The Quasi-Religious Aspect of the Modern Transmovement

I know that many of the readers of this blog have very different attitudes towards the trans issue and so may find the following essay offensive. It is certainly not my intention to insult or offend anyone, but merely to examine a distinct sociological aspect of the mass trans movement as it has emerged over the last decade or so. This has taken it far beyond the issue of the appropriate treatment of adults and children suffering distress or confusion about their biological sex. If this was simply the case now, I believe that it would have been quietly and amicably resolved a few years ago, and would be of no more interest than the question of suitable treatment for other people suffering distressing psychological and mental health conditions.

But the medical question has been co-opted by radical postmodern political activists and has been transformed and broadened as part of today’s identity politics. The ideologues behind this movement see it as part of a broader agenda to radically transform western society, and the mass movement that has emerged from this is bitterly intolerant of its critics and detractors. It has thus taken on the sociological character of a religion, and in some aspects particularly resembles historic heretical sects and cults as explained below.

Mutilating the Flesh for the Spirit: Trans Ideology as Quasi-Religion

According to the ideologues, adherents and activists of trans ideology and practice, trans identity, and the social and medical transitioning of troubled and psychologically confused individuals from their birth to the opposite sex is entirely rational and scientific, based on a scientifically recognised and confirmed medical condition. Its gender critical detractors, however, such as Barry Wall of the EDI Jester channel on YouTube and his many followers, are harshly sceptical of this ideology. For them, stripped of its scientific trappings, the trans movement is ‘a flesh-sacrificing cult’ with its basis in the Cartesian dualist separation of mind and body. A recent commenter, furiousfemale996 on one of the Jester’s posts, ‘Queering Classrooms – LGB Alliance Responds’ recommended that if the trans ideology is taught in schools, it should not be taught as a sexual identity like homosexuality in PSHE, but instead taught in RE as a religious cult: ‘They need to teach all kids how to recognise the signs of a cult.’

In fact, sociologists of religion such as Clifford Geertz have formulated the concept of quasi-religions to describe secular ideologies and movements that perform some of the sociological functions of religion, and the trans ideology certainly conforms in many respects to such a classification. Indeed, the concept of religion itself is notoriously difficult to define. While most people would automatically regard religion as the worship of supernatural beings, these are absent in some religions. The Latin term ‘religio’, from which the modern English ‘religion’ is derived, means literally ‘to tie together’ and may originally have meant something like filial piety to the Romans. Many cultures do not recognise a religious sphere as distinct from the secular as the two are so bound up together in their way of life. Snorri Sturluson, the 13^th century writer of the collection of Viking myths, the Edda, described Viking paganism as ‘an old law’. Some sociologists of religion eschew discussions of the supernatural and define it as about ‘matters of ultimate concern’. Another academic definition simply states that it divides the world into the important and valuable and less important and valuable. There are also secular religions, such as Humanism and its predecessor, the Ethical Church Movement of the 19^th century, that developed as rationalist, scientific alternatives to supernatural religion. The sociological description of these as quasi-religions, rather than simply religions, is important as many atheists take considerable offence to their movements being described as a religion. The ‘quasi’ element in the term serves to differentiate these movements from supernatural religion proper, while emphasising that they still perform some of the socialogical functions of religious belief and worship.

The secular movements identified as quasi-religious include nationalism, Humanism and the totalitarian political ideologies of Nazism and Communism, the latter because their doctrines of the Thousand Year Reich or the age of true communism have strong similarities to millennial, apocalyptic Christianity. Religions commonly have a set of core doctrines, rituals and ethics so that their adherents form a distinct ideological and moral community.

The core beliefs of the trans ideology may be simply described thus:

Everyone has a unique gender identity distinct from their biological sex. For trans people, this gender identity is opposite to that of the sex they were born as. This gender identity represents their authentic sex, and must be recognised and protected through progressive legislation. As members of the opposite sex trapped in the wrong bodies, they also require medical and surgical intervention to transform their bodies into those of the identified sex. At the same time, following the ideas of postmodern feminist Judith Butler and her text, Gender Trouble and the doctrines of Queer Theory, sex itself is a matter of social performance following socially constructed ideas of masculinity and femininity. Thus, sex is reduced to a matter of fashion and stereotypical gender roles and activities, distinct from the biological, embodied reality. This has led to nonsensical statements from politicians like Keir Starmer that only one per cent of women have penises, or circular definitions of womanhood such as ‘a woman is anyone who identifies as one.’ At the same time, the trans community and its supporters draw a clear moral distinction between themselves and their critics. The trans community has appropriated the general gay rights movement, presenting itself as an integral part of the general gay and bisexual community, which is conceived as uniquely loving. An LGBTQ+ cartoon to promote gay and trans acceptance among children reviewed and critiqued by the ‘femalist’ pro-woman activist, Kelly Jay Kean-Minshull, presents this community as animals in a parade. One of them has the mastectomy scars from ‘top surgery’, the polite euphemism for double mastectomies performed on trans identifying girls and women. The voiceover, singing a version of ‘The animals went in two by two, hurrah’, declares that they love each other so proudly.

Trans people are also presented as uniquely virtuous and persecuted. Outside the realm of the blessed elect are the gender critical fallen, creatures of absolute hate, prejudice, and malignity. As Maria MacLachlan of the Peak Trans vlog on YouTube and other gender critical feminists have discussed and demonstrated, these activists accuse feminists like MacLachlan of being Nazis, planning a ‘trans holocaust’, who must be physically fought, beaten and killed. See her video ‘Awful Argument 8: Terfs Are Rightwing’. MacLachlan has herself been physically assaulted by a trans activist, and has documented similar attacks on gender critical feminists in videos such as ‘Another day, another trans activist bully, another feminist assaulted’. In America, gun-toting goons in black bloc have appeared as stewards for trans rallies. This may be considered as a political paramilitary uniform, which would be banned over on this side of the Atlantic under legislation designed to suppress genuine Fascists like Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. As I write this, the government is deeply concerned with the issues of political and religious extremism and is busy formulating a definition of such that would allow the proscription of dangerous anti-democratic groups. A definition of extremism and terrorism could fairly include the violent, paramilitary wing of trans activism but due to the identification of trans with pro-gay liberalism and its advocacy from the left, is unlikely to do so.

Rather than being rational and scientific, the core doctrines of the trans movement resemble supernatural religion, and particularly Platonic Gnosticism. The distinction between a gendered mind separate from the body does indeed bear a marked kinship to Cartesian mind-body dualism, with the twist that the ghost in the body’s machine has its own gender. It also resembles Gnosticism in that primacy is given to the disembodied gendered mind with the body given much less regard. In Platonism, the ancient Greek philosophy derived from the great philosopher, the human soul comes from the realm of the spirit among the stars. In Gnosticism this realm is the creation of a good god, as opposed to that of matter, in which these spirits are entrapped. Matter is the creation of the evil god, and the flesh body a prison from which the Gnostic believer hoped he would be freed on death to ascend to the higher realms through belief in the Gnostic cult’s salvific message.

The trans cult eschews this supernatural, post-mortem doctrine in favour of a this-world practice in which the trans person has their flesh altered and mutilated so that they may ‘live their authentic lives’. At the same time, ideas of femininity and masculinity divorced from their biological reality, also resemble Plato’s transcendent forms. These are the patterns for the material world and its objects, which are their expressions. Thus, for example, there is the transcendent idea of a dog, or a man or woman, beyond the individual dogs, men, and women of material reality. In Queer Theory, this transcendent idea of gender is superior to biological reality. The idea of that sex alone, divorced from the reality of the physical body, is considered authentic. The biological sex is considered false, almost a product of mara, the realm of illusion in Hinduism, when it contradicts the inner conception of the sex of the trans person. The rhetoric that trans people must be accepted as their preferred sex or altered to conform to it to live their authentic lives comes partly from the contemporary emphasis for authenticity in popular culture. Rap musicians, for example, frequently talk about ‘keepin’ it real’. But it also seems to derive from Kierkegaardian existentialism and its stress on an authentic faith and life.

Gender mutilation is also a part of many cultures and religions, ranging from FGM, male circumcision to castration. Male circumcision is an important rite of passage among the Dowayo people, studied by the anthropologist, writer and broadcaster Dr Nigel Barley. In his book The Innocent Anthropologist Barley states that the Dowayos regarded circumcision as removing the biological elements that prevent boys from being real men. In a passage discussing how widespread the practice is amongst cultures throughout the globe, he states that in some societies the testicles may be hacked off. As the Jester has stated, there have been religions that practised castration, such as the Christian Skoptzi, as well as the Galli, the priests of Cybele in ancient Rome. They castrated themselves and dressed as women. Some shamans were also transvestites. The trans ideology resembles these castration cults, especially with WPATH’s embrace of the Eunuch Archives and eunuch as a gender identity.

But Queer Theory goes beyond individual transformation to call for radical social change. Some members of the movement have called for the destruction of the bourgeois heterosexual family, such as a recent trans person, Samantha Hudson, promoting Doritos in their Spanish advertising campaign. Internet trans activist Jeffrey Marsh has also suggested to the confused and distressed young people watching his YouTube channel that they should break with their biological parents if they refuse to accept their imaginary gender identity. This is particularly pernicious, as Clive Simpson and Dennis Kavanagh, the hosts of the gender critical Queens’ Speech podcast, have made clear. Many young gay people have suffered from being disowned and rejected by their families unable to accept their sexuality. This has caused them no little upset and distress, and is clearly not something to be blithely recommended to naïve children. But radical trans activism goes much further. The mathematician and fierce critic of postmodern woke nonsense, James Lindsay, in one of his anti-woke New Discourses podcasts has critically analysed a piece published in an American educational journal by two LGBTQ+ activists, one of whom is a drag queen. For them, drag queen story hour is not just about promoting literacy and toleration towards gay and trans people amongst young children. It is about creating an alternative, queer identity among children and youngsters in order to turn them into radical social activists. This queer identity is deliberately made unstable in order to alienate them from bourgeois society. Instead of their biological family, the children are to be turned instead to the trans and queer community as their real family. This again resembles the radical cults and ideologies that seek a radical transformation of society, including Nazism and Marxism, which attacks the family in The Communist Manifesto.

The trans movement also resembles radical cults in its separation of the trans individual from the outside world. The trans community is presented as uniquely loving and accepting, in contrast to the normal world outside the movement. Members of the trans community may encourage youngsters undergoing a crisis of gender identity to flee their homes to live and reside with them. It is exactly the same as the way religious cults have sought to separate their believers from their friends, family and community outside them. It also resembles ‘lovebombing’, a strategy also used by cults to capture new converts. In the initial phase of proselytization these cults impress upon their new members how the cult loves and values them. As the person is drawn into the cult, the attitude hardens until they may be subjected to harsh punishment inflicted for breaches of the cult’s discipline or morality. Questioning the cult’s doctrines and seeking to leave are particularly harshly dealt with. Detransitioners, former trans people who have regretted their decision and sought to revert to their previous birth sex, are shunned and excluded from their former trans colleagues, and may even be abused and vilified like heretics and apostates.

Whatever its scientific trappings, it is clear from this analysis that the trans movement counts in many respects as a secular quasi-religion. Even the claims of a scientific basis do not disqualify this identification. Since the rise of science, many new religious movements have claimed a scientific basis for their doctrines. One of the small press Spiritualist magazines published in Bristol in the 1990s proudly declared that it was ‘in support of psychic science’.

The designation of a movement as a religion or quasi-religion is not a comment on its moral content or nature, even though many people in today’s sceptical, secular society consider religion as intrinsically irrational and malign. Much bloodshed and oppression has been inspired by religion, but at their best religions have also inspired tremendous altruism and social advance. The French historian of science, Jean Gimpel, in his The Medieval Machine, described how Christian religious belief resulted in scientific breakthroughs and advances in the 14^th century. Several of the mathematical treatises from India and the Islamic world collected by Henrietta Midonick in her Treasury of Ancient Mathematics: 1 begin with a dedication to Brahma, in the case of Hindu India, and Allah for Islam. And while Humanism is a quasi-religion, it is very far from violent and oppressive movements such as Fascism and Communism.

What the designation of quasi-religion for the trans movement does mean is that its claims to scientific objectivity needs to be scrupulously and critically examined and rejected. At the same time, as Mr Wall’s commenters have suggested, it should be taught in RE rather than PSHE. Britain is now a multicultural, multifaith society. Regardless of what one feels about their truth content, most of the traditional religions since the Enlightenment are benign, offering their believers hope and comfort in a transcendent realm away from the trials and sufferings of the flesh as well as stressing the importance of altruism and moral conduct. Others, particularly some of the most notorious New Religious Movements that emerged in the ‘69s and ‘70s, are much more malign. School students should be taught that intolerance, repression, and cult-like behaviour are not confined to supernatural religions. They are also to be found in the secular realm amongst ideologies and movements that would angrily reject any claims of a religious or quasi-religious basis. Yet they are there, and children should be given the skills and reasonable scepticism to identify them as such and so avoid them.  And this needs to include the trans movement as a grave threat to young minds and bodies.

Further Reading

Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2^nd Edition (London: Routledge 1963).

Smith, John E., Quasi-Religions: Humanism, Marxism and Nationalism (Basingstoke: MacMillan 1994).

Thurlow Richard, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918 -1985 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1987)

Wilson, Bryan, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982)

Moscow Cops Raiding Gay Bars After Judge’s Ruling

That was the headline of an article I came across on the internet news page for my computer today. The raid apparently follows a ruling by a judge on the LGBTQ+ community. As our benighted world needs any more hatred and prejudice! Many people have commented on the institutional homophobia in Putin’s Russia. Over a decade ago Graham Norton had a few scathing comments to say about while hosting the Eurovision Song Contest, which has always been a festival of trans-European camp. That year it came at the same time Putin sent the goon squad in to beat up a load of gay rights protestors. Now I’ll admit I have strong views about the teaching of homosexuality in schools and don’t like the trans ideology. I think there is a problem in that some of it is age-inappropriate and Queer Theory seems to have been designed to make people confused about their gender. At certain ages I think all the kids really need to know is that some people love people of their own sex, and that’s fine. However, there are people who genuinely needed to transition and I am very much aware that ordinary trans people do suffer abuse and prejudice. But this is just vicious persecution.

It’s not representative of all Russians, however. There’s a lot of homophobia, but also a big gay scene in St. Petersburg. I don’t know if anyone remembers it, but a while ago the Beeb screened a documentary in which Anita Rani and a male presenter went to explore Russia. The male presenter visited a couple of Russian backwoodsmen, who made it clear that they felt gayness was disgusting. Rani, on the other hand, helped to operate the bridges on the St. Petersburg canals to allow a ship to pass. She then went on to have a bop and interview the people dancing the night away at the city’s gay nightclub.

Putin himself seems to be very touchy about the issue regarding speculation about his own sexuality. Also a few years ago an artist found himself arrested for disrespecting Putin because he painted him and his prime minister, Medvedev, wearing women’s underwear.

Thinking about the raids, a thought struck me. Wouldn’t it be terrible if the cops raided a bar and the barman or woman recognised them and greeted them. ‘Oh, militsioner (policeman) captain Ivanov! How bona it is to barda your dolly old eke again!’, as Julian and Sandy of Bona whatever it was that week used to say on Round the Horne.

Open Britain on the Threat to Democracy from Starmer Stopping Debate at Labour Conference

Starmer has once again shown how authoritarian he is by passing regulations banning debate on ‘divisive’ topics from being discussed at the upcoming Labour conference. This shows that not all Labour members have swallowed his neoliberal rubbish and he’s afraid they’ll challenge him. This is just another, further step in transforming Labour into a top-down, highly autocratic party in which the leader dictates policy while the grassroots obey. Or Else. Mind you, if the purges and suspensions on trumped-up charges weren’t enough, Starmer’s preference for silencing open debate when it gets awkward has been shown very clearly when he was interviewed a little while ago over the trans issue. He was asked if women had cervixes. There are a number of ways he could have handled the issue. He could have muttered something about it depending on how you define sex and gender and then talked about gender identity, like some of the politicians from the Green Party and SNP. Instead he shouted that it was not a question that should be asked. I’m not trying to rehash the arguments over the gender ideology again, as I think we all know where we stand on this issue. The point I’m making is that when he’s presented with an awkward question or challenge his first instinct is to try to shut it down.

This, in my view, makes him extremely dangerous as a leader. Free speech is under attack from both left and right, and I don’t seen Starmer trying to defend our ancient liberties from the people trying to set up secret courts and stifle demonstrations through regulations pretending to protect people from nuisance.

‘Dear David,

Everywhere you look, things are falling apart. Through the negligence, corruption, and incompetence of the last decade, this country is now in a state of utter disrepair. Our politics, our institutions, our public services, our buildings, our homes, and our livelihoods are withering away, and those currently in power seem to be fine with it. 

The calls from the public for meaningful change are only getting louder. 63% now say unequivocally that Britain is heading in the “wrong direction”. People are rallying behind campaigns led by public figures like Hugh Grant, Carole Vorderman and Feargal Sharkey, as well as subscribing to independent media outlets that are willing to criticise those in power. They’re joining political organisations like Open Britain to voice their frustration with our broken political system. 

The public is showing a palpable appetite for change and a desire to engage and grapple with the issues of our time. Whether it’s Brexit, electoral reform, the transition to renewables, or immigration, people are begging for a proper forum to debate issues even handedly. They want discussions based on the facts instead of emotional rhetoric or misleading soundbites. They want to have their voices heard instead of dismissed. 

Given all of that, we were dismayed at Labour’s decision today to shut down meaningful debate at their upcoming party conference, prohibiting discussion of “divisive issues” including electoral reform, Brexit, and the two-child benefit cap. Britain is clearly at a crossroads, a major inflection point likely to give way to a massive political swing. These kinds of moments are the true test for democratic debate, where we collectively re-evaluate who we are as a nation. 

Labour, the party which polling suggests is likely to form the next government, will not gain anything from kicking the can down the road and avoiding these hard conversations. It’s precisely because they are so divisive that the party needs to decide where its members stand. So why is Labour shutting down debate? 

The short answer is that our broken political system encourages it. Labour’s leadership seems convinced that their best bet is to appeal to voters in swing-seats, contorting the entire party policy platform towards a minority they believe will make or break the election. As often happens in First-Past-the-Post politics, nuance and debate is sidelined for a “win-at-all costs” mentality. In this case, it means the views of many within the Labour party will go ignored. 

If Labour wants to avoid “short-term sticking plaster politics”, as the leadership claims it does, they need to address the root causes of the country’s problems. They’d do well to commit to delivering the UK Democracy Goals by 2030. They could build a democracy where leaders are truly held accountable (Goals 1-3), voting starts at 16 and registration is automatic (Goals 21-22), and proportional representation in the House of Commons builds a collaborative British politics instead of a combative one (Goal 24). That’s only the beginning. 

Not only would it save Labour from having to twist and turn to fit a broken model, it would set the foundations for a more consistent and less volatile political future. It would ensure that whatever future crises or debates we find on the horizon – dealing with future pandemics, rejoining the European Union, or taking bold steps towards green energy – are truly held in the fairest way possible. 

We’re urging Labour not to give in to complacency, and to take a bold stand for what the UK desperately needs right now: proper civil debate and open fair democratic deliberation about the issues that matter most. 

The Open Britain team

Video on Fante Beliefs about Gay Attraction

This appeared on my YouTube feed from the Gay Black History Channel. This isn’t an area I know much about, but the video is very interesting and, I believe, necessary. There’s a wave of terrible, virulent anti-gay hatred going through parts of Africa. Extremely persecutory legislation against gay and trans people is being passed in countries like Ghana and Uganda, and gays and trans people are being subjected not just abuse but also mob attacks. When the Americans spoke out about this in Ghana as part of a diplomatic visit, the country’s president very firmly put them in their place by telling them that Africans had a right to their own views and culture on this matter and that they wouldn’t be told what to do and believe by foreigners. I think part of the argument over homosexuality in African is the belief that it didn’t exist in Africa until it was spread by Islam. Nigel Barley in his book The Innocent Anthropologist states that the Dowayo people allow much more physical contact between males than is customary in the west. He was embarrassed by the way his Dowayo friends would sit in his lap and stroke his hair, for example. But they had no conception of homosexuality. When one of their bulls attempted to mount another, they saw it as the animals ‘fighting over women’.

I think it’s probably true that some African peoples probably didn’t have it in their societies, or didn’t recognise it. But this video shows that many others did. The Fante, a Ghanaian people who warred against the Ashanti, had gay marriage, as did a number of the Muslim peoples who migrated southward from the north, such as the Berbers. The video states that they believed that people with heavy souls were attracted to men, while light souls were attracted to women. Naturally, they also consider that pagan Fante society was more open-minded about same-sex love than the Christians and Muslims that came after them. The video doesn’t mention them, but another African people who tolerated and practised homosexuality were the Azande, particularly their aristocracy. This has been compared by anthropologists to homosexuality amongst the Spartans. These were warrior cultures, and so homosexuality among men was seen not as effeminate, but hypermasculine, entirely fitted to macho killers.

I also wonder how much of the bitter hatred of gays in Africa is due to the kleptocrats robbing these countries’ peoples deliberately misdirecting them. These are extremely corrupt countries – back in the ’90s the Financial Times called them kleptocracies and said it was only a courtesy of the west that they were called countries at all. These a nations where people occupying even little pieces of power use it to rob and cheat. And so I wonder if the kleptocrats are using gays to direct hatred and resentment away from themselves.

Either way, the video shows that the Fante certainly had gay people in their society, who married, and that they had their own understanding of it. Thus the modern persecution of gays in Ghana can’t be excused as traditional African attitudes and morality.

Did Starmer Abstain from Voting on the Police and Crime Bill?

I don’t know if this is true or not, but one of the left-wing channels on YouTube posted up a video stating that Starmer had abstained from voting on the bill to give the police increased powers to close down demonstrations.

If it’s true, you really do wonder what the point of him is. Democracy and free speech in Britain is under attack from both left and right. From the left there’s the intolerance of the militant trans movement, which is seeking to shut down any opposing debate on the issue through loud, angry and threatening protests. Kathleen Stock, a feminist professor at the University of East Anglia, was subject to such a demonstration when students let off smoke bombs. There was opposition to her from within the university, who tried to sack her. One of the reasons they gave was that they could no longer protect her safety. She was also met with protests from the students when she spoke at the Oxford Union. On the right, the Tories are trying to strangle the right to strike and demonstrate. This campaign has been given fresh impetus by the stupid antics of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil in blocking the roads. This is not just an inconvenience, but dangerous as they have held up ambulances and ordinary people trying to get to a hospital appointment. It’s also massively counterproductive, as it seems designed to infuriate the very public, you’d think they’d want to appeal to. I’ve noticed a lot of coverage of these demonstrations on right-wing channels like GB News, and it seems to me that they are being used to produce a background of feeling against both the demonstrators and their cause, and against left-wing demonstrations in general.

As the leader of an ostensibly left-wing party, Starmer should be expected to stand up for the right to demonstrate. Unfortunately, I find it very easy to believe that he did abstain from voting against it. Starmer’s an establishment authoritarian who wants to appeal to the Tory-voting middle class. Hence he’s broken just about every promise and pledge he’s made and done his best to purge Labour of traditional, socialist, members and activists. And the party has form for abstaining on voting against Tory legislation in the commons. Back c. 2015, I seem to remember, Ed Miliband ordered the party to abstain when it came to voting on a yet another set of welfare cuts. Starmer himself has also described himself as a Conservative when advocating a set of policies recently. Well, there is a Conservative argument against clamping down on demonstrations. A few years ago Lobster reviewed a book about the expansion of democracy, free speech and human rights in Britain which clearly stated that every freedom we now enjoyed has been won through real hardship and struggle. The book was written not by a member of the Labour party, but by a Conservative. The Canadian right-winger, Kathy Shaidle, put on her terrible blog, Five Feet of Fury, the argument that Conservatives should be wary of passing legislation limiting free speech, because they knew that such laws could be used against them in opposition. It’s a good argument, especially as I remember the furore that erupted when Blair was met with demonstrations from the traditional Conservative-voting hauliers. The situation, according to Private Eye, was suddenly reversed. The party that had originally stood for the right to protest was now complaining about it. I’ve no doubt something like this will occur again if Starmer gets his way and occupies No. 10. Whatever individual Conservatives have said about preserving free speech and the right to demonstrate, the party itself is determined to clamp down on them. And if Starmer really abstained from voting against the recent legislation, he’s really not standing up for traditional British liberties either.

You wonder how he would have voted during the Peterloo Massacre, the 19^th century outrage when Castlereagh sent in a squad of dragoons against a crowd gathered to hear the radical politician, Orator Hunt. Coleridge or one of the other Romantic poets had no hesitation of denouncing it in his ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. Similarly, would Starmer have protested and condemned Churchill sending in the army to shoot down the strike miners in Tonypandy, another bloody Tory atrocity that’s left a deep feeling of bitterness in working class politics? I wonder if he would have, or just abstained in case it alienated the establishment he is so desperate to appeal to.

Our fundamental rights are under threat, and we need someone to stand up and preserve them. Corbyn would have, and did. He inspired crowds with Coleridge’s poetry appealing to working people against their oppressors. But Starmer and his coterie allied themselves with the Tories to lose him the last election, unseat him as head of the party, and are now trying to throw him out.

So how far can we trust Starmer to defend the right to protest and demonstrate? Or is he going to concede them to the Tories

Starmer Promises to Teach Boys to Respect Women – A Sop To Get Women’s Votes?

A few days ago Keir Starmer announced that if Labour came to power, boys would be taught to respect women in school. I can see the point of this, though it also seems to me to be a bit prim and schoolmarmish. It reminds me of the female management advisor who appeared on one of the TV shows a year or two ago and advised managers not to allow men to discuss sport at work in case it led to chauvinist behaviour. It also displays the totalitarian woke fixation with controlling how people think. But as a policy, I also find it rather threadbare as it ignores the real, material problems ordinary people are facing. This is the cost of living crisis with rising electricity bills and food prices. Some parents, and I think it may well be mostly mothers here, have been denying themselves the food they need in order to give enough to their children. People need higher wages, and unemployment and disability benefits at a level where they can afford food and other necessities. And, of course, an end to the humiliating, vindictive and persecutory sanctions regime. Starmer’s announcement does nothing to address these issues, nor those of massive profiteering by the oil and power companies and the raw sewage being pumped into our waterways. And you wonder how sincere Starmer is about anyway. He’s broken every other promise.

I wonder if it was designed to appeal to women following the debacle in Scotland over the gender recognition bill that brought down the SNP. Scots were rightly worried and angry at violent rapists and child abusers being put in women’s prisons after declaring that they were trans. Starmer and various other leading Labour MPs have made it clear that they believe transwomen are women and support the trans ideology, though Starmer’s commitment to it briefly wavered when Sturgeon was forced to resign. He stated that amending the gender recognition act would not be a priority under a Labour government. He’s been criticised for his bizarre statement that 99 per cent of women don’t have penises, while the right and gender critical have applauded Sunak’s statement that no, women don’t have male sexual organs. I wondered if Starmer had become worried that he was losing the support of ordinary women because of the trans controversy, and so made the announcement about teaching boys respect for women as a ploy to win it back.

Short Video of Spokesman from Gays against Groomers Testifying against Gender Ideology in Schools

This comes from the conservative American YouTube channel The Quartering. I’m putting it up, however, as it raises a good point that should extend well beyond the political boundaries of left and right. Much of the opposition to the gender ideology comes from the feminist, socialist left, while many conservatives in both America and Britain support the ideology.

The video shows a spokesman from the activist group, Gays Against Groomers, attacking an American school board for allowing the teaching of the gender ideology in their schools. He states that no child is born in wrong body and accuses them of teaching children to question their gender identity, an approach that leaves them vulnerable to child predators and grooming. He states that his group, Gays Against Groomers, has struggled to educate the public about these issues, and is opposed to the sexualisation and medicalisation of children.

These are all absolutely valid issues, and some of the ideologues behind the gender ideology were indeed in favour of breaking down boundaries between adult and child and legalising paedophilia. Graham Linehan and his interlocutors, as well as gay critics of the gender nonsense, have stated that in the UK the gay rights campaign really took off in the 1980s when the gay liberation movements cleared out the paedophiles. EDIJester, another gender critical gay man, has said in one of his recent videos that gay people do not wish to have the reverse prejudice, that just because they are gay they aren’t a danger to children and the vulnerable. They want to be treated exactly the same way regarding safeguarding issues as straight people. This is one of the many issues involved in the debate over trans rights. A woman was expelled from the Girl Guides because she raised just this issue about trans identified boy coming on camps with the girls. Men and boys are usually banned, unless for exceptional reasons. But it was assumed because the boy identified as female he was no longer a potential threat. But this isn’t necessarily case. Trans identified boys have raped girls in American schools, the most notorious incident being the recent controversy in Loudoun County. The woman was accused of transphobia and expelled.

This doesn’t mean that all transwomen are predators, but it does mean that they still need to subjected to proper safeguarding.

The Lotus Eaters Read Out Detransitioners’ Harrowing Stories of Pain and Regret

Readers and followers of this blog know very well how I feel about Sargon of Gasbag and the Lotus Eaters. He and they are arch-Conservative reactionaries, fully in support of the Brexit that has wrecked British trade and the agreement that has so far kept the fragile peace in Ulster. They’re fully behind privatisation, but refuse to believe that the Tories are selling off the NHS – even though it’s right under their noses – because they don’t see how anyone would want to buy it. They’re also strongly anti-feminist, believing in traditional sex roles and that a woman’s place is in the home. Sargon himself did much to destroy UKIP, simply by joining it under Gerald Batten’s fuhrership. When he did so, a number of local UKIP parties either disaffiliated from the national party or simply dissolved, and a large proportion of their membership, who weren’t racists, walked away. When this happened, I put up an angry video from one such Kipper who was absolutely livid about Sargon and other figures on the populist right, like Count Dankula and Paul Joseph Watson joining. I also utterly despise their attitude. I find them smug, complacent, and resent the way they continue to push the smear that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters are anti-Semites. Corbyn wasn’t, and we’re not. Especially not the Jewish brothers and sisters who have been abused, smeared and purged simply because the fanatically pro-Israel right hates them condemning Israel’s decades-long ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. As for the Lotus Eaters’ libertarianism, all their arguments in favour of this daft ideology were answer over a century ago by writers like T.H. Green, who supported the New Liberalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But I have to give Carl Benjamin and his mates credit where credit’s due. On some issues, such as the transgender debate, I think they’re right, or mostly so. Now I shall repeat: I do not support discrimination against, abuse, violence or persecution of people simply because of their sexuality or gender presentation. But there are very serious issues regarding trans ideology, the Queer Theory that informs it, and the medical-industrial complex that supports it. Quite apart from the dangers it poses to women’s sport, dignity and safety. Such as the danger to women in prisons when they are jailed with biological men, often brutal sex criminals, simply because the man identifies as a woman.

And one of the major issues is that there are powerful commercial and ideological incentives to push young people who feel dissatisfied or alienated from their birth gender towards transition. I believe that some people genuinely suffer from these issues, and have benefited from transition. My problem is not with that. My problem is with the attitude that has now emerged among gay and transgender activists that such problems are automatically a reflection of a permanent sexual identity among those suffering them. An identity which it is forbidden to question or to treat with anything but support and affirmation. According to academic research, 60%-85% of teens suffering from gender dysphoria grow out of it. The majority of them becoming gay men or women, but otherwise happy and secure in their sexual identity. And the process of transition itself also carries serious health risks. As has been admitted, puberty blockers like Lupron are not reversible, and their long term effects are unknown. The cross-gender hormones given to those making the transition can damage the heart and other organs, as well as reduce bone density. And the sex-change surgery itself may create complications that require additional surgery to correct.

Medical transition can be immensely profitable for the doctors, surgeons and clinics performing it. In Britain, I believe, there are only a small number of NHS clinics performing such treatment and so there have sprung up a number of private clinics to take over the slack. And private healthcare is all about profit. Decades ago the Beeb broadcast a documentary about the American private healthcare system, revealing the immense number of unnecessary operations that were carried out, simply because they made money for the private hospitals and surgeons. Something like this may be going on here as well.

There is a small but growing number of ‘detransitioners’. These are transpeople, who bitterly regret their decision, and are seeking as far as possible to return to their birth sex. I say small, but that’s in comparison to the people now deciding that they want to transition to the opposite gender. The online detransitioner community numbers about 20,000. Which to me is a lot.

Here Sargon and his co-host read out their stories of deep regret, and as Sargon himself says, it’s harrowing stuff. Most of the stories come from women who transitioned to men, though there is one from a man, who transitioned to a woman. They were all very young when they started to transition, some about 18 and 20 years old. One former woman says that she was 16. All the detransitioners are repelled by their new bodies and regret the loss of their natural, biological gender. One detrans woman says that she is in mourning for it. And at least one of them has serious health issues, including having to sleep for 14 hours a day, because of the treatment.

Transitioning has worked for some, but not these. This is why I strongly believe that when it comes to such radical and life-changing treatment and surgery, the greatest care should be taken to ensure that this is genuinely and absolutely appropriate for the patient.

This is why I strongly oppose the affirmation model and the attempts by trans activists to outlaw conversion therapy for trans people. Because there is the real danger that it is an attempt to ban really appropriate psychiatric treatment for people, who will be harmed, not helped, by transitioning.

Sargon’s Lotus Eater Deny You Have A Right to Healthcare

The attack on the NHS and the state provision of healthcare continues. A few days ago I put up piece from Private Eye the other fortnight, in which they reviewed Tory donor Michael Ashcroft’s and his pet journo, Isabel Oakeshott’s wretched little book on the state of the health service. They decided that it was in a mess because of waste caused by profligate hospital managers and recommended, along with a number of other ideas like people turning themselves into cyborgs, that some hospitals should be sold off. So to them, the state of the NHS has nothing to do with the fact that it’s been starved of proper funding for years and that administrative costs have written as a consequence of the piecemeal privatisation of the Health Service that’s been going on since the days of Thatcher.

But it’s significant that the Tories are now saying the quiet part out loud. Or at least their supporters are. Alex Belfield has also been telling his listeners that the NHS should be sold off, though he also tells them he doesn’t want people charged for treatment. But that would come in as a consequence of privatisation. A few years ago a group of right-wing Tories were pressing for the expansion of services for which the NHS could charge. And the whole point of privatisation is to transform our health service into a private one paid for by private health insurance.

And the Lotus Eaters seem to have the same attitude. They’re a right-wing YouTube channel with a team featuring Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, the man who broke UKIP. Much of what they put up is general culture war material against the trans cult and Critical Race Theory. Sargon denies that the Health Service is being privatised because he couldn’t see why anyone would buy it. Which shows that he’s wilfully blind to what’s been going on. But his little mate Callum said something that suggests that he doesn’t think that people have a right to healthcare.

It came up in a short I found on my mobile this morning. Callum and one of the other Lotus Eaters were discussing what they thought were the differences between left and right when it came to the concepts of rights. The right, they claimed, saw rights as innate, while the left saw them as something they had to be given for free. ‘Yeah, gib me dat’, says one of them, in what sounds suspiciously like a parody of Black speech. And then Callum added, ‘Like healthcare’.

Actually, I don’t see any difference between the right’s and left’s basic ideas about the nature of rights. Both, it seems to me, hold that rights are innate. Where they differ is the extent of fundamental rights. The political right believes that you have the right to do as you please with the bare minimum of state interference, because of the sacred right to private property and enterprise. But the left believes that capitalism, or at least neoliberalism, effectively prevents everyone enjoying the same rights, freedoms and opportunities, and so demand government legislation and interference to make society more equal.

And one of the fundamental rights, I’d say, was the right to healthcare. The provision of healthcare by the state has kept this country healthy since the NHS’ foundation in 1948. It isn’t perfect, and it’s being destroyed very deliberately by Boris and his minions, but it’s far better by far than what existed before. And much better than the American system, which Callum seems to admire.

Now that, thanks to the Covid crisis as well as decades of privatisation and cuts, only 38 per cent of the public are satisfied with the NHS’ performance, we can expect the demands of these chumps for its privatisation to get louder.

Government Bans Gay, But Not Trans, Conversion Therapy

Last week the government finally came to a decision about banning gay and transgender conversion therapies, and the result has predictably been controversial. Gay conversion therapies were outlawed, which is what LGBTQ+ groups wanted. But trans conversion therapies weren’t, which was very much what the gender critical movement wanted but definitely not welcomed by the mainstream gay organisations like Stonewall. The government had intended to put on a gay conference attended by members and representatives of the various gay organisations in the UK, but a large number of these have pulled out in protest. The decision itself follows a consultation process with the British public which was also controversial. It was initially going to be short, spurring fears amongst the gender critical that the government had already made up its decision to ban trans conversion therapies and that the process was deliberately being kept short to prevent people opposed to a trans conversion ban having their say. Then, after pressure and criticism, the government lengthened the consultation period.

I filled out the consultation document online. The link and web address was provided by my local Labour party in concert with one of the gay organisations. There was also a request or a directive telling us to vote for a ban on both types of conversion therapies. In fact I filled out the form stating that I was in favour of banning gay conversion therapy, but not trans. I’ll explain why.

Gay conversion therapy is horrendous. As gay people have explained, back in the past it involved the use of aversion therapy, giving gays electric shocks or drugs to make them sick, and worse, in order to destroy their sexual attraction to their own sex. Pat Mills, one of the titans of the British comics industry and a man of very left-wing opinions, tells how the Roman Catholic church in Belgium in the 1950s had a group of 15 young gay men castrated in order to cure them. Way back in the teens and the twenties of the last century, the Italian Futurists attacked a contemporary Italian scientist for advocating the same thing. Clive Simpson, a gender critical gay YouTuber, has made the point that such treatments are illegal and would not be used today. This was in response to an article in the Pink Paper by a transgendered person stating that he had been subjected to such terrible medical treatment back in the 1960s. The Lotus Eaters have weighed in on the issue in one of their videos, citing statistics that showed that only a tiny percentage of gay and trans people had been subjected to conversion therapy. The therapy itself, they stated, was mainly attempts to talk them out of their sexual orientation and was consensual.

I’m not entirely convinced this is the case.

Some of the readers of this blog may recall an episode of South Park where the adults misinterpret comments by Butters as indicating that he’s bisexual. Butters isn’t, but he’s sent to a centre to cure him of his perceived bisexuality. I think the place is run by Christians, who believe they can ‘pray the gay away’. In actual fact, it’s a hellish place whose inmates are made to feel humiliated, worthless and hopeless because of their sexuality. There are jokes about the terrible amount of suicide in the centre, with the officials running the place shocked and alarmed as yet another gay youngster takes his or her own life. The comedy’s black, as in just about all South Park episodes, but there’s a point to it. But there’s a serious point to the satire. Eventually Butters is released by his family, who find themselves no longer caring if he’s a little bit bicurious, just so they can have him back.

I think the type of institution South Park was satirising is largely an American phenomenon, but Private Eye has raised the alarm about similar places over here. I recall that a little while ago there was an article in the ‘In The Back’ section about a similar centre in Wales, and the suffering it inflicted on the young people sent there. I believe some of the inmates may have tried to harm themselves or commit suicide, and there were fears for safety of a young girl, who’d been sent there. It was definitely a case where the ‘cure’ was far worse than the ‘disease’. I am also unsure how consensual such treatment is. The young people that go there may well have given their formal consent, but I suspect they would have been under great pressure from their families to do so. It’s because of all this that I have absolutely no hesitation in demanding gay conversion therapy be banned.

Trans conversion therapy, however, raises a number of different issues.

I gather that historically aversion therapy has been used to treat people, who are now classed as trans. I think Han Eysenck used it to cure a transvestite trucker, and the trans soul who wrote the piece in the Pink Paper claimed it had been used on him in the early ’60s. As Clive Simpson said, this wouldn’t be used now. I believe others have described going through a process of counselling like the gay conversion therapy, which similarly left them feeling degraded and hopeless. If this was all that was involved, then I would have cheerfully voted for a ban on trans conversion therapy as well. But it’s more complicated than that.

Traditionally the process of transition has been lengthy and subject to stringent medical supervision. Those changing sex have been required to live as a member of the opposite sex for two years and are continually asked if this is what they really want. As it should be for such radical, life-changing surgery. I’m sure that the sexual reassignment surgery is appropriate and beneficial in many cases. But there’s a real danger of misdiagnosis. The gender critical activists have noted that quite often people with severe mental health problems and autism have been diagnosed as transgender when they very probably aren’t. And there is a large a growing number of detransitioners, former transpeople who are attempting to return, as far as possible, to their birth sex because they have found that the transition hasn’t worked out for them. Clearly you need to be as sure as possible in such cases that you are doing the right thing, and that may involve deterring people who have become mistakenly convinced that they’re trans.

The danger is, therefore, that any ban on trans conversion therapy would prevent this, so that the affirmative care model is the only treatment permitted.

This is predicated on the assumption that the individual always knows what is best for him- or herself, and that their desire to change gender must therefore be supported. This has resulted in gay and trans activist teachers over the other side of the Pond claiming the right to ask small children as young as four what their gender, as opposed to their biological sex, is.

Which in my view is highly dangerous.

If there was a way to distinguish quack and pseudo-scientific trans ‘cures’ that just lead to despair and humiliation from serious medical advice intended to deter the genuinely mistaken from going down a surgical path they would later regret, then I would be all for it. But at the moment this doesn’t seem to be the case. I therefore conclude that I fully agree with both the ban on gay conversion therapy and the decision not to ban it for the transgendered.

One of the strict requirement of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors were required to take since the development of rational medicine in ancient Greece was ‘First, do no harm.’ I am terribly afraid that a ban on trans conversion therapy, especially in today’s ideological climate where trans identification seems to be encouraged for ideological reasons, would do exactly that.