and it's an adjustment that our society's making. It is very difficult, because women have come a long way in getting free of strict gender roles. We have more women going to college today than men; many attorneys, doctors, higher professionals. There's a woman running General Motors, [that] would have been unthinkable 50 years ago; a woman as the vice president of the United States. I guess my concern, if I was reflecting what you're telling me, is that their accomplishments as women can be undone if we call them something other than women. These are women that have accomplished a tremendous amount and the language is at risk for taking that away.
Trisha Posner
Well, there is a risk. I speak to a lot of trans people. I know quite a few and they don't all agree with this. I think it is a small [group] that is pushing this agenda. I think it's a very small group. So my friends have gone through the transition - have gone through to become, whether it's a man or a woman - [want to] get on with their life. I have one female that I know very well who became a man about ten years ago and they just want to get on with their life. They don't want to stand there with a plaque saying I'm a trans, I'm a trans; they just want to get on with their life. Now they want to be able to get married, they want to be able to get a job, they just want to get on with life. They don't want to be making...they have everything they need. So this is becoming...I think it's the loudest group, obviously. I don't really know, you get the feeling that somehow, something or someone behind is pushing and pushing and pushing, but I don't know who or where; I haven't dug that deep to find out.
Richard Helppie
I hope that you turn your investigative skills that way. I think what you're expressing would be a very common thing, that we're tortured by language, or we're torturing the language, because we're trying to not step on any toes or not be offensive but eventually, you can't cancel everything or redefine everything.
Trisha Posner
We're not stepping on anyone's toes if you just co-exist, that's all you have to do. You can have your language and I can have my language and we can co-exist and there's no problem. There's no problem. Live your life, do what you want, go where you want. I have no problem with that. But let me live my life, that's all. That's all I'm saying.
Richard Helppie
Trisha, anything that we didn't talk about today that maybe we should have talked about, or any closing thoughts? Because I think you've really kicked the hornet's nest a little bit and I applaud you for doing that.
Trisha Posner
Well, I think the AMA and the Pediatric Association say all doctors now have to be gender affirming for the children. And I think we're stepping on prickly ground there. I know for a fact myself - I'm one here - [I] was a real rowdy little girl. In the old days we used to call it "tomboy." I don't know if you can call it that anymore. Medicine is going so woke and it's costing science sometimes. It's parents and children; I think we need to slow up a little bit. I really do. I think we need to just slow up a little bit. If, for supposition, your child does get to a point where he or she needs to transition, just give them time to grow and see. I think we're just really pushing this very quickly along the road. I think we're going to suffer the consequences in the future.
Richard Helppie
These are profound changes. Whether language leads society or society leads language is a debate for another time, that there is science based. I think that your plea to co-exist is something everybody needs to hear. This willingness for people to be offended quickly...at the same time it always comes down to can we be kind to one another no matter what manner a person chooses to live their life.
Trisha Posner
But we've lost our ability to debate, we can no longer debate. I remember many, many years ago, when Gerald used to go on the TV show, if anyone remembers it, Crossfire. You could take a subject - Kennedy assassination - and you would go back and forth and then afterwards go out for a drink or a coffee, whatever. People resort now to name calling. If you say one thing, you're Republican, if you say another thing, you're a Democrat; you can't have an opinion anymore. It's the one think; you must think this way and no other way. So I think we have to loosen up a bit again, get our sense of humor back - I think we've lost our sense of humor completely - and try and understand that we don't all think alike. Now, that's not to say that side's right and that side's wrong, but some way you can meet in the middle. There's common ground there somewhere but we've lost it because everybody is so offended by everything. I'm a journalist so I believe in freedom of the press. There are books that are being canceled now, like Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." I mean, I don't agree with that. There's so much going on, to me, that is just crazy. I think we need to slow down a bit.
Richard Helppie
I applaud you for bringing the issue to the fore. What you've described is what we hear from a lot of writers at Substack; that it is possible to hold two different thoughts in one's head at the same time. I've written columns about that and done podcasts about that very topic. The very essence of The Common Bridge is, let's find places we agree. There are higher purposes like kindness, like acceptance, like tolerance, that we used to talk about, versus this one size fits all, let's smash the other side. Trisha, you've been a terrific guest for us today.
Trisha Posner
Thank you for having me.
Richard Helppie
We'll continue to follow your writing. I'm so glad that you joined us on The Common Bridge. Of course The Common Bridge is available at substack.com, most podcast outlets and on YouTube TV. Please look us up, please get a free subscription or a paid subscription, join in the dialogue. We've got lots of guests, lots of perspectives, please jump in. It's not for the partisans. If you're wedded to party A or party B, you're not going to like the content. But we want to have good, good conversations. Please come in. With our guest today, Patricia Posner, best selling author, this is Rich Helppie, your host, signing off on The Common Bridge.
Transcribed by Cynthia Silveri
Woman Erased: How Degendering is Eliminating the Biological Woman