Is the film “Adult Human Female” transphobic?

What does the film “Adult human female” say about trans people?

It is a film of talking heads. One woman will talk for a minute or so, then another woman will talk for less. The rapid interchange gives no time to think about or challenge the things said.

It is a film of ridiculous falsehoods. The only man to appear, a gay man called Simon Case, said that trans kids were a new phenomenon in 2013. In the 1980s when I first heard of other trans people, there was already a clichéd narrative, that the trans person knew when they were a small child. Many trans people will say the same now. Puberty blockers were first given to trans children in 1994.

He also says that when a girl says she is attracted to girls she is persuaded that this is because she is a boy, not because she is lesbian, by staff at school as well as other pupils. This is not true. He says there is going to be a reckoning about all the children sterilised by gender-affirming care. He compares it to thalidomide and lobotomies. But there were 1648 children discharged by the Tavistock, the only gender identity development service for under 18s in England, in 2019/20. Only about 260 had been offered puberty blockers, and only 150 cross-sex hormones. That’s out of eleven million children in England.

Trans is forbidden by Deuteronomy. You do not forbid things which don’t happen. Trans has existed for millennia.

At the start there is a long section where several people repetitively claim humans are sexually dimorphic and it is illogical to say someone can change sex. But words and rationality should follow reality, which is surprisingly difficult. For example, is a virus alive? It reproduces, but does not metabolize. Trans people exist.

The film claims that the “Gender industry” makes billions from hormones and surgery, and the people making billions don’t want the general public to understand. It is not consistent: it also says most trans people don’t have any treatment. How can these two things be true? In fact, trans people demanded treatment. Dora Richter, the first subject of a vaginoplasty, attempted to remove her penis with a tourniquet when she was six. Her first surgery was in 1922.

It is a film which celebrates the contributors’ failure to understand trans people. Trans women are called “men who identify as women”.

It portrays all trans rights campaigners as violent misogynists threatening gender critical feminists with violence, death and rape threats. It shows tweets saying “terfs can choke on my girl-dick” and says trans is “not a social movement but misogyny”. I do not condone violent threats, and do not use the word terf. I explain and campaign for my rights with courtesy.

I am a trans woman. I wanted to be normal. I tried to conform as a man, or live as a feminine male, but I could not. Only transition lets me express my true self. It is hard, living as a trans woman under the extreme prejudice shown by Cabinet ministers, these people, and the men who told me “I’ll kill you, you fucking poof. You need killing,” or called me a “nonce” or a “paedophile” or a “fucking bloke” in the street. But it is unimaginable for me to revert. It would be too horrible to contemplate. This is more than, as one contributor says, “waking up one day and deciding to identify as a woman”. This is a deep-seated, decades-long conviction.

But for one contributor, trans is like a “spell”. She says, “They know most of the time but they’re just pretending they don’t know. It’s very hard for me to understand.” People have to agree to go into the spell-land and if they don’t agree they have to be coerced, she says. She is fearful of the “totalitarianism” or “authoritarianism” of asking her to accept that trans women are not just deluded men. I know I have a Y chromosome. I also know that living as a man was unbearable, living as a woman gives me peace, and I have been in women’s services since the 1990s.

The film starts with a woman who tweeted, “I don’t believe that humans can change sex”. She suffered professional difficulties because of that tweet, and other contributors say what professional difficulties they suffered because of their speaking out. They don’t explain the implications of their campaigning. If I, and the 48,000 people who identified as trans women in the 2021 census, can’t express ourselves as women we cannot flourish. Believe what you like, but don’t deny the existence of the phenomenon. We don’t change statistics more than a rounding error does.

These people call my very nature a fad, and demand that I be excluded from absolutely all women’s services. They frequently talk of the oppression of women under patriarchy- femicide, rape, everyday disrespect and bullying. But the reform they demand, if fully implemented, would ensure that those 48,000 trans women would never go into changing rooms in clothes shops, or be able to use most of the counselling services for sexual violence. Given the oppression of patriarchy, I don’t think such rigorous exclusion of such a small number should be the highest priority of a women’s movement seeking women’s rights. Instead, their campaign divides feminists and increases the power of the Right.

They insist they are left wing, and call acceptance of trans women neoliberal individualism, a perversion of the American Dream. They say it originated in America, rather than in 1920s Germany or ancient Egypt. But they admit that Conservative ministers speak up for trans exclusion, and Labour and the LibDems support trans people. They mock Keir Starmer and Ed Davey.

They talk of the billions the “gender industry” allegedly makes, but they will not recoup the costs of this professionally-produced film from box office. I saw the whole thing, without payment and quite legally, in Britain, shortly after its release. There is a vast amount of money available for anti-trans propaganda.

You will not learn anything about trans people or trans rights from this film. Instead, you will see a few women and one man parade their ignorance and inability to comprehend, and complain about us. The film stirs up incomprehension, resentment and fear of trans people, and portrays anti-trans campaigners as reasonable people seeking informed debate. That is, it is throughout completely transphobic.

I am pleased to see Greta Thunberg spoke out against it, and a planned showing at Edinburgh University was blocked.