Am I wrong for thinking Trump needs to suffer and die in a very public way in order to atone the world for what we’ve gone through?

You’re wrong to imagine there could be any societal atonement in the suffering and death of one man. It’s an easy mistake to make in a culture steeped in Christian dogma, but that’s not how the world really works.

Don’t worry, though. There is plenty of room for justice. Aside from the gigantic fuck-pile of state and federal charges Trump and his associates will eventually face, Trump’s personal hell will begin with the unrelenting social exile he and his family will face the very second he leaves office. He will live out the rest of his orange-tinted days in a post-presidential prison, surrounded by psychopaths, sycophants, and other assorted lickspittle, unable to leave his own crumbling shit-hole properties without facing a wall of seething hatred, or worse, total fucking indifference from celebrities and world leaders who are happy to pretend he’s not even in the room.

His life will become a wasteland of permanent irrelevance as the rest of us go about our days erasing any trace of his presidency, strengthening the foundations of the institutions he damaged, and ensuring that his legacy is cast as little more than America’s brief, slightly painful, and magnificently stupid brush with fascism at the hands of an addled, narcissistic clown.

How is a man choosing to identify as a woman not as offensive as white people “identifying” as black? Being black is not a feeling, and neither is being a woman.

You are conflating race and gender as social constructs with race and sex as biological classifications. You are also doing a little trick with the concepts of choice and identity. In other words, your question presupposes similarity where there isn’t any while also blurring the idea of what’s really a choice. Allow me to point out the fallacy in your framing with the following two statements:

A man who chooses to identify as a woman is merely in drag, whereas a male who has no choice but to identify as a woman is a transgender woman. 

A white person who chooses to identify as a black person is merely in blackface (or co-opting blackness or appropriating black culture), whereas a person of European descent who has no choice but to identify as a person of African descent isn’t actually a thing.

You must know that scientists and biologists disagree on the trans women debate too. For some issues we must also use common sense. Pretending that there is no difference between women and trans women is painfully ignorant, Coquette.

I’m not pretending that there is no difference between cisgendered and transgendered people. Those two prefixes (cis and trans) quite conveniently spell out the very obvious difference.

You’re the one pretending that there is no difference between the social construct of gender and biological sex, and it’s why you’re so maddeningly wrong. Your invocation of “scientists and biologists” makes you seem even more ridiculous, because this stuff has been settled science for decades. There is no serious scientist in any field who disagrees on the distinction between gender and biological sex. I can’t stress this enough, your resistance here isn’t scientific. It’s purely philosophical. You have a fundamental belief that is wrong, as is typical for anyone who invokes the painfully stupid concept of “common sense.” That’s okay. You are fully capable of changing your mind. 

Before we dive into the philosophy, we have to agree on the meaning of certain words. If I say man or woman, I am referring to gender. If I say masculine or feminine, I am also referring to gender. If I say male of female, I am referring to biological sex. A male is not equal to a man, and a female is not equal to a woman. Masculine traits are not equal to male traits, and feminine traits are not equal to female traits. For example, if you insist that an XX chromosome determines a woman, you are wrong. An XX chromosome determines a female. If you insist that having a penis is a masculine trait, you are yet again wrong. Having a penis is a male trait. If you refuse to accept these fundamental distinctions between biological sex and gender — which are settled fucking science, by the way — then there is no point in continuing this discussion. Hopefully, you aren’t a complete fucking idiot, and we can have a healthy philosophical disagreement. 

Come with me now as I shift our discussion from the settled science to the unsettled philosophy. I can’t know what’s in your head, but I’m speculating that your resistance is grounded in the theory of gender essentialism. That is to say, at some level you believe there are certain fixed, universal, and innate qualities that distinguish men from women. You believe there is an underlying feminine essence to a woman, and you believe that there is a separate underlying masculine essence to a man. Honestly, I can almost get behind that idea. It’s a bit limited and binary, but there are some pretty obvious differences between men and women, and I bet we can agree on most of them. The problem arises when you insist that these qualities are fixed and universal, and the problem becomes intractable when the only fixed and universal quality you consider is what’s in someone’s pants. 

It’s childish, really. That’s why I treat people who can’t make the distinction between sex and gender like children, which is a bit unfair to the average child, because most kindergartners are capable of grasping this concept. Besides, I probably lost you the moment I suggested that having a penis is a male trait rather than a masculine one. (I would absolutely love to watch your head explode during a conversation about the differences between the masculine and feminine penis.) I bet that’s most of the issue here, that you insist a penis is inherently masculine and a vagina is inherently feminine. They’re not. Scratching your balls may be inherently masculine, but simply having them is neither masculine nor feminine. It’s just male. Same with menstruation. It is a female biological function, but how we choose to feminize it is entirely a construct of gender. 

I could keep explaining this stuff all day, but if you refuse to acknowledge the distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender, then there’s really no point. You’re just fucking ignorant, and your shitty beliefs have the potential to cause harm to a lot of people. 

I hope you’ll come around one day. I really do, but until then, from the bottom of my heart, please go fuck yourself.

A woman is an adult human female. Nice try though.

Aww. How adorably essentialist of you. Are you a full-fledged Trump supporter, or are you just a confused JK Rowling fan? Either way, I’d be happy to provide you with a basic lesson on the difference between gender and biological sex. While we’re at it, maybe we could catch you up on the fundamentals of social constructionism.

Of course, we both know you don’t need those wikipedia links. You’ve already done the reading, and you just don’t care. You simply refuse to eat your vegetables. You’re a spoiled toddler who only wants chicken nuggets, and even if I make airplane noises while spooning them into your whiny little face, you’re still gonna resist swallowing even the tiniest morsels of postmodern theory.

To that, I say fine. I’m not your fucking mom. If you want to stuff your head full of garbage, I really don’t care. The rest of us adults are happy to carry on our conversation without you. Good luck getting out of that high chair.

You seem to have a LOT of vitriol about motherhood and women with children now. Is this about loss-reduction because you are past child-bearing age, loss-reduction because of COVID/racist cops/Biden is our man and he’s not that strong (therefore it’s likely a terrible time to have a kid), or something else? I have read and loved your work for years, and your tone about motherhood is not what is was. It stands out to me. I don’t disapprove. I just notice it. What happened?

I’m not past child-bearing age, and if there’s any vitriol it’s about the cultural expectations of motherhood, certainly not women with children. I can’t be bothered to cite my own references, but I’ve been saying the same shit for over a decade. If the tone has changed, it’s because world has changed, and everything is a bit more serious now.

You might also want to be more careful with your underlying assumption that not having children is some kind of inherent loss that requires reduction. It’s not, especially in 2020.