Mara is a brilliant transgender rights activist and founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. I’m so grateful for her willingness to have a robust exchange of views on some issues, along with much agreement as well. Every few weeks, I hope to add another perspective to the debate over trans identity, a subject that has suffered from the mainstream media’s horror of open debate. Dana Beyer kicked the series off. You can listen to the episode with Mara Keisling right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to three excerpts of Mara — on the tensions within the new Equality Act; on the conflation of sex and gender in public policy; and on the fairness of trans athletes competing with cis athletes — head over to our YouTube page.Looking back, here’s a question from a reader prompted by our episode with Kmele Foster:You expressed your frustration with terms like “whiteness” or “white values”, which mean nothing more specific than anything the speaker disapproves of at that moment. Whilst I agree, I’m not sure this is a new phenomenon. When I was at university, people on the left would use the phrase “bourgeois values” in the same way. Whilst the points of reference are rooted in identity politics rather than economics, and the underlying ideology is critical race theory rather than Marxism, is it not the same phenomenon? And, if so, do you believe they are interchangeable or is this generation’s activism significantly different?My concern is associating a whole slew of characteristics to a single “race” and erasing all the variety and diversity within that population is, itself, a form of racism. Values are not black white; they are human, and available to all. Last week’s episode with pro-Trump intellectual Michael Anton elicited the most email of any episode we’ve had so far. A reader writes:I appreciated your discussion with Anton, as it can be useful to hear the best defense of even (and perhaps especially) those things one finds largely indefensible (allowing me to check my Trump Derangement Syndrome levels, and all that). But boy, that sure didn’t move the needle. Anton’s defense of Trump boiled down to a combination of relentless whataboutism and what appeared to be, if we’re being extremely generous, highly selective “epistemological humility,” as he puts it. I came away with the impression that, whatever his rationalizations, what was driving him was largely the same motive driving my Trump-supporting relatives: a desire to own the libs/spite the elites/stick it to the Dems. Why that particular tribal motive is so powerful, and what can be done about it — in conservative and liberal circles alike — seems important to figure out if we’re to keep the republic chugging along.Another reader focuses on our fiery exchange over the 2020 election:Thank you for interviewing Michael Anton. I’d never before listened to a person espouse theories of voter fraud who actually has the mental resources and willingness to debate the topic, so the discussion was very revealing. I do wish that you, or someone, would ask him why he feels that our “loosey goosey” voter registration system (to use his words) is being massively exploited only by Democrats. If the fraud is not baked at the voting machine level (which Anton conceded) and is instead organic, then why does this organic fraud only cut in one direction? Anton casually asserts that half of the electorate (his side) is honest, while the other half is widely corrupt on an individual, person-by-person level: millions of people individually deciding to cheat the system. Anton himself has written a response to his Dish experience. Check it out. Another reader is “disturbed by the ongoing ‘bad election’ narrative”:As someone who has worked elections, may I suggest the doubters please work a poll? My experience is people of all political ideologie