The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is one of those places that makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel picked-on even visiting the website. At the top of the screen – before any mention of the collections and exhibitions – we are all told that ‘Bristol Museums welcomes trans and gender-diverse visitors, volunteers and members of staff’.
Perhaps this is a response to the Supreme Court judgement that biological sex quite rightly takes precedence over paperwork when distinguishing women from men? But I find it unhelpful and intrusive. I might be transsexual, but I am a human being just like everyone else, and I don’t need special treatment.
I certainly don’t want images that appear to promote elective double mastectomy – mutilating surgery in other words – emblazoned on two giant murals three metres high on either side of the main entrance hall of the museum. This, after all, is a place where groups of primary school children gather to be briefed before being shown the various collections held by the city.
On the day I visited, I walked past a couple of dozen youngsters as they sat quietly on the floor in that hall under the supervision of three adults in high-viz jackets. The murals by Samo White (‘he/they’) a trans-identified artist from Southsea, had been installed to promote the current headline exhibition in the museum. According to Bristol Museums, ‘Gender Stories dives deep into the intricate connections between sex, gender, sexuality, and identity’. The blurb adds that ‘visitors to Gender Stories will explore pivotal questions’ such as ‘What is gender?’, ‘Who decides your gender?’ and ‘What is the future of gender?’
Personally, I’d be happy never hearing the word ‘gender’ again, but I thought I’d better have a look to find out what Bristol’s public museum service was promoting. The exhibition – in a separate ticketed area – was not an edifying experience. The focus was on oppression and the need for protection. There were lots of quotes from anonymous ‘community members’ that gave a sense of victimhood. ‘It just puts you on edge constantly not knowing if you will be the next to experience unwanted behaviour from others,’ said one.
One exhibit was even covered by a little shroud, presumably to protect the unwary from inadvertently viewing what was a pin badge with the message ‘Gender Hostile’. The accompanying poster encouraged visitors to ‘skip this if you don’t feel able to safely engage with these themes’. Those brave enough to continue reading were told that:
Gender critical feminists believe that sex is male or female and cannot change … This belief can be distressing and damaging for trans people and rejects their identities.
Gender Stories (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery)
Following that rather infantilising message, we were then reassured that ‘Bristol Museums supports and stands in solidarity with our trans staff, partners and communities’.
More of White’s work was on show, and like the murals in the main entrance, the theme was human breasts underscored each time by those disturbing cuts and stitches. Were they mastectomy scars? White explained that the piece was a deep self-exploration of ‘my experiences and psyche as a transgender person’.
Alongside the paintings, photographs and pottery – a piece by Grayson Perry was prominent – pre-recorded video commentary by Dr Sarah Jones tried to explain what was going on with gender. Jones is a social and cultural historian of gender and sexuality at Bristol University. To be fair to her, she did a good job explaining what has, until now, been the orthodox narrative on gender. But just because something is widely believed does not make it true. To my ear, Jones sounded like a believer in the geocentric universe explaining the theory about how the sun goes round the earth.
The other key narratives – oppression and victimhood – permeated the exhibition. The solution on offer was clearly written on the wall. ‘The community is the antidote’, visitors were told, and:
If you don’t have the support you need [and] if any of the ideas explored today feel too much […] local and national organisations can provide help, unity and hope. Your community is there for you.
Gender Stories (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery)
The language, the methods and the imagery – there was a space filled with shifting lights, colours and sounds in the exhibition to ‘recharge and heal’ – could have been taken straight from a religious cult on a recruitment drive. ‘You are loved’, we kept being told. From where else might we hear messages like that?
Art can be an educator, and sometimes it educates in a way that the creator did not anticipate. This exhibition certainly educated me. It left me with the distinct feeling that this is a cult and we need to be on our guard against it. The risk is not from society as a whole, but an activist lobby that appears to encourage victimhood and creates vulnerability. That’s no way to live.
Maybe others in the room had come to similar conclusions? But I didn’t ask. We were all under the beady eye of the museum staff and despite the ‘all are welcome here’ mantra, I got the feeling that heterodox views would be poorly received.
Times are changing fast, though, and in some ways this exhibition marked the great heresy of the past ten years – that gender identity trumps biological sex. Perhaps a museum is a good place for it? But in a closed area restricted to adults. Bristol museums’ recommended visitor age of 14+ included possibly impressionable youngsters.
The museum’s decision too to subject primary school children to White’s murals was unforgivable. Teachers bringing their classes to see the museum’s dinosaurs are expected to marshal their pupils under the gaze of disfigured images bearing White’s transgender experiences. You are loved? Not like this!
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 15 June 2025: Bristol museum’s trans exhibition is like something out of a cult.
Debbie Hayton 
14 replies on “Bristol museum’s trans exhibition is like something out of a cult”
Debbie, you picked the right word: infantilising. I read this article and was astonished. I did not know that Bristol was the navel/omphalos of the trans world…. Dr Sarah Jones might need to step back and let biology explain what is going on with gender, the same thing that has been going on for millennia. One may not like Trump but the fact that as the President of the USA he felt obliged to pass an Executive Order stating what we all know (including trans people), says a lot. As always, an excellent and informative article.
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Fiona, I may have said this before, but Trump’s reputation is so poor that his efforts against transgenderism may not have a lasting effect. I think that both liberals and even some conservatives view Trump as a conservative bully who is unfairly attacking a minority. It’s possible that Trump’s treatment of trans people may raise them in the sympathies of the public. Of course, we know that only a small percentage of the people calling themselves trans are actually trans (meaning that it is a fad), and we know how destructive that fad is because of all the medicalization, and we know that children need to wait until they get older because they don’t have the emotional maturity to make this choice as children, and we know that trans activists are hateful obstructionists who care nothing about the children they are harming — but as I said, I think that a lot of the public is still focussed on trans people as a pitiful minority, and they may think that Trump should leave them alone.
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Caleb, look at how the big va-va-voom parades are slowly diminishing into a trickle. Trump merely enacted into law what we all know and it has given the ‘normies’ the courage to say ‘no more gender woo-woo.’ Even the Dems know darn well that this is a passing fad. But the sinister cabal (and I am not usually a conspiracy theorist) determined to push transhumanism and open borders etc are malevolent, well-funded, and determined to disrupt society by gaining control of its children. Research the Pritzker Foundation and be very, very afraid….
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What law did Trump enact on this issue? Most of what he’s been doing has been to issue executive orders, which don’t have the force of law.
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I think he will later on. No one has challenged it. People have stopped trying to invade women’s spaces. Penn U did a big turn around and revoked “Lia” Thomas’ medals and restored them to the girls he beat in the swimming championships. Plus they issued letters of apology. You can’t turn the QE2 on a dime. Slowly things will get back to normal. If trans athletes want to compete, they must do so in a separate category. When the next Olympics comes up I think Trump is planning on taking a stance about these male cheats.
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Pennsylvania University really did that? Oh wow, that’s huge. I had no idea. I’ll have to read up on that. But as Debbie is showing in this article, there are still bastions of sympathy for trans people. Of course, many trans people do indeed deserve sympathy, but the bad ideas pushed by the aggressive activists need to be rejected.
Now, regarding Lia Thomas, I was saying for years that all that needed to happen was for some tall, masculine trans woman to come along and dominate her sport, and the whole world would see how wrong it was. But then Lia Thomas arrived on the scene, and no one seemed to “get it”. It’s interesting to me, though, that what brought Penn U around was a bad president acting badly and assuming power that isn’t his. Where was Penn U’s integrity before that? However, we have Lia Thomas to thank for standing on all those victory platforms towering a foot above his competitors to make the point to everyone.
I suspect that you are a Trump supporter, and we would not agree on most issues. But we can agree on one thing: Reality is what it is, and you can’t change reality just by wishing it. You know, it was only about 15 years ago that trans activists started to push the idea that a trans woman is a real woman. It was a silly idea then, and it still is.
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There is no ‘her sport’ when it comes to a male cheat. I predict that Will Thomas will hang up his bra and thong set and go back to being a man because that was his intention all the time. He is no more a woman than I am a man. A male or female is male or female down to the very last atom in their bodies. That is biology and science. Ask Debbie, who is a science teacher. Trump is not everyone’s cup of tea. I did not like him so I decided to learn more about him and educate myself on the Dems and the Repubs. Trump has turned US politics upside down and that is a very good thing. The swamp does exist and, like a million leeches, it was draining the US dry. I don’t think the country would have survived without Trump cutting US funding to ridiculous projects like a transgender play in Peru (of all places) and supporting a group that funneled the money back to the Taliban. Just one of hundreds of thousands of ‘no questions asked and no receipts required’ projects that USAid doled out cheques to without verification. The waste and fraud were eye-watering. I think he is a good, common sense president and if I were an American I would have voted for him. Four years of Biden who was clearly senile from day one! The MSM treachery in propping up a Potemkin president who merely furthered the left wing agenda, which is aligned with the one-world govt agenda to destroy Europe and the UK by flooding the countries with illegals and dismantling the nuclear family. We could discuss this for hours….
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First, please don’t scold me if I occasionally use the wrong pronoun.
No, there is no “swamp”. Are you talking about all those hard-working civil servants who lost their jobs? Don’t buy into the lies. Judging good people as bad will boomerang on you. Donald Trump is the “swamp”.
Some of the money going overseas has been going to frivolous stuff, but most of the money we spend abroad genuinely helps people. It also creates goodwill, and in some ways it comes back to help the U.S. The United States is a great power in the world, and we can’t hold that position and not be involved with the world.
It’s ironic to hear people like you referring to Trump as “honest”. He is known to be a perpetual liar. Ideas pop into his head and he repeats them as truths. His level of knowledge is minute compared to most politicians.
Much of what you said in your last comment sounds like the kind of conspiracy theories that circulate in the right-wing media. Be careful what you believe. We agree on the trans issue, but we’d better avoid politics in general. A lot of what you said sounds nutty.
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I did not say he was honest. I said common sense. I agree USAid went to many worthy causes. From my understanding, the list is going to be vetted and the genuine ones put back. If you don’t think the Clintons, the Obamas, the members of the govt like Chuck Schumer et al who refused to pass the Laken Riley bill with one accord, then you have a very benign view of the democrats. Maxine Waters is a demonic creature from the bowels of hell. That Al Sharpton is the biggest racist I have ever heard speak. he is another vile swamp toad. Sure, there are very good ones, but judging by how they vote on issues that affect all Americans, they are mostly swamp creatures. I have to exclude John Fetterman for the sake of his refreshing honesty and the way he speaks his mind. I think the Dems thought they had another ventriloquist’s puppet but he survived his stroke and still has his own mind.
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Hello Fiona and Caleb. It pains me massively that liberal-left politics has disappeared down a rabbit hole. I am a social liberal who believes in the redistribution of wealth so it horrifies me that my natural political home has scored such an own goal on this issue. We all know the difference between men and women.
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Hi Debbie,
I would applaud any politician who ran with the trans issue and was genuine about it; if they sat down with various parties and thrashed out an option that worked fairly for everyone and acknowledged that biology cannot be altered. But when I see how these left wingers and so-called liberals have reacted with violence in speech and actions, and pressed on, determined to eradicate women and their rights, I too fear that the word ‘liberal’ is now being equated with ‘self-serving scoundrel.’
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Fiona, this is the problem I have with you. I am a liberal, yet I have been against transgender ideology since the first time I heard about it. I too sometimes talk about how liberals have become stupid, but the fact remains: Conservatives are stupid on 80% of issues, and liberals are stupid on 20% of issues. I’ll choose liberalism any day of the week. However, please stop branding all liberals as pro-trans. We aren’t.
As a writer, I do criticize liberals for trying to ban perfectly good words, like Latino and Oriental.
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Caleb, I am so sorry you have a problem with me. I am astonished and dismayed. I have enjoyed the back and forth and agree to differ ‘thing’ we had going. I did not know we even had a problem. So, now I feel obliged to reply that the problem I have with you is that you are a liberal. I would never have said this otherwise, but you are, like a true liberal, determined to win even if it means dying on a hill with no real basis. The problem you have with me is that I am conservative. Not a Conservative. Just conservative. I don’t believe in giving men access to women’s spaces, or subjecting children to the gender fantasies of deranged adults, nor do I believe in giving people’s money away to others who have not worked for it. I believe in closed borders, proper jail sentences, very carefully controlled migration, and sending back criminals and people who break the laws of their host country. So, if this is goodbye because you cannot debate objectively, then so be it. I have enjoyed the intelligent debate thus far.
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Caleb,
I really appreciate the comments I receive from both you and Fiona. I don’t agree with everything either of you say, and I bet that neither of you agree with everything I say. I like having a space where differences of opinion can be debated, and I value both of you.
Just to say, though, that things can come over on social media differently to the way that we mean them, especially when there is no body language to moderate them. Better, therefore to avoid opening a comment with ‘this is the problem I have with you’. How about, ‘This is where our priorities differ’? It’s factual and not personal.
My view is that I would not want DT as my president. I am a liberal with socialist economic views. It would frustrate me massively that DT has been able to use this issue to win support. But it cannot be denied that he has put a stop to the complete disregard of women’s rights, and protected children from the horrors of ‘gender affirming care’.
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