The Trans Agenda: NHS shows its anti-trans face as papers keep pushing anti-trans propaganda

6 October 2024

The Trans Agenda

[6 October 2024]

Welcome to The Trans Agenda: The papers, a newsletter that will arrive in your inbox every week if you are subscribed.

Transgender. How do you know? By Lee Hurley

Just a quick note before I start that it is my birthday next Saturday and how that goes will determine whether next week’s edition will be out on Sunday or Monday.

Full paper review below.

PAPER STATS

September saw a total of 66 articles across The Telegraph, Times, Mail and Guardian/Observer. The Telegraph alone accounted for almost 50% of those with 32. The Times and the Mail ‘only’ had 13 each while the Guardian had eight.

August saw 118 (Guardian 15, Times 24, Mail 27, Telegraph 52).

When looking at the figures for the months when I first started this (under a Tory government vs a Labour one), I was somewhat surprised to find that the numbers haven’t really changed that much, even though it feels, as I go through the papers, like it has. Perhaps I’m just immune to a lot of it now.

May, my first full month of counting, saw 116 (Guardian 8, Times 33, Mail 30, Telegraph 45) while June had 86 (Guardian 5, Times 24, Mail 28, Telegraph 29). I’m still missing some numbers from July, when I was on holiday, so will leave those out for now.

While September was certainly the quietest month so far, the main difference, however, seems to be in the tone and level of vitriol, which has certainly dropped off since the Tories were shown the door, even if the numbers haven’t fully.

NEWS

…that didn’t make the papers

NHS trans care officials speak at anti-trans hate group SEGM’s conference [Erin Reed]

NHS officials involved in shaping the future of transgender healthcare in the UK are participating in a conference organised by the Society for Evidence in Gender Medicine (SEGM), a group labelled as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate organisation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
SEGM is known for opposing transgender rights and promoting conversion therapy. Among the NHS participants are figures linked to the controversial Cass Review and future transgender care trials in the UK.

The involvement of these officials has raised serious concerns about the potential for harmful, anti-trans conversion therapy practices becoming more prominent in the UK’s healthcare system.

No crimes of misgendering reported despite surge in hate crime cases [BBC]

Since the introduction of Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act in April 2024, hate crimes have surged by 63%, with over 5,400 incidents recorded, primarily related to race, religion and age.
Anti-trans activists had warned that the law would lead to a flood of “misgendering” cases, overwhelming the legal system. However, Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs confirmed that “no crimes of misgendering” have been reported under the new law. Not one.

The majority of hate crimes recorded were consistent with previous legislation, debunking concerns of over-policing trans-related issues. Despite early, and disingenuous, criticism, including from figures like JK Rowling, the focus on gender has, unsurprisingly, proven “disproportionate” to the actual number of cases, with race and religion being far more prevalent targets.

Census reveals how many GCs live in Scotland [Holyrood]

The 2022 Scottish census revealed that out of a population of 5,436,600, fewer than 3,000 people (0.05%) self-identified their religion as “believer in biology,” a protest response coordinated by anti-trans group, For Women Scotland.
In contrast, 19,990 individuals (0.37%) identified as trans or non-binary.

This data shows that the so-called “Gender Critical” movement, which loudly and viciously opposes transgender rights, represents a tiny minority—there are at least 6.6 times more trans and non-binary people than “believers in biology.”

Despite their loud presence on social media, where many use multiple sock accounts, the census confirms what we already knew – that they are a small fringe group.

Non-binary customers awarded compensation over discriminatory forms [Telegraph]

Non-binary customers have won compensation after facing discrimination from financial services firms MoneySuperMarket and Transunion for not providing non-binary options on their application forms.
The Financial Ombudsman Service awarded Mx B £200 from MoneySuperMarket and Mx E £350 from Transunion for the “distress and disappointment” caused.

Both companies argued their systems were limited by legacy or partner requirements, but the Ombudsman ruled that they did not act swiftly enough to accommodate non-binary identities. Both firms are now working to improve their systems to include non-binary options.

For Women Scotland compiling information on trans athletes [For Women Scotland]

The anti-trans account, For Women Scotland, wrote on Twitter, “It’s Women & Girls in Sport Week and @ FWSSport and @ SexMattersOrg are undertaking some work to map the trans identified males that are competing in women’s sport in the UK. Please get in contact with us giving details of the teams, leagues, competitions that are allowing males in female sports. You can contact us here or via email at [email protected] and [email protected]”. Mara Yamauchi then followed this up by asking people to send details of ‘“who they are, which sports, how many positions, medals etc they’ve stolen from females & injuries they’ve caused.”
Barrister Sam Fowles noted, “This appears to be a request to process personal and special category data. This is unlawful save under one of the exemptions in Arts. 6 and 9 UKGDPR (none of which, prima facie, appear to apply here). If you are affected by this then I suggest taking legal advice.”
LGB Alliance supporter Alex Bramham was spotted at a Nazi conference. [Source]

MEDIA

Rod Liddle thinks a child in Scotland has been allowed to ‘officially’ ID as a wolf. Liddle has previously wondered “Should it really be a crime to look at child pornography?” and noted in another article how he “could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids” if he was a teacher. But don’t worry, he says he didn’t “think I’d have dabbled much below year 10.” Not completely ruling out kids younger, Year 10 is for 14-15-year-olds.

This is what never saying no to children gets you — accepting a lad as a wolf boy Rod Liddle Species dysphoria, sometimes referred to as therianthropy, is a deep and troublesome feeling that one’s body somehow belongs to the wrong species. While not recognised clinically, it nonetheless appears to afflict a small but growing number of people in the UK — including me, as it happens. Several years ago, acting upon a profound internal urge, I began behaving and dressing, more or less, like a human being — a pretence that in truth was never terribly convincing, even if I was afforded a limited amount of acceptance by a close ring of friends and relatives. I am grateful for their indulgence but I know this charade cannot last and one day I will have to shed these pretentious appurtenances — the ridiculous diet, neckties, renewing insurance on the car and so on — and return to my sett. Perhaps by then I will have got it all out of my system. One can only hope. I wonder how many other “people” have been similarly afflicted? I have always had my doubts about Princess Eugenie, for example. For the past few weeks a debate has raged about a school in Scotland in which a boy has been officially recognised as a wolf. O tempora, o mores, and all that. What nobody has pointed out is that this child hasn’t actually been recognised as such, really. If the congenital idiots who ran his school accepted that he was a wolf, he would be in a sealed grassy compound with specially built burrows, and they’d fling in a few legs of lamb every day. This may seem to you a facetious and over-literal response to the story, but it surely addresses the very heart of the matter. You may have heard anecdotally about other kids who have decided they are one or another kind of animal and, like the overwhelming majority of the population, I suspect, decided that things have gone a little too far. But the endlessly suggestible liberals who constitute a small minority of people in the country, but perhaps a rather larger tranche in our education system, are pledged to the notion that people, even the very young people we call “children”, not only can define themselves as whatever they like, but actually are whatever it is they are defining themselves as — a black woman, for example, or a civet cat. And yet they do not really believe this. They are lying. Lying to the child concerned and lying to the rest of us to uphold their facile ideology. The wolf boy won’t be kept away from other pupils, because the teachers concerned do not for one moment believe he will try to devour them, perhaps after having stalked them for a few days. In other words, they do not think he is a wolf at all, any more than the teachers at your local comp — the Winnie Mandela Academy for Stabbing or whatever — might be telling the truth if they said they were recognising and supporting a child who had decided to identify as a grey squirrel. If they really thought he was a grey squirrel, they would act accordingly and shoot him. These kids need help, but not in the form of puberty blockers or a pair of furry paws They cannot do this, though, because they have pledged allegiance to the notion of self-definition when it comes to that other clinically problematic business, gender dysphoria — which is psychologically related to species dysphoria. If they are prepared to take the word of a troubled 14-year-old boy that he is actually a girl, despite all the observable evidence to the contrary, then why should they refuse the same indulgence for a 14-year-old boy who thinks he’s a wolf? Unless that child is similarly indulged, the whole ideology begins to unravel, akin to pulling on the loose thread of a wolf costume knitted by an absolute imbecile. The same ideology insists that children may be smaller than us, generally, but are otherwise identical and should therefore never be gainsaid. This ignores the obvious fact that children are not remotely the same as us — they are not fully developed; they need guidance and control. Conniving with their every whim, no matter how absurd, is not liberating for the child. It is instead doing him or her a grave injustice. As adults we need to set down boundaries of behaviour which will later help the kid to cope in a grown-up world where that most vexing of things, reality, pertains. Both gender dysphoria and species dysphoria show a strong correlation to a deeply troubled home life, often involving physical abuse, as well as to various other mental illnesses and disorders. These children need help, but not from those who would bung them puberty blockers or a pair of furry paws. They need help from serious people who will address those underlying problems, rather than performing obeisances before the mere symptoms. Then perhaps, after a sufficiently rigorous course of treatment, that lad in Scotland might be able to say: “I used to think I was a wolf. But I’m all right nooowoooooooo.”

GB News allowed to challenge Ofcom ruling at full High Court hearing [Press Gazette]

GB News has been granted permission to challenge Ofcom’s ruling that it breached impartiality rules during a Q&A programme with then-prime minister Rishi Sunak. The High Court judge, however, refused the channel’s request to temporarily block Ofcom from publishing its sanction, stating that Ofcom had already agreed not to publish any decision until after the case is fully heard. GB News argues that publishing a sanction before the legal challenge concludes would harm its reputation. Ofcom, meanwhile, contends the breach was serious and part of a pattern, with this being GB News’s 12th violation since 2022.
The case will proceed to a full hearing at a later date.

WHAT’S ON IN PARLIAMENT

Select business. Full House business can be viewed here.

Monday 7 October

Parliament returns from recess

Tuesday 8 October

House of Lords, afternoon, oral questions: Appointing an independent legal expert to review the seven allegations of child sex abuse against Sir Edward Heath left unresolved

Wednesday 9 October

House of Commons, 12pm: Prime Minister’s Question Time

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Richard Dawkins, 83, who is known more these days for attacking trans people in the ‘defence’ of woman, is dating a woman 45 years his junior, as revealed in an article in Times 2 in which he called trans kids a ‘craze’.

Is it a secret that your illustrator, 38, is your girlfriend? ‘Not a secret, no’ At 83, Richard Dawkins is at a point in his life when he has nothing to fear from bullies trying to intimidate him, he tells Andrew Billen. And after three marriages, the evolutionary biologist also has a new partner Dawkins and his girlfriend, the illustrator Jana Lenzova Next image › It will soon be 50 years since the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, in which he identified a sequence of DNA as the chief suspect in the whodunnit of life. It is already 18 years since his next-most famous book, The God Delusion, crucified life’s great red herring and gained such attention that Dawkins’s notoriety as God’s worst enemy threatened to eclipse his status as the gene’s best friend. The “new atheist” is now an old atheist. However, at 83, and having written only one subsequent book on God, he tends these days to discuss religion only when asked. His provocative tweets on the subject, and others such as the trans wars, are rarer too. “Isn’t it obvious?” he replies when I mention his declining activity on X. “I mean, it’s a lavatory wall, isn’t it?” His latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, offers fresh tales of the mighty gene. A stunning passage, for instance, explains one of nature’s best conjuring tricks. We all know that cuckoos opportunistically lay their eggs in all sorts of other birds’ nests, but how can the female cuckoo lay dark, speckled eggs that pass for meadow pipit eggs in a meadow pipit nest yet lay appropriately bluegreenish eggs in a reed warbler’s? This is surely the equivalent of a woman willing herself to have a red-haired child one year and blond the next. It is not, of course, God moving in mysterious ways. It’s genes again, here working alongside “cultural tradition”. Dawkins’s answer to the puzzle is that the specific female cuckoos that lay eggs in a meadow pipit’s nest are, like their mothers and grandmothers before them, genetically programmed by natural selection only to lay dark, speckled eggs — and, harbouring memories of their own nesthoods, they choose exclusively meadow pipit nests in which to lay eggs. Cuckoos with different backgrounds deposit their eggs in other nests — such as reed warblers’. It is a solution worthy of Sherlock Holmes, but also a feat of explanatory storytelling by Dawkins who, this afternoon, is in Newark, New Jersey, on what he insists is his last speaking tour. Is it paradoxical that someone so good at describing nature prefers to champion something transcribed as a sequence of numbers and letters, I ask. “It’s not paradoxical exactly,” he replies on Zoom from his hotel room. “These are just two aspects of the same thing. The cuckoo out there in the wild is the manifestation of the genes, and you can only understand the cuckoo if you go to the gene level.” But is that really true, I say, thinking that word “instinct” might do the heavy lifting for most of us. “Well, I think so, because you’ve got the really remarkable fact that different gentes [lineages] of female cuckoo mimic different species of foster parent — and that can only really be explained at a genetic level.” The Genetic Book of the Dead nature observations are embellished by exquisite pictures of cuckoos, tortoises and walruses by the illustrator Jana Lenzova. Born in Bratislava, Slovakia, Lenzova was commissioned to translate The God Delusion into Slovak and was soon contributing pictures to his books. She is also secretary of Richard Dawkins Ltd. I need to ask Dawkins more about this supertalented 38-year-old, but not, I think, so early in our interview. In saving something juicy for the end, I follow the example of the book, which, as Dawkins puts it, contains “a sting in the tail” — his declamation that the genes of our bodies’ bacteria, viruses and parasites are also carried by sperm and egg through the generations. “You are the incarnation,” he concludes, “the incarnation of a great seething, scrambling, timetravelling cooperative of viruses.” The idea, he thinks, will initially at least be controversial. It’s certainly a bit creepy. Perhaps it is what the computer game and HBO series The Last of Us was dramatising, with its deadly fungus taking over humans? “No, I don’t think so. I mean, that may be based on ants. There are wonderful funguses that take over ants. Perhaps that’s what that game is based on.” All he is saying, he clarifies, is that there’s no “particular reason” to distinguish between virus genes and their hosts’ genes. A matter of semantics? “Yes. It’s a bit of a poetic fancy.” So will this insight enter the textbooks or be a footnote to his career? “Probably more of a footnote. It’s part of the idea in [his 1982 book] The Extended Phenotype that genes survive by virtue of the effects they have on the world, not necessarily tied into a particular individual organism. I’m kind of downplaying the significance of the organism. It’s an aspect of that, I suppose.” In his insistent promotion of the importance of the gene over the organism (ie body), Dawkins has shown a consistency that outclasses his hero, Charles Darwin. Darwin, Dawkins points out, revised On the Origin of Species so greatly that the sixth edition was less accurate than the first. Over the years, Dawkins has altered only a few details in The Selfish Gene, and in his new book is still dishing out punishment to doubters who argue for the primacy of the organism. Among them is the Oxford biologist Denis Noble, now 87. “Noble is clear. He ringingly hits the nail on the head, but it’s the wrong nail,” Dawkins writes. Won’t his old doctoral examiner mind? “I think he’ll rather enjoy it. He has a sense of humour.” The new book’s title comes from Dawkins’s claim that our bodies and genomes form “a comprehensive dossier of a succession of colourful worlds long vanished, worlds that surrounded your ancestors long gone”. This sounds like a big idea, not just a further aspect of his “gene’s eye” view of history, but potentially a new take on pre-history for scientists to explore as genome sequencing develops. But Dawkins tempers my enthusiasm. “It’s probably optimistic to think it will tell us too much detail, actually. I suspect when you’re talking about homo sapiens leaving Africa, the archaeological evidence might be more full than the genetic palimpsest evidence. I think it’s rather more a kind of poetic vision of life.” Happily, the genetic future is still exciting. It seems that Jurassic Park is no longer science fiction. Dawkins believes the dodo, passenger pigeon, great auk and Tasmanian wolf may all be revived from extinction, and that there are “serious hopes” of a comeback by the woolly mammoth (by adding mammoth genes to elephant DNA). “Some people think it shouldn’t be done. I think it should be done. I think it would be very exciting to have herds of woolly mammoth roaming over the tundra,” he says. As you can tell, Dawkins, who has already twice used the word “poetic” in our conversation and quotes Shakespeare, Yeats and the King James Bible in his text, has a huge capacity for wonder (indeed, he told me three decades ago that natural history documentaries moved him to tears). His championing of the gene, however, rather robs us of the joys of anthropomorphism. Often this is a good thing. We really shouldn’t call the American cardinal bird “stupid” for dropping food into the mouth of a goldfish, for it is simply responding to the genes telling it to look for large, gawping, open mouths. Birds are not little humans, cognitively aware of what they are doing and why. “They are,” he reminds me, “little automata which are programmed by genomes to behave in certain ways which benefit the gene.” But Charles Foster, author of last year’s Cry of the Wild, would disagree. He believes animals are more like us than we think, for the simple reason that we are animals too. Chris Packham, the TV naturalist, is also sympathetic and told me a year ago that recognising animals as individuals was important in “generating affinity”. “I don’t deny the possibility of non-human animals having a consciousness, a self-consciousness, but you don’t need to assume that in order to study their behaviour; and [mine is] a kind of parsimony argument — that until we have good reason to depart from the view that they are automata, doing whatever’s best for their selfish genes, then we do that. But I don’t necessarily deny that they have feelings similar to ours.” Humans, of course, can disobey their genes, I say. Are any other animals as good as humans at ignoring theirs? “That’s a fascinating question. No, I don’t think so. I think humans have a rather unique ability. For example, contraception is clearly a dysgenic thing to do and we override it because we enjoy sex and we have, as it were, detached sex from its reproductive function.” As it happens, he thinks there may well be a “genetic contribution” to homosexuality in humans — “which does seem to be a bit of paradox” — but he is not buying the idea that there is similar genetic explanation for trans people identifying with the opposite gender. “It’s a meme. It’s a school craze. We all remember crazes for this toy or that toy and children tend to behave in a rather herdlike fashion, following fashion.” How many other academics enjoy his freedom to speak freely about these subjects? “Since I’m retired, I don’t have to fear for my career. I think there are people who genuinely do fear for their career because they fear being dumped on by mob rule.” Is he thinking of the philosopher Kathleen Stock, forced out of the University of Sussex for her views on transgenderism? “For example, yes. Hideously treated.” Assuming The Genetic Book of the Dead is his last book, I ask whether he has written and achieved all he wants to in life. He corrects me: this is not his last book. He is writing Tales from Haeckel based on the work of the “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel, also an exquisite artist. Each chapter will expand on the animal portrayed in a Haeckel illustration. Dawkins confesses he cannot draw at all. So now I come to it. Dawkins has been married three times — first to the biologist Marian Stamp, then the late Eve Barham, by whom he has a daughter. His third marriage was to the Doctor Who actress Lalla Ward, who is credited with improving his public speaking. It ended amicably in 2016 and she is now married to the psychologist Nicholas Rawlins, and lives with him in Hong Kong where he is pro-vice-chancellor of a university. I ask Dawkins whether it is not time to acknowledge that Jana Lenzova is not just his illustrator but his partner. There is a long silence. “She is a wonderful illustrator.” Is she not his partner? “Yes.” I mean, it’s common knowledge in Oxford. Is it a secret? “It’s no great secret, no.” Well, she’s a fantastic artist. “She certainly is, yes.” I say I am delighted he has someone to share his adventures and he says, “Yes, yes,” but I am. As for the 45-year age difference, Dawkins neither looks, speaks nor writes like an old man. His mother, he points out, died at 102 and his father at 95. Although he had a minor stroke in 2016, he has good genes? “In that sense, maybe I have.” Certainly his genes have served him well. And, of course, the organism that is Richard Dawkins has served us all exceptionally well too. The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins is published on October 17 (Bloomsbury, £25). Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK P&P on orders over £25. Special discount for Times+ members The rise of trans in schools? ‘It’s a craze. Children tend to behave in a rather herdlike fashion’

Ron DeSantis has backed Kemi Badenoch for Tory leader
Judgment in Andrew and Tristan Tate tax evasion case is due on Monday 7 October
Friday, 11 October is National Coming Out Day
Saturday, 12 October, as well as being my birthday, is also the start of National Hate Crime Awareness Week (to October 17)

THE PAPERS

Right, let’s get to this week’s papers.

After a quiet week last week with only eight articles published, the papers – in particular the Telegraph – picked things back up again. They alone published 10, still someway short of their most prolific weeks, but an uptick nonetheless.

After a short period where the Telegraph also seemed to be moving their anti-trans content into their supplements, it is now firmly back within the main paper.

This week, the papers covered Miriam Cates calling for children to be kept ignorant and ripe for abusers, and the Met refusing to issue gender neutral uniforms because they cause thrush and squashed testicles. Quite how non-binary people manage to find clothing that doesn’t cause disease and destruction seems to be yet another mystery that the police can’t solve. The Telegraph also treated us to three pages on some GC nurses who absolutely, positively aren’t transphobic. They just want to exclude and humiliate their trans colleague for reasons.

Beyond that, it was a mix of the papers’ usual nonsense, all of which you can see below.

The Guardian remained trans free all week while the Times had three pieces, the Mail two and the Telegraph, as mentioned, 10.

Sunday was the only day with no content about trans people.