Sara: Welcome everyone to this episode of the FiLiA Podcast. My name is Sara, I'm one of the volunteers, and I am just so happy to be joined again by Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, who is a feminist, an academic, a social theorist, and a philosopher. And we are just so thrilled to have your voice back on the podcast, Heather.

And this time we're going to be discussing your brilliant new book, Transgender Body Politics, which is published by Spinifex Press and out now, and I would encourage any listener to please go and read it. Regular listeners of course will already be familiar with you and your kind of feminist insights.

And I would also recommend to any new listeners to listen to the previous podcast discussion where you cover the transgendering of children in more detail. And we'll link to that in the description. But for now, would you be okay to just maybe tell us a little bit about yourself again to anyone who's new and  perhaps just explain to us briefly what your new book is about.

Heather: Hi, Sara. So, thank you very much for inviting me again to speak, at a podcast. And I'm so pleased you enjoyed the book. It's very strange when you are writing a book and you have no idea how it's going to be received. So, I'm very pleased that you have received it well. I think you explained quite a lot of background about me, but I will just add that, as an academic, what I have done is analyse the relationship between medicine and culture, and for your listeners’ benefit, my analysis spans the relationship between medicine and culture, really from the beginning of the 19th century to the present. This has some significance to my analysis of transgenderism. 

So, what is the book about? Well, I hope that I demonstrate that transgenderism is not a real concrete phenomenon, something that is born with something that is inside us.

That was a major motivating factor for writing the book, because I think that the belief that transgenderism is real, it's concrete, has done a lot of damage to women and to women's rights and to children's rights. In particular, it's a narrative that has done a lot of damage to how women can talk about, think about and express their own agency and the realities of their bodies. The ideology, trans ideology's been so successful that the general population even, including medicine, law, social policy, had taken on the set of beliefs as actual truth.

And this has had dire consequences, as I've just already said. So, the purpose of the book was to draw attention to these, what seems like disparate areas. So often people think well, you know, the transgendering of children is a different issue as to whether, you know, men who identify as women are allowed in to compete in women's sports, or whether we should change the Gender Recognition Act 2004, reform it, so that men who identify as women can sign a document to say that they truly are women.

These seem like disparate issues, but in fact, they all belong to a central source. And the central source is the ideas behind transgenderism as being an internal, inherent property of the person. And I wanted to draw all of this together to show how the jigsaw pieces link together because until we know how it all fits together, in a way we can't successfully dismantle it.

I talk about it in the book like as an empire, all the different parts of it construct an empire. If we are to challenge the empire, we have to understand how all the different parts are working together. So, fighting to resist men's inclusion in prisons, for example, or resisting as we have done successfully, as gender critical feminists, the reform of the Gender Recognition Act, or being very concerned about the practices towards children, the medicalisation of children in gender identity development services. 

Thankfully, many of us have fought at these different sites and targeted these different sites, which has been fantastic. But what we need to do is understand how they interlock with each other and that was the purpose of writing the book. I hope I have been successful, but time will tell. 

Sara: I think you have done a really successful job of piecing together these different things, because I think in a way, the way you explain it and the way that I certainly have seen it is we are, I'm going to use that analogy here of that jigsaw puzzle, but it's almost like, you know, like a thousand pieces and you're not quite entirely sure how the picture is all going to fit together. And you, you almost don't really know where to start. 

And I think actually that's the question I'd like to ask next, which is the politics of this and the issues I think almost deliberately probably get portrayed as just a niche thing or just a bit of paperwork, or just this or just that. And nothing individually for women to worry about. But actually, it's this really kind of almost unbelievably complex thing. So how did you even begin to look at this question, in a way that doesn't make it sound like you've gone completely mad.

Heather: [Laughs]. Well, the truth is, I almost have felt like I've gone completely mad with it. It's a bit like, seeing something, and seeing something – a real threat – and wanting to alert people to it, but other people not seeing it. That in itself is a strange thing to live with for the number of years that I've lived with it. I have been doing research into this since 2016, so it's nearly four years now. 

Yes, I think the way it's been portrayed and successfully portrayed by trans rhetoric is, look, the reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is, it's just, it's just an administrative thing. It makes, it's going to make trans people's lives much easier. It only affects a tiny minority of people. And because of this, why don't you feminists, people who are not feminists, women, who are not feminists, why don't you just be kind to us and, and let this go through, because it's not going to affect you in any way whatsoever.

That's been a very powerful thesis. And one, I have to say that the Conservative government who proposed reforming the Gender Recognition Act, under Teresa May, it propounded that view. It's difficult for people who don't keep their eye on this particular ball, to not think of it in any other way, but we have to think about it in another way. It's very important to think about it in another way because that is an absolute lie. The idea that this is just a tiny thing that's happening, it's of no import, is a lie. And I hope the book exposes that it is a lie. And by saying that, that sounds like a very strong word to use. It's not one that I would've begun to use in 2016 because I was very, of course, I want everybody to be able to express themselves as they wish, and I don't want to police anybody in terms of their identity or how they want to express themselves.

But I discovered that actually it's a very authoritarian movement and it, and it hides its authoritarianism. And in that sense, the language of it, so “it's not really important” masks what is actually going on. So, in attempting to draw attention to this, I have found myself talking about what seems almost surreal things.

I try to explain to people that, it's very difficult when we think of pregnant fathers, when we describe the ability of men to get pregnant or that lesbians can have penises. And I hear myself saying these things and think, you know, these people are going to think I've completely and absolutely lost the plot. Because of course, this is the sort of quagmire into which one is pulled in analysing this, that I have to discuss concepts, which is so bizarre.

But the bizarreness lies in the trans ideology, it doesn't lie with me. But in order to expose the trans ideology, I have to use those terms. So, in some kind of odd way, the responsibility for explaining such bizarre concepts lies with the critic rather than the person themselves that is claiming, for example, to be a lesbian who happens to have a penis.

So I'd like to draw attention to the fact that what trans rights activists don't want, actually, is you to talk about genitals, because the minute you start to talk about genitals, for example, that men can be pregnant or you know, lesbians can have penises, what you do is expose the ridiculousness of these concepts. So, there is an embargo really from trans activists on talking about genitals. So, I say that it's, if there is an embargo on something, it's probably the very thing that we need to do. If we can't talk about it, it's probably the very thing that we need to talk about. If we are not even allowed to think it because it's prurient, it seems prurient, then it's probably the thing that we should think about.

Sara: I think the other thing is just, I wondered, when we're discussing genitals, I actually think perhaps one of the things that might be useful for us to highlight is the fact that it's beyond that, right? It's the sexed bodies that are becoming increasingly taboo. If you have, for example, genital alteration, it still doesn't change your fundamental sex, as it were. And it's somehow, we don't want to talk about genitals, but it's almost like they're using genitals as a proxy for sex. And that the taboo subject in my view is the kind of basics of reproduction and the basics of reproductive biology as a whole, as systems, rather than even just genitals that they're seemingly quite dismissive of us even mentioning or saying anything about.

Heather: Right. You are absolutely right about that. So, the purpose of not talking about genitals is that if we talk about genitals, what we will do is we will be eventually led back to sex difference. We'll be eventually led back to dimorphic sex difference, that between men and women, that there are two sexes. And that is the very thing that we are being asked to, to not think about. Because as long as we have the fantasy that it is actually possible to change sex, then we can dismiss sex as a reality. And what becomes reality is gender identity. It's a conceptual move, which has been really, really important. If we start thinking in terms of gender identity, rather than biological sex, as the phenomenon to be concerned with, then biology can be let go of. That is very powerful, and it's through letting go of biology that we let go of women's rights. So, the whole thing, as we talked about before, sort of fits together as in jigsaw puzzle pieces. 

We could take any person who performs femininity in a very extreme way and uses female pronouns and so on. It's very difficult for the ordinary person and for gender critical feminists to – or anyone else – to not see the person as being actually female. So, the claim that the gender identity is the most important thing, so a man can feel feminine, can be actually female in some way, even though he has a male body, has become so much part of the general understanding about this, that it's almost offensive to return to the body. So that offensiveness, that actually men who identify as women now, who have silicone breasts, who perform femininity in a very exaggerated way, do have penises. Most men do still retain their genitals. And if they don't, even if they had an operation to excise them, they would still be medical patients for life, is not at all glamorous. All kinds of bodily effects take place. But the glamour provides a sheen over the top of this so that nobody inspects or critiques or even dares think about what is actually happening to the body. 

Sara: Looking at it from a feminist lens, and I think this was something that's been in the news lately or there's been quite a number of organisations now who have decided deliberately to lose any sort of word or any sort of language that describes specifically reproductive biology or features that are specific to the female sex. And so, I think that's why this topic is so pertinent in the way that it's almost like, it's very little in some ways to do with trans as trans, if that makes sense. It's, it is about how this ideology, as you put it, affects us as women, affects the female sex. And that's why it's such a big problem for feminists.

Heather: Absolutely it is, because what happens is that if we focus on gender identity and see that as the main issue, and if it becomes in popular culture that having a gender identity is something to do with, respecting a person's gender identity is something to do with, their human rights, to choose their own gender, which sounds fairly innocuous, but in reality what is happening is this is a men's rights movement. It's clearly a men's rights movement in the following ways. The organisations are now erasing “woman” from their language. I think, we could take the La Leche League, which is an organization that helps support women who are breastfeeding. It is one of the organisations that is now erasing the word women, so I think they talk about “human milk producers”, something like that. Janice Turner, who's a Times journalist, is collecting information about all the different organisations, which are erasing the word woman, and again, it's to do with women's biology. It's women's biology that is being erased. 

Interestingly, it doesn’t work the other way. Men are not being asked to change their language about their own bodies. They're not described as “prostate holders”. They are not asked to not call themselves men anymore. It's women who are being asked to budge over and allow all the language about bodies, about, what it is to be a woman, to men who identify as women.

It is fascinating the way that such men can talk about what we can say about bodies, what we can say about vaginas, what we can say about breasts. They are determining our language, but we as women are forbidden to do so. And the organisations that are complying with this, it's really shocking. It's frightening. It's really frightening because it's going beyond language. It's about institutional capture. So, our institutions are now using the language, trans activist language. And when women resist or rebel, it seems as if it's us women who are the extremists. So, we have to fight this. We really have to fight it. So, this goes back to, it's not a tiny issue that as women we can just ignore, which is how it's presented. This is going to affect all women and children, boys as well as girls. And it's something we need to take very, very seriously indeed. 

To return to the issue of lesbians with penises as it were, or the embargo in talking about genitals is connected with this. It's not disconnected from, it's absolutely connected with it. What trans language wants us not to do, is for women to have a language about female bodies, because of course, if we have a language about female bodies, then our politics can be – and ethics are – based on our female bodies, or emerge from the fact that we have female bodies.

Sara: Absolutely. And then female bodies are considered a separate entity which cannot, in any reasonable way, be claimed by males. And so, there is that sort of distinction there, I think, which it seems to me is being systematically attacked. 

Heather: This is why we keep having to return to physical, biological reality. Because if we don't, it seems quite reasonable that a man could choose to be a woman, but it isn't reasonable, for the reasons we've talked about, but what we have to do is point out constantly that men are actually men and they can never, ever actually become female. We have to expose the lie to get back to physical details again.

For those men who have vaginoplasty, for example. The vagina is an organ. It is a very specific organ with specific functions and capacities. The creation of a vagina will never give you an organ. It will create a hole which has to be continually managed, because the body, the male body will attempt homeostasis all the time and attempt to close.

There are very painful procedures which a man has to use in order to prevent that closure of the hole that's been created. This is the actual concrete reality of the men allegedly transitioning to be women. It can't happen. It doesn't happen. And it's actually quite, there are unsavoury aspects to this. Unless we talk about them, which I don't particularly want to do, but unless we talk about them, we participate in, or we help by default, participating in this fantasy that men can become women, or women indeed can become men. It is a fantasy. It's not a reality. 

Sara: And I think it's one of those things that is tied in, in some ways also with, to return to the book, the language that you use here. It's a small detail that perhaps some people might not necessarily pick up on, but one of the things you've done is to say “transwoman” all in one word instead of the more, I guess, politically correct convention of using “trans” as an adjective for the word woman. Would you be happy to unpack that for me a little bit? Why that actually makes a difference in the context of what we're talking about? 

Heather: When I use “transwoman” in the book, I put it in inverted commas because I don't believe there is such a thing as a “transwoman”, and I think we should stop using the term actually. So, to use the term “trans woman” is to participate in the lie, or the delusion, or the fantasy that trans woman is a woman, but a different kind of woman to, a biological woman; but not different because of the biology, but different because the trans woman is, you know, in the book I describe the way that in trans language, it is important for men who identify as women to call themselves women, so that women can get bifurcated.

There's the overall category of women, and this can be bifurcated into trans women or cis women. That obviously has an ideological purpose, which I talk about in the book, which I won't elaborate on now. What I really want to concentrate on now, is that if we agree that men who identify as women are “trans women” in inverted commas, what we're doing is supporting the idea that men who identify as women are actually women, not that they just identify as women, but that they actually are women. And I, out of politeness, would have with specific friends who were, who identified as women, I would have spoken in those terms to them or used personal pronouns, female personal pronouns. I don't any longer and I refuse to do that.

I'm waiting to be hauled off by the gender police force, but I won't participate in that anymore. I think it's very important that we start using the correct language. So, a man is not a woman and can never be a woman, a man can identify as a woman, and that's okay as far as I'm concerned. He can identify as a woman as much as he wants, but we can't change the law on the basis of that. And nor can a man who identifies as a woman compel me to believe that he is actually a woman. I mean, this is really important. It gets down to the politics of it, but I can just give one or two examples.

The example is if we recognise that a man who identifies as a woman isn't a woman, then we're much, we would be much more concerned as a society that we put such men in prisons with women, or that such men compete in sports. The delusion that somehow these people have become women is allowing society to tolerate all kinds of terrible injustices to women as if it's reasonable. It's not reasonable, it's unreasonable. It's completely unethical. It is eroding women's human rights to dignity, to autonomy, to agency. So, we've got to reclaim the language and not go along with trans language. 

And equally I think it's about children. I don't believe there is such a thing as a trans child, and I think we should stop saying it. If we use that language, we end up believing that there is such a thing as a trans child, and then medicalisation of children, again, it becomes something that could be regarded as quite a reasonable thing to do. Of course, there are gender dysphoric children. I'm not suggesting for one moment that there aren't, but I don't think that there are trans children as such, and I just talk about this in the book that we're discussing at the moment, Transgender Body Politics. But I've also elaborated on this idea in previous books that I've written about transgender children. So, if we talk about the trans child as a sort of objectively existing phenomenon, what actually happens is that you can get gender identity development services, which try to distinguish between those children with gender dysphoria and those children who are truly transgender. And if a child is truly transgender, then the correct thing to do would of course, would be as any humane society would do, would be to correct the body to match the truth of, the internal truth of the child. But of course, the child doesn't have an internal truth because gender itself is socially constructed.

If you want to read more about that, or explore that in further detail, do go back to previous books that I've co-edited actually with my colleague Michele Moore. It's important to reclaim the language and use it now for our own purposes in order to not be oppressed. We mustn't take on the language of the oppressor.

Now, I know that the trans rights movement portrays itself as being very, you know, as being a movement which supports those people, who are the underdogs, who are oppressed, minorities, to whom most people are phobic or bigoted. This can't be the case because the movement is so powerful. It's so powerful that people are actually afraid to even disagree with it. Institutions are afraid not to comply with the language, with the practices, with changes to the law, and even comply before the law is changed. Trans people are in a minority, but the movement is very powerful. It's well funded, it's connected with big pharma. So, we, I think as women, what we have to do is, is lose our sensibilities to wanting to protect the poor, vulnerable, underdog.

Because it's through this, the creation of this narrative that we're actually hurting ourselves, while promoting the men's rights movement to get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. Of course, I have to say here, Sara and I shouldn't have to say, of course I understand that some trans-identified people are very, very unhappy and feel very vulnerable. I understand that, of course, I understand that. I'm talking about a movement here, the politics of this movement. 

Sara: Well, one of the things that I've been thinking about actually since reading your book is that of course, yes, undoubtedly, as you say, there are vulnerable individuals. I do think that there is an ever so slight bias towards favouring people on one side of this quote unquote argument. And to my mind a lot of the times, one of the things that I find is like, but what of all of the women who are in this, whether vocally or kind of suffering in silence as it were, and what about their vulnerabilities and their mental health? And it never seems to quite be enough to, that side of the balance very rarely seems to be caveated or thought about in that same sort of way. And I wondered what your thoughts were on that. 

Heather: Well, I think it's absolutely shocking the level at which there is a disregard for the suffering of women that has occurred and is occurring through this movement. And it demonstrates to me the way that patriarchy is alive and well, patriarchy seems like, you know, again, it seems like an exaggerated term to use for this, but through the research that I've done, I've begun to realise that it's not over exaggerated to use the term patriarchy. In fact, I can't really think of another term to use, because people seem completely insensitive to the suffering of women. 

Take for example, putting men who identify as women into women's prisons. Any understanding of the biographies of women who find themselves in prison indicates that many of those women have been sexually abused or violated in some way as adults or as children. It is part of the profile of the demographic of people, of women who go into prison. The fact that a man who could have been convicted for rape could be even put into a woman's prison with his genitals intact – here I am having to talk about genitals – and that the women would just have to somehow put up with it or get over it, or accommodate him without asking anything about their human rights to refuse his presence, indicates to me that patriarchy is alive and well, but there are so many examples of this. The fact that we have apparently reasonable discussions about whether it's possible for a man who identifies as a woman to be included into women's rugby teams. 

Sara: The fact that that question even gets mooted for discussion is just so beyond what anyone would have thought was possible. 

Heather: It is absolutely shocking, isn't it? So there has been, Peter Tatchell has proudly tweeted about his interview on Sky, I think, where he talks about the fact that men who identify as women, he calls them trans women, trans women in his terms, can be actually, disadvantaged in rugby teams in comparison to women. And he gives a whole series of bizarre examples as to why this could possibly be the case. The fact that this could be seen as the sane outpourings of someone, rather than someone who's absolutely deluded and perhaps shouldn't be given airspace. It's bizarre. It's almost beyond words. 

Sara: So, you were telling me about the patriarchy and we were talking about how women were not being included at all. Women's feelings are just very rarely brought to the centre. 

Heather: By women either, which is very disturbing, so I think that talking about the patriarchy often evokes this idea that it's all men as powerful and oppressing women, who are all vulnerable. I don't think patriarchy breaks down quite in that way. I think the term patriarchy is appropriate, I mean, as a term, because the people who are being affected by this are women in fact, not men. Men's rights are not being destabilised by trans activism, but nevertheless, women are participating in the trans ideology and some men are standing with us shoulder to shoulder in resistance to it.

The fact that we can be so unconcerned as a society about this is truly shocking. And you know, and an example of it was on Woman’s Hour recently, where the Woman’s Hour presenter – when the organisations, Woman's Place UK, or Fair Play for Women, or FiLiA indeed, were mentioned as women's rights movement – felt the need to say that some people think of these organisations as transphobic.

So the minute we begin to talk about women's rights, or the taking away of women's rights, the minute we begin to talk about how this is affecting women quite brutally in so many different ways, we immediately have to put it into the category of, this might be transphobic talk on our part. So, I don't quite know what to say other than I'm still shocked by it. I'm still shocked by it. So, I have live in this world four years, as I've said, in order to research and write. And it doesn't get any better. On the whole, it hasn't got better, although the, obviously the stalling of the reform of the Gender Recognition Act is astonishing. I'm so pleased about that.

It gives cause for hope. The tanker of this movement could, can be turned around by us, which, the small grassroots movement that we are, and we’re divided as feminists, it's not a feminist movement, because feminists are divided by this. But I think the term transphobic has been so powerful again, in terms of, you know, the lexicon of trans language. The accusation of transphobia has been very, very effective. People are petrified of being seen as transphobic, but you know, why? What is this fear about it? Because, you know, we're not transphobic. Gender critical feminists are not transphobic. The slurs against us from trans activists have been astonishing.

I don't know whether there are any individual gender critical feminists that slur trans people. There may or there may not be. I'm not on social media in that way, to find out. But what I do know is that gender critical feminists have been very careful, very careful not to allow themselves to participate in a hateful movement. This isn't about hate. What gender critical feminists are doing is protecting the rights of women and children. That is our aim. 

Sara: Well, exactly. And then that's one of the questions that tends to come up, isn't it? That if it's somehow or has become transphobic to think about child safeguarding and women's sex-based rights, then perhaps it's the definition of transphobia that needs looking at, rather than anything else. 

Heather: Yeah. Exactly. 

Sara: But one of the other things that I was just thinking about when you were talking is this notion, because it seems to me when we think about why people don't speak out and the climate of fear, and I think you were discussing institutional capture and you know, these very prominent names, for example, everywhere in the media, on social media, huge institutions, and I think one of the things that really I thought was beautiful in your book was this kind of allusion, of course to the emperor's new clothes. And part of it is almost that question of, not wanting to be seen as the difficult one, of not wanting to be the one who's wrong, right? So, in some ways, it seems like there's an extra element of, let's call it female socialisation being turned against us, 

Heather: Yeah. 

Sara: In the sense of not only do you see the witch hunts against the women who probably think the same thing that you do somewhere deep down inside, but you're too afraid of saying it. But also, there's a level – and I certainly know that I've had to think about this, I don't know about you – but a level of sort of having to unpack this for oneself in the sense of saying, “well, she's right though”. And what you really, you don't want her to be right, because that means that every institution that you previously held trust for, oftentimes people, or even cultural things that you kind of have a lot of faith in, you then all of a sudden have to start letting go of that, and not even just trustworthiness, but then you start looking at it, and then you start un unpicking it a little bit more and you start seeing all the different cracks, and it's come to this point now, I don't know about you, Heather, but it's come to this point now where I see various different things and I'm like, oh, they're putting pronouns in their email, for example, or, oh, they're doing this little thing, and it's almost like a little, little bit of a red flag because I'm like, if this most bonkers, in some ways, idea that we can change our sex by self-declaration alone has somehow managed to make it to this level, then what else are you letting through? Do you know what I mean?

Heather: Absolutely. 

Sara: It's a really long-winded way of saying, that I think, and I wondered if you had a response to this, that I think that there are different kind of elements going on, that it's not just that fear, but it's that kind of a sense of loss and a sense of hopelessness perhaps, and a sense of like, of that losing of faith.

And because this is almost like a faith-based movement, it's almost so much easier to just stay within the group and pretend you believe what you believe, not only for the ostracisation, but also because you, there is a lot of things that you lose, or something like that. Do you know what I mean? 

Heather: Mm-hmm. I think I do. So, I think I'd like to take that as, respond in two different ways. Firstly, yes. I mean, we're social beings and it's very difficult to stand outside of the crowd and say that you don't believe something that the crowd is believing in. And that, of course there are many, many sanctions if you do do that. I think that we need to start saying that we don't believe, and there will come a tipping point where it'll be quite clear that the emperor doesn't have any clothes on, and we will become equivalent to the little child that points this out. I think in the fable, the little child was castigated for this. And in the end, and of course we are being castigated for this, but in the end, people will be able to say that, that they see for themselves that the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. So, there is that aspect of it. 

But I think what you are doing is drawing attention to a second part of this, which is very, very disturbing. And that is, you could sort of think to yourself, well, the emperor doesn't have any clothes on, but I'm not going to look at the emperor, so I'm just going to look away and get on with my life because this has got nothing to do with me. The more this ideology is taking hold, the more difficult it gets to turn one's face in the other direction. And then if we don't do that, if we see, little by little the ways in which the normalisation that biological sex doesn't matter, and that gender identity is the primary reality, you see the institutions, as you say, in which one has had faith, or had a sense of belonging, within it, or having a trust that those institutions were reasonable and on our side. You can see that they are falling too. They are, they have gone to the other side saying, “yes, the emperor does have clothes on, the emperor does have clothes on”. So, it distorts one's reality in so many different ways and undercuts the foundations upon which, as human beings we have to stand, because we all, we all have our place within culture and we are nothing without cultural support and social support.

The consequences of this are dramatic in every possible way. And of course, I have had personal experience of this in so many different ways, which the book talks about. One thing that was really transformative for me in this area was that, I am a Quaker and I discovered that the Quakerism which I had seen as being a place in which I could express some form of spirituality without aligning myself to biblical dogma. And Quakers, of course, have always been progressive in relation to women and to issues of sexual freedom for both men and women. It's precisely doing this, it has banned my books from the bookshop, from Quaker Bookshops. It uses personal pronouns on all, you know, members who work for the Society of Friends, or Quakers, use personal pronouns. The children are being inducted into this ideology on children's camps, the employment of Mermaids, for example, to train the people who work with children in the children's programme. And it's shocking. It's really shocking. 

I think that, you know, one is always growing up. I didn't think I'd have to do a further growing up in relation to an organisation to which I was so tied and deeply embedded. I almost don't care about it anymore, Sara. And I don't know whether, how to think about this now.  I'm talking very personally now, not about the book. But the disillusion and the ways in which I have to understand myself as standing on very, very uncertain foundations in almost every area of life, is disturbing. But it's also strangely strengthening. And that, I suppose that's what I mean by growing up. I've almost got to the point now, where I feel invulnerable. Now, as I say that, I'm aware that the minute you think you're invulnerable, it's probably when you are vulnerable. But I have a sense of absolute agency in relation to this and a refusal to be subjugated by whichever organisation. And there you go.

I've arrived at that sense of steadfastness, and it does feel that my courage is strengthened day by day and my fear gets less day by day. And of course, fear is something that can grow and thrive in the dark, and it tends to run away when light is shone on it. So, I try my best to shine a light on this, which is one of the reasons why I wrote the book and why I live my life in resistance to trans ideas, to what I think of now as a cult. And there you go. That's who I am and where I am about all of this. 

And I think that the more women feel like that – getting away from me – the more women find that strength in themselves, the more we can link arms with each other to resist this movement, the better it will be. Obviously, we'll be stronger, but it's only through linking together – and I've said this on other forums, but I believe it so strongly – it’s only through linking together that the tipping point will come. And then everybody will start saying, oh yes, yes, the emperor doesn't have any clothes, and somehow we saw that all along. And then, we'll probably in 20 years’ time, be wondering how on earth it could possibly have been that we accepted this. How could it possibly be that we medicalised children and sterilised children in the name of equality, diversity, and inclusion. And it's bizarre. 

Sara: I wanted to come back and say thank you for that, very kind of personal response. Because I think as well, the other thing that I do think about in terms of that kind of journeying process perhaps, is the fact that it's almost like you have to really start trusting yourself. 

Heather: Yes, absolutely. 

Sara: Say, that no, actually I have to not believe what literally, almost everywhere else is saying about this one topic, and listen to the woman who's talking sense.

Heather: Including not going along with other feminists too. So, when I say we should stand shoulder to shoulder or link arms, whatever metaphor we are going to use, I don't do that with some feminists, I have to say. I want to keep away from certain feminists. I'm going to, sorry, I think the word is intersectional feminism, I think is very dangerous at the moment. And, I talk about intersectional feminism in the book, so I don't particularly want to go into an explanation of what that is and to describe the underpinnings of it, which were initially, of course, very good ones. But I think that, you know, intersectional feminists have got, had such a hold in promoting this, the trans rights movement couldn’t have succeeded if the intersectional feminists hadn't helped mobilise it. And it must be very, very confusing for a person, a young woman for example, exploring all of this for the first time, because she will be exposed to an allegedly feminist argument about why trans women should be included in to the fold of women.

And then they have other feminists, gender critical feminists, critiquing that position and saying the opposite. And how is a young person supposed to make any sense of that? It's very, very difficult for them. And of course, and I know this from young women who have detransitioned, that intersectional feminism and trans rights activists – and sometimes it's very difficult to distinguish between the two – almost … not almost, I'm trying, I'm being too polite here, forcibly tell young people to keep away from the kinds of arguments we make and who we are, because we're “retrograde”, we're “old”, we “don't want gender fluidity”, we are “repressed” in some way. And so, and of course this is nonsense. I think that fits in with a sort of arrogance that intersectional feminists have. They somehow imagine that they are better versed in, queer theory, have read much more academically, grounded in different feminist theories. So, I would like to make a plug for myself here, if that's okay, Sara. 

Sara: Of course [laughs]. It’s your podcast!. 

Heather: Well, just to let people know that I have read absolutely everything that Foucault has ever read, because I did a PhD on Foucault, Michel Foucault, who's regarded as the sort of – wrongly in my view, but that's for another podcast – wrongly in my view, seen as the father of queer theory. I disagree that he is, but anyway, I have read him. And I've read all of Judith Butler. I understand the theories. I also have read most of the things that second wave feminists wrote. So I have lived through, I have straddled. So there were the two movements within feminism, which was the sort of gender critical feminism of the 1970s and 1980s, and then what I'm going to call post-structuralist or queer theory of the late 1980s and 1990s and into the 21st century, when Butler had the most powerful influence on feminism.

So, I actually do know what I'm talking about and what I would love if anybody would give me an opportunity, but of course, intersectional feminists will never do this. They never, ever will get into dialogue with me about this. Never, ever. And, I'm really not scared of the dialogue. I would love the opportunity to have a dialogue with intersectional feminists about this. So, you know, we no longer have conferences, there is no longer a discussion about the two opposing positions so that we can hear what each other's views are and unpick them and critique them in a public forum. But of course, it's not gender critical feminists, and I'm just using myself as an example here, who are refusing to do that, it's intersectional feminists.

So my question then is, what is so dangerous about having a dialogue? Why will intersectional feminists not engage in discussion, but seem content to throw slurs? So, Judith Butler now happens to write in a very reductive way. I actually preferred her when she wrote in the 1990s actually, because at least she was attempting to make some theoretical ... to explore the issues of sex oppression and gender oppression theoretically. Now it seems that what she does is she talks like a trans activist. She uses the term transphobia practically in every other sentence when she writes all of what we've been talking about: the institutional capture, the medicalisation of children, the putting men who identify as women in women's prisons.

All of this is very theoretically based in a way that the ordinary person won't understand. It can be traced back to theory, and that is why it – I know it's boring – but that is why it's important to return to theory, to examine how it is that we have arrived in the position that we have. So, in the book, I try, I try to allude to this, but I don't heavily go into the theory, and I hope, because I wanted people to read it, I wanted it to be accessible.

But since we're discussing it now, I think that the only way that I have been able to write the book is because I understand the theories. In fact, I had the gall to write the book because I'm not frightened of the sometimes arcane ideas that intersectional feminists have. And of course, people believe them, you know, whether it's medicine or award-giving bodies that give monies for people to do research into pregnant men, for example. All of this is based on the idea that something has been discovered. Some truth of transgenderism has been discovered so that it's almost become, if I can say it, a positivist thing, an unquestioning thing, i.e., trans people exist. Transgender children exist. Trans women exist. As if those categories of person empirically and objectively exist outside of any social construction. So, a bizarre upturning of reality has occurred. These figures are socially constructed. They have emerged from theory and now it seems that they are outside of theory.

And so one of the difficulties I have and try to resolve in the book again, as I say, it's for other people to judge, but I try to somehow explain that. Without boring people or frightening people or turning people off by going too deeply into the theory, but flagging up that the theory really is important and actually intersectional feminists and the queer theory that they use does not stand up to scrutiny.

I know young people think it does, but they don't even read it. They just believe it, as in being in the cult. They believe the truth of what they’re told, but it's not true. Any exploration of intersectional feminist theory exposes the illogicality of it, and the way that this does not support women, but supports men. It's writ large, and I hope that the book is successful in explaining that or demonstrating that. 

Sara: I actually wondered on the subject of, with those divisions, between the people who know about queer theory or proclaim themselves to be the intersectional feminists or, you know, and then they would say that the unwashed women who are saying things against this are the fake feminists or whatever, how do we avoid kind of creating those sorts of same dynamics on the so-called gender critical side? In other words, how do you make it so that you're not creating a dismissive culture towards other women's voices? 

Heather: I don't feel an obligation to have to agree with all women. I do understand myself as belonging to a sex-based class, but there are women with different views about things obviously, and what I don't, I certainly don't dismiss their views. I want to take their views seriously, and I want to have a dialogue with them about their views. So I think that I get, I'm not doing what they attempt to do – I don't think – to gender critical feminists, which is to, which is to slur them and to hope that they slur them sufficiently, that people think that they're insignificant, outdated, and have nothing to say. 

In the book, I've taken their views very seriously, and I've pointed to the consequences of their views, and I want to expose the fallacy of their theorising. So, sorry, I know this is a roundabout way of saying, I think you are asking something like can the resistance movement happen if feminists are divided between themselves, and we are doing, we are being hypocritical, in dismissing some women's views and promoting other women's views. 

Sara: I think something along those lines, but I also think that there's, because women have had to invest so much of themselves into this, this sense of like, oh, who are you allowed to speak with? Women are being accused of being funded by the far right and all sorts of shadowy things. And I think there is a concerted effort to maybe not turn women against one another, but there does seem to be a little bit of a, sort of, of a risk of there, even on the gender critical side, there being some women who are considered less favourable in terms of their opinions than others. Does that make sense?

Heather: Yes, it absolutely does. I think that the trans rights movement is a men's rights movement of such importance and such a threat to women and children that we have to stand together to defeat it. And in standing together to defeat it, I will engage with anyone who also understands that there is a huge threat to women and children's rights at the moment.

So, I no longer care, Sara, is the truth, about who I talk with as long as they hold this position that I've just elaborated. And when I say I no longer care, I actually mean I've become quite defiant about it. I can't bear the divisions that are going on within gender critical feminism. I think they're self-destructive. I don't think they will get us anywhere. There isn't time for a purity of ideological position. We can return to that at some future point. We can discuss with each other what our differences are, how we think, you know, what we think about the left, what we think about the right, if we can even think in these terms anymore.

Of course, one of the people that I'm always warned not to speak with is Posie Parker. I think Posie Parker is – I know some people will say Posie Parker has done more damage to our movement, I disagree agree completely – I think she's appealing to a specific constituency of person who understands it through her kind of approach, and I welcome that. I absolutely welcome it. And I think that simple slogan, a woman as adult human female has said far more, probably, or done more work to change people's minds about this than any of the theoretical books that I, for example, could have written. She's not an intellectual in that way.

And she has arrived at a particular way of dealing with this or being politically active, and I applaud her for it. And she did something else I remember, if we could just talk about this a bit more, I've forgotten where it was now, but I think she stood outside of a hospital somewhere, with a placard or an image of a woman's arm. It was a brutal image. It was about how much flesh had needed to be taken out of this woman's arm in order for a penis, which isn't a penis, it was a bit of flesh which represents a penis, to be created for this woman. And it, the woman's arm, I think it was an arm, it could have been the leg was cut down to the bone almost, 

Sara: It's usually a forearm, I think.

Heather: A forearm. Yeah. So, we have to confront the physical realities. The biological realities, the physiological realities of the attempt to change sex, the impossibility of it, and what the lengths that the medical profession is going to, in order to participate or facilitate the human being, the woman in this instance, in having a fantasy that she could actually become male.

So, I think in, in doing that, she drew attention to a number of issues, the physical realities, the medical profession’s complicity within this. And thirdly, the way that we are almost forbidden from being able to speak about such things publicly. And people were horrified that she'd done that, as if she'd done something completely inappropriate. 

I learned this second hand, by the way, because I'm not on Facebook and I don't really, often people tell me these things and I'm not a participant to the discussion, but I heard that some prominent feminists were horrified by that and thought that she shouldn't have done it. Well, it has a purpose. It had a purpose, and I thought she was brave for doing it. It is a reality. Let's confront the reality of what trans ideology is bringing about and the ways in which our institutions are participating in it. Nothing will be achieved by not going there. We think that if we, if we don't go there, we can, we can have our own rhetorical persuasiveness, which we are having.

Sara: So certain things are then beyond the pale. Like you're not allowed to talk about those things, in a similar way that there might be some women who think, okay, well we can have some men who identify as women in these women's spaces, but not in other ones. So, there's almost a deliberate fragmentation there, compartmentalisation that’s really unhelpful, because what really needs to happen is what you've done in your book, and that is pull all these disparate threads together and be fearless about talking about all of it. That's interconnected.

Heather: Yeah. That’s where I'm coming from. Absolutely, and I think I'll go on doing that. I can't, I can't do it in any other way now. Yeah. 

Sara: Thank you Heather, for doing that work. And I know I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again. We're so grateful to you for doing it, but I wondered whether you could tell us what women can do to help support you and your work. Where can they find your brilliant book and if they like it, how can they promote it?

Heather: I have had experience of women who I imagine, gender critical feminists who are afraid of talking about the seriousness of transgenderism, talking in public about the seriousness of transgender, of the transgender activist movement. So, on the one hand, the reason why I'm bringing this up is on the one hand, I've slightly distanced myself from even requiring the support of other gender critical feminists even. And that sounds like a very sad thing to say, but it's given me strength to distance myself from needing that support. But having said that, I'm still very much in need of support. I don't think there's, I hope that doesn't sound contradictory. So, the way that I do get it, is if anything happens, I strangely get support from Twitter. I never thought that I would become a person that gets support from Twitter, but I do. And I note that some of the women who are supporting me on Twitter have very long memories. They remember one thing and they remember another thing, and they bring it up just at the right moment when I'm needing the public to remember whatever that happens to be.

So, I have a strong support on Twitter and it doesn't feel ephemeral to me, it feels quite concrete. Any open support that I can get, anybody daring to speak out on my behalf is great. That's what I really want, that feeling, and I keep saying this, that feeling that my back is being held. And I know that some people can't do it publicly. Some people can do it openly, but it's very important that I have that sense that I'm not a lone voice speaking in the wilderness. Yeah. Does that make any sense? I think I've probably said what might seem contradictory to you. 

Sara: I mean, I think it does in some ways, just based on what we were talking about before, in the sense that you've gathered in a way, your own strength and your own kind of two feet on this. So, it's not like you necessarily need it, need it, but that it's still useful to have women who will have your back. Who will say that that’s good.  

Heather: I suppose if I had a wish, if a wish could come true, I would ask women to come and join hands with me, speak out. I know why they don't. I know the dangers of it, but I would, if I could enthuse people with the results of my own experience, the results of my own experience are that it's less frightening coming out than staying in the closet. I know people can lose their jobs and, in a sense, and it's very … Losing your job is a very real fear for people, I do understand that. But if you can possibly speak out and join hands with me and with other women, it will be the most effective thing in the long run. It really will. I would love that. I get a sense of absolute relief when it happens. I get a sense of joy when we speak out collectively. And of exhilaration because we really are, we've come from … the base of resistance was so tiny at the beginning and it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and that is fantastic. So, supporting me would be for this resistance movement to get bigger and bigger and bigger, so that in the end I can walk away and leave it and not have to fight anymore. So, there's that part of it, yeah. 

So, yes, the book where you can get it from, obviously you can get it from Amazon and so on. But if you don't want to use Amazon for the reasons why it's not a very good organisation to use, you can get it from Gazelle Book Services in this country. So that's G-A-Z-E-L-L-E and then Book Services. You can find it on the website, www.gazellebookservices.co uk. 

Sara: Fabulous. And we will put a link in the description as well, and of course to the wonderful Spinifex Press site.

Heather: Absolutely. Yes. Thank you for reminding me about that. If it wasn't for Spinifex Press being very brave about this, there would be no book. Absolutely not. Because if you read the book, you will find that there have been many ways in which previous books that I've written or helped write have … there has been a movement to prevent them from being published. So, yeah, so I can't thank Spinifex Press enough.  

Sara: It sounds like you had a really good partnership in creating this book too. 

Heather: Yeah. 

Sara: So that's wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Heather for, joining us on this podcast. Thank you so much, Heather. 

Heather: Thank you. Bye.

Sara: Bye.