#61

Sally Jackson from FiLiA in conversation with Bev Jackson LGB Alliance

Sally: Welcome. I'm really pleased today on our FiLiA podcast to be joined by Bev Jackson from the LGB Alliance. 

Thanks for joining us, we're really pleased to have a discussion with you. It's a new organisation but one that seems to have really landed very quickly and made quite a mark already.

Could we start with you telling us a little bit about what the LGB Alliance is about? 

Bev: Well, what the LGB Alliance is about is recapturing the original meaning of what it means to have a sexual orientation towards the same sex or to both sexes because this seems to have got a bit lost in recent years with the shift from sex to gender, and that's something we don't agree with.

We are, we're trying to focus on the LGB people to try and redirect the discussion towards what sexual orientation actually is. 

Sally: I suppose the first thing that people will notice and you know, in the current climate, is that it is the LGB Alliance very noticeably not including the T.

Now I can remember a hundred years ago when I came out that we just had LGB organisations, the T was an addition that arrived to a variety of organisations that historically had been working around sexual orientation. 

Why did you feel it was important to pull back and just come back to the lesbian, gay bisexual focus without including transgender?

Bev: Well, of course we don't exclude transgender people from coming to our meetings and some of them do we welcome trans people at our meetings and some have spoken. 

But basically the LGB Alliance is about sexual orientation. Lesbians and gay people have a sexual orientation towards the same sex, bisexual people towards both sexes and trans people actually are coping with an entirely different kind of issue. It's about gender identity, which is something that we actually don't agree with. We don't believe in gender identity. 

The inclusion of trans in the LGBT and QI alphabet soup has actually done two things.

It's blurred the distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity. And it's also in the main organisations, which now are LGBTQI focused. The main emphasis is now on identity, is on the trans issues. And we think that that's been very much to the detriment of LGB people, particularly lesbians.

Lesbians have suffered tremendously from this. And we really needed to highlight this. And it should be pointed out that the LGB Alliance is led by lesbians. And this is quite unusual in the history of LGB Groups, and we think it's important because it's lesbians in particular who have suffered from the shift in emphasis from sex to gender.

Sally: And I think we've certainly seen that when you look at some of the funding distribution with some of the other LGBT groups, which over the years have perhaps been more around gay men and less so lesbians, bisexual and trans people. But then in recent years, we've seen the increase in the work, as you say, around the various trans issues, slightly less funding around gay men and work around lesbians is all but disappeared.

Bev: Well, it's worse than that. Lesbians are now actually actively excluded from Pride events. I mean, there was this appalling incident in Lancaster last year in which a group of people, really, a very small group of lesbians, protested during Pride, holding up signs saying lesbians don't have penises and a couple of signs like that. And a group of trans activists from within the Pride event descended on them, surrounded them, jeered at them, hid them with their pink and blue flags and it was very symbolic of what has happened to the LGBT movement. 

And to make matters worse, one of the demonstrators who was hiding the group of lesbians, tweeted that he had done this and Jan Gooding from Stonewall tweeted back, ‘yes, exactly the right instinct’ and this sort of symbolised what's happened.

Something, really quite dark has happened that lesbians are no longer welcome at Pride, lesbians who do not accept that some lesbians have penises are no longer welcome at Pride, and that is what homosexuality is. So the organisation that was set up and did so much good work, Stonewall was a wonderful organisation for years and years and years. Stonewall did most fantastic work, getting rid of Section 28, fighting for same sex marriage. I mean, it's almost as if when that battle had been won, they looked around and thought, eek, you know, we've got this big organisation with 150 people what should we do now? Well, let's move on to the next frontier and fight for trans rights without actually looking at where some trans rights in particular self-ID conflict with the rights of LGB people. 

Sally: And can we perhaps go back to talking about this conflation of sex and gender, which it seems to me is, is where a lot of the issues stem from because when you see sex and gender as the same thing, then the arguments are made around crazy things like lesbians having penises, whereas if you understand a difference between sex and gender as very separate things, then it's really easy to understand the importance of spaces for same sex attracted people and the importance of rights for people that have issues around their gender identity.

Bev: Yeah, I mean, the words sex and gender have caused a lot of confusion. A lot of people use them as synonyms.  Caroline Criado-Perez in her book Invisible Women, uses them as synonyms throughout. And when we talk about the gender pay gap and we can't really talk about the sex pay gap or people will think that we're talking about sex work.

So it's understandable that in some areas of life it's become common to use gender and sex as synonyms. But where they're used as meaning two different things. Of course, feminists use gender as a tool of the patriarchy. It's a way of controlling and suppressing women. That is the way in which gender has been used within feminist discourse. The idea that everybody has a gender or a gender identity sort of sitting inside their body and separate from it, is extremely alien to me, and I think to most feminists. The notion that you can have a little feminine soul sitting inside a male body is quite a regressive idea.

I would like to move forward to a world in which neither little boys or little girls are constrained by what you could call gender stereotypes, but simply have the full gamut of possibilities open to them in their lives. 

Sally: That kind of reliance on stereotypes to define gender is limiting to all, but I think it is, especially lesbians that are often paying the price around that.

Bev: I definitely think so. I definitely think so. And we are hearing more and more, I mean, the increase in the number of girls, nearly 4000% increase in the number of teenage girls who are presenting as trans. We've got studies now going on. There is, for some reason, secret study going on as to what is behind this huge increase.

But a lot of these girls have multiple problems and issues, and many of these issues have to do with their sexuality. At the same time, we're seeing women in their twenties coming forward, who have transitioned. In some cases, they've had their breasts removed, they've taken testosterone, and now have deep voices.

These are irreversible changes and they're now regretting their transition and realising that they had been struggling with their lesbian sexuality. I'd like to avoid the word identity. I think it's causing a lot of problems.

So there is a conflict here, when we are painted as being anti-trans, this is completely false. We're not anti-anything. We're trying to open up the possibilities for people to be themselves. 

Sally: And it strikes me as well that if you are saying, or you know, society, the medics, et cetera, are saying that it is better to have hormones in your body. have drastic surgery than being gay, this is quite a homophobic approach. 

Bev: Yeah. I mean, people play what is homophobic, what is transphobic? These words are banded about but I think it is absolutely true that some kids are having their gayness transed away. 

There were jokes made about some of the Clinicians who resigned from the Tavistock with concern about the fact that too many young people were being fast tracked into transition, that there won't be any gay kids left. which is quite frightening. 

People talk about conversion therapy. What is conversion therapy? Conversion therapy is surely intervening, doing something to somebody in order to try and make them something else. It seems to me that if you give hormones to somebody and you at some point and encourage or allow them to have surgery at a very young age, that if anything could be called conversion therapy.

Sally: I wouldn't disagree, and I suppose it seems to me the obvious way to address this, is to have some open and honest conversations about where it might be useful for a young person and where a more cautious approach should happen. 

Bev: Yeah, this point that you're making about open conversations is absolutely crucial and it's one of the things that really the LGB Alliance is pushing for is open discussion. 

And as you see all around the country, every time people try to discuss these issues, sex and gender, what do they mean? What are we doing in society with sex and gender? These discussions are closed down again and again.

Kathleen Stock constantly being no-platformed and having her publications withdrawn or people not being willing to listen to what she has to say. And she never utters a hateful word. Never a hateful syllable. But she's accused of hate speech. This absurd term hate speech, which is simply raising issues, saying, let's talk about this. Where is there conflict here? What is going on? This is not hate speech. 

Sally: I think what sometimes is being forgotten is it's trying to preserve an area of speech so that another group feels safe. So, as we said earlier, talking about how lesbians have been impacted on this. If you can't go to a pride march saying that your same sex attracted, where are the safe lesbian spaces for you? 

Bev: They don't exist. And even lesbian dating sites, this is hearsay. I haven't got documentary evidence for this, but it is reported that roughly 40% of the people who sign up to so-called lesbian dating sites have male bodies. They don't always say so. Maybe for more self-confident people, this would not be an issue. They could navigate this. But for a young woman, maybe 19, looking for her first girlfriend and finding herself in a situation like that. It must be very intimidating and can lead to unfortunate situations.

There just are no spaces. It is not legitimate to say no. We want only lesbians who were born female here, it's considered to be hateful. This is, as you were saying, that's homophobia. 

Sally: And again, thinking of young women coming out, or not necessarily young women, but women who are experiencing their first relationships and negotiating that it must be very hard to, when the discourse around this is you are transphobic or hateful if you discount this group of people with penises who call themselves lesbians, as sexual partners. And yet what we're trying also to tell women and minimise sexual assault, is that actually you have an absolute right to say who can have access to your body.

Now, those two things seem to be counter to each other. 

Bev: Yeah. For years we've been trying to emphasise how important it is to teach girls their boundaries, to teach young women their boundaries, to set boundaries and to keep to them. And it seems now that these boundaries are being dismantled as it's no longer permissible for young women to have boundaries.

And this was particularly shocking, I think, in the Crown Prosecution Service guidance for so-called hate crime that was issued, first secretly, and now they were forced to publish it for 11 to 16 year olds who are being told that they must not exclude, not clear what exclude means, not reject, not clear what reject means, people on grounds of a variety of characteristics including transgender identity, from what, from their friendship groups, from a relationship. It is completely unclear what these things mean. But the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service is interfering in the lives of teenagers, it creates an atmosphere of fear, which is just completely indefensible.

Sally: And there's enough things to negotiate at that age around relationships isn't there without this added dimension. 

We've kind of talked around it a bit, but this notion of the cotton ceiling and how lesbians are being encouraged to accept anyone who ‘identifies’ as a lesbian, what do you think is the way forward with this?

How can we move to a place where lesbians feel able to say who they're attracted to without fear? 

Bev: When we set up the LGB Alliance, we were astonished at how many people flocked to us from all over the world. So I think that there's a very big need around the world to get back to basics as to what homosexuality means so that lesbians can assert the fact that they are attracted to other women and the fear that has grown up around this needs to be dispelled. It is pure homophobia, which is being spread and it's very, very unfortunate that this homophobia is coming from within the LGBT movement. And that's obviously something that we are very much hoping to counter by publicising it and by offsetting it, and we get lots of messages from young lesbians thanking us for what we're doing and hopeful that we can turn things around.  

Sally: I can imagine. It's nice to know once again a home where lesbians can take those issues to.

 And I thought it was really interesting that you launched the Alliance in Scotland and I can kind of understand why, but can you talk me through why you thought that was a good place to launch from? 

Bev: With the Gender Recognition Reform Bill that has been proposed by the Scottish government with a short consultation procedure. We feel this is very much the thin end of the wedge for the UK because if this Bill is accepted by Scotland, then there will be a lot of pressure building for it to be accepted throughout the UK. And this is self-ID, self- ID is something to which we are completely opposed.

And in this respect we are aligned with the Scottish women's groups who are also fighting this legislation. The way it has been presented by the Scottish government is very much as this minor administrative change to make life a little bit easier for trans people, but it's nothing of the kind.

It's actually a very extreme change. Not only because people would only be required to live in their ‘new gender’ for three months rather than two years but also the reduction in age from 18 to 16 for getting a gender recognition certificate is astonishing. And we've received letters from parents who are really worried that if a child can get a gender recognition certificate at 16, that means they're preparing for it at 14 or 15. 

This is in the turbulent teenage years, not a time you would want someone to be making such an extraordinary decision, which has permanent consequences. 

And at the moment, by the way, I was talking about these de-transitioners in their twenties. They're not allowed to change their ID back. It's lifelong because they have signed up to lifelong. So these women, these young women who realize actually that they shouldn't have transitioned, they want to transition back. They cannot change their birth certificates back to their original female sex. At the moment it's not possible. They're stuck in a kind of weird limbo. 

Sally: I mean, that must have such a huge emotional and psychological impact on women's healing and going forward they may be able to start living their life again as a woman, but if every time they come across something official they've got a male birth certificate.

Bev: Yeah, and many of them talk about the internalised homophobia that they were struggling with. That was one of the reasons that they chose to transition. And, and we hear again and again that young women have no lesbian role models and they didn't know any lesbians.

So it seems that we've arrived in a very strange place where there's such a dichotomy between the pink and blue worlds. That girls growing up don't have lesbian role models and many are led to assume that they therefore must be boys. 

Sally: And it's a catch 22, isn't it? Because we're also at a time when lesbians are less likely to be at Pride because they're being banned.

Lesbians who say, I'm same sets attracted, and that's okay, I'm really happy with that, are being silenced. Where are we going to find these role models for young people? 

Bev: Well, we have to step up. We have to step up and we hope to attract more young people to the LGB Alliance. So there will be these role models and that girls can be more confident in their own lesbian sexuality and will not be led to worry that they might be boys and of course, it's extremely important that the therapists, the clinics where these children go to, that they adopt a far more cautious approach rather than moving towards, god forbid, the affirmative approach, which is common in North America. 

Sally: The good news is, what might be less well known at the moment, but still holds to be true, is there are lots of fabulous lesbians out there that can act as these role models. 

Bev: Yeah, absolutely, but very few are willing to step up and openly support us. It comes at a cost at the moment. At the moment it is not very easy for public figures to stand up and support the LGB Alliance. We hope that this will change as we've become better known.

But at the moment we still find that there is a certain reluctance to associate one’s self too publicly with the LGB Alliance.

But this is early days. It's hard to believe that we've actually only existed for less than four months. That's astonishing.

Sally: It is amazing what you have achieved in such a, a short space of time and talking about the work in Scotland: Obviously it's, it's the GRA for Scotland, but can people south of the border get involved with that consultation?

Bev: Well, in fact, people all around the world have been invited to get involved in it, surprisingly. This is actually very peculiar. So people from Brazil are very welcome to get involved in the consultation on the GRA in Scotland. I have no idea how this was set up and everybody can get involved and everybody needs to get involved. For Women Scotland has a good interactive consultation form on their website. Our consultation form is also going to be up within a few days and we would certainly encourage everyone to get involved and, and respond to this consultation. Those who are in favour of the GRA have mounted a huge publicity effort to get their supporters to respond to the consultation.

So it is rather important that we ensure that those who do see the problems of this Bill also get equally involved so as to provide plenty of counter-arguments as to why this is a bad Bill and must be stopped, in our view. 

Sally: Absolutely. And, and talking about getting involved with the LGB Alliance generally, if people want to get more involved, find out more, how can they do that?

Bev: Well, obviously, they can write to us through our website. There is a contact form and people do constantly reach out. And one important development is that people in other countries are setting up similar organisations and if they want to use our name we obviously discuss with them, about the particular principles that we have and the code of conduct that we have otherwise they would need to use different names. 

At the moment there is a small group setting up in the United States where it is particularly difficult and other ways in which people can get involved, buying our merchandise. Our shop is going online within a few days and obviously all our merchandise does present our image to the world and gets people talking about our aims and the way we want to open up debate.

 The most important thing that we have to achieve at the moment is to get a seat at the table, to get a seat at the table every time LGB issues are being discussed at the moment, unfortunately, if you look at, for instance, the LGBT panel, all the people on that panel are signed up to the same perspective. They all adhere to the view that everyone has a gender identity. They all adhere to the view that, some people are born in the wrong body. This cannot be, this is not representative. 

We wish to show that with the LGB Alliance that mainstream LGBT organisations do not represent the whole of LGB thought and that there are many, many, many and this is obvious because we have 17 and a half thousand people following us on Twitter just within a few months, that we represent a huge body of opinion. And when Kate Harris, the co-founder of the LGB Alliance, we set it up together in October, she has been trying to talk to Stonewall, so have I. She set up a petition about a year and a half ago, a calling on Stonewall to engage in dialogue. Let's have a talk. And our door is still open. We still would like to talk to Stonewall. 

In that petition, 10,000 people responded to that petition, and 2000 of them actually made impassioned comments saying, please Stonewall, let's talk, let's talk about your attitude to trans issues and see where we need to set up a discussion and they just refuse.

We're still hopeful that they will engage in dialogue. We're always prepared to talk. We have reached out to them again and again and unfortunately up to now they have not been willing to talk to us.  

Sally: It seems crazy because you've mentioned previously, and I can certainly remember Stonewall, being the organisation that historically was there to support the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual people. For them to actually be the organisation that is blocking the discussion. 

We hear about Stonewall Law being used in various organisations where information that has been shared by Stonewall through the various campaigns and things like their Equality star, is being taken by companies as law when it's not actually the law of the land.

Bev: Basically what Stonewall has done and this what we call Stonewall Law is what Stonewall wishes the law was but in fact isn't the law at all. And this is particularly the case where we're talking about the Equality Act in which there are certain protected characteristics.

 Sex, that is biological sex, is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. And gender reassignment, which is about a very, very small percentage of people who go through gender reassignment or planning to do so is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. And what Stonewall is it consistently explaining in its many, many, many advisory and so-called educational sessions with public bodies all around the country, it constantly states that gender is a protective characteristic and that gender identity is a protected characteristic. This is not the case. This is what Stonewall would like, but gender, some sort of inner feeling in a person is not, and could not be a protected characteristic because it's completely subjective.

Gender identity, as soon as you say that gender identity is a protected characteristic, you seem to be suggesting that the whole of society has this gender identity, which no one has ever accepted, which cannot be accepted and is not the law. 

Sally: With the power that Stonewall have been able to influence very large institutions and organisations, I think one of the things that annoys me, as an individual lesbian, is that's money from my taxes that is paying them to do that. 

Bev: Yeah, it's really quite shocking. The government gives grants to Stonewall, which then uses that money to teach public bodies, things which are in some cases completely incorrect.

We're fighting on so many different fronts here, but one of the things which, is of great concern to us is the LGBT inclusive curriculum. And that sounds like a very nice cuddly thing, an LGBT inclusive curriculum, we would like to be inclusive. We want to be kind to everybody.

 But, basically if sex education, which is voluntary in primary school but is recommended by the government. It's recommended that you teach children how babies are born, how they're conceived and born and the kind of changes that children go through in puberty and it's good to teach that sometimes some children have two mummies or two daddies instead of a mummy and a daddy.

And sometimes two women will fall in love and two men will fall in love and really at primary school level it's very good and that’s what you could say is an LGB inclusive curriculum. The government decided in its wisdom, to give the task of preparing a curriculum for this LGBT inclusive curriculum to Stonewall and Stonewall who prepared a curriculum which doesn't do those things that I just mentioned.

It doesn't explain how babies are born or what happens at puberty. Instead of that, it is full of gender identity. What I would call gender identity ideology and also includes books for the library with a little teddy that is wondering whether he's a boy or a girl, and plants confusion, I would say, in the minds of children completely, unnecessarily, and potentially quite harmfully.

A problem which affects a tiny, tiny percentage of children is presented to all primary school children, as if this might be relevant to them. I have no idea why the government gave the task of preparing this LGBT inclusive curriculum to Stonewall which has a particular view that it wishes to impose.

And Stonewall will say, oh, this is a voluntary curriculum. You don't have to use it at all. But on the very first page it says, OFSTED will be checking up to make sure that your education is LGBT inclusive, so it doesn't sound terribly optional to me.

And this is just one of many areas in which there's been a focus in policy on a particular kind of ideology instead of presenting what we really would like children to be taught at school.

Sally: It seems such a crazy backlash when we'll have from this September, something we've been fighting for, for a long time, sex education within schools as being part and parcel of the curriculum. And we've wanted to enable young people to have access to good, safe information so that they can make informed choices about who they are, what they do with their body, who they do that with and exactly the time that that's about to happen, we're getting this backlash around it being subverted for this issue. 

Bev: Yeah. I think that that's really problematic and you could find that the backlash against it means that we don't have the good LGB inclusive education that we do need certainly at secondary schools.

Sally: So there's a lot of work to do. Bev and I, for one, are really glad the LGB Alliance is on the case and taking, taking some of this work forward.  

You've mentioned people get in contact via the, the website is there anything else that people could do to help your cause?

Bev: Well writing letters. Wherever LGB issues are involved and wherever people see that, the organisations that are being consulted all come from one particular corner, write to your members of parliament, write to your school boards, write to whoever is involved. If you notice a particular organization is being asked into your school, ask them why that organisation is being invited and not an organisation, for instance, like Transgender Trend, which takes a very, very different approach to these issues and which has put out also alternative material for schools.

We need a broader approach instead of this focus on specific groups which have the same ideology.

Also call for more open debate. When you notice that a university is closing down debate, challenge it, protest against the closing of free speech.

Insist it's possible to discuss issues, write, call into radio programs about these issues. Write to newspapers, publicise it, talk to your friends and family about these things are going on.

A very small percentage of people in society is actually aware of what is going on.

So we need to raise public awareness of these issues and it's not just about being kind to trans people. Everybody wants to be kind to trans people. So do I. That's not what the issue is here. It's the issue is looking at where the rights of women, the rights of lesbians, the rights of gay people, the rights of children are an issue. And seeing we can have open discussions on the best way forward to help the rights of everyone. But you have to be able to discuss these issues in public. And so I would call on everyone to write and to call in wherever, make their voices heard. 

Sally:  A really positive note to, to finish on.

Bev, thanks so much for your time this morning and I wish you and the LGB Alliance every success in going forward. 

Bev: Thank you very much. Thank you.