Thread by @sarahstuartxx

This now my fourth time with Professor Stephen Whittle - this was an 'in conversation with'. 

On the call were a handful of female testosterone users and a couple of men who may have had oestrogen and few other interested people.

SW stated SW didn’t care it if it were 2, 20 or 200. Which is just as well because there was just a dozen.

I guess as long as SW gets to listen to the sound of SW’s own voice, SW's happy.

SW is now 45 years since transition.  Lots of progress has been made over the years,

except in the recent past few years.  Where should trans activism go next?

Back in 1975, when SW transitioned, things were entirely binary, now the categories had multiplied.

Younger generation are much more accepting of the LGBTQ community and in SW’s children circles they

have trans friends – which is hardly a surprise.

Another positive was that legislators were open to interpreting language favourably for trans people.  Despite this institutional support, trans people are being scapegoated, like the Jews were in the 20s and 30s.

SW described this as a ‘huge horrible international movement by womens’ groups’.  SW felt this was started by Fairplay for Women and that if you did your own research you would find that ‘most women don’t agree’ with these groups.

A group called Fair Cop had put in a case, there was a case against the Tavistock, someone else was questioning the wording of the Equality Act - all cases being raised by the gender critical movement. SW was amazed at the amount of money that had been raised in support.

OTOH there were pro trans cases - one questioning the meaning of the wording around ‘psychological evaluation’ in the GRA and an employment tribunal regarding disclosure of somebody’s previous trans history - it was hoped that this would be referred back to the European court

to test the extent to which the Equality Act could be used to protect a person’s privacy. There was also a case running in Northern Ireland on trans healthcare.

SW claimed that two anti-abortion groups in the US had provided directed funding to one particular group and that

that the group had justified taking the money because they weren’t going to use it for anti-abortion campaigning. ‘That’s why women talk with forked tongues’ SW explained. 

SW noted that gender critical groups were concentrating efforts on single issues – for example one

women’s group was going to the men’s pond on Hampstead Heath and challenging the YHA (SW relayed this as if it was a regular occurrence rather than one clever stunt done by Man Friday two years ago). 
 
Martina N. had been a big heroine until she had come out with ‘garbage’.

SW has looked at all the evidence which proves trans people are only going to be average sport people at best, including SW who couldn’t outrun a 20 year old. 

(SW must stand at no more than 5ft 4 and has a big slobby gut, so this is news to no one.)

The FA had an annoying stupid rule of asking trans players to provide hormone levels. 

SW had been invited onto a BBC programme to discuss trans participation in sport but got dropped from it because SW had apparently expressed wrong think, namely that Caster Semenya’s case

was completely separate issue to that of trans players. 
 
SW explained that the shadowy womens’ movement were ‘gradually manipulating what people think’. 

Even students have started to challenge SW now on points of discussion about the issue of self-ID. SW always refers them

back to what the law actually says.

SW feels sorry for JKR - she’s just digging a deeper hole for herself though acknowledged that she was reaching an audience that ‘we can’t reach’.

SW had a moment of nostalgia re: Hayley on Corrie - the character was someone everyone knew

watched three times a week by 8 million people.

At the moment they only had Manbloke working his arse off for the cause, and although Manbloke was doing his level best, he sadly didn’t have the pulling power of JKR.

SW said that responses from the the GRA consultation submitted by those critical of the proposed reforms could be regarded as just ‘one opinion’ since cut and paste responses proformas were used (neatly forgetting that Stonewall, Galop, etc also did the same thing).

SW met with the Minister who led on the GRA in Parliament - Geoffrey Filkin.

Filkin called SW to his office and said ‘tell me what I’m supposed to do with those?’ and point towards boxes full of postcards (184,000 in total) filled out by Catholic and evangelical congregations

in opposition.

‘How many do we have on our side?’ asked SW.

Filkin apparently pointed at another pile and said ‘Just over a thousand’.

SW told him he could safely regard the 184,000 as just ‘one opinion’, as they were from people ‘who had never thought about it, or known

one of us’. (Presumably many would had personalised those postcards.)

Whereas the 1,000 opinions made by SW’s side in favour of the Act were all individual stories.

‘Yes’, the Minister apparently said, 'that’s absolutely right, those are exactly the words I need to reject this

completely’ and thus ignored the 184,000 postcards.

Sadly, SW reflected, the current govt. is a completely different animal and had no faith that the Tories would help in anyway (particularly Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch), but SW has realised anyway that in fact it doesn’t

matter anyway as it’s incredibly easy to get a GRC. SW has never had to show a GRC or birth certificate.

The rather excellent Trans Crime UK website makes SW feel sick.

transcrimeuk.com

SW claimed to have been doing research on trans prisoners for the last 20 years, research not yet published (SW chuckled), and stated ‘fifteen was the largest number we have ever known’ out of a prison population of 100,000.

This was quickly contradicted by a man who is on

the Trans Advisory Board for HM Prison & Probation, who stated that recent research had identified 160 and that most of them had ‘transitioned’ (though didn’t specify what this meant). Unsurprisingly it also found men who have longer sentences are more likely to transition.

SW stated that self-ID legislation in Argentina and Ireland had caused no problems whatsoever, though there had been one case in Columbia where a man had dressed up as a woman, but the women could see he wasn’t a real woman and stopped him from entering a female-only space.

In the good old days SW had the media in their tiny mitt. SW would often act as a broker for a story. SW would insist on the right to sign off the article and was prepared to give the story for free, but apparently the papers still insisted on paying.

SW thought it was good that there was a 6 month cooling period built into the current process.

On the other hand the fact that 17 year olds in Ireland can now change their documentation in two weeks was also great.

SW talked a bit about single sex provision. Women apparently never say no to a TW being in a DV refuge. SW thought it might be proportionate to exclude a pre-op TW from a female sauna.

SW took great delight recalling how her appearance on a women’s ward many years ago,

when SW was having hysterectomy, caused upset to the elderly ladies. 

NB people should be able to chose which ward they want to go on.

Now that Scotland has bought in self-ID legislation, it is only a matter of time before England and Wales will follow since the Equality

Act makes it clear that there can be no discrimination based on race and nationality.

The beauty of the GRC was that you are not allowed to disclose whether someone has a GRC. If someone *doesn’t* have a GRC, and you know that for a fact, you can happily tell other people about

their history. However, it’s really impossible to know whether or not someone has a GRC, so it was best not to let people know one way or the other and deflect to showing your (falsified) birth certificate instead.

(One of the trans activists on the call worked in a hospital

and asked for this advice.)

SW wanted all orgs to purge their files of any trans person’s past histories. For example, SW was shocked and upset to find a photo of her hairy breast in her medical record from years back.  The comments doctors had written about it were vile.

Later SW got Mama Whittle (who worked in the hospital) to remove the photo from her file (thereby breaking the law and risking her job).

It was noted by another TIF that although they presented male in all situations, they were still careful in medical settings to make

it clear that they were female.

SW spoke about a haematologist friend and a scenario in which blood results had shown the true sex of the patient. What should the haematologist do? Make a note that it was in fact an opposite sex blood profile? SW advised the friend to ‘take

a walk’ and not disclose that their patient was trans. The haematologist replied ‘oh that’s such a good idea’. 🙄

Another TIF, who also worked in the NHS, had recently been risk assessed for COVID and was upset by the question ‘male at birth’, so the Trust changed the wording.

SW said she wouldn’t tick a box which said ‘female at birth’. It was the NHS’s duty to comply with trans peoples’ needs.

Happily SW has a new anecdote about her prosthetic penis, one I haven’t heard yet. 

SW was in hospital undergoing a procedure and a male nurse came over

and *without warning* pulled SW’s paper pants off and shouted ‘Omg what’s that!?’

‘That’s my dick if you don’t mind,’ SW squealed, pulling the shorts back up and gave the nurse a thorough telling off and making sure he knew he couldn’t go home and tell his wife because of the

law around GRCs.
 
On the one hand this isn’t beyond the realms of possibility – though any nurse who behaved like this would risk instant dismissal. 

On the other, SW ‘couldn’t be arsed’ to report the incident, which doesn’t tally with SW’s 30 year plus history of political

activism – and the incident, if it really happened, undoubtedly would have been motivated by prejudice.  A case of actual transphobia.  So on balance, I’m calling BS.

Another hospital story. 

Another male nurse revealed that he was a cross dresser and showed the photos on his

phone to SW’s mum. SW hated this because ‘cis men who cross dress are jumping on everything’.

Towards the end SW encouraged people to make the best use of the current GRC process. It only costed about £31 for most people and if you make a remittance request you can even get

the fee refunded. Most people qualify and the form was easy to complete. SW was going to do a dummies guide because SW was sick of re-explaining it all the time.

SW wasn't keen to wrap up on time and was still wittering on way past the given end time.

@threadreaderapp please unroll