There is a lot Meghan Murphy says I disagree with, but I agree with what she says in this essay.

Enjoy.

I grew up in a household that prided itself on being not just left, but most left. My father was a Marxist and, as a shop steward at Canada Post, was very active in the labour movement. My mother was a feminist and worked in arts administration. She went back to school when I was around 11 or 12, and went into Art Education, completing a Masters and PhD.

The left disavowed me long ago for insisting that pornography and prostitution was not an empowering choice sexually liberated women make for fun and wealth, then again for understanding that penises are male and girls who cut their hair short and replace pink frilly dresses with bowler hats and mismatched high top converse are not “non-binary” or “trans” or “boys,” but simply little girls who don’t want to play by old-fashioned rules.

That was hard. It’s hard when the cult you professed undying allegiance to excommunicates you.

I didn’t leave the left for any other reason beyond the fact the left became a toxic swamp of irrational hypocrisy and power-hungry, toxic, hate. I didn’t leave the working class heroes or brave dissidents, speaking truth to power. I left a bunch of out-of-touch phonies who had replaced real talk with jargon and fighting oppression with bullying. Their solution has not been to understand others or even to change minds, but to control — speech, thoughts, facts, protest, what have you.

“Leaving the Left” by Meghan Murphy. Click here to read the essay in full.