Today I was asked a type of question I find myself being asked again and again, particularly by women who would otherwise be liberal-thinking, who value the idea that everyone can live their life freely and how they wish, yet find themselves disagreeing with transgender ideology and particularly the sacrifices the acceptance of this ideology makes on them.
“As a teacher, I have a number of students who are identifying as transgender and I desperately want to support them and to be an ally to trans people, but without accepting the erosion of my identity as biologically female. How would you advise a secondary teacher such as myself to support these children?”
Wow that’s a question. It’s further complicated by the fact that those who do not support the transgender dogma unconditionally are relentlessly persecuted for ‘hate’, no disagreement is allowed.
I think we need to look at ways of helping children and young (and older!) adults happy in their own skin, and with their own sexuality/orientation. There is still too much bullying/stigma around being lesbian or gay, especially in schools. An incredibly serious problem is that transgenderism is a rapidly-spreading social contagion. There is influence from peers on and off the internet, I feel the Internet does have a lot to answer for. Also with our neoliberal society where ‘you can be anything you want’ we can view transgenderism not just a cultural phenomena but also a structural phenomena; what better way for patriarchy to thrive than to drive women against each other, and to eliminate the right of women to define their own spaces?
The last two hundred years have seen women’s struggle make great progress in liberating females from the control of males. Unfortunately we are sleepwalking into a situation where women and girls are having these gains clawed back by stealth.
Even worse, societies’ expectation of women’s sexuality is taking control away from women and a significant thrust of transgenderism is to eliminate lesbians by transitioning girls into ‘trans men’ and pushing a dogma that demands lesbians have sex with males with (or without) penises, or be called a ‘transphobe’ or bigot.
