Conor Friedersdorf vs. transgender people

Conor Friedersdorf is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Friedersdorf is a contributor to The Atlantic. Friedersdorf was a signatory to the Harper’s Letter, signed by a disproportionate number of anti-trans activists.

Background

Conor Renier Friedersdorf was born on January 7, 1980 and grew up in Orange County, California. Friedersdorf’s parents divorced when Friedersdorf was young. Friedersdorf earned a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in 2002 and a master’s degree from New York University in 2007. Fridersdorf began freelancing out of college, writing for Los Angeles News Group (LANG), including the Los Angeles Daily News.

In 2008, Friedersdorf was named features editor at Culture11, a right-leaning online magazine launched that year aimed at fostering conservative cultural commentary. Other contributors included founder William Bennett, David Kuo, Peter Suderman, James Poulos, and Razib Khan. In 2009, following the closure of Culture11, Friedersdorf joined conservative group blog The American Scene, originally founded by Ross Douthat, Steven Menashi, and Reihan Salam.

Friedersdorf began writing for The Atlantic in November 2009 as an intern for anti-trans activist Andrew Sullivan, then became a staff writer in 2010.

Friedersdorf created The Best of Journalism, a curated weekly blog of what Friedersdorf considers good journalism. It later moved to Substack.

Anti-trans activism

Friedersdorf has written about “transgenderism” and claims “the gender debate” has “veered off course” because of polarized opinions. Friedersdorf then trots out J.K. Rowling, Rod Dreher, David French, Andy Mills, The Free Press, Matt Boll, Alex Byrne, Jesse Singal, some person using the fake name “William Vex,” and Quillette, with Contrapoints as Friedersdorf’s sole defender of the trans-supportive point of view.

To merely ask others to clarify their views is to risk being castigated for “just asking questions”––internet vernacular for accusing others of bad faith that manages to stigmatize curiosity-driven dialogue––if not to be labeled as transphobic from one faction and “a groomer” from another. Little wonder that many decline to talk about the subject at all.

[…] Observing the country’s major divides on gender and transgenderism, I see an issue that is as disorienting for participants and observers as any that our society confronts. Antagonists who inhabit different epistemic universes do battle each week on the internet, and merely understanding the most common perspectives can be burdensome. (If you set aside enough time to listen to this seven-episode podcast series from The Free Press and this nearly two-hour review of it on the ContraPoints YouTube channel, you’ll come away decently informed––not on all trans issues, but on the competing perspectives about how to understand the place of one author, J. K. Rowling, in the larger debate.)

[…] Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, laments obstacles to publishing scholarship on gender, recounting his own experience probing and positing precise definitions of women; rather than seeing the importance of viewpoint diversity for truth-seeking, he argues, some in the field aggressively chill free inquiry. Underscoring his point about ascendant taboos, a Quillette article—an attempt to set forth competing gender paradigms—was published pseudonymously by the professor who authored it. And Jesse Singal––whose work I’ve found to be consistently humane, rigorous, and unjustly maligned, even after carefully reviewing the complaints of critics who lambast him and his journalism, and who may dismiss my viewpoint merely because of our divergent evaluations of his work––ably documents troubling flaws in youth gender-medicine research. It is hard to make sense of the world when our centers of sensemaking are compromised.

References

Urquhart, Evan (Jan 10, 2023). Parents’ Rights Come to the Atlantic: Conor Friedersdorf’s shallow approach to the question of how schools should respond to transgender youth leaves out a lot. Assigned Media https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/parents-rights-come-to-the-atlantic

Ellis, Justin (May 17, 2011). How Conor Friedersdorf created a magazine-club experience through his “Best of Journalism” list. Nieman Lab https://www.niemanlab.org/2011/05/how-conor-friedersdorf-created-a-magazine-club-experience-through-his-best-of-journalism-list/

Coverage in anti-trans press

Young, Cathy (July 17, 2020). In Defense of The Letter: The chilly climate for dissent is real. Arc Digital https://medium.com/arc-digital/in-defense-of-the-letter-ee6f7164f9c1

Dreher, Rod (Dec 23, 2016). The Abolition Of Man (No, Really). The American Conservative https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-abolition-of-man-no-really/

McArdle, Megan (August 27, 2008). The Atlantic Culture at 11. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/08/culture-at-11/4028/

Selected writing by Friedersdorf

Friedersdorf, Conor (December 15, 2024). How to Move On From the Worst of Identity Politics. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/democrats-election-loss-identity/680993/

Friedersdorf, Conor (December 10, 2024). The Problem With the Government’s Pansexual Pride Day Post. The Atlantic

Friedersdorf, Conor (February 7, 2024). A Farewell to Up for Debate: This newsletter is coming to an end, but my inbox stays open to all of you. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/02/a-farewell/677379/

Friedersdorf, Conor (May 8, 2023). Another Side of the Gender Debate: Up for Debate. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/05/another-side-of-the-gender-debate/673985/

Friedersdorf, Conor (May 1, 2023). What Readers Really Think About Gender: Up for Debate. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/05/what-readers-really-think-about-gender/673920/

Friedersdorf, Conor (April 21, 2023). How the Gender Debate Veered Off Track: Up for Debate. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/04/how-the-gender-debate-veered-off-track/673819/

Friedersdorf, Conor (January 10, 2023). Is Defying Parents the Only Ethical Alternative? Instead of rigid rules, educators need the freedom to finesse delicate questions about young students’ gender identity. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/transgender-children-gender-expression-identity-school-teachers/672669/

Friedersdorf, Conor (September 16, 2022). What to Teach Young Kids About Gender. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/how-to-teach-gender-identity-in-schools/671422/

Friedersdorf, Conor (April 11, 2022). 14 Reader Views on Sexuality and Gender in the Classroom: Up for Debate. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/14-reader-views-on-sexuality-and-gender-in-the-classroom/629534/

Friedersdorf, Conor (March 28, 2022). 20 Reader Views on Transgender People in Competitive Sports: Up for Debate. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/20-reader-views-on-transgender-people-in-competitive-sports/629410/

Friedersdorf, Conor (March 23, 2022). The Threat to Free Speech, Beyond ‘Cancel Culture.’ The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/the-threat-to-free-speech-beyond-cancel-culture/627599/

Friedersdorf, Conor (December 1, 2021). Welcome to Up for Debate: Let’s converse here, instead of on social media. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/12/up-for-debate-newsletter/620837/

Friedersdorf, Conor (April 7, 2021). The Sexual Identity That Emerged on TikTok: Amid progress toward transgender acceptance, the social-media war over “super-straight” shows how not to resolve delicate questions about dating norms. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-super-straight-started-culture-war-tiktok/618498/

Friedersdorf, Conor (January 19, 2020). The Talented Victim Is Not the Point. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/sexually-identify-attack-helicopter/605170/

Friedersdorf, Conor (March 9, 2016). Op-Ed: California’s flawed LGBT rights bill. Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0309-friedersdorf-travel-ban-20160309-story.html

Friedersdorf, Conor (April 27, 2018). Op-Ed: Conversion therapy for gays is awful, but so is California’s bill to ban it. Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-friedersdorf-gay-conversion-20180427-story.html

Friedersdorf, Conor (December 20, 2016). The Limits of Diversity: At what point would you start to express a strong preference for sameness? The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/diversity-and-its-limits/510818/

Friedersdorf, Conor (April 5, 2013). A Very Silly Argument Against the Gay-Marriage Movement. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/a-very-silly-argument-against-the-gay-marriage-movement/274693/

Book

Friedersdorf, Conor (2016). Meeting Triumph and Disaster: How Milton Shedd helped to win World War II, found Sea World, conserve his beloved ocean, and pass on the values that fueled his success. California, ISBN 978-0692785546