A historian looking back on the West in general and the United Kingdom in particular in 2018 might wonder what on earth so possessed the soul of its civilisation that it embarked upon the destruction of the very scientific rationalism that helped it forge ahead, both intellectually and technologically, in the first place. And all in order to placate a group of people who wish to identify as something that they are not.
The phenomenon responsible is transgenderism. It seemingly arose from nowhere in the last five years but today its influence is such that Theresa May’s government wants to reform the Gender Recognition Act to force everyone into accepting that if somebody says that they are the sex they are not, it must be accepted on sanction of penalty for disagreeing.
There are of course a very small number of people with genuine anatomical ambiguities who could medically be described as intersex, or who suffer gender dysphoria which without doubt can be deeply distressing. But since the first Gender Recognition Act of 2004, people who choose to live as the opposite sex for two years and have been certified by a doctor can be officially recognised as that sex. Just 4,910 people in the UK have obtained such a certification in 14 years.
However the government’s consultation document on reform of the Act states that there are 200,000 to 500,000 trans people in the UK, though it admits that estimates ‘vary’ and ‘there is no truly robust estimate’ of their number.
The trans lobby, backed by Stonewall, appears determined to see the Gender Recognition Act ‘reformed’ so that anyone can self-certify as the opposite gender and be recognised as such immediately. Anyone who self-certifies will be given a new birth certificate declaring that they are the gender they are not. Theresa May has promised it, and her once-sensible Women and Equalities Minister Penny Mordaunt MP is championing the cause.
In the 75-point LGBT Action Plan published by the Government Equalities Office in July, Mordaunt declares herself to be a Stonewall LGBTI+ ally. This action plan promises to ‘extend the anti-homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying programme in schools’ (transparently a façade for indoctrinating the youngest of children into LGBT ideology), ‘take further action on LGBT hate crime’, even though hate crime is purely subjective, and to push and fund the LGBT agenda around the globe in a new and unwanted form of progressive colonialism.
These action points are backed up with large amounts of government money to which we are all contributing as taxpayers. £4.5million is promised to deliver commitments in the action plan and other projects.
In the manner of progressive Leftists, Mordaunt accuses of ‘bigotry’ anyone who disagrees with the transgender agenda. In Parliament she claimed that ‘the discrimination and bigotry that the trans community faces is very much like what gay men went through in the 1980s’. Yet it is neither bigoted nor extreme to question the denial of basic biological facts.
Even more concerning is that she seems to have discovered a penchant for social engineering: ‘Ultimately this is about a culture change . . . We . . . need to show our complete solidarity with the trans community as we do it.’
This is the official expression of the furious, aggressive and sometimes violent street-fighting seen from trans activists in attempting to silence anyone who disagrees. This ideology, which only five years ago was on the fringes, has been mainstreamed to such an extent that it is now defended by the government with a revolutionary zeal.
Transgender activists regularly have speakers no-platformed, teachers fired, dissenters reported for hate crimes or hate speech and dragged through the courts.
At the same time proposed empirical and scientific research into the issue is being refused funding, as is publication if the conclusions do not fit the ‘correct’ political narrative. Even a poster with a simple dictionary definition of the word ‘woman’ has been condemned as transphobic and taken down. This is the altar of extreme political correctness on which freedom of speech is being destroyed.
Bullying on this issue has become so bad that once ‘progressive’ groups and individuals have had enough and are calling for more openness and less bullying by trans activists. The transgender pioneer Jan Morris, one of the first to undergo sex-change surgery, has called for a ‘kinder’ debate on the issue.
Feminists have grave and well-justified concerns about men gaining access to women’s lavatories, changing rooms and other facilities in order to commit sexual assaults on unsuspecting women and girls.
Members of the gay community are also deeply concerned about the trans lobby’s demands and Stonewall’s silencing tactics. Last week a letter to the Times, signed by 17 including gay activists, criticised Stonewall’s intransigence in refusing to accept any debate on the issue, and called on them ‘to commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate rather than demonising as transphobic those who wish to discuss, or dissent from, Stonewall’s transgender policies’.
The alliance between progressive interest groups is beginning to break up. Trans activists have become too Stalinist and gone too far for gay activists and radical feminists, who have found that their differing viewpoints are no longer allowed.
These are not just the concerns of competing identity groups, but of parents and grandparents across the country, concerned about the safety of their children and their natural development as boys and girls.
Despite all this, Theresa May’s government is going full steam ahead with her insane gender ‘reform’ plans even though only 18 per cent of voters support the reform. Tomorrow, I could stick on a wig and a dress and identify myself as Davina. If you refused to accept me as a woman then you’d be ‘harming my mental health’, and possibly committing a ‘hate crime’. The rational objective scientific fact that I am male and always will be is dispensed with in a page on the Statute book.
There are a few more days before the Government closes its consultation. You have till October 19 to make your views known via this link.
This reform is one of the most far-reaching and culturally destructive actions ever to come before Parliament. It will require everyone in the United Kingdom to reject the objective scientific truth that there is no difference between sex and gender, and that sex is determined by birth anatomy and chromosomes. If true conservatives do not act to stop Theresa May’s government’s absurdity, many people will find themselves punished by the law for speaking the truth.
