No prisoners

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The following article is by Sandra Pertot and was published in on the Gender Clinic News Website on July 15 2024.

 

Women and children are casualties in the uncompromising campaign waged by trans activists Dr Jack Drescher is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on sexual orientation and gender identity. From 2007, he was a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders for the diagnostic manual DSM-5.

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In 2009 he authored a paper, Queer Diagnoses: Parallels and Contrasts in the History of Homosexuality, Gender Variance, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. He described how transgender activists adopted the strategies of the gay community when they made the case for removal from the list of psychiatric disorders.1 It’s fair to say that he has been a strong supporter of trans rights. It seems likely, then, that he included these comments in good faith—

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“Adopting normalising etiological theories, such as the belief that one is born gay/trans;

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“Adopting a trans-historical approach that connects modern gay/trans identities to historical figures and cultures;

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“Using modern cross-cultural studies to show that anti-homosexual/anti-trans attitudes are culture bound;

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“Looking to statistics regarding prevalence to refute the notion that homosexuality/transgenderism is rare;

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“Underscoring the difficult, if not impossible task of changing a sexual orientation/gender identity, even through psychotherapeutic means;

“Adopting and insisting upon the use of normative language to replace medical terminology (‘homosexuals’ become gay or defiantly queer; ‘gender dysphoria’ becomes gender dissonance; ‘gender-reassignment surgery’ becomes gender confirmation, gender-affirmation surgery, genital-reassignment surgery, or bottom surgery);

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“Labeling theories that contradict affirmative perspectives as unscientific;

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“Ad hominem and ad feminam2 attacks on professionals who believe homosexuality/transgenderism is an illness or who use pathologising language to make sense of homosexuality/transgenderism. (Emphasis added—SP)”

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Take no prisoners

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What this list reveals is that by the early 2000s, trans activists had adopted a “take no prisoners” approach to anyone who disagreed with the Queer theory underpinning of gender ideology. Any arguments based on science are to be ignored, and dialogue can be abusive rather than calm and rational.

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This explains a lot about the toxic nature of the conflict surrounding any attempt at rational, evidence-based discussion of gender ideology—the immediate labelling of anyone who challenges any aspect of gender ideology as a transphobe, a bigot, together with a determination to shut down critics by making complaints to professional bodies with the aim of getting that person ostracised or removed from employment. The recently released book The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht gives a chilling, disturbing account of the relentless vindictiveness of trans activists.

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The list of strategies described by Dr Drescher was refined in the 2019 Dentons report. The advice from this trans lobbying manual reads like a carefully constructed marketing campaign, with recommendations including—

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“Target youth politicians;

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“De-medicalise the campaign;

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“Get ahead of the government agenda and the media story;

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“Use human rights as a campaign point;

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“Tie your campaign to more popular reform;

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“Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure.”

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Two-front conflict

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There are two fronts in the gender wars being fought across much of the Western world. One is conflict over the assessment and management of gender-questioning children and adolescents who state they have gender dysphoria. This front encompasses issues of competency to consent, the appropriate diagnostic process, and the safety and efficacy of medical and surgical interventions.

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The second front is in many ways a return to the gender wars of the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, women of my generation fought for autonomy from and equality with males—no longer controlled by the wants, needs and demands of men, women gained the right to call out inappropriate behaviour that impacted their sex-based rights and well-being. As gender self-ID3 has become law in many jurisdictions, females of all ages are once again confronted with the pressure from some males to yield to their demands for access to female spaces, associations, awards, sports—indeed, any and all areas of life meant to be strictly for females.

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Currently these two fronts tend to operate separately, despite having a common focus: concern about the ease by which a person is confirmed as being trans, i.e., by uncontested self-report. The efforts of concerned health professionals are slowly making headway against the irresponsible gender-affirming care model, and the fight to regain female sex-based rights remains at the guerrilla-warfare stage with intermittent gains.

Queer agenda

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For trans activists, promoting gender identity issues in children is a means to several ends, one being to achieve the Queer theory goal of deconstructing the traditional family—

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“Queer families, simply put, are families where one more of the family members are queer or where something about the structure/nature/being/doing of the family is inherently queer.”

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The promotion of gender-affirming care for gender-questioning children and adolescents is based on an irresponsible lie and reckless professional behaviour.

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The lie has two parts: the claim that any child/adolescent who states they are trans must be transitioned otherwise they will suicide; and the denial of social influence as a major factor in young people coming to the belief that trans identity will bring “trans joy”, “trans euphoria”.

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Video: Inside the “Action Lab for Social Justice”

Suicide story

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The claim that there is a high risk of the young person committing suicide if their trans identity isn’t “affirmed’ has been refuted several times, but the mantra that gender-affirming care is “lifesaving” continues. While trans-identified youth face a suicide risk above the general population, it is comparable to the risk among non-trans youth with mental health problems of the kind also present as co-morbidities in patients with gender dysphoria. In the rare event of suicide by a gender-questioning young person, it cannot be assumed the cause is gender dysphoria rather than the co-morbid mental health problems.

As for the reckless professional behaviour, this involves gender-affirming clinicians using the threat of suicide to persuade anxious parents to go along with treatments said to be “medically necessary” and “lifesaving”. These terms are used in SOC-8—the 8th edition standards of care from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—to satisfy the criteria for access to health insurance. As England’s Cass review found, there is little evidence to support these claims. Health professionals are—or should be—aware of the risk of social contagion when suicide is frequently discussed relating to a specific group.

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There is an interpretation of the DSM-5 criteria for gender dysphoria which involves both a lie and reckless behaviour. The criteria include: “A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and natal gender of at least 6 months in duration.” Trans activists have chosen to explain this to children as being “born in the wrong body”—and it is being marketed, literally, as such.

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This is used to convince the young person and their parents that social, medical and surgical transition are necessary for them to live as their true selves, to become a “transgirl” or a “transboy”.

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As time passes, wanting to be the other gender is being overshadowed as more and more “gender identities” emerge. Initially, “non-binary” became popular, loosely meaning someone who doesn’t fit into either the male or female gender roles. When that became too limiting, other genders were discovered under the trans umbrella. It isn’t clear how trans activists reconcile the idea of being “born in the wrong body” with some of the new gender identities—what is the right or wrong body for a person who is non-binary? Or genderfluid? Or any of the many other genders that are claimed to exist?

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In 2018, the American Psychiatric Association listed 14 different genders, some identified by Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist and co-founder of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center in California, who came up with various names including “Gender Tootsie Roll Pops”, while other novel identities are claimed to have been described by the children themselves, with still others of unknown origin from social media. Here are a few of the identities described by Dr Ehrensaft—

“Gender Tootsie Roll Pops. Children who exhibit one gender on the outside but experience another gender on the inside. To follow the metaphor, the crunchy outside is often the gender that accommodates to the expectations of the surrounding world, and the soft, gooey inside is the stuff of authenticity and realness. The hard candy is in place to protect or shield the inside chewiness from an unaccepting world or an internalised unaccepting part of one’s own self. It should be noted that the gender Tootsie Roll Pops, if not provided with resilience building, are often the most at-risk [transgender and gender-expansive] children.”

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“Gender smoothies. Gender smoothies are a variation on the theme of gender fluid. As one teenager vividly described it, ‘You see, you take everything about gender, throw it in the blender, press the button, and you’ve got me—a gender smoothie.’

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“Gender Teslas. The gender Tesla is the transgender state some children reach after a stint being a gender hybrid or gender ambidextrous. Some simply go from zero to 60 to get there, meaning from the sex assigned to them at birth to their affirmed gender identity. Some go more slowly. We could say that any child in the transgender category would count as a Tesla, but we are preserving this term for children who are in motion toward an all-one-gender status.”

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Video: Psychologist Diane Ehrensaft offers “a simple laundry list” of gender identities

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Queering the family

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It is clear that not all these gender types were named by gender-questioning young people themselves. Given the campaign strategies outlined above, I can imagine that trans activists have developed some identities in brainstorming sessions and have been as creative, even absurd, as they thought the general community could bear.

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This new group of identities are referred to as “gender expansive” rather than transgender: “An umbrella term for those who do not follow gender stereotypes, or who expand ideas of gender expression or gender identity. People of any gender can be gender expansive.”

The emergence of a large number of young people who adopt such a wide range of identities not only helps “queer” the family, it also adds a patina of legitimacy to the adults who “come out” as trans, in one of many identities, later in life. It seems that children and adolescents are collateral damage in the queer agenda for the broader society. What is noteworthy is that many of the new identities don’t require any medical or surgical treatment and they move from gender expression to include sexual expression.

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In 2024, the University of Rhode Island’s Gender and Sexuality Centre provided a list of 26 gender identities, including—

“Girlfag. A woman who is attracted to bisexual or gay men. The woman may even feel, to varying degrees, as though she is a gay man living in a woman’s body.

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“Guydyke. A man who is attracted to bisexual or lesbian women. The man may even feel, to varying degrees, as though he is a lesbian living in a man’s body.

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“Transfag. A transman who is attracted to other men.”

The normalisation of so many gender expressions in children and adolescents paves the way, bit by bit, for the normalisation of more extreme forms of self-expression in adults. This broad take on what it means to be transgender goes back several decades. In the 1990s, the term transgender…

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“… was taken up by a variety of people who, in their own ways, transgressed usual sex and gender expectations. It has now come to have quite a broad meaning. For many people, the term transgender includes a wide range of sex, gender, and sexual expressions which may include heterosexuals, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, queers and transsexuals (Emphasis added—SP)."

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Out-loud fetishes

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I was not a regular user of social media until 2021 when I had a complaint against me after I had argued for a safer assessment process for the gender-questioning adolescents I was seeing. In researching my response, I spent time on YouTube, mainly because that was the only platform I had heard of. That showed me the many posts of positive experiences of being trans and undergoing gender-affirming care. After that I ventured onto X/Twitter, and that was a revelation.

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During my 50 years working as a clinical psychologist, my particular area of speciality was human sexuality, including sexual dysfunction, sexual orientation and gender diversity. I had clients with a paraphilia (referred to colloquially as a fetish) of one kind or another, and these were almost always male: transvestites, infantilism, leather, used female panties, clean female panties, plaster casts, stockings, women’s shoes, exhibitionists, voyeurs … whenever I thought I had heard everything, a new fetish would present. The most disturbing time of my career was working for the New South Wales Department of Health during the 1980s, when I was required to assess serious sex offenders for court or for parole.

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What I have seen on X/Twitter is an increasing frequency of posts by males with a fetish, now proud and comfortable to reveal their specific interest: men dressed as children; men dressed in female clothing with an obvious erection; men in bondage gear; men in nappies and sucking on a bottle or pacifier; transwomen who claim to be menstruating using fake blood…

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I don’t have an issue with a male acting out his fetish if it doesn’t involve others, but I learnt from my clients that many of these men have a strong sense of entitlement: for example, a man who found female lingerie arousing insisted that his wife accept him wearing it when they had sex. When I asked him what he did to meet his wife’s sexual preferences, he simply said, without any self-reflection, that wasn’t satisfying for him. One man wanted to film his partner having sex with another man and post it to a voyeurs’ site, and he arranged an appointment for his wife with me to fix what was “wrong” with her for refusing to go along with it. This was typical of a man whose paraphilia involved his female partner, and now this strong sense of entitlement is being expressed by men identifying as women who expect, indeed demand, to have their wants prioritised over the needs and rights of females of all ages.

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Now that “transbian”—a transwoman, most of whom have not undergone sex-reassignment surgery, who is attracted to lesbians—has been added to the list of trans identities, any male who fantasises about having sex with a lesbian is, in some jurisdictions, a lesbian and legally cannot be excluded from lesbian groups; his penis is a “ladydick”, and any lesbian who wouldn’t consider a relationship with a transbian is transphobic and a bigot.

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Even more disturbing is that in some jurisdictions, if a sex offender labels himself a woman, at trial his victim may be compelled to refer to him as “her” and his penis as “her penis”. This is the damaging, almost sadistic, power of Queer theory.

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A well-known example of how effective trans activism has been is the case of Kayla Lemieux, the Canadian woodshop high school teacher who identified as a woman and wore a large Z-cup breast prosthesis in the classroom. For months, this man was allowed to continue teaching despite the impact that was having on the students and the anger of parents. Either the principal of the school was a Queer theory advocate, or he was worried about the pushback from trans activists if he ordered the man to stop. This take by a transwoman is informative

 

“So yeah, I am enraged—ENRAGED—at people in our community who are trying to make the world LESS safe for us. I’m talking about Kayla Lemieux. And I am talking about the trans ‘allies’ who are putting her needs first above the needs of school children. So, let’s be very clear. This person is practising a fetish. Lemieux is practising a fetish in front of children. She is using trans activism to excuse a form of child molestation.”

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A gift to voyeurs

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Now that self-ID is legal in many jurisdictions, women cannot legally exclude any man who claims to be a woman from female-only spaces. Self-ID is a gift to exhibitioners, voyeurs, or men with other fetishes, because if a woman complains about his presence, she is likely to be the one told to accept the situation or leave. Essentially, these paraphilias, once a crime, are now legal by default.

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Serious sex offenders also benefit from self-ID. My experience with sex offenders taught me they are very good at what they do: they are drawn to places where they can access their victims, they will use any ruse to target their victims, and they never feel guilt or empathy. Trans activists argue that no man would pretend to be a woman just to get access to female spaces, but there is considerable evidence that they do.

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“Transmaxxing” is another case where males take advantage of self-ID. This is the novel practice of changing genders not because one feels any kind of dysphoria, but purely to gain the perceived benefits of becoming another gender.

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Like any good advertising campaign, trans activists have developed a list of catchy phrases that are used to counter any challenge to trans ideology: “no debate”; “killing trans people”; “most vulnerable community”; “transwomen are women” and the rebranded “TWAW”; “the science is settled”; and the unethical “puberty blockers are reversible”.

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The calculated dishonesty and cynicism of trans activists are revealed in this exchange between Scottish journalist Mandy Rhodes and a trans activist, as reported in The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, straight from the Dentons playbook—

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“I remember speaking to a Scottish trans activist who was instrumental in lobbying for self-ID, and he told me that using that rhetoric was deliberate, because if you got people to buy into the idea that transwomen are in fact the same as any other women, then the arguments for self-ID would follow on more easily.”

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While the two fronts in this gender conflict have different aims, the common enemy is Queer theory. The world is certainly becoming queer when children are allowed to transition at school without the knowledge and consent of parents, when stating that a woman is an adult female human is considered hate speech, and when governments and corporations are so scared of being labelled non-inclusive and transphobic they in effect hand over government and company policy to activists.

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Dr Sandra Pertot retired not long ago after 50 years of practice as a clinical psychologist specialising in human sexuality, including sexual dysfunction, sexual orientation and gender diversity

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