Mick Hartley

Suzanne Moore is not impressed with the latest BBC trans drama:

An adult man does not know what it feels like to be a girl. But that didn’t stop transgender writer Paris Lees telling us in his 2021 memoir.

Of course, with What It Feels Like for a Girl, Lees is entitled to choose whatever book title he likes, particularly if he wants to also riff off a Madonna song.

But now that the memoir has been made into a BBC television series of the same name, what it feels like for licence fee payers is another matter. Because, for a very long time, the BBC has run roughshod over the feelings of those not enamoured with the trans cult.

Lees was promoted by the BBC early on, via appearances on Question Time. He also wrote columns for Vice and even Vogue. (Lees uses the pronouns she/her, but, for the purposes of this column, I’m using he/him.)

You can see why he appealed: he’d had extensive facial feminisation surgery, was witty, and was, as was the fashion, “feisty”. I objected to some of the things he said he now enjoyed, as a woman – such as being taken shopping and being cat-called. We exchanged friendly emails at one point, and then I forgot about him.

Until this week, that is – on the eve of his new TV series. Lees is commonly referred to as a “doll”. This is an old slang term for biological men who “pass” as women (dim celebrities wear “Protect the Dolls” t-shirts in support of them). Trans people who don’t “pass” as women are called “bricks”.

It’s not very kind, but there you are. In propelling Lees back into the spotlight, the BBC is pushing the notion of trans identity as fun and “culturally significant”. It’s also subtly sanctioning the darker side of Lees’s history.

On his 14th birthday, Lees went into a public toilet with a man. Even now, Lees describes himself at that time as a rent boy (though acknowledges he was also a victim of abuse). At the age of 18, he was convicted of robbery with violence for an attack on an elderly man and sent to prison. The man was severely beaten. While inside, Lees began to identify as a trans woman.

Yet none of this violent history seems to have bothered the BBC. Instead, it’s tying itself in knots over what pronouns it should use to describe Lees. In the episode guide, it uses they/them to describe him when he was a biological boy (and known by his former first name, Byron). Then Byron becomes she/her when he self-IDs as a woman.

The storyline of What It Feels Like for a Girl is also one of gay conversion, which is in itself questionable when conflated with trans conversion. An adult man can certainly know what it feels like to be a boy who is bullied for being gay and effeminate. But as Maya Forstater, of the campaign group Sex Matters, says: “Presenting the idea of an effeminate boy ‘becoming a girl’ as an edgy coming-of-age story is presenting delusion as self-discovery. This series will promote a regressive, dangerous, impossible and fundamentally homophobic dream to another generation of gay young men.”

"Regressive" and "Fundamentally homophobic". Yes, exactly. And the Beeb has been promoting this line – with vigour – for the best part of a decade now.

The Supreme Court ruling that said biological sex is real should have been a wake-up call to the BBC. Instead, it has left the BBC and many other cultural institutions reeling, because to question gender ideology in the arts world is to be ostracised and often fired. Far from being dissidents, the arts have bent the knee to trans orthodoxy to a sickening degree.

Since the ruling, we have seen programmes like Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour struggle to get on board with reality. They have pandered to men who have transitioned, but are hostile and incredulous when faced with the likes of Helen Joyce, the incredibly articulate gender-critical activist who has been snubbed by our national broadcaster.

We constantly have to read on BBC websites about “women” who have committed rape. Male sports cheats are referred to as women. We have had a decade of this. I cannot call it brainwashing, because anyone with a brain can see it doesn’t wash at all. On every salient point, from puberty blockers to single-sex spaces, the pushback has been real and righteous. The culture has to catch up.