Why shouldn’t we just go along with men who claim to be women?

Here's a primer on why: biology is real. Boundaries are necessary.

Last Saturday, I attended a meeting in Dublin about the onward march of gender ideology, which has made huge advances even in the formerly conservative Catholic country of Ireland. In a packed hotel meeting room, a spirited group of women gathered to speak about the harms being done in the name of this ideology, which has made into law that a man magically transforms into a woman by simply decreeing it so. In an indication of the level of vitriol with which the gender critical message is met, the location of the meeting was not disclosed until the last minute, as a precaution. But the event itself went off without a hitch. The topic was deeply alarming — one of the speakers, a Norwegian feminist, was questioned by police in Norway for nine hours for telling a man he could not be a mother. But the spirits were high, the speakers were feisty and funny, and the mood in the room was determined but warm.

A few days later, I was stopped in my tracks by footage from a rally of similarly-minded women in New York City last Monday. Watching it, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that, while the fight to restore sanity in Irish public discourse and legislation has a long, tough road ahead of it, at least we were not greeted by a group of violent, half-naked individuals furiously projecting some deep trauma onto the the assembled women: threatening to beat them, trying to break through a police barricade to get at them, spitting, and screaming misogynistic insults.

If anyone is still clinging to the idea that gender ideology is merely a way to promote acceptance for a diversity of sexual identities, the footage from New York should disabuse you of that notion.

It was truly frightening (as is seeing heavily armed, black-clad men —faces covered by balaclavas and hoods — “protecting” drag queen story hour.) But on the plus side, it makes very clear what the so much of the trans identity is really about: a deep, burning hatred of women. 

The star of the show at the NYC rally was undoubtedly the tall, lanky, bare-chested man whose viciousness was widely shared on social media. From the footage, he seemed to be the most aggressive in going after the Let Women Speak supporters, who were holding signs that said things like “self-love, not surgery.” Here is a sample of things this man (later identified as a model for some big-name fashion brands) screamed at women:

“Ima beat your ass bitch!”

“I will fuck you up.”

“These hands do not discriminate.”

“No man wants you.”

“These titties are more real than you will ever be, bitch!”

“Fuckin’ faggot! Dumbass bitch.”

I’ve watched the footage of this guy quite a few times. I see two different things when I watch him: a truly traumatised, probably violated, child — full of rage and pain. It’s etched on his face, it’s clearly communicated in the tone of voice. I also see the body of a grown man that presents a clear and present danger in its size and strength. Whatever happened to this young man that caused him to act out like this, no woman should be forced into physical proximity with him. He’s clearly and demonstrably a threat.

Where the United States is now, Ireland could soon be. That was, in part, the message of the speakers in Dublin last week. While much ground has already been lost — gender self-id has been law since 2015, for example —Ireland has a few built-in defences against the worst of American excess. People here tend to be self-effacing and cordial, less prone to public temper tantrums. But true believers in the church of gender are dangerous no matter how they present themselves to the world, because they demand that everyone, not just them, adhere to a great lie: that it is possible to change your sex. Because their foundational principle is such an enormous lie, they must get as many people as possible not just to believe it, but to live it, and scream it from the rafters. The boundaries of other’s  be damned. Without such colonisation, they might be forced to see their ideology for what it truly is: monstrously, delusionally, anti-human. In New York last week, the misbegotten, true nature at the heart of their PR campaign showed itself in all its derangement and violence. 

For people who don’t follow this issue closely, it’s possible that I sound alarmist, or worse. But what must be understood is that the word ‘trans’ is actually an umbrella term for a widely divergent group of people whose only commonality is they believe that changing what’s on the outside with extreme plastic surgery and synthetic hormones, will fix how they feel on the inside.

Other than that, what does an autistic 14 year old girl, extremely anxious about growing breasts and starting her period, have in common with a middle-aged married father who is turned on by wearing his wife’s underwear? What does a small, gay boy who is terrified by the rough and tumble play of his classmates and longs to just play with the little girls have in common with an autogynephilic homeless man who gets off on homeless women being forced to undress in front of him? In these different groups, the very young and very vulnerable children deserve support, understanding, and help. They are harmless to everyone but themselves. But don’t call me phobic for refusing to countenance that help for a distressed child should come in the shape of genital mutilation and sterilisation. And as for the grown men who are getting off on being able to dominate women in their private spaces? The men who spit on women in the public square for daring to tell them they are wrong? They just need to be stopped. 

In Dublin last week, bestselling author Helen Joyce made this point to great effect. She also pointed out that the trans ideology — its obvious flaws notwithstanding — has “managed to hook on to all the wrong metaphors. It’s better to think about like an eating disorder than a civil rights issue,” Joyce said. The fact that more and more of the children who are identifying as trans are girls makes this comparison even more apt. 

In a haunting echo of Ireland’s past, where the power of a church fused with the power of the state to commit terrible crimes against women and children, one of the speakers in Dublin described the gender ideologues as Ireland’s “new priestly class.” 

Colette Colfer, a poet who was cancelled for reading aloud a poem she wrote called Woman, identified this new caste as “the representatives of the LGBT groups who have the direct ear of the government.”

In much of the developed world, it has become an act of bravery just to state what every man, woman and child deep down knows to be true. Therefore it is imperative that more of us do it.