If a week is a long time in politics, then nine years is surely an eternity in the transgender debate. I began this blog in September 2016 to record my thoughts and archive my published work. If it has my byline, there’s a copy here somewhere.
What is a woman? That once-simple but now-controversial question divided opinion in the 2024 Paris Olympics, where boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting both won gold medals. The International Boxing Federation had previously excluded them from women’s boxing, reportedly because they have XY chromosomes, denoting them as males. But the International Olympic Committee saw things differently. IOC spokesman Mark Adams claimed that, “They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female.”
This post is the transcript of an interview I gave to Quillette: Podcast #235: Coming to Terms with Autogynephilia. The host is Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay.
This piece is an extract from my book, Transsexual Apostate published by Spiked
What drives a man to want to become a woman? To answer this question, it’s worth looking back to the work of American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard. In the 1980s, while working at the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, he developed a somewhat controversial taxonomy of male-to-female transsexualism (1). He described one group simply as ‘homosexual transsexuals’ (HSTS). But it is his second group that interests me personally, because it encompasses my own experience as a male-to-female transsexual. A group needs a name – where would the transgender world be without labels? – and, in 1989, Blanchard coined the term ‘autogynephilia’ (2).
This is the first of four extracts from my book, Transsexual Apostate published by the Daily Mail
Are you sure you want to do this?’ the anaesthetist at Charing Cross Hospital asked as I lay on the trolley ready for theatre, giving me one last chance to back out.
The ferocious transgender dispute is framed by the language of gender identity. To reach any resolution, though, we need to understand what everyone has at stake and to question our own basic assumptions. The truth about what it means to be transgender is a window into human nature, sexual desire, and the limits of language.
Agradeço a Daniel Reynaldo por traduzir meu artigo para o português.
Sentimentos e opiniões deslocaram fatos e evidências em muitas áreas das ciências humanas. Isso não é novidade. Um fenômeno mais recente, no entanto, é a extensão dessa tendência no campo da biologia, que foi vítima da ideia de que os homens podem se tornar mulheres – e vice-versa – apenas recitando uma declaração de crença. É um movimento insidioso que combina o desprezo pós-moderno pela verdade objetiva com superstições religiosas pré-modernas sobre a natureza da alma humana.
A subordinação da ciência ao mito foi exemplificada no recente caso britânico de Maya Forstater, que perdeu o emprego depois de apontar a pura verdade de que pessoas trans como eu não podem mudar nosso sexo biológico por proclamação. “Concluo a partir de … da totalidade das evidências, que [Forstater] é absolutista em sua visão do sexo e é um componente essencial de sua crença que ela se referirá a uma pessoa pelo sexo que considerou apropriado”, concluiu o juiz James Tayler no seu tribunal da justiça trabalhista. “A abordagem não é digna de respeito em uma sociedade democrática.”
My name is now Deborah Ashley Hayton, but that was not always the case. In 2012 I transitioned “male-to-female”. I didn’t really change sex – I know that now – but at the time I was convinced that I was some kind of woman. Otherwise, I can’t imagine that I would have gone through with it and caused so much distress to my wife and children.
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.”
Debbie Hayton