The Welsh government’s fixation on trans issues is baffling
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Remember when the Labour Party was a ball of confusion about women? Various MPs suggested that men could grow a cervix, that a woman could have a penis, that anyone who said otherwise, was a dinosaur hoarding rights. Then it got dialled down to only a small percentage of women penis-owners. As part of Sir Keir Starmer’s mission to make the party not seem total lunatics, he managed to say during the summer that a woman was an adult human female.
Hallelujah! How on earth was this so difficult? You know, stating the reality that there are two sexes? In part because the party was Stonewalled up and its activists refused to countenance any conflict between trans rights and women’s rights even though in the case of sports, of prisons, of rape refuges this was becoming ever more visible. And in part what I call progressive misogyny. It never goes away and that’s why we need to pay attention.
Though this obsession with gender ideology and the attempt to push self-ID through in Scotland helped bring about Nicola Sturgeon’s downfall, such thinking still dominates some factions of all the parties. Not just Labour.
A leaked draft from the Welsh Government on its Gender Quotas Bill, which aims to make the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament) more equal, proposes that half the candidates are women and that must include transgender women. That can be a man who has gone through the process of “reassigning their sex” or simply one who at some stage may undergo transition.
This is self-ID through the back door. The purpose of quotas is to increase female representation, yet this would mean men who ID as women would improve their chances of selection. The goal is to benefit women, the reality is that they may be pushed out.
Many of us are sick of being told to take such arguments in good faith when it has become apparent that some men will present as trans for selfish reasons, whether they are sex offenders or sportsmen. This is why the issue of self-ID is so toxic.
Actually, Wales already does have a trans MP – Jamie Wallis, the Tory MP for Bridgend, who is seeking another seat because, he says, of Westminster boundary changes. Wallis got himself (he was still using male pronouns a few months ago) in a spot of bother by crashing his car and fleeing the scene in high heels and a mini skirt.
This married father-of-two then spoke of the awful experience of being raped, subjected to blackmail and realising he had gender dysphoria. He said he would begin the process of transitioning and many were sympathetic and simply accepted this – self-ID – and patted him on the back for his bravery.
If anyone thinks that now Labour has steered itself away from all of this nonsense and when the government won’t backtrack on its newfound revelation that sex is binary, they are not listening.
Starmer uses the phenomenally dull Annaliese Dodds, shadow Women and Equalities Secretary, who in her best trainee social worker manner, signals the party’s position on gender. In July she announced what was seen as a U-turn on self-ID because she said new legislation would require a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
However, since then she has said Labour would introduce conversion therapy and that would be trans-inclusive. What does that mean? It means a basic acceptance of the fact that sexual orientation and this made-up thing called “gender identity” are equally valid. Conversion therapy refers to the punitive practice whereby a homosexual man or woman is persuaded that they are not in fact gay. It is cruel, it is used mostly in religious communities and it does not work. It is no kind of therapy at all.
Conversion therapy, when used as a term about gender dysphoric youth, is something else altogether. When young people are questioning their identity and their sexuality and are often depressed and anxious, good therapy provides a place to explore. Somehow, though, the therapeutic establishment has sought to align itself only with the position that the therapist’s role is to affirm the child’s identity. We are talking here about children as young as eight who say they are trans. To ban a space in which a child might be listened to and all the issues and options might be discussed is actually cruel when we know the value of “watchful waiting” with such kids.
Therapists who refute this affirmative model have been thrown off course, so ingrained is this relatively new idea that gender identity is as real as biological sex. This has led to the prescription of puberty blockers, chest binders and usually on to cross-sex hormones.
Why on earth would a Labour government endorse a ban on helping kids find themselves? There is no other disorder we affirm. Self-harming? Here is a bigger blade! Anorexia? Sure you need to lose more weight!
It is clear that politicians do not understand what therapy actually is but one would hope that those who make laws understand what the law is about.
If there is no distinction between sex and gender, no one would actually need to transition, would they? Any party that is so incoherent on this subject – and yes I am also looking at you Lib Dems and the Greens – will find it hard to win the trust of women.
Whatever they are.
