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Transgender

The trouble with Joe Biden’s trans declaration

Today* is International Transgender Day of Visibility – just like the preceding 89 days of 2023. But, jesting aside, it has prompted an astonishing proclamation from the White House. ‘Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul,’ president Joe Biden has announced.

Really? Who did Biden have in mind? Maybe he was still entranced by Dylan Mulvaney, a self-absorbed social media influencer who shot to fame last March after documenting a gender transition. Since then, Mulvaney has relentlessly taken to TikTok chronicling each ‘day of girlhood’ in nauseating detail.

On day 222 of this egregious series, Mulvaney was invited to the White House to interview Biden. Trans privilege really does know no bounds, it seems. The president told Mulvaney:

‘I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to [ban gender affirming healthcare].’

Joe Biden

He added:

You should have every single solitary right including the use of your gender identity bathrooms’.

Joe Biden

Does Biden understand the implications for single-sex spaces? Does he even care?

That was October. Now the president has issued his ‘Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility’. In it, Biden takes a shot at states such as Florida and Tennessee, which have stepped in to protect children from the sex-change industry. In his proclamation, Biden suggested that, ‘A wave of discriminatory State laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone.’

Biden is scaremongering. What Biden calls ‘transgender youth’ are indeed being targeted, not by state legislators, but clinicians who have spotted a cash cow and advertise their services on social media to impressionable girls.

And terrifying families? It’s hardly terrifying to be denied experimental treatments involving drugs where the long term prognosis is unknown. Disappointing perhaps, but only because these youngsters were made promises that could never be delivered.

Language like Biden’s feeds into a victim narrative. It does not help children struggling with gender distress to be told that the president thinks they may be terrified. Rather, it may well drive them further into despair and detachment from mainstream society.

As for ‘hurting kids who are not hurting anyone’, what’s hurting those children is the insidious ideology that has told them that they can change their sex – and that their satisfaction in life depends upon access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries. This is a tragedy.

Biden is not merely a fool, he is playing with fire. Under his watch, gender identity ideology has driven the United States apart into a great schism of so-called red-states and blue-states. In the former, laws are being passed to protect vulnerable kids; the latter, meanwhile, like the president himself appear to celebrate what has unfolded under his watch. State has been set against state. Blue California even passed a bill to make the state ‘a refuge for transgender youth and their families’.

This rift needs to be healed fast with cool heads and clear minds. But while America divides, Biden fiddles. Yesterday, gun control activists stormed the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville and a ‘trans Shaman‘ joined an occupation of the Kentucky legislature; the same day, Biden signed off his statement with hubris, ‘NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim 31 March, 2023, as Transgender Day of Visibility.’

What will Biden make of 1 April, I wonder? Some agitators in Washington DC are not satisfied with mere visibility. They are planning a ‘Transgender Day of Vengeance’ in the capital tomorrow.

‘We choose to fight’, organisers declared. A dangerous cocktail of self-righteous indignation, victimhood, and the perceived support from the president himself has the potential to create enough chaos to wake up even Joe.


Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.

* This article was first published by The Spectator on 31 March 2023: The trouble with Joe Biden’s trans declaration.

Categories
AGP Español Personal Testimony Sex and Gender

La identidad de género es una patraña

Las afirmaciones «las mujeres trans son mujeres» y «los hombres trans son hombres» han de estar compitiendo por erigirse como la frase definitoria de nuestros tiempos. En poco más de cinco años, el tema transgénero ha irrumpido con tal fuerza en la conciencia colectiva que el aún joven Día Internacional de la Visibilidad Transgénero parece ya anacrónico. Quizá deberíamos de remplazarlo por el Día del Discernimiento, porque, si bien las personas transgénero (como yo, por ejemplo) nos hemos vuelto bastante visibles, las razones por las que somos transgénero siguen ocultas en la sombra.

Categories
AGP Personal Testimony Sex and Gender

Gender identity is bollocks

Trans women are women and trans men are men must be in contention for the defining statement of our age. In little more than five years, transgender awareness has burst into the public consciousness to the extent that the recent International Transgender Day of Visibility seems to be a relic of history. Maybe it could be replaced by a day of understanding? Because, while transgender people – like me, for example – have become very visible, the reasons why we are transgender are still hidden in the shadows.

Categories
Free Speech Labour Party

Britain is not a transphobic country

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.

Categories
GRA Reform Personal Testimony Sex and Gender

A Plea To Trans Activists: We Can Protect Trans Rights Without Denying Biology

International Transgender Day of Visibility falls annually on March 31, though even the most casual observer must wonder if we still need a day to mark it. In the three years since Caitlin Jenner transitioned there has been an explosion of transgender visibility. What might be lacking is an International Day of Transgender Understanding. Western society has been keen to affirm trans people, and that is to be welcomed, but it has been slower to think critically about the wider impact of legislative change, and particularly the effect on women and their right to organise and associate as a biological sex.

Categories
Workers' Rights

International Transgender Day of Visibility

March 31st is the annual International Transgender Day of Visibility. In recent years, even a casual observer may feel that transgender people are already very visible, and query the need for it to be marked by a day in the calendar.  Whilst campaigning groups have promoted the message that “Some People are Trans,” the press have published a seemingly endless stream of news reports and feature articles about trans issues. Editorial policy might not always be sympathetic, but the battle for visibility seems to have been won.