In the ongoing culture war between trans people and gender critical (GC) people, the latter consistently refer to the former as a cult. Social media posts by GC people frequently accuse trans people of following “transgender ideology” or “gender ideology”.
The judgement yesterday in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, Forstater V CGD Europe, clearly shows that the reverse is true, it is the GC people who belong to a cult, and a nasty one at that.
The definition of a cult, from the Collins Dictionary for example, is: “Cult is used to describe things that are very popular or fashionable among a particular group of people”. It doesn’t necessarily need to be religious but obviously some are.
Note I didn’t say GC people are NAZIs, I said nasty, because under Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights, there is no evidence that the GC cult is an “activity…..aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms….in the Convention”, which includes NAZI ideology. The judge in Forstater appeal makes this clear in his introduction.
But it is a nasty cult and here’s why.
I volunteer as a manager for a transgender support charity which provides emotional support to people who are suffering from secondary mental health conditions as a result of their gender identity being in conflict with their sex assigned at birth. Each month we provide up to 100 counselling hours and facilitate 8 support groups for trans people who are suffering significant stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health issues. In the last 16 years we have provided this support to over 1000 people.
They are all clearly suffering. If they weren’t, my charity wouldn’t be needed.
When interviewing our clients to ascertain who they are and why they are seeking our support, none of them, not one single one of them, refers to, or indicates in any fashion, that they belong to a cult or follow a cult.
All they refer to is pain, emotional pain.
Our wonderful NHS recognise this pain, and try to help relieve it through correct treatment at the few gender identity clinics in the UK, with the compassion and caring of many doctors, nurses and gender specialists. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough NHS funding to go around and many trans people are on waiting lists for up to 5 years; it’s no wonder my charity is very busy.
One of the simplest and cost-effective treatments that the NHS provides is affirmation of gender; in fact, to be honest it doesn’t cost anything. Affirming someone’s gender just means calling them by their preferred pronouns and acknowledging their gender, socially and legally. For example, it means calling a trans woman a woman.
However, Forstater states, and quoted in the judgement, that she and by inference, other members of her cult, “don’t think people should be compelled to play along with literal delusions like “trans-women are women”. She also states: “I share the concerns….that radically expanding the legal definition of ‘women’ so that it can include both males and females makes it a meaningless concept, and will undermine women’s rights and protection for vulnerable women and girls”.
Forstaters’ cult-like belief is that the use of the word woman by people born into male bodies is delusional and that trans woman are a threat to other people, yet she has no scientific or academic studies or evidence to back up these claims. By inference she is critical of NHS procedures for treating trans people, and purposely adding to their considerable emotional pain.
We have all learnt from this Pandemic that people who look after their health are protecting the NHS and saving lives, but Forstater and other followers of her GC cult are deliberately campaigning to prevent trans people from looking after their good mental health.
How nasty is that?
Authored by Julie Miller