Amnesty Changes its Mind?

Has FiLiA successfully pressured Amnesty International into denying that trans people are persecuted in Afghanistan? It’s complicated. Are Amnesty offensively opposed to women’s rights, as FiLiA argue? Of course not.

Here’s FiLiA’s account of the reasons why it condemns Amnesty. It is a full-on attack: its headline claims Amnesty denies women “justice, freedom, truth and dignity” though Amnesty has a proud record of supporting women’s rights.

It starts by describing FiLiA’s 2021 conference and the protests against it, in a self-righteous manner. The writer agrees with Amnesty about seeking the release of political prisoners; but does not accept Amnesty’s right to disagree with her about other matters. Where Amnesty differs, she says they are captured by postmodernism and ultra-liberal ideas.

She introduces the issue of sex work in the most angry, aggrieved way. Some people, including FiLiA organisers, consider those who use sex workers should be criminalised. Amnesty takes a different view: that the oppression of sex workers can be reduced if sex work is decriminalised, but criminalisation of users would make matters worse.

The writer refers to allegations of “Caligula-style sex parties” in Haiti involving Oxfam workers. Her description is designed to create “abject horror” in her readers, and revulsion for the opposing point of view. There is no suggestion that Amnesty workers use sex workers, but if a reader was caught up in that abject horror, they might miss that nuance. The writer’s later quotation of Amnesty’s condemnation of charity workers using sex workers might make such confusion more likely. Then she gives the pro-sex work argument in a tweet, which appears chosen to continue that abject horror at pro-sex work arguments.

Then she refers to Amnesty’s position on sex work, which she assails in dramatic terms. Someone using a sex worker “may as well be holding a gun to her head”. Amnesty is not simply an organisation with different views on how the oppression and exploitation of women and girls might be mitigated, but (in the view of the writer) making the oppression worse.

Here is Amnesty’s policy to protect sex workers. It is not in favour of “Caligula-style sex parties”.

Then the writer moves on to the case of Tickle v Giggle. Amnesty, and trans women, are delighted with that case. It says that when there is no good reason for excluding trans women from women’s services, we should not be excluded. The writer will not use the simple phrase “trans woman” which we choose for ourselves: she calls Tickle a “trans-identified male”, demeaning Trans. She quotes Amnesty’s celebration, then calls this a “dereliction of duty” which “drown[s] out women’s voices entirely with mindless mantras”. Like the rest of the article, this is extremely emotive language, continuing the “abject horror”. Amnesty is not an organisation with a different view, but “denying women justice, freedom, truth and dignity”. I note Amnesty’s view was only expressed in a tweet: that tweet is the basis of two hundred words of condemnation from FiLiA’s writer.

Then she turns to this article by Amnesty. It is a history of women’s rights in Afghanistan. Amnesty has demanded that the UK Government take action to safeguard women’s rights, and give them safe routes to seek asylum in the UK. I would have hoped that FiLiA would have supported these aims.

Instead, the writer takes issue with one phrase in the article, and uses that phrase to attack Amnesty. That phrase was last visible on 27 August on the Amnesty website, recorded in the Wayback Machine. Previously, the Amnesty article said that from 1996-2001 women and girls were “discriminated against in many ways, for the ‘crime’ of identifying as a girl.” That would include trans girls: trans girls were persecuted too, forced into male roles. Now, Amnesty’s article says Afghans were discriminated against “just for being women and girls”. I don’t find that objectionable. Trans girls are girls. But the Amnesty article no longer explicitly mentions trans.

The writer says that there was “a tsunami of distress and fury”, a “cry” of “thousands of women” that being female is not just a matter of identity. That’s arguable. Most women just accept that they are women. In the same way, right-handed people only have to notice they are right-handed when they come across someone left-handed.

The writer says that including trans people was “offensive”, and that a “clear analysis” of women’s oppression depends on the idea that the class of “women” is clear, and does not include trans women. Perversely, FiLiA shares that idea with the Taliban, which also does not recognise the reality of trans. For both groups, they get to classify who is a woman, and they include trans men but not trans women.

She concludes her article with the words “Women’s rights are human rights”. Amnesty agrees, and so do I, but she implies they do not, because they support trans people and have a different idea about how to mitigate the harms of sex work.

I am a little disappointed that Amnesty removed the reference to trans. Trans people are also persecuted under the Taliban. But it does not mean that they have ceased to support trans people, because they still celebrate Tickle v Giggle.

Amnesty is still an organisation fighting for human rights- to mitigate the oppression of sex workers, to liberate women in Afghanistan, to support trans people, and to free political prisoners. That is not the impression you would get from FiLiA: Amnesty’s disagreement on certain points means they are “in opposition to women”, and utterly condemned.

Camilla Hannan

Schoolchildren will be protected from the transphobic teacher Camilla Hannan. She cannot teach in England for at least two years.

Hannan outed her trans pupil on twitter, giving their former name, current name and pronouns. She said another pupil was on medication, perhaps blockers, and in a fake show of concern said she “worried for” them. She thought she was anonymous, but the whistleblower found her surname from an earlier tweet.

She claimed to feel guilt and shame, but in an arrogant show of her lack of remorse told the discipline panel that she had “concerns with the use of gender ideology in schools”. There is no such thing as gender ideology. The panel found her remorse stemmed from being caught, rather than from her behaviour. She did not appear aware of the harm she had done to her pupil, the public, and the school (report p18).

The panel found that Hannan was entitled to her “gender critical” views but not entitled to post them on social media, because that affected her pupil and the reputation of the school. She used the eye-roll emoji to dismiss the school’s gender identity policy, and the panel found that was offensive to those the policy aimed to protect.

The panel found that Hannan had shown a lack of tolerance on the ground of the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. This shows that the panel is aware trans pupils are protected by the Equality Act, even if the Conservative government’s draft guidance is not.

The panel decided that the hearing should be held in private because otherwise the school and the pupil might be identified. Hannan did not attend the hearing: perhaps she was afraid, or she knew she would show her lack of remorse and her inability to tolerate trans pupils. The panel decided that she would probably not attend if they put the hearing off.

The panel found Hannan’s tweets were “offensive and transphobic”. She had failed in her duty to safeguard her pupil, and betrayed their trust. This exposed the pupil to a “serious risk” of bullying and hate crime. Hannan brought the profession of teaching into disrepute.

Why an order prohibiting Hannan from teaching? There is a public interest in the safeguarding and wellbeing of schoolchildren. The panel said other members of the public, not just schoolchildren, should be protected from Hannan’s transphobic views. She had brought the profession into disrepute by her tweets. They found a “deep-seated attitude that leads to harmful behaviour”, which can only be her “gender-critical” views. She had abused her position of trust.

Hannan claimed she “did not bear trans people any malice or ill-will”. This is obviously false, to anyone not caught up in her “gender-critical” cult. She claimed she had shown “poor judgment” because of “unmanageable” workload. To me, that shows part of the “pressure” she felt as a teacher was having to conform to a policy protecting trans pupils. That is, she found safeguarding trans pupils stressful. The panel found no evidence that Hannan had learned from her behaviour.

The decision maker found that there was therefore a risk to the future wellbeing of pupils. So if Hannan applies for the decision to be set aside, after 17 September 2026, she will have to show that she has learned from her behaviour, and there is no risk of its repetition. Otherwise, she will be banned indefinitely.

She had a right of appeal to the courts, but apparently has not exercised it.

Quite possibly, her tweet, “… gender identity policy 🙄 it’s a load of nonsensical rubbish” would have been sufficient to get her prohibited from teaching by itself, even had she not outed her pupil. It shows a lack of tolerance to trans people. Pupils are protected from “gender critical” teachers, even though the former Conservative government denied that.

This is the pdf judgment, and the teaching regulating agency page.

FiLiA are anti-trans campaigners

Is FiLiA an anti-trans campaigning group? It grew out of Feminism in London in 2008, so is older than the groups set up for anti-trans campaigning, such as Transgender Trend, Brighton Sisters, WPUK, and many others. It takes an interest in campaigning against sex work and femicide as well as trans people.

However their own account of their 2021 conference says that it “focused on sex-based rights … and the negative impact that the authoritarian imposition of ‘gender identity’ policies (or sex self-identification) is having on single-sex services, femicide data, children’s development and the rights of women in prison.”

Finding joy in touch

Touch expresses love. Through skin on skin, we give and receive love. Humans are apes, animals, bodies, responding in a way unmediated by words. And not me. I wanted to hug to offer comfort, solace, a sense of togetherness- to offer it, not to receive it.

My family did not touch each other much. As a child I valued my intellect rather than my physical body. I did not know what I felt. After my mother died, before I transitioned, I would go to visit my father and when I left we would shake hands. He was embarrassed to hug, the first time I proposed it. Thereafter we hugged when I left.

I am aware that there is work on pre-verbal trauma. I wondered about my offering support to another, not wanting to receive it even reciprocally. I had an image in my mind of being a baby, being fed at particular times, left to cry when supposed to sleep, experiencing touch as impersonal control rather than as love. Hating the touch she got, hating that she craved the loving touch she did not experience.

A baby does not create narrative memories of what happened. Instead it lays down implicit memories, of feeling-states. All I can say is my experience now. I felt in touch with a baby inside me, wanting comfort and denied it, then wanting to be alone and picked up, changed, put down again. It makes deep emotional sense to me. I am hurt and that is why. It does not make intellectual sense- how could I possibly know? But I feel the baby.

The baby is in me. Her feelings were too great to bear so she was frozen or immobile, but now she is waking up. That it is conscious in me, however painful that consciousness is, is a sign of trust after more than a year with Kate.

Hugging is so habitual it just feels weird: but I know, right now, I do not want to be touched. I want to be with this baby, to hold her, to win her trust. Internal Family Systems says that the exiled part, the part which one cannot permit into consciousness because it is too painful, is frozen at the age of the precipitating trauma. There is a baby in me, waking up, coming into consciousness, 58 years later.

I want to show that baby love. I want to show her love is possible, with my own love for her- after rejecting her, after pushing her into unconsciousness, after managing the feelings by stuffing them away for so long. I want to show the baby that I am now 58, an adult, able to refuse touch if I do not want it.

This is a process, over days. On Friday 4th I go out to walk to the beach, in sunny weather, feeling my fear of going out, seeing the impossible overwhelming detail of the world. I practice walking meditation: I am here. This is. I am. I want to be with the baby, showing her I am now adult, showing her the movement of my limbs, my size relative to others- no longer surrounded by giants! If someone imposed touch, I might fight them off, or at least make it difficult for them. I am not helpless any more.

I go a new way through the grid of streets to the station, where the piano is back, and someone is playing Einaudi. I walk along the beach where two people are sunbathing, and into Whittards: I ask for a “ball-cage-thing” and find it is called an “infuser”. And, I am with the baby.

Next morning, Kate asks if I would like a hug. I am clear that I want to hug as a symbol of our love. I am not clear if I, and the Baby in me, wants to be hugged. I have thought I liked hugs, but hugging has been a symbol of togetherness for me, rather than the experience of it. It takes time to contact the baby and be clear. Such fear and hurt takes time to dissipate, and the answer will not always be the same. Can I truly receive a hug?

I anticipate a period of adjustment, unknowing, exploring possibility, and mourning the horror which closed off this quotidian delight and blessing to me. I have no idea what brought the baby into consciousness now, how to spot such an exile in another, to liberate it, to help it heal and help the person through the process, though I passionately desire to. Even the experience itself, of feeling which does not relate to current reality, is hard to grasp. My language defines it, and it is indefinable.

For me right now, the most difficult question is “Would you like a hug?” I know I want the ritual, the symbol of amity. Do I want the actuality?

You are here

Awful day with Quakers, good day at Tate Modern, and the connections between.

I went to a Quaker meeting not my own expecting a supportive gathering of LGBT+ and allies, and found an exercise in normalising the Cass review and conversion therapy for trans children. The speaker has expertise in systematic reviews, and introduced the Cass report with slides. She has read the whole thing, and engaged with it deeply, which is more than I have. But she showed no sign of engaging with any of the critiques of it. She told me that the BMA had backtracked on its pledge to critique Cass. I said, well, someone tasked to review can’t offer an opinion before producing the review, because then they will demonstrably have a preconceived notion and devalue their review.

Are you bored yet? Do you know the blow-by-blow details of the BMA Task and Finish group? I know it is going to report and anti-trans doctors are furious (I infer they are anti-trans from their fury) but beyond that I am not following the story. There are too many stories to follow.

Any Quaker who had heard of Cass but not really gone into it would leave with particular impressions from the meeting. First, the studies which were reviewed for Cass by the University of York had 113,000 subjects between them. This was used to show that there is a lot of research, with the implication that this research is a good basis for the systematic review and therefore its conclusions.

But Tilly Langton will speak at the SEGM conference! To me, “Tilly Langton will speak at SEGM” is just part of the reason not to accept Cass’s review, but explaining why means going into huge areas of disputed fact. And even if I could convince these douce Quakers it was a reason to distrust Cass, they might not accept it was a sufficient reason.

Then the speaker showed a slide showing the increase in referrals to GIDS from a few hundred to five thousand in 2022. For that, I could give the facts- 5000 in a cohort of about 800,000 pupils in any particular year group in England is only a little more than the one in two hundred adult trans population, but only 21% of the GIDS patients ever got blockers, as the speaker should have read in the Cass report. But she would have left the question hanging. Someone in the audience said, “Is this down to social media?” Well, if it were, that would not be a problem. I transitioned after learning it was possible from other trans women. But his implication was that it was social contagion, or at least that it was suspicious.

So this gathering of the metropolitan elite heard an apparent expert imply Cass is based in evidence and the increase in referrals is dodgy, and one angry trans woman who showed hurt and therefore reduced her credibility before Quakers. Oh, and a butch lesbian who had travelled 200 miles to claim that if she had been a child now she would have been transed by the evil Gender Ideologists, but she was happy being a woman.

Trans children want treatment. The Establishment- the NHS, the Health Department, the government- want them not to get it, and here was a meeting saying that this withdrawal of treatment is entirely reasonable. And I could do nothing about it. I called the alternative “conversion therapy”, because SEGM and probably its speakers want to find other causes for gender questioning than being trans, and other ways forward than transition, both generally and in specific cases of presenting trans children. But these comfortable people, taking an interest in Cass, might call that ridiculous fear-mongering.

It is the difference between radicalism and liberalism. The left-liberal has far more trust. I have had the trust beaten out of me.

At Tate, we went to Solid Light, Helen Chadwick, the Expressionists exhibition and Zanele Muholi, and had lunch, then tea and cake in the afternoon. I had read about Chadwick’s Piss flowers when they were made, and remember being disgusted, as well as thinking her art was not art at all. I have come a long way since then. I found them viscerally moving.

I had not really planned my photo project, but wanted to go ahead with it anyway. The project was for a photo to be called “You are here”. It would look roughly like this:

You would not be able to identify a person standing on the north end of the Millennium bridge. However, I wanted to be taking a photo with flash at the precise time the photo was taken, so that the light from my camera would appear as a bright star in the photo. I found various technical difficulties with this, and we did not manage it. So Kate took photos of the bridge, and I don’t know which blur is me. It seems quite a good analogy for screaming “Some people are trans!” unheard, unacknowledged and ignored, while society moves to standardising trans exclusion.

I want to be that clear flash of light, unignorable. I want to persuade. It is really difficult.

Jess Phillips and the Labour Women’s Declaration

The Labour Women’s Declaration had a large meeting at the Labour Conference fringe. Has it ceased to be transphobic? Is transphobia normalised in the Labour Party?

The meeting was addressed by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips. She is a junior minister in the Home Office and Ministry of Justice. “Violence against women and girls” (VAWG) was added to her title by the incoming Labour government: her predecessor was a minister “for victims and safeguarding”. Labour takes VAWG seriously.

Phillips’ speech makes no reference to trans. If it were in any other context, I would applaud it. Here it is: it runs on the video from 54.10-1.10.45.

She talks about the women’s movement, how it starts with two women in a room with a cup of tea. Refuge starts with a mattress on the floor of a squat. The Labour movement sometimes ignores women, and part of the reason for Birmingham’s bankruptcy is decades of lower pay for women, at last corrected by equal pay claims. The Tory government would give a million quid for a project here and there, so the movement became professionalised and standardised, but at its heart it is women getting together.

Labour’s promise to halve VAWG has to involve more than a few ad hoc projects. Perpetrators are in our homes and offices, and we need to come to terms with pervasive violence. Systematic reform will address the health service, housing, welfare, immigration, everything, with fundamental change: Sure Start was wonderful, but the Tories just shut it down. Phillips has to be part of government, not outside with a placard. She can’t resign over every problem. But she wants campaigners pressuring her and the rest of Government.

I am glad that there is a large organisation for women hearing this speech about VAWG at the conference, and horrified that it is LWD. I might imagine negotiations for the meeting- how transphobic will they be? Phillips did not say anything transphobic at all in her speech. LWD are proudly transphobic. This is their website in September 2024, so proud of that conference. The “Declaration” makes no reference to trans explicitly, but is unchanged since 2019 and all about trans.

Beside Phillips in the video, you can see their slogan, “For women’s sex-based rights and freedoms”. I am for women’s rights and freedoms: what does “sex-based” add? It means, no trans women, as they claim my sex is male. Phillips wears a LWD badge.

Hannah Barnes, anti-trans campaigner, wrote about the meeting for the New Statesman. Again, she does not mention trans specifically. She writes of women’s equality. She starts with the first female chancellor talking of her female role-models, mentions VAWG, and then says Labour may now support “sex-based rights”. That phrase again, meaning the rights of women with the specific exclusion of trans women.

Phillips could so easily have been an ally. She could have put in her speech that she supported the rights of all women, cis and trans. I liked her when I met her. I do not think she is transphobic, but she just does not care enough to stand up for us. The closest she came was saying that the patriarchal powers will seek to turn women against each other. They have: Rupert Murdoch and billionaire-funded think-tanks have worked hard for trans exclusion.

In 2017, the women’s movement- rape crisis, women’s aid, women’s meetings in the Labour party and in unions, was focused on women’s rights. It rarely mentioned trans, but was generally trans-inclusive. Now, we have a women’s movement which might make huge steps against VAWG and for equal pay. It still rarely mentions trans but has been infiltrated by individuals and groups which have trans-exclusion as their first priority, and the governing Labour Party is happy with that exclusion. I want progress against VAWG, but it may come alongside my exclusion from British society. Increasingly, trans exclusion is normalised in the women’s movement.

Nadia Whittome MP stands with trans people.

What about me?

CBT made sense but did not work. I came across it in the 1990s, and its ideas such as black and white thinking helped me see what I was doing wrong without helping me do it right. I had a list of cognitive distortions and could see they were a problem, but pointing them out was listing symptoms of unhelpful thinking. CBT did not find the cause so could not cure. It was just one more thing for me to beat myself up about: black and white thinking made me Bad, to my implacable judge/inner critic.

I found myself in black and white thinking yesterday. This situation is Fine or it’s unbearable. FINE, fouled-up insecure neurotic and emotional, means ignoring my feelings, the parts telling me something’s wrong. Conceptualising it as adult and child parts, the child holds the feeling and the inner adult tells her not to complain, disrespects the child or Self having the feeling.

Sometimes I want to not act on a feeling. I want to be able to bear discomfort, as with Frank Herbert’s “Gom jabbar”. But that should not mean I suppress awareness of the feeling or deny it.

Black and white thinking is a fight in my head. That part which is too much socialised says everything is FINE- the white, or “positive” as in toxic positivity. And the inner child, the part of me I have been taught to ignore or suppress, says no it’s awful. That’s the black, or negative.

It seemed I use black and white thinking to respect my own feelings. Leaping to the Black, saying something is awful or unbearable, was letting my Feeling part- inner child, inner Light- be heard. Or the Child felt it could only be heard if it insisted everything was Unbearable- Black. The Black or Negative could be a firm boundary where I have not felt able to show a flexible boundary.

It’s not unbearable, but it is uncomfortable. I might learn something, but I have uncertainty and unknowing now. That produces a watchfulness in me. If I am too focused on pretending everything’s fine, I won’t acknowledge my own discomfort and won’t learn. That made me withdraw from the world. I say, What about me? I matter, my feelings matter, and I need the self-acceptance and self-love so that I can matter to myself, or no love will be enough to fill my need.

My inner conflict was too great to cope with the rational method of how to stop black and white thinking. Instead I had to value both sides of the black and white thinking, to find why I was doing it, and what each part achieved for me, before I could accept the rational way through it and hopefully beyond it.

My theology of the Quaker meeting now is that the human love and acceptance we hold, one for another, supports the parts of us that are hurt and need love. Come when you are angry, depressed, tired or spiritually cold. I want to hold the meeting and those present in love and curious openness to their whole idiosyncratic selves. I want Love to flow through the meeting, nourishing all of us.

I need to love myself first, or no love I receive will be enough. Then love flowing between me and my partner is a strong foundation for us both. Then we can love the world. People taught as children that they do not matter need to say “What about me?” And, if we are all in our individual struggles, then the meeting is unsettled and restless.

Brighton Sands

At the lowest tides of the year, the sands beyond Brighton’s stony beach are exposed, and adults come out to play.

And children:

I swam round the West pier, then the tide went out and I saw all the pointy bits round the West pier:

Crowds crossed a shallow lagoon to a spit of sand:

The sunset:

I swam from the Palace pier to the groyne West of the West pier. Then the groyne and its inhabitants were exposed.

A man went around sticking a pump in the wet sand, hunting invertebrates.

Tides are stated to the nearest decimetre. This low tide was given as 0.4m; the October lowest tide is 0.5m, and the December lowest tide 0.9m. The lowest tide data for July that I can find gave 1.0m. I hope to walk as far out, in the spring.

Working on Recovery

My rock bottom was thinking I Should get out of bed, and not doing it. The only place down from there is catatonia, being unable to move or speak. Ought and Should were brickbats beating me: I cowered and resisted by sulking and doing nothing.

Seeing myself as parts in conflict helps me understand myself. There was the inner critic, telling me my distress was “play-acting”, that I “should” have achieved things before I did, and compared me to others, always unfavourably. Then I shared her trauma, and she became my friend.

Then it seemed that there was the Real Self, the beautiful Me that wants to shine, and a part saying, What will people think? Usually the tug of war between these is unconscious, but it came into consciousness, and a dialogue between these helped me see my Desires, and how I am with other people. Then I see how to balance these to let the Self flourish.

Now I imagine a Self which is in the moment, seeking what I desire Now, and a self looking forward at where I might be. That is a temptation to Ought and Should: I need to be There, and I need to get there. Would it benefit me to see these as separate parts in conflict?

I know various ways of considering this: an “Inner child”, who wants to play and be spontaneous; an “inner loving parent”, who affirms all the parts of me, but considers what is the best response in the world. There are protectors and firefighters, a response to trauma: they were overwhelmed by a particular incident, and now imagine that threat still exists, and is a threat of annihilation.

I now see it as self with desire, with felt potential, which is traumatised. So that real self has fears, doubts and a lack of self-belief, and might want to be a counsellor but can hardly believe it possible. Then oughts and shoulds might make work wearisome. Or Perfectionism stops me undertaking a task: if I see it at some time in the future, I can imagine it done perfectly, but if I do it I judge unmercifully how I have done it. I need to accept “Good enough”, and see it.

Then the fear and doubt mixes with past hurt, and creates a stew of emotions which is unbearable. So I do something to avoid feeling those feelings. That is the root of addiction. My own addiction is to timewasting on the internet, particularly facebook, the Guardian and my blog stats. Upvotes on my Guardian comments, Likes on my facebook posts and views of blog posts give me the nutrition free dopamine hits that keep me coming back, but also gives a sense of failure adding to that stew of unbearable feeling. Emerging from that is hard.

Ought and Should will just hurt me and make it harder. There is Me, with my wounds, qualities, difficulties, desires, possibilities, gifts…. Appreciating myself in the round may help me move forward as I desire, not as traumatised parts seek to force me.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy professional ethical framework lists thirteen key personal qualities to aspire to: Candour, Care, Courage, Diligence, Empathy, Fairness, Humility, Identity, Integrity, Resilience, Respect, Sincerity and Wisdom. I am not there yet, but it seems possible that I might be, and if I were that would be a beautiful, behovely way to be.

The picture is a bronze from Zanele Muholi’s exhibition, at Tate Modern until 26 January. It is an affirming show of photos of queer people. I loved it.

“Transgender trend” is a hate group

Some people are trans. Adult trans people often knew when they were small children that they are trans. Children say that they are trans, or that they are not the sex assigned at birth. Children as well as adults want to transition, and find transition improves their lives, enabling them to live as their true selves. Acceptance of trans people by those around us also improves our lives. There have always been trans people.

Some people deny these facts. Then they have to explain why children want puberty blockers and social transition. They do it by fantasising about “transgender ideology”, a belief system which takes gender variant children and forces them into a box marked “trans”.

On the front page of Transgender Trend, which is regularly archived, the first thing you see is the begging-bowl: Donate! Support us! Several buttons are available to facilitate this, with helpful icons of visa, mastercard, etc, and paragraphs calling donors “kind”, suggesting donations should be monthly.

Then they get down to the denial of the fact that some people are trans. “Welcome,” the front page says. Our Founder discusses “the harms of gender ideology” to children. “No child is born in the wrong body”, they say, expressing absolute opposition to the bodily autonomy of trans people. Children have a narrow window to avoid the wrong puberty, and TT wants to prevent them.

They claim the fact that some people are trans is not just an “ideology”, it is a “mythos”, a “subjective idea” opposed to “objective reality”- so they deny that our reality is socially constructed. Human rights law has long recognised that some people are trans, and that society should accommodate us. TT find this threatening: they call it a “trend” in society to replace “objective reality” with “the subjective idea of ‘gender identity’.”

How do we know what is “real”? How does something become “real”? What does being “real” as opposed to “subjective” mean? When TT uses the term “real” to justify trans exclusion, it makes no sense at all.

TT are self-conscious that judges assert anti-trans campaigners have no expertise. They claim their expertise was acknowledged in the High Court because they were allowed to intervene in a case. But interveners in court cases are not experts: they are persons claiming an interest in the outcome, but who cannot claim an award or costs. Interveners are allowed to instruct barristers who make arguments and perhaps present evidence. In the Court of Appeal judgment, TT is mentioned only once, almost as if what they said had no relevance.

TT oppose the acceptance of trans children. They want other children to misgender them: if the cis children do not, TT claim they are “coerced”. When a trans boy is accepted in school, they call him a “lesbian”, and claim he should be brought up as a lesbian. They want the trans boy to use the girls’ toilets and changing rooms, and claim that otherwise the cis children lack privacy. They claim this is a safeguarding issue.

So they demand a complete lack of acceptance of trans children, demand their exclusion, demand denial and bullying, by pretending that they want to help that child and every other child in their school. Scandalously, they produced stickers denying the reality that some children are trans, which were used to bully trans children. They withdrew the stickers because of adverse publicity. Now they pretend to be experts.

This pretence operates very much like conspiracy theorising. Just as long articles are produced painstakingly analysing President Obama’s birth certificate or arguing that parents whose children were shot behave like “crisis actors”, so TT has twenty articles on “rapid onset gender dysphoria”, even though the originator of that idea admitted that any evidence for it could be explained in other ways. So the conspiracy theorist, or follower of TT, has access to a vast amount of specious narrative and argument with which to bamboozle others.

Trans children suffer depression if they are prevented from transition, but their mental health approximates that of their peers if their true identity is accepted. Such research is subjected to furious criticism, but, talk to trans people. Trans children facing the conspiracy theories of TT, so prevented from being themselves, might feel hated.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre defines a hate group as one that has beliefs or practices that attack or malign a class of people. When I say I am trans, TT is suspicious: they believe I am merely deluded, and that “objective reality” says I am a man. So they would dispute my legal right to go about my life as a woman. When I say some children are trans, they would call me a safeguarding risk, and encourage others to do so too. It feels like hate to me.

Stripped to its core, the anti-trans position is “We find trans yucky. We don’t understand it. We find the very idea of trans women disgusting, and the idea of trans women in a women’s loo unbearable. We don’t like their bodily autonomy because what they do with it icks us out, and we don’t like people, especially children, transitioning. We want them made too terrified to transition by the threat of exclusion from society. We are disgusted with them so they must be just Bad.” But nobody has the courage to say that, even if it is the subtext of every Robert Galbraith tweet. Instead they pretend to “objective reality” and compassion for children, and even scientific knowledge. It’s all conspiracist bullshit.