When Your MP Comes Out And Says Trans Is Bollocks
Nick Fletcher said his letter was designed to "set out his position" on gender identity.
The BBC has reported that a Conservative MP has sent a letter describing children's gender identity doubts as "nothing more than a phase" to every school in his constituency.
Nick Fletcher, MP for Don Valley, South Yorkshire, said he wanted to "clearly set out his position" on the issue and asked head teachers to do the same.
His letter states that "boys are boys and girls are girls", and the media glamorizes a "transgender lifestyle".
One school said the letter was "neither helpful nor positively received".
It was also criticized by councilors and the former boss of an LGBTQ+ youth charity, who said the comments "deny the existence" of transgender teens and could harm their mental health (but of course it does!).
Mr. Fletcher acknowledges that some may disagree with him, but suggests that children who would previously have been dubbed Tomboys or similar may now wrongly be led to believe they are transgender.
He says schools are "afraid of being classed as transphobic" but writes that a "push-back is desperately needed" and he will support staff.
Joe Brian, head teacher at Conisbrough Ivanhoe Primary Academy, said he had written back to Mr Fletcher to say: "I would have preferred to receive a letter supporting teachers after Michael Fabricant's comments about teachers drinking during lockdown"
"Or to discuss the fact that teachers have had a real-term pay cut. Or to talk about the stress that pupils are under doing SATS.
"I'd like to know what his thoughts are on teaching in the round.
"I don't think we need advice from [him] on how to deal with this single issue," he added.
Steve Slack, former chief executive of Sheffield LGBT+ youth charity SAYit, said the letter highlighted stigma faced by gay and transgender young people.
He said many had experienced "huge mental health problems", because of "attitudes that deny their existence, and suggest it's a phase".
"When I was growing up I was always told being gay was a phase and you'd grow out of it," he told BBC Radio Sheffield.
"Just let people be who they are and what they are," he said.
I take issue with what Mr. Slack just said.
Social justice movements have long succeeded in correcting legitimate political inequities by uniting under a banner of moral progress. As a result, people are often inclined to trust that these movements, led by champions of progressivism, must be happening in response to systematic and indisputable wrongs with a virtuous end goal in mind.
Enter the newest and loudest cause: transgender activism. Beneath the lavish media praise, the trans movement is hiding a litany of self-annihilating logic and regressive attitudes that merit public conversation. Aside from changing language to suit their subjective identity, the push to deny women sex-segregated protections, and the aggressive support for the transitioning of children, the often overlooked reality to this activism is the movement’s blatantly aggressive homophobia.
They claim to fight for “inclusivity,” but in pushing trans ideology, these activists are, either wittingly or unwittingly, actively erasing lesbians, gays, and any legislation intended to protect them. These supposed defenders of gays and lesbians are endangering the people they claim to fight for by selling out the community they call their own.
There’s a huge difference between being trans and being gay. Immediately what comes to mind is that there have always been gay people throughout history. You can’t say that about trans people.
Gender identity theory is the notion that what makes you a woman, or a man, or indeed something else, is an internal identity, to be taken on trust. But this notion is entirely modern. Historical titbits offered up as proof that trans people have existed throughout time typically come apart: claims that headstrong and courageous women of history were in fact non-binary turn out to be nothing more than misogynistic assumptions that females aren’t, or perhaps even shouldn’t be, headstrong and courageous. This is hardly progressive thought.
Many young people today seem to experience profound distress at being ‘misgendered’ by those who do not accept their gender identities. This, too, is entirely modern: there is no evidence that historic cultures accommodated today’s notion of self-identification of gender. In fact, past figures who bucked the trends of contemporary masculinity and femininity were notable because their status as men and women was not in debate. It was not something they sought to dispute with their contemporaries.
Sexuality, on the other hand, is older than dirt. Homosexuality warrants mention in the Bible – albeit unflattering mention – and other ancient religious texts besides. Gender identity does not. Historic figures such as Alexander the Great are believed, with good cause, to have had same-sex relationships; the argument that such figures have ‘trans’ equivalents rests on conjecture, defying rather than drawing from the historical record.
The other thing that comes to mind is that homosexuality is seen throughout the animal kingdom.
The same is not true of transgenderism. It cannot, by definition, occur in non-humans because it relies on what makes us human. On clothing and styling, not in play for any other species. On language – whether names and pronouns, or the means by which people describe their gender identities – again, not in play outside of Homo Sapiens. And on our deeply human obsession with considering who we are; how we relate to the world; how we are seen, and not seen. While it may seem odd to have to delve into the realm of the fruit bat and the orangutan to investigate human sexuality, there is a real point to be made here. Transgenderism, so philosophical a concept, rests its existence on human mental constructs which are not required per se for any understanding of same-sex relationships.
Finally, being gay never requires medicalization. Being trans usually does.
It is true to say that there are young people who see themselves as trans and do not wish to undertake medicalization. But these are in the minority. More often than not, kids who are questioning their gender have specific ‘transition goals’, which are bodily in nature. Often, young people who identify as trans, or as non-binary, can devote a colossal part of their time to their appearance, and how they would like it to change. These changes can be very major, involving hormones and surgical interventions. They are not to be undertaken lightly.
On the other hand, homosexuality, in its own right, never requires a visit to the doctor. To live as a homosexual in society, no prescription is needed; no medical appointments need to be made. While young LGB people are certainly more likely to struggle with mental health issues, and may seek medical help for these, this is not, in and of itself, a form of medicalization. To live authentically as a homosexual, you accept your own body, and its biochemical responses to the stimuli around it. To live authentically as a trans person, you are often doing the opposite: seeking to change your body in a way which will leave you dependent on doctors, endocrinologists and pharmaceutical companies for the rest of your life, with all the financial and other burdens that implies.