For centuries, long before hostilities began in the so-called ‘culture wars’, the response to those troubled individuals living with any kind of identity or sex dysphoria was, on the whole, an almost diffident, sympathetic silence.
More recently, as the delusional ideology of ‘gender identity’ became more prevalent, the general response developed into something that might be described as a reluctant but broadly agreeable accommodation: the vast majority of reasonable, clear-minded individuals were content not to interfere with the private, personal idiosyncrasies of other people: “What harm can it do?”
This accommodation proved to be futile: unscrupulous forces began to make ‘the money sign’ in realisation of an opportunity to indoctrinate successive generations of ‘gender-confused’ recruits into a lifetime of uncertainty, dependency, and suffering at the hands of gender-identity ideologues and their activist acolytes. A malevolent money tree.
Things then deteriorated further, and became far more concerning. Consequently, this response of agreeable accommodation was replaced by a period of reactive resistance, where individuals vilified by their employer, union, or professional body, sought justice through such as employment tribunals. With the dedication, determination, and expertise of (among others) the Free Speech Union, injustices were frequently redressed—but not always.
The establishment of the first Sex Equality and Equity Network (SEEN), in the UK Civil Service in October 2022, was both ground-breaking and encouraging. The original SEEN was the inspiration for many other SEENs in both the public and private sectors: SEEN in the City, Police SEEN, SEEN in HR, SEEN in Parliament, and several others—including Local Authority SEEN, which, had it been established four years earlier I would most certainly have joined. But gender ideology is so deeply embedded in public sector organisations, I regret to say that while they are making every attempt to engage, the SEENs are making slow and fragile progress.
I believe the next stage must involve intensifying and increasing our active resistance (of course, I’m aware that any response beyond reactive resistance must also in some sense be reactive). This will include advocating and arguing for a demonstrable, overt gender-critical presence (beyond the recent advances won by SEENs) in the workplace, public sector organisations and institutions, and in wider society. People who share gender-critical views must be able to declare so, without fear of sanction or recrimination. Self-identification must go, if for no other reason that for it to be equally applied universally would necessitate the acceptance of an absurd phantasmagoria.
We should also consider how we might further engage in pre-emptive resistance: a more determined appraisal and oversight of the education of our children; the inculcation, from an early age, of a sustaining value culture based in reality and science; the teaching of critical thinking (and how to guard against the techniques used by bad actors to misappropriate language and meaning); the cultivation of self-confidence and an instinctive ability to reject the nonsense of fantasy ideologies. Encouraging all children to be their own forerunners.
In the workplace, despite my personal lack of success, we should enquire of prospective employers what provisions they have in place for those who share gender-critical beliefs: is there a functioning SEEN employee network; are gender-critical employees supported to openly manifest their beliefs in the workplace in the same way as other employees (e.g., specifically designated gender-critical pronouns, if desired); is there evidence of the systematic erasure of women (such as in the NHS) and/or the misappropriation of language in corporate policies (as in, once again, the NHS). Exercising our free will by refusing to engage with all organisations demonstrably seeking to destroy the sex-based rights of women and girls and those who share gender-critical beliefs (including those who are yet to discover their gender-critical sensibilities).
In consumerism, following the example of Robby Starbuck in fighting for ‘neutrality and sanity’ in corporate culture, we must expose, resist, and consciously reject all those companies signing up to EDI strategies such as the Stonewall Equality Index and the various other so called ‘Inclusion’ schemes; and renounce even our long-favoured charities (such as the Royal British Legion) that have succumbed to the EDI ideologues.
Those ‘No debate’ activists who promote the insidious ideology of self-identification and its pernicious erosion of safe spaces for women and girls cannot be negotiated with any longer. This is my belief and my manifesto of resistance.
1. I believe in biology.
2. I believe in the right of every individual to live in peace and safety, and to ‘present’ however they choose under the law; and that everyone has the right to be treated with mutual respect and dignity.
3. I believe that every child has the absolute right to safeguarding provisions and protection from physical, psychological, and emotional harm, whether that originates within or outside the family structure.
4. I believe in freedom of thought, religion and belief (Article 9) and freedom of expression (Article 10) as defined in the European Convention of Human Rights; and in the fundamental rights embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
5. I believe that sex is biologically immutable, that there are only two sexes in human beings, and that this is fundamentally linked to reproductive biology.
6. I believe that women are adult human females and men are adult human males; that if a biological male claims to be a woman that is essentially untrue, even if that person has obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate; there is no spectrum in sex; and it is impossible to change from one sex to the other, a person is either one or the other, there is nothing in between.
7. I associate and have always associated social gender with binary sex; and I believe that the Gender Recognition Act (2004) construes social gender in terms of binary sex, referring, as it does, to gender in binary terms: ‘either gender’, ‘living in the other gender’, ‘if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman’.
8. I believe, as argued by the British philosopher Kathleen Stock in Material Girls (2021), that the Gender Recognition Act and the Gender Recognition Certificate together put in place a ‘legal fiction’ regarding the possibility of sex change, that to immerse oneself in a fiction is a matter of personal choice, and that ‘It’s not hateful in itself to refuse to immerse yourself in a given fiction and to choose instead to refer to facts’.
9. I reject the conceptualisation of ‘gender identity’ as anything other than ‘the sense of knowing to which sex one belongs’, the unambiguous definition described by Robert Stoller and Ralph Greenson, the psychiatrists who coined the term.
10. I assert that nowhere is there a clear definition of ‘gender’ as a synonym for ‘sex’, that neither the Equality Act (2010) nor the Gender Recognition Act (2004) provide a coherent definition of the term, and that all current attempts at a definition are circular and therefore meaningless.
11. I will question the use of the term ‘gender’ whenever and wherever it is used as a synonym for ‘sex’ and I will challenge anyone seeking to enquire about my ‘gender’ rather than my sex.
12. I will train myself to refrain from using the adjective ‘biological’ to modify the nouns ‘female’, ‘male’, or ‘sex’.
13. I believe that the declaration of and the invitation to others to declare pronouns in email footers or in meetings is a political act designed to silence by intimidation anyone who opposes gender ideology.
14. I believe that the insistence of others that they be referred to by pronouns based on nothing more than their feelings is an attempt to effect a form of control and manipulation; it is offensive to my gender-critical beliefs, and I will always rather address people by their name.
15. If I am in doubt about the sex of any individual whose name I do not know, I will ask their name and refer to them by that name.
16. I believe that no public sector organisation has a mandate to adopt a policy of self-identification that excludes any particular cohort from self-identifying in the manner of their own choosing.
17. I believe that use of the terms ‘trans’ and ‘transgender’ should be resisted, with the terms ‘transsexual’, ‘transvestite’, ‘trans-identifying male’ (being of the male sex), and ‘trans-identifying female’ (being of the female sex) to be preferred as applicable.
18. I believe that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is not fit for purpose and should be revised and amended to either remove all reference to ‘gender’ or, for the first time, unambiguously define ‘gender’ in terms of the immutable characteristics of binary sex.
19. In line with the fundamental principle of equality for all, I call upon all employers to restrict the content of email footers to include only a name, job title, and contact details; and to explicitly prohibit the inclusion of any form of secondary message, slogan, or pronoun set. If this is unacceptable, because the employer wishes or is compelled by law to facilitate or promote self-identification, then I advocate for the inclusion of specific gender-critical designated pronouns for those who wish to self-identify in that manner. For gender-critical males, this could be (ahm/ahms), derived from ‘adult human male’; for gender-critical females, (ahf/ahfs), derived from ‘adult human female’.
20. The Cass Review’s Interim Report stated that the social transitioning of children is ‘not a neutral act’, but advised: ‘it should also be recognised that ‘doing nothing’ cannot be considered a neutral act’. Accordingly, I support Recommendation 2 in the Cass Review’s Final Report, that children presenting with any kind of identity dysphoria should undergo ‘a holistic assessment of their needs [which] should include screening for neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, and a mental health assessment’.
21. I believe that until a precise definition of the term ‘gender’ as a synonym for ‘sex’ is formulated and agreed—one that unequivocally excludes predatory males from any general definition of trans-identifying men—those individuals living with genuine conditions of identity or sex dysphoria will continue to be politically exploited by extreme ‘trans’ activists, and women’s single-sex spaces will remain compromised.
22. I believe that it is time for women and girls to refuse to participate in any sporting or other competitive same-sex activity that undermines their essential femaleness by allowing the participation of trans-identifying males.
23. I believe that self-identification is the most pernicious tenet of gender ideology and is directly responsible for the indoctrination of children in schools; the social transitioning of minors; the misogynistic erosion of sex-based rights and safe spaces for women and girls; the erasure of lesbians; the homophobic attempts to ‘trans away the gay’ in vulnerable gender dysphoric children; the relentless attack on academic freedoms and pedagogy; the workplace victimisation of people who challenge the insidious creep of gender ideology; and the capture of public sector organisations, institutions and authorities that have a duty of political impartiality.
24. I believe that the time for the complete rejection of self-identification has arrived.