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.
Keir Starmer’s new Office for Equality and Opportunity – launched earlier this month* – purports to ensure that ‘equality is at the heart of every mission’. The terrifying reality might be something rather different. One key immediate priority is a ‘full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices’. The government has said, ‘Conversion practices are abuse. They have no place in society and must be stopped.’
Twelve years ago, I was a happily married, middle-aged man with a good job and three wonderful children. But something was wrong. I had convinced myself that I had been born into the wrong sex.
After years of crushing anxiety and even moments of physical self-harming caused by this understanding, I transitioned in 2012 and underwent gender reassignment surgery four years later.
Debbie Hayton