P.E. Moskowitz is a 30-something writer for The Nation who was born and raised in New York City and still lives there. P.E. — or “Paris” to his friends — wants you to know he is “trans” and his preferred pronouns are “they/them.”
Since I am not a friend — a fact that no doubt brings great relief to Moskowitz — and because I have no idea why in the name of all that is good and holy I should use a pronoun that describes multiple people and apply it to a single human, I will refer to Moskowitz by his last name.
Moskowitz seems like a real jerk. I hope that’s an epithet I can use to describe a trans person. But beyond that, Moskowitz is the perfect representation of a shockingly ignorant, opinionated New York writer who couldn’t be bothered with facts.
To wit: Moskowitz acknowledges that “suburbs” are different across the country — a suburb of New York City is different than a suburb of Dallas.
Except they’re not. They’re all hiding places for fascism.
And so it makes sense that these are now the places where fascism grows; that’s what these places were designed for. The suburbs were invented as a reactionary tool against the women’s liberation and civil rights movements. The US government, in concert with banks, landowners, and home builders, created a way to try and stop all that, by separating people into single homes, removing public spaces, and ensuring that every neighborhood was segregated via redlining. The suburbs would keep white women at home, and would keep white men at work to afford that home. These were explicit goals of the designers: “No man who owns his house and lot can be a Communist,” said the creator of Levittown, the model suburb. “He has too much to do.”
For the record, the women’s movement and the civil rights movements were part of the revolution of the 1960s. But the history of suburbia in the United States can’t be told without charting its origins in the immediate post-World War II environment. Five million American servicemen came home with literally nowhere to live. Most of them wanted to get married and start families. Levittown and other suburbs were created to house returning veterans who I guarantee were more interested in making babies than shutting down the women’s movement or oppressing blacks.
To actually claim on the pages of one of the most prestigious left-wing magazines in America that the suburbs were created to oppress women and blacks is about the most ludicrous nonsense I’ve read.
Hate against trans people is rising, but the suburbs are what give this hate its fervor and popularity. A million Torringtons, a million of the same location in different locations, in which any difference, or anything out of place or spontaneous, is perceived as a threat.
It is of course true that these mass hysterias are part of an organized right-wing movement that is attacking human rights across the country—through legislation banning abortion, gender-affirming care, and books, and making it illegal for educators to teach American history accurately. But the shape this movement has taken is not coincidental; it is in fact the product of the unique shape of public life in America, or lack thereof. Suburbanites do not have town squares in which to protest. They do not have streets to march down. Target has become the closest thing many have to a public forum.
It’s revealing what Moskowitz thinks are “human rights.” I’m with Moskowitz on restraints on American history instructors who often go too far in placing restrictions on teaching slavery and more contemporary oppression. But parents have a fundamental right to determine what their younger children can read and what subjects they can be exposed to. History is history. But taking away the rights of parents to determine what their children are exposed to in their innocence violates the sanctity of the parent-child relationship.
And what’s with this notion that suburbanites can’t protest because they don’t have a “public square?” What planet is this walking pronoun person from? People didn’t move to the suburbs to oppress women and blacks. They could, when they chose, gather in one of the several parks where kids could play ball or take a dip in the park district pool.
Suburbanites moved from the city to get away from hysterical activists like Moskowitz. They made a choice — a choice guaranteed by the Constitution — to be left alone. The left has been caterwauling about the suburbs since they were created in the 1940s, and Moskowitz is only the latest leftist to whine about suburbanites being shallow haters.
Fascists? Really? I would suggest that Moskowitz buy a dictionary. I know it has all sorts of forbidden words in there, but if he could find his way to the definition of the word “fascist,” he might have a better understanding of just how ignorant he is.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member