Guest post by...someone

When I first started talking about women’s rights, the condemnation from many in Ireland’s entertainment industry was swift. The lack of intellectual rigour or basic empathy around the subject came as a huge surprise, with most either joining in the abuse aimed at me (hi Rubberbandits!), or remaining conspicuously silent in the face of it (hi, Dara O’Briain!). I tell ya, it’s a sobering thing to see how many people will happily join a mob or, while it’s doing its thing, whistle and look the other way.

But it hasn’t all been bad. I found out who my real friends were, and cleared out a lot of chaff as a result . More recently, someone with a fairly high profile, who had participated in that initial wave of hostility towards me, got back in touch to say that they had been thinking and reading about the subject since, and had come to the conclusion that they had got it wrong.

And so I received my first apology from someone with something to lose. The person in question even took out a paid subscription to the site.

They want to ‘come out’ at their own pace, which I completely understand, but they recently posted this piece on Medium which I’ve been given permission to publish here. LGB Alliance Ireland, you have a new, (very talented) defender.

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‘A Spectrum of Legs’

Date Night With Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On the 20th of November, 2020, The Transgender Day of Remembrance, Ireland’s Gay Community News published an online letter calling for the silencing of dissenting voices in the debate on the conflicts between modern trans activism and lesbian, gay, bisexual/women’s human rights. The letter was signed by 28 organisations and 55 individuals, including Amnesty International, who profess to be “independent of any political ideology, economic interest or religion”. This essay outlines my specific criticisms of the letter.

Paragraph 1 states, “Internationally, women such as Marsha P. Johnson and others, marched, shouted and demanded gay rights”. Listen closely lest we be caught: Marsha P. Johnson was the drag name for a gay man called Malcolm, or “Mikey” to his friends. Among other things, there is an extensive Wikipedia “talk page” in which you can see all of the times people have tried to rewrite history and were rebuked by facts. Modern trans activists often claim that misgendering is akin to violence, yet they consistently misgender Johnson (saying that Johnson is literally a woman). In fact, the common declaration that transgender women of colour were at the forefront of the Stonewall rebellion has led me to many hours of research trying to find out who these trans women were, only to reach the conclusion that it is in reference to gay male drag queen Marsha P. Johnson, and gender non-conforming friend and fellow drag queen Sylvia Rivera. Both Johnson and Rivera were undoubtedly important figures in the movement following Stonewall, but biologically female activists like Stormé DeLarverie, of whom there are more accounts regarding the integral part she played in the Stonewall uprising, often get left out of the official narrative.

Paragraph 2 asserts that “the statements of newly launched organisations that seek to defend biology or fight gender identity… are not organisations at all, (sic) they have no governance, no accountability…”. I am finding it difficult to see this as anything other than “cancel culture” in its purest form. Who is doing the demonising here? I am yet to read one transphobic comment from the LGB Alliance Ireland and, although I have no ties to the organisation, I am troubled by the level of so-called intellectual debate that they have so far been confronted with. Also, what is wrong with seeking to “defend biology”? Moreover, what does that even mean? Honestly, my first thought was that there must have been an interloper amidst the signatories who was secretly adding Orwellian levels of insanity to the text.

Paragraph 3 is a doozy: “We call on media, (sic) and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, (sic) that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division”. What is this sentence implying? Are they really calling on politicians to stop providing “legitimate representation” (suffrage?) to a group of people whose only commonality for this letter’s purpose is a shared opinion on current gender ideology? There really is so much to unpack here, notwithstanding the continued misuse of punctuation (language matters).

I will assume that the letter is still talking about the LGB Alliance Ireland. My limited experience of this organisation is Ceri Black’s article in The Independent, which was in response to Emma Kelly’s article in the same paper. I have read and studied both of these pieces and I could write a whole essay on their use of language and the conclusions I would draw but, in the interest of brevity, I will just say this: Only one of the articles uses disingenuous tactics and tropes which could reasonably be compared with those of the far right, and it is not Ceri’s article. In short, Emma Kelly’s criticism of the LGB Alliance Ireland is under-researched, inflammatory and transparent in its populist, puerile and anti-intellectual approach, instantly branding the organisation as a hate group full of “transphobes” without a single piece of evidence to back up these claims. Ceri Black’s article, in stark contrast, is specific and fact-based, and its only direct mention of trans rights organisations is one of respect and decency; I quote: “There are several organisations in Ireland that campaign for trans rights, based on the gender identity of their members. We respect the rights of those organisations to do so; we do not hate or abuse them for excluding LGB people from their organisations.” …I ask you again: Who is doing the demonising here?

Paragraph 4 of the letter is quite moving. I feel a huge amount of sympathy for trans people in an Ireland of old in which they were “forced to be broadly invisible and silent in”. My heart is warmed by the fact that things seem to be getting better for people with gender dysphoria. Unfortunately, as the paragraph progresses, the “us versus them” rhetoric returns to the fore, culminating in the sentence, “Our lives and our very existence should not be up for debate”. I am struggling to find evidence for the claim that the LGB Alliance Ireland is debating trans people’s “very existence”. What I can observe, however, is the very real need to discuss the implications of the new guidelines that are being attached to this existence, and the violent rhetoric directed at the critics of these guidelines. Indeed, there are a lot of women in Ireland right now who are being “forced to be broadly invisible and silent” for fear of what might happen to them if they speak out against the current narrative. We have already seen the torrent of rape and death threats which are being sent to women, both high and low profile, in Ireland and around the world, who dare to say that their lived experience differ from that of trans women. I would hope that the signatories of this letter can appreciate the equivalence of these fears with their own. Indeed, if the signatories are so concerned about the erasure of specific social classes, I am sure that they can appreciate the hurt that is being caused by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International neglecting to even use the word “women” in their posters for women’s protests, such as the ongoing unrest in Poland regarding the government’s proposed abortion ban.

Paragraph 5 can be summarised quite succinctly. I’ll paraphrase it in three words: shut down debate. It paints all dissenting voices as “bad faith actors” who, instead of engaging with in discussion, should “take time to share why transgender rights matter, how transgender rights make society better, and how equality means a fuller and healthier life for all”. I find it quite astounding that the self-contained irony goes unchecked here. If, as the letter states, “equality means a fuller and healthier life for all” then how can the signatories justify their plea to the reader to not even “engage” in conversation with criticism of any sort? There is a strong whiff of a certain type of dogmatic ideology in these words, and it is reminding me more and more of the Ireland of old which the signatories so effectively denounce in Paragraph 4. Conjecture is being presented as fact, and dissent is being treated as a sin to be punished for.

Paragraph 6 states that, “sex and gender are both spectrums”. I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Of course, the word “gender” is a slippery one. To second-wave feminists it was a very useful word which allowed them to interrogate the way society oppresses their sex class. These days it usually comes attached to the word “identity” which creates a very different result. I love language very much, so I promise I am not saying this with irreverence or malicious intent: if gender is a spectrum then we are all non-binary, since nobody in the world could claim to embody pure masculinity or pure femininity.

The centring of this type of pseudoscientific ideology often leads to the reinforcement of gender stereotypes, as we saw with the UK-based organisation Mermaids and their “Barbie to GI Joe” Gender Identity Spectrum illustration which they presented at a “trans awareness training session”. Similarly, in Ireland, youth organisation BeLonG To and their “Genderbread Person” poster incorrectly posits that sex is “assigned at birth” (it isn’t: the sex of a human being can be observed as early as ten to twelve weeks into pregnancy). I implore you to understand why some people might have misgivings about allowing this kind of approach to education into classrooms, especially with regards to something so fundamentally important as sex and gender.

I am not sure where to start with the claim that sex is a spectrum, suffice to say that Queer Theory, from Foucault, Derrida, Butler and everyone in between, has a lot to answer for. Yes, people with variations of their sex development exist (sometimes known as “intersex” people) and they overwhelmingly have atypical sex characteristics for their sex class. There are diverging opinions regarding the classifications of intersex variations, and consequently there is no definitive consensus on the proportion of people with DSDs (“disorders of sex development”) in the world’s population, but the most oft-repeated number in various scientific journals is 1.7%. How can I put this in a nutshell? Some people have only one leg but we, as the human race, do not say we have a “spectrum of legs”. We have two legs generally. We all exist because of reproductive sex and the sex binary. If it wasn’t for this we would not be here to debate each other so respectfully and/or de-platform each other.

Paragraph 7 states, “We stand boldly against the rise of exclusionary rhetoric, and name it for what it is, (sic) harassment and transphobia. It is not based in truth, it comes with no claims in fact, and is a dog whistle to bigots”. This sentence attempts to silence opposing viewpoints and frames criticism as a “dog whistle to bigots”. Should women not be allowed to worry about their sex-based rights after reading about Stonewall UK “leader” and trans-activist Morgan Page having once ran a workshop called “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women” (the “barriers” in this case being women’s sexual boundaries)? The aim of this workshop was to help trans women and biologically male “genderqueer” people to “strategize ways to overcome” these barriers. I generally shy away from using the word “problematic”, but in this case I’ll make an exception.

Should women not be allowed to worry about an influential organisation, which has the audacity to call itself “Everyday Feminism”, giving a platform to trans women like Riley J. Dennis who tells lesbians that they are being transphobic if they refuse trans women’s sexual advances on the basis that they’re trans? (Hint: they are not being transphobic; nobody is morally obliged to have sex with anyone else for any reason).

Are women not allowed to be worried when the current gender narrative and legislation is allowing for someone like Barbie Kardashian to be placed in the women’s section of Limerick prison? Are lesbians not allowed to be worried when someone like Keira Bell tells her story of being set on a path of irreversible medical transition as a confused 16 year old after zero adequate psychological evaluations at the Tavistock Clinic? Are gay people not allowed to be worried when American NGO GLAAD (the “Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation”) claims that the word “homosexual” is “extremely offensive” whilst advocating for a focus on pronouns? All of these things are actually happening, and to reference them with regards to safeguarding or otherwise is not equivalent to bigotry, especially in a climate which sees over 2000 rapes or sexual assaults reported by women in Ireland per year.

In the final paragraph of the letter the signatories denounce “inaccurate science”. What science are they talking about? Are we back to criticising the need to “defend biology”? Is it the science regarding the importance of the Y Chromosome in the sex determination of a human being? (This, incidentally, was discovered by an American geneticist called Nettie Stevens in 1905, but she never got the credit for it during her lifetime because, you know, sexism). What is this “inaccurate science” they are talking about? I am genuinely interested. I find all of this stuff fascinating; the way modes of thought enter and leave our imperfect human societies as the spectre of mortality weaves its way through our collective psyche. We are all the same in so many ways; we all want to feel some sort of peace within ourselves. But when one group seems to have so much more control over the narrative there will always be friction. When is the last time you heard the astoundingly high numbers of women being murdered in their own homes described as an “epidemic of violence”?

On that particular subject, just to put things into perspective, in 2018 the Transrespect Versus Transphobia Worldwide project published that, between October 1st 2017 and September 30th 2018, there were 369 reported murders of trans and gender-diverse people worldwide. In that same year, the UN Global Study on Homicide reported that 87,000 women were intentionally killed worldwide. Tell me again where the “epidemic of violence” lies?

The number of women in Ireland dying by suicide increased by almost 50% last year. In this era of a prevailing and extreme misogyny (Trump et al.), we need to look out for our sisters. Shutting them down when they respectfully criticise aspects of influential and powerful organisations is not the way to do it. Spreading false narratives about trans women’s life expectancy whilst ignoring the concerns and lived experiences of women is not the way to do it. And writing letters calling for an end to “legitimate representation” of your ideological opposition is crude, shameful and most certainly not the way to do it. In the world of gender politics, 2020 will be largely known as the year when a growing obsession with pronouns finally coincided with an urge to prohibit women from even using their own actual NOUN.

The human rights of people of all gender identities need to be respected and observed. The language of law, however, also needs to be rigorous. Some of the most significant international human rights laws have been conceived on the basis that sex is immutable and fundamental to the power structures of society. Article 27 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War, brings to light the horrifying atrocities that have been routinely committed against women and children during wartime, and underlines the necessity of proclaiming that these groups of people must be treated with special consideration. The sheer force of necessity in conceiving these laws due to the biological differences of our sexually dimorphic species is as relevant as it ever was. Any effort to remove “legitimate representation” for those who criticise an ideology that centres an umbrella term such as “transgender” whilst simultaneously denying the significance of biological sex is misguided. To bring this quasi-religious and anti-scientific ideology into our schools is dangerous and indefensible.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

Just something to think about.

Selby O’Sullivan