Women Are Human shares with our readers the following excerpt from Dr Sheila Jeffreys’s newly released autobiography Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life, published by Spinifex Press. Works pertaining to Jeffreys’s critiques of transvestism and transgenderism include Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (1990), Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West (2005), and Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (2014). More of her work, including Jeffreys’s articles and books, can be seen at http://sheila-jeffreys.com. In addition, Jeffreys’s 1987 speeches “Sexology and Antifeminism” and “Eroticizing Women’s Subordination,” from the 1990 anthology The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism, and Jeffreys’s 2003 book Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective can be seen at https://radfem.org.

By Dr Sheila Jeffreys

The groundwork for a more general reflowering lay in a 2016 conference, Thinking Differently, which Julia Long organised to focus on transgenderism. It took place at Conway Hall which was, this time, prepared to let radical feminists meet there.

I spoke [in “The Social and Political Construction of Transgenderism”] about the origins of the idea and practice of transgenderism and [in “Transgender Porn: The Bimbofication of Women”] about transgender pornography and doubled down on the most unacceptable elements of my analysis to male cross-dressers and their supporters. These were to say that men could not become, and should not in any circumstances be seen, as women. Considerable evidence, including from sexologists – the scientists of sex – and the transgender pornography industry showed that their practice was not about an ‘inner essence of womanhood,’ but a form of sexual fetishism in which imitation of the subordinate status of women caused them masochistic excitements. I used book covers from ‘transgender erotica’ to show what motivates men who cross-dress and the precise nature of their sexual excitements.

Other speakers addressed different ways in which male cross-dressing activists adversely affected women’s rights and opportunities. Julie Bindel spoke on censorship in the media, Julia Long on transgenderism and violence against women, Magdalen Berns on student union politics, Mary Lou Singleton on the effect on women’s reproductive rights, Jackie Mearns on her suffering as the wife of a cross-dresser, and Lierre Keith on the effect on feminism. The event was public, greatly appreciated by the audience, and there was, surprisingly, no attempt to stop it by transgender activists. The critique that feminists had been creating for years online or at secret meetings was out in the open and transgenderism could now be debated in public. But this happy situation did not last as I shall show below.

This fightback against men’s usurpation of womanhood was given impetus when the newly formed Women and Equalities Committee of the UK government decided to focus its first consultation and report not on anything to do with women, but on ‘transgender rights.’ They proposed that men claiming to have feminine gender identities should be able to self-identify with no impediment or control. This meant that they would not have to go through the procedure set out in the UK 2004 Gender Recognition Act under which men and women wanting to change their ‘gender’ had to get support from doctors and undergo a two-year real life test of living as their chosen ‘gender’ in order to acquire a certificate and qualify as the opposite sex. The committee asked for submissions to its consultation, ignored those from feminists, and proposed legislating to enable self-identification.

Women all over the UK rose up in arms, recognising that women’s safety and dignity would be hugely harmed by the inclusion of men in all women’s facilities, such as toilets, shelters, changing rooms, and prisons. Organisations were set up to safeguard women’s interests and support women’s human rights.

The practice of men being able to self-identify as women was already taking place on the ground. It led to such problems as the entry of male criminals who identified as women into women’s prisons. Often these were very violent men, including rapists and murders, who gained access to the most vulnerable of women who were in prison and available for their purposes. The problem with placing men in women’s prisons became clear in 2018, when a man, Karen White, with a two-decade history of sexually assaulting women and children, assaulted two women prisoners in the facility that he was placed in.

A critical ignition point was reached for the feminist critique in September 2017, when a woman waiting to attend a meeting on transgenderism was physically attacked by transgender activists. Venice Allan attempted to organise the meeting to discuss transgenderism. She was new to the issue and thought it would be possible to organise a debate where she lived in Lewisham. It was not possible, because male cross-dressers do not like to debate their ideology and practice, and because the venue cancelled as a result of threats from transgender activists. She moved the event to a secret venue which turned out to be the University Women’s Club in central London.

Attendees were told to assemble at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, which had symbolic significance in the history of free speech, in order to be taken to the new venue. Transgender activists turned up and attacked Maria MacLachlan for taking photos. One of these men was later found guilty of assault. The event took place bedevilled by loud chanting outside the windows of the club by trans activists who were unable to get in.

The assault on Maria changed everything. At no time in the history of the WLM in the UK did men physically attack women in this way. Men, as many examples of harassment, stalking, and abuse by male trans activists had already suggested, had moved into a new stage in the assertion of their power and privilege and would be vicious towards any women who stood in their way.

The assault was reported in The Times by the journalist Janice Turner and this opened the gates for coverage of this issue in the press. The Times itself proved determined to examine the practices of the transgender movement critically and in detail in many articles over the next couple of years. Though The Guardian and outlets that saw themselves as progressive gave the male cross-dressers solid support and did not report the feminist point of view, the tide had begun to turn.

Venice Allan began her own powerful activism against the transgender rights movement through staging panels of speakers in different parts of the country and livestreaming the events. She later joined up with Posie Parker and the two of them showed a tactical brilliance which has been very influential in turning the tide on the issue.

Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), an organization from a background in unions and the Labour Party, helped organise events up and down the UK, involving speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and with a variety of stakes in the debate. I did not get to speak at any of the dozens of WPUK events, perhaps because I am seen as too provocative. Some things do not change. Radical and revolutionary feminists are still seen by some as ‘going too far,’ though the ‘too extreme’ ideas that we promote regularly become mainstream over time.

There are now a number of feminist organisations that challenge the idea and practice of transgenderism. Wherever transgender rights activists were seeking to overturn the rights of women and girls to safety and dignity, in schools, in the girl guides, in women’s refuges and women’s prisons, extremely erudite and articulate feminists have created alternative resources and fought back. Stephanie Davies-Arai, for instance, created the influential website Transgender Trend to oppose the transgendering of children. I took part in many of the panels that were not organised by WPUK and was hugely heartened to be able to meet a rapidly expanding pool of angry and effective feminist campaigners.

Women became more and more radical as they went further in their understanding of the issue. In the beginning, many women had decided to see traditional cross-dressers who were not overtly abusive towards feminists – and in some cases wrote and spoke against self ID – as allies. They were seen at first as sensitive, perhaps even heroic, men who had found the role of being masculine men too onerous. Some women wanted to see them as quite different from the new wave of cross-dressing activists who wielded baseball bats covered in blood (as happened in San Francisco) and made rape and death threats against their feminist critics.

Gradually, as the critique broadened and deepened, many of these women started to accept that men’s cross-dressing behaviour had similar origins – however apparently sympathetic to feminism certain individual cross-dressing men appeared to be. Women started to use male pronouns and began to say that all transwomen were men with no exceptions. In short, they ceased to be nice. The most heartening aspect of the numerous meetings, which were able to be held in public spaces despite attempts by the cross-dressers to get venues cancelled, was that women could meet each other face-to-face. Online activism cannot constitute a movement. Gradually women got to know each other, met up at different events, and started to set up local groups. A movement was being built.

Feminist activists became increasingly aware that male cross-dressing activists had effected a form of state capture, with dominant influence on policymaking in parliament, on government departments, schools, the health service, youth services, and on organisations from the police to the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) and universities. Despite the almost complete grip of transgender ideology on all sectors of society and politics, a feminist opposition gained considerable traction in some sections of the media, in online forums such as Mumsnet, and even amongst some politicians.

In the demand by transgender rights activists for legislation to enable men to self-identify as their gender of choice, they may have overreached themselves. In both the UK and Scotland, legislation to put the demand into effect has received serious opposition, and in the UK has been at least temporarily shelved. There is evidence from opinion surveys in Scotland in 2019 in relation to proposed gender self-ID legislation there, that only eighteen to twenty percent of those consulted supported the legislation. The majority thought that the current system requiring medical evidence should remain in place.

Now that the transgender rights movement seems to be failing to reach its ultimate goal – and there are increasing challenges in significant sections of the media in the UK and Australia – it does seem likely that its influence has reached its apogee and will now decline.

The term ‘state capture’ means the capture of the policymaking process by private interests for their own purposes, in this case the pursuit by a men’s rights movement to assert the rights of male cross-dressers. Until the last couple of years, there was little public knowledge about the process by which this capture had taken place. Feminists, for instance, have never been able to ‘capture’ the state in this way. Indeed, in October 2019, it was reported that only 1.4 percent of reported rapes in the UK result in a conviction, i.e., rape has been essentially decriminalised, and feminists have been unable to assert women’s rights to free abortion on demand despite this having been pursued for 50 years. The tiny proportion of men who are cross-dressers, however, have achieved phenomenal influence and success. For the success of the trans rights agenda to be understood, we need to know who funds their organisations and how their agenda serves the interests of the patriarchal state.

In 2018, the American journalist Jennifer Bilek followed the money which has enabled this degree of influence, and named many of the billionaires, either gay men or heterosexual cross-dressers, who have primed the pump. These men have combined their largesse in the US with funding from pharmaceutical companies and the US government. She found that funding for transgender issues increased eight-fold between 2003 and 2013 and has exceeded by three times the increase for LGBT issues as a whole. The interests of heterosexual men who cross-dress have been able, in the last decade, to take over the agenda in, or be installed as leaders of, the main lesbian and gay rights organisations in many countries. In this way, their rights have come to be seen as an essential, if nonsensical, part of gay rights in every respect.

Groups like Stonewall, which was set up as a lesbian and gay rights organisation in the UK, now lead the charge for the sexual rights of heterosexual men in opposition to lesbians and feminists, and they have the clout and funds to train a swathe of state and charity sector services. In response to this, lesbians who were involved in founding or running Stonewall in earlier times have created a new organisation: the LGB Alliance. The Alliance enables lesbians and gay men to oppose the transgendering of children, particularly young lesbians, and highlight all the ways in which men who transgender prey upon or oppose lesbian and gay rights.

The brave and feisty new wave of radical feminist activists have suffered for the cause. Some women have been disciplined or sacked from their workplaces and others have been interviewed by the police as a result of complaints by cross-dressers that they have expressed hate speech online by saying that men cannot become women. Venice Allan and Linda Bellos were forced to appear in court in response to a complaint by one of these men. But they were acquitted. So far, none of the men’s legal harassment of feminists has been successful, but it has caused great stress.

The activism of this men’s rights movement has led to a situation in which women in the courtroom, children and teachers in schools, and workers in many organisations have been subjected to a regime of ‘compelled speech’ in which they must pretend that biological sex has no meaning and people can actually change sex. The compelled speech applies to judges and witnesses in court cases too. The Equal Treatment Bench book advises judges that defendants must be addressed by their pronouns of choice. This means that female witnesses to assaults upon them by cross-dressing men are required to pretend that their attackers are women. This severely undermines women’s right to justice.

A number of significant court cases are taking place as this book is written in which feminists are challenging the extent to which women and men can be forced to pretend that cross-dressing men are women, with various degrees of success. The use of the police and courts to harass feminists and the extent to which our speech is being banned is strange and alarming to those like me who have experience of the Women’s Liberation Movement. At that time we were not being visited by police, called into court, or told what we could or could not say about anything at all.

In one important court case which is under way, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the only UK facility which transgenders children, is being sued for giving children ‘experimental treatment’ without adequate assessments. I am expecting that the outcomes will be generally positive for the feminist perspective, but it is peculiar that this should be happening at all.

This egregious reign of harassment of feminists has, however, had one positive result. It has enraged thousands of women and provided the spur to an awakening, new Women’s Liberation Movement. There are other signs of re-emergent rage amongst women such as the #MeToo spotlight on sexual violence in the workplace in recent years, but this has been a mainly online phenomenon. I understand a movement to mean women organising face-to-face with each other to consciousness-raise, to create theory, to protest and do activism. That this is happening now is largely a response to the fact that cross-dressers have overreached themselves. Not content with quietly blending in, they have challenged all the rights that women have achieved over decades. In response to this, I have been working in the Women’s Human Rights Campaign to create and promote a Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.

In 2018, I started to speak about the way transgender rights were creating a clash with the rights of women, not just locally and nationally but internationally. I wrote a chapter on the clash of rights in Gender Hurts (2014) in which I explained that male cross-dressing activists had been able to hitch a ride on lesbian and gay rights in a document called the Yogyakarta Principles (2007). The principles cover what are now called SOGIES, i.e., Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The principles are not a UN document but have been used by governments as support for the policies that cross-dressing men demand, such as self-identification. Because they were attached to gay rights, the rights of cross-dressers to impersonate women were automatically included every time that gay rights were advanced.

I did a public speech on this at Camden Town Hall in 2018 and became involved with other women in writing an antidote to the notion of gender identity rights as human rights. Our document, which was launched in New York in March 2019, by the writers, Heather Brunskell-Evans, Maureen O’Hara, and me, is called the ‘Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.’ It argues that all women’s rights as human rights as set out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and other UN documents are based on biological sex, not ‘gender,’ which consists of sex stereotypes.

The declaration says that the inclusion of men with ‘gender identities’ in women’s rights is a form of discrimination against women which violates our rights. Examples include the inclusion of cross-dressers in women’s spaces which abrogates women’s rights to dignity and safety, and their inclusion in all women’s sports which eliminates the separate provision created to enable women to compete on a level playing field. They include, too, their inclusion in shortlists of women that are created to improve women’s political representation. The inclusion of the idea of ‘gender identity’ in relation to children’s rights has led to the identification of children as transgender and their treatment with harmful drugs and surgeries which destroy their fertility and right to health. There are many more serious examples of the trampling of the rights of women and children.

The declaration, and the defence of what are now being called women’s ‘sex-based’ rights, are being taken up internationally with thousands of individuals and many organisations signing up. The argument that women’s rights are sex-based is increasingly being used by politicians, journalists, and feminists in many countries in the fightback against the notion of ‘gender identity’ rights.

Feminist activism is spreading, including in Australia where very few were being publicly critical of transgenderism when I left in 2015. Now, there is a swiftly developing feminist fightback from activists who include, I am delighted to say, several feminists who had been my PhD students and friends in previous decades.

Excerpted from Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life, by Sheila Jeffreys, pp. 218-228. Copyright © 2020 by Sheila Jeffreys. Reprinted by permission of Spinifex Press.