The gender war is slowly being won. But there’s no room for complacency

For ten years, gender identity ideology ploughed through western societies. It started quietly, a decade earlier, when a group of human rights experts gathered in Yogyakarta, in Indonesia, and established gender identity as an innate human quality. They demanded that it must be protected in law and policy.

Their 2006 ‘Yogyakarta Principles’ probably passed most people by, but they prepared the ground for subsequent campaigns to enshrine gender identity in legislation. The outcome has been terrible. Women’s sex-based rights became unspeakable and second-rate males barged their way into female sport. Transsexual people like me never asked for any of this. We watched in horror as psychological conditions that had hitherto been met with sympathy were eclipsed by self-identified communities that demanded social justice.

Most egregiously of all, confused children became the subjects of poorly controlled and unethical experiments that risked interfering with their natural development. Other children might have escaped the puberty blockers and cross sex hormones peddled by paediatric gender clinics, but the fantasies they were fed about gender identity hardly helped their mental health.

The unfolding scandal continued for far too long, but it seems that finally this nightmare is coming to an end. The Cass Review of gender identity services for children and young people was critical. In April this year, Hilary Cass published her final report. She didn’t go along with the orthodoxy that had displaced sense and reason from those services. The former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health was clear:

‘The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.’

Cass Review final report

Cass could hardly have been more damning. The NHS swiftly halted the administration of puberty blockers, a ban which Victoria Atkins extended to private practices. Two weeks before Christmas, Wes Streeting – her successor as Health Secretary –  prevented this off-label use of powerful cancer drugs indefinitely.

At the same time, more sporting bodies are coming to their senses. One of the latest is the Lawn Tennis Association. From early next year, trans people recorded male at birth will be ineligible for women’s domestic inter-club competitions.

It would have been hard to imagine this outcome back in 2017, when ‘self-identification of legal gender’ appeared to be a shoo-in. Prime Minister Theresa May showed up at the Pink News awards dinner that year, and pledged to let anyone define themselves to be a woman without checks or balances. Jeremy Corbyn eagerly offered Labour’s support to any government attempt to change the law.

Dissenting voices found it hard to be heard. When James Kirkup started writing about sex and gender in these pages in February 2018, his friends in politics and journalism warned him that ‘it will go badly for you’. Thankfully, he ignored their advice to avoid the issue. He assembled the arguments and summarised the problem succinctly:

‘Moves to change the law on gender are not being properly debated because many people who should be talking frankly about the issue aren’t doing so because they’re afraid of being accused of transphobic bigotry by an angry mob.’

James Kirkup

The following year, Kirkup shone a very bright light on the ‘Dentons’ document’, a guide for activists produced by Dentons, which says it is the world’s biggest law firm, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation (IGLYO). Anyone who wondered how such bizarre ideas had wormed their way into corporate thinking had their answer here in The Spectator.

Activists, Kirkup reported, had been advised to limit ‘press coverage and exposure’ and encouraged to follow the example of places like Ireland where, ‘changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation. This provided a veil of protection.’

Five years on, it can sometimes feel like there is 24/7 rolling press coverage of the issue. Arguments are now picked over much more carefully by journalists and at least some politicians. Rosie Duffield, the former Labour and now independent MP for Canterbury, is notable for facing the wrath of the mob when she stood up for her sex in the summer of 2020. Her ‘mistake’? She liked a tweet by Piers Morgan where he harrumphed CNN’s reference to ‘individuals with a cervix’. Duffield’s fortitude was exemplary, though the impact on her political career has been massive.

But thanks to Duffield and others, the debate in politics has changed beyond recognition. Theresa May’s promises of self-ID appear to be lost in the long grass. Keir Starmer’s manifesto did promise to ‘modernise, simplify, and reform the intrusive and outdated gender recognition law to a new process’, but since the election, the Government has been deathly quiet on this issue. After Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill fiasco north of the border I’m not surprised.

There is no room for complacency, though. The government has been making unwise noises about banning so-called conversion therapy and – astonishingly – plans are still afoot for a clinical trial of puberty blockers in children at NHS clinics.

However, we are no longer in 2017. There is now a lively debate and, crucially, the government can no longer plausibly deny knowledge of the problems and likely consequences of such folly. Back in December 2016, Maria Miller cited the Yogyakarta principles when she first pressed the Commons to not only adopt self-ID, but also open up the Equality Act to recognise ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic. As chair of the Women and Equalities Committee she really ought to have known better, but she could at least protect herself with a veil of ignorance.

That defence no longer holds. If puberty blockers are an ‘unacceptable safety risk’ outside a clinical trial, the dangers hardly disappear with the addition of a control group. At least Miller’s folly didn’t directly harm children. If Streeting signs off a clinical trial, he will be held responsible for any and all adverse outcomes. Surely he knows it.

I’ve two predictions for 2025. Firstly, there will be no NHS clinical trial of puberty blockers; secondly, plans to ban conversion therapy will make little progress. Abusive and coercive practices are already illegal. The real goal for activists, I think, is to stop teachers, parents and perhaps religious leaders offering truly impartial advice to youngsters who have been led to believe they have a gender identity somehow different to their biological sex. Even if nobody is ever prosecuted, the chilling effect of new legislation may be enough to stop confused children getting the help they need. In 2025, Keir Starmer will never be able to claim that nobody told him.

But if the outlook is positive, that’s only because politicians like Duffield, journalists like Kirkup, and countless other people have put reputations and livelihoods on the line to speak truth to power.

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Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.

Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum

* This article was first published by The Spectator on 28 December 2024: The gender war is slowly being won. But there’s no room for complacency.