Arguing has always made me uncomfortable. Growing up in reliably blue Connecticut, I often had to interact with people who thought differently than I did but I always sought to find common ground. Even as I came to care deeply about politics and public policies, and actually began debating for a living, I never liked exchanging talking points and competing data, which so often seems to end up just to be talking past each other. I wanted to do better.
Stories, I came to realize, are the best way to approach a conversation with those who disagree. Policy and political positions are inevitably divisive. Someone’s story, on the other hand, is just that: a real-life experience inherently worthy of dignity and respect.
Take the story of Prisha Mosley, a detransitioner from Big Rapids, Michigan, who, as a child, believed it was possible to change her sex. Acting on that belief, a team of medical providers prescribed Prisha testosterone when she was anorexic and cut off her healthy breasts.
Today, Prisha is still battling the repercussions of being lied to as a child by a team of adults who led her to believe she was born in the wrong body. She’ll never have a normal sex life, she experiences pain throughout her broken body, and fights mental demons from her medical trauma that haunt her to this day.
Prisha’s story is one of many I’ve told at Independent Women’s Forum, an organization that, early on, recognized the power of personal storytelling and invested in it. Today, Independent Women’s Forum is doubling down on that commitment, launching a brand new storytelling website called IW Features.
IW Features will be a home to free video content, written stories, and podcasts. Featured content will include our series Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons, a groundbreaking mini doc series telling the untold fallout of incarcerated women who have been forced to share their female-only spaces with males who identify as women. These tragic yet politically inconvenient stories—and the women behind them—are often ignored, overlooked, and overshadowed by corporate news. With the launch of IW Features, they will have a home.
Unlike a traditional news publication, IW Features will continue working with our storytellers in an ambassador format after we hit “publish.” That’s because we know their stories don’t end when the writing stops—they continue, and often they become a catalyst for meaningful policy change.
Take Prisha. After IWF told her story, she went on to testify in more than 20 states about the need to protect minors from irreversible gender harm–several moved forward with policy change. Prisha also sued her medical and mental healthcare providers in a historic lawsuit and became one of the leading voices in the fight to protect children from gender harm.
Prisha’s story matters. It’s made a difference. And there will be many more.
If more of us chose to talk about stories rather than political candidates or other disagreements, our communities would be full of more productive, compassionate, and meaningful conversations. Of course, there’s a time and a place for politicians and political fights. But if we want to better connect at the human level, stories are how to do it. And with IW Features, we’re leading the way.