Trans movement has been hijacked by bullies and trolls by Lucy Bannerman in the Times 1.10.18

The original article is here.

A worthy movement to help a minority group has become a form of McCarthyism in bad wigs and fishnets, thanks to a bunch of bullies, trolls and humourless misogynists. Feel too daunted to venture an opinion on anything “transgender”? Great! That’s exactly how the bullies like it. Dare to discuss the complexities and contradictions thrown up by their absolutist identity politics? If the screams of “transphobe!” don’t shut you up, perhaps a call to your employer demanding your scalp will. Or to the police, bleating hate crime.

Perhaps the greatest trick they’ve pulled so far is to convince parts of the population that transgender people are too fragile to walk past a poster bearing the word “woman”, while at the same time being so terrifying it’s better to say nothing at all than to risk offending them. It’s nonsense, of course.

The “they” I’m referring to is not transgender people. (Though the bullies will pretend that it is.) I’m referring to the “trans activists” — some sinister, most joyless, and more than a few who don’t even identify as transgender themselves — who delight in “transplaining” to the rest of us the rules of this new, glittering utopia, where spaces must be shared, safeguards dismantled, disagreement decreed to be hate speech, and women must not be allowed to gather to discuss laws that will affect them.

And that’s fine. Bullies will be bullies. Trolls will be trolls. It’s the cowardice of the institutional response that’s astonishing. Girlguiding. Politicians. Billboard companies. Credit Suisse. Goldsmiths University. All willing to capitulate quicker than you can say “transwomen are women”.

Last Friday, women were due to meet at Leeds Civic Hall to discuss the government consultation on gender identification. Trans activists falsely claimed the women were a hate group. No matter that it was a lie; that it was said was enough. Their meeting was cancelled at the 11th hour by Leeds city council. What did MPs and councillors say about this outrageous assault on democracy? Not a single word. Silence. This behaviour is an insult to trans people.

Yet organisations like Girlguiding trot out their platitudes and expel the volunteers left to square the circle of absurd, contradictory policies that they’ve outsourced to interest groups in the desire to win some quick LGBTQI+ points and a pat on the back from Stonewall.

It’s that kind of cowardice that is enabling smear campaigns against those trying to discuss what activists’ demands to recalibrate the human race will mean for everyone else. Like it or not, genitalia is at the heart of this. It would be nice, for everybody’s sake, if all these organisations began to show some balls.