Stay incredulous about the radical trans debate
That said, there is the distinct thud of reality hitting home – in some quarters, at least. And at last.
After a period only a few years shorter than it took Einstein to work out the theory of relativity, the International Olympic Committee this week finally worked out that biological men are different from biological women.
On Tuesday, the IOC – under new leadership – banned biological men from competing in women’s sport. So why did it take so long for the IOC to accept men’s obvious biological advantages, including bigger heart and lungs, greater oxygen capacity, more muscle mass, especially greater upper body strength, and no pesky monthly hormonal changes?
Put it down to the rampant spread in some parts of our society of a psycho-social disease we might call delayed-onset- of-common-sense.
This disorder, which might one day earn an entry into DSM, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has two inter-related causes: the canny activism of the trans movement combined with woolly-headed thinking from decision makers.
The political agenda of the trans movement has been cleverly pitched as a modern version of the civil rights movement. Who in the 21st century could argue against equal rights for trans people?
Distorting fears for ‘safety and survival’
As the authors of a 2016 paper for the AMA Journal of Ethics wrote: “Transgender rights stem from human rights, i.e., those fundamental rights belonging to every person. Persons with either cisgender (in which assigned and experienced gender are the same) or transgender identities deserve to live and flourish in their communities – with freedom to learn, work, love and play – and build lives connected with others at home, in the workplace, and in public settings without fear for their safety and survival.”
Alas, the comparison with the civil rights movement is, in many cases, a major distortion. Where many well-meaning people have gone wrong is by failing to distinguish between two very different kinds of claims by trans activists.
A modern and compassionate society will ensure trans people are not discriminated against in areas where there is no conflict of rights. For example, in employment, or housing, or access to government services, these are spheres of genuine equal rights where trans rights do not intrude on the rights of others.
A trans person should not be discriminated against when they seek to rent a house, get a job or get government services, simply because they are trans.
However, many, perhaps most, claims based on human rights are more complex. They frequently involve overlapping, competing and sometimes downright conflicting claims. In such cases, not everyone can win a prize. Not infrequently, clashing claims mean zero sum outcomes – one right can be vindicated only at the expense of another. Probably the most striking example of such a zero-sum rights outcome in the West today involves claims by trans women to access spaces or services which biological women regard, for various reasons, as exclusive to women.
Where those reasons are compelling, for example those resting on differences in physical attributes or on safety, the rights of trans women must yield to those of biological women.
In these cases, there is nothing equal, let alone compassionate or fair, about preferring the claims of trans activists. Indeed, the opposite is true.
Only by distorting reality can the trans movement be seen as a fight for equal rights. Trans women wanting to compete in women’s sport is not about equality given the strength and other benefits of male physiology in sport but is rather the opposite. Trans athletes effectively seek guaranteed inequality by tipping the playing field in their favour.
Similarly, trans women wanting to enter female-only spaces – from female prisons to homes for female victims of rape and domestic violence – is not about equal rights. Instead, it is a twofold demand to subordinate the rights of biological women to feel, and to be, safe as well as a demand to distort the scientific reality that a woman is a biological female.
These and other similar trans demands are for special rights at the expense of the rights of others, namely biological women.
Likewise, trans women wanting to experience breastfeeding is not remotely a case of equal rights.
In the lead-up to the birth of a baby conceived by IVF, trans woman Jennifer Adrian Buckley wanted the experience of breastfeeding the newborn who was born through IVF to her partner. To that end, Buckley requested and received large doses of three drugs to induce the secretion of a substance that the transwoman says was breast milk.
Buckley told British website parentingqueer.co.uk “I didn’t realise that it could be an option for myself. My endocrinologist helped induce lactation by mimicking pregnancy in my body.”
“At first, it was only a small amount but gradually increased … producing approximately 40ml to 50ml per day. It was amazing that I was able to produce this amount.
“Sharing our story is about letting transgender women know that they can breastfeed, they are able to induce lactation and that it should be normalised,” Buckley wrote.
The call for normalisation appears to be the new frontier of trans activism.
For those of us who have steered clear of environments where delayed-onset-common sense is rife, the answer to this demand is simple: some things should not be normalised.
This is one of them. A trans woman’s desire to breastfeed, by relying on a combination of drugs, should not supplant the right of a baby to be fed safely. Anecdotal evidence is not the same as scientific data, which Buckley’s endocrinologist, Naomi Achong, conceded was “limited”.
Refusing to normalise the use of drugs to enable a biological man to breastfeed may offend some trans women and trans activists more broadly. But being offended ought not be grounds for shutting down the views of others. Here again there is a conflict of rights. Which is more important in a healthy democracy? The right not to be offended? Or the right to discuss matters freely and robustly?
Buckley is suing former Australian Breastfeeding Association counsellor Jasmine Sussex for breaching Queensland anti-discrimination laws. Sussex made her views clear, including by denouncing the “delusional queer theory take” on breastfeeding.
The upcoming legal battle between Buckley and Sussex will, as Jamie Walker reported last weekend, raise many questions about free speech and science. Those issues look set to unfold in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal next May.
Misguided calls for nomalisation
If our laws successfully – whether formally or by a shadow effect – shut down debate, then misguided calls for normalisation will succeed in no time. The law and its chilling effect will potentially prevent us expressing a reasonable view that the demands and desires of some trans women are growing ever more radical – and nonsensical.
For many, this dispute is the zenith of multiple failures across society to address one fundamentally simple question: how far should we go to distort reality? And at what cost are we currently distorting reality?
Speaking to a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in late September, author Lionel Shriver urged us “to never relinquish our incredulity” over the obsession with trans demands to neuter biological sex.
Three cheers. Even if one doesn’t agree with everything Shriver says, it is important to remain incredulous, where necessary. Just as laws that curb free speech will fast-track normalisation, so will an absence of incredulity.
If a man wants to dress as a woman, or be known as a woman, or take medical steps to look more like a woman, then he is free to do that. Live and let live. What a man should not be able to do is use a law to demand that others treat him as a woman, or call him a woman.
After all, free speech is useless unless someone is able to think sensibly and then say the obvious.
The dearth of sensible thinking, especially in politics, bureaucracies, in the law and medicine about the demands from the small but vocal trans movement, is largely because people in power succumbed to the trans movement strategy of defining their demands in one of both of two ways – as an unassailable human rights issue and as a matter of normalisation.
Examples include the IOC’s refusal over many years to acknowledge biological differences. Or the consent form sent by the Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority that asks parents to nominate preferred pronouns for their four- and five-year-old children. Or BBC presenter Martine Croxall being admonished by her Beeb bosses for eye-rolling on camera when she changed BBC approved language of “pregnant people” to “women”. Or when our federal parliament removed the definition of woman (being a biological female) from the Sex Discrimination Act. It followed that we were expected to keep a straight face when the Sex Discrimination Commissioner tells us, as she did in the Giggle v Tickle case, that pregnancy provisions under the act extend to men who identify as women and who cannot possibly get pregnant.
Incredulity? You bet.
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