Category: UK

The Modern Left is Out of Touch With Reality: Part 3 – Universal Basic Income

Cartoon, the dream vs. the reality. Left shows multiple payments into a bank account by the government, Right shows stop symbol with text anti social behaviour detected, account deactivated

As argued in the first two parts of this series, the modern left has lost touch with reality.

In order to recap my definition of the modern left, it consists of those who agree with many left-wing economic policies and share the critique of imperialism with the traditional socialist left, but who have a heavy focus on identity politics. Examples would be outlets such as The Canary and Novara Media. For a more detailed explanation, see the first article in these series.

The first two parts of this article addressed two ways in which the modern left has lost touch with material reality. The first of these, the left-wing support for lockdowns, shows their detachment from the reality of working-class job losses, income losses, and mental well being. The second of these, their support for transgender ideology, shows their detachment from the material reality of biological sex.

The third part in this series will address the issue of Universal Basic Income, or UBI.

What is UBI?

First, we need a definition of Universal Basic Income. Investopedia defines the term as such:

Universal basic income (UBI) is a government program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money on a regular basis. The goals of a basic income system are to alleviate poverty and replace other need-based social programs that potentially require greater bureaucratic involvement.

UBI is a popular position among many people on the left, including many who could not be considered part of the modern left. In the US, the idea has gained more traction due to the Democratic primary challenger Andrew Yang running as a largely one-issue candidate focusing on UBI.

While there are right-wing cases for UBI, made by individuals such as Milton Friedman, I will not take these into consideration in this article. Nor will I attempt to use the fact that some right wingers support UBI as prima facie discrediting the idea.

The Left Case For UBI

An article published in Novara Media by Andrew Dolan brings up 7 reasons as to why he supports UBI. In short, his reasons are: 1) that wages are too low, 2) full employment is not possible, 3) that it is unconditional, 4) makes working less necessary, 5) It is becoming a mainstream idea, 6) it provides and opportunity to move beyond capitalism, 7) potential to create a unified movement.

At first glance, these seem to offer some good reasons to support UBI. The fact that UBI supplements wages, for example, seems like a good way to reduce poverty, as does the fact that it is paid to everybody, including the unemployed. The fact that it takes the emphasis from paid work could also appear as a positive benefit as it could reconfigure life to be more focused on other aspects of the human condition such as family.

So where is the snag in the argument?

The Biosecurity Context

There are many people who object to UBI on economic grounds, such as that the policy would lead to high levels of inflation, or that it would lead to large levels of government debt. Another objection is that the taxes used to pay for the policy would end up being taken from the poor, particularly if it is funded via VAT (which was a suggestion made by Andrew Yang). However, these kinds of arguments do not concern me, and are not the reason for my objections to UBI. Even if all of these arguments could convincingly be debunked, I would still oppose UBI.

This is because of the capitalist biosecurity state context in which the UBI policy would exist.

We cannot abstract UBI from this context, which is the major flaw in the left case for UBI. So what is a biosecurity state context and why is it problematic for the case for UBI?

We live in societies where the state already has a large amount of control over people’s lives. While the 1940s creation of a welfare state could be said to have had some benefits for working class people, such as improving access to healthcare, it also acted as a control mechanism over the working class, particularly in terms of unemployment benefits.

The working class under capitalism have had the choice of the ‘friendly societies’ that were common in the nineteenth century or state provision of unemployment benefits. Friendly societies were organisations set up by workers as a kind of insurance policy that they paid into and would receive stipends from if they were made unemployed or injured at work. This was a form of self-organisation, but often proved inadequate when capitalist crises happened. On the other hand, workers accessing state-based solutions have been subjected to the long-standing idea of the ‘deserving’ vs. the ‘undeserving’ poor.

The amount of state control over the lives of ordinary people has increased over time and is reaching the stage where alleged Western ‘democracies’ are teetering on full-blown authoritarianism. In the UK, this can be seen in the increase in mass surveillance, and the increasing control over free speech, including the persecution of Julian Assange and coordination between state and social media platforms to remove dissenting opinions. A significant step towards this was the 9/11 event, sold to the public as being caused by ‘terrorists that are trying to destroy our way of life’. This meant that the government was able to pass a range of ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation, aimed at the public. Similar trends exist in the US and some other ‘Western democracies’.

The measures imposed over the past year – allegedly in response to the virus Sars-Cov-2 – are the next stage in this growing authoritarianism. The first step was the ‘lockdowns’, forcing people to ‘stay at home’ and banning them from social interaction. Following on from this policy came the forced masks, used to maintain the image of fear while no-one was dying in July and August. Then came more lockdowns, and now the government is making their play for permanent tyranny – the vaccine passport.

The government is currently attempting to soft pedal the passport by suggesting the idea that it will be temporary, or that it will not be needed for certain businesses, such as ‘non-essential’ shops and pubs. However, once the passport is introduced, it will be impossible to get rid of it without a massive effort, and it will become slowly more draconian over time. Such a mechanism may begin only with international travel, theatres and sports, but will expand to shops and every other possible organisation.

This is the context we need to understand when looking at the reality of UBI as a policy. While fighting for UBI may seem like a good response to lockdowns due to the destruction of jobs caused by this policy, in reality UBI will strengthen this control matrix.

One of the desires of the elite is to create universal digital IDs for the entirety of humanity. There is a campaign group set up to advocate for this called ID2020. This group is associated with Microsoft and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance and thus has ties to Bill Gates. While the ID2020 website tries to portray its strategy of giving every human being on earth a digital identity as empowering people through the promotion of more choice and control, in reality such a system would lead to more elite control over humanity. The ID2020 website links to another site called the Good Health Pass Collaborative, designed to promote the vaccine passport.

The aim of any UBI that is introduced – and the government could use the mechanism of furlough to do so – would be to tie it into this digital identity matrix. UBI would then be used as a control mechanism. It would be ‘universal’ in the sense that anyone could have access to it, but it would require compliance – for example, having all the latest vaccines that Big Pharma demand, or not resisting or opposing the government in any way.

Critics of this argument may object that what I am criticising is not UBI, since that would be without preconditions. However, this argument shows that what would happen in practise when this policy is implemented by a capitalist state. In order to combat this argument, it would need to be demonstrate that this would not be how such a stipend would work in practise.

Conclusion

Universal Basic Income is a distraction for the left, and if any similar policy was implemented by a capitalist state, it would merely enhance the control mechanisms of such a state. The left should forget about demanding this policy and instead focus upon organising to end the draconian ‘Covid measures’ and other signs of an emerging biosecurity state.

The Modern Left Has Lost Touch With Reality: Part 2 – Transgender Ideology

Cartoon: woman standing in foreground. Signs read Fight lesbian erasure, Save women's sports, no to puberty blockers, protect women in prison. Text above her head reads TERF!

In the first part of this series, I discussed the pro-lockdown stance of the modern left and how that indicated a break with reality.

In order to recap my definition of the modern left, it is those that claim to be independent from the mainstream media, advocate for left wing policies on the economy and criticise US/UK foreign policy but have a large proportion of their focus on identity politics. For an expanded definition, see the original article.

The second part of this series will discuss the modern left’s belief in transgender ideology, and how that indicates that their break with reality came earlier than the Covid Narrative.

What is Transgender Ideology?

People who support transgender ideology will claim that there is no such thing as transgender ideology (or alternatively, Gender Identity Ideology).

Transgender ideologists believe that each human being has an innate gender identity. This can either match the biological sex of the person (‘cis’) or not match the biological sex of the person (‘trans’). This gender identity does not have to be male or female; the most popular alternative to male or female identities is ‘non-binary’ meaning not identifying as either male or female. This identity is considered to override biological sex, so if a man ‘identifies as’ a woman, he is a woman, if a woman identifies as non binary then she is non binary.

This ideology seeks to change the way that society is constructed, to change the point of reference from sex to gender identity. So female toilets should be those for a female gender identity and not for the female biological sex. This applies to all other things segregated by sex – they should become segregated by identity (or not segregated at all). Pronouns are also another key part of this ideology. Rather than pronouns simply being used to shorten communication and to avoid contorted sentences, they are used as a form of validation of the individual’s gender identity. It is common nowadays in ‘queer’ spaces to state the pronouns ‘you use’ (i.e. that other people use about you) while introducing yourself to the group. She/her if you identify as a woman, they/them if you identify as non-binary etc. Some use multiple pronouns like she/they or ‘neopronouns’ (new words) like zie/zim.

The Left and Transgender Ideology

The modern left is heavily invested in supporting and defending this ideology and protecting it from criticism. Many of the individuals that I identified in my previous post, such as Kerry Ann Mendoza, Ash Sarkar, and Owen Jones, put a lot of energy into defending gender identity ideology. Here’s a few examples of how that applies in practise.

Sarkar and Jones, in particular, have criticised the High Court ruling in Bell/A. vs. Tavistock. This legal case was brought by Keira Bell, a detransitioned woman, and Mrs. A., the mother of a teenager with rapid onset gender dysphoria. It regarded the issue of whether children can consent to puberty blockers – drugs that prevent natural puberty which are the first step towards medical transition. The High Court declared that children under 16 were very unlikely to be able to consent to the use of puberty blockers.

Both Jones and Sarkar support the notion of the ‘trans child’. Of course, this follows from the notion of an ‘innate gender identity’ which children are capable of ‘just knowing’ by magic whether they are a boy or a girl (I would suggest that anyone who believes this try interacting with some children.) They believe that saying that children cannot consent to puberty blockers is discrimination against the ‘trans child’.

This isn’t the only position that these left wing activists take that is completely out of touch with reality. They also consider the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to be ‘transphobic’ because it requires a waiting time of two years before ‘gender’ can be changed and the presentation of medical evidence of gender dysphoria. Instead, they want this system to be operated on the principle of ‘self-ID’ – anyone can change their ‘gender’ at any time for any reason.

This article criticising Liz Truss for rejecting reforms along these lines from the Canary is a good example. One sentence of this article – talking about the fact that the GRA does not mention ‘non binary’ identities – is particularly revealing:

“Right now, non-binary individuals have nowhere to turn to legitimise their gender.”

The idea that the state and government legislation exists to legitimise an individual’s belief about themselves is of course, absurd and extremely narcissistic. The article does not answer the question as to why the state should consider ‘gender’ to be a valid category at all to include in law, other than that people’s feelings will be hurt if it is not.

Meanwhile, women’s concerns about men in their spaces are dismissed as transphobic. Women are perceived as the oppressors of those poor trans-identified males because we don’t consider them women and don’t want their male bodies in our spaces. This of course is a complete inversion of reality, where patriarchy oppresses women through male violence and the threat of such.

Transgender ideology has become a key plank of the modern left, and one which brooks no dissent, similar to the Covid narrative. The publications that are part of this milieu would refuse to publish any woman talking about the harms of this ideology (even publishing an article by her on a completely different topic) because in their view she is a ‘transphobe’ and a ‘terf’. The mantras are – ‘No Debate’ and ‘Trans Women are Women’. Anything other than full belief is transphobia.

What’s wrong with Gender Identity Ideology?

What’s the problem? Someone might ask. After all, isn’t this just about being kind to people who are suffering from mental distress? Isn’t this just about alleviating an individual’s dysphoria by being polite and kind? Well, no.

It should go without saying that criticising an ideology is not the same thing as expressing hatred towards a person. If one criticises Christianity or Islam, because they disagree with those religions, that is not the same as hating individuals that profess belief in those faiths. Whereas say, abuse towards someone for wearing a religious symbol would be an example of hatred towards the person believing in that religion. It should go without saying, except for the fact that transgender ideologists frame any disagreement with the concept of ‘gender identity’ as personal hatred and denial of their existence. They often abuse women for criticising their beliefs as ‘terfs’ and ‘transphobic’. So what are the problems with this belief? I am going to outline the fact that gender identity ideology is both misogynistic and homophobic.

Misogyny

Gender identity ideology is misogynistic.

How can one ‘identify’ as a woman? Women (and in general, non-gender identity believers) would say that female is a biological sex which is defined by the body type designed to produce eggs (large gametes). Women generally develop certain primary and secondary sex characteristics (womb, vagina, breasts) etc. That said because female is the type of body that is designed to develop large gametes, women who have certain disorders with regards to hormones or differences of sex development are still female, despite some transgender ideology claims that sex is a spectrum.

It’s clear that males cannot identify as having female biology, because that does not make any sense. Males by definition cannot have female biology (and vice versa). So, if a male identifies as female, what is he identifying with? Males who claim they are female claim to have some sort of inner female essence. What this amounts to in reality, however, is that they consider this female essence to be feminine stereotypes. Obviously, reducing women to feminine stereotypes is misogynistic.

The sexism is also very notable in the discussion around ‘trans kids’. ‘Affirmative’ parents – those who accept their child is the opposite sex – generally make comments about how their male child always liked dresses and dolls or their female child always liked trucks and climbing trees. The implication of this logic being that if a boy likes dresses he must really be a girl inside. This is regressive and encourages medicalisation of children who do not conform to gender stereotypes.

Gender identity ideology implies that women can identify out of their own oppression, as if ‘gender identity’ is the cause of women’s oppression, then women could escape this by identifying as men. This is obviously wrong, as women and girls cannot avoid FGM, forced marriage, rape, domestic violence and prostitution simply by identifying as male. Gender ideology also believes that men who identify as women are more oppressed than women because of their ‘identity’, and because of the fact that women refuse to ‘respect’ this identity. This ignores the male violence that women face, and also equates the oppression of trans identified homosexual males in prostitution in South America – a form of homophobic male violence – with the alleged oppression of middle class white trans-identified males in the West.

This ideology also reduces women’s safety, by allowing men who identify as women into spaces designed for women such as female toilets and changing rooms. It reduces the ability of women to be able to say no to men in these spaces for fear of being accused of transphobia. It also leads to dangerous situations where males are placed in female prisons and attack women.

Homophobia

Gender identity ideology is homophobic.

A lesbian is a woman who is attracted to other women and a gay man is a man attracted to other men. These terms are defined on the basis of biological sex. Gender identity ideology redefines these terms by stating that ‘woman’ is anyone who says they are a woman and ‘man’ is anyone who says they are a man. It follows that lesbians must include trans women in their dating pool and gay men must include trans men in their dating pool. This is imposing compulsory heterosexuality on gays and lesbians, which is homophobic.

Lesbians and gay men are subjected to abuse if they define their orientation as same sex attraction. There are endless amounts of twitter comments that state that if a lesbian refuses to sleep with trans women she is a ‘terf’, a ‘transphobe’ and that she is ‘denying that a trans women is a real woman’. There is even a term used by trans activists for this, the ‘cotton ceiling’, in other words framing lesbian sexuality as a barrier to be overcome by trans women. The same applies to gay men in reverse.

Trans ideology is also homophobic because it encourages children to ‘transition’. Gender dysphoria in children is more likely than not to resolve or decrease if a child is allowed to go through puberty and the number of these children that grow up LGB is higher than statistical average. There are also cases – revealed by whistleblowers at the Tavistock gender identity clinic in the UK – that many parents who do not want a gay child will seek their child’s transition as a ‘cure’ for homosexuality.

Where did Transgender Ideology Come From?

How did the absurd idea that men are actually women if they say so become so popular? After all, it is a laughable idea, or would be, if it wasn’t being used as a basis to undermine women’s rights and give harmful drugs to children.

Transgender ideology would not have been able to have become so dominant in society without a large amount of money behind it. Unlike Civil Rights and Gay Rights, transgender ideology has completely captured society in a small period of time without any real input from the broader society and without any attempts by activists to build public support for their position. The powerful men behind this ideology have captured institutions from the top down.

Stonewall, for example, used to be an organisation for gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. It was designed to combat discrimination and to abolish homophobic laws such as Section 28. In 2015, Stonewall added the T to the previous Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual activism that it had been doing. Stonewall started pushing for extreme claims such as that biological sex does not matter and that same sex attraction is actually same gender attraction. The amount of funding that Stonewall has increased since they started promoting transgender ideology.

This idea was able to capture many large institutions in the UK through the mechanism of the ‘Stonewall Diversity Champions’ scheme. This scheme involves organisations paying Stonewall money to have a label placed on their website that shows that they are affiliated with Stonewall. This is then used to push their ideology and silence dissent, as has been seen with the case of Allison Bailey, a barrister who disagrees with gender identity ideology.

It is far more than just Stonewall, of course. Stonewall is merely a footsoldier in this war, the main drivers of this ideology are certain billionaires invested in pharmaceutical companies, and those who seek to change humanity through the mechanism of transhumanism. Big Pharma has an incentive to promote transgender hormones and surgeries as these make a large amount of money as opposite sex imitation requires a lifelong hormone regimen. Trans-identified male Martine Rothblatt has been the most vocal in promoting the intersection between transgenderism and transhumanism. The idea of transgenderism, in the words of Jennifer Bilek, is the “normalisation of disembodiment”, which opens up a path to lead to transhumanism as transhumanism is based on rejecting human embodiment and seeking to upload human beings to the cloud and other similar projects.

So How did the Left Become Duped by this Big Pharma based Ideology?

This ideology is another case – similarly to the Official Covid Narrative – where a detachment from material reality has led to the left supporting something destructive and dangerous, that benefits the billionaires that they claim to oppose. In the case of transgender ideology it also leads to the left promoting ideas that it claims to be opposed to such as misogyny and homophobia.

Both the Covid Narrative and Transgender ideology are able to manipulate the idea of compassion. The left considers itself to be compassionate and caring, so the idea that they could possibly be a ‘bigot’ for criticising transgender ideology is extremely upsetting to them. In fact, many on the left spend a lot of energy on calling other people bigots. When a large part of your identity is wrapped up in not seeming to be bigoted, and you are automatically the ‘kind’ one because you are on the left, the idea of being called phobic is a possible psychological harm to you.

Misogyny also likely plays a role, because trans activism inherently privileges the opinions of men over women. Learned misogyny makes people turning to the left more likely to take men’s claims that they are women seriously. There has been a significant history of misoogyny on the left, and one of the reasons that women created their own movements was because of the lack of support for women’s rights within broader movements. Thus I don’t think implicit misogyny can be ruled out as an influence on the left – as although the left has adopted more women’s rights positions over time, it cannot be expected that they would be immune to misogyny. Misogyny also means that they dismiss women’s counterarguments to transgender ideology as being bigoted and hateful.

The detachment from the reality of biological sex means they fail to see how the ideology harms women. Their detachment from material reality in terms of class and economics means that they fail to examine the massive amounts of money behind this agenda, and fail to see that the more people ‘being their true self’ by taking hormones and having surgery, the more money for Big Pharma.

The left also fails to understand the concept of autogynephilia. If you understand this concept, the behaviour of trans-identified males makes perfect sense. Combine this with big pharma based ‘activism’ for the acceptance of this fetish and the mixture is truly toxic, but the left fails to understand this.

Many trans-identified males, and former trans identified males, have admitted that autogynephilia is or was their motivation to ‘transition’ from male to female. Autogynephilia can be defined as a fetish in which a man is sexually aroused by the idea of thinking of himself as a woman. This fetish can involve being aroused by female clothing, female biology (such as breastfeeding or pregnancy) etc.

The concept of autogynephilia explains male trans activist behaviour exceedingly well. It explains the obsession with entering female spaces (as this involves being validated as a ‘real woman’ and not a man claiming to be a woman and this is a crucial part of the fetish), why they desire to sleep with lesbians, etc. It also explains the anger they show if they do not get their fetish validated – the anger of male entitlement.  When men get sexually rejected by women, they often get angry.

People find it hard to believe that there could be men out there that are so sexually obsessed and motivated by their fetish that they could go to the extremes of transitioning. However, there are many cases of men murdering women because of sexual rejection. The idea that there is a subset of men that would take hormones and have surgery for their fetish is really not so extreme.

Conclusion

Transgender Ideology is another sign of the left’s detachment from material reality. In particular, the material reality of biological sex, which is undermined and in some cases outright denied by transgender activists. But also the reality of the fact that this ideology is promoted by Big Pharma as a means to create profit, and has nothing to do with ‘being your true self.’

LGBT Charities Response to Bell/a vs. Tavistock is disgraceful

Cartoon reading 'Conversion Therapy: A Short History'. On the left, the year 1980 with a Bible, on the right, the year 2020 with a sigh stating 'NHS Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service'

Keira Bell is a detransitioned lesbian who was harmed by unprofessional treatment at the Tavistock, the UK’s only gender identity clinic for children. She was a claimant in a legal case against the Tavistock clinic (the other claimant being an anonymous mother, Mrs. A, who has concerns about her autistic daughter receiving treatment at the Tavistock). The question that the judges were asked to decide is whether children can consent to the use of puberty blockers.

Puberty blockers are a drug given to some children who have gender dysphoria. They stop the body from developing in puberty as it normally would (for females menstruation and breast growth, for males hair growth, voice deepening etc.) Ms Bell was prescribed these blockers when she was 16.

Many people have been raising concerns about puberty blockers for quite a while now. There is a lot of scientific evidence that the experience of gender dysphoria in childhood is not always permanent and that the majority of transgender-identified children desist (that is, no longer identify as transgender). It is also well known that many of these gender nonconforming children are more likely to grow up to be gay or lesbian. On the other hand, most children who take puberty blockers do not desist and instead go on to cross sex hormones and later (possibly) surgery. This evidence suggests that puberty blockers, rather than being a ‘pause’ and ‘time to think’ as advocates often claim, cement transgender identification.

There are also significant medical risks with the use of these drugs.  

So little is known about their long‐term effects in gender dysphoric adolescents that their use remains unlicenced (ibid., p. 41). Numerous studies suggest however that bone mass density is seriously compromised by them, leading to the risk of osteoporosis (Vlot et al. 2017, PBS Newshour, 4 February 2017). A study of 30 children prescribed them for precocious puberty showed a 7% drop in IQ (Mul 2001). The authors declared this clinically insignificant, presumably because of the small sample size. 

One puberty blocker, Lupron, has caused significant, long term harm to women who were prescribed it for endometriosis.

There are also significant problems with the Tavistock itself. There is evidence that many parents wanted their children to be transgender instead of gay or lesbian and saw the GIDS service as a means to achieve this goal. A BBC Newsnight report on the Tavistock found that:

“There have been many times when the push to transition has come from families who are uncomfortable with the sexual orientation of their child……some parents express real relief at their child is not gay or lesbian, suggesting being trans is a better outcome for their child.”

A clinician who had resigned from the service said the following: “A lot of the girls would come in and say, ‘I’m not a lesbian. I fell in love with my best girl friend but then I went online and realized I’m not a lesbian, I’m a boy. Phew.’” There was a joke at the clinic that “there would be no gay people left.”

This obviously raises massive concerns about childhood transition being caused by internalised and explicit homophobia, making it essentially the new conversion therapy. There are also other concerns such as a lack of investigation or study into the high level of autism among those referred as well as the huge spike in referrals over the past 10 years. There has also been no investigation into the fact that girls being referred outnumber boys despite the fact that historically, most transsexuals are biological males.

To summarise, then, an outfit riddled with homophobic beliefs has been running a medical experiment on children. The court wisely decided that this medical experiment had to stop and as such, its ruling makes clear that it is very unlikely that children under 16 can consent to these drugs.

So how did the charities that are meant to represent lesbians, such as Stonewall and LGBT Foundation react to this ruling? Did they support a young lesbian who overcame homophobia and being subjected to the medical experiment of puberty blockers?

No, of course not.

BBC Newsnight with Emily Maitlis interviewed both Keira Bell and Susie Green, who is the leader of the ‘trans child’ charity Mermaids. LGBT Foundation, in response to this program, tweeted out their support, not for Bell but for Green: “Today sending our love and solidarity to @Mermaids_Gender and @green_susie100 [Transgender flag] Thank you Susie for speaking so passionately on behalf of young trans people about how worrying the High Court ruling is”. This was added to the retweet of the video of Susie Green talking on Newsnight.

For those not familiar with Green, there is a TEDx talk where she discusses her backstory. She talks about how her eldest (biological male) child declared “I should have been a girl” age 4. According to her own account, the child liked stereotypically feminine toys, but her (likely homophobic) husband did not like this and the toys were taken away from the child. (I will leave you to judge to what degree this triggered the child’s transgender identification). Green put her child on puberty blockers (by going to America, at this time they were not prescribed in the UK) and when her child was 16 they went to Thailand so Green’s child could have genital surgery (an operation which is illegal for under 18s in the UK and now also illegal in Thailand).

Green is a problematic individual for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones is her weaponisation of suicide as a means to try and manipulate the public. Green endlessly repeats the statistic that 48% of ‘trans young people’ attempt suicide. [What she does not mention is that this study involved a total of 27 transgender people, hardly a sample that should be used to conduct national policy]. In the Newsnight clip, within the first 40 seconds Green refers to the fact that she believes that suicide will increase due to this ruling.

I find this extremely problematic and possibly dangerous. These young children, who are vulnerable, have been sold the idea of puberty blockers as a solution to their problems, and no doubt many have seen the videos online from children taking them and talking about the benefits. This ruling has taken away the possibility for these children to be put on blockers, so I have no doubt that some of these children now feel hurt and desperate.

Green’s invocation of suicide in this context has the possibility to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is well known that irresponsible media reporting on the issue of suicide can cause already desperate people to be more likely to kill themselves, and that higher rates of death follow suicides of famous people. (This is why suicide charities such as Samaritans have guidelines on suicide reporting for the media, in order to lower the risk.) Suicide contagion is not exactly an obscure phenomenon. It has been observed since the time of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, so it’s not unreasonable to expect the head of a national charity to be aware of it.

By talking about the the ‘inevitable rise in self harm and suicidality’ she acts as if these young children are now doomed to death. Rather than bringing up suicide, a responsible person would reassure their clients and make clear that they will give additional support to anyone who is struggling. I do not believe LGBT charities should be sharing this woman’s irresponsible rhetoric.

LGBT Foundation’s own response to the ruling is filled with more claims about puberty blockers being ‘life-saving’, again promoting the suicide narrative. And, of course, they are complaining that it is bigoted because it means that ‘trans children’ have less autonomy than ‘cis children’ over their bodies which is obvious nonsense (if a 14-year-old ‘cis’ child wanted to be sterilised, for example, the courts would rule that to be illegal – the issue at hand is the weight of the decision, not whether it has anything to do with transgender issues). Nothing they have said whatsoever expresses any concern for Keira Bell and that she was harmed by irresponsible doctors, and will have lifelong consequences from impulsive decisions that adults should not have allowed her to make.

Stonewall’s response also lacks any concern for Ms Bell in their response to the ruling. As far as I can tell they don’t even mention her name. They repeat the claims about puberty blockers ‘buying time’ which has already been shown to be false. They claim puberty blockers alleviate distress. What’s interesting here is that Stonewall tried to intervene in the case, but the judge deemed that they did not have any relevant evidence. If there was fantastic evidence for this intervention, they should have tried presenting it to the court.

Neither of the organisations mention that Keira Bell is a lesbian, despite the fact that both of them claim to represent and support lesbians. They don’t even mention she is a detransitioner.

Why? The real truth is that Keira Bell destroys their narrative, and thus they don’t want to draw too much attention to her.

Transgender ideology says that there are two types of people, ‘trans’ and ‘cis’. ‘Trans’ people do not identify with their gender ‘assigned at birth’ whereas ‘cis’ people do identify with their gender ‘assigned at birth’. The narrative promoted around ‘trans children’ is that ‘they just know’. If a child says they are trans it’s because they know they are trans. Questioning their identity is thus harmful and amounts to conversion therapy.

If children ‘just know’ then it follows that interventions such as puberty blockers and cross sex hormones are perfectly fine for children. After all, their ‘trans identity’ is permanent, in the same way that sexual orientation is largely fixed. In fact, denying them this treatment is harmful.

Except for the fact that detransitioners prove that children don’t ‘just know’. When she identified as trans, would any trans activist draw a distinction between Bell and any other person who was transitioning (let’s take an individual who is happy with their decision, say, Blaire White)? No, they would not. They would say both are trans because they both say they are trans. Could they even draw such a distinction? No, they could not. There is no basis for any such distinction to be drawn according to their beliefs. Both ‘just know’ they are trans.

Except Keira Bell decided she didn’t ‘just know’ and was actually a woman and lesbian all along. And thus, the whole logic of transgender identification being permanent and children knowing that they have a ‘boy’s brain in a female body’ or vice versa falls to pieces.

Given that many gay and lesbian young people believe that they are ‘born in the wrong body’ due to homophobia and being gender non conforming, the protection of these children from harmful drugs should be celebrated by organisations that claim to represent them. Keira Bell should be considered as a hero who stood up to protect vulnerable children from medicalisation, despite the fact that that involved admitting her mistakes in public, in front of everyone (no easy decision). Instead these organisations that claim to represent us as lesbians barely mention her name as the woman who personified the case let alone praise her – or even show any basic sympathy that she was harmed by the Tavistock.

Gender identity ideologues are welcome to Stonewall and the LGBT foundation, because they sure as hell do not represent me.