Trans Ideology Hits the Buffers

Time for a New Human Rights Strategy

I’ve just completed a two-part report on the crisis in the LGBT+ campaign. I linked its inability to persuade health professionals to block children’s puberty and to convince judges that trans women are literally women to the McCarthyite atmosphere in my corner of the liberal left.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Trans activists drove journalists from their jobs at The Guardian and academics from their posts at universities simply for saying that it is impossible to change your biological sex.

In response, I updated an old liberal argument about the dangers of censorship.
Cancel culture, and the fear it spreads, is not only wrong in principle—it has also been a double-edged sword for the trans campaign.

Activists who forbid debate don’t learn where their weak points lie. They don’t see their critics coming until it’s too late.

The pieces are behind a paywall, but an annual subscription works out at £1.15 ($1.45) a week—which, by today’s standards, is a pretty good deal. Free trials are available too.

You can start reading here.

While I was researching, I learned a huge amount from reading Transgender Rights vs Women’s Rights, the latest book from Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College, London.

He kindly agreed to appear on The Lowdown podcast to talk about how, despite all attempts to pretend otherwise, the conflict between trans rights and women’s rights is real.

You can listen here on Apple

On Spotify

On Amazon here and on all other apps via this link

The taboos around discussing biological sex remain extraordinarily strong on the left. The slogan “trans women are women” may not be true—as sporting associations and courts around the world are increasingly recognising—but as propaganda, it is brilliant.

It denies that any conflict exists between women’s rights and trans rights.

But of course there is a conflict—and Wintemute shows precisely where it lies.

He argues that “transgender rights campaigners need to reconnect with political reality.” Previous campaigns for equality sought the extension of existing rights. Women wanted the same right to vote as men. Adult gay men wanted the same right to sleep with consenting partners as their straight counterparts.

The trans campaign, by contrast, is not asking for equal rights. It is “asking for exemptions from rules that apply to everyone.” For that reason, he says, it is doomed to fail.

Campaigners should not kid themselves that their cause is destined to triumph just because they believe they are “on the right side of history.”

As courts and health authorities reassert the material reality of biological sex, and Trump and other reactionaries exploit the issue to win power, it appears that history may have other ideas.

“Campaigners can dream of a progressive government coming to power that will give them everything they want,” Wintemute says. “But if politicians told the electorate in advance what they planned to do, they would probably lose the election.”

Professor Wintemute offers a tough-minded compromise.

Trans activists would stop demanding that others—including the state—validate their gender identity.
“You may have strong feelings that you're a person of the opposite sex,” he says, “but you cannot reasonably expect other people to share them.”

In return, society should “make it clear that there should be no discrimination against a trans person because their appearance does not match what we expect for someone of their birth sex.”

Compromise on the most toxic debate of our time?
Stranger things have happened. Although not, I must admit, very often.