Mick Hartley

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph – The woke institutions backpedalling on trans ideology owe the public a huge apology:

It is obvious that certain trans activists, and those who have trans-ed their own children, will never back down from their cult-like beliefs that a mystical “gender identity” is always more important than biological sex. But now that this belief lies in tatters in mainstream thinking, we are now in the era of those who promoted trans ideology, stepping back from it in awkward regret, trying to rewrite their history.

For years we’ve had to contend with years of woe-fully inaccurate news reporting when it comes to trans-related crimes. In a story about a registered sex offender who was born a man being jailed for recording hundreds of men using the toilet in Aldi, the BBC, Metro and the local press all referred to the perpetrator in their headlines as a woman, or she, alongside a picture of a man. It was enough to make you roll your eyes. Even in court, this person was referred to as “she”.

A lot has been said about media distrust. But this constant reporting of the crimes of men, but attributed to women, is but one of the issues that the public has finally become alert to. The unfairness of male-born trans competitors in women’s sport is another….

In truth, this “movement” was always a forced coalition between male fetishists and distressed teenage girls. If gender identity was someone’s true identity suppressed for years, why do we find it mostly in middle-aged men who finally get to wear frilly knickers? Was this absurdity not obvious? We do not suddenly have a generation of middle-aged women declaring themselves to be men. The best we can manage is some attention-seeking actresses having a haircut and declaring themselves “non-binary”.

To mistake a fetish for a civil rights movement was a gross error. The much-discussed scene in the new White Lotus series, when a character realises that what he desires ultimately is to have sex with himself, but as a woman, makes this clear. The term for this is autogynephilia, and it is all over social media. Half these men don’t even want to be women. They want to be “little girls”.

Sadly, actual girls who fear becoming adult women in our pornified culture often turn out to be simply gay. The blatant homophobia of the whole trans rights movement is astonishing. The radical position would be to extend our definitions of masculinity and femininity, not push people into these awful pinks and blue boxes. The infantile pink and blue trans flag says it all.

These beliefs have been deeply embedded into academia, the Civil Service, the NHS, the arts: so many of our institutions have abandoned critical thinking in favour of fashion. Yet most of the public never really have bought into this ideology. Most of us have wanted the gender dysphoric to get the help they need, but want women to retain their own rights, spaces and language.

There is now a long walk back from this idiocy. The public are not fools. No, female medics should not have to get undressed in front of biological males. No, women should not get punched in the face by those who refuse to take a simple sex test. No, a nurse dealing with a huge paedophile should not be racially abused and reported because she wouldn’t use the “right” pronouns.

I don’t expect any apologies for losing work and “friendships” for arguing that biology is real. But there are many, many good folks who refuse to be airbrushed out of history. They stood up when it mattered.

Suzanne Moore herself was an early victim: hounded out of the Guardian for her gender-critical views.