Thank you for taking the time to speak up about your views on the UK Self-Identification consultation process aimed at making life more humane for British-born transgender people, Daphna. Thank you also for reading this missive.
Participating in the public discourse is an important part of democracy. That said, to help shape foreign policy we need evidence to support strong views. I could not find any evidence, although you are already being quoted far and wide. Was your piece intended to be more than a voicing of pent up frustration that your point of view now belongs in the past and hardly fits in today’s society? I imagine this is how a coelacanth feels some days.
You may wonder why I am bothering to write you. You see, TERFs in the UK are making a giant mess making wild claims about transgender people and their views are being enflamed by famous transphobes including some where I live. I thought it would be supportive to LGBTQIA people in the UK for me to chime in. Nobody likes to feel alone.
“Supporting the updated Gender Recognition Act is a necessity for anyone who calls themselves a feminist, and in fact most feminists do support it.”
Ellie Mae O’Hagan, The Guardian
If things are evolving in the UK in a way anything like they did in Canada when we explicitly protected gender identity or expression recently, civil discourse has been taken over by rabid and orchestrated hatred by now and it’s time to set the record straight and remind everyone how loud and troublesome anti-trans zealots are (I guess you already know that, Daphna.
No, it’s not funny.
Did you bring evidence? I did.
I wonder however, if you have any peer-reviewed academic articles that support the claims you are putting forward in your article “Trans Ideology is Bollocks”. Because I see nothing more than your very strongly worded view that , the lack of any supporting evidence to be taken as indirect proof of The Conspiracy To Ruin Science you are protesting here?
“Science is under attack as universities, [sic] workplaces and governments are drawing up policies and laws to codify a fiction that makes creationism look sensible. We are suppose to believe that trans women are women, lesbians can have penises, and biological sex is a social construct. The idea that a man can literally be transformed into a woman, and a woman can be a man, has gained ground over the past decade.”
Daphna Wiltmore, who has some very strong views
I am asking because I can find no corroborating evidence in your article that supports your claim, despite a cornucopia of articles that describe the benefits or recognizing transgender people by supporting our transition. For example, here is what Cornell University collected.
Fun fact: I found some fallacies.
The very best of them of course is your erroneous presumption that transgender women do not ALREADY used gendered spaces in the UK. In fact Wikipedia reports that transgender people were recognized in the UK as a valid part of diversity in 2005. We already access the appropriate spaces, and will continue after Self ID passes on order of the European Court of Human Rights. The only change is that we are slightly simplifying the process to make it less cumbersome.
“Since 4 April 2005, as per the Gender Recognition Act 2004, it has been possible for transgender people to change their legal gender in the UK, allowing them to acquire a new birth certificate, affording them full recognition of their acquired sex in law for all purposes…they must have transitioned two years before a GRC is issued. It is not a requirement for sex reassignment surgeryto have taken place “
Wikipedia, source of (mostly accurate) information (that should alway be verified)
Another fun fact: you have no idea who is transgender and have no way to know. Of course, somebody like me who tells you she is trans is easy enough to spot – I’m in the news far too much to quietly live my life. …but the majority of trans people are invisible to you. Sometimes I envy them, but my consolation prize is that I get to tell cisgender transphobes they have no idea what they are talking about and I get to have a chuckle in the process… It does have its benefits.
Cis People are Dangerous…
Here’s another fun fact… your fear of transgender women in gendered spaces designed for women is aimed at the wrong group. Ok, it’s not a fun topic but your missing the point of the idiocy of hate-driven advocacy makes this worthy of the term here.
As we know, our prisons are full of cisgender people. In fact, most sexual assaults are committed by cisgender people. (Refernce: personal certainty)
Statistically speaking, doesn’t that mean that you are far more dangerous to cisgender or transgender women than any transgender person?
Yes, it does. Not only are cigender people dangerous, but here you are advocating to make yourself even more dangerous to us trans women just trying to live our lives in quiet.
Of course, we all know that we should never prevent you from accessing gendered spaces based solely on who you are. We know that you have to pee somewhere, and most spaces are gendered. We also know you are not personally responsible for all the horrible things cisgender people like you do to transgender women like me and to other women.
So for the time being, I agree that you SHOULD be allowed into our gendered spaces – but we’re watching you. Don’t mess it up, but don’t worry I would never hold who you are against you.
Transgender people who conceal their biological sex in the healthcare setting are endangering themselves and others.
Transgender people have the right to live free from discrimination but the trans activists are undermining this. By demanding women give up women-only spaces and sex-based protections the trans activists’ campaign is far from progressive.
Daphna Whitmore, telling us whatnot.
Canada was already recognizing gender identity in case law by 1999, codifying it federally in our human rights law in 2017. Unsurprisingly, the sky didn’t fall in. Crime statistics did not suddenly change. In fact, the one noteworthy statistic is that Canada is a country with some of the lowest anti-transgender violence in the world. Now, just some short years later, our children are learning in schools to not be as chauvinistic and to rely less on stereotypes when looking at others. Maybe there’s a correlation?
As Harvard University scholar
Katherine J. Wu writes, “It’s All in Your Head” – Except When It’s Not.
Sex determination – the way we are “coded” into a biological sex – is complicated in and of itself. There are far more options than just “male” or “female,” and countless instances of species that can actually transition from one sex to another within a single lifetime. With most mammals, however, the majority of individuals are cisgender male or female; transgender individuals are estimated to comprise about 0.3% of the adult U.S. population.
Katherine J. Wu, Harvard University
Stereotypes hurt us all
So please, try and back your statements with facts Daphna. Your hyperbole sounds a little bit too much like what Meghan Murphy writes to justify her own deeply-held biases against transgender people. It’s possible to have discourse without falling off the cliff of credibility. It’s a high one and the landing is no fun. And please think it through… Do you really want people telling who they are and what they can do based on outdated stereotypes?
Who knows, next time I’m in the UK maybe we can have a civil chat over a pint (just please don’t follow me into the women’s loo and bother me, cis women who do that are creepy and I’ll need to have you arrested)
Thank you James M Mar for pointing Dapha’s piece to me. I recognize it was in an effort to incite anti trans bias in Canada, but I forgive you. Not everyone can always gets everything right.
[yes, there WAS some parody sprinkled in this article]
Morgane Oger 
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