About this episode

Carol Dansereau discusses her experiences and insights on gender ideology and communication with family and friends.

Carol Dansereau is an attorney, author, and advocate who spent 25 years working in the non-profit sector. That sector, which she now calls the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, gets its share of criticism on her eponymous Substack. So does the Unitarian Universalist Church where she and her partner, Bruce Lesnick, were active members until their views on sex and ‘gender’ were deemed problematic. I’ve been following Carol’s Substack for a couple of years, and I finally had to reach out after listening to her audio post from Feb. 7th, 2024 titled “Speaking to My Family and Friends,” in which she explains the facts of gender ideology to her own inner circle in a measured way that communicates good faith as well as I’ve ever heard it done to an audience that may be hearing the truth for the first time. It made a powerful impression on me and I wanted to know how it was received, since I’ve been thinking hard about why and how we need to talk about ‘trans,’ even in polite company. Carol’s partner Bruce Lesnick is a talented songwriter and performer whose recordings on Spotify are my newest downloads. With his permission, I chose a track called “Bad Guys” as the outro for this episode…

People in this episode

Host: Jenny Poyer Ackerman

Guest: Carol Dansereau

Topics covered

• gender ideology
• non-profit sector
• trans issues
• communication
• advocacy
• family discussions

Keywords

• gender ideology
• trans issues
• advocacy
• non-profit
• communication
• family discussions
• Carol Dansereau

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Unitarian Universalist Church, Substack

Books & works: Bad Guys, Firestorm

More episodes of UnMuted: the TransMuted Podcast

• Episode 49, featuring Stella O'Malley · May 22, 2026 · 58 min
• Episode 47, featuring Wesley Yang · February 8, 2026 · 1h 35m
• Episode 46, featuring Lisa Selin Davis · January 4, 2026 · 1h 4m
• Episode 45, featuring Dr. Andrew Hartz · November 22, 2025 · 1h 4m
• Episode 44, featuring Stephanie Winn · October 31, 2025 · 1h 4m
• Episode 43, featuring Sarah Hartman-Caverly · September 14, 2025 · 1h 16m

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