22 December: Progress has been made this year, but there’s still capture everywhere we look

Let’s start by noting how good it was last week to hear a government minister calling out the dangers of relativism. Yes, it’s sad that this has become necessary, but it was good to hear, nonetheless. We’re going to resist the temptation to focus on Foucault here, however. But we’re grateful that Liz Truss is continuing her fight against those who believe that “there is no objective view — [that] truth and morality are all relative”.

We say ‘continuing’, because this reference clearly interlocks with the fight that Truss is leading against the morality-free-zone of gender-identity activism — and particularly with regards to her commitment to protecting children from its dangerous zealots. Maybe you think we’re exaggerating? Read on. Though first we’d better reiterate, once again, our firm commitment to free expression and equal respect.

At Radical, we firmly believe that people should be able to behave freely in line with whatever sex-based stereotypes they wish, as long as doing so is not harmful to others. But the last few months have really served to emphasise the extreme capture of our institutions by the activists claiming to represent the ‘gender diverse’. These activists lie, exploit, and harm. They are the overriding reason equality laws are so badly understood in this country. They have misrepresented these laws at every turn, disinforming the nation by corrupting the public documents that are published and disseminated by our health service, police forces, councils, education system, and more. They are the overriding reason for the Tavistock scandal. It is owing to these activists' insidious behaviour that vulnerable children referred to UK gender clinics have been left with their mental health problems undiagnosed and untreated, their bodies subjected to experimental drugs, and their physical and mental development threatened in ways many of them will probably never now be able to fully understand.

If we had one wish for the new year, it would be for the true extent of what has been going on to be fully and publicly examined and understood. And for those who have failed these children — the adults charged with their care, and the adults who disinformed and emotionally blackmailed those charged with these duties of care — to be held properly responsible.

That this capture continues is all too evident, regardless of the important progress made this year. This progress is thanks to Truss, and to all who have pushed for the good — from Maya Forstater to Keira Bell, via Kathleen Stock and Alice Sullivan, and so many others in between.

Pressing examples of ongoing capture can be found in the paperwork pertaining to two of this year’s Law Commission consultations. One of these consultations, which closed for public submission last week, is focused on laws surrounding online communications. The other, which closes on Christmas Eve, is on the reform of UK hate crime laws. We’ve spent the past couple of weeks writing Radical submissions to these consultations, and have been deeply concerned by what we’ve read. Particularly so, considering the Law Commission’s supposed role, as a statutory independent body, whose responsibilities include “ensur[ing] that the law is as fair, modern, simple and as cost-effective as possible”.

A key concern we flagged in our submission to the first of these consultations relates to the commission’s decision to include ‘gender’ – rather than sex – in the list of “relevant characteristics” that it proposes should be taken into account when assessing the likelihood of a piece of online communication causing harm to any particular individual. Now, we fear that the commission’s suggestion that law-makers should rely — when determining how to assess whether harm has been caused, here — both on the subjective notion of likelihood (as in “likely harm” caused to a “likely audience”) and on “relevant characteristics”, would, if it were to be followed, have a chilling general effect on free speech in this country. But beyond that, the choice to focus on ‘gender’ over sex is telling. Alongside the commission’s uncritical use of related disputed terms, such as “gender identity” and “cisgender” — and its worrying description of sex being “assigned at birth” — this betrays all-too-familiarly the kind of institutional capture we discussed above, and have reported so many times in our writing.

Similarly, that the commission accepts that the “misgendering” of trans people is something that would be deemed capable of causing harm, within the terms of the new offence that they've proposed relating to online communications, indicates the direction of travel of such an offence. It would surely be used, amongst other political purposes, to silence people who wished to speak of their scientifically-sound belief that sex is immutable, and of why this is important. And those who do not accept that recognition of a person’s ‘gender identity’ should be compelled by law.

There’s vastly more we could say about the commission’s proposal for a new online communication offence. Foremost here is probably our concern about the way in which the bar for the level of “harm” that would give rise to the offence is set so low as to be objectively meaningless. This is because it depends entirely on subjective, even hypothetical, assessment. No actual harm of any kind to any actual person would be required for an offence to have taken place. Rather, only a “likelihood” that some person who might “likely” be “harmed” might encounter the relevant communication. Indeed, the proposal specifically envisages that the “victim” would not be expected to provide evidence of any harm. On top of this, again, is the commission's choice to focus on the subjective notion of ‘gender’ — rather than sex, which is objectively determinable.

All of this would inevitably entail astonishingly wide discretion for the police and prosecutors in deciding which matters to pursue. And would have the clear potential to be instrumentalised by individuals and groups to pursue personal or political grievances. But none of this is surprising, given the commission’s open admission, in the documentation pertaining to the hate crime consultation, that its aim is to “build” on the existing corpus of hate crime law. This is the corpus that brought into play this dangerous type of accuser-driven subjective assessment of crime.

Analysing these Law Commission documents is depressing work. Writing submissions to its consultations is time-consuming and frustrating, not least coming so soon after the deadline for submissions to the Women and Equalities Committee’s inquiry on gender recognition. We could spend every day, every hour, on these matters. Evidence of capture — and actual harm — is everywhere we look, and fightback against the fightback is well and truly underway. But we’ll continue to push for an adherence to truth in these matters in the new year. And for as long as it takes.

21 July: An open letter to Liz Truss

Dear Liz,

As you know, we’ve been thinking hard about sex and gender issues. We launched our Radical campaign last November, with the aim of searching out the truth, from a position committed to freedom, tolerance, and equal respect. As planned, we’ve engaged with people from across the political spectrum, and learned lots from researchers, activists, practitioners, and more. We’re writing to you now to share our latest thoughts, ahead of your expected announcement on the outcome of the consultation on reforms to the Gender Recognition Act.

Our initial instincts haven’t changed much, although our concern has grown, greatly, the more we’ve learned. Our view remains that people who choose to act in ways stereotypically associated with membership of the opposite biological sex should be treated just as respectfully as anyone else, all other things being equal. But also, that this doesn’t equate to believing that the law should mandate that biological men must be treated as women, and vice versa, solely on their demand – via ‘self-ID’. That would not only risk a downgrading of the value of truth in our society, it would have serious detrimental consequences for the policy prescriptions that seek to ensure equal opportunity, and the social-science research and records that inform these policies. It would also constitute a safety risk to girls and women, by effectively outlawing single-sex spaces and services.

Our view also remains that, if adults wish to seek medical intervention to make their bodies resemble those of members of the opposite sex, they should be free to do so. But, that in the case of children, such interventions are always wrong: over the past year, we’ve grown even more committed to fighting against these interventions, which equate to child abuse.

We’ve been grateful to write for ConservativeHome, once a fortnight, about why we hold these views — sharing what we’ve learned with the conservative community. We were aware that many people on the centre-right weren’t engaged with these matters, and we’ve sought to change that.

On that topic, as you’ll know, there’s been a recent flurry of polling and campaigning on sex and gender matters. We believe that the results of recent polls – and how they’ve been reported – serve to illustrate public confusion about relevant current laws, and the reforms that’ve been proposed. This confusion is persistently manifested in mainstream-media reportage, in policy documents published by state bodies, and in statements by high-profile commentators and politicians. This confusion, as we’ve written here many times, has been propagated by a set of powerful activists, who’ve seized on the uncertainty they’ve sown, to advance their political cause.

Pink News – the chosen media outlet of many of these activists – recently published, with great fanfare, the finding that most women in Britain support the right of transpeople to self-identify. This, they proclaimed, means that the law must be changed to remove the current procedural requirements for obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (the document that legally changes a person’s sex). However, what Pink News has actually done, is to highlight – inadvertently, no doubt – the reason why maintaining these controls on changing legal sex is so important. And also, how the retention of these controls is not only expected by the public, but that these controls are not generally seen as illiberal, or as ‘denying the existence’ of transpeople.

More detailed polling, subsequently released by YouGov, does indeed show high levels of support for people being able to self-identify their gender. But it also shows much lower levels of support for the idea of transwomen using women-only facilities, and serious disagreement — from almost all sections of society — with the idea that the legal ‘gender’-change process should be ‘made easier’. It also shows widespread opposition to people who’ve not had gender-reassignment surgery using facilities reserved for the opposite sex. This is a crushing blow to those claiming that self-identified gender identity should solely determine one’s entitlements regarding single-sex services. It reflects the traditional understanding that ‘sex’ relates to membership of the biological sets of male or female, and that ‘gender’ relates to stereotypical societal understandings of masculinity and femininity.

As you know, we’re fully committed to free expression, and we’ve stressed many times that we’ll die on the hill for people to be allowed to dress and act however they like. But that doesn’t mean that men – adult human males – should be housed in women’s refuges or prison wings.

Now, you’ll be aware of current siren calls for ‘compromise’, rippling through Conservative Party circles. Common to these is the claim that a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) is ‘just a piece of paper’ – and, that, if a GRC makes a vulnerable transperson feel more secure and validated, then what’s the harm in making GRCs available, on demand? Well, those making such calls simply cannot be aware of the realities of the current relevant laws – and the repercussions such a change would have. It would not only make it much harder to exclude men from women-only spaces, it would also destabilise all manner of legal structures, from equal pay, to sex discrimination law, to criminal law.

Sadly, the truth is that, as a society, we’ve moved beyond the opportunity of dealing with these matters at the level of individual choice and decency. We urgently need laws that clearly prevent men seeking residency in women’s refuges and prisons; that prevent men rendering women’s sport null; and, yes, that even help to prevent men using women’s toilets. This is an extremely depressing, yet fully accurate conclusion. And, yes, the current laws are imperfect. In an ideal world, they would be torn up and rewritten, but – unless you have the time to do that (!) – then we are where we are, and the inevitable negative effects of changing these laws must be accepted.

So we urge you to resist the calls for so-called ‘compromise’, and to see through your commitment to protecting single-sex spaces, and to maintaining checks and balances in the gender-recognition process. Neither of those commitments can be honoured by allowing self-ID. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to help support transpeople, and those suffering from gender dysphoria. Aside from small, genuine, unharmful direct compromises — such as removing the fee from seeking a GRC — foremost in these positive actions should be to improve resources for young people. It must be ensured that children and teenagers get the proper support they need — and they must be protected from being instrumentalised and abused by political activists and politicised medical professionals.

Beyond that, we believe your priority should be to meet the urgent need for the review and clarification of formal guidance around relevant law. On all the YouGov questions, between 21 and 30 per cent of people answered ‘don’t know’. This is unsurprising, given the arcane nature of much of the debate, and — as previously emphasised — the confusing and often seriously manipulated advice that government departments and local authorities have been publishing and endorsing.

With very best wishes,

Rebecca and Victoria

7 April: A response to the FLaG ‘Attitudes to Gender’ survey results

At the moment, it can feel wrong to be reading — or writing — about anything except Covid-19. One justification for thinking about other things is that the reason we’re all so concerned about Covid is that we care about the world it affects: the societies, the relationships, the people. On that justification, it seems ok to write about anything that usually matters, and continues to do so. But this can still feel out of kilter. Maybe a better, related justification is that other people aren’t stopping: they’re not stopping doing good and bad things, which aren’t directly about Covid. So, if we don’t keep our eyes open, then changes might happen, without us realising, or getting involved when otherwise we’d have thought we should. Of course, many people aren’t able to get involved at the moment; but those of us who are shouldn’t feel too bad about doing so. 

When we launched Radical, it didn’t seem likely that one of us would start an article with this kind of apology/justification. After all, a key Radical aim is to help people recognise that our focus — sex and gender — is, itself, an important one. Many people, particularly on the centre-right, haven’t realised this yet.

So, we think this topic is important. But we also feel it’s important to get the message out that a set of people are controlling the topic’s agenda in such a way that, even if you don’t think it’s important now, you’ll be detrimentally affected by it sooner or later. To my mind, alongside serious concerns about ongoing harms to vulnerable children, the most dangerous of the ways the agenda is being driven is in a direction towards an opposition to science. Although I’ve previously written about how science isn’t the only route to truth, there’s no denying (except by these deniers..) that things that are unscientific cannot be true.

I’m not now going to make some detailed science-denial comparison between people propagating the idea that there’s no such thing as biological sex — that babies are ‘assigned’ a sex at birth, by some unconsciously-biased doctor — and people who, say, don’t believe in vaccines. You can do that yourself, and consider the risks involved, not least in a time of pandemic (and one affecting biological men and women differently). Rather, I want to talk about the people — academics — you might expect to be leading the charge against a denial of truth and the value of the empirical method.

I want to draw your attention to a recent piece of research, carried out by the Future of Legal Gender project (FlaG) — a project looking into whether the UK should adopt a ‘self-ID’ approach to legal gender status.

The research in question is a survey on ‘attitudes to gender’, and its results came out last week. That said, both parts of my previous sentence are contestable: I’ll get on to the ‘surveyness’ of the survey in a moment, but first I want to note the lack of a publication date. If you click on the link above, what you’ll find is some pages of infographics: I can’t find the full dataset, anywhere. But the lack of dates on these pages is particularly problematic, as various people are claiming the survey’s results have been ‘slipped out’ during a time in which general attention is understandably elsewhere — and I’d like to know if that’s true. It’s certainly true that on the FLaG homepage’s ‘latest updates’ section, there’s a reference to the “three new infographics summarising some of the findings from our Attitudes to Gender survey”, under the words “March 2020”. But, alongside the infographics, are two blogs commenting on results from the survey, dated September and November — neither of which link to, umm, full results. This all seems odd.

Anyway, let’s turn to the substance of the pages. The first obvious point is that they do not report results from a balanced survey: the infographics page entitled ‘Survey Demographics’ shows that 71 per cent of respondents were (i.e., presumably, self-identified as) women, 48 per cent were left wing, and 64 per cent were middle class:

Now, if you read the blogs, you’ll see that this imbalance has been a matter of concern for the project’s leaders. They seem to believe their results were skewed by a load of gender-critical opponents having shared the survey around. (Remember, ‘gender critical’ refers to people who, like us at Radical, believe that sex is biologically determined, gender is a social construct, and that a shift to self-ID would be wrong and dangerous, not least for the risks it would pose to vulnerable women). Here’s FlaG’s conclusion:

“An online survey, anonymous as it is and with distance created between the researchers and the researched, is not the optimum research method for furthering connection and mutual appreciation. It has the potential to encourage the “research participant keyboard warrior.”

Shame that FLaG hadn’t thought about that beforehand, you might think. Or, if you’re feeling cynical, perhaps they did, but expected a different kind of ‘keyboard warrior’ to be filling the survey in. After all — although it’s claimed on their site that “[o]ur project is neither straight-forwardly in favour of nor against sex and/or gender being defined purely by individuals themselves” — total objectivity seems unlikely for a project that is “currently exploring the implications of abolishing or radically reforming the legal gendering of personhood”, and which published a blog entitled ‘Moving beyond the binary? The enduring power of biological sex in our survey responses’ (my italics, for emphasis).

Because, yes, as you’ve guessed, the infographics show a pretty strong opposition to self-ID:

There are other results it’s easy to imagine FlaG’s leaders weren’t too happy about, either. And I’d go into more detail, but, while you might think I’d be pleased by these results, the survey seems so flawed — not least in the bias, inconsistency, and lack of clarity in its question wording —  that there seems little value in doing so.

Rather, I have a general comment. My incomplete trawl of this project’s output leaves me frustrated: the passive-aggressive barrages of citation, the self-complimenting virtue signalling, the hiding-in-plain-sight lack of transparency, and more. Now, I’m a big fan of free speech, and the value of searching out knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But this kind of work not only gives higher education a bad name, it eats up limited funding, leaves students feeling pressured into espousing dogma for the sake of educational capital, and makes our society ever more divided between the privileged few who have time to spend on ‘critical’ post-modernist obfuscation, and everyone else.

Radical stands for freedom as well as truth; we’ll die on the hill for the right of anyone to act (harmlessly) in line with whatever sex-based stereotypes they want. But taxpayer-funded academics must be called out if they’re trying to sneakily push through serious legislative change, which they can’t even get enough of their mates to support in a dodgy survey.

RML Lowe