Manchester, UK. Now let me start by saying my agenda is simple. I want to help to change medical opinion to favour effective early pre-puberty intervention for women born transsexual and make access to surgery faster and simpler.

To do this the transgender myths must be destroyed and common sense prevail. We must change the attitude that surgery is a bad outcome to one where surgery is seen as a cure. That the new DSM is likely to at least recognise surgery as a cure is a huge step forward.


However, it would be far better to stop puberty for those who know that there is a misalignment between the sex they know they are and the body parts they don’t want and the effects of testosterone that cannot always be eradicated by delaying intervention until the wrong puberty has occurred. In the UK, this is the core problem as regards health care as the definition of gender dysphoria requires you to be dissatisfied with a post puberty body refusing to accept that self-diagnosis pre-puberty is valid.

Let’s look at reality

Identity?

The transgender myth of identity range plays to the conceit of the medical establishment that their right to determine sex at birth is absolute and can never be shown to be incorrect or mistaken. That gender is divorced from sex is a political position and doesn’t stand up to any scientific analysis.How you actually conduct the sex act, rather than fantasize about it, splits the population rather neatly into heterosexual and Gay/Lesbian. Simple — everyone can understand that. For those who like it they can be both that is bisexual again — everyone understands that.

It is of course important that the majority who are heterosexual do not create or maintain laws that discriminate against the minority who are Gay/Lesbian. That is why Same Sex Marriage is such a vital part of Lesbian and Gay politics and must be achieved.

In England HM Government is being taken to The European Court of Human Rights to have the fact that heterosexual couples cannot have a Civil Partnership, whilst Gay/Lesbian couples cannot have a marriage (secular or religious) declared discriminatory and therefore in breach of European Law.

This has echoes of the battle women born transsexual had through the same courts to obtain the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. This right was achieved In England after HM Government was shamed by the ruling that to deny a new birth certificate and with it all the rights and privileges of the surgically reconstructed sex was illegal under European Law. The law that passed into UK statute was The Gender Recognition Act of 2004..

Yes just 7 years ago — that is all the time that has elapsed. I have to keep reminding myself that it is still so recent and that we still have much to do. After all, as women we only got universal voting rights in 1928 and after 83 years we still have to accept that our status is not equal to men.

Transgender is of course an excellent way for men to deny all women equality. It is a socio political web of confusion ambiguous definitions and downright silliness that is a catch all now used to disguise male discrimination against women.

Now it may come as a surprise to some American readers but The UK Act of 2004 did not require a man to have sex reconstructive surgery to become a legal woman. The conditions were a statutory declaration of living permanently in the acquired sex, proof of having done so for 2 years and two medical reports, one of which had to be from a listed and Government approved specialist. They are mainly but not exclusively psychiatrists. If you were still married you got an interim certificate until you divorced as marriage laws require two people to be of the opposite sex.

Odd bit, this

It was not anticipated that the law could be used to force grossly discriminatory Primary Care Trusts to fulfill their legal obligations to provide funding for choice of surgeon and hospital to someone who had legally acquired their corrected sex but not had surgery.

I fought and won that one.

As I think about it, how could a court say no you can’t have your external genitalia removed, especially as The Mental Capacity Act 2005 allowed you to exercise informed consent?Roughly 2000 women appeared from stealth mode to claim their birth certificates that were automatically granted on proof of surgery. Since then about 100 new birth certificates are issued each year.

The Gender Recognition Act is far from perfect legislation. No individual yet has been prosecuted for a breach of the confidentiality clauses, a criminal offense under the Act. In the early days, abuse of that provision was widespread; to this day a lot of Doctors and Local Government Officials think they are exempt when they are not.

Government got the most important bit (for themselves) right though by having a separate national tax office section for the 2500 or so of us that pay UK taxes. I think the transgender politicians who claimed to represent us sold the Government that there would be far more of us than there really are.

Now, the Gender Recognition Act would never have passed UK Parliament other than it had to be done. Sanctions from the European Court of Human Rights would have humiliated the UK Government. The Conservative Party now in Government was almost universally opposed to the 2004 Act so it is with some amusement I watch them create an Equalities Ministry that separates Transgender from Lesbian and Gay.


It certainly isn’t to advance the transgender political objective of total sex deconstruction. It is more probably the desire for the removal of women who have taken advantage of the 2004 Act from future legislation as that will stop transition from male to female by only allowing transgender as a state between male and female. We won’t let that happen – we will use the European Courts again if we have to.

So let’s not be afraid to talk about sex and sexuality!

Now let’s get back to sex and sexuality which has sort of got sidelined in the myths of the transgender agenda. The argument being that gender is not about sex and sexuality is valid if you accept that a prepubescent child can determine whether they are male or female which of course they can as those of us who have had reconstructive surgery can testify.

But did we know that before or after our awareness of sex and sexuality? More importantly does it matter? I once asked Peter Tatchell to support my campaign to remove transsexual from the mental illness list on the grounds of gay and lesbian were removed when they were recognised as nature — not nurture. His response was to ask me if it mattered if it was all a lifestyle choice my answer was No it doesn’t but either way it’s not a mental illness.

Transgender worry about that one as the number of transvestites who boldly state on web-sites that their transgender status first manifested itself by wearing their sisters clothes is now legend. Transgender go to enormous lengths to deny any connection between fetish and sexuality driven desires.

Why? It doesn’t matter! If you get off on cross dressing or fantasy or fetish and your partner is happy with it then great what’s the problem? If you are single you can have sex any way you like with another similar consenting adult.

OK, I can understand some men having loathing and despair after having sex with another man when both are dressed as women particularly if it’s hidden from the wife. But at the end of the day you can consume yourself with guilt about pretty much anything. If removing your penis for such men makes them happy then go for it.

Women who unfortunately experience physical development in terms of male anatomy are different and a quite separate group. Surgery is not something they consider it is something they must have whatever the risks and whatever the difficulties. Women do the thing that totally differentiates them from men — they find a way!

Sorting the women from the men is of course is the underlying problem for the medical establishment in that they cannot prove by testing their diagnosis (opinion is actually a better word but I’m being polite) to be true or false as only the individual seeking surgery knows the truth.

I know that the current NHS system produces men with female anatomy. I’ve met them and they are some of the most aggressive, unpleasant, domineering advocates of transgender or gender queer theory along with the women dissatisfied with their surgery to become men.

It is very much about sex!

If you reconstruct someone’s genitalia and the sex afterwards is not better than it was before then they should have stayed as they were. Sex is always better with genitalia that matches your core knowledge of yourself.

Female orgasm is so obviously different to male orgasm that it beggars belief that someone who is not female could experience pleasure from it. If you enjoy the experience of orgasm through giving penetrative sex to another human being you are a man. If you prefer receiving ejaculate you are either female or bisexual.

Beyond that debate ...

My experience is however that women know that the best orgasms are through the mind and body combining to climax – it goes way beyond those of ejaculating males. Surgery is in my opinion far more than a cure it is a passport to a better more fulfilling sex life whether you have that sex with someone with the same anatomy of a different one.

The only experience I’ve missed out on is carrying a child but that is something I share with quite a large number of other women. I could never let another woman carry a child from my sperm producing days. It has taken me time to realise that my greatest enjoyment pre-operatively of making another woman climax without penetration was because I was mentally lesbian though ashamed of my anatomy. Now I don’t have such constraints I’m finally set free.

That some lesbians don’t accept me as a woman, I understand that and respect their views. My gay male friends joke about my radical feminism but it’s a nice way of acknowledging me as a woman.

Heterosexual men mostly don’t know the real differences between the sexes so they want to see me as a gay man. Human beings who take the trouble to engage me in conversation soon discover I’m not a man despite my superficial assertiveness. Those I let into my bedroom know I’m a woman.

At some stage in development a human being discovers their sex and sexuality and I believe (I knew in my case) that occurs before the physical confirmation of puberty. That some human beings will know that their anatomy is not matching their brain is inevitable and these people must be allowed to delay their puberty with a view to having surgery once considered capable of informed consent.

That is the only missing individually determined Human Right in England.

We have the rest.

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