Kemi Badenoch, Minister for Women and Equalities, was seen doing her job effectively in the House of Commons yesterday. Reminding Parliament that Stonewall “does not decide the law in this country”, she committed to reframing the debate on so-called “gender-affirming care” for children. Badenoch also pledged to prevent schools from socially transitioning primary-school-age children unless medical advice dictated otherwise.
Many trans activists (who count a number of Labour politicians within their ranks) claim that offering talking therapies to children distressed about their biological sex amounts to “conversion therapy”. From this false premise they will conclude that unless a young person presenting with dysphoria is immediately and wholeheartedly affirmed as transgender, they are likely to experience suicidal ideation. Thus, anyone who disagrees is a transphobic bigot.
Actual conversion therapy is when a lesbian or gay person undergoes abusive “treatment” designed to shame them out of acting on same-sex attraction. It is the polar opposite of offering psychological support and counselling to a young person who wishes to escape their body. I know exactly what it is, because in 2013 I conducted an undercover investigation into it. I travelled to a small town in Colorado, adopted an assumed identity, and claimed to be deeply unhappy as a lesbian. The “therapist” tried every trick in the book to get me to denounce my sexual identity – insisting I must have been abused and neglected as a child; dominated by my mother; brutalised by my father – even dropped on my head as a baby. It was a horrific experience, and one too many lesbian and gay teenagers have undergone at their parents’ behest.
Listening to Badenoch yesterday was a breath of fresh air for this lifelong Labour voter, who could never envisage voting Tory. I actively oppose the vast majority of their policies, and have stuck with Labour through thick and thin, despite its capitulation to dangerous and offensive transgender ideology. Yet I support Badenoch 100 per cent in her endeavours to expose this ideology for what it is.
She said that doctors are currently “fearful of giving honest, clinical advice to a child, because if they do not automatically affirm and medicalise a child’s new gender, they will be labelled transphobic… we do need to address many of those issues, and that is why we are going to publish a draft bill.”
She also described as disgraceful the way that Labour MP Rosie Duffield has been treated for speaking out about women’s sex-based rights, and against the misogyny so prevalent in the trans rights movement. And she reiterated the importance of introducing clear evidence-based policy and laws through parliamentary debate.
When Labour MP Chris Bryant tried to shut down the debate yesterday, saying he felt “unsafe as a gay man”, Badenoch challenged his histrionics, reminding the chamber that the “transing” of same-sex attracted children is a new form of conversion therapy. She’s right: we know that a number of Tavistock whistleblowers, for example, had suggested there would soon be no lesbian or gay young people left because they were all being offered puberty blockers and cross sex hormones.
Some women have lost their jobs, reputations, and even been arrested for saying the things Badenoch said in Parliament yesterday – yet she simply made common-sense, fact-based statements. As Equalities Minister she seeks to protect same-sex-attracted young people from irreversible medical and surgical interventions, and women and girls from predatory men by securing their right to single-sex spaces.
As a teenager growing up in the 1970s, I was constantly told that I must really be a boy, because I had been identified as a lesbian. Had I been born 40 years later, to middle-class, liberal parents, I probably would have been taken to the gender clinic and offered puberty blockers. I recently visited Vancouver and Toronto in Justin Trudeau’s Canada, where self-identification and the most extreme transgender ideology has captured the entire nation. While there, I interviewed several young lesbians who had experienced distress as a result of rampant homophobia. The therapists and counsellors they turned to had told them that they must be trans men, and offered irreversible intervention.
My favourite moment was when Badenoch mentioned that she would be working with the Lesbian Project, an organisation I founded this year with Kathleen Stock, in order to look at the needs of same sex attracted females.
What Badenoch did was the most progressive thing I have seen in Parliament for a long time. The Labour Party should hang its head in shame, and Badenoch should be awarded a medal.
Kemi Badenoch, Minister for Women and Equalities, was seen doing her job effectively in the House of Commons yesterday. Reminding Parliament that Stonewall “does not decide the law in this country”, she committed to reframing the debate on so-called “gender-affirming care” for children. Badenoch also pledged to prevent schools from socially transitioning primary-school-age children unless medical advice dictated otherwise.
Many trans activists (who count a number of Labour politicians within their ranks) claim that offering talking therapies to children distressed about their biological sex amounts to “conversion therapy”. From this false premise they will conclude that unless a young person presenting with dysphoria is immediately and wholeheartedly affirmed as transgender, they are likely to experience suicidal ideation. Thus, anyone who disagrees is a transphobic bigot.
Actual conversion therapy is when a lesbian or gay person undergoes abusive “treatment” designed to shame them out of acting on same-sex attraction. It is the polar opposite of offering psychological support and counselling to a young person who wishes to escape their body. I know exactly what it is, because in 2013 I conducted an undercover investigation into it. I travelled to a small town in Colorado, adopted an assumed identity, and claimed to be deeply unhappy as a lesbian. The “therapist” tried every trick in the book to get me to denounce my sexual identity – insisting I must have been abused and neglected as a child; dominated by my mother; brutalised by my father – even dropped on my head as a baby. It was a horrific experience, and one too many lesbian and gay teenagers have undergone at their parents’ behest.
Listening to Badenoch yesterday was a breath of fresh air for this lifelong Labour voter, who could never envisage voting Tory. I actively oppose the vast majority of their policies, and have stuck with Labour through thick and thin, despite its capitulation to dangerous and offensive transgender ideology. Yet I support Badenoch 100 per cent in her endeavours to expose this ideology for what it is.
She said that doctors are currently “fearful of giving honest, clinical advice to a child, because if they do not automatically affirm and medicalise a child’s new gender, they will be labelled transphobic… we do need to address many of those issues, and that is why we are going to publish a draft bill.”
She also described as disgraceful the way that Labour MP Rosie Duffield has been treated for speaking out about women’s sex-based rights, and against the misogyny so prevalent in the trans rights movement. And she reiterated the importance of introducing clear evidence-based policy and laws through parliamentary debate.
When Labour MP Chris Bryant tried to shut down the debate yesterday, saying he felt “unsafe as a gay man”, Badenoch challenged his histrionics, reminding the chamber that the “transing” of same-sex attracted children is a new form of conversion therapy. She’s right: we know that a number of Tavistock whistleblowers, for example, had suggested there would soon be no lesbian or gay young people left because they were all being offered puberty blockers and cross sex hormones.
Some women have lost their jobs, reputations, and even been arrested for saying the things Badenoch said in Parliament yesterday – yet she simply made common-sense, fact-based statements. As Equalities Minister she seeks to protect same-sex-attracted young people from irreversible medical and surgical interventions, and women and girls from predatory men by securing their right to single-sex spaces.
As a teenager growing up in the 1970s, I was constantly told that I must really be a boy, because I had been identified as a lesbian. Had I been born 40 years later, to middle-class, liberal parents, I probably would have been taken to the gender clinic and offered puberty blockers. I recently visited Vancouver and Toronto in Justin Trudeau’s Canada, where self-identification and the most extreme transgender ideology has captured the entire nation. While there, I interviewed several young lesbians who had experienced distress as a result of rampant homophobia. The therapists and counsellors they turned to had told them that they must be trans men, and offered irreversible intervention.
My favourite moment was when Badenoch mentioned that she would be working with the Lesbian Project, an organisation I founded this year with Kathleen Stock, in order to look at the needs of same sex attracted females.
What Badenoch did was the most progressive thing I have seen in Parliament for a long time. The Labour Party should hang its head in shame, and Badenoch should be awarded a medal.