Or: Why we need to stop platforming disingenuous anti-trans speakers
I wanted to write this essay as a primer for anyone who might up until now have only been witnessing the debate about trans rights from the outside. I want to make the case that anti-trans activists and speakers are not acting in good faith and that we should stop uncritically accepting their claims that they are simply in favour of ‘discussion and thoughtfulness’ which I intend to show is absolutely not the case.
As a reflective indidivual, I am genuinely interested in understanding the nuance of issues and am open to constructive discussion even about topics that affect me personally. In fact, especially about topics that affect me personally. As a trans person, and a parent I am deeply invested in wanting to understand the evidence and what best practice suggests is most beneficial for myself and my child for the obvious reason that I want the best possible outcome for myself and those I love.
However, gender critical advocates have shown a repeated disinterest in engaging with any actual evidence, with the trans community, or in any good faith discussion and at this point I believe it is actively dangerous to continue to allow these perspectives to be shared without challenge within professional spaces as I have seen occurring recently within psychotherapy organisations in Aotearoa.
So why is that?
I’m going to address some of the most common gender-critical talking points, drawing on a seminar that David Bell delivered to the Scottish Parliament, in order to demonstrate clearly the ways in which gender-critical arguments are constructed and provide evidence that they show a willful disregard for actual evidence and are, contrary to their claims, designed to shut down actual exploration and curiosity in favour of presupposed outcomes.
Right from the outset in his seminar, in the first couple of paragraphs in fact, David Bell makes the claim that there is a ‘whirlwind of change’ that has ‘come about in a very reactive non-reflectice way’ (I’m petty enough to leave in the spelling mistakes). This is one of the most common messages that gender-critical people use to discredit trans people’s perspectives so I want to tackle it first. The clear implication Bell wants to make here is that social change relating to trans people (such as broader social acceptance, greater access to healthcare) is not based on careful thought or evidence. He makes this even clearer later in his seminar by stating that ‘thought and enquiry are drowned out by the highly politicised agendas’ and that ‘Many of these children are thus easy targets for highly politicised cults’.
These arguments are a clear appeal to emotion. After all, no-one wants children to be manipulated by ‘cults’. This emotive language is obviously not designed to elicit the peaceful ‘thought and enquiry’ that he claims to want but rather to cast his opponents as dangerous ideologues that ‘fiercely reject any challenge to their orthodoxy’ and who show ‘aggressive intolerance towards those who question it’.
So let’s get rid of this ridiculous claim first. Has this change come about in a reactive and non-reflective way? Well, no. People have been scientifically curious about trans people for well over a century. Admittedly we lost a great deal of the knowledge that had been gained regarding gender non-conforming people when the Nazis destroyed one of the world’s first modern institutes for sexual research in Berlin, but research has continued on from then and we have a very very comprehensive body of research into many issues relating to trans experiences including the risks and benefits of various forms of treatment, the connections between trans identity and other mental health issues, puberty blockers, hormone treatments, the frequency of de-transition and so on.
We have study after study after study after study (see the link above) all more or less confirming the same thing – that people experiencing gender dysphoria who are supported to explore their gender identity and supported to transition when that is their wish have better mental health outcomes, reduced suicide risk, increased sexual and relationship satisfaction, and greater quality of life. There is a significant body of evidence to this effect, and to dismiss it all as being ‘reactive’ and ‘non-reflective’ – not to mention calling advocates a ‘cult’ – shows not ignorance, but an intentional disregard for evidence. It is not reasonable to think that someone genuinely just wants to engage in ‘thoughtful debate’ when they show a deliberate disingenuity in their arguments and use deliberately inflammatory language.
A connected and common gender-critical argument is that kids are being pressured, persuaded or manipulated into identifying as trans or transitioning in response to unrelated mental health issues or life stressors. David Bell makes this point (repeatedly) in his seminar, including stating ‘there is usually a tremendous pressure to close down any discussion that might involve understanding how this has situation has come about and rapid unquestioning acceptance of the child’s view , a demand (often supported by the family) for ‘closure’.’ Or in a Times article where he stated that clinicians at the Tavistock’s ‘only acceptable explanation’ for children who are ‘unwilling or unable to conform to gender stereotypes’ is that they are transgender, going as far as to suggest that girls who did not like playing with dolls were classified as transgender on that basis.
This is an outrageous claim, and yet he presents it without any evidence whatsoever – again with the clear intent of painting his opponents as radical, unhinged and reckless. Not only has no gender-critical speaker ever provided any solid evidence of this idea that kids are being ‘pressured’ to be transgender, the examples they do provide often demonstrate the opposite. As the podcast Maintenance Phase discovered when they actually investigate the cases Bell and colleagues bring forward as evidence of kids being ‘rushed’ onto medical treatments, in reality the case examples that they themselves provide received multiple therapy sessions over multiple years before any kind of treatment was initiated.
More importantly though, this claim that gender non-conforming kids were assumed to be trans goes against everything that trans people actually believe – which he would know if he spent any time at all actually talking to us. As biologist Julia Serano describes in her excellent book ‘Whipping Girl’, gender expression – how we choose to dress, what interests we have, our mannerism and way of being in the world – is not the same as gender identity, our internal sense of who we are as a gendered (or ungendered) being. If you spend time on any of the publicly visible trans spaces online you will see this being addressed over and over again when people are struggling to work out whether they are transgender. In these cases, sometimes a person trying to work out their gender identity suggests that maybe they are transgender because of their interest in cross-gender dress or activities. Almost without exception, they will receive the response that aesthetics and interests are not a meaningful indicator of gender identity. Because this is what most trans people actually believe. Not that David Bell would know that.
One of the reasons trans people understand this almost instinctively is that most of us tried being non-conforming members of our ‘assigned’ sex before transitioning. And most of us have been confronted with a question along the lines of ‘couldn’t you just be a feminine man/masculine woman?’ Believe us, we tried. The reason trans people transition is explicitly because gender expression is not the same as gender identity, and most of us transition not to look like the other gender, but to feel physically correct within ourselves. You also don’t have to dig very far to find whole communities of butch trans women and feminine trans men which highlights very clearly that these are two separate issues.
A second aspect of trans experience that makes clear the absurdity of his argument is that the vast majority of trans people (not all, we’re not a monolith) are actively opposed to the idea of trying to convince another person that they are trans. In fact, it’s such a widely held viewpoint that there’s a phrase to describe it, the ‘egg prime directive’. Forgive the slightly cringe language, a lot of us were nerds growing up okay?
The ‘egg prime directive’ is the ‘unspoken agreement not to tell people who are questioning their gender whether or not they are trans’. The usual rationale given for this is twofold:
Firstly, trans people have had the experience our whole lives of being told by others who we are, how to think about ourselves, and what our gender means and it has caused us enormous amounts of suffering. The very last thing a trans person wants to do is inflict that on anyone else. Overwhelmingly, trans people encourage and support any person, trans or cis, to openly explore their gender and find what feels right for them.
Secondly, as the link above points out, trying to pressure someone to be trans – even if they are trans and haven’t worked it out yet – simply does not work. People do not want to believe that they are trans for hopefully obvious reasons (if it’s not obvious, consider the vast social, financial and practical costs of transitioning) and trying to tell someone that they are usually just makes them more resistant to the idea. Most trans people will try just about every other possible explanation and solution to their gender dysphoria before transitioning, because for most of us it’s the least appealing option, not the most. It’s just that (again, check the science) it’s the only one that works.
So the idea that trans people are a ‘cult’ trying to force others into unquestioningly transitioning flies in the face of everything that trans people actually say and do and more importantly, wouldn’t work even if that was what was happening.
I’m aware that that’s all anecdotal however, so I come back to my general rebuttal to most gender critical arguments which is: if this is so widespread and happening so regularly, it should be easy to provide evidence. So why aren’t you?
A final connected argument that gender-critical people make is that young people (particularly young women) are becoming convinced they are trans due to social media, peer pressure, and that they have ‘very often been carefully trained on line, by peers and even by parents, to produce a plausible narrative’. This is often supported by ‘evidence’ relating to a concept called ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ (ROGD). As David Bell says, ‘This explosion in numbers , the sudden increase in natal girls, the appearance of ROGD all indicate a cultural phenomenon of enormous importance that we do not understand’. The problem here is that this ‘phenomenon’ of ‘enormous importance’ has been thoroughly debunked. Not just debunked, but stupid from the outset. The Maintenance Phase podcast describes how the ‘research’ that led to the creation of the term ‘ROGD’ was conducted by talking to the parents of young people who identified as trans who were selected for the research on the basis that they had anxieties or concerns about their kids’ gender identity. No trans youth were involved in the research, and the parents were recruited from online forums that had already expressed clear anti-trans sentiments. That’s like conducting ‘research’ into female ‘hysteria’ by interviewing only male physicians. Oh wait, that happened.
Here’s the thing. David Bell knows this. It’s extremely clear if you read the studies exactly how they were conducted. And here’s the other thing – he doesn’t care. Despite his claims, he is not trying to engage in rational, scientific debate. Because the science doesn’t, not for a moment, come close to supporting his views. So instead he needs to use inflammatory rhetoric (‘cults’, ‘irreversible damage’, ‘political agenda’ ‘so called liberal agenda’ – all direct quotes) and unsupported claims designed to resonate with parents’ justified desires to protect their children (‘potentially devastating physical effects’ or the suggestion that kids are being encouraged to transition because they ‘don’t like playing with dolls’). Of course this kind of framing creates a response, and a heated one. Of course we feel like we shouldn’t shut down debate if it seems like someone is just ‘looking out for the children’. The problem of course is that none of it is true, or even approaching true, and that when we allow the conversation to continue it leads to restrictions to care and increased prejudice directed towards trans people.
It’s clear that this is his intent if we analyse the way in which he uses language. He states ‘It is vital to distinguish between Gender Dysphoria and Transgender as these are easily conflated , itself a cause of serious damage. Gender Dysphoria might arise from many sources and in mild forms is certainly not uncommon in adolescents (the relation between milder forms and severe forms of gender dysphoria is very under researched). Transgender refers to the situation when a decision has been made that the way to manage the gender dysphoria is through the child being set on a course to change her gender identity.’
Look closely at how he defines transgender here, and contrast that with the definition from the Oxford English dictionary that I believe many trans people would broadly agree with: ‘denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.’
This is a somewhat subtle but really important thing to understand, because by framing being transgender as a ‘situation’ where a ‘decision is made’, he calls into question the validity of trans identity via terminology. Because a ‘situation’ can be resolved in a number of ways, and ‘a decision has been made that the way to manage the gender dysphoria is..’ suggests that this ‘decision’ is questionable at best. By contrast, the Oxford dictionary definition makes clear that this is a value-neutral description of an internal experience.
By replacing ‘transgender’ with other identities or natural human variance, the intent of this framing hopefully becomes clearer. For instance, ‘Homosexuality refers to the situation when a decision has been made that the way to manage lack of attraction to the opposite sex is through sexual activity with the same sex’. Or perhaps ‘Cisgender refers to the situation when a decision has been made to eliminate any exploration of sex or gender variance in favour of dogmatically identifying with ones sex assigned at birth’. Or maybe ‘Left-handedness refers to the situation when a decision has been made that the way to manage a deficit in dextrousness with the right hand is through the child being set on a course to change their handedness’. I could go on, but you get the point.
The important thing to understand here is that again, David Bell will know what the actual definition of the term is, but engaging with its correct meaning makes it harder for him to make his arguments. Again revealing that he is not interested in genuine, constructive debate but rather pushing a perspective regardless of the evidence.
I want to challenge a few other points Bell makes that are readily and easily disproved by evidence to again support my claim that he is not interested in genuine discussion. He states ‘We need to bear in mind that a substantial percentage of these children, if left without intervention will desist and emerge as gay and lesbian (there is evidence to support this)’. It’s nice to just be able to claim that there is evidence without actually providing any of it. But understandable, given that most of the evidence is to the contrary.
Similarly, his claims about the use of GnRH analogues (more commonly called ‘puberty blockers’) are alarmist and significantly overstate the risks while understating benefits. The science here is pretty clear, though still emerging – GnRH analogues have low (but not non-existent) risks, and very significant benefits. Rates of regret for the use of these, hormone treatments and even surgery are consistently found to be very very low, meaning that even given the potential costs involved the benefits significantly outweigh them in the eyes of the people receiving treatment (details of regret rates in the link above).
And again, the way he describes the impacts of hormone or surgical treatment make clear that he is not interested in debating the merits of these treatments in an objective way but rather creating an alarmed reaction in the reader: “When the child is set on this course we know they will be infertile, suffer irreversible changes in the sexual body, be anorgasmic, have a lifetime of being a patient taking hormones, suffer vaginal atrophy, suffer the daily routines of tending for the parts of the body that have been surgically modified.”.
To address these points one by one:
‘Infertile’ This is a potential risk of hormone treatment, but not puberty blockers. However the data does not suggest that we ‘know’ they will become infertile – it’s a risk, but not a guaranteed one.
‘Suffer irreversible changes in the sexual body’. Puberty causes irreversible changes in the sexual body. The only distinction here is which puberty a person chooses to go through, and in framing it this way the clear implication is that one is preferable to the other. Which indicates a clear belief (which he has articulated elsewhere) that trans identities are simply not valid. And this is a dangerous position to be allowed to be shared, because if somebody doesn’t believe in the validity of my existence, what steps might they take to ensure that I do not exist as I am? It’s not hard to see how this has played out throughout history.
‘Be anorgasmic’. Absolute, easily disprovable bullshit. Or you could just spend a few minutes in any online trans space to see that this is crap.
‘Have a lifetime of being a patient taking hormones’. True, but there’s an intentional framing here – that a transgender person taking hormones is a ‘patient’, implying that we are treating a medical condition. Firstly though, plenty of medical conditions like diabetes require lifetime medication. That’s just what some people unfortunately have to deal with. Secondly, so what? There are plenty of things I have to do daily including eating and drinking that are necessary for my wellbeing. That’s just part of being alive.
‘Suffer vaginal atrophy’. True for some trans masculine and non-binary people taking testosterone, but this is relatively easy to treat through exercises and or topical estrogen creams. Again, he is conflating costs of transitioning that many trans people are more than willing to pay in exchange for the benefits with problems that should, in his view, lead to our restricting access to care.
‘Suffer the daily routines of tending for the parts of the body that have been surgically modified.’ Again, factually inaccurate and revealing of the reality that he is not interested in actual engagement with the data. If he’s talking about transwomen, one-year post surgery might require a weekly routine of dilation for women who are not sexually active. Even if this were true, which it’s not – again, we have to do a bunch of daily routines to take care of our body including cleaning it and providing it nutrition. This is just part of the cost of being a person.
I’ve targeted the David Bell seminar because he has been relevant to my profession as a therapist recently due to having been invited to speak in New Zealand by the New Zealand Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. However I want to make it clear that everything I’m debunking here and the arguments I’m making could just as easily be levelled at nearly any ‘gender-critical’ person, since they make the same arguments, rely on the same disproven studies and theories (like ROGD), and use the same tactics to try and shut down their opponents by claiming that they are just wanting to engage in ‘thoughtful’ debate, all while making outrageous claims that paint their opponents as lunatics without providing any evidence to back it up. This is not debate, or thoughtful or reflective discussion. This is a moral panic. And we should not give space to these toxic and actively harmful viewpoints from people who are actively trying – and unfortunately in some cases succeeding – to deny care and rights to an already marginalised community.
People like David Bell want to frame the conflict around trans rights as being one of ‘exploration’ vs ‘affirmation’, where they stand on the side of those who just want to have dialogue and allow thoughtful exploration, while trans activists and academics want to blindly affirm people’s ideas about themselves without any curiosity or discussion. This is a gross mischaracterisation of our perspectives, as what trans people and their allies really want is exploration leading to affirmation. That is, that someone be supported to freely and openly explore their gender identity so that they can work out what feels right and resonates with them, and then be affirmed in whatever fits them most authentically and genuinely. On the other hand, as I hope I’ve illustrated, gender-critical perspectives are not concerned with actual exploration because actual exploration would allow for the possibility of arriving at the conclusion that one truly is transgender. Instead, they want the pretence of exploration with the reality that the outcome is pre-determined – that a person cannot genuinely be transgender, and that claims of such are just representative of other underlying psychological or social issues. This is not exploration, it is the exact kind of coercion that they claim to be against.
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