You observe a tearful child of no more than ten, with brown eyes and fragile limbs. The child wants dresses and dolls but the child is a boy and so, his androgenous auburn hair is shorn to something unambiguously masculine. So the traumatic scene plays out in the 1997 film Ma Vie En Rose. As we feel for this child, so we feel for Tomboy, another classic of European cinema. Tomboy’s sex will become apparent in time. Then what? Oh if only these children lived in a world where they would just be accepted for who they are. If only. The huge shining eyes of the crying child.
To be affected by these stories is to be human, they are to be found in literature, TV and film and we are affected. But these are stories. They have a bearing in real life but real life plays out beyond the satisfying timing of the curtain call.
‘I am Jazz’ is a simple picture book that features a child much like Ludo of ‘Ma Vie En Rose.’ The message of the book is simple enough for a child to understand, Jazz just wants to be herself. Unlike Ludo, Jazz is a real person. Jazz took puberty blockers for years. Jazz had surgery. You can see how that story plays out, if you doubt what I am about to say I urge you to look it up and make up your own mind.
I had to immerse myself in the subject of transition back in 2016/7. I knew of Jan Morris, Wendy Carlos and April Ashley – who transitioned successfully and without regret. I recall an Iranian doctor with a neat beard who had been born female. He had a black and white photo of himself as a cute little girl in pigtails, but in great distress at having to wear girls clothes. I marveled that transition could so transform the female body. I was fascinated.
It is fascinating to watch someone change. I was fascinated as a six year old, looking through the maternity books, watching the belly swell stage by stage – more interesting than the painfully slow reality. I was equally disturbed and fascinated by metamorphosis in myth and fairytale. Years later I could see how it could titillate, the sexual nature of the sea folk, the selkie and the mermaid, the works of Angela Carter. Across the world and throughout time, the realm of childhood twists and gives way to the sinister and sexual.
I know why many take the stance they do the subject of trans rights. It comes from the desire to do the right thing, to be supportive and sympathetic. But you must read on.
The case cannot be closed there.
This is written for those who want to know what the hell is going on. It is not written to preach to the converted. As a member of a feminist group regularly defamed and discredited I urge you to research what you find incredible. I mean incredible in the old-fashioned sense as, in fairness, so much of it does not seem credible. I’ll start with Juno Dawson.
Juno Dawson and I
Around 2008, in secondary schools across the country, pupils were abused with a disturbing and deeply homophobic lexicon. Young teenagers were no longer innocent in the ways of gay culture, they could spot it in children coming to terms with their sexuality and make that process as miserable as possible.
UK Libraries were very excited about ‘This Book is Gay’ and welcomed author James Dawson with open arms. He had been a PSHE teacher, he certainly knew his audience and he had a lot to offer young people dealing with homophobic bullying. The James Dawson I met at Bromley Library was a bearded hipster. The room of librarians warmed to him. He had been the bullied gay child who gratefully found refuge in the school library.
James became Juno.
If you want to know about Juno Dawson, you can read all about it. Prior to, ‘This Book is Gay’ Dawson, published ‘Being a Boy’ and soon after transition, ‘Gender Games, the problem with Men and Women: from someone who has been both’. Then ‘What’s the T?’ in which Juno asserts they were never male. The doctor made a mistake.
If you believe queer theory, as defined by Judith Butler, Juno Dawson was never male. If you believe queer theory, the bearded man I met in Bromley who had literally written a book called ‘Being a Boy', was female.
We’re moving away from the worlds of Wendy Carlos and April Ashley into a realm, not focused on individual need, but on dogma.
JK Rowling
In 2019, a colleague informed me that JK Rowling had tweeted support for a transphobic woman who had subjected a trans colleague to abuse and subsequently lost her job.
My colleague imparted the crime of Rowling like someone very much in the know but, despite their confidence, the story seemed highly unlikely. Years prior, Rowling had voiced support for Scotland remaining in the UK, but she was careful in her approach, she donated her money, respectfully making her feelings known and then bowed out of the debate. It indicated a degree of care that made it unlikely that she would involve herself in an obscure work dispute, particularly one that involved a clear-cut case of transphobia. Because she didn’t.
She did voice support for Maya Forstater but Maya used preferred pronouns at work and the conflict was not personal. Had there been a transgender colleague involved I suspect we would all know their name. The abused colleague does not exist. Maya expressed her opinions on twitter. If these views were so horrendous, we would have seen screen shots of them. Maya’s views are moderate as you’ll see if you look into the court case – that’s not to say you will agree with them, but extreme they clearly are not.
There are many threads to look out for and here is the first;
1. The views of moderate women, reported as extremism. Only men are allowed nuance. Women are either approved or condemned.
The law spoke on the Forstater case, illuminating it for any who wished to see and yet the lies continued to dominate. When it came to the truth, too many either couldn’t be arsed or didn’t want to see it.
Rowling does not believe in the gender identity movement that Juno Dawson promotes and embraces. She is not prepared to pretend. The smearing of JK Rowling herself started there. Whatever your own views I would urge you to at least consider that Rowling’s passion and concern comes from her experience of domestic violence. Scottish women are told that our rights will not be impacted by self ID by those who are well aware of male sex offenders housed in the female prison estate.
I tried to put this case to my MP, John Nicolson a year ago. His office refused to consider the words of Rhona Hotchiss, who had worked as a prison governor at Cornton Vale women’s prison. Rhona has recently been in the news as she worked alongside Rowling to set up Beira’s Place, providing support for female victims of sexual violence. Rhona was dismissed by Nicolson before any of her points could be considered because she was not sufficiently sympathetic to trans rights. I urge you to hear what she had to say on prisons. She reported incidents of rape threats, abuse of the system and the recovery and rehabilitation of the most vulnerable sacrificed in the name of inclusivity. Rhona had been accommodating of trans prisoners. Then she saw the practice on the ground. A raped woman is important, until her rapist decides to transition, whereupon she must acknowledge her place. Her rapist is now the most marginalized in society.
Cornton Vale prison is practically a stone’s throw from where I grew up. To a child, it doesn’t look like a prison and so I could almost pretend it wasn’t until, when I was in my early teens seven suicides took place within the space of a year, including one on Christmas Eve. Every week I waited for the bus across the field from the prison and stared at this quiet white building and wondered what was going on inside that could explain why the women kept dying.
The mothers of daughters in Cornton Vale cannot speak out as the proud parents of trans kids so often do. On hearing their daughter has self-harmed within the prison they may not be able to explain the cause of their tears to colleagues and friends. They keep the pain to themselves, theirs is a stigma, a cruel heavy stigma.
UK feminism once centered vulnerable women and we have the maternity rights and child benefit paid directly to women, as a proud legacy. To many men, this is unremarkable. The far left has never really valued what the left gave women – it just can’t summon the passion for child and maternity care that it summons for the gun-wielding. The campaigners themselves, from Eleanor Rathbone to Barbara Castle, reduced to a footnote in history. When it came to trans issues however, the same men fall over themselves to denounce women and light the necessary fires. Here is the second common thread to look out for;
2. Men, often on the left, who find it an affront to be challenged by women.
Diversity of opinion
Women are penned in together, tarnished by guilt by association and collectively labelled.
But what do we actually think?
Obviously there are many women who agree that gender identity is what matters and that unisex facilities make everyone welcome. Are they the majority?
A lot of women are very cautious and uneasy, they don’t believe that gender identity trumps biological sex and dislike the activism of those that insist otherwise. Due to the toxicity, these women keep schtum. Then there is Kathleen Stock, who states that perception matters, if a transwoman uses female spaces but is perceived as a women, it’s not an issue. I have tried to simplify her words but I know she followed them with a note that many feminists would disagree with this point.
Julie Bindel is more combative than that and would disagree on many concessions that Kathleen Stock would make. Julie Bindel didn’t embrace gay marriage initially, viewing it is a heterosexual institution and therefore a club she didn’t want to join. Feelings change. Gradually society changes.
Then you have Kellie Jay Keen, who wouldn’t agree with any of the concessions Kathleen Stock would make. She calls that position the thin end of the wedge. Some women wish to abolish the current gender recognition act, some seek to alter it, plenty want to keep it.
What unites is the opposition to self ID.
United we stand, divided we fall.
If we lose, the man you perceive in a female space, or at your most vulnerable, may be female in the eyes of employers and the law. Your discomfort, like your biology, will mean nothing. Victims of domestic abuse may put themselves and their children back in danger due to being spooked by a male voice or presence in a shelter. We know the discomfort of this reality would be unreported and ignored. At the other end of the scale, disasters would be dismissed as demonization.
Thoughts Before Gender Identity Ideology
Don’t let anyone tell you that gender identity ideology and trans rights are one. Rewind ten, twenty years. The ideology was something debated in some US colleges but had not extended into law around the world. Rather than a gender identity, we talked of gender dysphoria, an intense discomfort with the sexed body. In some cases, transition was the appropriate treatment and doctors were cautious and careful. Transwoman Debbie Hayton, reports her frustration that doctors and therapists sought to explore every single option before physical transition. Desperate as she was, she accepts this treatment as vital. Even Mermaids, the trans children’s charity, once clearly stated that physical transition was a last resort. In the first instance, treatment explored whether those experiencing gender dysphoria could become comfortable in their healthy sexed bodies.
If you were, ten years ago, to ask about trans people who were comfortable in their sexed bodies, you could expect blank looks. How could someone be content in their sexed body and be trans? Answer: Gender Identity Ideology, by which the once sensible exploratory treatment experienced by Debbie Haydon becomes conversion therapy.
Do you see the problem now?
The Draw of Gender Identity. What is gained?
1. Liberation. It takes a huge amount of bravery for a man to appear defiantly and flamboyantly feminine. This is why Eddie Izzard was to be admired when he said, ‘These aren’t women’s clothes, they’re my clothes’. Until recently, it was socially acceptable to ridicule such men, giving a nod to the violence that was never far away from them while an unsympathetic police force offered little, if any, protection. The trans umbrella provides a protection Izzard didn’t have as a young man. This protection makes it possible for men to experiment with their version of the feminine knowing they have an army to protect them. There is a chance to find ‘their people’ in this community. What it offers women and girls is an escape from the shitty sexualised world young women increasingly find themselves in.
2. Power.
Remember the golden rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. As publishing houses know, there is a lot of money in gender identity and lots of people lining up to tell their stories and instruct the confused on how to do it.
Once onboard, the power is yours, not only to point and decry ‘Transphobe’, ‘Fascist’ and ‘Terf’, but to have it stick with neither evidence nor explanation. Once onboard, there is nothing you cannot say;
India Willoughby has freely claimed that butch lesbians are men as, by rejecting the feminine, they have effectively transitioned. Ten years ago that would be clear-cut homophobia. Defiant butch lesbians, can have their identities dictated to them by trans women speaking from the book of gender identity. The reverse is hate speach.
I have seen many activists scream at women that men are not going to want them, their line of bullying is that men prefer women who resemble, to my eyes at least, the most seedy 80s prostitutes. The view that women exist to satisfy men also goes unchallenged.
Imagine you could go back fifteen years. Do you think trans people then would look at the mess of the last five years and call it progress? Have lives been improved?
Here we are, on the verge of speeding up complex processes and removing outsider support when we can’t even explain what is so terrible about having a process for gender recognition.
Answer: It’s ‘dehumanizing’. To remove it entirely would be to ‘make lives easier’.
The process of adoption is also very difficult but parents do it out of love, they certainly don’t argue for the removal of safeguards because they find them an inconvenience.
The role of the professional outsider is especially important for the children of parents who see failure to conform as a problem to be fixed. Homophobic parents still exist. Outsider support is also needed for young women who have been sexually abused and seek to escape their sexed bodies as a result. We’re complex, complicated people who seek to please peers and family. In our deepest distress, we don’t always know what we need.
Reading this, you may have felt that as a ‘cis’ person, you have no right to speak.
You may roll your eyes when a politician is asked to define woman. You may argue that women are more than just their bodies and dismiss arguments to the contrary as, ‘biological determinism’.
Biological determinism does not stop anyone living ‘as’ the opposite sex. It does not alter how an individual views or presents themselves, neither law nor society can change this. It does not stop employers supporting their employees, it does not stop supportive friends and family respecting wishes. Gender reassignment is protected in law.
The female sexed body links young and old, black and white, rich and poor. We are united by that one reality, whether we have children or not, whether we loose body parts we are united by our sex, not subdivided into categories. Remember when I said you could say anything? Many people have even said that trans women are women just as black women are woman. Even in this most censorious age, you can get away with racism if you play for the right team. We are accused of ‘reducing women to their bodies’ by those who then fail to provide a definition, as though it doesn’t matter. But who decides if we can’t? Globally, women are owned and oppressed. If we can redefine to include, others can redefine to exclude. Iran could redefine women to exclude unmarried victims of rape, perhaps in countries where cut women and victims of FGM have a higher value than those with a clitoris, the latter can be redefined out of womanhood.
The beauty of biological sex lies in its simplicity and the simpler you keep it, the better it is. The simpler you keep it, the freer you are. It cannot dictate your personality, passion or self-expression. You are free to embrace aspects of masculinity and femininity throughout your life, without considering whether this alters the label you’ve affixed to yourself.
This simple belief made me free. I didn’t think I would ever have to fight for it.
But this is Scotland in 2022.
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