The British Medical Association is the latest organisation to fall victim to gender identity ideology. At the BMA’s annual representative meeting, medics called on the government to let anyone change their legal sex on the basis of a ‘witnessed, sworn statement’. But in the midst of a pandemic, is this really a matter worthy of being listed as a prioritised motion on the agenda?
Even a hermit in total and complete lockdown will have been aware of the bullying suffered by J.K. Rowling this summer when she had the audacity to stand up for women’s rights. Thankfully she stood firm – sadly, the same cannot be said for the Co-op, who this week wobbled in an apparent fit of alarming cowardice.
The story started last Saturday when Stop Funding Hate, a bunch of self-righteous zealots attempted to shame the Co-op for advertising in The Spectator, a magazine they described as ‘notorious for transphobia’. Of course, no evidence was supplied to back up this scurrilous claim. But we saw the sorry saga play out on Twitter – where the discourse was more reminiscent of the school playgrounds of my childhood.
On August 24, Sasha White, a 25-year-old literary agent, was fired by the Tobias Literary Agency in New York. She spoke to RT from her California home to explain how one Tweet led to the loss of her job and her livelihood.
I’m transgender myself but this film is misleadingly telling viewers as young as six that if they are unhappy with their sex then they can choose the other one, and then all will be fine. But they can’t and it won’t, of course.
The transition from primary school to secondary school can be an anxious time for all children, and it is surely a worthy topic for children’s television to cover.
But “First Day” – the latest offering from the children’s arm of the BBC – focusses on a transgender-identified child who transitions from male to female at the same time. The synopsis is simple: an unhappy feminine boy, mocked and bullied by others, overcomes enormous adversity to become the centre of attention, popular with peers and feted by teachers after they metamorphose from boy to girl.
The public furore following the suspended sentence handed down to former MP Eric Joyce earlier this month highlighted once again the sexual exploitation of children and what we do with those who are convicted. But as Sarah Ditum pointed out this morning, Joyce is only one of 400 men arrested every month for viewing indecent images of children.
The problem is endemic. As a teacher and a parent, I believe the protection of children should be paramount. But we face an uphill battle in a culture that doesn’t just condone the sexualisation of children, it encourages it.
Debbie Hayton shared her journey exclusively with Hood magazine. Stories are central to the human experience. By sharing them we make profound connections, we understand more acutely, and our compassion grows. Here, Debbie Hayton shares hers…
Do you really need to do this? Do you not care about the rest of us at all?’ asked my wife, Stephanie. But my energies were overwhelmed by my own needs; an inward focus that left nothing for anyone else. After a lifetime spent hiding my inner turmoil, my mind revelled in what I thought were new freedoms. I was talking about my gender identity; how I was a woman trapped in a man’s body, and why I needed to transition. That was eight years ago, in 2012. It’s hard for me to remember how it took over my life, though maybe easier for Stephanie, who had to keep her feet on the ground while my head was in the clouds.
August is the traditional silly season, but the Labour party risks descending into a farce from which it might struggle to recover when real politics resumes in September. In the absence of any direction from the party leadership, the transgender thought police have led the party down a rabbit hole. Last week, Spectator readers may recall the appalling attack on Rosie Duffield MP for claiming – quite rightly – that ‘only women have a cervix’. Now, the madness has continued.
It’s summer but the war on women continues. The latest person to fall victim to the transgender thought police is Labour MP Rosie Duffield after she liked a tweet by Piers Morgan where he harrumphed CNN’s reference to ‘individuals with a cervix’. Duffield later angered her critics more by asking: ‘I’m a ‘transphobe’ for knowing that only women have a cervix….?!’
Morgan is a man, of course, so he escaped censure. But Duffield was not so lucky. This modern witch hunt tends to target women, specifically those who have the audacity to reclaim the word ‘woman’ to describe their sex.
The heated transgender debate is aggravated by muddled language that has obfuscated discussion and clouded understanding. Dispute resolution requires clarity of thought, which in turn needs precision of language. In transgender politics, that starts by unravelling sex and gender, description and definition, and even the verbs to be and to do.
A new book, Irreversible Damage, reveals how teenage girls are being duped into believing they want to be male, and are pushed into taking puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and undergoing double mastectomies.
Whether it is a statement or a question, the title of this book conveys the necessary urgency of this desperately sad story. Amid the trans debate, seemingly a battle between grown adults, vulnerable children are prey to a malevolent ideology that survivors call a cult.
Debbie Hayton