Urging action
But it isn’t “a row over transgender rights” – nobody wants to take any rights away from trans people. It’s always framed that way, and the framing is wrong.
A ROW over transgender rights has broken out on the opening day of the SNP conference, with activists demanding the party whip be withdrawn from a prominent MP.
The party’s official LBGTQ+ wing, Out for Independence, signed an open letter to Nicola Sturgeon and Westminster leader Ian Blackford urging action against Joanna Cherry QC.
The signatories, who included SNP, Scottish Green and unaligned campaigners, also called on the SNP to launch an investigation into transphobia in the SNP’s ranks.
It isn’t transphobia, either.
They’re talking about the “conversion therapy” bullshit – the framing of caution about drastic changes to the body as the same kind of thing as trying to talk people out of being same-sex attracted.
In a tweet earlier this month, the Edinburgh South West MP [Cherry] said conversion therapy, which is soon to be banned, was something which “any right thinking person must oppose”.
She then added: “We must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help patients with gender dysphoria to feel comfortable in their birth sex.”
Because the two are not the same.
Just think: being lesbian or gay doesn’t involve any drastic changes to the body. What a bonus! No slicing off of penis or breasts, no cross-sex hormones, no puberty blockers – nothing medical at all.
Last week, Ms Cherry wrote a newspaper column about her beliefs on conversion therapy, and said: “Of course I’m against conversion therapy. What I want to preserve is therapy for young girls who are gender confused. Please ignore the distortions & the witch hunt”.
But of course the distortions and the witch hunt continue.
As my friend joolz pointed out on Twitter, in Scotland, trans women have more rights than women anyway, because of sex not being a protected characteristic in the Hate Crime bill. If trans activists want equal rights, she said, they should be campaigning for women to have more.
And boys! Other than that, excellent all round.
Again, the existence of de-transitioners (which TRA’s deny) puts the lie to their stupid misuse of the term “conversion therapy.”
If it really was the case that lots of adolescents thought they were same-sex attracted for a short while and temporarily dated their own sex before finding out they were heterosexual, what would the harm be? Nothing. But a 13 year old girl uncomfortable with her body’s changes and the leers of middle-aged men and the comments of her male classmates, joining the trans-cult and getting a double masectomy and taking testosterone for a couple of years before realizing she made a mistake, … well that’s something else altogether, isn’t it?