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Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights

Members and supporters of the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) yesterday launched a Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights dedicated to the affirmation and protection of women’s and girls’ sex-based rights.

You can read and sign the declaration here: https://greenwomensdeclaration.uk – you don’t have to be a member of the Green Party to sign the declaration.

The Declaration has been initiated by GPEW members who believe that the right of women to advocate for women as a biological sex, is being eroded within the GPEW, as elsewhere in society, and that the ‘No Debate’ mantra is being used to curb freedom of speech.

Follow Green Women’s Declaration on Twitter: @GWDeclaration

Molly Scott Cato and the breastfeeding trans-identified male

On Wednesday 28 June 2023 News At Ten reported on the cost of living and interviewed Mika Minio-Paluello who described rising water bills as being ‘tough if you’re a mum’. The video clip is available on YouTube and Twitter.

But Mika Minio-Paluello (MMP) is a transwoman – a trans-identified male – and therefore biologically incapable of being a mum. There were many gender-critical responses to the news report. Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury, for example, tweeted on Thursday 29 June: “Dear @itvnews, I am sure this is a lovely, intelligent and decent human being. This was an important piece. This is not however a struggling ‘mother’.”

Within days the conflict between gender ideologists and gender critics over whether MMP was a mum had moved on to breastfeeding. This was after MMP posted a photo online saying: ‘Here’s me on the bus to hospital for the 1st chemo round, feeding my child for the last time’.

The gender-critical responses to this led to an open letter in early July entitled ‘Solidarity with Mika’ at www.welevelup.org/surveys/solidaritywithmika, which ran: “… As feminists and mums, we give our wholehearted support to Mika Minio-Paluello who has faced a vile wave of personal attacks for speaking on TV while trans.”

About a third of the way down the list of about 100 signatories was the Green Party of England and Wales.

At this point Imogen Makepeace (Lewes and District Green Party) wrote to Molly Scott Cato, Green Party External Communications Co-ordinator (and also finance and economy spokesperson and former Member of the European Parliament for South West England from 2014 to 2020).

9 July 2023 from Imogen Makepeace to Molly Scott Cato

Dear Molly,

I’m writing to you as I believe you are the co-ordinator of external comms for GPEW?

I hope you can confirm that this signing “The Green Party of England and Wales” is fraudulent?

The current narrative in some parts of the media claiming that men can breastfeed has been re-ignited by a letter from http://www.welevelup.org/surveys/solidaritywithmika.

I am a member of GPEW, and I know that men cannot breastfeed, and that this belief is dangerous to children.

It is also immensely insulting to the many thousands of women in the Green Party who have breastfed their babies, often with pain and difficulty in equal quantities to joy and delight, and to the young women currently hoping and struggling to do the right thing to nourish their infants.

I would like to understand what is the protocol for a signature that indicates the 100% acceptance of over 50,000 members, and what is the sanction for abusing this protocol?

Kind regards

Imogen Makepeace

Molly Scott Cato replied on the same day, 9 July, as follows:

Dear Imogen

Following a request from the New Economy Organisers’ Network, the leaders and comms group agreed to sign the letter you can find at this link at our meeting on Thursday. It is in support of Mika Minio-Paluello, the Trades Union Congress’ climate and industry policy officer who has faced a great deal of hateful comment on social and other media since a recent TV appearance.

The letter expresses solidarity with somebody who comes from a group in society that is currently facing appalling prejudice. The Green Party supports a policy of self-identification, meaning that we recognise trans people’s full civil and human rights in their transgender identity and we would extend this to affirming Mika’s right as a trans woman to be a mother. The letter also notes that all mothers need support during this cost of living crisis.

Although much of the online comment has focused around the issue of trans women breastfeeding, you will notice that this is not mentioned in the letter we agreed to sign. I am one of the many women in the Green Party who breastfed my children (and with some of the difficulties you allude to) and I do not find the letter in any way insulting.

The issue around respect for trans people and their rights is being subjected to a great deal of polarization and weaponisation that makes establishing the right and wrong of particular issues hard to determine. But in this case we are clear that we should be standing up for a trans woman who has been victimized as part of a culture war that is not of her making.

Yours in peace,

Molly

Further discussion

For further discussion, if you are a member of GPEW, see the Green Party Women page of Green Spaces. There and elsewhere are comments like these.

The ‘trans women can breastfeed too’ advocates do not care about children except when they can be used for validation.

See this 2021 report in the The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism on how drug-induced ‘lactation’ has not been sufficiently evaluated for toxicity nor nutritional value, which states:

“Efforts should also be made analyze the protein, nutritional, and
immunological components of the breast milk produced by transgender
women, which we have not done in this case report.” (sic)

“It would also be valuable to measure the relative levels of hormones in
the breast milk, as this may impact the growth and development of the
infant. In summary, lactation induction is likely beneficial for gender
identity, irrespective of milk production outcomes.”

Orwellian Newspeak:
Trans women are women
Trans women are female
Trans women are mothers

Only a biological woman can be a ‘mother’.  Of course men can have motherly feelings but that is not the same as being able to give birth.

Green Party policy RR530 that ‘transwomen are women’ does not mean they can also be mothers. If this is to be presented to the broader public as policy, it needs a bigger mandate than the slim margin RR530 obtained when it was voted for at a Conference of about 500 members (about one percent of party membership).

Men cannot breastfeed, transwomen cannot breastfeed. The only humans that are physiologically, anatomically and evolutionarily adapted to nourish infants are biological women. To deny this is immensely insulting to women as a sex class, and more importantly potentially suggests an experimental and dangerous attitude to nourishing babies.

On the last point, note that even La Leche League (LLL), the breastfeeding support charity, now advocates for transwomen – and transmen who have had mastectomies – to breastfeed or ‘chestfeed’ their babies. Unbelievable.

Support for Transgender & Non-binary Parents

Vote Eric Walker in Green Party Eastern Elections

Voting closes on Thursday 30 March at 23:59. If you are in the Eastern Region, please vote*. If you have Green Party friends in the East please ask them to vote too. These internal elections for the Disciplinary Committee (DC) and Green Party Regional Council (GPRC) are very important, as GPRC make decisions for the wellbeing of the party, and the complaints system is being used to punish members for being openly gender critical. We recommend you vote for the following candidates who are all sensible, dedicated Greens. GPRC  1) Susan Stewart 2) RON DC 1) Kerri Edmondson 2) Eric Walker Eric’s statement was missed off the candidate statements, so we are sharing it here: I have considerable knowledge of life.  Brief c.v.; Born into single parent family in slum district of industrial town. Interested in politics from age 12 (Spanish Civil War)- started work age 14 – textile, tobacco, engineering factories, 5 years army during WW2 – British Railways employee. For last 50 years founded and C.E.O of an educational charity (Concord Media).   Released first films on ecology back in the early 1970s. I hope I can bring maturity of thought to this important role. Life is complicated  and so are motivations. Having been both employee and employer, I think I can bring to bear some experience in sorting out problems.  Compromise rather than dogma is to be favoured. Although I have been a member since Ecology Party days I have never until two years ago taken an active role because running a charity took all my time.  Since then I have been membership secretary of my local branch (Suffolk Coastal) for 2 years and recently became membership secretary of Green Seniors. I hope you will vote for me for this important position. Eric *Voters were sent an email with the voting link on 20 March. If you did not receive a link and think you are eligible to vote, please contact: ero@eastern.greenparty.org.uk

The ‘trans community’: vulnerable victims of violence?

In the struggle for so-called ‘trans rights’, gender ideologists have been asserting for years that ‘the trans community’ (whatever that means) is among the most marginalised in society. They tend to assert that trans people are among the most likely to be victims of violence, including murder. Here are two recent blog posts on the subject that counter this false narrative.

The view from the UK

Giving the UK perspective in October 2021, Madison Smith in The Critic debunks the dodgy statistics at: Neither marginalised, abused nor vulnerable. Debunking a persistent talking point in the trans rights campaign

Smith also links to a brilliant video compilation (by Karen Actually) of our political leaders stating how marginalised, vulnerable and abused the trans community is. Sadly, it has no clips of our esteemed Green Party leaders like Amelia Womack, Sian Berry or Carla Denyer, joining in.

The view from the USA

Giving us a view from the USA in November 2021, Anna Slatz of 4W writes: Breaking Down Claims of a “Trans Genocide”. Like Madison Smith, she debunks the dodgy statistics.

More resources

@STILLTish

Another UK-focused resource from May 2021 is by @STILLTish at gendercriticalwoman…trans-murder-monitoring which contrasts research by Transgender Europe (trigger warning: it’s funded by Arcus) on their trans-murder monitoring site (transrespect.org/en/trans-murder-monitoring) with other (preferable) research at transcrimeuk.com and on Karen Ingala Smith’s website: kareningalasmith.com/2021/04/21/counting-dead-trans-people.

@STILLTish writes that:

The narrative that trans people are an extremely vulnerable demographic … is an inversion of the truth designed to posit women as “cis-privileged” whilst casting aside safeguarding, for women and girls.

Arty Morty

Trans people are NOT the most vulnerable people on the planet! is a video by Arty Morty, where he argues that

“… the Transgender Umbrella encompasses a broad and diverse array of people with very little in common with each other. Some people who identify as “trans” are indeed very vulnerable and at high risk of being harmed by dangerous men, but many (perhaps most) would be more accurately described as emotionally fragile …”

A Gender Critical Green History: 2015-2021

Introduction

This is a chronology of gender-related events in the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) from 2015 to date. It has been written by Robbie Spence with help from other Gender Critical Greens and covers:

• Suppression of free speech
• Denial of women’s rights
• Denial of women’s life experience and the biology of sex

Key

GC = Gender Critical

GI or GIE = Gender Ideologue or Gender Ideology Extremist

GPEW = Green Party of England and Wales

GPEx = Green Party Executive Committee

GPW = Green Party Women

NVC = Nonviolent Communication

SOPD = Standing Orders for Party Discipline

TRA = trans rights activist

A note on the term ‘trans rights activist’ (TRA)

Rather than refer to trans rights activists (TRAs), I prefer to speak of gender ideologues or gender ideology extremists, as I believe that better describes the people with whom we (in the Gender Critical Greens) are in conflict. Along with other Gender Critical Greens, I support trans rights too, just not all the ones that are advocated by the gender ideology extremists!

2015

• January 2015: Rupert Read, a leading member of GPEW, and then Parliamentary candidate for Cambridge, wrote an article questioning whether anyone who was of one sex could become a person of the opposite sex. He was subjected to a multi-member vendetta accusing him of “transphobia”. He felt forced to recant like a medieval heretic. 
• Spring Conference 2015 passed a policy motion to remove “spousal veto”, the first noticeable step in the gender ideology extremist agenda.
• Autumn Conference 2015:
  • Shan Oakes, then Equality and Diversity officer on GPEx, was allegedly attacked at conference for “not supporting trans rights”
  • Some pro-gender ideology motions were passed.

2016

• 2016-2018: Some Party members feel bullied into silence and fear being accused of “transphobia” as Rupert Read had been.
• Autumn Conference 2016 passed policy motion on “TWAW/TMAM”.
• Green Party Women’s rules altered to treat transwomen as women.

2017

Spring Conference 2017: calls for ‘necessary and proportionate’ religious exemptions to be scrapped where they conflict with gender ideology policy.

2018

• 2018 onwards: re-assertion of women’s rights, biological evidence etc.
• Spring Conference 2018: gender ideology extremists push through some subtle changes to the SOPD that result in vexatious complaints increasing.
• July 2018: GPEW member Olivia Palmer was expelled for ‘transphobic abuse’ during May 2018 Channel 4 ‘Genderquake’ programme, directed at Munroe Bergdorf, a male bodied ‘transwoman’. See:
  • post by Denis Walker at lgbtiqa.greenparty.org.uk/2018/05/10-channel-4-genderquake
  • Olivia Palmer’s account perspicats…2018/05/11…genderquake-debate-fiasco
  • Unsympathetic accounts in The Independent and inews.co.uk
• Autumn Conference 2018 (Bristol)
  • A handful of Fair Play for Women activists picketed GPEW conference about the government consultation on reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and handed out leaflets opposing the reform. Police on horseback allegedly attended in response to a complaint by GPEW leaders.
  • A local councillor told the police that the women were allowed to hand out leaflets outside the venue, which was council property: GPEW had only hired the inside of city hall for their private event, so they were not allowed to control anyone peacefully picketing outside.
  • Conference organisers ensured that the Fair Play for Women leaflets were not on display inside the venue.

2019

• Gender critical women gain control of GPW
• GE2019 GPEW manifesto removed climate policies, as reported by Dee Searle: “The [2019] manifesto was finalised by the group that had removed the climate policies. Green Party Regional Council (which was the body with official sign-off responsibilities) was given around 24 hours to approve an 88-page document. This enabled the leadership to insert favoured commitments (such as transgender people being able to change their legal gender based on self-identification, which is not Green Party policy) and weaken inconvenient ones.” [emphasis added]
• ‘Listening circles’ at Autumn Conf in Newport: ‘Listening Circles’ were proposed to resolve conflict between GC and gender ideology extremist factions. But they did not take place, allegedly because the LGBTIQA+ group and/or the gender ideology extremists refused to engage.

2020

• Following the ‘Listening Circles’ fiasco, another attempt was made at the annual Policyfest weekend in January 2020 to resolve conflict between GC and gender ideology extremist factions. GPEW engaged two experienced trainers and mediators in Nonviolent Communication (NVC). GPEW put forward various nominees on either side to be interviewed by the NVC trainers.  
• Some of those who took part found it unhelpful. They said that the basic premise was that, if you just talk about your own needs and hopes, and ask the other party what their needs and hopes are, you would be able to find common ground. This turned the discussion into an individualistic one and effectively meant that you couldn’t talk about women’s rights, only about your own needs; you couldn’t say women were oppressed as a class, only something like, “I feel oppressed by my feeling that you assume that I am worth less than you”.
• In fairness to the NVC trainers, it seems that the problems were too great to be resolved in one Policyfest weekend and the dialogue should have been just the start of a much longer and deeper process.
• For various reasons the attempts at dialogue were not taken further that year (nor since). This was partly because one of the main drivers of the attempts at dialogue, John Woodhead, resigned and left GPEW in early 2020.
• Autumn Conference online. For the first time ever, the GPEW conference was a virtual and not an IRL experience. It was on Zoom with a separate online voting tool. It was dogged by technical problems.
• GPW elections, Oct to Dec 2020. GPW elections were set aside on a technicality and had to be re-run. For the GC feminists, Emma Bateman, the previous co-chair, stood again and won. But her running mate as co-chair, Rebecca Johnson, lost out to Kathryn Bristow, a male-bodied transwoman, who had the support of Sian Berry and Amelia Womack. The gender identity extremist candidates won a bare majority of GPW committee positions, putting gender ideology extremists in overall control of the GPW committee.

2021

• Spring Conference: Out of a membership of over 50,000, fewer than one per cent voted at the conference. Voting was generally split as to 58% Gender Ideologist versus 42% Gender Critical voters. Thus it was that:
• Gender Self-ID was voted in as party policy: only 493 people voted, of whom 281 were in favour.
• A motion proposing that the party should support women’s sex-based rights in accordance with the United Nations CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) agreement was voted down.  Only 491 people voted, or whom 289 people voted against women’s rights, and the motion failed. 
• There were overtures to attempt further dialogue between gender ideologist and gender critical factions. But they did not amount to much.
• Almost as soon as Spring Conference was over, Emma Bateman, Co-Chair of GPW, was suspended for transphobia. Here is her Tweet:  “@EmmaBatemanGPW  16 Mar 2021  On March 8th, International Women’s Day, I was suspended from the Green Party following a complaint by 2 fellow GPW committee members Because I queried whether trans women are female. Green Party policy is that ‘trans women are women’. Now we must agree that they are also female.”

• Dom Armstrong, GP Councillor in Sunderland, resigned on 11 March 2021. He was elected in 2019 as Sunderland City Council’s first-ever Green councillor. He wrote in his letter of resignation: “I am also dismayed by the fact that a co chair of our women‘s committee is a biological male, who works for a company (Gender GP) that in 2018 was found guilty of illegally supplying puberty blockers to children as young as ten. The Green Party are not concerned by this, in fact this person holds another FOUR senior party roles, and gloats on social media when some women (who they are meant to represent) feel so uncomfortable about this, they leave the party.”
• Green Party Strike on 18 March: days after Emma Bateman was suspended, Bridgwater and West Somerset Green Party went on strike, demanding that she be re-instated.
• July: Kathryn Bristow declared faeself (sic) to be sole chair of GPW and locked the internal members-only Green Party women discussion space from comments by other members:
• GPEW Co-Leaders resign on 5 and 14 July respectively:
  • Jonathan Bartley, co-leader for five years, resigned on 5 July
  • On 14 July, Siân Berry, his joint co-leader, resigned too. She cited an “inconsistency” between the party’s promises and actions on trans rights. Berry’s decision came after the party selected Shahrar Ali, the party’s former deputy leader, as the spokesperson for policing and domestic safety. According to Pink News “Ali was heavily criticised after he embraced definitions of women that exclude trans and intersex women from womanhood.”

The resulting leadership elections, as well as this year’s round of elections to GPEx, the Green Party Executive Committee, took place in August and September. The leadership result is due out today. Watch this space!

GENDER IS NOT AN IDENTITY, IT IS A TOOL OF PATRIARCHY: A FEMINIST VIEW OF GENDER-IDENTITY POLITICS

This article is also available to buy as a pamphlet via ebay

HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALL JUST FINE

Men are fine, women are fine. Every body is fine, every body is perfect. If we believe this, then any sense of dissociation or negative feelings about our bodies must be distress, whether caused by trauma, abuse, societal pressure, injury, illness, sexism, racism or disableism.

BIOLOGY
Biologically humans come in two sexes i.e. we are sexually dimorphic. A small number of people are born intersex, which does not negate the reality of two sexes, but rather confirms it. You can’t be a combination of two things if the two things don’t exist. Traditionally intersex people have had their bodies surgically altered at birth to conform to one or another sex, but there is now a movement of intersex people who challenge the validity of this. If all bodies are fine why force this conformity on babies who are unable to consent? Why surgically alter perfect bodies, as all bodies are?

FEMINIST THINKING ON OPPRESSION
Feminist thought, as developed through consciousness-raising, writing and activism, offers an analysis of sex and gender which sees gender as a system of expectations, compulsions and hierarchy imposed on males and females. It asserts that patriarchal society has created a hierarchical system of oppression between the sexes, whereby males as a class have power over females as a class. This oppressive hierarchy intersects with all others i.e. racism, disableism, classism, homophobia etc to create complex, interwoven hierarchies which have different consequences for different groups. Individuals in an oppressor group can of course be hurt and distressed, including as a result of their role in the hierarchy. Feminism concentrates on the importance of our biological sex because when we start to look at how sexism operates we observe through our experience that biology is the excuse for the oppression of women and a major and crucial site of that oppression. So we are oppressed, discriminated against, controlled and mistreated in this society, not because of how we identify, but through the reproductive system of our bodies, through sexual abuse and rape (and the threat of it), through prostitution, pornography, child-bearing and all aspects of our fertility. For thousands of years, men have controlled women – economically, socially, sexually, emotionally and physically – through our bodies and our fertility.
This thinking does not mean we allow biology to define us. On the contrary feminism asserts that any female can do or be anything, that the fact of our femaleness should never be a limiting factor, that we should be without limits and that anything which does limit, control, discriminate against or hurt us as women is wrong. But we cannot simply identify our way out of oppression and denying the reality of our biological makeup prevents us from being able to name, confront and organise against what is done to us through our bodies.

FEMINIST THINKING ON GENDER
Gender is a set of societally-imposed, socially-constructed norms which are the structure through which all males and females are boxed in, but which, in particular, are the building blocks of the hierarchy between males and females. From a very early age, almost birth, these gender expectations are imposed through the clothes we wear, the toys we play with, the colours that are considered appropriate, the behaviour that is expected of us, the attitudes expressed towards us. They may vary from culture to culture and throughout history but their purpose is the same, to mould us into roles in society according to our biological sex. These gender boxes are detrimental to males, especially to the extent that they rigidly prohibit expression of feelings of sadness, grief or fear, suppressing crying and shaking as being weak and feminine. They mould our boys into a state of separation from their emotions which is deeply harmful to themselves and society. But in many more ways the limitations imposed on girls through gender are the basis for the sexism and misogyny which blights women’s lives.

GENDER IDENTITY?
Gender is what feminism has critiqued for decades, so the recent concept of gender identity as something to be chosen and celebrated is a strange one for feminists. The categories of non-binary, genderfluid, agender and a myriad of other identities seem to be expressions of dissatisfaction with “being a woman” or “being a man” in this society. Quite right too! Nobody wants to be limited by their biology, by what society imposes on us based on our biology, by socially-constructed gender roles. But to deny reality by trying to identify out of being male or female, not only won’t work, as sexism does not care how we might “identify”, but also unwittingly reinforces those gender roles. It’s like holding our hands up and saying “You win, a woman can’t be powerful in this society, a man can’t be gentle and caring, and as I want to be those things I’m clearly not a woman/man.” No, no, no! Let’s not swallow patriarchy’s lies, let’s keep asserting that the objective definition of us as a female or a male based on biological reality will never define our personality, our attitudes, our abilities, our desires, our behaviour, our place in the world.
It is also very dangerous to deny our biology. Humans can’t actually change sex. We can take hormones, and embark on surgical alterations to our bodies. These can change our appearance, voice, body hair, breasts, genitals, but we will always be biologically what we were born as, and have health needs based on that e.g. only men get prostate cancer, symptoms of heart disease are different for women.

TRANSITIONING
When we are born we are described as male or female based on objective observation of genitalia, not as is becoming fashionable to say “assigned female or male at birth”. What is assigned to us is societal roles based on our sex, and this is what is problematic. So transitioning, however far a person might take it, cannot transform someone into the opposite sex. One can only “live as” the opposite sex i.e. socially transition and alter one’s appearance. Many of us, especially in the LGB community and the women’s movement, have for years been respectful of an individual’s choice to do this, by calling them by the name and pronoun they request; and basic human rights dictate that no-one should be discriminated against on the basis of this choice, be it in employment, housing, access to services etc. Nor should any trans person be abused or assaulted. Any such discrimination or abuse is quite rightly called “transphobia”.

“MALE TO TRANS” FOLK
Male To Trans people (MTTs) have been raised as male i.e. a member of the group accorded power and privilege over females. They have been conditioned to assume the privileges of that group, and indeed have benefited from those privileges. They will inevitably carry patterns of behaviour and entitlement associated with that group. This is true however hurt or distressed they have felt. So to assert that they are actually women, members of the oppressed group, and furthermore, despite being male-bodied and raised male, always have been female; to claim membership of the oppressed group, thus changing the definition of that group (i.e. female objectively defined by biological sex) is an extreme form of sexism and particularly galling for women themselves. The assertion that “transwomen are women” is an ideology with no basis in fact, which is not believed or adhered to by many MTTs. Adopting it is not the only way to support trans people, and in fact is quite unsupportive to the individuals struggling to find a way to live happily in their male bodies. The reason it has no basis in fact is that, apart from biological sex, what is the definition of female? Is it a feeling? Is it an identity? Is it a brain separate from a body? Those of us born, raised and living as women in this society might quite understandably say such definitions are an insult to our lives and experiences, to the 85,000 women known to be raped every year in England and Wales, to the 35% of women worldwide who experience male violence. Any attempt to define female other than by biology inevitably resorts to gender stereotypes, so all references by this ideology to “being female” or “feeling like a woman” are based on such socially-constructed ideas as wanting to wear feminine clothing, play with dolls, wear makeup, do “girly” things, and crucially not do “boy” things. Strangely it rarely manifests itself in a desire to do the housework or receive 14% less pay than they did as a man. It is portrayed as a rejection of gender roles, but is actually an adoption of the stereotypes associated with the opposite sex, thus reinforcing those stereotypes as belonging only to one sex, and thus a deeply traditional, regressive and misogynist stance. Sorry guys you don’t get to break out of your restrictive gender box by jumping into ours and redefining us in the process! Nor do you have to. Men can be anything, wear anything, do anything, feel anything. Women are not defining or limiting you, only the concept of gender is.

THE BACKLASH AGAINST FEMINISM…
Feminism’s critique and challenge to gender roles had a large measure of success in the 70s and 80s, to everyone’s benefit. Early Learning Centres promoted the de-gendering of toys, girls could wear dungarees and climb trees, boys could prepare themselves for fatherhood by playing with dolls, books progressed from “Janet and John” to stories with strong female characters. The backlash against feminism was deliberately fostered by a capitalist system which preferred to sell twice as many goods to parents, and with that backlash gender roles became tighter than ever. Society bought into the whole princess trope for girls, with sexualised clothing for younger and younger girls, while boys were pushed back into macho superhero roles and expected once again to be tough and never show emotion. This was a deliberate reversal of many of the gains made by the women’s liberation movement, and detrimental to all of us.

…AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
It is no coincidence that the recent massive increase and interest in transitioning, particularly amongst young people, has occurred at a time when the tightening of gender roles has become tyrannical, and young people quite rightly want to break out of these boxes. The feminist analysis of power relations has over the years been traduced to the need for “gender equality”, as if arbitrary and unexplained discrimination is the problem rather than a consciously nurtured power system. The absence of an analysis that gender roles and hierarchy are the problem has led to the perception that if we don’t like society’s rules and roles then there is something wrong with us and we must change ourselves; that “gender” is the reality not biological sex; that we must redefine ourselves, not as the sex that we are but as either the opposite sex or as a new “gender identity”. The feminist view that gender is an illusion, a societally-imposed set of rules which keep males and females in their place and assert the primacy of males over females is one that many young people have been prevented from hearing, by a society which has an interest in preserving the status quo. It seems it is still revolutionary to say “Women and girls can be anything, boys and men can be anything! There is nothing wrong with you if you do not conform, it is society which is at fault!” It has now become more urgent than ever to declaim this loud and clear, because our girls are being tossed and turned in the storms of gender identity and coming to some worrying and downright dangerous conclusions.

“FEMALE TO TRANS” FOLK
The biggest increase in referrals to “Gender Identity” clinics recently is amongst girls and young women. Our attention has been taken up by MTTs who, by virtue of the male patterns of entitlement and centring themselves that they have been brought up with, have captured all the media attention. Women have been busy dealing with encroachment on our hard-won spaces of woman-centred practice e.g. rape crisis centres, women’s refuges, feminist organisations and lesbian spaces, trying to negotiate solutions which are inclusive but allow women-born women the right to meet and organise together. But while our backs were turned, our gender-non-conforming girls have been being encouraged to think that they must be male. This is occurring on social media sites such as Reddit and Tumblr through an ideology which says that if you’re not feminine, or not comfortable with being feminine, then you’re not female. Many girls approaching puberty in our currently highly-sexualised society are concerned, fearful, unhappy with and rejecting of what they see being expected of them as their bodies change. This must come as no surprise. Being surrounded by a generation of boys raised on internet porn and confronted by hyper-sexualised images of females, presents an intimidating, if not downright abusive, climate for adolescent girls. Little wonder that girls are rejecting the role of sexual availability, and with it their own developing bodies which seem to be a magnet for anything from “low-level” objectification to outright sexual abuse. Rape culture is alive and well, and girls navigating the rapids of adolescence have every reason to reject becoming a woman. There is currently very little room for manoeuvre, or ability to opt out of objectification, as a woman in this society.
What is extremely worrying is that a girl presenting to a gender identity clinic as potentially “trans”, often as a result of a social media culture which has encouraged her to think that’s what she may be, is increasingly being “affirmed” in that rigid position, which almost inevitably leads to social transition. Girls are then binding their breasts, resulting in restricted lungs and breathing problems. Girls are having mastectomies. Girls are taking puberty-blocking hormones, leading on to testosterone (which is not generally approved for females) frequently resulting in permanent sterilisation. Permanent sterilisation, facilitated by adults in responsible roles. Not to mention future genital surgery. Surely such a route should be absolutely a last resort when all other therapeutic support has been exhausted. Adult society is comprehensively failing our young gender-non-conforming girls. We should be congratulating them on refusing to perform feminine gender roles, assuring them that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with them and their bodies, and placing the blame squarely on a misogynist culture. How has it come to be the progressive position to encourage mutilation of girls’ bodies when life as a female has become unbearable for them? Why are we not in uproar about this? Young people will always experiment with styles, behaviours, definitions and identities. And they won’t appreciate the adult world butting in on their culture. But we are not just talking about a goth phase here. Adults, including parents and professionals of all kinds, have a duty of care to our young people, and the consequences of transition for girls are simply too drastic and long-lasting to abandon them to this ideology.

LESBIAN CONVERSION & PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY
What is also clear is that many of these girls if left alone would certainly grow up to be lesbians. This we know from the accounts of detransitioning women, as well as lesbians who know that they would have been seen as trans if the current climate was around when they were young. It has been shown in repeated studies that a lesbian identity in girls is often not commonly formed until late teens or early twenties. What this means is that many girls who would grow up to be self-identifying lesbians are being “groomed” through social media, trans ideology and well-meaning but misguided professional services into believing they are “trans” rather than simply girls who refuse to be sexually available to males or perform their expected role as young females. There are cases of young people being advised on trans forums to tell their parents they are suicidal in order to access the treatment they want. What kind of perverse society offers mothers the choice of mastectomy or suicide for their beloved daughters? These girls and their parents are not served by professional services which have bought into a system of thought which says we must affirm a young person’s identity at all costs and to do otherwise is “transphobic”. We have a responsibility to offer an alternative feminist perspective on their distress as young women. We would not “affirm” an anorexic’s view of themselves as fat, or a self-harming youngster’s “right” to damage their body. We would look at the underlying causes, and always, always take seriously our duty of care. The same must be done in cases of potential “trans” young people.
There are also increasing attempts to normalise, to ever younger and younger children, the concept that it is possible to change one’s sex, always with reference to gender stereotypes. Books aimed at 3-5 year olds are presenting the regressive falsehood that if you want to wear a bow in your hair and do feminine things then you must of course be a girl and if your desire is to reject femininity, the colour pink and frilly dresses i.e. be an active, dynamic girl, you must be a boy. How did we come to this? And how could it possibly be considered feminist?

FEELINGS & REALITY
We hear repeatedly from people defining themselves as trans, that they feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body, or vice versa. Women know that their reality is not a feeling that any man can lay claim to, but we need to acknowledge that this feeling is real. It is perfectly valid to assert that you have feelings of unhappiness or dissociation from your body, generally called body dysmorphia. (Gender dysphoria is a more contested term. If gender is a social construction and not innate, as feminism asserts, then to be unhappy with your gender is simply human and thus we are all actually or potentially gender dysphoric, which rather makes a nonsense of the term.) However to frame this distress as “feeling like a woman” begs a number of questions. How can one know what the opposite sex feels like? Is being a woman or a man more a feeling than a biological reality? Besides, feelings are not a good guide to action. Anything which expresses itself as feeling bad about oneself, especially if it becomes so unbearable that one feels unable to live in the body one has, is surely something a person needs therapeutic help with. Feelings need discharging through our natural healing processes of crying, shaking, etc and work with a good therapist will achieve this. Deep feelings need deep discharge. We all know how very much better we can feel after a good, long cry. Of course wise therapeutic help is very often not available, certainly not of sufficient length and quality to deal with deep-seated distress, and we know from detransitioners and others that body dysmorphia often has its roots in physical or sexual abuse, or other traumatic life experiences, with the gender component of the distress layered on top. In this way feelings of needing to change sex are not only validated but portrayed as a reasonable guide to action by a society which cannot abide, and actively punishes, gender non-conformity. When individuals who experience body dysmorphia to such an extent that they present at a gender identity clinic are not offered comprehensive therapeutic support to uncover the reasons for their distress and help them recover from their pain, but are rather “affirmed” in their self-diagnosis, then society is abdicating its responsibility and they are being let down.

DRUGS
As with many other situations in society, the absence of wise, consistent and appropriate therapeutic help, means that people often have to find alternative means of managing their pain. This frequently manifests itself in taking drugs. From a coffee every morning to wake ourselves up, through tablets to help us sleep, to alcohol or illegal drugs to numb our feelings, to medication for mental distress, drugs can make us feel better, and in an imperfect society, are a solution most of us take part in to a greater or lesser degree. Hormonal drugs are no different, so a person taking hormones to imitate the attributes of the opposite sex may well “feel better”. This is no surprise, but is no more proof that they were really a “man in a woman’s body” than that an anorexic really is fat. Feelings, though real, are not reality.

TRANSPHOBIA
Let us be clear, lesbians, gay men and women in general, particularly feminists, have been the most vocal, consistent and practical allies to trans people for decades. We know what it is to be abused, to be discriminated against simply because of who you are, to be an outsider in a rigid society. Women, lesbians and gay men are the natural allies of trans people. So what has changed? Why is there conflict between feminists and the trans community? Why is Germaine Greer, one of the founding mothers of feminism, vilified in trans circles? Why have bathrooms become the site of such vexation? Why are radical feminists such as Julie Bindel, a lesbian and campaigner for years against violence against women, no-platformed in universities, a tactic originally used against fascism? No progressive person wants to be transphobic, and many individuals and organisations have recently been seduced or coerced into adopting one particular ideology i.e. that there is such a thing as “gender identity” entirely separate from one’s biological sex, that being a man or a woman is a feeling unrelated to biology, and that the only way to be supportive to trans people, and indeed to avoid being seen as transphobic, is to adopt this ideology. It must be said loud and clear, this is not true. Trans people are many and varied and do not all agree with this way of thinking. Many MTTs and FTTs still see themselves as the sex they were born as. Many only partly transition, sometimes only socially, and change their identities over time. Many decide they have made a mistake or that transitioning has not solved the unhappiness they sought to banish, and many of these people detransition. Trans ideology would insist we accept absolutely that a MTT person is a woman. This not only conveniently absolves them of any responsibility for the maleness they grew up with and benefited from, but also begs the question: are they no longer female if they detransition? At what point does a detransitioning MTT become a man again? Detransitioners are an inconvenience to the essentialist notion of an innate gender identity which trumps biology. Unfortunately for gender ideology, they refuse to go away and, the more transitioning we see, the more they will be part of the landscape of our world.
Supporting trans people’s right to freedom from discrimination and abuse does not have to mean agreeing to an ideology which has been shown to be backward, misogynistic and against the liberation of all humans from gender stereotypes. It is not transphobic to be scientific about biology, or to disagree that a biological male is actually a female just because he says he is. In fact it absolutely belittles real and damaging transphobia, to insist on this one view. It results, for example, in the farcical but ultimately dangerous actions of the NHS sending out reminder notices of cervical smears to MTTs who have no cervix and not sending them to FTTs who do have a cervix. Clearly ideologies, when insisted on to create policy and practice, have consequences, and this ideology has negative consequences for trans people themselves. We must bear this in mind when examining any proposed legislation or policies on trans issues.

LESBOPHOBIA
Lesbians are women who are sexually attracted to women. This would have been an uncontentious statement until recently. Now we have a situation where the very definition of “women” is contested and being redefined. If “woman” no longer means an adult human female, if being a “woman” can be simply a feeling, if a person born and raised male and often still with an intact male body can define themselves as a woman, then society and lesbians in particular are faced with a dilemma. If transwomen are an oppressed minority of women then, logically, a lesbian who says she would not consider a relationship with a person with male genitals could be labelled transphobic. It is barely believable to any rational-thinking person, but this is actually happening. It is called the “cotton ceiling” and used to criticise and abuse lesbians. Lesbians are being told that they are transphobic for being who they are, lovers of women. This is not only ridiculous but it is deeply anti-lesbian and the LGBT communities and indeed all who consider themselves opponents of homophobia need to call it out. It also shows where logic based on a false premise can lead.

SEX-SEGREGATED FACILITIES
It is important that all people, including children, are able to use a public toilet or changing room in safety. This has traditionally been achieved by segregation on the basis of biological sex, on the presumption that the main safety issue is men’s violence towards and abuse of women and girls, although this has begged the question of heterosexual men’s violence against gay men, who have never been served, practically or legally, with facilities safe from homophobic abuse. Clearly any person who has physically transitioned or is in the process of doing so deserves the same safety from male violence. However, to insist that women and girls must forego their own safety by including male-bodied people in female-only spaces, simply on the basis of self-declaration, is wrong and dangerous. Many FTTs are understandably ambivalent about insisting on using male facilities and in fact often prefer to still use females’. So the issue is not identity. The problem is male violence and the issue is safety. We need to name the problem in order to come up with practical solutions that ensure safety for everyone, without one group’s rights overriding another’s. This is surely not beyond the wit of humanity.

LIES, DAMN LIES, STATISTICS AND EVERYTHING ELSE
Many who adopt different gender identities are enjoying the freedom to define themselves at last; there is an element of playfulness and subversion about being part of this trend which is fun and seductive. Fair enough. We are all free to call ourselves whatever we want, we can change our minds, we can have fun subverting society’s expectations. But it matters whether identity or biology is the measure of a woman or a man. It matters in society’s gathering of statistics. If anyone can identify as a woman how can we gather information about the position of women in society e.g. with regard to rates of pay, health, crime or violence. If people’s identities, which are myriad and frequently change from one year to the next, are the definitions by which we gather statistics, then social policies based on those statistics will be useless. It matters with regard to prisons, where a trans identity can result in a violent male offender being housed with vulnerable and powerless women. It matters in sports, where women are now expected to compete with biological males whose testosterone levels are allowed to be higher than the women-born women’s. It matters when we attempt to redress centuries of discrimination against women by adopting quotas in public life, politics and organisations; if anyone can identify as a woman then women-born women will once again be on the losing side. Everyone is free to identify however they like, but once we elevate this personal preference and expression of personality to the same status as biological sex we undo in one fell swoop all the gains women have made and still need to make in our male-dominated society.

DEBATE & SILENCE
Debate and discussion have consistently been shown to be an essential prerequisite for progressive change in society. There are currently opposing views and conflicts of interests around the issues of sexism, women’s rights, gender identity and trans rights. In progressive movements, we must always strive to keep thinking, to be open to debate and to listen to each other, in order to end oppression and mistreatment of all groups of people. It is therefore worrying to observe the silencing of feminists who have challenged a trans ideology which insists its analysis is the truth and the only way to support trans people. Feminists are being no-platformed in universities; women are been verbally abused and threatened on social media; the acronym TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) is used as an insult, a threat and a misogynist slur against women; lesbians are regularly threatened with rape and branded transphobic. This is no way to conduct a liberation movement and no way to win allies for a cause. To insist that decades of feminist thought is transphobic and to close down dissent is counterproductive and insulting. Feminists believe that the limiting consequences of gender roles and hierarchy are what oppress all women and hurt all men. This includes people who at times might identify as trans, genderfluid, non-binary, genderqueer etc. We are all fed up with society’s limiting of our humanity due to our biological sex. To end this and to free ourselves, we must be open to respectful debate around this issue or we will never progress. Any silencing only benefits a misogynist, homophobic and patriarchal society, and we will all be the losers. Let us instead win this struggle for freedom from gender’s stultifying grip!

Green Goude

Above article also available in German

Gender ist Keine Identität 

and Portuguese

Género Nao E Uma Identidade

Gender Wars in the Green Party

Today’s post is a re-blog of a clear account by Sandy Irvine of events in the ‘gender wars’ in the Green Party up to November last year, with special emphasis on the party’s treatment of Alison Teal, former Green Party Councillor in Sheffield, who is languishing on a ‘no-fault suspension’ because of her opinions on women’s and children’s best interests.

Gender Wars in the Green Party

Statement from some Green Party Women Committee Members

Statement from some Green Party Women Committee Members

We members of the Green Party Women (GPW) Committee condemn the decision of GPEW (Green Party England & Wales), via the Party’s Complaints Procedure, to suspend the co-chair of GPW, Emma Bateman.

We view this as a serious instance of institutional misogyny by the Party. 

Emma was elected as co-chair, by the whole GPW membership, for the third time running, with an overwhelming majority. She received 44% of 1st preference votes, and was elected in the first round. Her election campaign focussed on many issues of importance to women including her support and advocacy for women’s sex-based rights – one of the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. The GPW members who voted for her were aware of her very clearly expressed opinions.

Emma also demonstrated her intention during the election process and in our first

Committee meeting on Thursday 3rd February to work with all Committee members regardless of differences of opinion, but without suppressing her own opinions or those of other Committee members. 

Exactly two weeks after her appointment, she has been suspended for a second time, the first time being after her appointment as co-chair last year. We don’t believe this is a coincidence, or that it is unconnected to her being seen as an “uppity” woman who speaks her mind. 

We witnessed a seemingly co-ordinated campaign by some GPEW members against her, including publicly via social media. One prominent office-holder smeared almost 260 GPW voters as “transphobes”, others called for the Party to “do something about it ASAP”. 

For Green Party Regional Council (GPRC) to give in to this campaign of vexatious complaints is, in our opinion, unlawful and an abuse of process.

The Committee has made no complaint against Emma Bateman. We hold a variety of views on sex and gender, yet we are all willing to work together to re-establish GPW as an active valuable resource that encourages and engages women into political activism. This work has now for a second year been put in serious jeopardy. This is why we are naming Emma’s suspension as institutional misogyny and an attack on us all.

We members of the Committee of Green Party Women hereby call for the Green Party Regional Council to revoke the no-fault suspension of Emma Bateman with immediate effect.  We believe that only the most serious of allegations against the Code of Conduct should result in immediate suspension and Emma strongly refutes that anything she has said belongs in this category.

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Trans People, Trans Ideology and Trans Women

As with discussing any topic, debate about the trans gender issue and its meeting with women’s rights has to start by defining terms.  Without this, we will inevitably find ourselves talking at cross purposes, writes Caitlin Collins.

I will focus here on trans women, ie men who wish to be identified as women, rather than trans men, ie women who wish to be identified as men.  This is because it is trans-identifying men who are causing the most disruption in society because their demands bring them into conflict with women’s rights: a man demanding to be accommodated in a women’s prison causes more disruption – and is a more likely occurrence – than a woman demanding to be accommodated in a men’s prison.

Sex and gender

First, we need to distinguish between a person’s sex and their gender.  The terms are often used interchangeably, sometimes because gender is considered a more polite word than sex (and because asking the question ‘Sex?’ on forms invites the witty response ‘Yes, please’ instead of the required M or F), sometimes due to confusion as to their distinctions, and sometimes in a deliberate attempt to conflate the two. 

A person’s sex is their physiological category relating to reproduction, which in mammals such as humans means male or female, ie those who produce sperm and have the potential to sire children, and those who produce eggs and have the potential to get pregnant and give birth to children.

Gender refers to the attitudes, behaviours and roles commonly associated with each of the sexes; however most of those (some would say all of them) are due to social conditioning, starting with blue rompers for a boy baby and pink ones for a girl.  In some cultures gender variation is very limited, with boys being discouraged from adopting attitudes, behaviours and roles that are perceived as being feminine, and girls being discouraged or even prohibited from taking on attitudes, behaviours and roles perceived as being masculine.  In other cultures, such as in the UK, the range of gender possibilities is much wider: if a boy likes playing with dolls and aspires to become a kindergarten teacher, it’s fine; if a girl studies political theory and aspires to become Prime Minister, OK.  Of course some gender stereotyping still persists, as does the tendency for society to place a higher value on those stereotypes traditionally thought of as masculine (girls will wear trousers, but not so many boys are happy to put on a dress) but it is widely accepted that we have moved on from the restrictive rigid gender stereotyping of the past.  

Next, it is important to distinguish between trans people and trans rights ideology. 

Trans people

Trans people are individuals trying to find happiness by adopting and living in accordance with the gender stereotypes or socially-conditioned programming more usually associated with the opposite sex.  However, it involves more than, for example, a man simply changing his appearance to look more like a woman; it involves his making a lasting identity change in which he consistently lives his life as though he were a woman, and requires other people to accept his adopted identity and to treat him, as far as possible, as though he were a woman. 

Trans rights ideology

Trans rights ideology is a complex, shifting mass of beliefs, ideas and theories providing various often conflicting rationales that claim to support trans people but that in practice may in fact be damaging to them due to negatively influencing public opinion.  Many trans people reject trans rights ideology.  Many, in fact most, people who champion the ideology are not trans people.  Trans rights ideology promotes the following ideas:

• when a baby is born it is incorrect to observe its sex as a biological fact based on its physiology; rather, if the parents, doctor or midwife, on seeing its male genitals, say, ‘It’s a boy’, they are merely arbitrarily assigning it a gender or sex (the terms are often deliberately conflated), hence the expression ‘Assigned male at birth’;
• this assignment is often wrong, so that . . .
  • the individual who was wrongly assigned male experiences a conflict between the male identity that was imposed upon him by others and his own feeling of being female; he feels like a female trapped in a male body;
• the feeling of being female is more authentic and more important than the biological fact of being male, so that . . .
  • the individual is actually, really, authentically a girl or woman, so that . . .
  • the individual has the right to access all of the protections and rights that society has provided to women in order to protect them from male violence and male privilege;
• anyone questioning any of these beliefs or ideas is hostile or ‘transphobic’ and must be silenced;
• anyone refusing to use the required language, such as the new gender-identity based pronouns (instead of the old sex-based pronouns that have served us since language began), or the prefix ‘cis’ as in ‘cis woman’, referring to a woman whose gender identity matches the sex assigned at birth (this politically sinister term is meant to groom society into accepting two equally valid kinds of woman: trans and cis), is transphobic and must be silenced;
• anyone standing up for women’s rights must include trans women, ie trans-identifying men, in these rights, or be deemed transphobic and duly silenced;
• anyone daring to defend some brave soul who has challenged the trans ideology and therefore been demonised, such as JK Rowling, is transphobic and must be silenced.

Gender stereotypes

One of the ironies of trans ideology is that it has a very old-fashioned view of gender, recreating the polarised view of clearly separated masculine and feminine gender stereotypes.  Instead of applauding today’s opportunities for a boy to embrace attitudes, behaviours and roles that were traditionally perceived to be feminine stereotypes, trans ideology takes any such preferences as indications that he is actually a girl – the ‘female trapped in a male body’ idea. 

The five main groups of ‘trans-identifying’ men

There are five main specific groups of men who might claim to identify as trans women, more accurately termed trans-identifying men; there may be some who fit into more than one of these categories, and there are some who fall outside these categories.

1.  Men who just feel more at ease living as though they were women.  They wish to adopt a consistent, lasting feminine gender identity.  They may or may not take hormones and / or have surgery to bring about physical changes.  They just want to get on with their lives.  A well-known example would be the late travel writer, James Morris, who became Jan Morris.
2. Homosexual men who believe they would be happier living as though they were women.  In some cultures homosexuality is not acceptable, and it may be safer for a gay man to present as a woman; for example, Iran has a high proportion of trans-identifying men.  Some families are uncomfortable with a boy child who seems to have feminine tendencies; they would prefer that he be re-branded as a girl.  In these instances ‘transitioning’ such a child could be seen as an extreme kind of gay conversion therapy.
3. Men suffering from the sexual fetish of auto gynephilia.  This is a fetish in which a man is aroused by the thought of himself as a woman; he may enjoy dressing up as a woman in order to masturbate.  The opportunity to parade this fetish in public, enlisting others as involuntary bit-players in his sexual fantasy as they unwittingly endorse his feminine role-play, may be very tempting.
4. Young men who, as children, were encouraged by others – their schools, families, peers, online buddies, and medical professionals – to think that they could achieve happiness by identifying as female.  Instead of being supported to explore their identity through counselling, or just encouraged to wait a bit, they were put on irreversibly damaging puberty-blocking drugs and then surgically castrated.  As more and more of these tragically abused individuals attempt to ‘de-transition’ and rebuild their shattered lives, the court cases and compensation claims will happen, although of course no amount of financial compensation can undo the harm they have been done.
5. Male sex predators who spot an opportunity to gain easy access to women and, perhaps, children. This is the group that is most disruptive to society.  All a predatory male has to do is to claim to be a woman, and he can get his Access All Areas pass.  Predatory behaviour ranges from voyeurism (peeping) and exhibitionism (flashing) in women’s toilets and changing rooms, all the way up to rape in California’s women’s prisons (don’t worry: the authorities are equipping the women – the real ones – with condoms).  Such men are of course merely exploiting a loophole; by no stretch should their claims be given any legitimacy.  The problem is, if people can self-identity themselves as the opposite gender, and that gender-identity counts as more authentic and more significant than their physical sex, there is no way to challenge the man who says he’s a woman for nefarious reasons.

Occupying one or more of these categories, or falling outside them altogether, are men with a patriarchal sense of entitlement who use the opportunity created by their trans identity to enable them to invade women’s protected spaces not for sexual predation but for other sinister reasons.  Men are pushing their way into women’s sports by claiming they are women; it’s an easy way for a mediocre male athlete to succeed at last, at women’s expense.  Men are pushing their way into women’s jobs, such as Mridul Wadhwa, the new CEO of Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis Centre, a trans-identifying male who says that any woman who is so impertinent as to ask for a female-only space at a rape centre should be ‘educated’ out of her transphobia.  Men are claiming to be lesbian trans women and demanding that lesbians have sex with them.  If a lesbian refuses, on the grounds that she is same-sex attracted, she is told that she must accept ‘girl dick’; if she won’t, she’s transphobic.

Distinguishing between trans people and trans ideology

We must be able to make these distinctions between trans people and trans ideology, and between different categories of trans-identifying men, if we are going to have any meaningful discussion about this issue that, like it or not, affects us all.  Precise language matters: if the definition of the word ‘woman’ is expanded to include men who wish to be identified as women, then women will lose their sex-based rights.  Already crimes that have been committed by men are being recorded as having been committed by women, simply because the criminals self-identify as women.  In Ireland, a mentally deranged young man who identified as a woman, calling himself ‘Barbie Kardashian’, assaulted several women, culminating in an attack in which he tried to gouge out the eyes of his victim; when he went on the run, the Irish police were obliged to say they were looking for a violent woman who was a danger to other women.  This is where the unthinking acceptance of trans ideology is taking us.  It has to be stopped.