The four heartfelt letters on Tuesday responding to J.M. Sorrell’s May 3 column [“Misogyny as entertainment and entitlement,”] prompted me to write to thank the Gazette for publishing her column, despite knowing it would offend. Not because I agree with what she wrote, precisely because I do not. But it sure did make me think. And that is the point of an editorial page.

Since the column appeared, I’ve had no fewer than a dozen conversations with people trying to understand it, to comb through her points and our reactions to them as we together tried to understand the issues raised. These conversations happened by text, email, and the best ones were in person.

I discussed it over tea with a new friend, both of us questioning some points we thought maybe we might agree with while we knew we disagreed with what we viewed as her main message. Two friends and I vigorously discussed the column and the guest column and letters that ran in Saturday’s paper over waffles in my kitchen before setting off to march in Hampshire Pride, where folks in drag and the Expandable Brass Band made the event festive and celebratory.

Over dinner with old friends that night, we talked about how the lesbian community has changed over the years, and how changing attitudes have led to much greater acceptance to a degree we never could have believed possible (legal marriage) — but how that acceptance does not (yet) extend to trans folks.

All these exchanges of ideas prompted this old(er) feminist to kick the tires of long-held wonderings about whether drag exemplifies gender stereotypes I have always resisted (misogyny?). These are ideas I am happy to now consciously discard.

Today’s letters helped me better understand that drag is self-expression and a response to oppression rather than an act of oppression. For me, this turned Sorrell’s blackface/drag analogy into apples to oranges. It also articulated something I’d thought when I read the original column: that it’s wrong to conflate people in drag with people who are trans.

At the march I saw one T-shirt calling the Gazette anti-trans, and it made me sad. I hope we can stop placing blame on the messenger. Maybe all of us can sit with our own discomfort long enough to talk to each other, and allow for conversations that will bring greater understanding of our changing world.

Here’s one thing I know for sure: The original column and subsequent letters, conversations and internal thought have made me a better, stronger ally at a time when allies are needed more than ever.

Laurie Loisel lives in Northampton.]]>