Mick Hartley

Genevieve Gluck, of Reduxx, talks to Brendan O'Neill. An extract:

Pornography is now normalised in the private sphere. A lot of the concepts or ideas about women that you see coming from trans activists – their objectification of women, or their reduction of womanhood to having plastic surgery and hormones – have a connection to pornography. We really don’t fully appreciate the scope of the problem yet. I don’t think it’s even possible to, because we don’t see it in the public sphere. All we see are the repercussions of this porn-saturated culture….

Girls are being presented with this idea of what a woman is by men who are self-objectifying and modifying their bodies in extreme, hypersexualised ways. And those men are applauded and celebrated. They are held up as role models for young people. Girls will then internalise that particular view of womanhood.

Not only are girls nowadays being exposed to pornography at such a young age, but they also have men on social-media platforms telling them that this is their destiny. Not only are they expected to become something that is objectifiable, but they are also supposed to enjoy being objectified. It is little wonder that so many girls feel a dissociation with their bodies when they are presented with this image of womanhood, especially if they are already struggling with puberty. It is hard to recognise your own body as female if it does not resemble the artificial version of female that you’re being shown….

I saw someone say that lesbian is no longer an identity or a person, it’s a porn genre. I do think that is relevant here again. Lesbian women have become so objectified that many now might want to escape or possibly aren’t even able to recognise their own sexuality. The homophobia is very real, it’s a very strong current. There is something going on there, which I suspect is different for young girls than it is for boys and for young men, so I can’t speak specifically for boys. But for lesbian girls in particular, it comes back to how hard it is growing up as a girl and then to be struggling with your sexuality on top of that.

Trans activists are also telling lesbians that they have to accept male partners, which is just the most extreme form of homophobia. The concept of the ‘lesbian penis’ is being forced on to women. Some transwomen use the phrase, the ‘cotton ceiling’, which refers to lesbian women’s underwear being the barrier that these men are supposed to conquer and to break through. It’s horrendous. Thank God there are some groups who are working to highlight the homophobic aspects of this movement. I just wish more people would see trans ideology for the homophobia and for the sexism that it really is.

It's a men's movement, driven by a toxic mixture of postmodern Queer Theory, misogyny – and porn.