Physics teacher and trade unionist.
As the United Kingdom plunges into an unprecedented crisis, the time has surely come to halt the reforms to self-identification of gender. Schools are closing; London could be locked down; even The Archers has an uncertain future – this really is a crisis. At such times, we can no longer afford the luxury of devoting time and resources to the foolish idea that biology matters less than feelings, when we divide humanity into male and female.
The last day of March marks the International Transgender Day of Visibility, which must be in contention for most redundant event in the calendar. Some readers might be of the opinion that a few days of transgender invisibility might be more timely.
As a transgender person, I am tempted to agree. When I transitioned eight years ago the goal was to assimilate back into society, and with the minimum of fuss. Occasional stories did reach the press but, while there was passing interest, they were never high up the news agenda.
While the increased visibility cannot be denied, some people are now claiming that transphobia is taking over the nation. In an astonishing opinion piece for the New York Times earlier this week, Juliet Jacques announced that Transphobia is Everywhere in Britain.
It is a well-known fact that the moment one steps out of line in their social group, consequences will inevitably occur.
However, in this age of social media, coupled with an increasingly aggressive progressive politics, “stepping out of line” now simply means speaking realities and truths that cause the slightest discomfort to the “group.” Consequences can often be dire.
Without question, a modern social line that is absolutely not to be crossed is that of sex and gender. Anything from expressing concerns about the safety and future of children being pressured into hormone therapy, to simply asserting the biological reality of differences in sex are met with immediate hostilities and extreme abuse.
Even being transgender or experiencing gender dysphoria is not a protection from the imminent cancellation that follows expressing a dangerous opinion such as “women are adult human females.”
The transgender crisis that has engulfed the Labour Party has now lurched into a new and previously unimaginable phase. When the hitherto unknown group, the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights (LCTR) launched its egregious manifesto last week, peak-lunacy seemed to have been reached.
Following demands for compliance — including “pledge 4: Accept that trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary” — they condemned what they considered to be transphobic organisations, naming Woman’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance and calling for transphobes to be expelled from the party.
It has been a trying week for the Labour Party. The leadership contenders are falling over each other in an astonishing bid to make themselves equally unelectable by a membership who are becoming exasperated with what many now view as transgender nonsense. I say that as a trans woman who is a member of the Labour Party.
Have they not learned from Jo Swinson? In December, the former Lib Dem leader’s election campaign went up in smoke on the altar of transgender ideology. Her inability to define the word “woman” is a masterclass in how not to do live radio.
Jo Swinson’s dismal election campaign was unlikely to have been helped by her inability to define the word woman. But if there are any lessons from Swinson’s ability to alienate people on the subject of gender, it seems Labour is determined not to learn them.
Feelings and opinions have displaced facts and evidence in many areas of the liberal arts. This is nothing new. A more recent phenomenon, however, is the extension of this trend into the realm of biology, which has fallen victim to the idea that men can become women—and vice versa—merely by reciting a statement of belief. It is an insidious movement that combines the postmodern contempt for objective truth with pre-modern religious superstitions regarding the nature of the human soul.
The subordination of science to myth was exemplified in the recent British case of Maya Forstater, who’d lost her job after pointing out the plain truth that transgender people like me cannot change our biological sex by proclamation. “I conclude from…the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate,” concluded Judge James Tayler at her employment tribunal. “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
∴ tw ∩ w = ∅ ⇒ tw ≠ w
The butterfly effect describes how the flapping of tiny wings in China may cause a hurricane in the Caribbean a couple of weeks later. The hurricane tearing through social policy in Scotland at the moment also had small beginnings: not in China 14 days ago but in Yogyakarta, Indonesia 14 years ago. This, however, was no accident of chaos — it was deliberate and planned.
Future historians may marvel how that meeting of human rights groups in Yogyakarta established gender identity as an innate human quality and decided that it must be protected in law. At the time, in 2006, political commentators at home were more concerned with the so-called Granita Pact, and whether Tony Blair would ever resign in Gordon Brown’s favour. But Yogyakarta triggered a chain of events that would eventually challenge the use of biological sex to divide humanity. While the definition of gender identity was vague — how can you define what is in essence a feeling in our heads? — the vision was grand.
From my earliest memories I struggled in a society delineated by sex. The rules were different for boys and girls, from what we could wear to how we related to society. Certainly, the expectations placed on me, as a three-year-old boy, were very different to those experienced by three-year-old girls.
Some of this was external – I was told that I would grow up to be big and strong – but we are all curious combinations of nurture and nature, and much was driven from within. I longed to be a girl from before I could speak in full sentences; without the capacity to explain my reasons, even to myself. But, at the same time, the taboo against wearing clothes marketed at girls was already hardwired into my mind.
Debbie Hayton