God, I love you Stepfanie! Your intellect is unique, your eloquence, inspirational, and your passion, completely aligned with the God's...but that's just my opinion. Write on, girl!
Just as an aside, as 'We are all created in HIS image', so yes, we do know. That's one of my favorite things about be a human being...we're the highest creatures, on the greatest planet, in all the Universe.
Hey, Step, I'm an ol' timer musician with a collection of music I've produced over the last 40 or so years that you just might like. May I send a song to you for consideration? You could use it or NOT however you might choose, no obligation. So give me an email if you're interested. Thanks!
I'm duane.evans @charter.net (*I think you and I are on the same plain*)
This might be my favorite thing you’ve written yet. Rage Against the Machine really does capture the moment—only now it’s stretched across both ends of the yin/yang extremes. Here’s hoping that out of all this tension we get a genuine punk or avant-garde revival. 🤞🤞
I haven’t seen anyone address the ironic shift in punk culture, it’s so “rage with the machine” it’s hilarious when people think they are rebels and simultaneously sync up with NYT op ed, legacy media, career politicians, celebrity influencers…
I love this. OG punk did teach us it’s ok not to fit in and it’s badass to have a spine and think for yourself. Cheers to building a meaningful, productive, beautiful life and rebelling against oppressive power schemes.
I admire your eloquence engaging with debate in the comments.
What if someone feels truly about some of those things you seem to be against and sticks to that truth. Regardless of consequence. Just because there are groups without a doubt co-opting some of the list you mentioned doesn’t mean that there aren’t those who live it as their truth. Probably to their great detriment. Being punk rock is living your personal truth and thinking for yourself no matter who disagrees. Punk rock is sticking to your own ethos. Should say, as long as you’re not harming others.
Live and let live is a great mantra and I agree, people should be able to do what they want so long as it doesn’t harm others. However, reality and truth doesn’t care about lived experience or feelings—it just is. 2+2=4 no matter how someone “feels” about it. And regarding “those things I seem to disagree with”—those things are rooted in biological reality. Things like transitioning children, for example, do harm other people. Just because groups “co-opt things” doesn’t make those things right.
Truth is reality for all intents and purposes. Agreed on young children and the hormone situation. However, not my lived experience so really don’t have a right to comment one way or another. Totally disagree that lived experience doesn’t matter. It most certainly does.
I never said lived experience doesn't matter, I simply said it doesn't make it the Truth. There's not "your truth" and "my truth"—there is only The Truth.
I would agree with that. Except these days people just make shit up and say it’s the truth. A large swath of the country. More on one side than the other but lots of full of shit out there right now.
"That doesn’t mean going full prepper or tradwife or off-the-grid monk (unless that’s your thing). It just means not letting mass consensus replace personal discernment. It means asking: who benefits from me believing this? And what happens if I don’t?"
yup who benefits from me conforming and believing all this non-binary stuff is real? i mean it's a just representation. it's only a map put not the territory. i wish i could be known as disagreeing and understanding you -non-binary, transcending gender people- are only using mental models. and mental models are just ways of seeing the world not the truth.
blah...lots of people would stop talking to me. perhaps.
"nothing is true, everything is permitted" has been taken off the rails. of course it could and it has been.
I think the punks need to go a step further. Simple statements of reality can be used to justify anything from regressive policies to atrocious behavior. Intellectual courage must include dealing with how these truths influence action, not simply seeing that they are stated.
I agree. But since so many people can't even bring themselves to admit well-established truths out loud, I think saying them is of the utmost importance right now. Until the silent majority starts to speak up, we'll be stuck with these narratives.
I'm glad you agree - we want our thinkers to go further!! But here you seem sure that you are on the side of the silent majority. Isn't that engaging in the politics of identity? What is the Silent Majority if not an identity? Based on its name and the implications thereof, how can anyone be sure they are a member?
The silent majority is definitely not an identity, it’s a sociological pattern. When the loudest voices control media, schools, and culture—and most people quietly disagree but say nothing out of fear—that’s not ideology lol
I recommend reading Todd Rose's book "Collective Illusions" if you haven't already. He does a great job of explaining how we end up with a silent majority to begin with and what it means for society.
I have not read heard of the book that you suggest - thank you for the recommendation, I'll seek it out. But Stef, you didn't engage with my point. You maintain that you know who it is and what ideas there are in this 'silent majority' - and that it is a truth in place today. I'm sure that the pattern you describe is one of sociological validity, but - does it actually exist today in our society in the manner you believe? What evidence do you have that it does? Why are you laughing out loud at the idea that you are caught in this concept being an ideological trap?
I'm not going to cancel my subscription—though I’ve been tempted—because I find your posts thought-provoking. While I generally agree with your underlying concepts, I strongly disagree with the political lens through which you apply them.
Your alignment with socially conservative trends—particularly the current suppression of fluid gender identities, which are distinct from biological sex—and your apparent disdain for drag queens and perhaps other LGBTQ identities is troubling. Your comment that “men and women are different” oversimplifies a complex topic, and the remark “no thanks to drag queen storytime” comes across as unnecessary and dismissive.
I find it a bit ironic that you’re upset I have a “political lens” while filtering everything through your own, but I appreciate you laying out your position.
I think this is where we fundamentally diverge—not just politically, but epistemologically.
“Gender fluidity” isn’t a coherent category when examined from a systems or first principles lens. If gender is purely a social construct, then it has no intrinsic essence—and therefore cannot be “felt” in some innate or internal way. But if it does have an essence, then that implies an underlying structure, which brings us right back to biology, evolution, and sexual dimorphism.
You can’t have it both ways: either gender is performative (in which case “fluidity” is just theater), or it’s rooted in something real, stable, and biologically constrained. The popular rhetoric tries to merge both, but contradicts itself at every turn. It claims gender is both entirely subjective and somehow deeply innate, simultaneously meaningless and sacred.
From a systems lens, male and female are not arbitrary—they’re necessary for the propagation of life. Every culture on earth, across time, has organized around this reproductive distinction because it’s not just cultural—it’s functional.
So when I say “men and women are different,” I’m not flattening complexity, I’m anchoring to reality. And when I reject “drag queen story hour” for children, it’s because no healthy society sexualizes identity performance in front of toddlers and calls it progress.
What you’re calling “troubling” is simply my refusal to adopt a belief system that breaks under basic logical and biological pressure.
I’m dismissive because I’ve thought about it deeply. I’ve looked at it through systems theory, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and first principles—not to mention, my literal college degree in Women's and Gender Studies. And it doesn’t hold up.
I believe you may have misunderstood my point. I’m not upset that your political perspective differs from the one shaped by my own experiences and thinking—nor would I expect otherwise, regardless of where our viewpoints align or diverge. What surprises me is that I find myself in agreement with many of the concepts you express, yet completely at odds with your conclusions. That’s why I continue to read your posts, though I must admit I’ll be glad when you move beyond this political minefield and return to the more introspective writing that first drew me in.
I appreciate the thoughtful tone, but I want to push back on something here. You're referring to my “conclusions” as if they’re some radical ideological leap, but all I’m saying is that men and women are biologically different. That’s not a conclusion. That’s a baseline fact—backed by science, evolution, and every functioning system humans have built for thousands of years.
It’s honestly wild that stating obvious, observable reality now gets interpreted as some kind of political “stance.” That tells me less about my writing and more about how far detached from reality this discourse has become.
Also, I don’t see my work as separate from politics. Politics isn’t just policy; it’s how power and meaning move through culture. The introspective writing that drew you in still lives here—I'm just sorting through a lot of the madness that's unfolded over the last 2 weeks and processing what it all means for me. That's why I started this Substack to begin with :)
I appreciate that you’re thinking about this from a systems and first-principles perspective. Where I diverge from your framing is in the assumption that “socially constructed” automatically means “unreal” or “inauthentic.” Many things we treat as deeply meaningful—money, law, language, even nation-states—are also social constructs. Their lack of a biological essence does not make them arbitrary or purely “theatrical”; it means their reality is mediated through shared meanings and lived experience rather than rooted in a genome.
Similarly, gender can be both socially constructed and deeply felt. A person’s internal sense of gender isn’t an essence in the biological sense, but an emergent property of culture, psychology, and identity—something that can still feel innate and stable even though its categories are historically contingent. The fact that cultures across time have recognized more than two gender roles (e.g., hijra in South Asia, Two-Spirit identities in Indigenous North America) suggests that binary organization is not the only functional system societies have used.
Sexual dimorphism is real in biology; no one disputes that. But gender, as distinct from sex, is a way societies interpret and organize those biological facts into roles, expectations, and symbols. That’s why male/female differences at the level of reproduction don’t automatically dictate what behaviors, appearances, or identities are legitimate for individuals.
On “drag queen story hour”: the stated intent is usually not to “sexualize identity performance” for children but to offer inclusive storytelling and positive exposure to difference—no more inherently sexual than Shakespearean actors or clowns reading to kids. One can reasonably debate appropriateness or execution, but framing it as inherently unhealthy conflates adult drag culture with the carefully curated events designed for families.
In other words, acknowledging biological reality doesn’t preclude recognizing that gender is more flexible and culturally mediated than a simple binary, and that people’s internal experiences of it can be authentic even if not biologically “hardwired.”
Anton, I was simply trying to reference a concrete example from the article that I found troubling. I don’t see gender as an “obsession,” but I do believe it exists on a continuum distinct from biological sex. I’m sorry if that perspective bothers you.
I too Stepfanie, am having these exact same thoughts. Your content is thought provoking, and I can agree with underlying concepts. But the drag comment was off. where is this even happening? And what is wrong with it? If it is, isn’t that more punk than anything? and while I agree that there are obvious differences between men/women , I do think you are flattening the subject. I thought you were after nuanced thought and that doesn’t feel very nuanced to me.
I am after nuance. But on this, there’s no ambiguity. Boys are not girls. Men and women are fundamentally different—and no amount of cultural theorizing changes that.
Drag queen story hour has happened across schools and libraries and is usually public funded. It’s not a myth. And yes, I draw a hard line between adult identity performance and children’s developmental spaces.
Nuance doesn’t mean entertaining every idea like it might be valid. It means knowing which ones to dismiss—and why.
One thing that us old punks understood was that we're GOING to stand out, we're not going to fit in, we're not looking to be accepted by the public at large. Going the face tattoo, piercing, ear gauge, and liberty spikes is not going to get you an office job. Realize that's part of the cost.
God, I love you Stepfanie! Your intellect is unique, your eloquence, inspirational, and your passion, completely aligned with the God's...but that's just my opinion. Write on, girl!
Kiss!
Has anyone let the Gods know?? (I kid, I kid)
I'm calling them now and I am certain that they will alert the media. But if not, I know...
Just as an aside, as 'We are all created in HIS image', so yes, we do know. That's one of my favorite things about be a human being...we're the highest creatures, on the greatest planet, in all the Universe.
Hey, Step, I'm an ol' timer musician with a collection of music I've produced over the last 40 or so years that you just might like. May I send a song to you for consideration? You could use it or NOT however you might choose, no obligation. So give me an email if you're interested. Thanks!
I'm duane.evans @charter.net (*I think you and I are on the same plain*)
Or is it "plane"? You're the writer! I have questions...
This might be my favorite thing you’ve written yet. Rage Against the Machine really does capture the moment—only now it’s stretched across both ends of the yin/yang extremes. Here’s hoping that out of all this tension we get a genuine punk or avant-garde revival. 🤞🤞
Your brain is a weapon😂👏I love watching you go to work!
THIS IS SO GOOD
I haven’t seen anyone address the ironic shift in punk culture, it’s so “rage with the machine” it’s hilarious when people think they are rebels and simultaneously sync up with NYT op ed, legacy media, career politicians, celebrity influencers…
I love this. OG punk did teach us it’s ok not to fit in and it’s badass to have a spine and think for yourself. Cheers to building a meaningful, productive, beautiful life and rebelling against oppressive power schemes.
I admire your eloquence engaging with debate in the comments.
What if someone feels truly about some of those things you seem to be against and sticks to that truth. Regardless of consequence. Just because there are groups without a doubt co-opting some of the list you mentioned doesn’t mean that there aren’t those who live it as their truth. Probably to their great detriment. Being punk rock is living your personal truth and thinking for yourself no matter who disagrees. Punk rock is sticking to your own ethos. Should say, as long as you’re not harming others.
Live and let live is a great mantra and I agree, people should be able to do what they want so long as it doesn’t harm others. However, reality and truth doesn’t care about lived experience or feelings—it just is. 2+2=4 no matter how someone “feels” about it. And regarding “those things I seem to disagree with”—those things are rooted in biological reality. Things like transitioning children, for example, do harm other people. Just because groups “co-opt things” doesn’t make those things right.
Truth is reality for all intents and purposes. Agreed on young children and the hormone situation. However, not my lived experience so really don’t have a right to comment one way or another. Totally disagree that lived experience doesn’t matter. It most certainly does.
I never said lived experience doesn't matter, I simply said it doesn't make it the Truth. There's not "your truth" and "my truth"—there is only The Truth.
I would agree with that. Except these days people just make shit up and say it’s the truth. A large swath of the country. More on one side than the other but lots of full of shit out there right now.
They sure do. And the irony is that the most controversial parts of my essay are the places where I called out the *made up stuff*
"That doesn’t mean going full prepper or tradwife or off-the-grid monk (unless that’s your thing). It just means not letting mass consensus replace personal discernment. It means asking: who benefits from me believing this? And what happens if I don’t?"
yup who benefits from me conforming and believing all this non-binary stuff is real? i mean it's a just representation. it's only a map put not the territory. i wish i could be known as disagreeing and understanding you -non-binary, transcending gender people- are only using mental models. and mental models are just ways of seeing the world not the truth.
blah...lots of people would stop talking to me. perhaps.
"nothing is true, everything is permitted" has been taken off the rails. of course it could and it has been.
I think the punks need to go a step further. Simple statements of reality can be used to justify anything from regressive policies to atrocious behavior. Intellectual courage must include dealing with how these truths influence action, not simply seeing that they are stated.
I agree. But since so many people can't even bring themselves to admit well-established truths out loud, I think saying them is of the utmost importance right now. Until the silent majority starts to speak up, we'll be stuck with these narratives.
I'm glad you agree - we want our thinkers to go further!! But here you seem sure that you are on the side of the silent majority. Isn't that engaging in the politics of identity? What is the Silent Majority if not an identity? Based on its name and the implications thereof, how can anyone be sure they are a member?
The silent majority is definitely not an identity, it’s a sociological pattern. When the loudest voices control media, schools, and culture—and most people quietly disagree but say nothing out of fear—that’s not ideology lol
I recommend reading Todd Rose's book "Collective Illusions" if you haven't already. He does a great job of explaining how we end up with a silent majority to begin with and what it means for society.
I have not read heard of the book that you suggest - thank you for the recommendation, I'll seek it out. But Stef, you didn't engage with my point. You maintain that you know who it is and what ideas there are in this 'silent majority' - and that it is a truth in place today. I'm sure that the pattern you describe is one of sociological validity, but - does it actually exist today in our society in the manner you believe? What evidence do you have that it does? Why are you laughing out loud at the idea that you are caught in this concept being an ideological trap?
I’m sorry—I literally have no idea what this means.
I'm not going to cancel my subscription—though I’ve been tempted—because I find your posts thought-provoking. While I generally agree with your underlying concepts, I strongly disagree with the political lens through which you apply them.
I'm curious to know which part of the lens you're strongly disagreeing with?
Or rather, what lens you think I’m applying—bc my goal is to test ideas against reality, not against party lines.
Your alignment with socially conservative trends—particularly the current suppression of fluid gender identities, which are distinct from biological sex—and your apparent disdain for drag queens and perhaps other LGBTQ identities is troubling. Your comment that “men and women are different” oversimplifies a complex topic, and the remark “no thanks to drag queen storytime” comes across as unnecessary and dismissive.
I find it a bit ironic that you’re upset I have a “political lens” while filtering everything through your own, but I appreciate you laying out your position.
I think this is where we fundamentally diverge—not just politically, but epistemologically.
“Gender fluidity” isn’t a coherent category when examined from a systems or first principles lens. If gender is purely a social construct, then it has no intrinsic essence—and therefore cannot be “felt” in some innate or internal way. But if it does have an essence, then that implies an underlying structure, which brings us right back to biology, evolution, and sexual dimorphism.
You can’t have it both ways: either gender is performative (in which case “fluidity” is just theater), or it’s rooted in something real, stable, and biologically constrained. The popular rhetoric tries to merge both, but contradicts itself at every turn. It claims gender is both entirely subjective and somehow deeply innate, simultaneously meaningless and sacred.
From a systems lens, male and female are not arbitrary—they’re necessary for the propagation of life. Every culture on earth, across time, has organized around this reproductive distinction because it’s not just cultural—it’s functional.
So when I say “men and women are different,” I’m not flattening complexity, I’m anchoring to reality. And when I reject “drag queen story hour” for children, it’s because no healthy society sexualizes identity performance in front of toddlers and calls it progress.
What you’re calling “troubling” is simply my refusal to adopt a belief system that breaks under basic logical and biological pressure.
I’m dismissive because I’ve thought about it deeply. I’ve looked at it through systems theory, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and first principles—not to mention, my literal college degree in Women's and Gender Studies. And it doesn’t hold up.
I believe you may have misunderstood my point. I’m not upset that your political perspective differs from the one shaped by my own experiences and thinking—nor would I expect otherwise, regardless of where our viewpoints align or diverge. What surprises me is that I find myself in agreement with many of the concepts you express, yet completely at odds with your conclusions. That’s why I continue to read your posts, though I must admit I’ll be glad when you move beyond this political minefield and return to the more introspective writing that first drew me in.
I appreciate the thoughtful tone, but I want to push back on something here. You're referring to my “conclusions” as if they’re some radical ideological leap, but all I’m saying is that men and women are biologically different. That’s not a conclusion. That’s a baseline fact—backed by science, evolution, and every functioning system humans have built for thousands of years.
It’s honestly wild that stating obvious, observable reality now gets interpreted as some kind of political “stance.” That tells me less about my writing and more about how far detached from reality this discourse has become.
Also, I don’t see my work as separate from politics. Politics isn’t just policy; it’s how power and meaning move through culture. The introspective writing that drew you in still lives here—I'm just sorting through a lot of the madness that's unfolded over the last 2 weeks and processing what it all means for me. That's why I started this Substack to begin with :)
I appreciate that you’re thinking about this from a systems and first-principles perspective. Where I diverge from your framing is in the assumption that “socially constructed” automatically means “unreal” or “inauthentic.” Many things we treat as deeply meaningful—money, law, language, even nation-states—are also social constructs. Their lack of a biological essence does not make them arbitrary or purely “theatrical”; it means their reality is mediated through shared meanings and lived experience rather than rooted in a genome.
Similarly, gender can be both socially constructed and deeply felt. A person’s internal sense of gender isn’t an essence in the biological sense, but an emergent property of culture, psychology, and identity—something that can still feel innate and stable even though its categories are historically contingent. The fact that cultures across time have recognized more than two gender roles (e.g., hijra in South Asia, Two-Spirit identities in Indigenous North America) suggests that binary organization is not the only functional system societies have used.
Sexual dimorphism is real in biology; no one disputes that. But gender, as distinct from sex, is a way societies interpret and organize those biological facts into roles, expectations, and symbols. That’s why male/female differences at the level of reproduction don’t automatically dictate what behaviors, appearances, or identities are legitimate for individuals.
On “drag queen story hour”: the stated intent is usually not to “sexualize identity performance” for children but to offer inclusive storytelling and positive exposure to difference—no more inherently sexual than Shakespearean actors or clowns reading to kids. One can reasonably debate appropriateness or execution, but framing it as inherently unhealthy conflates adult drag culture with the carefully curated events designed for families.
In other words, acknowledging biological reality doesn’t preclude recognizing that gender is more flexible and culturally mediated than a simple binary, and that people’s internal experiences of it can be authentic even if not biologically “hardwired.”
I'm so sick of people bringing gender into literally every discussion.
Especially considering what I said in the piece was simply "men and women are different" 🤷🏻♀️
Exactly. 🎯
Anton, I was simply trying to reference a concrete example from the article that I found troubling. I don’t see gender as an “obsession,” but I do believe it exists on a continuum distinct from biological sex. I’m sorry if that perspective bothers you.
You're right, but so what?
Exactly.
I too Stepfanie, am having these exact same thoughts. Your content is thought provoking, and I can agree with underlying concepts. But the drag comment was off. where is this even happening? And what is wrong with it? If it is, isn’t that more punk than anything? and while I agree that there are obvious differences between men/women , I do think you are flattening the subject. I thought you were after nuanced thought and that doesn’t feel very nuanced to me.
I am after nuance. But on this, there’s no ambiguity. Boys are not girls. Men and women are fundamentally different—and no amount of cultural theorizing changes that.
Drag queen story hour has happened across schools and libraries and is usually public funded. It’s not a myth. And yes, I draw a hard line between adult identity performance and children’s developmental spaces.
Nuance doesn’t mean entertaining every idea like it might be valid. It means knowing which ones to dismiss—and why.
"Nuance" ≠ denying biological reality
I wrote more on this in the comments above.
This is grooming.
Drag Queen Story Hour in schools.
Look it up.
One thing that us old punks understood was that we're GOING to stand out, we're not going to fit in, we're not looking to be accepted by the public at large. Going the face tattoo, piercing, ear gauge, and liberty spikes is not going to get you an office job. Realize that's part of the cost.
I guess there's a cost to conforming, and a cost of not...