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Dec 6, 2024 | 
benappel.substack.com | Ben Appel
I’m not really a protester. I mean, I’m passionate and I have convictions—call me crazy, but I don’t think sissy boys need to be castrated—but I’m not a sign-toting, drum-banging, “What do we want?! [something!] When do we want it?!” [now!]” type of person. I’m more like a “I’ll tell you what I think needs to happen from the comfort of my home and then shut down my computer and watch Friends” type person. But I knew it was important for me to be there.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
benappel.substack.com | Ben Appel
You guys, we are way too far through the looking glass for you to still be accusing people of being “right-wing” just because they deigned to reject some random facet of modern-day progressivism, which we all know is patently insane. And for the love of God, Libs of TikTok, not every gender-bending dude is a left-wing radical who wants to trans kids. I feel compelled to say this stuff not just because this way of thinking is corrosive to society, but also because it’s justso profoundly boring.
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Nov 19, 2024 | 
realityslaststand.com | Ben Appel
Reality’s Last Stand is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber or making a one-time or recurring donation to show your support. Ben Appel has written for Newsweek, The Free Press, Quillette, UnHerd, and many other publications. His memoir, Cis White Gay, about his experience in LGBT activism and Ivy League academia, is forthcoming. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X @benappel.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Ben Appel
If the new horror film Heretic were just about the dark side of religion, it would be smart and entertaining, though not entirely original. After all, the horror genre has dissected this subject on screen for decades. What makes Heretic different is its chilling depiction of what can happen when we disregard our own boundaries for fear of offending others.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
benappel.substack.com | Ben Appel
Over the past eight years or so, we’ve heard a lot of stories about people being canceled for daring to express ideas that deviate from the prevailing, batshit crazy orthodoxies around race and gender. They’ve been publicly shamed, had their lives threatened, and quite a few of them have lost their jobs. Many people who typically vote blue had become so repulsed by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing that they either withheld their votes last week or decided to cast them for Trump.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
benappel.substack.com | Ben Appel
The day after the 2016 election felt like the end of the world. Under Obama, same-sex marriage had become the law of the land, and in 2014, I got to marry the man I love. For the first time in my life, I was truly happy. I feared that a Trump presidency meant it would all be taken away. I’m about as far as you can get from a physicist, but since then I’ve thought a lot about Newton’s third law of motion, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
benappel.substack.com | Ben Appel
I’m a tried-and-true liberal American. I believe in individual rights, civil liberties, and democracy. I’ve voted Democrat in every election since 2004—the first year I was old enough to vote. I’ve campaigned for Democratic candidates, marriage equality, and legislation that would ban discrimination against transgender people in employment and housing. My fellow liberals tell me this is the most important election in U.S. history. That if I don’t vote blue, I can kiss liberal democracy goodbye.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
lgbtcouragecoalition.substack.com | Ben Appel
You only have to read the opening pages of Claire Rae Randall’s 2022 book, The War on Gender: Postmodernism and Trans Identity, to understand why I’d want to talk to her. “Postmodern gender theory,” she boldly writes in the introduction, “is a sham.”“[It] sees everything in terms of social power, moral blame, privilege and oppression, things inappropriate to the requirements of biology and evolution from which we sprang,” she adds.
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Jun 18, 2024 | 
lgbtcouragecoalition.substack.com | Ben Appel
In February, a gay man named Jeff Cleghorn testified before the Georgia Senate during a committee hearing on a bill titled the “Parents and Children Protection Act.” Cleghorn, an Army veteran and retired lawyer who once served on the board of directors for Georgia Equality and Lambda Legal, spoke in favor of the legislation, which would require teachers to obtain parental consent before discussing controversial theories about gender with their students.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Jawad Iqbal |Susannah Heschel |Matthew Lynn |Ben Appel
University campuses across the United States are facing a growing wave of student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Campus officials have responded by taking unprecedented measures, including calling in the police, to try to clamp down on the unrest and contain an increasingly chaotic situation. The end result? Some of America’s most prestigious educational institutions look less like places of learning and more like crime scenes.
