My first space - how did it go?

On August 24th I found myself hosting my very first Twitter space. What did we talk about and is it worth doing? TLDR - yes.

On 24th August 2023 I found myself unexpectedly organising my own ‘Twitter space’ (or ‘X space I as suppose I must now call it). This was because I should have been joining Freda Wallace to discuss his female penis in another space. This collapsed on the morning of the day as Wallace angrily objected to me paying £1K to the charity Disability Rights UK, as opposed to Mermaids, as a condition of our discussions, and blocked me. Whether Wallace used my donation as an excuse to dodge discussion with me, or was genuinely outraged, I do not know, and do not care to find out.

But I had time free in my diary and my commitment is to freedom of speech. I don’t find being challenged or getting things wrong a genocidal attack upon my very essence. Opening yourself up to discussion and being prepared to be wrong, is how you learn.

I believe the only way out of current mess is by discussion. We may end up with a compromise that doesn’t make anyone particularly joyful but is something we can all live with. A small minority of angry and violent men have hijacked much of the existing poor quality public discussion. We cannot allow this to continue. If they have no ability or no will to explain and defend their positions, we go on without them.

So, how did it go? I think it went well, with many thanks to my suddenly co-opted co-hosts. At the time of writing, 10,600 people ‘tuned in’. The quality of the contributions was very high and provided me with food for thought - such as my glib acceptance as ‘dysphoria’ as a useful diagnosis, without stopping to think why only this particular dsyphoria merited a special status in law. We all agreed that children needed to be seen and treated very differently to adult men, but I had not before tonight given much thought to how the younger generation were captured largely by ‘non binary’ status rather than wishing to be seen as the opposite sex, and what that meant for their futures.

But the most chilling - or heartening thing, depending on your perspective - is that only a few years ago we would not have been allowed to have this conversation at all. Twitter would not have allowed it, we would have found ourselves reported to the police and our employers for ‘hate’. We have clawed our way back into the spaces from which we should never have been ejected, and now we have the opportunity to consider how to shape our futures.

I have set out below a transcription of the conversations, but for your sanity and mine have not recounted the many minutes of confusion over who was speaking or how they could be heard. I would like to hold another space in a few weeks time, to examine current techniques/tactics of activism and how we best use and conserve our energies. Watch this space.

What is a woman? Can gender ever over-ride sex?

(Painful first 4 minutes)

SP: This is my first space as is probably painfully apparent. I wasn’t intending on hosting a space tonight as I thought we were going to be having interesting and adult conversation with Freda Wallace, which I think was probably a very doomed wish from the outset. Yup, you can call me naïve, you can call me stupid, you can call it a wate of time but I do think if we are not going to be able to talk to each other then we are in real and serious trouble and I already think its probably too late.

I know Twitter isn’t the world. But levels of aggression and hostility, refusal to countenance good faith arguments is just astonishing and we are seeing that spill over into the real world into some of the court decisions being made, women still being investigated by the police, chucked out of their jobs - it’s still happening. So I don’t have any shame in saying I want to be part of trying to get people to talk. I think two years ago I set up ‘GRARG’ which was the Gender Recognition Act Reform or Repeal Group’ and that was really interesting and we had public meetings just to show that we could, just to show it was perfectly normal, legitimate and acceptable for us to talk about our political views.

So what I wanted to explore with Freda Wallace - because I was genuinely interested in what he had to say - were some general questions and some specific questions and hopefully you have all seen those set out in Twitter or on my substack. Of course I didn’t start with grandmother of all the questions, which is ‘what is a woman’. Because I think quite interestingly I am seeing a definite shift from people like David Lammy and India Willoughby, who seem to think you can grow a cervix in a jar with the right amount of oestrogen, the shift has been to trans identifying men saying ‘look I know I haven’t changed sex but that is not the point - I am not female but I am a woman’. So the term ‘woman’ is being claimed as indicative of some sort of self asserted gender identity and that’s fine, in lots of situations. But I worry it is being used to override sex, when sex is clearly important - sports, prisons, refuges etc.

So my definition of a woman is an adult human female and an adult human female is that person whose body developed with the potential to produce large gametes. I am not saying you are only a woman if you menstruate, if you give birth, as that is obviously wrong and some women can’t. But the key factor has got to be, how did your body develop and with what potential. I appreciate there is a very tiny minority of people with ‘differences of sexual development’, it is difficult to ascertain what sex they are but most (if not all, obviously I am not a biologist, but that’s my understanding) can be determined to be in one category or the other.

So - that’s where we are going, that’s what I think a woman is and that’s what I think is a really important category to keep separate, to define. So those are the terms I think on which I am operating. My first question that I put in my substack is one that I asked over and over and over again - who is within the ‘Q’ and who is within the ‘+’ in the LGBTQ+AI+++ whatever. And I asked quite specifically - are there groups such as paedophiles, zoophiles or necrophiles who are excluded. If they are excluded - why? What is the test for inclusion? Because if you are saying - very few people engaged with me, most ignored or blocked me, a handful of people engaged - I only got one attempt at a sensible answer which was this: those groups cannot be included because the consent of the person or the thing they are having sex with cannot be guaranteed. And that make perfect sense. Paedophiles have sex with children who can’t consent, zoophiles have sex with animals who can’t consent and necrophiles have sex with dead bodies, who obviously can’t consent.

But that got me thinking - that applies with equal force to the T doesn’t it? Because if you are a man claiming to be a woman, that is predicated on the consent of everyone that you meet and so I really wanted to explore that with people but nobody ever did. So I would just be really interested to know what perspectives the group had, if there was anyone who wanted to chime in on that. Um, but I won’t be too confident I know how to give you the chance …. (ignore painful attempts to allow people to speak)

Conversation resumes at 13.00

SP - I can’t see any hands up, I guess it may be that some of these questions… I mean I assume most people who have joined this basically agree with my view unless we have got some hate listeners, but I suspect they would be too fragile to endure this potential genocide. Um, I suppose the bottom line is that most of you probably agree with me. There is a as massive problem with the ‘Q’ and the ‘+’ as I am not given any sensible answer - that was the one sensible answer and it did make sense to me. You can’t have people included in this group whose sexual partners are dead, animals or children, because they can’t consent. But the whole trans identifying thing is also about imposing consent on other people which of course is no consent at all. So this I think desperately needs some discussion, particularly as the ‘Q’ and the ‘+’ being so undefined are going to be used to sneak people in under the radar. And I think the whole thing with Peter Tatchell has been incredibly worrying - he’s been so obviously dishonest in his previous support for adult men having sex with children that he clearly has something to hide and something that he is concerned about.

OK, I don’t see any hands raised for that so I am just going to assume everyone agrees with me (co host attempts to interject but I can’t hear her). The next question, I have been posing over and over again, I posed it on air to Robin White on GB News. Robin has now said he won’t appear with me any more because I called him ‘he’ but as I have made clear, I am not going to put fetters on my consciousness, I am not going to be running my speech through my brain before I say it, other than to generally think about what I am going to say, and if somebody in front of me is presenting as a man - sounds like a man, looks like a man, then I am going to be using the pronouns I think are appropriate and that will be ‘he’ and ‘him’.

But I remember asking Robin on GB News - how do you distinguish between a transwoman and a man claiming to be a transwoman, such as Adam Graham, aka Isla Bryson? Is there a test? I never got any answer from Robin so I just wondered if anyone could speak to that, if anyone has given that some thought and considered - we have got to have a test haven’t we? If we have someone like Adam Graham who has committed two rapes and is going to prison, which prison is he going to? The prison that he self identifies into, or do we say he’s not a ‘genuine’ transwoman, he’s actually a rapist. That was Nicola Sturgeon’s preferred response. I just wondered if anyone could speak to that.

SPEAKER: Hi, yes, thankyou for hosting this space, I think this is a great way internationally for us to connect within the movement, I really appreciate you hosting it. But coming back to your first question, when you asked about who is acceptable and not getting any answer, I think that is part of the problem, I can’t really think of a time when there has been this large of a movement and there’s been no defined ‘heads’ to it or whatever, so everything is in the dark and its hard to tell, because if you ask one person if those are permitted and another person, it’s not, its because they are just doing whatever they want, there is no organisation. So I think that is frustrating as well, because one person will say ‘no you can’t have that in our movement!’ and another person will say ‘no we accept everyone’. So I think that is a hard thing too as its just a free for all.

SP. Yes, that’s a really good point. They talk of a ‘community’ and I am always suspicious of talking about ‘communities’ - like the disabled community is so vast its almost pointless and when people say they are a spokesperson for the Jewish community or the Muslim community, I always wonder who actually appointed you? But yes, that is spot on. This is such a wide and diffuse community and there is no one particularly identified as its figure heard apart from Peter Tatchell - and that’s not a good place to be is it?

SPEAKER: Thank you, just to say nice to hear you on spaces, glad you have come on here, think its a really important space to be in, if you are a politician particularly. If we are looking at what we are actually dealing with is this idea of you know definitions. We were talking earlier on in a different space with a lady, and it was, you know its about the language we are using at the moment and how difficult it is to argue with someone who has a different language to you. We all know if we are working on an intercultural level, if you are working in a different language, the problem is at a language, we have a different language of ‘transwoman’ and ‘trans identifying male’, we have got this different language of ‘woman’, whatever woman is supposed to mean. And its just ridiculous we have got to this point. I am glad to have you here and I am glad you are coming on spaces, I think its a good idea. I am so you have your own space instead of the original one (chuckles) I think its a really good idea … (background noise)

SP: yes, I did feel anxious and on edge all day yesterday because I don’t underestimate just really the sheer nastiness of some of the people who are self appointed spokesmen for this movement and I think Wallace is definitely up there. This is a man who burned a copy of the book I edited with Al Peters, Transpositions, … this is not a nice man at all … we have to talk across the divide and get through these really unpleasant and quite violent men, because if they are gate keepers for this whole discourse we are stuck aren’t we? We can’t keep doing lawfare, we are exhausted. It’s crowdfunder after crowdfunder simply to re-establish basic legal principles. And I do think dialogue is the only way through. But yeh I am really glad I am not doing the alternative as I think it would have been really unpleasant…

(problems with delay - resumes at 23.20)

SPEAKER: OK I was just wanting to answer the question Sarah posed regarding how do you tell between a genuine transperson and someone who is just posing as one? The answer is - none of them are. If we know that humans can’t change sex, no one is trans. That is the ultimate conclusion you should come to. Plain and simple, full stop. You can’t change sex, and therefore no one is trans and its an arbitrary and ridiculous status or claim - its a religious claim. That’s all I wanted to say.

SP: I like the simplicity of that but I think the problem we have got is gender dysphoria. Now that is a real recognised diagnosis and it is clear there have been people going back many years who have been diagnosed -

SPEAKER: It was put in the DSM 5 as a means to bill insurance and its actually not a genuine thing as its self diagnosed and that’s not a critical criteria for a diagnosis. So it is not a genuine thing -

SP: Ok, I am not a psychiatrist so I am not competent to talk to that but the problem that we have got is that it is well established isn’t it, and I look at people like Blaire White and Buck Angel who say they knew from a very young age, and I think that is what I am trying to say. There are people who claim, from when they can remember, age 3, that they wanted to present as the opposite sex and there are men when they are suddenly facing time in prison for rape, decide they want to be the opposite sex. So that is probably what I mean about how are we distinguishing. I like the simplicity of your approach and its very bold and it would solve quite a lot of problems, but I don’t see us making much headway with that - because the problem is isn’t it, that a lot of sympathy, quite understandable sympathy and compassion, has been weaponised by those people who from a young age felt uncomfortable and wanted to present as the opposite sex. So I just worry we are not going to cut through that. I mean, I would like to. That’s why I started off this whole adventure, thinking we would never get rid of the GRA, and now I think its absolutely imperative that we do, because it’s where the rot set in for us. (speaking over)

SPEAKER: Can I answer that then I will move on and let everyone else have the mic. Um, in terms of Robert White, his name is not Blaire, Robert White, and Buck Angel, whatever, its basically internalised homophobia. They are both homosexuals and Robert doesn’t want to be seen as a male as if he is dating a man he would be gay. He doesn’t want that because he may have been raised in a more traditional religious family that would frown upon that or doesn’t want to admit it to himself that he is gay, but he is a gay man. The same with Buck Angel. Buck is a lesbian woman and wanted to change for the same purpose, to convince everyone she’s a man when she is clearly not. She may look like one now through all the testosterone she’s junked up on but she is clearly a woman. And the notion that there is some genuine thing - there’s not. Its actually, its all about appearance. That notion of genuine transphobia is a load of bunkum. And they use this argument to legitimise their claim that they are - quote unquote - ‘trans’. But it’s not. Because no one is trans.

SP: yeh, I like the simplicity of the approach. I think we may however be caught up in the gender dysphoria point which has certainly been accepted for some time now, but I do hear what you are saying about a self diagnosed diagnosis has its limits. Um, I don’t know if anyone else wanted to speak about this…

(co host lost connection) resumes 29.06

SPEAKER: It seems to me that there is a half hearted and dishonest moving away from the position that anyone changes sex. I was told by my son last night nobody has ever said people can actually change sex. They are on the run and I think that is also our opportunity. I think our opportunity is ‘well ok, if you are not saying you have changed sex or a different sex or there is any um biological implication, actually what do you mean by trans. What is it? Just tell us what it is. (SP: I think that’s a really good point). I don’t think they can answer.

SP: I think that’s a really good point. Now finally the floodgates are opened and we are not all being hauled off to the police station, there is some rather frantic re-definitions coming through aren’t there. I think that is spot on.

()Resumes 30.49)

SPEAKER: Hello everyone. Thankyou for this opportunity. I think its really important for us to speak together and I do agree with Sarah, its very intense but very important that we engage with people in conversation, even with the people we disagree. I have tried to do that, um although its really hard, I have actually lost a friend I was at Uni with, this person knew me for five years and I just posted one article about some trans identifying males abusing some kids in Boston and people were really trying to cover it up and that was immediately a ‘no’ for them and I was like, surely the kids are more important? But anyway. I wanted to say I think its really hard to know what the difference is between someone who is being genuine, even if you can or you can’t - I don’t really think you can - I don’t think you can change sex, its just not possible, it’s something you have to deal with in other ways, have to learn to accept the way that you were born right? But to that, I think its also really important to consider non binary people, who say they are ‘they/them’, alright but what category do you fall into in all of this then? Because it will really affect you in so many different ways. I mean we are seeing like lawsuits now that are people who are calling each other, pardon me, ‘wankers’ and such stuff - where does this stop? Where is the limit? Because I think that organisations - I am not from the UK, I am not British as I think you can tell - but I really admire how things are run here, and I think everything is losing its control right now. From the police to the like, even the law system, everything and how do we even go back from this? Because it does affect everyone and yeh, especially when everything is so blurry. Its like what is the line? Even just obviously from trans identifying males, I believe are a very dangerous category of people, for women and children, right, because it’s just a way to hide. People are actually you know deviants, sexual deviants, but how can we actually care for other people, non binary or whatever it is. That’s the point I wanted to make. Just bring in these people too.

SP: I think you hit on the really important word there which is ‘blurry’ and they are doing this on purpose to confuse you and make you doubt yourself. A very interesting part of the complaint about me from my regulator is that I was very ‘clear’ in my views. Now, I thought that would be a good thing that you are ‘clear’ in your views. But that is seen as a threat, as if you hold the line and you are clear, then a lot of these arguments fall away, so I think it is in the interests of those who are promoting gender identity as more important than sex, to encourage that fuzziness and that blurriness. And I think, I don’t know what is going to happen to the non-binaries as I think it is a very interesting development isn’t it. Really, what place in the world are they asking for when it comes to categorisation. When it comes to sports, when it comes to prisons, what are they asking for? Separate non binary spaces, or are they willing to recognise that they retain one of only two sexes? They are absolutely allowed to call themselves whatever they like and dress however they like but I was quite interested in your use of the word ‘blurry’ as I think that is what we have to be alert for.

SPEAKER: This is a very interesting question and I think we can’t change sex, we just can’t, that’s a fact. But I also think it is limiting if we say all trans identifying men are these sicko perverts. A lot of them are, that is true, but I also have a couple of friends with children, 15, 16 years old who you know came up through this and now they think they are female and they are not sick individuals, they are not perverts, they are children who have been impacted by this. And I think we have to keep the distinction and keep away back for those. Obviously not the Isla Bryson’s because that’s so abhorrent but there is a lot of people who exist in in that grey space - so I’m not like that! They might not be, but they are getting lumped with the people who are like that. Those are the ones that we say, I’ve spent a long period of time as a drug addict, over a decade of my life. Now I am in long term recovery and I’ve worked with addicts in recovery, you know in many different arenas, and the presentation, the ways that people from .. act is the exact same way an addict does when they can’t get their fix. So you know, I don’t have an easy answer for what to do about it but I do think but that just having, we need to hold that distinction in minds. Not only are we talking to people with autogynephilia, we are talking to people with autism, you know about children who have been sucked into this, who have been brought in, maybe have been sexually assaulted, latch key kids, had these traumas. They are victims too, it sucks they are all lumped together, it isn’t fair and it doesn’t do anything.

SP: That’s a really valid point but I don’t agree - I certainly don’t lump them together. You see from the questions I move to ask about the age that children should medically transition because one of the really awful things about this current situation is I think you have a lot of middle aged men, very invested in children losing the ability to have sex, to reproduce, to have an orgasm. These are all men who have gone through male puberty and many of them have actually fathered children. So I think you are absolutely right. We cannot lump everybody under one umbrella marked ‘pervert’. Because that is going to get us nowhere. Because it’s true for a significant subset but it is not true for all. And it would be easy to dismiss us if we do that. So you are absolutely spot on but I want to reassure you that I absolutely keep children transitioning very separate from this subset of middle aged men who threaten women with violence and who ask us to worship the female penis. They are not the same.

SPEAKER: Before I hand the microphone over I think its very hard to put an age on that, what if they are 25, 26? Is it their actions then? Is that what we break it down to? how they act, you know, I don’t think there is really any other -

SP: I think we have to take from the criminal justice system and this is something I found so interesting, I was a bit sceptical of calls for raising the age of consent to medical transition to 25. I didn’t realise until I did some digging that there was very serious evidence presented way back 2014 in terms of criminal sentencing to show beyond doubt that our brains, our personalities, do not fully form until we are over 25 and that is reflected in sentencing. Remember the big scandal of the man who committed a rape in Scotland when he was 17 and he got time off his sentence. So why are we not translating this to the children who are making appointments to get testosterone from Helen Webberley when they are eleven! It’s such a bizarre disconnect, I don’t understand it. But I think that would be a very reasonable thing for us to get our shoulders to the wheel on and say look, there is a lot of evidence, well its been accepted by the criminal justice system. Why isn’t that factoring into medical transition, why are the NHS having 7 as the age at which a child can consent to a referral to a gender identity clinic. And actually that is an improvement isn’t it, because before this recent recommendation it was a child of any age! I hadn’t realised that. I was fulminating and getting on my high horse about the age of 7 but prior to that recommendation, it was any age. Yeh, its really curious but I agree with you we have got to keep them distinct.

SPEAKER: Some statistics for the rest of the space. If you look at the Ministry of Justice statistics, we have to keep the children separate, I totally agree but we also can’t underestimate how dangerous these men who claim to be women can be. And you can look at the Ministry of Justice statistics and they will tell you. The odds of a man being in prison for committing at least one sexual offence, this is just your normal everyday guy, is 1 in 2, 205. The odds of a man who thinks he is a woman or a transwoman being in prison for committing one sexual offence is 1 in 626. So check your Ministry of Justice statistics yourself. These men who are claiming to be women are at least three times more likely to be attacking us, so just wanted to put that in their.

SPEAKER: So just on the dysphoria point really. I think the point is well made that dysphoria as set out in DSM 5 is absolute bollocks for simple reason that it contains within the diagnostic criteria the term ‘desires to transition’ so its almost like saying that one of the definitions of depression is ‘if you want to take anti depressants’ that means you are depressed. So the way it is set out is just complete nonsense. That said, I do think there is a recognisable pattern of suffering, which and I think actually that’s valid. Depression is a recognisable pattern of suffering and I think most of the things in the DSM 5 could be described in that way. And to put it in really broad terms, it’s usually associated with difficulties with your sexed body, and is historically defined by being gay or lesbian but you couldn’t transition unless you were gay or lesbian five minutes ago. The idea of a ‘transbian’ is a 5 minute old idea. They used to turn you away from the gender clinics if they thought you were a cross dresser. That is what they used to call the heterosexual males for example. And I also think there is no point denying that dysphoria does have a sexual element. It’s about how you want to relate sexually, even in those people, if you want to make a distinction between actual real dysphoria and people who are just trying to get into the women’s prison and do easy time, its a way of dealing with a certain type of way that you want to relate sexually. There is no point denying that but I think the real problem is when you say this person has dysphoria and therefore the only solution is to transition. You go to one appointment for 45 minutes and you get given all the drugs. Referred to surgery. Even if you allow that transition can be helpful to some people and I think the medical jury is still out on that, I think medicine in a general has a really terrible history with regard to physical solutions to psychiatric problems. I mean lobotomy was cheap, fast and easy so they just did it all the time, cliterectomy, electro shock therapy, there is a long and terrible tradition of physical solutions to psychiatric problems and electro shock therapy for eg is still used but it is a last resort for the desperate and it is not a cure all. If you don’t turn up, read the list of things that you said off the internet and get a lobotomy or electro shock therapy or anything like that and it needs to be separated.

The idea of transitioning which is a fiction anyway, but the idea of undertaking various surgical and hormonal actions in order to appear more like a member of the opposite sex, in order to deal with a problem, a pattern of suffering you have in your head with regard to your physical sexed body, well maybe it helps some people, maybe it does. But it shouldn’t be something you embark on straightaway. My wife lives with that pattern of suffering as it is described in DSM 5 before it goes entirely off the rails. And there is a way of doing that, of living with that, of being dysphoric and not deciding to transition. Gay and lesbian people have always played with gender. Me and my wife say ‘who’s the man?’ and of course I laugh and say ‘it’s me!’ and its layered in irony, people have always done that.

And to speak to that consent point, we both consent to that so that sitting on the sofa and this woman on the telly going on about her search for the ideal man, so I look over to Lauren and said ‘well I’ve found him’ and she laughed. But the only reason I did it as that I know she is not a man and she knows she is not a man and there is no danger anyone’s going to be doing anything stupid like going down the transition route. And it’s playing as gay people have always done. So that’s what I’ve got to say on those points.

Just couple of things to come out from what other people have said. Sarah, from what you said, my question is who on earth has an interest in having nominal adults with the bodies and possibly the minds of children? Because there is only one group in my view that has an interest in that and only one group that wants to stop children going through puberty. People who can technically consent to sex but who still have child like bodies. And then just one last point, the broadness of the diagnosis of dysphoria as its given now so you are giving a female child of 18 months, because they open their babygro, the same mental health diagnosis as a man in his 60s. It’s ridiculous. That’s what I’ve got to say about that. Thanks for holding the space too, its great.

SP: Thank you. This is why I thought this would be valuable. It’s forcing me to think about that. My thinking has not developed much beyond, o Blaire White seems really happy, Buck Angel seems really happy but yeh, that’s a really good point. I don’t know if people want to go onto the issue of medical transition, we seem to have come into it quite naturally. I have asked the question ‘do women have a right to single sex female spaces’ - I don’t think there is much point asking the question in this group, the answer cannot be anything other than ‘yes’. I think that is a really comforting thing that has happened in the last year or two, is that politicians seem to be waking up to that. I don’t know if people on the list wanted to talk to the other questions on the list, don’t let me stop you.

(housekeeping)

SPEAKER: resumes 49.08 Someone briefly mentioned early about non binary and what do non binary people want and I was more concerned about how many young people have assumed this non category and I was slightly concerned, and my understanding of it and why it appeals to so many young people, from my own experience - gender has been designated as something you should feel now, given the increase in young autistic people who are identifying as trans but neither or, I think that is in part because they have been given an option that wasn’t previously there. If you tell a cohort of people that struggle with feelings, in particular labelling and identifying feelings, if you tell them something solid, a solid concept like sex is based on the feeling, then they very quickly go ‘well, I don’t have that feeling’, so I think that is in part one of the most terrifying things.

SP: Sorry to butt in, I think someone is speaking but I can’t hear anything now. Can you hear me… can hear Amanda. (Speaker goes out and comes back in)

SPEAKER: I wanted to say an entire generation of young people have been told that gender is something you should feel. Like an emotion. And if you have a whole cohort of people struggling with their emotions and you are suddenly telling them something that is fixed and previously wasn’t negotiable, if you are suddenly telling them they should feel a certain way about it, that is not going to go down well, and that’s part of the reason why there is such a sudden increase in people who identify as ‘trans’ identify as non binary specifically. Because that’s something I have noticed out of every I know who is younger, particularly young women and same sex attracted young women, aren’t identifying as boys, all identifying as young men and putting themselves in harms way, and feeling a sense of injustice when they are not able to access male facilities.

And I think as other speakers have said, you have got adult grown men cheering on the fact that young girls are upset they can’t go into men’s lavatories, and that is - it’s frightening. Ceri has already said everything as to why that is so frightening, but I think the lumping together is the most dangerous… its the non binary category for young people and it puts them in such a nebulous position as they have no where to go. You have got older trans people advocating for ‘trans rights’ but what possible rights can someone have when they don’t fit into either category? The whole notion of trans people living in stealth, someone who is identifies as non binary and takes a medical pathway to transition, is never going to look like ‘either or’ if they are successful. In fact, lots of young people want to transition and have what is referred to as ‘non binary surgeries’. I was reading about a woman who wanted one breast amputated and not the other. These people are never even going to be able to do what trans people refer to as ‘living in stealth’. There is no safety for them. There will be no way, whether we end up with ‘us lot’ winning the GC war or the trans brigade having it their way, there will be a whole group of predominantly young people who will be enormously left behind. Because I don’t believe that the older trans activists, who for the most part who are identifying as male or female, and for most part men identifying as women, I don’t think they are particularly bothered. They are not. They are using younger people as collateral and ammunition. It’s more about whose bodies can be sacrificed and used to aid our greater goal. I know people hate it but I say it frequently - it is almost a form of child sacrifice, it is younger people being increasingly medicalised and it is older men who are arguing that they shouldn’t have to make physical changes to their bodies. That’s all I’ve got to say.

SP: Thank you, that is very articulate. I have to thank you for being possibly our token young person so we can wave you as a flag to show we are not all hideously aged and decrepit crones. Thank you that was really informative and frankly terrifying. My daughter is 18 going to go to University perhaps next year - what is she going to find? What is going to be asked of her? and it is really, really worrying. So its really helpful to have the insights from someone actually at the coal face of ‘youth’. so thank you.

(Noting its nearly 9pm and didn’t want to go on for more than an hour… agree to have a hard stop at 9.15)

SPEAKER: resumes 56.27 I guess I haven’t got a dreadful lot more to say but the trans people that I knew from 30 odd years ago are not the ones that are wanting to speak up, they are the ones who are trying to be ‘stealth’. But I still don’t believe that they are really trans - all the men that I knew became transsexuals, were gay men who came from religious backgrounds. The only girl I knew who transitioned was sexually abused by her father, so I can’t really blame here. It’s really sad she was a lovely gay woman. The thing is it seems as someone else was saying, it’s in so many different sections. The people I think are behind it, the AGPS, what you might call the old fashioned transsexual and this whole swathe of young people who have pretty much been conned into thinking that they can live out their fantasies. Because I mean, people have always had fantasies. Kids had fantasies about being adopted if they didn’t fit in. And its something along those lines, but the internet has been used to spread it globally, so there is a whole generation of young people have been told that they have got this sort of option and I think that some of them are possibly are going to become very angry at some point. But yes, its the children who are the real problem.

(problems with sound)

SPEAKER: resumes 59:44 Thank you Sarah for this space. I stuck my hand up when you asked your question quite early on - how to tell the difference between a ‘real’ trans person and somebody pretending. As with other speakers, I would say there is no real difference. Even if we look at treatment programmes, stemming from 70s and 80s, when people were, so this is precursor to GRC, when people could just go by stealth, the programme of treatment they undertook, the psychotherapeutic treatment, part of that was to live for two years, ‘passing’ as the opposite sex. It was almost without exception men pretending to be women. And I really struggle with this notion of ‘passing’ because what it means is ‘passing yourself off’ as something that you are not. So this is lying to yourself and engaging other people, witting and unwitting in your lies. So I really struggle with that as a treatment option in the first place, as it was instigated as was the GRA without any consideration of the third parties who are unwittingly involved in this play. But even if we accept that is a valid treatment, what purpose or reason is there for then conferring a special status on people who are living a lie.

So what does this special status of ‘trans’ really mean? And its come to mean something since the GRA, it’s come to mean having this magic paper which is a passport to all sorts of places you shouldn’t be allowed to go. For a start I think the treatment plan is not evidenced based - its not good for people and its not good for society. But why that treatment plan should create a special class of people, is a complete mystery because we don’t create a special class of people for other disorders, whether those are dysphoric disorders or delusional disorders or other mental health disorders or disabilities, we don’t create a special class of people and afford them extra rights and - ability to lie, its living a lie 24/7. I am an autistic Quaker who ….and I can’t get past this business of government agencies enshrining a lie and everybody else expected to join in with that. I also wanted to speak a little bit to your concerns that there are people around claiming this synthetic sexual identity, that they always knew they were different, they always knew they were in the wrong body, but as adults we are incredibly poor narrators of our own history, and very bad history givers, particularly of our own childhoods as we see childhood through the retrospectoscope and we put adult slant on it.

While I don’t doubt a number of people who are now living with a synthetic sexual identity, did struggle in childhood, I would posit that was about normal childhood development that got derailed. Because all children role play members of the opposite sex and most often its boys role playing women, because they are around women all the time, whether its mums at home, workers in nursery, teachers in school, the primary influence for boys is women and its completely usual for boys to role play feminine role. This becomes very difficult if that boy’s in a homophobic family. I am the daughter of an early years’ specialist who used to have little arguments with homophobic parents who thought it was abnormal for their boys to put skirts on and pretend to be mums. One of the most disturbing things I ever saw when I worked on the wards in Leeds was a boy, a little five year old dying, with leukaemia and all he wanted to do on his bed was play with Barbies and his father wouldn’t visit him because ‘I am not having anything to do with that fucking poof’. Those children are the children who are most vulnerable to being transed by the adults around them and I think we need to bear that in mind when our attention is drawn to adults who say ‘I always knew’. They didn’t always know. They didn’t know they were born in the ‘wrong body’ because nobody is born in the ‘wrong body’. Nobody is ‘wrong’ and we have to find a way to live with our foibles and faults and live with the things we don’t like about ourselves. But passing ourselves off as something we are not and engaging other people in that fantasy in lie, and enshrining that fantasy and lie more is a very dangerous route to go down.

SP: Thankyou, that is really interesting. I am actually looking forward to transcribing this. I am going to transcribe it over the weekend and put it on my substack, as I think this is worth keeping a record of.

SPEAKER: resumes 1: 06.06 sorry, such a horrible connection….I was going to touch on something that Frankie said… its a bit of a selfish question I have and I pose it to the whole group and we have such a great group in here now I am excited to hear your opinion… when I started two months ago, my name is two genders, among ourselves I ran into some issues, there seems to be one camp that says there are two sexes, no genders and infinite personalities and then there is the other camp that says gender is synonymous with sex. And Frankie was talking about how gender has come to mean ‘feeling’ and I do agree. My personal view was that I always viewed ‘gender’ as synonymous with sex and that was again before I came to Twitter and heard other views, I really didn’t think twice about this. And that is kind of why I chose the name I did. Then through research I have seen that in the 1970s John Money and other researchers, started to tease out the word ‘gender’ to mean like a ‘feeling’ or identity. Certainly I think there are gender roles…. totally understand that. But my question for the group is are we giving up that gender exists at all soley because that some people have teased out the meaning of gender to be identity and base transgenderism on that. Or do we want to reclaim the word to be synonymous with sex as it was since 1474. Just curious what people’s opinions are as its something I have noticed disagreement about - don’t want to say in our camp - but people that believe the things we believe. So was just curious what people thought about that.

SPEAKER: when I was in secondary school, gender and sex were seen as one thing by everyone. I went to a very religious school. But as we all joined the world of Tumblr and Twitter and YouTube… sex was seen as less important. In fact sex was being blurred enormously into something that was far less binary. And gender was something we were told was far more concrete. They were making - I am not a sciency person at all - but there was a very prominent YouTuber at the time who in ‘old money’ was basically just a lesbian but her and her partner made a video all about sex wasn’t binary itself but gender was. What should be taken as the most important thing? They were trying to concretise gender - I don’t know if that is a word - but make gender appear really ‘solid’ and make sex seem all blurry and wobbly which personally, I, appeals to science work for some people and certainly worked for me, briefly thankfully.

SP: This is about the distinction between sex and gender? I think this is absolutely crucial. I had a bit of a run in with Sex Matters, don’t know if you saw that. I am finding their approach to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, really, really troubling because there is the conflation there of sex and gender as there is in the Gender Recognition Act. Yes, gender used to be synonymous - I was shocked to discover it was Ruth Bader Ginsberg who started all of that, because she couldn’t talk about sexual harassment without using the naughty word ‘sex’, so all her submissions to the Supreme Court in the US were on the basis of ‘gender’. But I think things have changed now, and ‘gender’ is actually quite useful to refer to this identity as opposed to an immutable reality. But I think having a characteristic which is called ‘gender reassignment’ but which refers to ‘changing the attributes of your sex’ is just a recipe for disaster and to say it applies to a child of any age, is to my mind insane, and I think there is a growing disagreement… there are still people popping up on my timeline saying ‘sex and gender are exactly the same thing and I’m not going to budge’. But I do accept that language is a living instrument and I think we have moved on and I think there is value in keeping them distinct. But if there is any statute, guidance, that has sex and gender in the same section, we have got to root that out and I think that would be key to achieving clarity in a lot of fields.

I have had to miss the last five minutes as Substack warns me I am near my email limit! So apologies to the last speaker.