Tomorrow, it will be a year since the closure of the controversial Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust was announced. Rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission and overwhelmed by an exponential rise …
Lesbian mothers should be on birth certificates
If you’re a politician, the presence of a global LGBT+ activist movement offers large amounts of political bang for your buck, pound or euro — whether that’s by waving trans flags enthusiastically, or by banning books about gay dads. Last …
Doctors have failed detransitioners
Every medical student should acquaint themselves with the discomfiting history of epilepsy surgery. Regardless of their eventual speciality, they will become better clinicians for it. As a cautionary tale of what happens when we lose sight of primum non nocere …
The perversion of lesbian envy
Of all the footnotes to Kathleen Stock’s recent trip to Oxford, perhaps the most unedifying was the sight of me and my friends — ranging in age from 30 to 70 — exclaiming “Phwoar!” in private chat groups. But as …
I was sacked for writing about trans censorship
For a quarter of a century, on and off, Melbourne’s “quality” daily newspaper The Age not only published my words — it was my intellectual home.
I had joined the paper’s staff around the turn of the century as a …
The plot to redefine conversion therapy
The majority-Muslim city of Yogyakarta, on the humid southern coast of Java, is rarely associated with progressive politics. While being gay is not illegal there, it is certainly not tolerated: the Indonesian island has a history of shunting homosexual men …
The gender wars are not a gift to the Right
As a critic of transactivism, one thing you hear a lot is how you are “propping up” the Right — or even the far-Right. You may think that all you are doing is pointing out some fairly obvious downsides to …
‘I will never call my rapist father a woman’
“I have no respect for those criminal sex offenders who want to make life easier for themselves,” says Ceri-Lee Galvin. “My father wasn’t dysphoric about his male genitals when he was abusing me.”
Ceri-Lee is a bright and confident 24-year-old …
Why is my gender research being cancelled?
Since my academic paper on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria was published last month, it has been downloaded more than 38,000 times and is ranked in the top percentile of similar articles in terms of online attention. One might think that …
Why should lesbians sleep with men?
If you are a late millennial or early Gen Z-er, life is probably quite hard right now. Chances are that you can’t afford to buy your own home, or even go out socialising that much. Perhaps you can’t avoid feeling …
Is trans the new anorexia?
When teaching freshman composition in New York colleges in the mid-Eighties, I picked up a peculiar pattern in one-on-one conferences with my female students. With improbable frequency, they’d confide that they were anorexic. The term had only entered the popular …
Buck Angel: ‘We never denied our biology’
“I used to be a woman, and I really am a feminist.” With his full beard, bald head and inked, muscular forearms, Buck Angel cuts a striking figure. The trans porn star is an unlikely feminist ally. We shouldn’t really …
Did City Uni censor my gender research?
“Are you not terrified? Everybody is going to hate you.” As she began the interviews for the research project she was leading, participants and colleagues asked Dr Laura Favaro if she was afraid. Now, three years later, she is haunted …
The media is spreading bad trans science
Do people with severe depression have a right to accurate information about antidepressants? I suspect most people would answer “yes”. There is a general understanding that individuals who suffer from medical conditions are in a vulnerable position, making them susceptible …
How the trans census fooled Britain
Last weekend brought surprising news: an unprecedented spike in the number of West Ham fans identifying as trans. According to the 2021 Census, the London borough of Newham has the highest proportion of trans people in England and Wales, coming …