Unbecoming

The UK government is working to reduce or remove protection for human rights. Ministers claimed their Bill of Rights Bill would allow UK courts to ignore European Court of Human Rights precedents, though it may have been withdrawn, yet again. Victor Borloz, the United Nations Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, visited the UK from 24 April to 5 May, and has given a damning preliminary statement (pdf), before a comprehensive report due before Summer 2024.

An “Adult human female”, and toilets

I am in another city for the weekend, and visit the Quaker meeting. In the lobby, people are chatting, relaxed, before meeting. As someone takes off her back-pack, I see the sticker on it: “Woman, n. Adult human female.” I then go into meeting for worship, where the convention is that we sit still and quiet.

My body is still, but my mind is racing. Now is not the time to stand in ministry, but I imagine doing so. I might say, “I am a Jew, and someone here has a swastika sticker on their backpack”. That’s how I feel: the campaign group portraying trans as Bad and Scary, and making trans the Outgroup to protect the Good People from, so that “defensive” violence is legitimised against us, includes Rupert Murdoch, Ron DeSantis, JK Rowling, Viktor Orban, Joanna Cherry, Rishi Sunak and that woman, and I am scared.

Or I could go to my Trump Card. Yearly Meeting 2021, Minute 31: “We seek to provide places of worship and community that are welcoming and supportive to trans and non-binary people who want to be among us. Belonging is more than fitting in.” I do not feel welcome. But I do not like trump cards: her trump card would be “humans are sexually dimorphic”, that is, my delusions should not impinge on other people. But, from inside it does not feel like delusion. Trump cards only work in a zero-sum game.

But that woman does not conform to feminine gender stereotypes. I bet she’s been challenged going into women’s loos, or knows someone who has. She’s campaigning to make her life worse.

I think of sharing past distress: lying weeping, curled in the foetal position, repeating “I am not a man”. Ah. I am thinking of my distress in the past. Emotions now come into consciousness sometimes through story. Perhaps I am distressed.

I am distressed.

I sit with this, in silence, for an hour. Someone ministered, and I cannot now remember what they said. By the end, I have two words: “contingent welcome”. I want my Friend with the sticker also to feel welcome here. Is there anything someone feels they could not bring to the Quaker meeting? Is our welcome contingent on hiding parts of ourselves? What parts of yourself do you feel might be unwelcome in Meeting?

I need all of me- my transness, my sensitivity, my potential for being triggered- to be welcome in the Quaker meeting.

After Meeting I stayed for the business meeting. There is a great deal from Finance and Property. YFGM had signs on loos: “stalls with bins” and “stalls and urinals”. They marked the disabled toilet “All-gender toilet”. Should this meeting follow suit, “recognising the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act”?

The GRA is irrelevant. It seems the false interpretation of the Equality Act has infected their understanding.

I feel threatened when someone alludes to or asserts that false interpretation. Trans exclusion turns my life upside down. Now, I feel excluded from amateur running, even fun runs- I might be classified as “male”.

The reason for marking a loo “stalls with bins” is that marking it “women” (or “Merched”, which I did not understand the first time I saw it) seems like a rule- particular people only. “Stalls with bins” is a description, so that people can use whichever fits their needs. Arguably, men’s loos should also have bins in case trans men need them. Disabled loos should always have sanitary bins.

Such a change would need careful explanation to the cis, so that they could know in advance how alienating any objection they made would be to a nonbinary person.

Or, the disabled toilet could be marked “All-gender toilet”. That’s for nonbinary trans. I am binary trans. I am a woman. I use women’s loos. Of course. Then the nonbinary person does not have to use a loo marked “men” or “women”, so is not pressured to define themself other than nonbinary by the signs on loo doors. There is a great deal of other social pressure to define as binary. Anything we can do to reduce that social pressure is a good thing.

Should there be a sign on the all-gender toilet that disabled people have priority? They need the raised toilet and the support rails around it. No. Such a sign implies the disabled person’s need for that loo is more real, or more important, than the nonbinary person’s. I see the temptation: disabled people are also systemically devalued.

But, but- what if some vile anti-trans-campaigner man, say Graham Linehan, goes into the women’s loo offensively shouting that he can call himself a woman if he likes? Deal with that if it happens. Rules can only protect us up to a point.

I want the Friend with the sticker welcome in her Quaker meeting. And, that cannot come at the price of my needs. My needs matter and are not to be dismissed in some “objective” way- humans are sexually dimorphic, whatever. With my internalised transphobia lessening, I might need less help to assert my own needs, but I still need help.

And the second half of this post, on toilets, is my happy place. I have been explaining as calmly, clearly and winsomely as I may the precise considerations around trans inclusion in toilets. I like writing. This patient intellectualising makes me feel safe.

Ode

Friends, now hear my supplication
Seeking reconciliation
Let us make our true oblation
Let us salute the coronation
Charles deserves our salutation
If not our thoughtless veneration
He is the head of State and nation
Which sorely needs invigoration

If we raise an altercation
or make enraged expectoration
it won’t procure the Crown’s cessation
or end the plutocrats’ predation
Which will survive our indignation,
condemnation, castigation, execration.
Let us show imagination
Seek peace is the implication.
And so, my heartfelt peroration:
I salute the coronation.

Impressions of Yearly Meeting 2023

Alighting from the carriage in the crowds, I want to get to the ticket barrier as soon as possible. I am irritated by people walking slowly, and overtake if I can. So I get to the barriers a few seconds earlier. I realised I am walking rapidly because I am anxious. I habitually suppress signs of anxiety so I am not consciously aware of it: it only shows through my actions. The next time I was there, I paused to look around me.

This is my place. I belong here.

As I passed the piano, a young man- twenty? As I get older, seeing the precise age of younger people gets more difficult- played the first three chords of the Rachmaninov C# minor prelude, and I stopped to listen. Unfortunately the first three chords were all he could manage. He suggested I play something, and I played the Chopin C minor prelude. This got me to start playing the Rachmaninov again. I would like to play it without the score, as I used to.

I dropped off my case at my Friend’s house, and went to the National Gallery to see Les Parapluies, by Renoir. I got a stool and sat before it, considering the relationship between the two girls, and their- mother, I think, rather than nanny. The woman on the left is a milliner’s assistant, with a hat box, says the caption. I started talking with a woman who had also come to see Les Parapluies, she told me. We considered the young man looking over the milliner’s shoulder.

Art opens me up. I am more in the moment, more aware of feelings and bodily sensations, and my surroundings. I am in the place I am, rather than trying to get somewhere else.

To Friends House. The assistant clerks welcome and hug me, and we talk a little. In the café I see my Friend, who shows some sign of anxiety. I describe Les Parapluies, and he looks it up on his phone. Oh, yes, the man’s definitely coming on to her, pursuing her. She shows some distress.

More Friends, more loving conversation, then in to the Large Meeting House, or the Light. This is my place. I belong here. I feel completely at home. I hear the long, careful minute-taking of the nominations. I am in worship.

Next morning, walking through the long pedestrian tunnels of the Victoria Line, I check. Yes, I am probably anxious. I repeat to myself as I walk: This is my place. I am safe here. This is my place.

People here tell me they love what I write- my articles in The Friend, my essay in the Friends Quarterly. One has read it three times! I am delighted. I chat to more accomplished writers. I do not have, yet, something to say that is worth the 20,000 words of a Quaker Quick. I hope to. One stands on Saturday afternoon and talks of the Society’s declining membership. I note how here I am considerably younger than the average, though there are beautiful, vital Friends in their twenties and thirties here too.

I could not remember, on Monday, what we had discerned on Saturday. Oh, yes, considering the structure of central committees QPSW and Quaker Life. I do not have any position on this, but as we upheld the clerks writing the minute, I loved the sense of worship. I felt there was a sense of sadness there too, though I may be projecting: over dinner my retired lawyer Friend thought that ridiculous.

As I understand it, Meeting for Sufferings discerned that Vibrancy workers, now called Local Development Workers, should be appointed for the whole YM, and referred that to trustees. The triennium ended, and a new MfS was appointed. Trustees reported on the local development workers, and some of MfS were affronted. Why were they not making this decision? To me, it seemed some still felt trauma from this. As a former lawyer, I had the idea that MfS should make the decisions as led, and trustees should implement them- which would mean making a myriad decisions, and still provide potential for friction. You cannot make a clear rule which will ensure nobody will feel such trauma ever again. We can only do our best in love. But it is very tempting to try to draft such a protective rule, rather than accept our unknowing. Rules can protect us to an extent. Faith, trust and Love are better protection.

I may be mistaken, but it seemed to me at one point the clerk was comparing herself, unfavourably, to a Perfect Clerk who exists only in her imagination.

In meeting for worship for business, there is the great joy of coming together over Equal Marriage, but we cannot avoid perplexity and disagreement. I found parts of the discernment distressing and I love the final minute on this. I do not like the epistle. It is too confident for my liking. I made a Friend laugh when I said, “If you did not know what the phrase ‘Metropolitan Elite’ meant-“ I don’t think it captures all that was there.

The epistle says we can provide leadership. I would prefer “walk alongside”- we have a lack of hierarchy among us, which could be our gift to the world. We will attract people who love what we say and do.

On Monday morning I thought, if “This is my place”, then all of me, all my beauty and sensitivity, belongs here.

I am safe here.
That means my whole sensitivity and love is safe here,
because I am nothing without my love and sensitivity.
I am safe enough.

I picked up my case, and left the building, without pausing to talk to anyone. On the wall in the garden is a beautiful enigma, eating her sandwich. She is perhaps the most intelligent person I have met, of strong will, capable of determined action where no-one else yet sees the point of it, and wonderfully contained. I joined her. Having been a clerk, she sees the meeting as a clerk would, and might go to talk to the clerk. She asked, has the yearly meeting been good for me? Oh, yes. Utterly, utterly wonderful.

Politics, life and drama

I write on trans, including summaries of law reports and parliamentary debates. I downloaded the EHRC letter, and read it, and have been unable to write about it.

A trans woman can use women’s services from the moment she decides to transition, by law, when she is expressing female, unless excluding us is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” (PMOALA). The EHRC says, falsely, that only trans women with a GRC have an entitlement to use women’s services, and that entitlement should be taken away- single-sex and separate sex services should be segregated by biological sex not legal sex. In 2016 the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee recommended partly repealing the PMOALA exception, so any trans woman with a GRC could not be excluded. The government refused.

It will be an election issue. The Prime Minister announces that “no woman has a penis”, effectively saying that trans is meaningless, and we are simply deluded. Now, society accommodates my settled and intractable weirdness, by treating me as a woman. The Prime Minister, the Conservative Party, The Times, Mail, Express, Telegraph and often the Guardian, parts of the Labour Party and even the Greens, say this should stop.

There is writing about “women’s rights” barely mentioning trans. Pithy statements such as “humans are sexually dimorphic” are all that need be said for some people, trans women are men and should be treated as men. Sometimes they say that we should be allowed to wear what we like and they don’t want us to suffer violence.

The enormity of this overwhelms me. I can’t write about it systematically. A friend has paused her transition because of it, and fears for her job. We talked and shared our fear and misery. Trans social media, where I find some social contact and support, is full of the proposed change, though my preferred group mostly shares action against it and writing condemning or mocking it. I’m thinking more of Etty Hillesum.

What could I say? Trans is no threat to women, children or anyone else. A trans ban would disadvantage cis women. Permitting harmless eccentricity benefits society. I could try to argue these points, or critique texts, but there is no joy in it, and my thoughts turn to anguish or ranting. And, life goes on.

On Sunday 17th I went to the Quaker meeting, then the Tate. At Friends House there was a Narcotics Anonymous conference, and people crowded the garden, happy to be with their tribe. I chatted with one about my own Steps, about the Higher Power and the Inner Light. He loves Friends House, the peace in the heart of London. He had tried Quaker meetings. He found silence for an hour a bit much, but sometimes the meeting “Opened up”. Then in the George Fox room there was lively ministry, and eight stayed talking until 1.30.

In the Tate Members’ toilet, a woman said, “Is it me, or is it very dark in those cubicles?” She might not have read me before asking. Well, the bulbs are dim, and the ceilings, floors and laminate doors and walls (floor to ceiling, for privacy) of the cubicles are dark. I agreed they are dark. I presume people read me when they hear my voice, but she did not faint or start screaming or report me to the staff, and I hope she will not be writing an article for the Daily Mail.

At the Tate, I saw H (Not to be confused with other H’s on this blog) for the first time since last Summer. We have hardly messaged since 2019. We talked of all sorts of things. We ended talking of the trans ban. She said it’s important to remember that women are frightened of male violence. How could I forget? I was triggered. Yes women are frightened of male violence, and so society should deal with male violence- maybe, prosecute some rapes, or refer potential coercive control cases to well-funded social services. A trans ban makes things worse. She insisted, I insisted and bored and frustrated myself.

On the train home, I read a circular email, including a note that my trans friend was working with gender critical Quakers and well-meaning uninvolved Friends to find common ground. That started me ranting in my head- my lips were moving, I was not speaking aloud-

THE ONLY WAY FORWARD IS TO GET EVERYONE TO AGREE THAT TRANS IS A GOOD THING AND SPREADING SUSPICION OF TRANS IS WICKED HATEMONGERING. And all the arguments. And expression of hate and fear of the haters and excluders. And lots of swearing and words like f’wit, traitor, quisling which I would not want to get between me and my sweet, gentle Friend.

How can I cope with my rage and terror when all this comes up for me?

Cis people: the trans ban will not affect your day-to-day life in any way. If you see a trans woman, that is good luck for you, bringing you face to face with the strangeness and beauty of humanity. But trans and asylum seekers could be a major issue at the election. The Tory record on the economy, preventing crime and prosecuting criminals, the NHS and public services, are all a complete disaster, but hate and fear might grub them a few votes. Do we want to live in a liberal/”woke” society, or an authoritarian one?

One lesson from this is that while there is all this Threat- the trans ban- all the actual experiences were lovely. If I live the day I have now, it’s fine, and the Dreadful Things that might happen might not happen. And the quintessential Dreadful Thing- Death- will certainly happen, but maybe not yet.

Monday I was still prone to ranting. I was in a conversation with a man who did not perceive what was obvious to me, and I had a rant to myself about that; then I read an NYT article about Harlan Crow, Clarence Thomas’s billionaire benefactor, and had a rant about that. The heart of all my ranting is,

LISTEN TO ME!

I do not feel heard, and so I do not feel safe. Thomas will make administrative regulation impossible, the mass extinction will ensue, and the rats and cockroaches will take over. But I cannot have any effect at all on SCOTUS, no matter how hard I shout or pray. I was shouting and crying then shaking like a terrified animal.

“Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past.” I hope that’s it…

The effect of the trans ban

What if the law was changed, so that sex was defined as biological sex, and gender recognition stopped having any effect at all?

Would my passport now say “M”? There is no statute on passports. They are issued under the Royal Prerogative, by the Home Secretary. It declares my “sex/sexe”- in English and French. The International Civil Aviation Organisation has standard guidelines on machine-readable passports. The sex recorded might be discretionary, but “to avoid confusion” if the government said sex is biological they might equally decide to record my sex there as M. I do not want to travel on a passport marked M.

What of my driving licence? Now, in the driver number, the second digit is a 5, indicating I am female. I got that before the Gender Recognition Act. If I were male, it would be 0. If I were born in October, November or December it would be 6. “Miss Clare” indicates I am female, but my driver number might call me male. Would the regulations go so far as to demand it called me “Mr Clare”?

Before transition, once, when presenting male, I was utterly desperate, could not find the men’s, and went in the ladies. I was horribly embarrassed, and desperate not to be seen. Such embarrassment, a purely social sanction, is what keeps men out of the women’s loos. A woman, seeing me, would object, and I would know her objection was rightful. But, being a woman, that does not apply to me. Even after the ban, I might go in the women’s. Well, I am one of those Bad Trans, the out-group from whom the Tories will protect the Decent People.

So I go into the loo, I use it, wash my hands, check my lippy, leave like any other woman. Even after sex were redefined, that is not a crime. The problem comes if anyone confronts me.

Now, I have a right to use the loo. If directed to the men’s, I would assert my right to use the women’s. If told there was a restriction, I would want to know what the purported “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” was, and where I could complain, or where I should send my letter before court action. I would be polite, and hope to make enough problem that they let me past. I have not yet been blocked. Based on the EHRC Code of Practice, laid before parliament in 2011, I hope I would win any court action. It’s a code, so legally more persuasive to a judge than any guidance the EHRC issues.

And after the ban? I would challenge any person blocking my path or objecting to my entry. I would say they have no right to suppose they are certain of my biological sex, or my legal sex, come to that, and no right to ask me because of my right to privacy. But anyone challenging me might say they had a right to ask my legal and biological sex because of the right to privacy of the cis women using the loo.

Now, if someone blocks my path and I push past them, I would say that was asserting my legal rights, so entirely permissible. If they sought to block me, that might be a criminal assault.

After a ban, if I push past them it is I who commit the assault. I could be arrested and charged. If I raise my voice, that could be a “breach of the peace”. In England, that entitles a police officer to arrest me and take me somewhere else. In Scotland, breach of the peace is a crime in its own right.

I might not be confronted, I might just get in, and use the place as normal. That’s the fiendish part of the proposals: single-sex and separate-sex services are governed by the Equality Act. If someone objects, but the staff turn a blind eye or refuse to stop my use of the toilet, the objector may be able to claim damages for indirect discrimination. So the EHRC letter suggests.

Several organisations might want to provide toilets by gender, including me as a woman, rather than by sex. They might be forced to bar me from the women’s, by a threat of legal action by one objector.

Possibly a changing room in a shop might be different. Men’s and women’s clothes are in different areas of the shop. Often, the changing rooms have solid doors, with a lock. If refused entry, I could argue that the rules for allowing a service to be restricted to one sex only are not met. People are entitled to privacy, but they get it, because I cannot see them unclothed. It might work.

Touching another human being in an effort to get where they do not want you to go, or to prevent them going where they want to go, could be a criminal assault. There need be no bodily harm. Partly it depends on what the legal right to go, or prevent access is, or the person’s reasonable belief. It’s a risk. I don’t want a physical confrontation, even if a court might subsequently decide I was in the right.

After twenty years expressing female, I hope I could cope with any embarrassment or hostility. It would be horrible transitioning in such a climate.

Hadley Freeman in the Times

Hadley Freeman is a less florid example of gender critical derangement syndrome (GCDS) than Enoch Burke. I cannot imagine her arrested for breaching an injunction. But when an article she writes refutes itself, it seems her obsessive transphobia has blinded her.

Columnists do not write their headlines, so it is not her fault that the headline was untrue. “Liking my tweet is a cancellation offence”- no, Freeman confirms there was a history of anti-trans tweets, such that Elon Musk’s twitter suspended the liker’s account. “I was the cause of her cancellation,” writes Freeman. No, a history of anti-trans obsession, on twitter at least, caused a fashion show to disinvite her, which most people could survive.

Freeman turns the withdrawal of an invitation into cancellation. Turning petty inconvenience into martyrdom is a sign of GCDS. Making herself the centre- “I was the cause”- is another.

Another is denying you are attacking trans people. Freeman claims her tweet “wasn’t about trans people at all; it was about women’s sex-based rights”. “Sex based rights” means women’s services rigorously excluding trans women. Nobody objects to women’s services excluding men, they just don’t define “men” in the way Freeman does.

Another is not understanding about an employer’s disciplinary action. Freeman reports that City, University of London, “let go” a sociologist, Laura Favaro. Why? Well, “her colleagues described her work as ‘an attack on trans people’.” But for Freeman, that is no reason at all, as no attack on trans people is objectionable, and anyway all Favaro was doing was sociological research. “I know what it’s like to live in a dictatorship” says Favaro, darkly, and Freeman quotes her ridiculous hyperbole without questioning it.

Another is circumlocutory ways of not mentioning trans people. In that article, Freeman calls us “gender activists” or “a loud but very niche minority”. We are not really trans, to her: it is just “whims and magical thinking”.

Freeman can see, dimly, that not everyone agrees with her that Trans is Bad. She calls them deluded: “young, highly educated, highly online graduates remain notably in thrall to the idea that the censorship of feminists is for the greater good”. Note “in thrall”- their thoughts are not their own, or they would agree with Freeman. Favaro was sacked for anti-trans campaigning distorting her “research”, but Freeman thinks her martyred for “feminism”.

Bombast is a symptom of GCDS. “The time has come to speak up, because I don’t want other women to go through this. Silence will not protect us.” Freeman cannot see how ridiculous she is.

The Times, a propaganda site, nurtures and coddles Freeman’s GCDS. On a search for “Hadley Freeman” on the site, the second result is “Freeman leads the feminist fightback”. That could have gone to Freeman’s head a bit, though Janice Turner might be narked. The letters show more GCDS: for Norah Ward of York the possibility that there might be a trans woman in a woman’s loo is “dystopian”.

Freeman joined the Times from The Guardian, a paper happy to print transphobia. It would be a comfier billet for a feminist- one sign of GCDS is giving up feminist causes for full time anti-trans campaigning. The Times reported that Freeman accused Katherine Viner, editor, of “censoring” her. Freeman worked for the Guardian for 22 years, and presumably knows what an editor’s job is, but that becomes “censorship” when it means getting in the way of her anti-trans obsession. And Freeman might disapprove of The Times’ climate denialism, but her transphobia is so important to her she ceased to care.

The Times search shows Freeman’s articles since December. Her first article, on 3 December, claimed “feminism became a dirty word” when “progressive organisations have dutifully fallen” behind trans rights.

7 January: “The prize for being a good parent is hatred”, surely a self-refuting line. But “good parent” means the Bayswater Club, and absolute opposition to trans children. 21 January: “gender activism” is “a cover for misogyny”. On 11 February she claimed “The Tavistock gender clinic ran out of control,” though most children referred there did not get puberty blockers. On 5 March she claimed the anti-trans books The Times plugs are “censored”.

Gender critical derangement syndrome turns feminists into anti-trans campaigners who cannot see when their own words refute them.

Fears and Addictions

What’s the worst that could happen? Well, I could die, in a slow, painful and humiliating way. I saw my Friend on zoom six months ago, in bed. I saw her again. How are you? “I am no worse,” she said. That she, a glorious explosion of intellect, energy and Love, should be reduced like this is horrifying.

Some pretty bad things can happen at work, too. Representing in the Employment Tribunal, I saw some of them. My friend has set a boundary, which she hopes her employer will respect, but if they don’t she will be supported by her husband and get another job. No biggie. Certainly not what I fear-

The monster will get me. Like being cast into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not death itself, but abject terror immediately before it, which I will do anything to avoid.

My addictive behaviour is checking and rechecking my favoured internet sites. For social media I use facebook, wordpress and the Guardian’s comment threads. Social media gives some human interaction, but repetitively checking the sites in rotation for likes and replies is tickling a craving. It does me no good. Reading the Guardian keeps me informed about the world, but also lets me feel the communal feelings of my lefty tribe. Or I do wordles. I judge this behaviour as grading from OK to damaging.

The damage is when I spend the afternoon on the internet rather than doing things I ought to do. It is OK to spend time entertained by streaming services, but not if it stops me doing-

There is that email. I should forward it with a brief explanation. Simple. It should take no time, and no mental energy. Instead I click away to look at the Guardian. I don’t understand why. I am stuck in a “rational” understanding- the task should cause me no problem. I have a blind spot preventing me seeing my fear. So my finger goes without my volition to the touch pad, and I am cycling Guardian, facebook, stats page again, not knowing why.

I can’t admit the fear because the fear is irrational. Is this date OK? I have to ask two other people. That I haven’t makes it harder to face the task, two weeks later. But the simplest task is freighted with the same weight- the monster will get me, and the people judging me are as bad as the worst I have come across. My perfectionism is such that that email becomes impossible, even as my blind spot tells me it is the simplest task that should cause difficulty to nobody. So I stop thinking about it, and hide from myself on the internet, but the need to face the email becomes an ever bigger weight on my back.

Or I go into puzzles. They should be fun, an intellectual challenge of no importance. I prove my skill and they make me happy. So I did the sedecordle puzzle mindfully. Ratio clues informs me of ten letters, then I hope to guess the other sixteen words. I can guess wrong three times before I fail the puzzle. It is easier if I use clear, bison, thump to give clues on fifteen letters, but I scorn that.

What am I feeling? If I guess right, there is no pleasure, hardly any relief. I am back in my childhood. Perfection is a bare pass, no better than should be expected. If I guess wrong, it is proof that I am stupid and useless. So if I have made two mistakes I take less care of the remaining guesses: I resent my own mortification. Success gives me no pleasure, but the effort stops me thinking of That Email for a while. I think the puzzle will make me feel good about myself, so give energy like a shot of caffeine, but when I finish I only want to do another one.

What would a loving parent say? A friend imagines her “loving parent” cajoling her to get on with her tasks. I think that’s her controlling parent. I could give up this responsibility- my critical parent tells me it is tiny and not a burden at all, so that is impossibly weak.

Against all my resistance, my loving parent tells me, this is where I am now. These are my feelings. I am still terrified. I imagine the loving parent shows total acceptance without self-pity or resentment, and I work to disentangle these things.

Should Labour abandon trans people?

Does Labour need a socially conservative line on gender to win the election? So said Patrick Maguire in The Times, based on a report by Labour Together. Who are they?

Gender Critical Derangement Syndrome

If you lose all sense of proportion and start acting strangely in the presence of trans people, you may be suffering from Gender Critical Derangement Syndrome.

Enoch Burke, an Evangelical Christian, was a teacher at the Church of Ireland Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath, Leinster, when a pupil transitioned. The principal, Niamh McShane, emailed teachers asking them to use the pupil’s they pronouns and new name. On 21 June 2022, Burke stood up interrupting a school religious service as a bishop was about to deliver the concluding prayer and spoke for about 2½ minutes, while the transitioning student was present. Catherine Brabazon, a witness involved with the school, said Burke “hijacked the service” with a diatribe, a “very personal attack” on Ms McShane which she could not “make head nor tail of”.

Ms Brabazon approached Mr Burke who told her he was a teacher and started another diatribe. Later, a student’s mother had to physically prevent Burke from accosting Ms McShane. Ms McShane felt agitated and hunted when Burke harangued her- he stood so close she could feel his spittle.

The school began a “stage four” disciplinary procedure: dismissal was a possibility, and in August 2022 Burke was suspended on full pay. He continued to attend the school, which obtained a court order barring him. When he still went to the school, he was jailed for eleven days for contempt of court. He refused to purge his contempt, but was eventually released after 107 days in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. Fintan O’Toole had a good laugh at Burke’s evangelical fervour, condemning Daniel O’Donnell and even CS Lewis. The New York Post thought the story worth reporting.

Burke appealed the injunctions restraining him from approaching the school to the Court of Appeal, and lost. He then challenged the suspension and disciplinary process in the High Court. At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday 28 March he was so disruptive, continually interrupting and making submissions contrary to the order of the judge, that he was again ruled in contempt. He has been barred from attending court in person. On video-link, the judge will be able to mute him.

There is a steady trickle of fools who lose their jobs, or are jailed, because they refuse to treat trans people with respect, get irate when challenged, and don’t know when to back down. But large parts of civil society suffer from a milder form of Gender Critical Derangement Syndrome (GCDS). Consider The Times, interviewing Keir Starmer on the third anniversary of his election as Labour leader. The 2745 word article mentions the local elections in May, and how to fund public services after the total mess the Tories have made of them, and of the economy. But the first third of the article is devoted to trans rights, even though Starmer says very little about them, and the headline is “Keir Starmer: Trans rights can’t override women’s rights”. Actually he calls for cross-party agreement because “it’s not helpful to have this as a toxic divide”. Fat chance of that. The comments section was full of anti-trans “men can’t be women” comments.

Or, Humza Yousaf has been elected First Minister of Scotland. I did a search for him in The Times. Of the first ten results, three are comment articles- “Mishandling of Kate Forbes’s appointment spells trouble for Humza Yousaf”; “Joan McAlpine: Independence may be a forlorn hope for Humza Yousaf” and “Scots head for disaster with Humza Useless”. Each mentions gender recognition:

“The heavily criticised Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill (GRR), which has hitherto achieved little except to tear the party (and the country) apart, and is destined to be blocked by the UK government.”

“controversial policies such as the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. It is hard to see how Yousaf’s determination to fight for an issue that has lost the SNP so many members, and dismayed so many voters, will help bring independence any closer.”

“The SNP also introduced ill-conceived gender recognition reforms that have had to be blocked, sensibly, by the UK government. At great expense Yousaf will fight this in court, he says.”

If Holyrood did not fight the Westminster block in court, the Greens would leave the coalition. The legal support for the block is flimsy– interpreting the Scotland Act s35 so widely would mean Westminster could block any Scottish bill it liked.

The Times still calls itself a “paper of record”, but if you got your information on this one issue solely from The Times, you would be less informed than if you read nothing. It suffers from Gender Critical Derangement Syndrome.

You might think I have no business going about, classifying new diseases, and you would be right. But GCDS is far better documented than, say, “Rapid onset” gender dysphoria.