Friday, 15 January 2016


Every time I hear about Transgenderism on the radio, and it is nearly every morning, I ask myself "what are we talking about here?". How has this become such a prominent issue in the public life of the nation? Let's be clear, I have enormous sympathy for people with genuine gender dysphoria - the outward appearance and physical characteristics different to your gender identity.

And aside: That this condition exists rather gives the lie to those who believe gender is a social construct, and that the only reason women seek different roles is mainly because of social pressure.

So, let's dig out some numbers; a few thousand post-operative transsexuals in the according to the UK ONS in 2009:

The Home Office ’Report of the interdepartmental working group on
transsexual people
‘ based on research from the Netherlands and Scotland,
estimates that there are between 1,300 and 2,000 male to female and
transsexual people.
Further, GIRES (2008) claims there are 6,200 people who
have transitioned to a new gender role via medical intervention and
approximately 2,335 full Gender Recognition Certificates have been issued to
February 2009.  
So, post-operative transexuals are about as twice as frequent in the population as people who've been struck by lightning. But there's more to transgenderism than just those who've had the operation. Under a broader definition to include

  • Gender Variance: A person’s feelings about his or her gender identity that do not conform to the stereotypical boy/man or girl/woman category as assigned at birth.
  • Transsexualism: This term is used to describe a person who has ’transitioned‘, or is in the process of ‘transitioning‘, or intends to transition from male to female or female to male. 
  • Transvestite: A transvestite individual feels compelled to wear clothing normally associated with the opposite sex, but does not desire to live permanently as a member of the opposite sex
  • Drag: A term applied to individuals who cross dress often for entertainment purposes.
  • Androgynous: A person who does not fit clearly into the typical gender roles of their society. Androgynous people may identify as beyond gender, between genders, moving across genders, entirely genderless, or any or all of these. Androgyne identities include pan-gender, bi-gender, ambi-gender, non-gendered, a-gender, gender-fluid or intergender. 
The numbers are estimated to be about 0.1-0.5% of the population, 65,000-300,000 or so people (ONS, 2009).

So, we are talking about a very small number of genuinely transexual people, onto whom we latch a much, much larger number of people who range from transvestites to all manner of special snowflakes, who merely want their victim status enshrined in law.

The fact that the troubles of the "Transexual community" make it onto the news every single day, isn't because of widespread problems, but it's about culture and virtue-signalling. Take a group of people with a genuine condition, amenable to medical intervention, and to whom we owe sympathy and respect, we've add a much larger group of people whose interests seem to be mainly about rubbing "society's" nose in its "intolerance" rather than any genuine injustice they've faced.

My contempt for latching onto the "transgender community" starts with none for people who're genuinely transexual and increases as we descend the list above. I am not sure most Drag queens would welcome being included on the list - aren't they in the "Gay community", and in any case seem well able to look after themselves? I struggle to keep up.

To these people I say, you're not discriminated against because no-one will use 'zir' as a pronoun, you're just an arsehole. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I noticed this on radio 5 live, every morning they where having a news item about it. My ears pricked up when a person with the most annoying voice imanginable had been put in a male prison when clearly he/she wanted to be a women. My local pub have a couple where one is supposedly a woman, says it has had its bits chopped off but doesnt look or make any attempt to look feminine, my missus gets the right hump when He/she uses the ladies lol. And there's nothing the landlord can say.

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