Complex psychological and social reasons
Heather Brunskell-Evans wrote a public statement to the Women’s Equality Party dated November 19th.
The Women’s Equality Party (WEP) has informed me that three Party Members have alleged that my “conduct” on the BBC Radio 4 Programme the Moral Maze on 15th November 2017 has “promoted prejudice against the transgender community”. The Party is currently giving weight to this allegation. As a Spokesperson for the Policy on Violence Against Women and Girls I have been informed I am under review by the Executive Committee.
The Committee is now examining my public statements including my blogs, social media, and on-line forums. It is also assessing whether I have complied with the Volunteer Agreement which I signed at the beginning of my term of office. If the Committee concludes my views do promote prejudice, ‘any decision of the Executive Body shall be effective immediately but may be appealed to the Appeals Body, whose decision shall be final’ [1.]
[1.] I mistakenly understood this statement to mean my membership would be revoked. WEP has clarified: ‘According to the Constitution, the Executive Committee will decide whether censure is required and what the appropriate sanction should be in those circumstances’
At the same time, the Party is completely silent about the “conduct” of a fellow panellist on the Moral Maze, Jane Fae. Fae, a trans woman who transitioned to a feminine identity in middle-age, is a speaker for Mermaids (the charity that supports children to transition). She alleged that the prescription of hormone blockers to delay puberty in girls, or the injection of testosterone at the age of 16, is of no greater social or moral concern than prescribing the contraceptive pill.
There are complex psychological and social reasons why, in a society structured by gender and the sexualisation of girls and young women, there is an unprecedented upsurge of girls declaring they are ‘really’ boys. However, there is no credible science to back the narrative that gender ‘identity’ (rather than biological sex) is innate. Hormone blockers have serious consequences on the body, including the probability of infertility. A substantive number of medical practitioners are extremely worried about this practice (as well as the serious medical interventions that usually follow, such as surgical removal of breasts) but daren’t speak out for fear of accusations of transphobia.
However, there is no credible science to back the narrative that gender ‘identity’ (rather than biological sex) is innate.
It’s not really even a scientific question – “identity” isn’t really a scientific category. Identity is a social or political or literary category, or all three or two of the three. Subjective states aren’t really scientific categories, because they’re too…subjective.
And that’s why all this noisy bullying insistence that there are definitely true facts about “gender identity” is so irritating, especially since the definitely true facts change every week or two.
To sum up: it’s all much too fuzzy and debatable to exile or punish or investigate people over. The WEP shouldn’t be investigating Brunskell-Evans.
I joined the Women’s Equality Party because I believed in a political party which would keep at the forefront the rights and safety of girls and women. Through the example of the Moral Maze, the Party has demonstrated it shares similar approaches to transgenderism and to girls and women’s rights as other political parties: it has not questioned Fae’s views whilst rendering my free speech ideologically suspect; it is concerned to protect the trans community rather than the swathes of girls who are increasingly subject to harmful medical practices.
I refute that I have promoted prejudice against the trans community either on the programme or through my writing and social media. I have called for transparent public debate, without fear of reprisal, of the social, psychological and physical consequences of the narrative that children can be born in ‘the wrong body’.
Both can be true, after all. It can be true that there are people who really do need to live as the Other sex (other than their natal sex or biological sex – both of which terms have been ruled impermissible, so apply your own adjective if you feel rumpled) and never look back, and that there are people who only think they do, temporarily, because of social contagion. In fact we pretty much know both are true, don’t we? We know the first category exists, and since we know some people have detransitioned, we also know the second one does. If both exist, what is so wicked about urging caution and low speed when dealing with teenagers? Teenagers haven’t finished cooking yet, so how can they possibly know for sure that they want to live as the Other sex forever?
But by this point the pouncing on Error has become an entrenched part of trans activism, so there we are. Not a good sitch.
And the ‘scientific truths’ are culturally dependent; there are several letters in the alphabet soup that specifically refer to cultural experiences and understandings of gender or sexuality which are explicitly closed to people in other cultures. Two Spirits is the one that jumps most readily to mind.
The idea is obviously racist, but then they redefined racism as systemic and not individual in order to square that circle.
And gender identity is biological and innate and it lives in your brain AND some people have a fluid gender identity.
Talk of “gender identity”, afaik, began or at least was popularised in the 60s-70s with John Money and his colleagues. Money ran a gender clinic at Johns Hopkins that pioneered SRS. He thought that gender identity was malleable when born, but fixed by 18 months. Some feminists embraced it because it seemed to back their socialisation theories, but if you read through it, it really is just the reification of gender stereotypes. Janice Raymond criticised what she construed as a the gender identity industry, including Money, in her book The Transsexual Empire.
This was before being trans became fashionable, of course. It was also when gender dysphoria was considered necessary for counting as trans: GNC people without dysphoria were thought of as cross dressers, transvestites, etc. These days “trans” or “trans*” has almost completely swallowed up the entire discourse on gender non conformism.
To such an extent that people who would prefer to be drag queens and leave it at that come under pressure to “admit” they’re trans.
Indeed, to the point where many gay people, especially women for some reason, find themselves pushed into wondering if they are in fact trans*. Presumably, being sexually attracted to the same sex is thought of as icky or socially unacceptable, whereas if you’re really trans*, now you’ve got a reason. yes, I know that requires several leaps and contortions.
Yet it wasn’t long ago that drag was the blackface of transphobia because….just…..because.
Rob, I was also in the position where the fact that I felt “odd” because my own experiences as a woman didn’t fit the gender stereotypes I was brought up with, and as a result, people were assuming I probably should change sex. I wasn’t interested in that, I just wanted those shards of glass my mother put in my brain extricated so I could live the way I wanted to without being ostracized and feeling stigmatized. I had finally achieved that, at great pain and psychological dysphoria, when along came the trans movement to inform me that, as a cis-woman, I was comfortable in the skin I had been brought up in and therefore privileged.
By the way, my therapist was not quite able to extricate all those shards of glass; they still poke into me from time to time. I’m sure I imagine it, though, because if I had any problems with the gender I was brought up as, I would just be a new gender (even if I had to make up my own!).
Trust you to bring sex into it! Anyway, my days of leaps and contortions are long-gone. Nowadays we lay there and hope for an earthquake.
iknklast, I hear you on many counts, even if my experiences are different and from a male perspective.
AoS, Me! Sadly, we actually went through quite a spell of having earthquakes. It’s more of a distraction than a marital aide I’d say.
I am thinking that the term “gender” has now changed meaning so much that I actually don’t have the thing “gender” refers to. I have no gender, where “gender” means what it apparently means now. Of course politically that will get me precisely nowhere because I have a female body and will be treated accordingly. But no one gives a crap about those whining bitches with female bodies now, so I should probably just go die in a fire or something.
On the topic of trans issues monopolising language, get a load of this.
https://mobile.twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/933792162705301504?p=v
Holy shit! I just googled “women murdered in 2017”, 9/10 links on the first page were for trans women or calls by trans activists for better tracking of killings of trans women. The exception was 8th on the list and was a story about 50% of all women murdered being killed by boyfriends or husbands.