This article is reproduced by kind permission of its author, David @ the HALL of EINAR
Originally published 28 January, 2023 in Ramblings
I was at the Natural History Museum in London a month ago when I saw the skeleton of an adult human female. I thought today would be a good day to publish what I wrote that evening.
Our country is in the grip of a bizarre, anti-scientific, religious cult, which is changing the laws of the land, destroying the rights of women, and actively harming children.
Our major governmental, cultural, media, and business institutions have already fallen into its grip, and it’s not possible to function within schools, hospitals, prisons or multinationals without either professing belief in its doctrine or maintaining a cowardly silence.
It’s an accumulation of illogical and incoherent nonsense and is spreading because of a misguided view that it is a social justice issue, and a fearful refusal to challenge it, based upon the very real fear of social ostracism.
Who is going to be brave and say the emperor has no clothes?
Giordano Bruno would.
In the 16th Century, Bruno had radical ideas. He proposed stars were distant suns with their own planets which could harbour life. He insisted that the universe was infinite and had no sun at its centre. Those were dangerous views to express.
Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition. He faced charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines: eternal damnation; the Trinity; the divinity of Christ; the virginity of Mary; and transubstantiation (the idea that the bread and wine in the Catholic Mass literally become the body and blood of Christ).
It didn’t end well for him. On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII offered no clemency and declared Bruno a heretic. The Inquisition issued a sentence of death. He was gagged, hung upside down and burned at the stake in Rome. His books were banned and placed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Index of Forbidden Books, until 1966.
That’s similar to what believers in the new religion want to do to JK Rowling.
Today’s blog is one of my opinion pieces. Its roots are in science and biology and its subject is a controversy in society. If you’d rather just look at beautiful images of wildlife and listen to my occasional concerns about its destruction, please stop reading now and click here to look at Puffins. Thank you.
A new religion
What is the new religion?
The new religion is called Gender Identity Theory, and I deny several of its core doctrines. What do its adherents believe? The central beliefs of the religion are contained in its Creed. The Gender Identity Creed is:
Trans women are women
Trans men are men
Non-binary people are valid.
Just to be clear, the Gender Identity Creed is not true.
Trans women are not women, they are trans-identifying men, and most still have a penis.
Trans men are not men, they are trans-identifying women.
There are also no non-binary people, where sex is concerned, because people are either men or women, male or female.
You can be any kind of man, you can be any kind of woman, you can conform or rebel in any way you wish against societal gender norms, or you can ignore them completely, but you will always be a male or a female, a man or a woman.
Gender isn’t a spectrum, it’s two spectrums, a male one and a female one. It doesn’t matter how much you shout or pray or fight, your sex is inescapable. You’re conceived with it and you’ll die with it.
Heresy
Writing or saying the above is currently regarded as heresy by a small but powerful sect in our population, even though biological sex is scientifically proven, is factually undeniable, and has been the bedrock of human society for all of human history. Denying Gender Identity is currently so intolerable that you may be banned from social media, ostracised from your friends or sacked from your job for refusing to believe in it.
Failure to agree with the holy trinity of religious concepts in the Creed leads to modern witch-trial-style abuse, social-media pile-ons, cancellations, and sackings. Cries of “Transphobe” are made at anyone who disagrees. The word transphobe is now no different from the words “Apostate” or “Unbeliever” being yelled with religious fervour at those who don’t share their beliefs. It is a generic insult thrown at anyone who refuses to accept the doctrine or repeat the catechisms and creed of this new religion. Failure to respect the new religion also leads to police visits, interviews under caution, threats of prosecution and sackings by employers.
All religions
Personally, I deny all the core doctrines of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism. I’m simply adding Gender Identity as another on my list. Like all the other religions, Gender Identity Theology is profoundly misogynistic and homophobic, is run by men in frocks, resorts to violence to enforce its rules, and has young women as its most faithful adherents. At its centre is a nonsensical origin story. It has saints, icons, feast days, religious flags and banners. It also carries out genital mutilation on a constant supply of child sacrificial victims.
It’s no surprise that some of the most strident voices against the new religion are Irish. They’ve heard all this nonsense before.
And just like all religions, Gender Identity Theology has no sense of humour.
The New Inquisition
This new religion has a social media inquisition with a ‘witch question’ based upon the Creed: ‘Do you believe trans women are women?’. It’s a test, so believers know who to metaphorically gag, hang upside down and burn at the stake. In case you’re still unsure of the answer, men who identify as trans, and call themselves trans women, are men. And yes, most still have a penis.
Why should I care? There are plenty of other nonsensical religions in the world. What’s the problem with one more? The problem is that Gender Identity is causing severe harm to women, gay people and children, as well as to many people who have identified as transgender for decades and who simply want to get on with their family and professional lives, without their rights or existence being debated.
It is a religious belief system and I want it to have no place in public life. You’re welcome to believe any story, superstition or religion you like, just don’t make it part of public policy.
What is Gender Identity?
Gender Identity Theory is attempting to redefine the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in denial of biology and in promotion of a beguiling and deceptively simplistic origin story.
Gender Identity is an amorphous mass of contradictory beliefs which is almost impossible to define because the words and concepts you might use to describe it have different meanings within its belief system. It’s not even possible to use the word woman, one of the most fundamental words and concepts in human language and society, without defining it and arguing over it.
Put simply, Gender Identity has become a story that some people are born in the wrong body. A man born in a woman’s body. A woman born in a man’s body.
This theology has developed further, so that a man who feels he is a woman is a woman, whether he dresses, speaks or acts like a woman or not, whatever that means. This feeling is an innate self-professed personality trait. Your identity is the concept of the gendered soul.
Why would men create a story that they have a woman’s brain inside a man’s body, in denial of the biological facts? It’s because that’s much more socially acceptable than saying you’re sexually excited by the idea of being a woman.
Women don’t get sexually excited over period products, or cervical smears or any of the many other biological realities of being a woman. Many men who identify as trans do.
The problem with the euphemistic story of being born in the wrong body is that to justify it, you must have always been like that, and that means there must be babies born in the wrong body. That means that some children’s bodies are wrong and those children must be saved by being converted. That means drugging, castrating and mutilating children.
That’s something we must stop.
Adult human female
A woman is an adult human female.
What do true believers in Gender Identity want the word woman to mean? Their answer is, ‘a woman is anyone who says they are a woman’. That’s a circular definition which denies that biology and science exist and creates a meaningless self-defining category. Words need to have stable and uncontested meanings for us to communicate, organise, reward and penalise. People have always used patterns and constructed categories which are useful to them.
Gender Identity destroys gender categories and makes the words man and woman meaningless.
It’s not possible to provide healthcare, social care, criminal punishment, education, sport or dating apps effectively without a meaningful shared understanding of what a man and a woman are. ‘A woman is anyone who says they are a woman’ turns ‘woman’ into a category open to men. And that is a problem.
Sex matters
Biological sex is important in many areas of society, and it’s particularly important for women, gay people and children. Sex is important to women because of safety, privacy, and dignity. Sex is important to same-sex attracted people who are gay or lesbian and those who are bisexual, too, because biological sex is the basis of sexual attraction. Sex is important to children because it is our duty to safeguard them.
Sex matters to women because women are sexually harassed, sexually assaulted and physically assaulted by men. Two or three women a week are killed by current or ex male partners in the UK. Women are subjected to rape, sexual assault, unwanted sexual imagery and sexual exposure. That’s why women need private spaces, whether it’s toilets, changing rooms, exercise, activities or prisons. Women also don’t need to give a reason for why they need their own spaces, or defend the exclusion of anyone they choose. It’s an entirely reasonable demand.
No man has the right to tell women what makes them safe, what allows them dignity or what gives them privacy, least of all a man who says he is a woman.
A man who identifies as a trans woman was conceived as a man, was born as a man, will live as a man, and die as a man. If his body becomes fossilised, in 10 million years our descendants will still be able to identify that he was a man from his bones. Your sex is something that you cannot change, escape or deny and is with you always. Once a man, always a man. It’s not possible for a man to live as a woman because a woman is an adult human female. A woman is not a hairstyle, a type of dress, a walk, or a hormone level. A woman is not a feeling. A woman is not a cervix-haver. A woman is a biological reality, built of blood and bone. A woman exists in our physical reality. A woman is a category no man can ever be classified in.
If you’re a man, you can be any kind of man. Nothing about how you live, speak, dress, act or who you love makes you a woman. Nothing about how you feel inside or your deep-seated personality makes you a woman. Neither does castration.
A woman is more than a castrated man.
Those facts are dismissed by Gender Identity believers as being “Biologically essentialist.” That’s a way of saying “it’s a truth we don’t believe in”.
My statement that a woman is an adult human female is not a set of beliefs, it’s science. Belief is holding something to be true for which you have no evidence. Belief is also still holding something to be true despite the evidence against it. That is what Gender Identity Theology is: a religious belief system in denial of the facts.
A man cannot be a woman, a girl, a mother or a lesbian under any circumstances. It should not be controversial to say that, and it certainly shouldn’t be considered a hate crime.
If men can be women, then lesbians can be men who say they are women, who want sex with women. That means men can expect to have sex with lesbians and brand them transphobic for refusing. Starting to see the problem with ‘queering the categories’?
Fighting for men to be considered women is not a civil rights battle and does not represent progress. It is embarrassing, religiously motivated nonsense. It also leads directly to destruction of women’s culture, spaces, dignity and safety. We must all resist it.
Science is the method by which we find the best truth we currently can. And that truth is that a woman is an adult human female.
Facts and belief
Science is real whether you believe in it or not.
Just to rehearse the scientific facts:
Sex in humans is binary, unchangeable and determined at conception.
Male and female are the two immutable reproductive forms of our species. There are no other forms.
Sex cannot be reassigned.
Sex cannot change. Your sex is your story, carried in your genes and, since sex evolved, has been passed on as part of the continuous unbroken line of living beings. Life has been here for 3.5 billion years.
Biological sex in humans is just like sex in many animals and plants.
There are two sexes, two models and two reproductive strategies. The female sex produces small numbers of large reproductive cells, which are called eggs. The male sex produces large numbers of small reproductive cells, called sperm.
If you don’t believe sex is binary, go and have a chat with your mum and dad.
Men and women are fundamentally different
A woman of reproductive age usually produces one ripe egg a month. A man produces 100 million sperm a day. These reproductive strategies have profound effects on the bodies of males and females because of sexual selection. Men have chosen the women they like, and women have chosen the men they like, and that has changed how men and women are through generations of evolution. Men and women are caught in one never-ending love story with each other through evolutionary time. Our bodies, our minds, our development, our puberty, and our life experiences are fundamentally different because of our sex. Love for one another has made us different and love has made us who we are.
Sex is real, and just like all science, it is real whether you believe in it or not.
There isn’t a person alive today who hasn’t been carried inside a woman for up to nine months. That has resulted in major evolutionary changes to women’s anatomy and chemistry compared to men. Men are heavier, stronger and far more violent.
The reason for the sexual dimorphism in men is that their role is to protect women and children. Who are men protecting women and children from? Other men, of course. Men are a self-fulfilling necessity.
It’s time for men to protect women and children and reject Gender Identity Theology.
Sex in humans cannot change, but not all sex is immutable. Sex for limpets is something else.
And don’t get me started on clownfish.
Sex is not assigned
Sex is determined at conception depending upon which type of sperm fertilises the egg. Women have two X chromosomes. Men have an X and a Y chromosome and when men create sperm, cells split so half contain one X chromosome and half contain one Y chromosome. The X chromosome sperm with fertilise an egg to make a female and the Y chromosome sperm will fertilise an egg to make a male. Male-making sperm are lighter, faster and more mobile, because they contain a smaller Y chromosome, while the female-making sperm are slower because they contain a larger X chromosome. That speed is why more boys are born than girls; sperm with the smaller Y chromosome are more likely to be winners in the egg and sperm race.
Sex is not something which is ‘assigned at birth’ like the wish-fulfilment storytelling of Gender Identity Theology. Doctors and midwives don’t take a quick guess based upon a baby’s genitals, they do genetic screening and identify, observe and record the baby’s sex. It’s science, not witchcraft.
There’s no midwife in the delivery suite saying “Congratulations, it’s a non-binary”
Sex cannot be reassigned
There’s no such thing as male-to-female transgender surgery, or ‘reassignment’ surgery. There is only castration and loss of sexual function and fertility. You don’t ‘become’ a woman. You become a castrated man. There’s no such thing as female-to-male transgender surgery, or ‘reassignment’ surgery. There are only double mastectomies, hysterectomies and arms mutilated to form a roll of skin to put where a penis would be if the person was male.
Either our society is built on science and reason or it descends into primitive superstitious nonsense, and that’s where our culture is currently heading with this new religion.
Scientific ignorance has led many people to say ‘Ah, yes, but what about intersex people?’ Intersex is a mis-naming of a variety of genetic conditions which cause disorders of sexual development. Most are clearly men or women, many have genitals or plumbing which hasn’t developed along standard lines. To say they are not men or women because of that is dehumanising.
People should believe what they want. As soon as they want to impose those beliefs on other people, though, it becomes political. I won’t be becoming an observant member of the Gender Identity congregation.
Feelings aren’t facts and yet emotions are true
Gender Identity Theology holds that the statements, ‘I feel like a woman, therefore I am a woman’, ‘I feel like a man, therefore I am a man’ and ‘I don’t feel like a man or a woman, so I’m neither’ are true statements. They aren’t. Feelings aren’t facts.
The words man and woman have had stable meanings throughout human history. A woman is an adult human female and a man is an adult human male. No amount of wish fulfilment, sexual fantasy, bullying and harassment, or legal recognition can change that. Not even an Inquisition.
I have no doubt that many people who identify as trans are perfectly sincere in their beliefs and correctly portray their discomfort and anger. Being trans is unlike being gay and yet very similar. Straight people are opposite sex attracted and gay people are same sex attracted. We all have an image, a fantasy, a vision or a projection of our ideal sexual partner which is a deep-rooted part of our sense of self. Its formation is mysterious and we’re only just beginning to understand its origins. That sense of attraction is a beautiful thing and should be celebrated amongst all consenting adults. It’s that attraction to other people which defines our sexuality.
People don’t just have a fantasy partner, though, which they project onto their actual partner. They also have a fantasy self, which they project onto themselves. You need to find yourself attractive and enjoy inhabiting your own body to have a fulfilling relationship. A mis-match between your body as you imagine it and your actual body is at the heart of a great deal of sexual disfunction.
Trans people are attracted to an opposite-sex-imaginary-self.
Imagine the distress when you compare your actual self with the mental projection you have of yourself and find it doesn’t fit you, because it is the opposite sex. It’s often referred to as gender dysphoria and treated as a medical problem and included in psychological categories. That seems inhumane to me. People have developed to be attracted to an opposite-sex-self. Pathologising it makes no sense, when who you imagine you are is a fundamental part of who you are.
We need to care for people who feel that deep unease, while maintaining the rights of everyone else.
The reason for the rage
Why do so many transgender people feel rage? How would you feel if everyone you met insisted on telling you that you were ugly, wrinkled, old, short, bald or fat, even if it was true. It’s utterly dehumanising to have your self-image destroyed. That’s what happens when anyone refuses to accept that men who identify as trans are women. It’s pure, unadulterated rage, generated because of uncontrollable feelings of having had your sense of self denied.
I’ve realised over many years that people who can’t control their feelings try to control other people. The uncontrolled male rage of a small number of people who feel invalidated is being allowed to change our entire society. We shouldn’t allow it.
What’s wrong with gender self-ID?
With gender self-ID, men can access women’s and girl’s toilets with impunity. With gender self-ID men can be incarcerated in women’s prisons, with vulnerable women, even if they are violent sex offenders. With gender self-ID, men can appear in court and force the woman they raped to refer to them as ‘she’ and ‘her’. With gender self-ID, women who identify as gay men can access gay men’s saunas. With gender self-ID, men can proclaim themselves both a woman and a lesbian and join lesbian dating sites. With gender self-ID women who actually are lesbians, can receive lifetime bans from lesbian dating sites because they wish to only date women. With gender self-ID a man can demand access to a rape crisis centre full of vulnerable women. With gender self-ID a man can demand intimate waxing from a women’s beauty parlour. With gender self-ID… You’re getting the picture, aren’t you? Every protection for women and girls, every separate female space, is potentially up for equal access to men who self-profess an identity.
Brownies? Girls’ schools? Cheerleading? Ladies swimming sessions? All accessible and inclusive of self-ID-ing boys and men unless rules are developed for each case.
Woman of the year? A man. Business-woman of the year? A man. Women’s sports champion? A man. Best Female Artist at the Brits? No longer a category. Don’t tell me that this year there isn’t a single British female musician who is better than George Ezra.
Child abuse
No child who has yet to go through puberty can possibly give informed consent to losing their sexual function and a lifetime of sexual pleasure. How could you possibly understand what you are signing away? To be castrated before you even know what your penis is for? That means all child transgender medical interventions are child abuse. Encouraging toddlers and teens to identify as another sex is child abuse. So is all gender-affirming care to children.
Transing away the gay
Most young children who don’t come close to conforming to gender stereotypes go through puberty and realise they are gay. Many, but not all, little boys who want to play exclusively as girls grow up to be gay men. Many, but not all, little girls who want to play exclusively as boys grow up to be lesbians. We need to leave them alone to be themselves and mature into happy, healthy adults. Gay boys used to be abused by being called girls. Now the state is telling them they actually are girls and putting them on a pathway to irreversible treatment. That’s abuse.
Why the distress in girls?
It used to be just older men who were transexuals. What’s happening now? Why are so many young girls in distress about being girls?
There are now middle-class white girls in many classrooms who say they are non-binary or trans. Perhaps they want to shock, to attract attention, to appear edgy, dangerous and rule-breaking. Maybe they desperately want to be popular. Many also have genuine feelings of acute distress. Why is it that so many teenage girls in particular are having severe problems matching their image of their sexualised self with their actual body. I’ve listened to many interviews with professionals who maintain they are baffled and have no explanation.
It’s blatantly obvious to me what has changed. Social media is full of unachievable, extreme, highly sexualised beauty standards which young people cannot connect themselves to. The Internet is also full of extreme, disturbing pornography, where women are used and abused, hit, spat upon and apparently raped.
What young girl, seeing that as their future, would want it for themselves? It’s no wonder so many want to mutilate their breasts and ‘be’ men.
Troubled teen girls are being horrifically mutilated as part of a social contagion based upon an entirely false premise. Many trans girl teens suffer from anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, have been sexually abused or are self-harming or anorexic. Many are diagnosed as autistic.
If girls reject womanhood and ‘identify’ as a boy, they will be put on the trans train and fed to the mutilation machine.
Turning mutilation into style
Mutilation is being actively promoted to girls as something to aspire to along with expensive handbags. The scars of unnecessary mastectomies are exploited for commercial gain without any thought to the physical or emotional traumas the expansion of mutilation will cause to vulnerable people.
Patron saints and Child Sacrifice
Choosing a gender identity has as much scientific validity as choosing a patron saint to identify with, or finding out your star sign. It’s unmitigated nonsense.
Is my gender identity demi-fluid? Is my patron saint Joseph of Arimathea? Is my gemstone amethyst? I’m a Capricorn so I don’t believe in such nonsense.
Gender identity theology is a religious cult which requires a constant supply of child sacrificial victims and actively recruits and harms children. The operating table is the new sacrificial altar.
Trans teens are celebrated as they are prepared for ritual sacrifice. They are the chosen ones. They have been specially selected to achieve a higher state of being. They are lambs to the slaughter.
We are at a point in our history when female genital mutilation for religious reasons is outlawed with severe punishments, yet male and female genital mutilation for Gender Identity Theology is celebrated. It’s all religious mutilation, and objecting to one and not the other is clearly hypocritical.
Female Genital Mutilation
Any person found guilty of an offence under section 3A of the 2003 Act faces up to 7 years’ imprisonment, a fine or both. Under provisions of the law which apply generally to criminal offences, it is also an offence to: aid, abet, counsel or procure a person to commit an FGM offence.
Trans Surgery
NHS Gender surgery for trans women includes:
- removal of the testes (orchidectomy)
- removal of the penis (penectomy)
- construction of a vagina (vaginoplasty)
- construction of a vulva (vulvoplasty)
- construction of a clitoris (clitoroplasty)
Breast implants for trans women (trans-feminine people) are not routinely available on the NHS.
Facial feminisation surgery and hair transplants are not routinely available on the NHS.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/
Gender Identity Theology relies upon female sterilisation and male genital mutilation as a fundamental part of its religious observance.
Gender Identity Theology is spread through well meaning people’s fear of causing offence, and willingness to believe absolutely anything is true if it makes them popular.
Gender Identity believers prey upon the vulnerable, the traumatised, the neurodiverse and children only just coming to terms with their sexuality, to validate their own choices.
Gender Identity Theology spreads through dogma, religiosity, fear of social isolation and excommunication from professional society.
Gender identity theology depends upon belief in transubstatiation – that men actually are women and women actually are men, in the same way that bread and wine actually are the body and blood of Christ. It’s embarrassing.
History repeats
How did we managed to drug and castrate boys and drug, sterilise and mutilate girls out of a culture of inclusion and #bekind? It is a scandal on a par with the forced adoption of children of single mothers or the institutionalised sex abuse of children in the care system.
Forced adoption
Between 1949 and 1976, in England and Wales an estimated 185,000 children were taken from unmarried mothers and adopted. Women and girls who became pregnant outside of marriage during these decades were seen as having shamed themselves and their families. Babies were forcibly taken from their mothers who did not want to let them go.
Child abuse
There was an ‘epidemic’ of institutional child sexual abuse in church institutions, children’s homes, borstals, schools and foster families in the 1970s and 80s.
The Office for National Statistics estimates 3.1 million people aged 18-74 were sexually abused in childhood. One in seven callers to the helpline of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood hadn’t told anyone before.
State grooming
Now, schools are renaming children, putting them in different classes, different toilets and different changing rooms, dressing them differently and the health service is drugging them to prevent them growing naturally. All of that is currently possible without parental consent. The state can groom your children and abuse and mutilate them and treat a concerned parent as the abuser for wanting to protect them.
We’ll be studying these times, holding inquiries, writing books, paying compensation and regretting society’s actions for decades.
Unsporting
Men have no place being in women’s sports teams, women’s prisons, women’s toilets, women’s clubs and associations, women’s awards or any other area reserved for women.
Drug cheats
Women are not a hormone level. Women’s sport is a place for women, not drugged or castrated men and not for self-identifying men.
Male athletes competing in women’s sports should be disqualified as lifetime drug cheats.
Men have no place in women or girl’s judo, women or girl’s hockey, women or girl’s football or any other women or girl’s sport, even if the sport has nothing to do with height, weight or power. Men in women’s chess anyone? No. Men need to stay in their own lane.
Boys have no place being in girl’s sports teams, girl’s toilets, girl’s clubs and associations, girl’s awards or any other area reserved for girls. It’s a straightforward safeguarding issue. Flashing is meant to be an offence. Not submitting to being flashed in girl’s changing rooms is now deemed socially unacceptable. Women and girls should and must not submit.
Reading tea leaves
Gender identity theory is a religious belief system and not a scientific concept. It has no more validity than reading tea leaves, the doctrine of signatures, or astrological star signs.
Our society is in the grip of a dangerous delusion. Gender Ideology is a religious belief system which relies upon social pressure to spread unchecked amongst the weak-minded and well-meaning. Don’t let it.
Gender Identity Theology relies upon suspending your disbelief and accepting the scientifically illiterate proposition that men are women and women are men, that either can be neither and that children have a choice.
I won’t accept that, whatever the Inquisition says.
I’m with you Giordano Bruno, and I dedicate this blog to you, with thanks for your voice of reason from across the centuries.
