"Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" - My conversation with Helen Joyce
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foreign
[Music]
welcome to the Poetry of reality
I don't have a religion but I think if I
had one it would be the religion of
reality
and it's a pleasure to meet Helen Joyce
here as I haven't met her before I
wanted to meet her ever since reading
her wonderful book trans when ideology
meets reality uh science is all about
reality and Science and reality have
come up against some competition some
opposition
and Helen has been in the Forefront of
fighting against some of this opposition
um
there's a character in a Kingsley Amos
novel I think who gets interviewed on
television and the interviewer tells him
who he is and what he does and how long
he's done it so that's a typical Trope
of Television to to tell the interviewee
about herself but I'm going to ask Helen
to introduce herself very briefly thank
you thank you so much for having me on
well I work um for a an advocacy
organization called sex matters now but
my background has been rather varied so
when I was a little girl I wanted to be
a dancer and I actually went off to
dance school when I left school at 16
and after two years realized that wasn't
a great idea and went and did a degree
in maths in Trinity College Dublin and I
stayed and did my masters in Cambridge
and my PhD in maths at UCL in London and
then spent three years doing postdoc in
mathematics before changing course and
going into public understanding of maths
and science
and then in 2005 I joined the economist
as the education correspondent and I
spent 17 years there doing various jobs
along the way living in Brazil as a
foreign correspondent and then becoming
an editor of various sections of the
paper including the international and
finance sections
and one fateful day in 2017 the editor
sat down beside me at lunch and said why
do the kids keep coming home and saying
such and such as trends
and I said I have no idea should I look
into it for you
and my first attempt to find an author I
found somebody who had been through a
lot of queer Theory and gender studies
at University and managed to write three
pages about people identifying as male
or female man or woman without ever
mentioning that sex is about
reproduction and that the Sexes are
reproductive roles and that their
evolved categories
and I had to bend that piece and I ended
up writing it myself
and by this time I realized that there
was a lot of very odd stuff Happening
Here and that turned into my book which
came out in 2021.
it is a very odd phenomenon because I'm
used to
continue wherever I look I mean there's
tall versus short fat versus thin old
versus young all these things are a
smooth Continuum
um the one thing that isn't is sex I
mean sex really is binaries no question
about it you're either male or female
and it's absolutely clear you could do
it on gamete sides you can do it on
chromosomes
um and so it is to me as a biologist
distinctly weird
that
people can simply declare I am a woman
though I have a penis
um that seems to me to be a
strange Distortion of language because
we languages
useful as something to express your
thoughts clearly
and so I'm bewildered by it and I was
fascinated to read your book and I
learned a tremendous lot from it and
while I'm about it I would recommend a
couple of other books um
irreversible damage by Abigail schreier
about the particularly focusing on young
girls and how they get um
misled
and this one Material Girls by Kathleen
stock I I listened to this on audio so I
don't have a physical copy of the books
I'm printed out because I got the cover
of it
um
Helen what do you think lies behind this
odd Distortion of reality
so that was basically the question that
got me into this in the first place
and I mean I've been thinking really
almost full time about this for about
five years now and I don't have a pat
answer for you I think like a lot of
interesting phenomena it's a lot of
things
um I would say that when I started to
write about it first I quickly realized
that this wasn't treated the same way as
anything else like just asking very
obvious questions
like um don't you think that if we allow
people to self-identify their sex this
will lead to for example destroying
women's sports or putting rapists in
women's jails
people would turn this back on me and
say you think that trans people are
predators or you think that trans people
are in bad faith you're a bigot and I
hadn't experienced this before in at
that point about 14 years as a
journalist
that's a willful misunderstanding yes it
is it is willful misunderstanding
um and I mean I slowly became aware that
what we were talking about here was an
intensely linguistic movement like there
isn't a sense in which a man can become
a woman except linguistically like yes
okay he can have operations and people
some people do most trans people don't
have any operations don't take any
medicine don't have any genital surgery
but that doesn't change your sex I mean
the reason the female eunuch has called
that is that Jermaine Greer was pointing
at the way that the man is seen as the
full human and the woman is seen as the
lacking human she is a female eunuch
she's a man that you've castrated
but actually female people aren't
male people lacking something you know
or male people lacking something with a
little grow bag that you pop a baby out
of every now and then you know female
people are their own category female and
male are actually very profound
categories they're profound biological
evolved evolutionarily they have to be
that it's it's a the gift of giving
birth is something that that pervades
the yes uh the whole
um anatomy and physiology and psychology
actually exactly and if you're a mammal
every part of your body is female like
earthworms have both parts you know but
you know my hands are female my jaw is
female it's not just that I have you
know I'm a man with uterus popped in and
no penis but so it was the only sense in
which a man can become a woman or a
woman can become a man is by saying so
it's a speech utterance
and so I've come to see I think there
are many things happening here there's
things happening in medicine in politics
but one of the things that's happening
is a long run maybe two or three Century
move towards seeing categories and
classification as inherently oppressive
so people think you know
um you know heteronormative is a bad
thing
or they think that um you know the
traditional family is constraining
and they miss the point that these
things often like when I say evolved I
don't mean like evolutionary biology I
mean that they they came to be over
significant amounts of time for a reason
and they're supportive as well as
constraining
but everything that's structured or
categorized or named or classified
that's now seen as something imposed
upon people
so somebody like Judith Butler for
example who's the queer theorist who
wrote gender trouble which is kind of
the foundational text that Academia uses
when looking at these issues
says that gender is is an imitation for
which there is no original
that she doesn't see sex she says sex is
socially constructed and gender is the
real thing
and there isn't any foundation for
gender it's just something that's made
meaningful by performing it over and
over again
now I hadn't come across this at
University as I say I studied
mathematics
and I spent my time proving theorems and
defining my terms very carefully so I
was blissfully ignorant of the fact that
significant numbers of young people are
being taught this sort of nonsense
but they come out of it thinking that
somebody who says look there are two
Sexes and the sex that you are or it's
the sex that you were conceived as they
think that what you're doing is imposing
social roles on them
so I was brought up to think that what
was liberatory and what was Progressive
was to say well this little person is a
girl
let's not let her stop that let's not
let that stop her doing anything she
could be an astronaut I mean I think
they were all sort of I was brought up
to think that
you could do whatever you wanted to you
you have the power to to as you said be
an astronaut be whatever you damn well
like and it's as though this trend now
is reverting to stereotyped
girls like pink and boys like blue and
boys like playing with with meccano sets
and girls like playing with dolls and
and it's a stereotyping which I kind of
revolt against and yet it seems to be
increasingly fashionable absolutely and
it's worse than just the old-fashioned
stereotyping that would have said look
this child is definitely a boy and if he
doesn't like rugby and so on well he's a
puffer and let's bully him
it's now saying he's actually a girl yes
so you know there's the pink and the
blue boxes have been
re-structured and remade and reinforced
and a child who doesn't fit into the one
that's for the sex that they were
inverted commas assigned at Birth we
have to pop them into the other one and
if you call them out on this they say no
no no no no that's gender expression
that's gender roles you're talking about
we're talking about gender identity
which is a sort of an IT positive innate
knowing that you pop into the world with
but nobody pops into the world knowing
that sort of thing about themselves
children learn it from the stereotypes
they self-examine and match themselves
against the stereotypes so now we say to
little you know what you used to call a
[ __ ] boy you know that little boy now
thinks that he's meant to be a girl and
teachers may say that's not what I'm
telling him but it is what they're
telling him
yes I was very upset to see evidence
from your book and others that teaches
and
doctors perhaps are
latching on to a child who expresses the
slightest
doubt about this and then
affirms them as being
um the opposite gender to their sex I
mean it's worse than that they latch
onto us they suggest sell it yes you
know these books for two and three and
five-year-olds that say you must examine
your gender
I've got to hear a quote from a a girl
from America I think she must have been
about 12 when this happened to her she
was in she says I was in a very liberal
School
um
and she says there was so much peer
pressure to either be gay or trans at
this school basically it felt like you
weren't cool if you were heterosexual
this made me even question myself quite
a few times even though I'm heterosexual
I know that this pressure can be real
for so many children
some of them actually be gay or trans
and I will definitely support them and
fight for them in the end
but that's pretty young to be labeling
yourself in any permanent way in my
opinion
um she was a very bright girl she's
actually written books about science for
for children and very very impressive
and I was
really depressed to read her letter that
there is peer pressure and even teacher
pressure
um
to
really go against reality yeah yeah
absolutely and teachers think that
they're being Progressive you know so in
this country we don't have a syllabus
for sex ed for relationships and sex ed
there's some sort of very vague things
that you're meant to cover
um like the fact the facts about sex and
gender identity or the facts about
sexual orientation and gender identity
without telling you what those facts are
I don't think there are any facts about
gender identity and so there are these
external providers who are basically
Lobby groups that write unbelievably
inaccurate materials and then sell them
to schools so I've seen short videos and
they're so nicely made there's one by m
a guy called who calls himself Ollie and
his sidekick is a balloon and they call
themselves pop and Ollie and pop and
Ollie you know it's very bright and
colorful and they're like your sex is
the best guess that a doctor had when
you were born they looked at you and
guessed
yeah they often conflate this fact that
there are people who have differences or
disorders of sex development there's a
tiny number of people I mean a few
people do need investigations to not two
percent exactly exactly and even then
you know mostly they're getting
investigated for conditions that don't
cast out on their sex it's just their
genitals have not developed normally so
I mean probably about half a dozen
people a year in this country in Britain
have their sex assigned at Birth the
rest of us the doctor writes it down
anyway so it says you know so the doctor
guesses your sex and then when you're
old enough you get the chance to tell
everybody what sex you are are you male
female a boy or a girl or something else
in between and then and then stars come
behind him and it looks like you're
going through the Galaxy and it says or
something else entirely and we get off
this this putative sex Spectrum down
here and what are you meant to make of
this if you're eight like first off that
you're very boring if you think you're a
boy or a girl but also you're just given
no hints as to what this gender thing is
so you look around and you see Barbie
and GI Joe and you know that sort of
thing and you say well I don't like
Barbie I might be a boy
it's incredibly regressive yes
um somewhere in your book there's a
story about a mother who said who had
eight children and she said
and not a single one of them is boring
CIS is that what that's right so so sis
is this very new coinage that's uh with
by analogy with Trends yes because what
they don't want is you saying you know
real women and trans women
or normal women and trans women are
actual women and trans women they want
there to be two types of women so they
need a symmetric words to trans and that
is CIS on the same side of yes and so
this uh this woman I found this quote in
an a closed Facebook group in America
for parents of trans kids uh somebody
gave me a password into it and I lurked
there for a while and watched and there
were doctors gender doctors in there
suggest selling treatments answering
questions with extremely inaccurate
information like claiming that science
has settled on things that it's not but
mostly what you saw was the parents
reinforcing each other's false beliefs
so a new parent will come in and go hi
you know my my great little my great
little trans boy which is a girl you
know she's four I'm learning so much
from her sorry um I forget I've
forgotten which way around I'm having
this child let's say it's really a girl
and this girl says she's a boy
you know my little trans guy I'm
learning so much from him but I'm just
wondering like I I'm a bit worried about
socially transitioning him case I'm
leading him on the path to
medicalization and then people will love
bomb her and come in and say wow great
to have you here with us love them that
is what
um religious cults do uh they they love
bomb is the phrase they actually use I
think yes that's right and then if you
if you step out of line if at any point
you say well I'm not going to do yeah
and you are just going to get piled on
and you'll get kicked out and the thing
that these people use more than anything
else is the emotional blackmail of
telling you that if you don't get with
the program your child will kill
themselves now that is appalling because
that because well put it another way
the evidence for that had better be damn
good otherwise it is the most appalling
blackmail how good is the evidence I
mean the evidence that it does lead to
Suicide it doesn't so the important
thing to understand is that the reason
they say suicide it's not just that it's
emotional blackmail it's that they're
suggesting that you put your child on a
pathway that leads to sterility
because if you put a child on puberty
blockers early in puberty and then you
put them on cross-sex hormones at some
point we don't know exactly when but
maybe at 20 or 21 you've missed your
opportunity your own sex organs are not
going to grow you're not going to be a
person who can
conceive or impregnate somebody else so
they're sterilizing children
and the only reason you would ever do
that is to save a child's life so it has
to be yeah it has to be death it has to
be death or sterility yes so that's why
suicide now there are not a lot of
children committing suicide thankfully
it's very very rare in miners to commit
suicide so that's the first bit of
evidence that this is not true there's
an enormous boom in trans identification
there has been no concomitant boom in
suicide again thankfully but there have
actually been a few papers that have
looked at children who are on the
waiting list for gender clinics
and what they have found is that these
children you know they do have a lot of
mental comorbidities mental health
comorbidities so you are seeing higher
rates of depression anxiety
so that's there anyway they're depressed
anyway or or bulimic or well they they
say they say that of course that it's
it's you know the stress the minority
stress that's causing these things but
there's no evidence that that's true
it's at least as probable and I would
say much more probable that a child
who's looking for solutions to feeling
miserable and is suggest sold that if
you're trans you can reinvent yourself
you know you're like a phoenix your rise
from the ash as a new person all your
problems will be left behind
so yes so so the suicide rate is and the
self-harm rate is a little higher than
it is in the general population but not
out of line for mental health conditions
yeah
and and important to say there is
literally no evidence that transitioning
the child will decrease that risk yes so
so it does seem like a terrible it'll be
emotional blackmail people like you who
are standing up about this mostly women
I suppose
uh are getting an awful lot of
persecution
um I think they're very brave and and
um JK Rowling is very brave Kathleen
Stock's very brave Maya forced out it's
very brave is that how you pronounce it
yes it is yes what gives you the courage
I mean I don't want to answer for
anybody else although I work with Maya
daily so I sort of see where she comes
from and it's
um and I know Kathleen and I've missed
Joe Rowling and it's my privilege to
have met her
um
in my case
I was lucky to work somewhere that has a
very Collegiate and rigorously
intellectual atmosphere namely The
Economist but even there of course there
were people who didn't agree that I
should be speaking about this and it was
awkward on occasion
I would say in my case I was in too deep
okay I was so far stacked in blood that
there was no way back you know like I
before I knew that this was going to be
a problem I was so far in that I
couldn't get back
and then I um I was you know I was quite
I was quite
negative about it I really felt this to
me very bad was happening and you know
all the people who think that something
very bad is happening they'll pick a
different bit of it they'll say it's
about Free Speech or it's about women's
rights it's about Children's Health or
it's about just you know basic reality
or sanity and it was all of those things
for me but then I went to an event at
which um some D transitioners were
speaking and this would have been I
think late 2019
and I found it a profoundly
um upsetting event so at this one in
particular there were six young women of
course there are boys who transition and
de-transition to but this was six young
women all of whom had thought they were
boys
and they were all of them lesbians who
had been misled by their early gender
non-conformity into thinking they must
be boys and they had gone various power
stages down the medical pathway and one
of them was 23.
was this very articulate young woman who
had suffered from anorexia in her teens
and at 18 had stumbled upon the idea
that she was trying to starve away her
curves because she was meant to be a boy
and by 21 she had all her sex organs
removed Amazon testosterone she had no
breasts no uterus no ovaries she had to
be heard her hair was receding and by 23
when she still wasn't feeling any better
she still had an eating disorder
she one day
had the thought how can an operation
namely a hysterectomy that only a woman
can have
turned me into an
and that bounced her all the way back
to I am a woman that is just a fact
about me
and so I sat there and I listened to
these young women and you know I have a
very soft spot for gay kids I have a gay
son myself
he's never had gender dysphoria it's
important to say that he's never had any
theory that he's a girl or anything like
that but I have a soft spot for these
kids because
they're quite non-conforming and you
know Finding their way finding your way
as a teenager is difficult anyway but
for these kids it's a little bit more
difficult
because as they're growing up they're
also realizing they're different I mean
how many of these children do you think
are just simply gay anyway well I mean
according to the Tavistock Clinic which
is the UK's main gender identity Clinic
for Children the great majority of the
children they see are same-sex attracted
there's a strong statistic they could
have been perfectly happy because yes so
we are turning potentially healthy gay
adults into sterile straight simulacra
of the opposite sex and one of the
points you'll make I think is that there
are certain parents who would rather
have
a trans child and a gay child and yes is
that part of the motivation yeah and I
don't think it's always stated up front
and you know some people think that
that's very implausible
but I think that they they don't realize
the dynamic in some families and In some
cultures as in you know local cultures
and school or whatever
it's really hard to be gender
non-conforming like right bone deep
gender non-conforming I don't mean
someone like me who's a fairly normal
woman but did a PhD in maths I mean
somebody that everything about your
style and your taste and the way you
move and your interests just really
screams
you know camp for your boy or Butch if
you're a girl
and you have to have you have to be let
a lot of freedom to be yourself and not
a lot you know nothing has to be made of
this by the grown-ups around you
and it's things start to be made about
it you start to question yourself and
think like why am I so different like
why am I a boy who only likes the girls
and why am I a girl who only likes the
boys what's wrong with me and then the
thought comes up in your own mind
was I meant to be a girl was I meant to
be a boy like we knew this already in
about 2000 the research had been done
the the the papers have been examined we
know that the gender non-conformity
comes first in these kids and the gender
dysphoria the distress
is a result of the gender non-conformity
and the meaning that is made of that so
if no meaning is made of it you just
grow up
and you might be an unusual straight
person but you're quite likely to be gay
but if a lot of meaning is made out of
it you interpret that as being that
there's a woman inside or there's a man
inside
and then the people around you may think
that too and your parents may find this
very hard like a man who's always wanted
a boy to take to the football and you
know he he can the best will in the
world he may fail to not seem
disappointed yeah and the same with the
mother who wanted a daughter who went to
ballet and to go shopping with and so on
and she gets some little rough and
tumble character who just wants tree
climbing and rugby you get the
impression that you're a big
disappointment to your parents and this
Dynamic can unfold between them both and
what you need is family therapy really
from someone supportive to point this
out to you and to guide you gently
through and instead you end up in a
gender clinic and they say oh your
child's gender identity
oh you have a little trans boy you have
a little trans girl yeah
was in in the past we've just said well
she's a tomboy and and yeah well with a
girl you would have plural Boys the boys
they tried to straighten them out yes
horrible yeah but the girls was much
easier you just let them out tell them
to climb some trees and look back when
they're 16. yes
um I'm perfectly happy to address a
trans person by their preferred name and
prefer preferred
pronouns I think it's just a matter of
politeness really
um what I objective is the
um
insistence that I am a woman I mean
you're not a woman you're I'm perfectly
prepared to call you she if you if you
like and recall you whatever your
preferred name is
but to say I am a woman is a debauching
of language and that's where I draw the
line I've become much more Hardline on
this and I would like not to be I would
like I would have started where you are
but what I've learned is that somebody
who expects to be called she also
expects the words woman and female and
mother and sister and daughter
and it's very hard if you give away
sexed language to explain why this
person cannot in all circumstances be
treated as a woman
so often people do this Preamble it
happens to me less now but two years ago
when my book came out it happened a lot
they would give a preamble to any
interview with me in which they said uh
you know of course neither of us is
transphobic and we're very happy to use
people's names and pronouns and treat
you as a woman or treat you as a man and
I started to think like what do you mean
by treat somebody as a man or a woman
because we've got rid of all the unjust
and
unjustifiable differences between the
Sexes and the way we treat people now
with equalized pension age you know my
mother had to leave her job when she got
married in the Irish Civil Service
because there was a ban on married women
we've got rid of all that stuff and now
treating somebody as a woman means
either I just noticed that they're a
woman in in a space like any other space
where it just doesn't actually matter
what what sex people are or it means
we're in a single sex space and they
shouldn't be there let's we'll come on
to that in a moment but if you want to
try and explain why you have to use
sex-based language so I have to say the
reason this person cannot come in here
is because he is a man yes and if I say
she
I'm already I mean it is do you make a
distinction between people who've gone
through the ordeal of surgery and and
being castrated or whatever and having
their breasts removed whatever
than people who just simply stand up and
say I am a woman or I am a man
um it does seem to me that there's you
you also since you sort of paid your
dues if you if you if you've subjected
yourself to I mean you're really serious
about it you're really Earnest about it
no not just a frivolously standing up
and saying I've decided I'm a woman
today sort of thing I don't make any
distinction because I don't think that
being a woman or a man is the sort of
thing that you pay a price to be yes
it's just a very base fact about you but
more than that
um
you know in a space where a man is not
supposed to be I don't know whether he's
been castrated or not I'm telling from
his secondary sex features and they
don't change if he's been through the
surgery but the other reason is that in
international human rights law there
can't be any Distinction on the basis of
whether the person has been castrated
because it's basic it's a basic
principle that's been adjudicated on now
in several courts is that you can't make
something conditional on getting
yourself sterilized because it's human
rights if you used to do that so if you
say to people uh you you know you've
paid your dues if you cut the bits off
and that'll give you the the reward is
that we'll now treat you as a woman or
we'll treat you as a man
um
you are inducing people to go through a
really horrific surgery that is and to
give up oh yeah something so that cannot
be a legal line no and then the last
thing I'd say is like they paid their
dues to whom like well I mean like to
the other people around them you know if
you come into a women's space who have
you paid your duties are the wrong
phrase but but no I've heard it sure
you've shown you're serious about it you
should you've shown that you're I mean
somebody who let's talk about sports for
a moment somebody who who's a a
moderately good swimmer as a as a man
but kind of mediocre and then suddenly
just says I am a woman yes and because
he says I'm a woman he's then allowed to
go and break all the records of female
swimming
um
that seems to be to be
unserious you you're just saying you're
you're a woman because you want to say
you're a woman whereas if you've been if
you've been through the surgery
but he's still not a woman no no but but
but
there's a sort of feeling that
he really means it he's sincere about it
I mean I could say I was sincere about
being astronaut it doesn't make me an
astronaut and and the surgery doesn't
make any difference to your um your
sporting performance so if we're
protecting
what it is to be female in a sports
category which we are that's how sports
categories work you know we protect
under 18s over 35s paralympians
flyweights yeah the thing that we're
protecting is femaleness and the fact
that a man is very very serious in
wishing to be seen as female doesn't
move his category no that's true but
okay let's take the example of the
astronaut that you just mentioned just
say I I'm an astronaut and you're
obviously not but if on the other hand
you've gone through the rigorous
training of an astronaut and you've and
you've if you put yourself through all
the all the the it's really rather hard
craft to become an astronaut
you've proved you're serious about it
but I've also become an astronaut so
that's that you might not become you
might be not good enough to become a
restaurant then I would not be an
astronaut well you wouldn't be an
astronaut but but you've you've tried
yes I mean I just I don't think that
male and female are are prizes for
effort
they're just observations of categories
that we are yes yeah okay I mean it
keeps the numbers down there's that yes
but um you know for a long time we
didn't see trans like men who identified
as Trans in women's sports because they
did set a surgery Rule and at the time
the surgery was really only done on
people in their 40s and older yeah so
you didn't see any Prime aged men and
now that it's just a testosterone level
is all that many of the sporting bodies
require that you lower your testosterone
and I mean honestly they can't check
that it's just a it's just a paper rule
it's not a real one younger men can
identify as women and so now we're
actually seeing men who are you know
pretty good athletes and who are then
world record Breakers as women yes
but it's all wrong like if we're
protecting the female category then no
male Advantage belongs yes if there's
that simple if we're going to have
separate female
um athletic competitions at all then
then and if we don't then there will be
no women who win anything yes I mean you
could say everything's open you're just
a human you and you're going for for
everything and then as you say um women
wouldn't wouldn't win anything yes maybe
gymnastics but the gymnastics is an
interesting example because male and
female gymnastics are very different
like the one thing that women really
have an advantage in is flexibility yes
but male male gymnastics yes they're
flexible but mostly they're strong
so they do very different things they
just do different events for the men and
women
neither sex would be any good in the
others yes
okay
um there's a lot in your book about
changing rooms so we better we better
talk about that um uh tell us a bit
about that
I think another thing that people often
give away when they start to think about
this is they think well you know I
understand that you need female only
spaces if they're say rape crisis
centers
or you know really specialist services
but they think like you know oh what
about public toilets and maybe even
changing rooms like have cubicles
and they miss the point that these are
sort of mass arrangements for the
convenience of the half of humanity that
experiences rape at the hands of the
other half of humanity that experiences
the two most common sex crimes which are
voyeurism and exhibitionism
and are just they're an inclusion
measure for women so the first female
public toilets were brought in so that
women didn't experience what was called
the urine release which meant that women
had to stay near the home because they
needed to be able to go
and you know I mean women had to take
off clothing from the bottom half of
them to go to the toilet so men don't
you're quite vulnerable when you're
weighing
and so women in the Victorian era like
would have to always be able to be aware
that there was somewhere they could go
to way otherwise they could get
assaulted
and it was it was the factory girls
actually who campaigned for the first
public toilets and because they were
they were getting sexually assaulted if
they tried to wee during a factory day
they weren't able to
to work outside the home
and then you think like all the special
situations that women need
um just just ordinary spaces like
toilets and changing rooms for
like women menstruate
as I said women take off more of their
clothes to go to the toilet we take much
longer
uh young girls in particular like little
girls are at risk like if you if you're
a man who's out with your daughter who's
six seven eight nine and you want to
send her to the toilet you want to be
able to pop her into the women's lose
and know that there's only women in
there because she's really at risk
actually if it's a mix-sec space
then there's Muslim women and there's
women who have been right who are
survivors of sexual assault and who can
have really serious flashbacks in
enclosed faces if there are males there
with them
and now we're losing all of these spaces
they're either going gender neutral or
they're going self-id like they'll put a
sign up saying you know use whichever
space you feel most comfortable in
and about a year ago at sex matters
where I work with Maya for stature in
there we put out a call for evidence as
to why people cared about Single Sex
spaces and we did hear stories about
specialist spaces like Rape Crisis
centers but mostly we heard about
toilets and changing rooms
and this phrase got said over and over
again people wrote us almost essays
about it they said you know I went along
to my local swimming pool
and there's a bloke who caused this
other woman who's Now using the changing
room and I've never told anybody I'm in
my 50s now but I was raped when I was 14
and I never told anybody and I found
myself in this enclosed space and I
looked around and there was this bloke
and I froze
and I remembered everything terrible
that had happened to me and I left and I
never went back
so women are being pushed out of public
spaces Again by the loss of these spaces
that were introduced in order that we
could play a full part in public life
you were telling me before we started uh
which I didn't know that um
competitive swimmers but Olympic types
swimmers have to wriggle into their
streamline
swimsuits and so they don't just sort of
quickly put put it on with the way the
rest of us do they take how long does it
take like it can take up to 40 minutes
so I didn't know this when I wrote the
book or I would have put it in So at the
time I was writing the book and there
were a few athletes who were making it
into Elite women's sports who were men
so Laurel Hubbard was the big example at
the time who's a weightlifter a new Z
weightlifter a man in his 40s
but in between the hardback and the
paperback Along Came Leah or will Thomas
who's a young man who's six foot four
who's about 21 22 and who started
swimming in American college races
and I mean it's bad enough when you look
like you see people in their swimsuits
you can see who's a man and who's a
woman and he's really towering over the
women and he doesn't have good technique
you know he's just using his shoulder
strength and not even kicking his legs
and he still wins
and then I heard one of the young women
who had to compete against him
describing what it is like doing
competitive swimming so they wear these
streamlined suits
and the the sort of the compression
suits that like just make you very um
cut through the water fast and very very
hard to get on and the compression
doesn't last all that long so you change
suit every time you race and you also
don't wear that suits when you're doing
your warm-up
and there's dozens of events you know
all the different lengths and strokes
and there's maybe many competitors in
all of them they're these big open
changing rooms and you're running in you
strip completely naked you put on your
practice suits you go out you do your
warm-up you come back in your strip
completely naked again and then you
start this miserable business of
shimmying into your race suit which is
incredibly tight and you have to sort of
wriggle and bounce and wriggle and
bounce and get it up over your hips and
then regular and bounce yourself in
completely naked through all of this and
all around you everyone else is doing
the same thing and there's this six foot
four bloke and in case anyone wants to
know no he has not had surgery and no
there are not cubicles and no you cannot
hold a towel in your way
and that's what you're doing and these
poor girls like the girls on his own
team at the University that he's at but
all the women who had to compete against
him if they complained they were told
that they were bigots
at Riley Gaines who's the one of them
who spoke about the most was warned by
her University that if she kept talking
about it she would not be taken on to
medical school
told she's a bigot by somebody senior in
the University Yeah by this by the
sports team by the EDI team in the
University EDI meaning Equity diversity
and inclusion told her that they'll be
referred for counseling the women of the
University uh that we're
um Leah Thomas is I think it's
University of Pennsylvania the girls on
his own team because they complained
anonymously and they finally found
someone to send their complaints and
they were told they would be referred
for counseling to learn to cope with
their transphobia so they to to um to
cope with losing basically
I'm baffled by why
this is also one-sided I realized there
are two different points of view here
but
how has one side managed to kind of
capture
the dominant
um
dialogue really the dominant half of the
dialogue
and and
constantly it comes up that you've if
you descend from that you're called a
bigot and so people don't want to
descend because descents
um so I don't want to call it Cardis but
but
um it's it's pardonable characters
because nobody wants to be called a
bigot but why does all the abuse go one
way why does it why is it such a yeah
why did all the bullying go one way I
mean there are so many different answers
to that and like you know like I think
they all reinforce each other and one of
them is because this is a linguistic
movement and there is no sense in which
Leah Thomas is a Woman except that you
say he is you must silence people it's
the only way in which you can keep the
fiction going if people can say what
they see in front anyway in which he can
keep the fiction going but why does he
have these are better than the campuses
yes who um
I mean you can't ignore the fact that
this is for the benefit of men
you know like female sports has always
been fifth rate like it gets much less
funding you know these girls are told
they're told things that nobody would
tell a male athlete like that you know
it's for the joy of taking part why do
you care about winning
I think in America it's become so
associated with the the very very
polarized political system
so you know the and everyone everyone
tends to take their political opinions
as a package that's not an American
um thought solely but in America it's so
polarized that they're really very
specific packages and if you want not to
take the opinion the gender identity
trumps sex then you're a republican you
have to be a Conservative Christian you
have to be anti-abortion you have to
think that women belonging to this
kitchen you know and so if you don't
want those things well you've got to
come over here and give up women's
sports and say that men can be women and
say that you know there can be a female
penis and so on
and then I mean
there's a sort of an evolutionary point
to make here like sometimes when you
look at a giraffe or a platypus or
something and you say how did this come
to be
you could answer that by sort of going
back and I think you did this in your
beautiful book and which one was it the
the one where you go back in the the
Tree of Life backwards quite thick one
oh the ancestors tale that's lovely yes
that book so you can go back and you can
you can actually answer that question or
you can just say look that's how
Evolution works
you know so we have we have this is an
emerging ideology some would say
neo-religion
and out of the many many bizarre things
that people could believe this is the
one that made it and you could then
Point At You know the internet
um the arrival of sex change surgery the
fact that we're all online too much
uh social media places where kids
congregate without adults and talk to
each other without adult oversight the
cowardice of the ioc the international
Olympic Committee which is a dreadfully
corrupt organization I mean you know it
allowed the cheating by the East German
women dopers to go on in full sight for
20 years and has never sorted that out
and never taken the medals away from
them you know they just don't care the
show keeps on the road as far as they're
concerned so there's just all these
different things that happened and you
know the result is what we see as
opposed to me being able to say I would
have been able to predict this in
advance I'd never predicted the Platypus
either
yes the Platypus wasn't the lead when it
was first sent to the museum well
exactly so this is a platypus in a way
yes is this is there a tension between
the LGBT yeah um is the is the tea a
little bit more I mean is there some
opposition between the LGB on the one
hand and the T on the other on the other
I mean depends who you ask and depends
what you think these are if you think
these are identities
and especially if you think in American
identities
so in in the American way of thinking
there is the you know the white
supremacist the the sisette white male
who runs the world and everybody else is
oppressed by that person and the more
ways in which you're oppressed kind of
the better in this culture then
lgbtqia plus plus you know all of those
things are you know you're not CIS hit
yes I meaning CIS and heteronormal
heterosexual
um
on the other hand if you actually just
think that LGB is a shorthand for people
who aren't heterosexual that people are
either homosexual or bisexual and you
understand those as people who have
unusual sexualities which you know has
been until very recently a major reason
that people have been oppressed like as
in sent to jail given electric shocks
cast out by their families like really
bad things then what the hell is T doing
in there like tea is an identity it's
not a sexuality and more than that t is
a an identity that undermines the very
basis of sexuality
because if you're trans you move
category or in your mind you move
category from male to female and that
means you change sexuality as well so a
straight man becomes a lesbian
yes and that's not very much what most
lesbians find very helpful for their no
I mean there's attention
lesbians do feel threatened I think
don't they absolutely yes I mean
you could it works both ways like like a
lot of things to do with sex you know
formally it works both ways like a woman
who identifies as a man like a straight
woman who identifies as a man becomes a
gay man and this is increasingly popular
among teenage girls to identify as gay
men I think they're not going to have
much success when they get older it's
not going to go very well because that's
not how gay culture works
but the other way around you've got men
who are bigger stronger more sexually
aggressive
you know lesbians are the people who've
always found it hardest to keep their
footing in the alphabet soup like I have
a lot of lesbian friends now doing this
work and they'll tell you that the LGB
groupings never paid attention to their
needs they paid attention to gay men's
needs
and so now a lesbian-only group will
often find usually find itself under
pressure to admit heterosexual men who
think of themselves as lesbians
and then when you add to that the fact
that there's a very common male sexual
interest a fetish in cross-dressing
and that there are significant numbers
of men who find it very sexy to think of
themselves as lesbians probably as many
of those as there are actual lesbians
you're like well you know these people
come into your spaces and now it's not a
lesbian space anymore yeah
yes one thing that really pisses me off
it it came up a moment ago is that is
that
um
I've been kind of politically on the
left all my life and I find myself now
being
blamed
um
somehow it well I find that that people
think I must be right wing because
because the only people who agree with
me about this tend to be politically on
the right that's not really true but but
they they often think it is I mean it do
you find that I mean there's a very
significant movement here in the UK on
the left of the women who came up
through the unions and to you know very
good organizers who are sex realists
and so I think here in the UK it's
really easy to say oh look at Woman's
Place UK I mean JK Rowling look at her
she's not exactly right-wing so
you know it is often said but it's an
American thing to say it's because of
the American polarization and it's part
of the Americanization I should have
said that that's American oh it gets
said to us too I mean I get told that
I'm funded by the Heritage Foundation
you know that I'm getting money from
shadowy right-wing American groups I'm
not you know it's it's a joke among the
women like you know that I work with you
know people are saying have you got any
of your far-right money yet this must be
stuck in the post you know no we haven't
we don't get funding from them
um it is very irritating and I suppose I
find it less irritating because I never
thought of myself as either left or
right wing I wasn't even a left-wing
student politician I'm um
I've always been a very include me out
person
like I I I've voted for every party
every every one of the three main
parties here honestly don't know who I
could vote for now
uh but you will find that in this
in this movement the the people who are
willing to speak on this issue
um are often people who have been
through some Crucible beforehand and
those can be good bad or in different
things as far as I'm concerned lots of
brexiteers
lots of anti-vaxxers uh lots of
Evangelical Christians
um people who have had some formative
experience like I think probably you
sticking with atheist rationalism while
the new atheist movement degenerated
into gender woo you know you've already
been cast out in some way
and if you've already been cast out well
you've got used to it you know what it's
like and you know that you can survive
it and so I do see a lot of very varied
people who have already experienced
being cast out right
Well we'd probably better come to a
close would you like to um tell us a bit
about your organization's sex matters as
we as we close sure so anyone who's read
my book will have uh met Maya for
stature who is the person I shape the
chapter about Britain otherwise known as
Turf Island around Turf being trans
exclusionary radical feminist and it's
what we get called for believing that
sex is real yes do do tell Maya's story
yeah
so Maya worked for she was a specialist
in tax International tax flows and
developments and she worked for a think
tanker called the center for Global
development which is based in Washington
and they had a An Arm based in London
and at the time in 2017 the government
was thinking of changing the law to
allow for gender self-id meaning that
you would be able to get a new birth
certificate stating whichever sex you
liked just by asking
obviously insane when you put it like
that but anyway they were about to do it
and Maya thought but in development sex
is actually a really important variable
so you know maybe we should talk about
this maybe we should talk about our
gender self ID
destroys the bases on which we do a lot
of the work that we do
and that was fine initially with her
colleagues in London but colleagues in
America because all of this gender stuff
comes from America I like everything
else yeah yeah we live in America now
all of us they complained and said she
was transphobic and cut a long story
short she lost her job so she went to
the employment tribunal and she lost
a bit about what uh end of 2019 that
must have been no end of 2020
um as the book was you know as I was
writing the book and in the employment
tribunal the judge James Taylor said
that her belief that there are two sexes
the Sexes are immutable and sometimes
recognizing that is important for
women's rights that's her belief
that was not worthy of respect in a
Democratic Society
and so she deserves to lose her job and
I mean the way that the law was written
it's not just deserved to lose her job
it would mean that anyone could
discriminate against her at will they
could turn her away from a bar they
could refuse every employer anywhere
provided with any Services because this
is the law that protects us against
discrimination in employment and
provision of goods and services what he
was saying was that she was a Nazi she
was literally literally equivalent to
being a Nazi or somebody who says we
want to bring back slavery
so I knew Maya by this point and she's a
very brave woman
um and very very dogged so she had to go
to the employment appeal tribunal which
the original ruling was overturned in
its entirety I mean the judge just
didn't know what he was talking about
and that set precedent
so now with the belief that sex is
binary immutable and that matters
is a protected belief in UK employment
and prevention
yes that president has set so now in a
workplace if you say I think we need to
have men's and women's toilets because
there are two Sexes and women need them
they can't say are you bigger okay I
I've just found in in your book The the
questions that the lawyer on behalf of
the company that got rid of her
asked
um on what basis did she think male
people couldn't become female could you
name philosophers who agreed with her I
couldn't have a wife a lot of us or they
got to do with this biologists you want
to ask
um how could she know someone's sex if
she hadn't been present at their birth
doctors assign sex by looking at
newborns and using guesswork
so she had to answer all of those things
under oath and um the reason it's a
philosophy is because the protected
characteristic in the equality Act is
religion or belief and she was claiming
a belief you can't just protect facts it
does it at which the room packed with
women supported erupted and laughter I'm
not surprised yes and then after all of
that judge Taylor said thus you know her
belief was a novel belief that was not
protected because it was too harmful to
other people's rights so anyway Maya set
up with some lawyers including
um her her Barrister and your Palmer
this organization sex matters and I left
the economist to go and work for it
because honestly I feel in some ways
that this is
you know a generation defining battle
actually because it's a battle against
reality as you said also against Free
Speech against women's rights against
gay people's rights and it's a battle to
keep children from being indoctrinated
because children are being lied to all
of them they're being lied to about
their bodies about human nature about
sexuality and they're being misled all
of them and for some of them that's
leading them together
me too um well thank you very much Helen
once again Helen's book is trans when
ideology meets reality thank you very
much indeed well thank you for having me
on
thank you
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