Some of my good male friends, Tories, are sick of terfs. I can see it in their shifty eyes, in the way they won’t quite look at me when terfy issues creep into conversation, but stare gloomily at the skirting board. Terf stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and terfs are women who insist that you can’t change your biological sex, and that the whole notion that some humans are born in the wrong body is not only daft, but catastrophic for our culture and our children.
It could soon be a criminal act to try to talk a gay boy out of castrating himself
It’s been a half-decade since the terf wars became a daily part of the media scene and, if I’m reading their micro–expressions right, their eye-rolls and fidgets, it’s exactly the sort of people we’ll need most in the next few years who have had enough of it all. They’ve had it with J.K. Rowling and her relentless presence on their social media feeds, perhaps particularly with the way their wives and girlfriends, increasingly radicalised, now follow J.K., flinging themselves into the path of her Twitter feed like teens in the grip of Beatlemania.
But Labour is coming. On Monday they announced that they plan to make it easier for anyone who fancies it to get a gender recognition certificate, and Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, pretty much confirmed that she’ll scrap the guidance banning children from being taught that they can change gender. Tuesday brought the exciting news that Labour will introduce a full ban on what they call ‘conversion therapy’, which sounds reasonable but is insane. A ban would mean that teachers, doctors, therapists, even parents, are at risk of legal action if they dare to suggest to a confused child that he or she is not transgender. It could soon be a criminal act to try to talk a gay boy out of castrating himself.
So are the Conservatives readying themselves for a fight? For the most part, they seem to be readying themselves only to sidle off. Where, for instance, is that moral crusader Michael Gove on this? If senior Tories find themselves captured by the progressive politics of their younger staffers and special advisers, what hope is there for Labour?
Part of the problem is that Conservative men aren’t naturally ideological. They find an ideological set-to hard to stomach unless of course they’re led into it by a firebrand hottie. I’m considering (quite seriously) designing a secret terf weapon: an online AI bot version of a young Margaret Thatcher, now firmly gender critical and with even lovelier ankles. She’ll deploy some familiar phrases but in a new cause:
‘Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.’
‘The lady’s not for turning.’
If this doesn’t stiffen Tory sinews, nothing will.
In the past, it’s confused and surprised me that men who think themselves chivalrous don’t seem more agitated about the astonishing violence trans women (men) can display towards real women. Sarah Jane Barker, a man who has served time for torture, kidnap and attempted murder, has encouraged a crowd to punch terfs in the face. Barker was at it again last weekend in Brighton, menacing a group called Let Women Speak. The academic Kathleen Stock has been thumped on the head by trans-identified men. Why do so few Conservative men leap to Kathleen’s defence? Do they think what goes around comes around?
Some of the loudest and fiercest feminists have spent the past few decades attacking men and I suspect, now that another oppressed minority has risen and started savaging the feminists themselves, some men think: you reap what you sow, girls. I do have some sympathy. The phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ often seems to be referring not just to a subset of boy behaviour but the whole masculine shebang. Don’t touch, don’t flirt, don’t stare, don’t pursue. What’s a guy to do? Cry, that’s what, preferably on Instagram.
But this isn’t really at heart a feminist issue. Yes, at first gender ideology let loose will destroy women’s sports and turn women’s prisons and women’s refuges into rapey hellscapes, but this is not a war on women; it’s a war on reality. And if Tory men leave terfs to defend themselves – if they prefer to discuss more manly things like war and space – then it’s their own children and grandchildren who’ll suffer.
I’ve recently heard people trying to persuade themselves that if there was ever a real threat from gender ideology, then that time is over; that we’ve reached and passed peak woke. But ask any public-sector worker, any medic or teacher, and they’ll set you straight. They would be ostracised if they tried to suggest that kids who think they’re trans don’t know their own minds. If you work in a university, a retweet for J.K. Rowling is still tantamount to a resignation letter. Behind closed doors, your academic friends may well pat you on the back, but in public they’ll knife you. Ask a young relative if they’d feel comfortable out and about in a ‘I stand with J.K. Rowling’ T-shirt.
And despite the Cass Review, the threat to children is still there. Yes, the Tavistock clinic may have shut down, but last week it was reported that one of its former staff, a Dr Heather Wood, has gone private and launched her own new gender clinic for children, Dignity Gender Assessment Services, though it doesn’t yet offer euthanasia. Dr Wood is reported to have received a large taxpayer-funded payout when the Tavistock closed, but each assessment at the new clinic will cost £1,500 even so. Now that Labour has promised to keep the pipeline of children coming, I expect more clinics will follow suit.
So it’s down to you, brave Tory men, in power or in opposition. Desperate though you are not to be thought of as toxic, or transphobic, you at least won’t lose your job or all your friends if you take a stand. If you don’t speak up, who will?
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