A Utah ban on ‘gender-affirming care’ for children has prompted a fierce backlash
An American politician appears to have been targeted by transgender activists intent on imposing their beliefs on the country. Mike Kennedy, a Utah state senator, reported that his house had been daubed with graffiti on Friday evening.*
The vandal, or vandals, left messages in red spray paint across the senator’s garage: “fash” — presumably meaning fascist — and “these trannies bash back”. Kennedy shared the images on his Facebook pages, telling the perpetrators that “I will not be deterred by your cowardly actions.”
Earlier this year, Utah banned so-called “gender-affirming care” for trans youth. A better term might be “experimental treatment that can lead to permanent and irreversible changes, with unknown long-term consequences on both physical and mental health”. Less catchy, perhaps.
Senate Bill 16 prohibited giving “hormonal transgender treatment to new patients who were not diagnosed with gender dysphoria” before the bill went into effect, as well as banning “sex characteristic surgical procedures on a minor for the purpose of effectuating a sex change.”
Utah was right to exercise caution. But that’s not the way that some transgender activists see it. To them, drugs and surgery are the answer to what — until recently — was regarded by the World Health Organisation as a mental health condition: gender identity disorder of childhood. The latest version of the International Classification of Diseases might have changed the language — it’s now “gender incongruence of childhood” but the condition remains the same. And one where we need to tread carefully.
In England, the Cass Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People has found that “there is a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.” In America it seems that the discussion has now been overtaken by more direct measures, with an act of vandalism against a politician.
Gender identity ideology presents an open door to abusive men who want to usurp the rights of women. It also offers a shield for anarchists, trouble makers and those looking for a fight, if they can paint themselves as allies of what some consider to be the most vulnerable and oppressed group in society. They seem to think they can act with impunity.
But it is not fascism to protect children from harmful medical interventions. Ironically, one definition of fascism is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control”. Those with the red paint might not be in government but their actions suggest that they are out to control the narrative.
Meanwhile, transsexuals like me are not “bashing back”. We want nothing to do with this. We transitioned to be able to get on with our lives in peace, not to impose ourselves on other people, nor to change the way they think and regulate the language they use.
Debbie Hayton
* This article was first published by Unherd on 24 April 2023: In America, trans activists are turning to vandalism.
Debbie Hayton 
One reply on “In America, trans activists are turning to vandalism”
Civil disobedience in support of good ideas has an honorable history. What makes this alarming is that this is civil disobedience in support of a BAD idea: children transitioning before they have the emotional maturity to do so. Children have been given the idea that transitioning is their right. Given that children have very few rights, I think a lot of kids have glommed onto transgenderism as a way to show their independence. Even if that is not the reason, the idea of being transgender is being promoted by almost all of the adults in their lives, so naturally some of them are going to decide that they are trans. Once they decide they are trans, they are rushed by parents to the nearest clinic where the child is given hormones and then indoctrinated into transgender ideology. Kids are not being given an opportunity to change their minds.
But the truth is — and this may be controversial to say — the trans life is, generally speaking, not a happy life. There is more and more evidence that transitioning does NOT resolve feelings of dysphoria. Indeed, the person first feels dysphoria because his or her body is the wrong sex. But once transitioning has begun, the person continues to feel dysphoria because his or her new body is just an imitation of the body the person wants. Some people, like Debbie, are able to find a measure of peace in transitioning, but I think that most trans people do not find that peace. Thus, the better course of action for most of them is to accept their sex as their gender and make the best of it. Certainly, that’s what children should do until they become adults; children just don’t have the emotional maturity to make such decisions.
What I said doesn’t address the fact that probably most people who consider themselves “trans” are actually imitators, i.e. people who think they are trans for reasons that have nothing to do with dysphoria. Since those people don’t have a genuine experience of dysphoria, I suspect that they are the ones who are becoming terrorists. The ones who have actual dysphoria are probably more focussed on their own needs.
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