1./ Where did the idea of 'Gender Identity' come from? We're told we've to rewrite our laws, give up rights and teach children it's a FACT. Yet the history of this idea is -to say the least- chequered. Not least when it comes to kids. Let's start with this colourful character.๐ 
2./ In the late 18th Century the Chevalier d'Eon embodied a perennial debate about why some men are 'feminine' and some women 'masculine'. A spy, and great "swords-person" d'Eon claimed to be a woman. S/he certainly seemed to contemporaries to be ...a bit of both.๐
3./ In the early 20th Century gay rights pioneer Havelock Ellis coined 'Eonism' to describe what we'd now call trans. Like other pioneers, he imagined a third sex. Here's Ellis, a gay man, with Edith Lees, his lesbian wife. They'd an open relationship (to no one's huge surprise).
4./ In every age people have been fascinated with the boundaries between masculine, feminine, male, female. In the ancient world hermaphrodites were revered. Waldemar Januszczak points out both Apollo and early representations of Jesus were often decidedly ambiguous, sex-wise.๐
5./ Once in power Christianity repressed gender-bending and sex generally. But the 20th Century saw a determined effort to return to what we might call good old pagan laissez faire. Havelock Ellis was a huge influence on Magnus Hirschfeld. And in Berlin, Magnus had a bold idea.๐
6./ In the 20s he championed a way for trans people to realise the belief they were the opposite sex. Sex change surgery, he said, would make their body match the sex they felt they were. But there was a problem that's haunted all sex change endeavours ever since: stereotypes. ๐
7./ Hirschfeld defined male and female based on strict expectations of what male or females should be like, from gestures and behaviour to the way they walked or talked. His definitions reinforced stereotypes and his work was largely forgotten. Until.... hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/institut/en/ifโฆ
8./ In 1948 the Kinsey Report sparked a revolution when it argued the sex lives of Americans was different from what the public imagined: more unbuttoned, more promiscuous and a lot more gay. This needed investigating. University sexology departments mushroomed. Enter 3 Kings.๐
9./ Harry Benjamin was a Hirschfeld protege and with his colleagues Robert Stoller and John Money he rewrote Sexology. John Money now argued trans peeps had a mental 'sex identity' different from their physical sex. 'Sex' sounded dirty so he called it.... 'gender identity'.
10./ The problem remained: like Hirschfeld, Money's work was rooted in gender stereotypes. Here's his colleague Richard Green describing what they thought a successful transsexual. 'She' was a stunner. Men lusted after 'her'; women defined by their ability to raise an erection.๐
11./ Money's "science" like Hirschfeld's was bunkum. Funded by Reed Erickson, a transman who poured money into any old psychobabble, Money became a shameless overseller of how easy sex change could be. His number one poster child was "Joan", a boy who became a girl, allegedly.๐
12./ The boy lost his penis in a circumcision gone wrong. Money advised the parents to castrate him and bring him up as a girl. BBC Horizon revealed how the boy rebelled when Money urged him to have an artificial vagina constructed and used a transwoman to try to convince him. ๐
13./ In the clip ๐biologist @Fausto_Sterling defends the use of a transsexual persuader. She'd construct a theory about a biological sex spectrum that justified a gender identity spectrum. Her theory is demolished by @Docstockk in 'Material Girls', reviewed here by @bindelj๐
14./ In the gender identity story it seems kids often become just a canvas upon which utopia can be drawn. This lack of concern began with Kinsey who sparked the sex revolution. His research is increasingly thought biased and his work practices bizarre.๐nytimes.com/2004/10/03/movโฆ
15./ Worst of all he actively collaborated with paedophiles. This chilling interview in a C4 documentary from the 90s sums up the team's total lack of concern for kids. The abuser he describes raped over 300 kids. Kinsey never turned him in. Research justified abuse it seems.๐
16./ As for Money, "Joan" decided to return to being a boy, but Money's misuse of David Reimer to prove an ideological point haunted him and his twin. They both commited suicide. Some blamed the creepy naked experiments Money made the boys conduct while he photographed. ๐
17./ Money had used David Reimer's story to claim 'sex' was pliable and changing it easy. By 1997 when the truth was revealed, it was too late. His proteges held leading positions across the world including in the UK. The idea of 'Gender identity' was unleashed.
18./ After Labour took power in 1997 it came under pressure to legally recognise "sex change". Russell Reid, its expert advisor, studied under Money, and saw transsexuality as just one of many mental health conditions where the physical self and its mental image could be at odds.
19./ Reid shared Money's fascination with apotemnophilia, the deeply felt need to be an amputee. I worked on this BBC doc where Reid argued if you could surgically remove your genitals, then why not your limbs? Why should one act be sane and the other one not? Why indeed?
20./ The people we followed seemed... sane. But they weren't. There are a surprising number of people who want to seriously harm themselves, because they loathe their bodies. Surely one of the defining characteristics of a humane medical service is it shouldn't enable this?
21./ You might think so. But in Scotland 51 teenagers have been approved for breast removal in the last 6 years alone. This is justified by an idea, 'gender identity' that percolated from the minds of John Money, Reed Erickson and Russel Reid. ๐ thetimes.co.uk/article/scottiโฆ
22./ Reid was eventually found guilty of misconduct after he fast-tracked sex change for a woman who wanted to be a man because she said she was Jesus. This expert advisor on the GR Act (2004) was defended to the hilt by Peter Tatchell. Of course he was. ๐petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/trโฆ
23./ But if Reid had had his way it would have been acceptable right now for the NHS to be chopping off limbs for that "small vulnerable minority" who can't live with their body. He'd have justified it with tropes we have all heard: high suicide rates, mental trauma, etc etc.
24./ But here's the thing. Do you really think it would be a healthier society for kids to grow up in where the idea is promoted that a route to greater happiness is the mutilation of your body? I don't. But we're about to test that idea to destruction.
25./ The tragedy is for the Chevalier d'Eon and the patients of Hirschfeld, Money and Reid there was for most a much simpler, safer solution: men can be as feminine as they want, women as masculine as they need to be. Gender is a trap. Surgery should not be a route to utopia.
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