Sally speaks about the book « Women’s Rights Gender Wrong » (published by Women’s Declaration International)

FS: Could you tell us how and why the Declaration on Women’s Sex Based Rights was launched ? How many women signed it so far?

Sally: The Declaration was written in 2018 as a response to the increasing replacement of the category of ‘sex’ with that of ‘gender-identity’. It’s based on CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) which was adopted by the UN in 1979 and which defined discrimination against women as being discrimination on the basis of sex.

It has been signed so far by over 37,000 people (mostly women but also a few men) and 570 organisations in 160 countries.

FS: I was amazed when I saw that in some South American countries, abortion is prohibited but men can legally change gender on simple self-identification. What does it say about the political nature of this movement ?

Sally: There is some correlation between abortion rights and self-ID, but it’s not absolute. There are some countries where abortion is illegal or highly restricted, and which also allow self-ID. When we started this project, we hoped to identify some countries where there were abortion rights and no self-ID, but if they exist we haven’t found them yet. As I said in the book’s introduction, this is not a battle between left and right, but a battle between the patriarchy and women. Both the denial of abortion rights and the implementation of self-ID are part of a patriarchal attack on women.

FS: In some countries, men can not only be admitted in shelters for victims of domestic violence and women’s prisons, places where women have already been the target of high levels of male agression, but even the fact that men have been previously convicted of sexual assault is no reason to refuse them access to these places. The book mentions the case (in Canada) of a woman who was jailed because she killed her rapist, who was then raped by a male inmate, and asked to withdraw her accusations by the prison’s autorities. Your comments?

Sally: In the UK, policies have recently been changed to prevent sex offenders routinely being housed in the women’s estate, but it’s not an absolute ban. Even this was only agreed in Scotland after a high-profile case that led to a public outcry. In California in February 2022 there were nearly 290 male prisoners seeking transfer to the women’s estate. That this is ever considered is shocking, especially when you consider that some 70-80% of female prisoners have been the victims of male violence in the past. At least this is true in the UK, and I suspect it’s the same in most countries in the global north, if not universally.

Allowing men into domestic violence refuges (shelters) totally ignores the trauma and experience of the women for whom they were developed. It may be that males, including those who say they are women, occasionally experience domestic violence, but they should create their own refuges rather than demanding entry into women’s space. There is a case of a separate facility being made available for trans-identifying males, but not one bed has been slept in for a single night.

FS: In Californian jails, not only women inmates may have to live side by side with men identifying as women, but if they don’t use the proper pronouns with them, they can be placed on report for abusive and insulting words or behavior, which can result in a longer prison sentence for them. Even if female inmates are sexually assaulted by a man identifying as a woman, they still have to use female pronouns when reporting the assault. In Scotland, a sexual assault by a transgender male will be reported as commited by a female in crime statistics. In these situations, clearly, « men’s rights to live as their chosen gender clearly takes precedence over women’s safety ». Your comments?

Sally: Placing men in women’s jails is incomprehensible to me. It demonstrates the absolute disregard the political system has for women and our right to dignity and even physical safety. Recently, we got the news that a violent male offender has been placed in an Irish hostel sharing a room with 5 women. In prisons we have some of the most vulnerable women in society, with literally no place to go, being locked up with violent male offenders.

We are seeing the absolutely absurd and deeply offensive practice of recording rapists as ‘female’ in many legal systems. This has several effects, quite apart from the insult to women who are forced to refer to their rapists with female pronouns. It is impossible to devise appropriate crime prevention strategies, say, if your crime statistics tell you that there has been a sudden increase in the number of women committing sexual assault and rape, suggesting that measures to combat them need to be targeted at women as well as men.

There are several jurisdictions where women have been expected to refer to male prisoners as ‘she’ and have risked losing remission days if they fail to do so. This is the equivalent of imposing a prison sentence on a woman for so-called ‘misgendering’ (I prefer to call it ‘correctly sexing’) someone, even though that is not a criminal offence. It is a measure of the extent to which the authorities have been captured by gender-identity, and of its attack on women, that this is happening.

FS: In the Netherlands, children in schools can choose their gender from the age of 4, and can require « inclusive » langage (the use of their chosen pronouns). Puberty blockers are prescribed to 13 year old girls.  What are the risks, for girls and boys, of taking hormones for a lifetime? What are the risks of masectomy, ablation of the male genital organs, and the problems of having a surgically created penis and vagina?

Sally: A four-year-old girl I knew wanted to be a parcel, but nobody ever considered putting her in a postbox.

The physical (and psychological) harms are not something we discuss in the book. We do know from other research that all the medical and surgical interventions you mention can have negative, life-long impacts on people’s health. Women who have their breasts removed will, at best, be unable to breast feed a child. And it is likely that children subjected to puberty blockers – and certainly those who undergo genital surgery – will be infertile, possibly unable to have sexual relationships and/or orgasm. Testosterone leads to uterine atrophy, so many women who take wrong-sex hormones need a hysterectomy after about 5 or 6 years, even if they wouldn’t otherwise have chosen to have one. Other long-term effects of wrong sex hormonal use may include a wide range of serious conditions, including Increased risk of breast and uterus cancers.

If this is something your readers are interested in they might want to read Time to Think by Hannah Barnes or Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier.

FS: The number of girls wanting to transition and undergo hormone treatment and surgery is increasing, and the phenomenon even seems contagious. What are the reasons young girls want to change gender?

Sally: Again, the reason for this is not something we address in the book. However, we do know there is evidence of social contagion – I’ve heard of an entire friendship group of teenage girls coming out as ‘trans’ at the same time. Also it’s trendy to be gender non-conforming. I’ve spoken with teenage girls who say they are one of a small handful of heterosexual pupils in their year, that most of their classmates are one or other of the ‘gender non-conforming’ alternatives. Unfortunately, there are also far fewer young lesbians and gay men – they are now much more likely to describe themselves as ‘gender queer’ or ‘non-binary’ or ‘trans’. Shockingly, one reason young women don’t want to be seen as ‘lesbian’ is that the term is increasingly associated with a category of pornography, which even quite young children are now exposed to because of its ubiquity on social media. And there is tremendous pressure on young women to behave in the ways that boys have seen on porn sites. You might think it’s no wonder that the girls want to deny, or escape, being female, given that’s what is expected of them.

The gender-identity movement is based on reinforcing and embedding gender stereotypes that feminists have spent years fighting against. Whereas my contemporaries and I argued that boys should be allowed to wear pink tutus if they wanted, now any deviation from sexist gender norms is taken as a sign that the child is, in fact, a member of the opposite gender.  One of the favourite mantras of the gender-identity movement is “Better a trans-son than a dead lesbian daughter”. But there is no evidence of young people committing suicide if they aren’t able to ‘transition’. The reality is that gender-identity ideology is deeply misogynist and homophobic and it would be far more accurate to describe the message as “Better a (‘straight’) trans-son than a gay daughter”.

 FS: The book underlines a major contradiction of the gender ideology movement : if gender is just a social construct, why are some transgender men taking hormones and having « sexual reassignement surgery » to make their body more similar to a female body ?

Sally: It’s not the gender-identity ideologues who say that gender is a social construct – in fact, some are now saying that ‘gender-identity’ is real, whereas sex is a social construct. But of course you’re right to point out a contradiction. Some large, bearded, muscular, genitally-intact males demand to be recognised as ‘women’. They say our understanding of a woman is outdated and that they (the men) are no different from (natal) women. But of course they say ‘other women’ to imply they are women themselves.

Other men want to rearrange their bodies to more closely resemble that of a woman – but of course that is not achievable. A neo-vagina is no more than an open wound which can never have any functionality. Though, in fact, whilst quite a few men get breast implants or take wrong-sex hormones, very few have their genitals removed.

FS: You say the language concerning these men has been changed, from « transvestite » to « transgender » and « gender dysphoric», and women are called «uterus havers » in documents like medical articles or reports–but the word « man » has not been replaced by « penis havers ». Why this one sided change in language and what difference does it make ? –

Sally: Why? Patriarchy.

What difference does it make? It makes women invisible and promotes the ascendency of men.

FS: « If anyone can legally declare himself to be a woman, then women are legally eradicated ». Can you explain what are the consequences of the replacement of the category of sex by the one of gender in laws and international documents and why it hurts women’s rights?

Sally: We are seeing some of the consequences of the legal eradication of women already. It allows men to take women’s places, for example on women-only shortlists, in sports (although thankfully some sporting bodies are starting to see sense), and it gives men access to all women’s space. In Brazil, the ‘most voted-for woman’ in last year’s election is, in fact, a man.

Legally ignoring the sex-class of women does immense harm to women’s rights. The use of ‘gender’ rather than ‘sex’ in official statistics serves to hide the extent, even the fact, of women’s oppression and subordination. Allowing men to be defined as ‘women’ gives them access to the few rights we thought we had, which effectively removes those rights from us. We can’t measure or argue for improved women’s rights if we are unable to accurately define which individuals should be included in the category of ‘woman’. We can’t discuss even a relatively simple concept such as equal pay, if we don’t know how much women are actually being paid because their incomes are mixed in with those of an unknown number of men who tick the box to say they are women.

We can’t consider any measures for women – housing, health, longevity, rates of committing or being a victim of crime, access to education and healthcare, discrimination in employment, levels of political participation, to name but a few – if we don’t know who the women are. When statistics have confused or conflated sex and gender, it is impossible to disaggregate the data to provide accurate information about women.

Mis-recording people’s sex can also have extremely serious consequences – there was a tragic case a couple of years ago of an apparently male patient who was admitted with severe abdominal pain. By the time the medical staff realised ‘he’ was actually a pregnant woman it was too late and the baby died.

I have to say I have never understood the logic in allowing people to have the wrong sex recorded on their passport. This is an identity document that, I had supposed, accurately describes the individual – indeed passports include a variety of physical information. But allowing a man to have an internationally recognised ID stating he is a woman seems to run completely contrary to this notion. Imagine a person who is self-evidently a man presenting himself at passport control as a ‘woman’. What is the hapless immigration officer supposed to do confronted with that situation?

There are increasing concerns, too, that a legal change of sex and name enables fraudsters, money launderers and sexual offenders to hide their identity.

FS: The book underlines that the wide official recognition of the gender ideology is tantamount to basing laws and institutions on « private fantasies », more precisely on male sexual fantasies ». – What is AGP (autogynephilia) and why many radical feminists consider the gender ideology movement essentially an attempt to sanitise and normalise male paraphilias ?

Sally: There are a very small number of individuals who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria, and they deserve sympathy and appropriate treatment. However, that condition does not turn a man into a woman, however much he may think he feels like one. Of course, a man can’t know what it feels like to be a woman (I’m not even sure that I know that myself – do you?). Whatever that feeling is, it requires someone to have had the experience of being female from birth, and of experiencing the discrimination, misogyny and abuse that all women have to deal with. Even men with gender dysphoria can only feel like what they imagine a woman to be, which is unlikely to bear much resemblance to being an actual woman, so we’re already entering into the realm of male fantasy.

But the gender-identity movement holds that it is possible for a man to ‘be’ a woman even without having gender dysphoria. It is, they claim, an ‘identity’ which, when you think about it, doesn’t actually mean anything at all.

The gender-identity movement seems to have become a magnet for men with a wide range of paraphilias, especially, as you say, autogynephilia. AGP is when a man becomes sexually aroused at the thought of himself as a woman. (And you don’t have to look very hard to find photographs of them with their erections poking out of their skirts to see the truth of that.) Those men do not at all believe themselves to be women. Rather they play out their fantasy, maybe initially by dressing as a woman, but progressing to wanting to ‘live as a woman’ at all times. The demand that we call them ‘she’ is another demand for validation, again at women’s expense.  

The more that people are expected to accept and validate the delusion that a man is a ‘woman’, the more the concept, and men’s paraphilias, are normalised. Every time we are instructed to ‘be kind’, and to prioritise men’s fantasies above the truth, the more they are sanitised. You see this taken to one particularly offensive extreme when heterosexual men claim to be ‘lesbians’ and demand access to lesbian women. (If it were true that men can become women. then, logically, they would be lesbians. They don’t stop being attracted to women when they put on a dress.)

One of the most searched for categories of pornography is ‘lesbian’ – so much so that many, particularly younger, lesbians now choose not to use that word to define themselves. Allowing men to define themselves as ‘lesbians’ and forcing women to accept them into their social circles, and even dating pools, promotes a particularly abusive culture, where lesbian women feel unable to refuse the men and rape is effectively acceptable. So again, we see how the ideology normalises and sanitises men’s sexual fetishes.

 FS: What do you think of the support of the Left for gender ideology? In France, Sofia Chikirou, a woman and top member of « La France Insoumise », the main Left wing party, has declared that « trans rights were non negociable », a statement which implies that when these rights conflict with women’s rights, it’s women’s rights that are negociable. Your comments?

Sally: It seems to me that there has been no time in history when women’s rights were not negotiable. Patriarchy has a huge capacity to change with the times, and to fit its demands round the present circumstances. Gender-identity ideology is merely the latest iteration of the patriarchal project, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the left has embraced it with such enthusiasm.

FS: In the book, the feminist author Melissa Farley explains why there are similarities between the promotion of prostitution and porn and the transgender ideology. Can you explain these affinities, which appear also in the fact that quite a few pro-gender ideology are also active in « sex workers » organisations?

Sally: Prostitution, pornography and gender-identity ideology are all misogynist, sexist and patriarchal concepts that subject women to the whims and desires of men.

But for a more detailed response, it might be better to ask Melissa!

In her article figuring in the book, Melissa Farley writes that « a parallel can be made between the political movement promoting self-ID or transgender rights and the political movement promoting prostitution as sex work. Both movements are based on the sexual objectification of women, male supremacy, female subordination and rigid stereotypes about masculinity and femininity ». And the movement for self-ID is similarly « concealed under the umbrella of the women’s and gays’ liberation movement ».  

She underlines that « prostitution and self-ID are rooted in toxic stereotypes about femininity and masculinity; self-identified men perform a sexist stereotype of femininity that include behaviours that are rituals of subordination » whereas « the sex trade is is similarly based on women’s performance of  subordination to men. Advocates of self-ID normalize the sex trade because it validates their view of women as sex objects. »

As examples of the concrete links existing between these movements, Melissa Farley quotes the names of several self-identified transgenders who lead movements to decriminalize the buying of sex (Cecilia Gentili in the US, Antonella Lerca in Romania); Sophie Pezzato is affiliated with SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project) and A Gender Agenda (NDLR)