Over the years I’ve started to change my mind about transgender issues. I’ve been forced to question much of the received ‘wisdom’ of trans activists and much of the ‘approved’ literature on transsexuality because of my personal experience. What it has taught me is that maybe transition is not all it’s cracked up to be as a treatment for all gender confusion issues. Also, just because a trans activist says something about gender confusion, doesn’t automatically mean that their statement is objectively true. I’ve been prompted to write this article because Brighton and Hove council on Britain’s south coast, is going all out to promote trans issues in the schools that they control.
In order to show just why I’ve changed my mind, I need to recount some of my personal experiences. Many years ago I had a short term relationship, of less than a year, with a lovely post-operative trans woman who I shall refer to as ‘Abigail’. Now Abigail was lovely. Intelligent, attractive, funny and interested in maths, engineering, art and history. A proper ‘geek-bird’ as some may put it. We broke up not because of any issue with her gender status, but because it was a long distance relationship that like many long distance relationships was difficult to sustain.
Now Abigail was, as I said, the sort of woman any man would be proud to be seen with. She was bright enough and aware enough to be the sort of woman who you could introduce to either a dustman or a duke and she would behave appropriately in either situation. I loved her dearly and think of her a lot even now, many years on. I still miss her and wonder what became of her. I hope she found happiness because she deserved to do so.
If there was one stain on or one fault in Abigail, it was her sadness, but it was a special sadness. It was the sadness of someone who went through some of the most traumatic hormone and surgical treatment that could be devised, but still had not had her underlying problems or sadness cured or alleviated.
My relationship with Abigail and my many non-intimate friendships with other people who have transitioned or were in the process of transitioning, mostly from male to female, showed me that this sadness was not unique to Abigail. Many of my friends who were trans were sad or depressed and getting gender reassignment didn’t cure them, and didn’t make them feel better about their bodies, even when they expected transitioning to do this. I also encountered several people who had transitioned from male to female but who had regretted it, and for them there was no way back to how they once were. This regret, and the fact that transition wasn’t curing my trans friends of whatever they wanted to be cured of, set me wondering whether or not the current treatment for those with conflicted gender issues is really the best way of dealing with such problems. I started to read stuff by people who were either hostile, questioning or ambivalent to the narrative put out by the activists in the trans community. What I discovered made me think very hard about some of the stuff about trans issues that I’d previously accepted with little question.
I came to several conclusions, not all of which will be accepted or even liked by those who call themselves Trans, and I’m expecting the sort of flaming for this article that others have got for questioning the narrative of the trans activists.
These are some of the conclusions that I’ve come to:
1. Adults, by which I mean over the age of 21, should have the right to transition if they are sane and 100% convinced that they were born in the wrong body, or were assigned the wrong gender at birth, and also if there is long term evidence that this gender confusion has manifested itself before. I pick 21 as a minimum age even to talk to a medical professional about gender confusion not arbitrarily, but because there are many people who don’t really come out of the other side of puberty until then. I look back on my own puberty period and I think ‘thank f**k I ain’t got to go through that again’, it can be a nasty time for both boys and girls and it may be only when you come out of the other side that you realise who you are and what you want out of life.
This touches on the Brighton scandal. Although I believe that adults should have the right to transition if that is their choice, it’s a decision that only adults can make, since it is often an irreversible choice. The doctors cannot replace a penis that has been refashioned into a vagina and there is no reversal for the effects of testosterone on a genetic woman’s body. Many female hormones for genetic men on the other hand, do reverse when they are stopped, and that means that things like breast growth ceases and normal male sex drive returns. Gender identity treatment is traumatic and genuine gender identity disorder is a horrible condition that I would not wish on anybody. GI treatment is not something that should be undertaken lightly or because of pressure from peers or activists.
However, I don’t think that it’s right to make young children, primary school age and below, think about gender issues. It’s what could be called age inappropriate. Children of this age are only just starting out to work out who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are and what are their places in the world. It is grossly unfair and of benefit only to the trans activists to burden children with worries about their gender identity. The Brighton case is also a situation where the local authority is trampling on the rights of parents in a most gross and authoritarian way.
Another reason why I feel the sort of policy being promoted by Brighton council is wrong, is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that children are great mimics. What happens if you get children who are not gender confused, copying those who are? Or children seeing the so called trans children getting special attention that they may wish to have also?
A health visitor once said to us when they visited shortly after a beautiful son (who I will refer to as ‘Laughing Boy’ ) was born to myself and my wife, that babies and toddlers will imitate 90% of what adults do. This is why when I’m researching the appalling world of Islam, I do it before he awakes or after he ‘s gone to sleep. I don’t want to traumatise him by having him see some of the things that I see. Hell, I don’t even put up most of the images I see to this blog, for fear of traumatising my readers. After all, nobody needs to click on Fahrenheit211 and see a surfeit of blood and gore images, my preference is to describe the blood and gore. On a similar note, I try not to let Laughing Boy see me swig from a can of beer or have him hear me swear or watch films that are significantly violent. Although Laughing Boy had his first view of Dambusters when he was 2 days old, I would draw the line at exposing him to ‘Massacre in Rome’, ‘Escape from Sobibor’ or ‘Schindlers List’ until he is much much older, probably at the point when he asks me ‘Dad, why do you say ‘bloody Nazis’ so often?’ It’s basic parental nous not to expose a child to stuff that he or she cannot handle. Because of this, I support the parents in Brighton who are angry at their children being exposed to trans propaganda. I think they should kick up a stink about this, if they don’t, then the lefty teachers and the trans activists will have won.
2. Gender reassignment may not be the best treatment for all those who are gender conflicted. Some people go through periods in their lives when they feel such confusion about their gender, but for many it may cease to be a problem. It’s horrific to think of people being railroaded by trans activists into gender reassignment at a time in their life when they are feeling gender confused but not permanently gender confused. Then there are those who can sublimate their feelings of confused gender by cross dressing and hanging around with other cross dressers or those who admire and fancy cross dressers. This is also a way that some people may choose to deal with issues of gender confusion or thinking outside the gender box. It’s just as valid a way of coping or dealing with a problem in my view as going the whole hog and transitioning, but you’d never know that from the loud and often aggressive trans activists. Transitioning may be an answer for some who are gender confused, but it may not be a route for all or a cure-all.
I lived through the first wave of the AIDS crisis, I lost some friends and colleagues to this awful disease and saw the terrible homo-hatred that AIDS brought out in some people. Because of that I got involved in a small way in sexual health education. I wanted to do my little bit to prevent people from contracting this terrible and destructive disease.
This in turn led me to meet a lot of people who played around with gender as well as with the genitalia of their sexual partners. What I discovered was that there were a large number of men (and it is mostly genetic men who seem to have gender identity issues) who may have laid bricks by day but put on women’s clothing and hung around in bars by night, hoping to get laid by other blokes. Very few of these men had any interest at all in surgical todger removal. They were quite happy to keep their penises, thank you very much. Some of these men were gay but others were what on the Kinsey scale would be 1 to 3. They were quite happy being men but they just enjoyed putting on a flouncy dress and wearing it whilst propping up the bar, drinking a pint of lager and chatting up men instead of women for a change. Also, there were some men who could act in ways with a female persona that they felt they could not do in their everyday male persona. Maybe that says a lot more about what society expects of men today, than it does of the individuals concerned.
As far as I’m concerned, this sort of cross dressing is no different and no more of a problem than someone who enjoys live role playing games and dressing up in armour and carrying a plastic sword. Many people have a fantasy life that they use to escape from the humdrum, some take inspiration from sci-fi or fantasy novels and some prefer to be Stacy the Stratford Strumpet. Horses for courses.
People express themselves in different ways, there is no one way that suits everyone. This is what bothers me about trans activists, they often have the view that is their way or the highway. For them, men who cross dress are on their way to being fully fledged transsexuals, but people and life really aren’t so clear cut.
3. My view on transgender issues has been changed by expert opinion. Surveys such as that quoted by the excellent website ‘Fourth Wave Now’ show that many teenagers who are presenting to medical professionals and others with gender confusion issues, later turn out to be Lesbian,Gay or Bisexual, not transgender. In my view it is a gross dereliction of medical ethics to submit young people to aggressive chemical and surgical treatments for a condition that they may grow out of.
The fact that one of the medical establishments, Johns Hopkins Hospital in the USA, one of the places that pioneered gender reassignment, now refuses to undertake such treatment, should also tell us a lot. Their post treatment studies showed that the level of suicides and instances of depression was the same after treatment as before. Frankly, if a treatment doesn’t sort out the problems that the patient has, then it really isn’t much of a treatment. This ties in with my personal experience that transitioning or accepting that a person is trans often doesn’t cure the underlying problems.
I do not doubt that there are some individuals who are helped by gender reassignment, but I doubt that this number is as high as the trans activists say it is. I would not forbid gender reassignment treatment, but on the other hand I would not promote it. It should be the action of last resort. I would prefer to see other routes taken to address the issues that individuals may have with their own birth gender. Some people may be unhappy and have a poor self image of themselves and this may be ameliorated by a bit of cross dressing and role play or even by a bit of cognitive behavioural therapy. Better that than something irreversible. Bad upbringing, bad previous relationships or the sort of chemical imbalance that can cause depression may manifest themselves as gender identity issues but the gender identity issue may not be the main problem. I’m coming round to the view that surely it is better to cure the disease than just deal with the symptom? I’ve seen too many depressed men who transition only to end up as depressed women and that can’t be right can it?
4. There is something to be said for the mental health approach to trans issues. If you put the genitalia issue aside for a moment and look at other parts of the body and apply the trans activists point of view to them; then the mental health approach starts to make sense. If a person had very bad eczema on their left foot and it drove them to such distraction that they begged to have the foot amputated, would you agree to this? Many people would say ‘of course not’. The issue is not with the foot, the foot is fine except for the skin ailment, so you need to treat the eczema and also deal with the factors, which may be psychological, such as stress or depression, that cause the eczema to flare up. You would not consider amputating the foot, it would be an action too far and in the wrong direction. Now if we go back to the subject of genitalia, we can see the flaw in the arguments and point of view of many trans activists. The answer to the problems that many people have with their gender identity may not be in removal or reshaping of their genitalia, but asking why the person feels this way and dealing with these feelings. It’s better in my view for medical professionals to take the ‘do no harm’ route and try to sort out the underlying problems in a patient rather than reach too quickly for the hormones or the knife.
To conclude: What has happened in Brighton and other local authorities that are trying too hard to be so achingly trendy, is that the local educational establishment has been captured by activists, in this case trans activists. Activists, no matter what they are activists for, often have a fixed view of a problem or an issue and they want to apply their ideology to the real world. It may be that the activists are correct in their assumptions but it is equally possible that their views may be wrong or even destructive. If individual adults want to experiment in their own lives or on their own bodies to find the best way of living, then that is up to them. However they should not be allowed to experiment on the minds and bodies of our children. We are learning about gender and sexuality all the time and our knowledge of these subjects is by no means complete or comprehensive. I worry that children may be persuaded by activists to go down routes which include treatment for gender identity issues that may not be best for them and which they may regret bitterly later in life. We should not be allowing activists whether they be political activists, gender activists, religious or sexuality activists to call the shots in our education system, nor allow them to usurp the rights of parents to bring their children up as they see fit. Britain’s education system is damaged enough as it is without making things worse by freaking kids out about what their gender is. In my view this poorly thought out attempt to brainwash children about transsexuality and gender issues needs to be stopped as soon as possible.
Links
Brietbart on the scandal in Brighton where parents are being confronted with a multitude of different gender options on school forms and documents.
The website Fourth Wave Now which contains interesting stuff that is critical of the idea that children should be considered as trans.
