What I told the
students of Princeton
Show
some self-respect and reclaim your freedom
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I was so honored
tonight to be hosted by the Princeton Tory, the Witherspoon Institute and the
Tikvah Fund. The undergraduates I met tonight were clear sighted and brilliant
and astonishingly well read. There’s so much on their shoulders. Here was my
message to them.
The question I get
most often—the thing that most interviewers want to know, even when they’re
pretending to care about more high-minded things—is: What’s it
like to be so hated? I can only assume that’s what some of you
rubberneckers want to know as well: What’s it like to be on a
GLAAD black list? What’s it like to have top ACLU lawyers come out in favor of
banning your book? What’s it like to have prestigious institutions disavow you
as an alum? What’s it like to lose the favor of the fancy people who once
claimed you as their own?
So, perhaps I’ll begin
by telling you a little bit about myself mainly because I’m not so different
from many of you. I grew up, daughter of two Maryland State judges, in a
multi-racial suburb in Prince George’s County, Maryland. I attended a community
Jewish day school, which I loved. In high school, I worked as a stringer for
the Washington Jewish Week and edited my school paper. I
attended Columbia University, where I received the Kellett Fellowship for two
years of graduate study at Oxford. From there, I earned my J.D. from Yale Law
School and then clerked for a Clinton-appointee on the D.C. Circuit.
At the beginning of my
clerkship, I accepted a setup with a guy from Los Angeles, and by the end of
that year, had decided to follow my then-boyfriend to California. I took a job
with a terribly prestigious LA firm, whose daily tasks nearly anesthetized me.
I married my boyfriend, struggled to hold onto pregnancies, quit law firm life
and had three children. I taught them to read and sang them songs very badly
and wrote a series of unpublishable novels. Most people who’d known me before
wondered what the hell I was doing.
I began writing a few
op-eds for our local Jewish paper, one of which was spotted by a Wall
Street Journal editor, who invited me to submit to the Wall
Street Journal. I did, and in the course of that year, published 13 op-eds
with the Journal. One of those op-eds inspired a reader to contact
me and tell me the story of her teen daughter who was rushing into a sudden
gender transition. After trying and failing to find an investigative journalist
who wanted the assignment, I took it on myself. My investigations turned into a
book called Irreversible Damage.
All of which is to
say: I’m not a provocateur. I don’t get a rush from making people angry. You
don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You
need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down.
Why am I unwilling to
back down? Why wouldn’t I
prostrate myself before the petulant mobs who insist that my standard
journalistic investigation into a medical mystery—specifically, why so many
teen girls were suddenly identifying as transgender and clamoring to alter
their bodies—makes me a hater? Why on earth would I have chosen to write this
book in the first place and am I glad that I wrote it?
You don’t have to be a
troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two
things: effective and unwilling to back down.
If you’re here, you no
doubt are familiar with at least some of the unpleasantness you encounter
whenever you deviate from the approved script. So, again, what’s it like to be
the target of so much hate? It’s freeing. That’s
what I’d like to talk about tonight.
As an undergraduate
studying philosophy, I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering whether my
will was free. This is the metaphysical question of whether anyone can be said
to have acted ‘freely.’ And most of the philosophers seemed to agree that our
will wasn’t all that free. The hard determinists painted a world in which every
human action was ultimately explicable by the wave function of elementary
particles, ultimately leading neurons to fire—setting off of axonal conduction
well beyond our control and none of which we directed.
Even if you weren’t a
hard determinist, you struggled with the obvious problem that human decisions –
and the reasons behind them – are structured by one’s upbringing, experience or
even inborn personality traits, all of which shape our motivations.
Compatibilists claimed that, at most, one could hope to live according to one’s
own motives and preferences. That is, motives and preferences that were largely
determined by things like personality.
“The Actions of man are
never free,” 18th Century determinist Baron Holbach once wrote. “They are
always the necessary consequence of his temperament, of the received ideas, and
of the notions, either true or false, which he has formed to himself of
happiness, of his opinions, strengthened by example, by education, and by daily
experience.”
I remember reading
those lines as an undergraduate, tugged by the worry that Holbach was right:
maybe our motivations were determined by our personalities and upbringing and
received ideas. Today, I read them and think: if only.
In 2021, it seems a
luxury to worry that a will determined and shaped entirely by received ideas
and our own personality-driven desires might not be entirely free. Today,
before any of us decides what it is we want, we open our phones and participate
in our own manipulation at the hands of those who actively want us to think,
and see, and vote differently than our own wills would have us do. If we were
not entirely free before, in other words—we are far less so now.
Every dating app
pushes us toward the same few attractive mate choices; Spotify presses us to
like the same music; Amazon pushes us to purchase specific books and away from
others. If you’re under the impression that the books Amazon recommends to you
are based solely on a content-neutral algorithm, I can disabuse you of that
fiction right now. I once asked one of my sources at Amazon, who was concerned
about the ways the search results were being manipulated, whether he’d ever
seen a book deliberately boosted. Yes, he said. Becoming by
Michelle Obama. When that book came out – he told me – virtually every search
you did led to the recommendation to buy the former First Lady’s book. And the
opposite is also true. There are books that are never recommended
by the Amazon algorithm, irrespective of how well they’ve sold or how likely a
specific shopper is to buy them. Or, at least, there’s one such book. I’ll let
you try and guess what it is.
But the larger point
is, your will is being toyed with, subverted, manipulated. And
in a fairly insidious manner. None of you will be shocked to hear that Google
promotes certain search results in order to lead us to a certain perspective.
But did you know that, for contested entries, Wikipedia assigns editors, some
of whom are ideologically committed activists, many of whom have very
particular views they want you to walk away with.
If you form views
based on those Wikipedia articles or reports by corrupt fact-checkers, if you
act based on them, are you exercising freedom of will? Given that you’ve been
spun and prodded along to a pre-determined conclusion by hidden persuaders,
perhaps you aren’t. Perhaps you’re left in the same sorry state as the Moor of
Venice: toyed with, subverted, manipulated. Acting out someone else’s plan,
pointed in the direction that he wants you to walk.
We’ve spent a lot of
time in the past few years debating whether this kind of manipulation is at the
root of our political divisions, but I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention
to an even more basic question: how it has interfered with freedom of
conscience and ultimately free will.
When polled, nearly
two out of three Americans (62%) say they are afraid to express an unpopular
opinion. That doesn’t sound like a free people in a free country. We are, each
day, force-fed falsehoods we are all expected to take seriously, on pain of
forfeiting esteem and professional opportunity:
“Some men have
periods and get pregnant.” “Hard work and objectivity are hallmarks of
whiteness.” “Only a child knows her own true gender.” “Transwomen don’t
have an unfair advantage when playing girls’ sports.”
On that final example
of a lie, the one about transwomen in girls’ sports, I want you to think for a
moment about a young woman here at Princeton. She’s a magnificent athlete named
Ellie Marquardt, an all-American swimmer who set an Ivy League record in the
500-meter freestyle event as a freshman. Just before Thanksgiving, Ellie was
defeated in the 500-meter, the event she held the record in, by almost 14
seconds by a 22 year old biological male at Penn who was competing on
the men’s team as recently as November of 2019. That male athlete now
holds multiple U.S. records in women’s swimming, erasing the hard
work of so many of our best female athletes, and making a mockery of the rights
women fought for generations to achieve.
Ellie Marquart swam
her heart out for Princeton. When will Princeton fight for her? Where are the
student protests to say—enough is enough. When a biological male who has
enjoyed the full benefits of male puberty—larger cardiovascular system, 40%
more upper body muscle mass, more fast-twitch muscle fiber, more oxygenated
blood—decides after three seasons on the men’s team to compete as a woman and
smashes the records of the top female swimmers in this country, that is not
valor—that’s vandalism.
Where is the outrage?
Imagine, for a second, what it must be like to be a female swimmer at
Princeton, knowing you must pretend that this is fair—that the NCAA competition
is anything other than a joke. Imagine being told to bite your tongue as men
lecture you that you just need to swim harder. “Be grateful
for your silver medals, ladies, and maybe work harder next time,” is the
message. Imagine what that level of repression does to warp the soul.
Now, imagine, instead,
the women’s swimmers had all walked out. Imagine they had stood together and
said: We will meet any competitor head on. But we will not grant this travesty
the honor of our participation. We did not spend our childhoods setting our
alarm clocks for 4am every morning, training for hours before and after school,
to lend our good names to this fixed fight.
“Be grateful for your
silver medals, ladies, and maybe work harder next time,” is the message.
Imagine what that level of repression does to warp the soul.
I know why students
keep their heads down. They are hoping for that Goldman or New York
Times internship, which they don’t want to put in jeopardy. Well, any
institution that takes our brightest, most capable young people—Princeton
graduates!—and tells you can only work here if you think like we tell you to
and keep your mouth shut, that isn’t really Goldman Sachs and it isn’t the
paper of record. It’s the husk of a once-great institution, and it’s not worth
grasping for. Talk to alums at these institutions: they sound like those living
under communist regimes. That’s the America that awaits you if you will not
speak up.
You who are studying
at one of the greatest academic institutions in the country only to be told
that after graduation, you must think as we tell you and recite from this
script—why were you born? What’s the point of being alive? Computers are vastly
better at number crunching. They’ll soon be better at all kinds of more complex
tasks. What they cannot do is stand on principle. What a computer cannot do is
refuse to lend credibility to a rigged competition—to refuse to strengthen its
coercion—making it that much harder for the next female athlete to speak up.
What the computer cannot know is the glorious exertion of the human will when it
refuses to truckle in the face of lies and instead publicly speaks the truth.
Machines will soon be
better than humans at all kinds of complex tasks. What they cannot do is stand
on principle.
I didn’t write Irreversible
Damage to be provocative. In a freer world, nothing in my book
would have created controversy. I wrote the book because I knew it was truthful
and I believed recording what I found—that there was a social contagion leading
many teenage girls to irreversible damage—was the right thing to do. I also
believe if I hadn’t written it, thousands more girls would be caught up in an
identity movement that was not organic to them but would nonetheless lead them
to profound self-harm. But I didn’t write it specifically to stop them. I wrote
it simply because it was true.
When I testified in
front of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, I started by stating
that I am proud to live in an America where gay and transgender Americans live
with less stigma and fear than at any point in American history. That is the glory
of freedom as well—the chance for adults to live authentic lives and guide
their own destinies. And allowing mature adults to make those sorts of choices
for themselves is absolutely a requirement of a free society. Yes, you can
reject the false, dogmatic insistences of Gender Ideology and still wish to see
transgender Americans prosper and flourish and fulfill their dreams in America.
I do.
I wrote the book
because the story of one mom and her teen daughter compelled me, and so did
that of the dozens of other parents who then spoke to me—mothers and fathers
who sobbed as they described how their daughters had become caught up in a
craze that seemed completely inauthentic to the child, but which they were
powerless to arrest.
I wrote the book not because
I believed the fancy institutions I’d attended would celebrate me, or even
acknowledge me, after I had done so. I wrote it because I knew that the point
of all the educational opportunities I received that my equally-qualified
grandmothers never had, the purpose of all the sacrifices my parents had made
for my education—for all the time my teachers and professors had taken with
me—couldn’t be to plod through life on a forced march. The point of all the
hours my parents and teachers and mentors had devoted to me, was surely not to
become the world’s best-oiled automaton. The point of all of that privilege—and
yes, I think that was a kind of privilege—was to be able to write and think as
others lacked the will to do.
Spotify employees
tried to hold that company hostage because they carried my podcast episode with
Joe Rogan. Amazon employees threatened to quit if they continued to carry my
book. GoFundMe shut down a grass-roots fundraiser by parents, who reached into
their own pockets, to advertise my book. And the ACLU threw its entire,
century-old mission in the garbage, all because of one book with which it
disagreed. Joining these petulant mobs is not a show of strength, and it is not
freedom. It’s closer to servitude.
I wrote Irreversible
Damage because I knew the point of all the educational opportunities I
received—opportunities my equally-qualified grandmothers never had—couldn’t be
to plod through life as a well-oiled automaton.
True, if you dare
exercise your will, you may sit for decades on the Supreme Court, as the eldest
member, the only African American, perform your duties admirably and with
integrity, and perhaps not a single elementary school in America will bear your
name. Does anyone doubt this is a discredit to his detractors—not to Justice
Thomas?
I cannot claim to know
if we are truly free in the metaphysical sense. But if the universe is anything
less than thoroughly determined down to the last sub-atomic particle, then we
must also agree that freedom admits of degrees. And if that is true, then we
are far less free today in this decade—that you, as undergrads, have lost a
significant measure of freedom that your parents once had. Take
it back. Take it back. It’s yours to demand. Take back the right
to speak your mind—thoughtfully, courteously, with a goal in mind beyond giving
offense. The list of unmentionable truths expands so rapidly, without reason
other than the attempt suffocate a free people so that they forget the
exhilaration of a lungful of air.
If you are someone who
believes you have pronouns or would like to supply them, by all means, that is
your prerogative. Whenever anyone asks me to use their preferred pronouns, and
I can do so without confusing my audience or muddying an argument, I do so and
I think this is an important courtesy. But –when asked, I will
not state my pronouns and if you don’t believe in Gender Ideology, you
shouldn’t either. When you state your pronouns, you participate in the
catechism of Gender Ideology – the belief that there are ineffable genders,
unknowable to all but the subject. That no one can possibly know I am a woman
unless I’ve supplied these. I do not believe this. I regard this as nonsense.
When asked for my pronouns, I say: “I am a woman.” Take back your
freedom. Reclaim it now.
Psychiatrists and pediatricians
tell me they are afraid to resist an adolescent’s demand that she be given
puberty blockers because they’re afraid—if they point out the risks or the
hastiness of the decision—they will lose their licenses. Parents tell me they
are afraid to push back on the activist teachers and social workers at their
kids’ school for fear of being called some flavor of phobe. Whatever freedom
is—it isn’t that—and all of the wonderful education you have earned here will
have been wasted if you find yourself one day observing some lie predominating
in your own field and the best you can do is sit on the phone with me
anonymously lamenting the state of things. You will soon be graduates of
Princeton. Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom.
It isn’t in those
moments when you do just what’s expected that your will is tested. It isn’t in
those moments when you recite the script that you exceed what any computer can
achieve. Those moments when you managed to make yourself a faceless member of a
pre-approved chorus will slide away as though you were never part of them.
The wonderful
education you have earned here will have been wasted if you find yourself one
day observing some lie predominating in your own field, and the best you can do
is sit on the phone with me anonymously lamenting the state of things.
You will, each of you,
have the chance to matter. You will find yourselves at hospitals or in banks or
in courtrooms and at newspapers where you will see things happen that you know
to be wrong—where you find that the standard line is actually a lie. You may
have found yourself there already. If you’re fortunate enough, you may even
find yourself one day with children of your own, knowing you are their best
defense in this world. And you’ll feel the nub of your will, pressing you
to do something—say something. And when that
happens, don’t sit there like a sock puppet.
I’m 43, which I
realize makes me very old to many of you. But not so long from now, you’ll wake
up and be 43 yourselves. And when I look back on my life thus far, it occurs to
me that the decisions of which I am most proud—the ones that strike like an
unexpected kiss—are not the times when I obeyed the algorithm. They’re the
times when I defied it and felt, for a moment, the magic and power of being
alive. When I felt, even for an instant, the exquisite joy of not being
anyone’s subject. When I had the unmistakable sense that I’ve existed for a
purpose, that I stood the chance of leaving the world better than I found it.
You don’t get any of that through lock-step career achievement and you
certainly don’t get that by being the Left’s star pupil.
You feel that frisson when
you choose a person to commit yourself to knowing full well that any marriage
may fail; when you bring children into a world where there are no guarantees of
their safety or success. When you summon the courage to fashion a life,
something that will remain after you are gone. When you speak the truth
publicly—with care and lucidity. And when you say to the world: you cannot
buy me with flattery. Purchase my colleagues or classmates at bulk rate. I am
not for sale.
Thank you.
