Mick Hartley

Sandra Pertot, a retired clinical psychologist, on the Queer theory underpinnings of gender medicine:

The thing that has played on my mind ever since I became embroiled in the gender wars is, how did we get here? How is it possible that large sections of Western society—including health professionals who should know better—have come to accept ideas such as sex isn’t binary, a person can change sex, it is right to tell children they might have been born in the wrong body, and it is good medicine to give these children powerful drugs to “pause” puberty….

A key factor in females gaining independence from male control and being accepted as equals was the development of effective birth control: the ability to control when and how often a woman had a child gave her the freedom to take control of her life. No longer bound by the needs of a continually growing family, women were able to pursue their own goals in their personal lives, in education, employment, and so on: biological reality in action.

The cynic in me speculates that as female issues of inequality were addressed and largely resolved, at least in the Western world, the academics who service the departments of Gender studies in tertiary institutions were left with nothing controversial to trade on, so they had to come up with a new area related to gender and/or sexuality to justify their existence.

The malleability of gender roles provided the perfect solution….

Correspondingly, gay activist organisations like Stonewall, having achieved their aims and with nothing left to trade on, took up the trans agenda – with Queer theory ideology helpfully supplied by the gender studies academics.

The basic ideas proposed by Queer theory are not new: society does influence our understanding and beliefs about sexualities (straight, gay or bi) and gender roles. The feminist movement of the 1970s-80s was all about challenging the restrictions imposed on females simply because of their biology. Also in that period, gay rights groups peacefully sought to have their sexuality acknowledged and recognised as a normal variation in human sexuality.

But Queer theory takes this to a new level which becomes nonsensical when the aim is to challenge norms just because they are norms. Paradoxically, queering the definitions of sex and gender creates new norms which then, according to trans activists, aren’t allowed to be challenged. For example, lesbians must accept “transbians”, who typically retain male genitals, in their groups. And rules such as using preferred pronouns must be obeyed. Queer theory in practice is the ultimate hypocrisy….

In the wake of the Cass report, it is time for gender-affirming health professionals to consider the real possibility that they have been conned by a sophisticated, well-organised network of trans activists who want to reshape society into their version of normal. It is time for health professionals to reflect on how they came to put their faith in the gender-affirming model as the best form of care for gender-questioning clients.