The Biden administration recently announced a plan to ban “conversion therapy” and dismantle barriers to “gender-affirming care” for transgender-identifying children and adolescents. A few days later, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal introduced the “Transgender Bill of Rights” on Capitol Hill which sought …
Why did my daughter become trans?
Our third child was a quirky girl, into gymnastics, baking, music. She liked things requiring new outfits. She was keen on Disney princesses. She had some particular passions — fluffy clothing for a while, a collection of handbags, cast off …
Biden’s cowardly war on conversion therapy
Body horror dwells in the fear of damage that cannot be undone. It involves stories of skin, and limbs, and teeth, and eyes — precious and irreplaceable, now scarred or severed or irrevocably changed. In some versions, the Icarus stories, …
How DeSantis toppled Mickey Mouse
In 1967, a year after the death of Walt Disney, construction began on the magnate’s signature project — Disney World. Located in the swamps of Central Florida, the resort — “the most magical place on earth” — opened in 1971. …
Boris can’t keep a story straight
These days, with Partygate refusing to go quietly, there’s increasing attention paid to Boris Johnson’s incapacity to keep a story straight, not to mention his constant prevarication about what conservatism in practice should look like: lockdowns or wild parties? Or …
The doctors profiting from trans surgery
I have the strangest feeling that my body has been stolen from me. When I started my transition, I was not aware of any options besides medical treatment to modify my body. Years later, I still ask myself why no …
Did hipsters start the gender wars?
What could Florida’s legislation banning the teaching of gender identity to children possibly have in common with the skinny-jean devotees known as hipsters? Only that both movements are responses to the unraveling of settled gender roles that is one of …
Five rules for fighting transactivism
It will not have escaped the eagle-eyed that something about modern transactivism seems to make otherwise Gillick-competent adults veer towards the infantile. From the EHRC’s recent clarification about the legality of single-sex spaces under the terms of the Equality Act, …
The week the trans spell was broken
I always knew it would start with sport.
Back in 2018, when the obvious fallacies of gender ideology made me feel merely puzzled as opposed to completely enraged, a friend of mine went to the Commonwealth Games. He’s a sportswriter, …
Do we need a Trans Olympics?
When Ketanji Brown Jackson refused to define the word “woman” during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday, the US Supreme Court nominee put it down to the fact that she is “not a biologist”. She is also clearly not a sports …
Have we reached peak trans?
Is it really too much to ask those who struggle to define the word “woman” to refrain from running for public office? Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe’s Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, was asked to provide the dreaded definition during …
The fictional world of trans activism
When people say things like “transwomen are women”, “transmen are men”, and “nonbinary people are neither women nor men”, what do they mean? In my book Material Girls, I suggested that many of them are immersed in a fiction.
Getting …
The taboo trans question
“Sexuality is who you go to bed with, gender is who you go to bed as.” Learn it, remember it, drill it into your brain: this is one of the most important precepts of gender identity activism, and one of …
Putin doesn’t have mummy issues
Did Russia invade Ukraine because Putin wasn’t loved enough as a child? AnnaLynne McCord, an “actress/human rights activist”, seems to think so.
Last week, she posted a poem online declaring that if only she’d been Vladimir Putin’s mum, he would …
The liberal case against pronouns
On the day that Vladimir Putin initiated his invasion of Ukraine, the front page of the Daily Mail led with a story about a leaked document from MI5 and MI6, urging spies to acknowledge their “white privilege” and declare their …