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Transgender Body Politics
At a time when supposedly enlightened attitudes are championed by the mainstream, philosopher and activist Heather Brunskell-Evans shows how, in plain view under the guise of liberalism, a regressive men’s rights movement is posing a massive threat to the human rights of women and children everywhere. This movement in transgender politics has turned coloniser, erasing the bodies, agency, and autonomy of women and children, while asserting men’s rights to bodily intrusion into every social and personal space. In a complete reversal of feminist gender critical analyses, sex and gender are identity is now called ‘innate’ (a ‘feeling’ located somewhere in the body) and biological sex is said to be socially constructed (and hence changeable). This ensures a lifetime of drug dependency for transitioners, thereby delivering vast profits for Big Pharma in a capitalist dream. Everyone, including every trans person, has the right to live freely without discrimination. But the transgender movement has been hijacked by misogynists who are appropriating and inverting the struggles of feminism to deliver an agenda devoid of feminist principles. An eye-opening book.
200 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2020
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November 16, 2024
An excellent critique of the current trans-activist movement and its threat to not only the safety and well-being of women, but a threat to the human rights of women and children. The author explores the medical harms being done to children in the name of trans politics, and how this is being promoted by powerful, rich men to intrude on women's rights and been so influential in the political and legal system. She also addresses how the medical and pharmaceutical industry is benefited by this movement.
Her analysis leads her to conclude that the transgender movement is in fact a men's rights movement, with the intent of invading not only women-only spaces, but as a silencing of women's voices and colonising and erasing our bodies, agency and autonomy.
Highly recommended.
Her analysis leads her to conclude that the transgender movement is in fact a men's rights movement, with the intent of invading not only women-only spaces, but as a silencing of women's voices and colonising and erasing our bodies, agency and autonomy.
Highly recommended.
October 20, 2020
This slender volume captures a surprising amount of information in accessible and readable form to bring readers quickly up to speed with the ongoing debate between so called Gender Critical Feminists in the UK and the transgender movement. It is written by an academic who has examined exhaustively the key literature and theory underpinning the movement, and gone on to engage actively in challenging important claims, notably the concept of a trans child.
In response, she has experienced the gamut of retaliation and intimidation. This often comes from ordinary activists but the hostility to debate is now known to be an explicit strategy on the part of those lawyers and lobbyists funded by the transgender industry, reflecting in the secretive way by which much regulation and legislation on the subject has been introduced, the aversion to public discussion or academic scrutiny of relevant medical practices, refusal to acknowledge the immense and deeply troubling impact of “trans rights” on those of women and children, and the emerging pressure to associate any attempted scrutiny, debate, and “gender critical” opinions with hate speech and the criminal law. One can anticipate that this book will join the list for book burning.
The book attempts to give an impression of the sheer scale and ambition of the transgender movement in England, recognising that it is active globally. This is something that most of the UK public remain largely unaware of, or mistakenly believe that it is entirely subsumed into the human rights category of the LGB movement, but the changes it has managed to secure to date and the scale of its ambition are a tribute to the dynamism, financial resources, organising power and lobbying skill of its main instigators, who are of course successful entrepreneurs and capitalists. To be fair, a different source is needed to provide a proper overview of the international reach of this movement, though the information is in the public domain for those with access to the internet. The scale of the operation is jaw dropping, and though there is huge funding from some key billionaires, listed in the book, it is largely funded and indeed implemented by public bodies and corporations, including political parties, academics and educational managers from university level to primary school, as well as charitable giving by the public and by celebrities. It is in short a business model with a capacity for exponential growth and we the public are paying for it.
For the transgender industry to expand requires a growing demand for life-changing medication and surgery in the name of “gender identity” and this is exactly what is happening in the countries affected. This escalating demand is concentrated especially among adolescent girls. Burnskell Evans takes particular interest in England’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock in London and Leeds to examine just what this medication of adolescence entails, the astonishing lack of restraint in the promotion of untested treatments with known harmful and irreversible effects, and the shoddy practices by which clients are channelled towards medication as their primary option. These practices are at this moment under scrutiny in a court case against the Tavistock. She does not, I think, give detail on her views about the concept of a trans child, but she has co-edited two books on the topic; suffice to say the concept is entirely a political, ideological one.
In most if not all societies adolescence is a challenging period of transition into adulthood which is inherently stressful and requires adult support. Western girls and boys are distressed by adolescence for reasons that reflect social and cultural expectations in the shape of gender roles which are often oppressive and restrictive, amplified and intensified by social media and a pornographised culture. This vulnerability is what the trans industry cynically exploits, not least by offering a drug claiming to make all the discomfort and distress of adolescence go away, which is magical thinking at best; it is part of our nature to experience adolescence. To do that it requires a cultural / ideological and political expression and this is supplied by several variants of postmodernism, including Queer Theory, Intersectional Feminism and, confusingly, by Transgender ideology, which can at times and in important ways be at odds with each other. Brunskell Evans is well versed in these academic and popular ideologies and especially scathing is her reminder that they ultimately subvert feminism as a movement expressing the interests of women as a sex class, instead promoting aggressively the objectives of the Men’s Rights Movement at the expense of women and girls.
To appreciate the extent of the Men’s Rights agenda in transgender activism, it is important to grasp that most transgender adults make no attempt whatever at physical or even social transition, and the Stonewall definition of transgender [the trans umbrella] is open ended, to say explicitly that anyone who states he is a woman has the right to be treated as a woman; to say otherwise is transphobic and work is in hand to make such opinions a hate crime. This movement not only has the stated aim of eliminating the very concept of a sex class named “woman” but has also set about negating the very concept of same sex attraction for gays and lesbians, an astounding move by an organisation and a movement celebrating (increasingly fictional and self contradicting) LGBTQIA+ solidarity. Brunskell Evans documents examples of the resulting destruction of the rights of girls, women and specifically lesbians, in the service of a Queer ideology and Men’s Rights agenda that has never had general support and lacks a credible intellectual foundation.
The Gender Critical perspective on transgenderism is emerging slowly and with difficulty, in the teeth of immense hostility and aggressive efforts to silence and “cancel” its advocates, some of which are described in this book. Even so, the information so clearly and credibly laid out in this book is of the greatest importance and urgency for anyone interested in the multi billion dollar transgender industry, and its associated ideologies.
Quotes:
Gender critical feminism is not a biologically based identity politics, it is a sex-class based politics. ... Patriarchy is a historical structure that has oppressed women on the basis of their biology. To recognise the material basis of oppression does not make the oppression necessary; it makes it a political structure and thus open to challenge and to resistance. [p10]
In 1988, Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectional’ to describe how interlocking systems of power combine... The laudable analytical category ‘intersectionality’ has unintentionally fed into a form of ‘feminism’ that mobilises the new branch of the men’s rights movement, transgenderism. Sally Hines, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sheffield, is a trans-affirmative intersectional feminist, who has reduced the term ‘intersectional’ to ‘inclusivity’, missing the point that including ‘transwomen’ in the category ‘women’ is not the same as white women including black women. [p18]
In 2018 a group of parents... handed over a comprehensive research based portfolio of evidence indicating and substantiating extensive patient safety failings for young people and families in the care of GIDS... At the same time, Dr David Bell, a Tavistock governor and senior psychiatric consultant was approached by ten staff members ... who had grave ethical concerns similar to those expressed in the parents’ letter – including inadequate clinical assessments, girls being pushed through for early medical interventions, and the GIDS failure to stand up to pressure from trans lobby groups, in particular Mermaids... [p60, 61]
... ‘gender identity’ is defined as ...each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender including dress, speech and mannerisms (Yogyakarta Principles 2007) [p84]
...the transactivist movement has successfully linked T with LGB which is a conceptual coup that gives the appearance of homogenous and collective interests of these four groups. In fact their interests are very different: being lesbian, gay or bisexual is a sexual orientation, being transgender is referring to a non definable ‘gender identity’. [p90]
In recommending far-reaching legal changes in a liberal democracy that redefines ‘woman’ without acknowledging the profound public policy implications of that change on women (and girls) the government demonstrated 1. A serious lack of consciousness of the ideas they were embracing and helping reproduce 2. Inadequate institutional safeguards against the well organised and highly purposeful single-issue lobbying groups such as Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids ... 3. a predisoposed partisanship to the transgender human-rights paradigm that is so strong that women.. had no representation in redefining the category to which they belong. [p90]
If anyone can identify as a woman, and be treated as if they are women, they effectively have access to women’s safe spaces on demand (changing rooms, refuges, hospital wards, prisons and so on)... [p97]
Stonewall’s Consultancy Services and Training and Champions Schemes for organisations allows it, under the banner of diversity, to shape the ideas of institutions and individuals whose organisations have joined the schemes... With regard to children and education ... Stonewall has an Education Champions programme, a Children and Young People’s Services Champions programme and Consultancy Services for Education and Youth Professionals... Stonewall has unilaterally and without any mandate whatsoever, ... redefined homosexuality as same gender attraction rather than same-sex attraction. Bailey argues this is an especially egregious betrayal of LGB people, especially women... [p127]
The child is presented as a member of a political rights group, rather than as a child who may be experiencing distress and confusion and who is in need of careful and thoughtful support. [p130]
Diversity policies, saturated with a monologic view of ‘gender identities’, execute a masculinist trans rights political programme through the universities, the health care system, Gender Identity Development Service clinics, the school system, the police and political parties in the UK... The dynamics and processes which have allowed this societal change to happen for so many years, on such a scale, with so much money poured into it but so little scrutiny, deserve much closer attention, not just in order to understand the specific vulnerabilities of the historic and hard fought for rights of women and children, but also the vulnerabilities of the democratic polity more generally. [p132]
Academics face campaigns of vexatious complaints, no-platforming and even threats of violence for simply asserting the reality and social salience of sex, especially when they do so from a feminist perspective. [p138]
Most people think that the ‘transgender’ or ‘gender identity’ movement are about accommodating people with a debilitating condition. But they are actually an industry that creates medical identities out of sex, while simultaneously mounting active campaigns to deconstruct sexual dimorphism within the law. Transgenderism is a multi-billion dollar industry, disguised as a civil rights movement... Three American billionaires have bankrolled the transgender movement on a global scale. The Open Society Foundation (OSF), funded by George Soros, ...the top funder, followed by Stryker’s Arcus Foundation and Pritzker’s Tawani Foundation... [p143, 4]
The following have been deemed hateful in the trans community (and their supporters): the statement ‘only women have periods’, the female sign on packaging for sanitary towels; a refusal to allow an intact biological male to use a women’s changing room; objection to a biological male sex offender who identifies as a woman being housed in a women’s prison; the statement ‘only women give birth’; the statement ‘only women have vaginas’; a refusal to use third person (or any other) pronouns an individual wishes you to use. [p150]
Although the CPS is obligated to bring criminal prosecutions and acts to enforce the law as it stands, CPS policy and guidance have the effect of potentially criminalising behaviour or speech which would otherwise not constitute a criminal offence. The subjective definition of a hate crime, based upon a person’s perception of hostility, combined with ... the adoption by the CPS of Stonewall’s definitions [of transphobia] into their policy and guidance, creates a real risk that the expression of gender critical opinions would be investigated as a transphobic crime. [p150]
In the ethical universe of the EHRC, the organisation tasked with promoting and upholding equality and human rights ideals and laws across Britain, unless women acknowledge and accept sharing intimate spaces with men who identify as women (namely with the cross dressers, transvestites and anyone else under the canopy of Stonewall’s trans umbrella who may not conform to traditional gender roles), unless women ignore what is happening to women’s sports, crime statistics, medical statistics, sex equity in the workplace, women’s safety in prisons and refuges, and the abomination of medical experiments on healthy children, a moral, discriminatory mistake of the first order has been made. [p153]
In response, she has experienced the gamut of retaliation and intimidation. This often comes from ordinary activists but the hostility to debate is now known to be an explicit strategy on the part of those lawyers and lobbyists funded by the transgender industry, reflecting in the secretive way by which much regulation and legislation on the subject has been introduced, the aversion to public discussion or academic scrutiny of relevant medical practices, refusal to acknowledge the immense and deeply troubling impact of “trans rights” on those of women and children, and the emerging pressure to associate any attempted scrutiny, debate, and “gender critical” opinions with hate speech and the criminal law. One can anticipate that this book will join the list for book burning.
The book attempts to give an impression of the sheer scale and ambition of the transgender movement in England, recognising that it is active globally. This is something that most of the UK public remain largely unaware of, or mistakenly believe that it is entirely subsumed into the human rights category of the LGB movement, but the changes it has managed to secure to date and the scale of its ambition are a tribute to the dynamism, financial resources, organising power and lobbying skill of its main instigators, who are of course successful entrepreneurs and capitalists. To be fair, a different source is needed to provide a proper overview of the international reach of this movement, though the information is in the public domain for those with access to the internet. The scale of the operation is jaw dropping, and though there is huge funding from some key billionaires, listed in the book, it is largely funded and indeed implemented by public bodies and corporations, including political parties, academics and educational managers from university level to primary school, as well as charitable giving by the public and by celebrities. It is in short a business model with a capacity for exponential growth and we the public are paying for it.
For the transgender industry to expand requires a growing demand for life-changing medication and surgery in the name of “gender identity” and this is exactly what is happening in the countries affected. This escalating demand is concentrated especially among adolescent girls. Burnskell Evans takes particular interest in England’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock in London and Leeds to examine just what this medication of adolescence entails, the astonishing lack of restraint in the promotion of untested treatments with known harmful and irreversible effects, and the shoddy practices by which clients are channelled towards medication as their primary option. These practices are at this moment under scrutiny in a court case against the Tavistock. She does not, I think, give detail on her views about the concept of a trans child, but she has co-edited two books on the topic; suffice to say the concept is entirely a political, ideological one.
In most if not all societies adolescence is a challenging period of transition into adulthood which is inherently stressful and requires adult support. Western girls and boys are distressed by adolescence for reasons that reflect social and cultural expectations in the shape of gender roles which are often oppressive and restrictive, amplified and intensified by social media and a pornographised culture. This vulnerability is what the trans industry cynically exploits, not least by offering a drug claiming to make all the discomfort and distress of adolescence go away, which is magical thinking at best; it is part of our nature to experience adolescence. To do that it requires a cultural / ideological and political expression and this is supplied by several variants of postmodernism, including Queer Theory, Intersectional Feminism and, confusingly, by Transgender ideology, which can at times and in important ways be at odds with each other. Brunskell Evans is well versed in these academic and popular ideologies and especially scathing is her reminder that they ultimately subvert feminism as a movement expressing the interests of women as a sex class, instead promoting aggressively the objectives of the Men’s Rights Movement at the expense of women and girls.
To appreciate the extent of the Men’s Rights agenda in transgender activism, it is important to grasp that most transgender adults make no attempt whatever at physical or even social transition, and the Stonewall definition of transgender [the trans umbrella] is open ended, to say explicitly that anyone who states he is a woman has the right to be treated as a woman; to say otherwise is transphobic and work is in hand to make such opinions a hate crime. This movement not only has the stated aim of eliminating the very concept of a sex class named “woman” but has also set about negating the very concept of same sex attraction for gays and lesbians, an astounding move by an organisation and a movement celebrating (increasingly fictional and self contradicting) LGBTQIA+ solidarity. Brunskell Evans documents examples of the resulting destruction of the rights of girls, women and specifically lesbians, in the service of a Queer ideology and Men’s Rights agenda that has never had general support and lacks a credible intellectual foundation.
The Gender Critical perspective on transgenderism is emerging slowly and with difficulty, in the teeth of immense hostility and aggressive efforts to silence and “cancel” its advocates, some of which are described in this book. Even so, the information so clearly and credibly laid out in this book is of the greatest importance and urgency for anyone interested in the multi billion dollar transgender industry, and its associated ideologies.
Quotes:
Gender critical feminism is not a biologically based identity politics, it is a sex-class based politics. ... Patriarchy is a historical structure that has oppressed women on the basis of their biology. To recognise the material basis of oppression does not make the oppression necessary; it makes it a political structure and thus open to challenge and to resistance. [p10]
In 1988, Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectional’ to describe how interlocking systems of power combine... The laudable analytical category ‘intersectionality’ has unintentionally fed into a form of ‘feminism’ that mobilises the new branch of the men’s rights movement, transgenderism. Sally Hines, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sheffield, is a trans-affirmative intersectional feminist, who has reduced the term ‘intersectional’ to ‘inclusivity’, missing the point that including ‘transwomen’ in the category ‘women’ is not the same as white women including black women. [p18]
In 2018 a group of parents... handed over a comprehensive research based portfolio of evidence indicating and substantiating extensive patient safety failings for young people and families in the care of GIDS... At the same time, Dr David Bell, a Tavistock governor and senior psychiatric consultant was approached by ten staff members ... who had grave ethical concerns similar to those expressed in the parents’ letter – including inadequate clinical assessments, girls being pushed through for early medical interventions, and the GIDS failure to stand up to pressure from trans lobby groups, in particular Mermaids... [p60, 61]
... ‘gender identity’ is defined as ...each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender including dress, speech and mannerisms (Yogyakarta Principles 2007) [p84]
...the transactivist movement has successfully linked T with LGB which is a conceptual coup that gives the appearance of homogenous and collective interests of these four groups. In fact their interests are very different: being lesbian, gay or bisexual is a sexual orientation, being transgender is referring to a non definable ‘gender identity’. [p90]
In recommending far-reaching legal changes in a liberal democracy that redefines ‘woman’ without acknowledging the profound public policy implications of that change on women (and girls) the government demonstrated 1. A serious lack of consciousness of the ideas they were embracing and helping reproduce 2. Inadequate institutional safeguards against the well organised and highly purposeful single-issue lobbying groups such as Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids ... 3. a predisoposed partisanship to the transgender human-rights paradigm that is so strong that women.. had no representation in redefining the category to which they belong. [p90]
If anyone can identify as a woman, and be treated as if they are women, they effectively have access to women’s safe spaces on demand (changing rooms, refuges, hospital wards, prisons and so on)... [p97]
Stonewall’s Consultancy Services and Training and Champions Schemes for organisations allows it, under the banner of diversity, to shape the ideas of institutions and individuals whose organisations have joined the schemes... With regard to children and education ... Stonewall has an Education Champions programme, a Children and Young People’s Services Champions programme and Consultancy Services for Education and Youth Professionals... Stonewall has unilaterally and without any mandate whatsoever, ... redefined homosexuality as same gender attraction rather than same-sex attraction. Bailey argues this is an especially egregious betrayal of LGB people, especially women... [p127]
The child is presented as a member of a political rights group, rather than as a child who may be experiencing distress and confusion and who is in need of careful and thoughtful support. [p130]
Diversity policies, saturated with a monologic view of ‘gender identities’, execute a masculinist trans rights political programme through the universities, the health care system, Gender Identity Development Service clinics, the school system, the police and political parties in the UK... The dynamics and processes which have allowed this societal change to happen for so many years, on such a scale, with so much money poured into it but so little scrutiny, deserve much closer attention, not just in order to understand the specific vulnerabilities of the historic and hard fought for rights of women and children, but also the vulnerabilities of the democratic polity more generally. [p132]
Academics face campaigns of vexatious complaints, no-platforming and even threats of violence for simply asserting the reality and social salience of sex, especially when they do so from a feminist perspective. [p138]
Most people think that the ‘transgender’ or ‘gender identity’ movement are about accommodating people with a debilitating condition. But they are actually an industry that creates medical identities out of sex, while simultaneously mounting active campaigns to deconstruct sexual dimorphism within the law. Transgenderism is a multi-billion dollar industry, disguised as a civil rights movement... Three American billionaires have bankrolled the transgender movement on a global scale. The Open Society Foundation (OSF), funded by George Soros, ...the top funder, followed by Stryker’s Arcus Foundation and Pritzker’s Tawani Foundation... [p143, 4]
The following have been deemed hateful in the trans community (and their supporters): the statement ‘only women have periods’, the female sign on packaging for sanitary towels; a refusal to allow an intact biological male to use a women’s changing room; objection to a biological male sex offender who identifies as a woman being housed in a women’s prison; the statement ‘only women give birth’; the statement ‘only women have vaginas’; a refusal to use third person (or any other) pronouns an individual wishes you to use. [p150]
Although the CPS is obligated to bring criminal prosecutions and acts to enforce the law as it stands, CPS policy and guidance have the effect of potentially criminalising behaviour or speech which would otherwise not constitute a criminal offence. The subjective definition of a hate crime, based upon a person’s perception of hostility, combined with ... the adoption by the CPS of Stonewall’s definitions [of transphobia] into their policy and guidance, creates a real risk that the expression of gender critical opinions would be investigated as a transphobic crime. [p150]
In the ethical universe of the EHRC, the organisation tasked with promoting and upholding equality and human rights ideals and laws across Britain, unless women acknowledge and accept sharing intimate spaces with men who identify as women (namely with the cross dressers, transvestites and anyone else under the canopy of Stonewall’s trans umbrella who may not conform to traditional gender roles), unless women ignore what is happening to women’s sports, crime statistics, medical statistics, sex equity in the workplace, women’s safety in prisons and refuges, and the abomination of medical experiments on healthy children, a moral, discriminatory mistake of the first order has been made. [p153]
September 6, 2021
I have read TRANS by Helen Joyce and Material Girls by Kathleen Stock, I have read Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage.
Heather Brunskell-Evans's book is the most condensed of them all and the clearest. It gets to the root of the issue, and provides many needed sources of information (all the other books are very important, I recommend them). Her writing is smart, convincing and erudite.
I highly recommend it, to get the big picture and start advocating on behalf of women's sex based rights.
Heather Brunskell-Evans's book is the most condensed of them all and the clearest. It gets to the root of the issue, and provides many needed sources of information (all the other books are very important, I recommend them). Her writing is smart, convincing and erudite.
I highly recommend it, to get the big picture and start advocating on behalf of women's sex based rights.
May 8, 2023
CW for Brunskell-Evans's book: transphobia, misgendering, conversion therapy
According to Heather Brunskell-Evans (HBE), “transgenderism … is patriarchy emblazoned in imperial form.” How anyone who calls themselves a “philosopher and Foucault scholar” could write a book so rife with logical fallacies and devoid of a single Foucault reference is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Foucault had nothing to say about sex or power. Or perhaps it’s that nothing he did have to say supported her argument. In any case, like every Gender Critical (GC) work I’ve reviewed, this book is a train wreck of dumpster fires from start to finish. The only thing I may say in its favour is that it is short.
If you consider yourself part of the GC movement, and you hate trans people as much as HBE does, then you will probably enjoy this provocative romp through endlessly rehashed transphobic talking points. Who doesn’t like having their prejudices gleefully affirmed? Not the people writing the glowing reviews of this book, that’s for sure. If, on the other hand, you are a babe in the woods looking for insight into these contentious cultural issues, your time’s better spent looking up the data yourself. Anti-trans activism (ATA), like anti-vaxx activism or climate change denialism, is built on a quicksand of pseudoscience.
Right out of the gate, on page one, HBE begins her vengeful tirade by misgendering and denigrating a former friend, a trans woman named ‘Emily.’ (One hopes that Emily finally got wise to the toxic nature of their ‘friendship’ and ended it.) HBE goes on to say, “I supported his [sic] right, and anyone else’s for that matter, to identify with socially constructed gender norms for the opposite sex” (pg 1-2). For anyone who actually understands this subject, “identify with socially constructed gender norms” is a puzzling statement, it being a complete misunderstanding of how trans identities work. But this is par for the course for GCs.
HBE then goes on to misgender and denigrate Caitlyn Jenner, the most obvious target of transphobic ire. She criticizes Jenner’s presentation on the cover of Vanity Fair, as if it were any different from the presentation of countless other women in countless other mainstream publications, and as if the magazine itself didn’t have a vested interest in presenting her this way to drive sales. “See,” HBE seems to say, “this is what trans women are. A sexualized caricature of women.” As if there weren’t thousands of trans women out there who make no effort whatsoever to conform to traditional gender norms. As if there weren’t many more cis women who do. Jenner may be a celebrity, but it’s not her job to single-handedly change the representation of women, and as a privileged conservative, she’s not likely to do it. Having verbally defecated all over Jenner, HBE cites GLAAD’s guidelines for writing about trans people as if she is proud of having intentionally violated every last one of them. I’m not surprised she and Emily are no longer friends.
Like everyone who holds science in contempt, on page 8 the author relates how she offered medical advice to the parent of a trans child. Like anti-vaxxers, her own ignorance of the subject does not seem to discourage her: “My advice was that her duty as a mother was to refuse to go along with the trans narrative, and that she owed it to her daughter [sic] to continue to nurture and protect her [sic] body from harm.” Like all conspiracy theorists, extreme ignorance goes hand in hand with extreme arrogance. I hope for that child’s sake their mother didn’t listen to the author and took them to a qualified professional.
All this, and I have only covered the prologue. To enumerate all the flaws of HBE’s work would require an article twice the length of the book, so I will restrict myself to a few highlights.
The first chapter covers her objections to the substitution of gender identity for sex in the determination of a person’s gender. Throughout the book, HBE makes claims which demonstrate either a complete misunderstanding or a deliberate misrepresentation of the claims of trans people. For example: “In order to make the claim that ‘transwomen’ are equally female, it is necessary to erase biology in two ways: Identity, not genitalia, is the empirical basis of being female, thus rendering ‘femininity’ innate and not socially constructed and thus political.” First, at no point is anyone in the trans community attempting to ‘erase’ biological differences between people. When trans women argue that they should be considered female, they are not claiming to be biologically identical to cisgender women. Second, no one in the trans community equates femininity with being female. Femininity refers to gender expression, female refers to biological sex, and these are always considered separate things. The Genderbread Person infographic, hated by transphobes everywhere, makes this distinction explicit and is used to educate people about that difference. When HBE inserts ‘femininity’ in this statement, she’s not engaging in criticism, she’s practicing sleight-of-hand. The trans community has always advanced the view that sex, gender, and gender expression are three separate things. Being feminine does not make you a girl; being masculine does not make you a boy. I do not know a single trans person who believes it does. The trans community is filled with masculine trans women and feminine trans men, and no one bats an eye. This is a straw man erected by anti-trans activists. Third, she implies that trans activists are upholding a prescriptive gender binary, which is about as far from reality as you can get. Trans activists are, and have always been, absolutely opposed to any and all prescriptive gender norms. We have worked very hard to escape them ourselves. No one wants to make a butch lesbian identify as a man, or an effeminate gay man identify as a woman. The mere suggestion is horrifying.
She goes on to say, “It is now all psychological associations—professional bodies that register and govern practicing psychologists—that are compelled to comply with the fiction that trans identity, unlike all other identities, has no psychological basis or components.” I don’t have time to unpack the author’s ignorance here, sufficient to say that this is her attempt, in a roundabout way, to say that trans identities are not valid. They are, rather, a by-product of psychological trauma—you’re trans because you were touched by an uncle or mummy didn’t love you enough. After over a hundred years of clinical experience, and indefatigable attempts by transphobic therapists, to find such root causes, there is still no evidence to support this claim. There is no common psychological background among trans people; they come from supportive and unsupportive families; from abusive and non-abusive families; from all walks of life, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, secular and religious; some have had traumatic experiences, other haven’t. This, in itself, is very strong evidence in favour of a biological origin.
Unsurprisingly, and concordantly, there is no way to “fix” a trans identity through psychotherapy (the attempt to do so is conversion therapy). In chapter two, HBE cites Marcus Evans (no relation, as far as I know), an old-school gender therapist who is opposed to a ban on conversion therapy. This is what he believes (and, by implication, what HBE and no doubt what many GC activists believe) is the origin of trans identities: “the physical difference between the sexes may be experienced as so traumatic that it leads to an attempt to deny sexual differences altogether, as men may envy women their reproductive capacities while women may envy a man’s potency and perceived power in the world.” He doesn’t come right out and say it because he knows it won’t go over well with a twenty-first century crowd, but you can tell that he wants to: trans men are trans because they have penis envy. This neolithic thinking on trans identities goes all the way back to Freud and is now at least several decades out of date. It is no doubt true that many trans people envy the attributes of their cisgender peers, but that is not why they are trans. It’s the other way around.
How a specialist can maintain such obvious nonsense in the absence of any supporting evidence is bewildering. Perhaps a second quote from Evans will clear things up: “a trans woman may be impelled by a desire to establish a self-embodied replacement for a mother (or a mother figure). In my clinical experience, such forceful psychological defences dominate the mind, and thereby make it difficult for the person to consider alternative views.” (Emphasis mine.) Perhaps the same forces are at work in Evans himself. Perhaps he can’t see that trans people don’t change because they can’t change, not because they stubbornly persist in their “self-embodied replacement for a mother” (whatever that means). As previously mentioned, trans people are not at all interested in denying “sexual differences.” What they’re interested in is reframing how people perceive those differences. I.e., in a way that is more inclusive and sensitive to the experience of trans and intersex people. The implication that trans people are in some kind of denial, or outright delusional, is, at best, bad psychology, at worst, vicious slander. And why should the differences between the sexes be “experienced as so traumatic”? On what grounds? Where is the evidence that this has ever happened to anyone even once, let alone happened millions of times to millions of people? It seems like Evans is using trans people to justify claims that have no evidential basis beyond existence of trans people themselves. There is already a very good, very reasonable alternative to this psychodynamic gobbledygook, and it’s natural diversity. Intersex of the brain, as opposed to intersex of chromosomes and genitals.
Here, it is HBE and the GC community in general who are ignoring the very real, very significant evidence which points to biology: anthropology, history, ethology, child development, twin studies, heredity, clinical experience (the failure of both conversion therapy and antipsychotics), and studies in neuroactivity and neauroanatomy all suggest that trans identities are a product of natural variation in neurological development and structure. There is nothing remotely radical or scientifically objectionable about this view; it is in fact very reasonable, which is why the vast majority of scientists and healthcare specialists have adopted it. But HBE, like all ATAs, would like you to deny such biological evidence in favour of a purely cultural explanation: “gender critical feminism specifically refutes a direct link between biology and gender.” Gender is just up there, floating around like an epiphenomenon, completely rootless. No one doubts that biological sex and gender are different, but it’s another thing to say there is no connection between them at all.
This is where GC theory and the science of gender identity part ways. In the scientific model, there is a link between biology and gender, but it is not the one ATAs claim trans activists say it is. In the scientific model, the link has to do with a person’s innate predisposition toward adopting one reproductive (i.e. gender) role or another, a phenomenon known as self-socialization: children are born with an innate predisposition to self-socialize as male or female members of the reproductive community (or, in a few cases, as some more ambiguous combination, producing nonbinary identities). This innate predisposition is a person’s gender orientation, which is the kernel around which their gender identity forms. Gender orientation directs the child’s attention and rewards them for emulating the behaviours of same-gender role models; over time, a gender identity develops. This can be seen in countless studies which examine which gender children pay more attention to, and in brain scans demonstrating that the reward centers of the brain light up when children emulate same-gender role models (something which does not happen when they emulate other-gender role models). The form that a gender takes in any given culture (the stereotypes and social roles) is socially constructed and a product of historical accidents and trends, but not the predisposition to model oneself after adult males, females, both, or neither. This same tendency to self-socialize by modeling same-sex peers can be seen in a wide variety of animals (if not all sexually reproducing animals) and has no doubt been evolving for millions of years right alongside sexual orientation. Animals wouldn’t be able to form separate male and female dominance hierarchies without it, wouldn’t know how to form same-sex alliances or develop same-sex rivalries. The universal nature of this primitive social process explains why we find examples of trans identities in a wide range of cultures and over the entire length of human history. But there is no room for real science in GC theory. It is thoroughly rationalist and dualist, maintaining a rigid Cartesian separation between biology and behaviour.
The fact that there is a biological basis for gender identity is no cause for concern, in any event; if we want our children to grow up in a world free of prescriptive gender norms, all we have to do is give them better role-models by ignoring these prescriptions ourselves. HBE quotes Jane Clare Jones who says that: “it is gender critical feminism that offers ‘the radical proposition that what you like, what you wear and who you are should not be dictated by your chromosomes, hormones or any other marker of biological sex.” What’s so radical about that? Trans people have been saying it since forever. And saying it more loudly and unequivocally than the GC movement ever has (or will). Everywhere you look in the trans community you will see people blithely ignoring gender norms. It’s the whole reason the community is under constant, vicious attack. We haven’t all equally overcome such forces—we’re all on our own journey—but for the most part we’re just waiting for cis people to catch up. That Jane Clare Jones could believe that this opinion somehow sets GC thinking apart demonstrates nothing so much as an embarrassing ignorance of the lives and opinions of actual trans people.
In chapter 3, HBE calls up the spectre of trans women in women’s prisons, trotting out Karen White, the ultimate GC boogeyman. Now, without question, White’s actions are vile; no one should take prison violence lightly. But you can’t use the actions of one person to condemn an entire community. That kind of argument is the very essence of bigotry, which everyone knows perfectly well, and which HBE displays quite openly here. She even cites a website called “Trans Crime UK” as one of her sources. (One wonders if the mastermind behind the site has created sister sites for “Black Crime UK” and “Jew Crime UK.”) In 2018, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, a lesbian couple, drove their SUV off a cliff, killing themselves and murdering their six adopted children. This was a horrible tragedy, but it would be absurd to use it as a reason lesbians shouldn’t be allowed to adopt children. It’s not “evidence” that lesbians are bad parents, it’s only evidence that some lesbians, like some members of every group, are a danger to others. You cannot use the existence of trans predators as a reason to attack the trans community. If you could, no community on Earth would escape censure, and we would all lose our rights. If Karen White is evidence of anything, it’s that prison administrators make mistakes and need to be held accountable. Trans women are at much greater risk in men’s prisons than cis women are from trans women in women’s prisons, something which can be factually demonstrated. If you believe that trans women should be exposed to extremely high levels of probable violence to spare cis women from very low levels of possible violence, then not only do you not consider them women, you do not consider them human. In any case, men have always had access to women in prison. Prison administrators and correctional officers have not only power and authority over their women inmates, they have ready access to any of them at any time. They pose a far greater danger to women in prison than trans inmates do. Raising a hue and cry now is like setting out mouse traps while the dingo is eating your baby.
But by far her most bizarre claim is that trans activism is a branch of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRA). Which, as far as I can tell since she never defines it, is just another way of saying the Patriarchy. But if the MRA (i.e., the Patriarchy) is behind trans activism, and the right-wing is rabidly opposed to trans rights, then it must mean that right-wing conservatives, including fundamentalist Christians and neo-Nazis, are the real supporters of feminism and women’s rights and the true allies in the fight against the Patriarchy. Now, it’s true that conservative religious foundations pay GC activists to speak for them, and that neo-Nazis show up to GC speaking engagements to support them (with sieg heils, no less), but to get from there to “trans activism is a branch of the MRA” is a bridge I admit I cannot even find let alone cross. This line of reasoning is so pants-on-head crazy I can’t even imagine how anyone managed to convince themselves of it.
I could go on and on about the flaws of this book. I could talk about the author’s femmephobia (“There is nothing authentic about femininity”); about her support of Bilek’s antisemitic conspiracy theory about “Jewish billionaires” funding the trans movement, whose charitable donations (in the millions) are a pittance compared to the huge sums (to the tune of hundreds of millions) donated by religious conservatives to ATA (which pays, for example, for speaking engagements by people like HBE); I could talk about her pimping Littman’s roundly debunked junk science on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, an example of pseudoscience if ever there was one; about her bizarre historical myopia when it comes to the LGBT community (“the transactivist movement has successfully linked the T with LGB which is a conceptual coup that gives the appearance of homogenous and collective interests of these four groups”); but you get the idea.
As HBE says, “the way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion.” I hope this review contributes to that endeavor. HBE was once given a piece of advice by a colleague: “Don’t go down the transgender route Heather. It’s a vortex—it will suck you in and you’ll never get out.” It’s a shame she didn’t listen.
According to Heather Brunskell-Evans (HBE), “transgenderism … is patriarchy emblazoned in imperial form.” How anyone who calls themselves a “philosopher and Foucault scholar” could write a book so rife with logical fallacies and devoid of a single Foucault reference is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Foucault had nothing to say about sex or power. Or perhaps it’s that nothing he did have to say supported her argument. In any case, like every Gender Critical (GC) work I’ve reviewed, this book is a train wreck of dumpster fires from start to finish. The only thing I may say in its favour is that it is short.
If you consider yourself part of the GC movement, and you hate trans people as much as HBE does, then you will probably enjoy this provocative romp through endlessly rehashed transphobic talking points. Who doesn’t like having their prejudices gleefully affirmed? Not the people writing the glowing reviews of this book, that’s for sure. If, on the other hand, you are a babe in the woods looking for insight into these contentious cultural issues, your time’s better spent looking up the data yourself. Anti-trans activism (ATA), like anti-vaxx activism or climate change denialism, is built on a quicksand of pseudoscience.
Right out of the gate, on page one, HBE begins her vengeful tirade by misgendering and denigrating a former friend, a trans woman named ‘Emily.’ (One hopes that Emily finally got wise to the toxic nature of their ‘friendship’ and ended it.) HBE goes on to say, “I supported his [sic] right, and anyone else’s for that matter, to identify with socially constructed gender norms for the opposite sex” (pg 1-2). For anyone who actually understands this subject, “identify with socially constructed gender norms” is a puzzling statement, it being a complete misunderstanding of how trans identities work. But this is par for the course for GCs.
HBE then goes on to misgender and denigrate Caitlyn Jenner, the most obvious target of transphobic ire. She criticizes Jenner’s presentation on the cover of Vanity Fair, as if it were any different from the presentation of countless other women in countless other mainstream publications, and as if the magazine itself didn’t have a vested interest in presenting her this way to drive sales. “See,” HBE seems to say, “this is what trans women are. A sexualized caricature of women.” As if there weren’t thousands of trans women out there who make no effort whatsoever to conform to traditional gender norms. As if there weren’t many more cis women who do. Jenner may be a celebrity, but it’s not her job to single-handedly change the representation of women, and as a privileged conservative, she’s not likely to do it. Having verbally defecated all over Jenner, HBE cites GLAAD’s guidelines for writing about trans people as if she is proud of having intentionally violated every last one of them. I’m not surprised she and Emily are no longer friends.
Like everyone who holds science in contempt, on page 8 the author relates how she offered medical advice to the parent of a trans child. Like anti-vaxxers, her own ignorance of the subject does not seem to discourage her: “My advice was that her duty as a mother was to refuse to go along with the trans narrative, and that she owed it to her daughter [sic] to continue to nurture and protect her [sic] body from harm.” Like all conspiracy theorists, extreme ignorance goes hand in hand with extreme arrogance. I hope for that child’s sake their mother didn’t listen to the author and took them to a qualified professional.
All this, and I have only covered the prologue. To enumerate all the flaws of HBE’s work would require an article twice the length of the book, so I will restrict myself to a few highlights.
The first chapter covers her objections to the substitution of gender identity for sex in the determination of a person’s gender. Throughout the book, HBE makes claims which demonstrate either a complete misunderstanding or a deliberate misrepresentation of the claims of trans people. For example: “In order to make the claim that ‘transwomen’ are equally female, it is necessary to erase biology in two ways: Identity, not genitalia, is the empirical basis of being female, thus rendering ‘femininity’ innate and not socially constructed and thus political.” First, at no point is anyone in the trans community attempting to ‘erase’ biological differences between people. When trans women argue that they should be considered female, they are not claiming to be biologically identical to cisgender women. Second, no one in the trans community equates femininity with being female. Femininity refers to gender expression, female refers to biological sex, and these are always considered separate things. The Genderbread Person infographic, hated by transphobes everywhere, makes this distinction explicit and is used to educate people about that difference. When HBE inserts ‘femininity’ in this statement, she’s not engaging in criticism, she’s practicing sleight-of-hand. The trans community has always advanced the view that sex, gender, and gender expression are three separate things. Being feminine does not make you a girl; being masculine does not make you a boy. I do not know a single trans person who believes it does. The trans community is filled with masculine trans women and feminine trans men, and no one bats an eye. This is a straw man erected by anti-trans activists. Third, she implies that trans activists are upholding a prescriptive gender binary, which is about as far from reality as you can get. Trans activists are, and have always been, absolutely opposed to any and all prescriptive gender norms. We have worked very hard to escape them ourselves. No one wants to make a butch lesbian identify as a man, or an effeminate gay man identify as a woman. The mere suggestion is horrifying.
She goes on to say, “It is now all psychological associations—professional bodies that register and govern practicing psychologists—that are compelled to comply with the fiction that trans identity, unlike all other identities, has no psychological basis or components.” I don’t have time to unpack the author’s ignorance here, sufficient to say that this is her attempt, in a roundabout way, to say that trans identities are not valid. They are, rather, a by-product of psychological trauma—you’re trans because you were touched by an uncle or mummy didn’t love you enough. After over a hundred years of clinical experience, and indefatigable attempts by transphobic therapists, to find such root causes, there is still no evidence to support this claim. There is no common psychological background among trans people; they come from supportive and unsupportive families; from abusive and non-abusive families; from all walks of life, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, secular and religious; some have had traumatic experiences, other haven’t. This, in itself, is very strong evidence in favour of a biological origin.
Unsurprisingly, and concordantly, there is no way to “fix” a trans identity through psychotherapy (the attempt to do so is conversion therapy). In chapter two, HBE cites Marcus Evans (no relation, as far as I know), an old-school gender therapist who is opposed to a ban on conversion therapy. This is what he believes (and, by implication, what HBE and no doubt what many GC activists believe) is the origin of trans identities: “the physical difference between the sexes may be experienced as so traumatic that it leads to an attempt to deny sexual differences altogether, as men may envy women their reproductive capacities while women may envy a man’s potency and perceived power in the world.” He doesn’t come right out and say it because he knows it won’t go over well with a twenty-first century crowd, but you can tell that he wants to: trans men are trans because they have penis envy. This neolithic thinking on trans identities goes all the way back to Freud and is now at least several decades out of date. It is no doubt true that many trans people envy the attributes of their cisgender peers, but that is not why they are trans. It’s the other way around.
How a specialist can maintain such obvious nonsense in the absence of any supporting evidence is bewildering. Perhaps a second quote from Evans will clear things up: “a trans woman may be impelled by a desire to establish a self-embodied replacement for a mother (or a mother figure). In my clinical experience, such forceful psychological defences dominate the mind, and thereby make it difficult for the person to consider alternative views.” (Emphasis mine.) Perhaps the same forces are at work in Evans himself. Perhaps he can’t see that trans people don’t change because they can’t change, not because they stubbornly persist in their “self-embodied replacement for a mother” (whatever that means). As previously mentioned, trans people are not at all interested in denying “sexual differences.” What they’re interested in is reframing how people perceive those differences. I.e., in a way that is more inclusive and sensitive to the experience of trans and intersex people. The implication that trans people are in some kind of denial, or outright delusional, is, at best, bad psychology, at worst, vicious slander. And why should the differences between the sexes be “experienced as so traumatic”? On what grounds? Where is the evidence that this has ever happened to anyone even once, let alone happened millions of times to millions of people? It seems like Evans is using trans people to justify claims that have no evidential basis beyond existence of trans people themselves. There is already a very good, very reasonable alternative to this psychodynamic gobbledygook, and it’s natural diversity. Intersex of the brain, as opposed to intersex of chromosomes and genitals.
Here, it is HBE and the GC community in general who are ignoring the very real, very significant evidence which points to biology: anthropology, history, ethology, child development, twin studies, heredity, clinical experience (the failure of both conversion therapy and antipsychotics), and studies in neuroactivity and neauroanatomy all suggest that trans identities are a product of natural variation in neurological development and structure. There is nothing remotely radical or scientifically objectionable about this view; it is in fact very reasonable, which is why the vast majority of scientists and healthcare specialists have adopted it. But HBE, like all ATAs, would like you to deny such biological evidence in favour of a purely cultural explanation: “gender critical feminism specifically refutes a direct link between biology and gender.” Gender is just up there, floating around like an epiphenomenon, completely rootless. No one doubts that biological sex and gender are different, but it’s another thing to say there is no connection between them at all.
This is where GC theory and the science of gender identity part ways. In the scientific model, there is a link between biology and gender, but it is not the one ATAs claim trans activists say it is. In the scientific model, the link has to do with a person’s innate predisposition toward adopting one reproductive (i.e. gender) role or another, a phenomenon known as self-socialization: children are born with an innate predisposition to self-socialize as male or female members of the reproductive community (or, in a few cases, as some more ambiguous combination, producing nonbinary identities). This innate predisposition is a person’s gender orientation, which is the kernel around which their gender identity forms. Gender orientation directs the child’s attention and rewards them for emulating the behaviours of same-gender role models; over time, a gender identity develops. This can be seen in countless studies which examine which gender children pay more attention to, and in brain scans demonstrating that the reward centers of the brain light up when children emulate same-gender role models (something which does not happen when they emulate other-gender role models). The form that a gender takes in any given culture (the stereotypes and social roles) is socially constructed and a product of historical accidents and trends, but not the predisposition to model oneself after adult males, females, both, or neither. This same tendency to self-socialize by modeling same-sex peers can be seen in a wide variety of animals (if not all sexually reproducing animals) and has no doubt been evolving for millions of years right alongside sexual orientation. Animals wouldn’t be able to form separate male and female dominance hierarchies without it, wouldn’t know how to form same-sex alliances or develop same-sex rivalries. The universal nature of this primitive social process explains why we find examples of trans identities in a wide range of cultures and over the entire length of human history. But there is no room for real science in GC theory. It is thoroughly rationalist and dualist, maintaining a rigid Cartesian separation between biology and behaviour.
The fact that there is a biological basis for gender identity is no cause for concern, in any event; if we want our children to grow up in a world free of prescriptive gender norms, all we have to do is give them better role-models by ignoring these prescriptions ourselves. HBE quotes Jane Clare Jones who says that: “it is gender critical feminism that offers ‘the radical proposition that what you like, what you wear and who you are should not be dictated by your chromosomes, hormones or any other marker of biological sex.” What’s so radical about that? Trans people have been saying it since forever. And saying it more loudly and unequivocally than the GC movement ever has (or will). Everywhere you look in the trans community you will see people blithely ignoring gender norms. It’s the whole reason the community is under constant, vicious attack. We haven’t all equally overcome such forces—we’re all on our own journey—but for the most part we’re just waiting for cis people to catch up. That Jane Clare Jones could believe that this opinion somehow sets GC thinking apart demonstrates nothing so much as an embarrassing ignorance of the lives and opinions of actual trans people.
In chapter 3, HBE calls up the spectre of trans women in women’s prisons, trotting out Karen White, the ultimate GC boogeyman. Now, without question, White’s actions are vile; no one should take prison violence lightly. But you can’t use the actions of one person to condemn an entire community. That kind of argument is the very essence of bigotry, which everyone knows perfectly well, and which HBE displays quite openly here. She even cites a website called “Trans Crime UK” as one of her sources. (One wonders if the mastermind behind the site has created sister sites for “Black Crime UK” and “Jew Crime UK.”) In 2018, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, a lesbian couple, drove their SUV off a cliff, killing themselves and murdering their six adopted children. This was a horrible tragedy, but it would be absurd to use it as a reason lesbians shouldn’t be allowed to adopt children. It’s not “evidence” that lesbians are bad parents, it’s only evidence that some lesbians, like some members of every group, are a danger to others. You cannot use the existence of trans predators as a reason to attack the trans community. If you could, no community on Earth would escape censure, and we would all lose our rights. If Karen White is evidence of anything, it’s that prison administrators make mistakes and need to be held accountable. Trans women are at much greater risk in men’s prisons than cis women are from trans women in women’s prisons, something which can be factually demonstrated. If you believe that trans women should be exposed to extremely high levels of probable violence to spare cis women from very low levels of possible violence, then not only do you not consider them women, you do not consider them human. In any case, men have always had access to women in prison. Prison administrators and correctional officers have not only power and authority over their women inmates, they have ready access to any of them at any time. They pose a far greater danger to women in prison than trans inmates do. Raising a hue and cry now is like setting out mouse traps while the dingo is eating your baby.
But by far her most bizarre claim is that trans activism is a branch of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRA). Which, as far as I can tell since she never defines it, is just another way of saying the Patriarchy. But if the MRA (i.e., the Patriarchy) is behind trans activism, and the right-wing is rabidly opposed to trans rights, then it must mean that right-wing conservatives, including fundamentalist Christians and neo-Nazis, are the real supporters of feminism and women’s rights and the true allies in the fight against the Patriarchy. Now, it’s true that conservative religious foundations pay GC activists to speak for them, and that neo-Nazis show up to GC speaking engagements to support them (with sieg heils, no less), but to get from there to “trans activism is a branch of the MRA” is a bridge I admit I cannot even find let alone cross. This line of reasoning is so pants-on-head crazy I can’t even imagine how anyone managed to convince themselves of it.
I could go on and on about the flaws of this book. I could talk about the author’s femmephobia (“There is nothing authentic about femininity”); about her support of Bilek’s antisemitic conspiracy theory about “Jewish billionaires” funding the trans movement, whose charitable donations (in the millions) are a pittance compared to the huge sums (to the tune of hundreds of millions) donated by religious conservatives to ATA (which pays, for example, for speaking engagements by people like HBE); I could talk about her pimping Littman’s roundly debunked junk science on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, an example of pseudoscience if ever there was one; about her bizarre historical myopia when it comes to the LGBT community (“the transactivist movement has successfully linked the T with LGB which is a conceptual coup that gives the appearance of homogenous and collective interests of these four groups”); but you get the idea.
As HBE says, “the way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion.” I hope this review contributes to that endeavor. HBE was once given a piece of advice by a colleague: “Don’t go down the transgender route Heather. It’s a vortex—it will suck you in and you’ll never get out.” It’s a shame she didn’t listen.
December 9, 2020
Transgender Body Politics by Heather Brunskell-Evans is a fairly short, concise, and articulate exploration of the complex issues facing Westernised capitalist society today with regard to gender identity ideology. Even beyond the issue of money and funding, the subsection 3.1 Queering the Law and Social Policy, in chapter 3, The Male Body Politic, in particular seems to me to explain what is going on in broader society with the acceptance of an ideology which most people know nothing about in terms of its origins in postmodernism and Queer Theory. Postmodernism in its current form and agenda seems to dismiss embodied reality in favour of "talking about" what is real, is deliberately confusing, has shown its misogynist foundations in vivid technicolour, and successfully weakened strong, "unmodified" feminism through typical divide and conquer tactics, for example as Brunskell-Evans points out, by the co-opting and twisting of the meaning of an intersectional analysis. Brunskell-Evans shows us how common-sense has little to do with extremist gender identity ideology. It is shown to be centered in the self and self-expression despite claims to the contrary, incoherent in many of its assertions, and downright aggressive in its need to colonise and appropriate public space, language, thought, law, and even the private space and personhood of the individual by insisting that sexual orientation is no longer to be based in the wholistic sexed body, but rather in "gender identity," effectively making it "gender orientation." For according to the ideology, the brain and body are separate entities which can be paired incorrectly. This is tantamount to making metaphysical claims about the mismatch of bodies and souls.
This book also highlights a disturbing preoccupation with children by gender identity ideologues and their supporters. Children are developmentally immature and lack nuanced experience of the world, and at the onset of puberty are certainly NOT being taught the history of capitalist patriarchy, sex-based gender stereotypes, and sexual politics despite living beyond saturation point in such a world. Yet activists are getting permission to enter schools to effectively groom children into their ideology if they are not already exposed to it via social media, to spread the ideology and blatantly undermine, even bypass the parent-child relationship in favour of the child-gender identity ideology relationship. Then there is the matter of medical practise -and malpractise - and policies hostile to thorough counselling, trauma-informed therapy, and waiting for youth to emerge as adults from puberty, in favour of medicating children to halt puberty in line with ideology rather than good care of their developing bodies.
At the root of Brunskell-Evans' critique is a duty of care for children, and for the support of freedom to speak, critique, discuss, and to make social policy and law which benefits all members of society without us needing to dismiss our biological roots as a mammalian, dimorphic species, all in a functional democratic manner. This timely book gives us a coherent overview of the subject as it presently stands, particularly from a UK perspective.
This book also highlights a disturbing preoccupation with children by gender identity ideologues and their supporters. Children are developmentally immature and lack nuanced experience of the world, and at the onset of puberty are certainly NOT being taught the history of capitalist patriarchy, sex-based gender stereotypes, and sexual politics despite living beyond saturation point in such a world. Yet activists are getting permission to enter schools to effectively groom children into their ideology if they are not already exposed to it via social media, to spread the ideology and blatantly undermine, even bypass the parent-child relationship in favour of the child-gender identity ideology relationship. Then there is the matter of medical practise -and malpractise - and policies hostile to thorough counselling, trauma-informed therapy, and waiting for youth to emerge as adults from puberty, in favour of medicating children to halt puberty in line with ideology rather than good care of their developing bodies.
At the root of Brunskell-Evans' critique is a duty of care for children, and for the support of freedom to speak, critique, discuss, and to make social policy and law which benefits all members of society without us needing to dismiss our biological roots as a mammalian, dimorphic species, all in a functional democratic manner. This timely book gives us a coherent overview of the subject as it presently stands, particularly from a UK perspective.
July 12, 2021
Transphobic
January 30, 2025
daha düşük vermeye elim gitmedi ama okumaya değer değilmiş
June 16, 2021
Maybe I should have guessed this based on the title after all, but this book is almost entirely about transgender politics and lobbying groups in the UK. It's not really a general critique. As someone who is not British, it felt very boring to me and was difficult to understand.
The book almost sometimes becomes interesting and then falls flat. I'd like to hear more about Sarah Ahmad, the deleterious effects of queer theory on society, big pharma and transgenderism, the billionaires who fund transgenderism, but the thoughts are never really fully fleshed out.
The book almost sometimes becomes interesting and then falls flat. I'd like to hear more about Sarah Ahmad, the deleterious effects of queer theory on society, big pharma and transgenderism, the billionaires who fund transgenderism, but the thoughts are never really fully fleshed out.
February 5, 2024
Wonderful but horrifying. How could it be true? But I know it is. It is astonishing that the great majority of people have no idea of this scandal and most don't want to know. I have a friend who says she wants to know why I am so upset about this, but as soon as I start to tell her, she shuts down the conversation. Too hard. It really does seem unbelievable and I think that's half the problem.
Heather Brunskell-Evans is a Quaker, as am I. I am so disappointed that even the Quakers have been bought by this travesty and Heather's book is not sold in the London Quaker bookshop, while books by trans activists are. She has been vilified by her own Religious Society of Friends. When I tried to put an article she wrote on the Australian Quaker Facebook page, it was removed by the administrators. So disappointing. And don't mention the Greens! The 'no debate' mantra has absolutely captured these organisations. We just have to keep trying to speak truth to power and wait for the madness to pass.
We are mammals. There are two sexes, male and female. Women are oppressed because of our biology. Children should be protected from harmful drugs and life altering surgery.
I am grateful to Heather for writing a clear and concise exposé of the issues of Transgender politics and live in hope that more people will wake up.
Heather Brunskell-Evans is a Quaker, as am I. I am so disappointed that even the Quakers have been bought by this travesty and Heather's book is not sold in the London Quaker bookshop, while books by trans activists are. She has been vilified by her own Religious Society of Friends. When I tried to put an article she wrote on the Australian Quaker Facebook page, it was removed by the administrators. So disappointing. And don't mention the Greens! The 'no debate' mantra has absolutely captured these organisations. We just have to keep trying to speak truth to power and wait for the madness to pass.
We are mammals. There are two sexes, male and female. Women are oppressed because of our biology. Children should be protected from harmful drugs and life altering surgery.
I am grateful to Heather for writing a clear and concise exposé of the issues of Transgender politics and live in hope that more people will wake up.
April 28, 2022
I was scared to ask my local library to stock this, but then pleasantly surprised when they did without question. I read it in one sitting. I found it very informative. Thank you to Heather and others with the courage to expose the lies we are being immersed in. Anyone who cares about the safety of women and children should read this and anyone who doesn't want Big Pharma in control of our society's priorities and our children's education. This book makes me feel proud to be a woman, although compared with Heather and her compatriots I am a cowardly one. As a stay-at-home mother, I have no job to lose but I still live in fear of speaking up on this issue.
June 27, 2024
"In her latest book, Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans shifts her focus from the transgendering of children explored in her previous two books to now analysing the political movement of transactivism using a wider lens. In an impressively comprehensive yet lean volume, Heather makes a convincing case that certain campaigns under the label of “transgender rights” are, in fact, masculinist projects that centre men’s rights, and give supremacy to male feelings. This erodes women’s ability to name, understand and organise for themselves as a distinct group of human females separate to males and dismantles women’s sex-based rights".
December 1, 2022
Feminism hurt itself in confusion - it is still fault of the Patriarchy. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
March 16, 2024
One the most boring TERF books in my life. The language is dull, the contents are not original at all, 2 stars only for some bizarre thoughts
December 15, 2025
I don't agree with many perspectives from this book, because of my sex abolitionist POV of both gender and sex, however it's an interesting critique, despite not agreeing with many points. Also I find the start disrespectful. What did you gain by that honestly?
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