Manchester, UK. A friend of mine once said if you ever saw a psychiatrist they’d have a field day!

It was a comment from her after discharging herself from Charring Cross Gender Identity Clinic where the psychiatrist had said she was a transvestite really simply because she wore a short skirt on a hot summers day. On such observations rest all the great theories of gender dysphoria.


But this article is not about the UK psychiatric charlatans of gender but more about the stupidity of social science observations and conclusions that affect us all. The world divides into those who believe that nurture is more important than nature — and those of us intelligent enough to use science to actually prove or disprove more than the casually small and statistically invalid social observations grossed up to justify a theory that is never more than an opinion, but with the danger of becoming an urban myth.

The Almost Victory of Bogus

The champions of bogus social theory and meaningless statistics are of course the politicians and the medical establishment not that there is much difference now between the two. In England you have the political incurable illness of transgender whist in America you have a medical condition cured by surgery so make sure you keep it that way.

You also have education which along with religion is the now accepted way of producing a nice dumbed down compliant workforce to ensure wealth is continually concentrated to the select few.

Nurture is a great way of justifying anything you want and also for some the ideal excuse to blame it all on someone else. I was abused in some way as a child — or this tiny silly incident happened and it still affects me forty years on — is the meat and drink of the nurture believers who will make a good living out of counseling, psychotherapy, psychiatry, et al when the only good advice anyone can give you is change your coping strategy and get on with it!

But Here Comes Nature

Here’s my own personal experience of nature being far more important than nurture. As proof I offer Darwin’s Theory of Evolution though remember to add in the effect of selective breeding (the bit Darwin didn’t include). [N1]

I was adopted at 10 days old and from the eleventh day enjoyed a fantastic childhood with my adoptive parents, living on the rural edge of a large town I enjoyed the countryside but had access to a great grammar school that led me onwards to the University of my choice. I was equally as good at arts and science but I chose to specialize in physics and mathematics mainly due to my fascination with nuclear physics and its potential peaceful applications in terms of power generation and medicine.

Yes, I was an idealist I saw state owned nuclear power plants providing free power to UK citizens and industry selling our surplus to Europe and I still believe we could have made that work — but I digress.

I can’t remember the exact age my Mum and Dad (and yes I’ll always refer to my adoptive parents as that) told me that I was adopted to protect me from the possible distress of finding out from some administrator’s cock up or being taunted at school. It made no difference to my life although at age eleven I was given a medical file (with my name on it) by mistake to take into a medical examination.

There was a delay so I read it and memorized the address in Newport that was listed as my birth. On the weekend I went there and looked around the terraced street on the docks area thinking I’m better off where I live now. It was a very rough red light district and a lady soon asked why this obviously well dressed teenager was there. I mumbled I’m looking for someone and got Well, you won’t find them around here! I never went back.

Fast forward exactly 50 years

I’m retired through ill health rather than choice, I’ve transitioned, done all the surgery and I’m totally content but thinking I suppose I ought to find out who my birth mother really was. My adoptive parents are both dead so it makes no odds. And my curiosity grows to the point where I think Well, I might as well discover my biological roots.

So I start the process as the law allows me total access to every record other than my adoptive parents application to adopt me. I started in Manchester with the Adopted Children Agency that used to be part of Manchester City Council but is now a charitable status company with an excessively glossy web site trying to sell you things you are entitled to anyway free of charge. But then, such is the corrupt relationship now between the State and the private sector that you expect such nonsense.

What I hadn’t allowed for, however, was the we are above the law and we don’t like the law attitude and we want to protect your birth mother from you. The systemic bigotry that has arisen from the all pervasive transgender political movement that gives local government and the health service the excuse to hide it’s discrimination.

So I junked the local agency and read up the legislative Act which gives all the legal rights to the child put up for adoption and none whatsoever to the birth parents. I went direct, as was my right under the Act, to the UK National Passport and Identity Agency which also issues the Gender Recognition Certificates and new Birth Certificates.They would know exactly how to handle things! Or so I thought.

Well to be fair they did, but to get access to records you have to attend a counseling session and they bring in a contracted trained counselor. Trained, of course, meaning they have swallowed hook, line and sinker transgender theory. She proceeded to lecture me about gender as a range and how I was a transgender and had to use someone to prepare my birth mother etc. etc. yuck. etc.

I stuck this out until I received the record of my adoption. Then I really gave it back to her big time, with me pointing out her breach of ethics and the law in the very building and department set up to protect me! I put in a formal complaint and the procures there now are amended to actually reflect the law as it really is. Once you have completed the gender recognition process you are the sex that is on your new birth certificate. That is female or male — not transgender. It appears that I was the first person to apply for original adoption birth records post transition with a new birth certificate (not that that is an acceptable excuse).

The big shock,however, was not the ignorant counselor. It was the address of birth not being Newport but Tredegar. It meant I either had received the wrong file 50 years earlier or they had made a mistake. [N2] That meant going back to the original court records in Newport.

Now Manchester Social Services is pretty biased but the prejudice in Newport was off the scale. The officials first denied the records even existed, then lied and and refused access to them contrary to the law. They demanded I go there and allow them to create a file linking my old identity to my new identity. That is something that the legal structure imposed by the UK Gender Recognition Act specifically disallows except for the National Passport and Identity Office itself.

Only when I threatened to invoke the criminal provisions of the Act against the official blocking me did they agree to send their records to the National Office. The UK Gender Recognition Act makes an criminal offense for anyone to reveal my former name and sex to anyone else! There is no exception for social science practitioners.

After much arguing I went back to The National Passport and Identity Office and pointed out the breach of the law and got the illegal unofficial register plus their records on me sent to the National Office who immediately sent them on to me as required by law.

Meanwhile, I had an intermediary check on the person who is listed as my birth mother. She turned out to be alive and living at the same address listed on my original birth certificate. So they obtained her agreement to a DNA test. There was a discrepancy: she said she gave birth to a child a year earlier than the records showed — we needed to resolve the discrepancies. The result was as about certain as a DNA test could be!

So I had found my first Mum!

Unfortunately the intermediary failed to keep my name off the result copy sent to her so she wrote back and said there must be a mistake, at which point I decided to take over direct contact. An exchange of letters and phone calls ensued and a meeting was arranged.

Now, I will never know who briefed her on gender theory but it was clear that someone had. It was not something she would reveal, but she did say she thought transgender did not adequately describe someone who was clearly female. I could not have had this conversation with my two Welsh boys was her summary of our first four hour meeting. It took place, in all places, Newport (now politically transformed from a county borough of England to a city in Wales)! [N2]

We met again in the Welsh capital, Cardiff [N3] a month later. She was keen to know if the man she married later the year I was born was my father. Or maybe it was the other man who immediately returned to England when she told him she was pregnant. Knowing that I would know if I had half or full brothers, as well as who my biological father was. I told her I didn’t care. Either way, neither were prepared to support her so what does it matter?

Back in 1950 it was not an atypical male position to say either I’m not bringing up another man’s child or You’re not good enough to be my wife. If she had kept me as an illegitimate child to an unmarried mum in Wales — one of the most hypocritical, prejudiced and bigoted counties in the world — then we both would have suffered. So the attempt of her parents to keep her pregnancy a secret was not so uncommon. It was pretty sensible, given the accepted social standards of that time.

She did me a huge favour in one area: it was easier for me to disguise my female brain to another woman (mother) who was always going to be aware I was not hers and therefore might possibly be different. Occasionally, the female thinking would be spotted and my adopted Mum and I would row until my Dad sorted it all out. I was very much Daddy’s girl. By the way, none of my female thinking resulted in crossdressing, or playing with dolls, or other girly girl stuff. I was as much a tom boy as the farmer’s daughter I hung out with. (Mostly because she had horses.)

So what did I inherit from my birth Mum?



The Tredegar Town Clock,
keeping timeObviously intelligence as she has two sons from her marriage, one of whom is a cosmetic dentist, and another an ophthalmic surgeon. That is three children who have gone through leading Universities; not bad for a cake shop assistant. She told me she thought I had a medical degree by the way I explained the formation and sex of the brain. My retort was No, I’m too intelligent to just memorize and repeat (which is all most doctors do).

I gained an independence and determination to succeed in business. After bringing up her boys she became a senior office manager.

I gained not being afraid to reinvent yourself. After she retired from business, she trained as a holistic therapist and has maintained her license and insurance. At 82 years old she still does work with terminal cancer patients at the local hospice. We are both people who will start over again at the bottom and become the best at what we chose to do.

I gained a love of fashion, music and art. We have remarkably similar tastes in all three areas.

We have an identical, wicked sense of humor.

Then there is an Irish ancestry. Perhaps that explains why I’ve always supported a reunited Ireland. lol

There were ancestors who were part of the Rebecca Riots and the bitter class wars from the Tredegar Iron Works days which explains my radical political beliefs. [N2, N4]

After the first four hours it was like talking to myself as we probed each other’s values and attitudes to life and it’s issues. Very significant: our spiritual and political beliefs are identical (and very different to my adoptive parents).

I am my birth mother’s daughter. There is no doubt of that and I got that lot in 10 days! The only difficult part was convincing her that I had no ill feelings whatsoever against her and if roles were reversed I’d have done the same thing.

So what now?

Well we’ve agreed that we now close the book. We have very different lives, so it is not sensible to try and play at being a happy family after a 60 year gap. I would be slotting in as first born; given the grandchildren and future great grandchildren with her as head of a family in Wales a major family row would be inevitable. Attitudes in Wales are still years behind London and Manchester. There is nothing to be gained but much for her to lose. She would have to explain a secret and why I am who I am. That approach is bound to cause problems which I can simply ignore but she can’t.

She is trying to get a DNA test on her late husband’s brother done without revealing why and I’ve advised her to back track on that given how she found out about me! I think she will.

Have I kept any secrets from her?

Only one: that she has mild ankylosing spondylitis, which both she and her doctor think is arthritis. [N5] Given the mild symptoms and the anti-inflammatory and pain killers she already takes, there is nothing to be gained by my explaining that by descent from her I have the severe version.

ankylosing spondylitis, made so much worse by testosterone poisoning through the wrong body parts, has been of far greater significance in my life than sex reconstruction or being adopted.

In other words: nature is always more important than nurture.

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