Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce – Book Review

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce – Book Review

OPINION: by Steph Richards

This book review of “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality” is a profound exploration of Helen Joyce’s book and hopefully a contribution to the discourse on sex and gender identity. It is the second book I have read by a gender-critical author, the first being “Testosterone: the Story of Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us” by Carole Hoveen, an author I have debated human rights with at an American University. Sadly, in the UK, trans people are silenced from taking part in debates and from writing articles in the mainstream press – we dont get internationally branded as “Terf Island” because grass is green.

My review looks not only at the storyline of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality but also at the references she refers to ascertain validity. I also look at the movement that Helen Joyce allies – the global gender-critical movement (GCM), referencing Sophie Lewis’s newly published book “Enemy Feminisms: Terf’s Policewomen and Girlbosses“, which challenges gender-critical feminism.  

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality has been criticised in the past specifically for suggesting that trans activism is financed on a global basis. As a trans and award-winning human rights activist and the CEO of a trans advocacy organisation, that is certainly not my experience. 

Meanwhile, Helen Joyce currently works with the trans-hostile organisation Sex Matters as ‘Director of Advocacy’, saying they are a “human rights organisation”.

For this review, I will not use the term “Terfs” as used in Lewis’s book, as I have (unlikely as it may seem) three gender-critical friends, all of whom would be upset if I used that term, while I appreciate others in their movement happily adopt “Terf” with pride.

It’s crucial to understand that the gender-critical movement is not a monolith but a complex entity with differing factions. These factions include the ‘Ultra’s’, who hold radical views and have links to the far-right, fascist, and Christian evangelical extremists, and the ‘Softs’, who acknowledge trans human rights while also recognising the reality of sex, which they believe takes precedence over gender. Needless to say, my gender-critical friends are all Softs. While I consider the gender-critical movement to be a hate group, I certainly don’t think everyone who is gender-critical hates trans people.

The human rights organisation The Lemkin Institute defines the gender-critical movement as:

The gender critical movement simultaneously denies that transgender identity is real and seeks to eradicate it completely from society. Many gender critical ideologues identify themselves as feminists and believe themselves to be protecting women from men.

The movement, a centrepiece of right-wing ascendancy in the Western world, calls for discrimination against and harassment of transgender individuals and the transgender community through laws and policies that criminalise trans identity and trans life”.

This definition would be true of the ‘Ultra’ faction of the gender-critical movement but not true of the ‘Softs’ who take a more realistic view of trans people. Sadly, in the United States just now, we are witnessing the social genocide of trans people with the Trump regime, wiping away trans healthcare, legal recognition that we exist, changing discrimination laws, banning us from serving in the military, and even falsifying records in history. More recently, trans people from outside the United States have effectively been barred from entering the country.

Other human rights organisations have called out the GCM, including UN Women, stating:

Media and political campaigns have positioned the rights of LGBTIQ+ people as negotiable and debatable. Some try to frame the human rights of transgender people as being at odds with women’s rights, even asserting that trans women do not face gender-based discrimination or that they pose a threat to the rights, spaces, and safety of cisgender women”.

The Council of Europe said:

The Assembly condemns the highly prejudicial anti gender, gender-critical and anti-trans narratives which reduce the fight for the equality of LGBTI people to what these movements deliberately mis-characterises as ‘gender ideology’ or ‘LGBTI ideology’. Such narratives deny the very existence of LGBTI people, dehumanise them, and often falsely portray their rights as being in conflict with women’s and children’s rights, or societal and family values in general. All of these are deeply damaging to LGBTI people, while also harming women’s and children’s rights and social cohesion.

Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality centres on “gender identity ideology”, which suggests to the average person in the street that trans people are not real  – basically “fake”. This is despite the obvious fact that laws exist to protect trans people, and the NHS has devoted services to my community. We will go into this dehumanising mantra of gender identity ideology later in this review.

Looking at the references Joyce used to write her book, it is very clear many are highly controversial, taking a “one-sided” approach to justify the book’s narrative. Joyce references studies involving Ray Blanchard, a highly contentious American-Canadian sexologist, along with her Sex Matters colleagues Michael Biggs and Emma Hilton. She also refers to Lisa Litman, which Google tells me that her study regarding Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) “has generated considerable discussion and controversy”. Needless to say, I was aware of that, and I am grateful Google agreed.

Frankly, I think Google is being very kind – Litman’s study, which Helen Joyce refers to, has been roundly debunked, as has much of Blanchard’s work. Joyce also refers several times to ‘Fair Play For Women’, an organisation with a similar agenda to Sex Matters and Women’s Liberation Front. This American organisation aligns with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a named anti-LGBT+ hate group, an organisation to which Helen Joyce refers several times. The ADF has an office in the UK, an income of over £1m and has been involved in several anti-LGBT legal and anti-abortion cases over the last few years. More recently, they have campaigned against buffer zones encircling abortion clinics and supported “Christians” who break the latest legislation.  

Indeed, most of Joyce’s references appear to be from gender-critical sources, as are all of her acknowledgements, Bindel, Bartosh, Ditum, Stock, Forstater, Smith, Turner, Williams, Fanshawe, and many more – it’s just a massive list of people who play an active part of the far-right financed gender-critical movement.

Helen Joyce’s book is a polemical exploration of the central tenet of gender self-identification. Joyce argues that trans people should be recognised as men or women based on their biological sex, not on their gender identity. This argument, which defies human rights and propagates the Christian extremism mantra of “anti-LGBT”, underscores the importance of recognising and supporting trans people’s rights.

Joyce claims her book is about trans activism and its alleged “capture” of policies and institutions. Her critique centres on what she describes as the rapid acceptance and promotion of gender identity ideology within influential sectors of society.

She contends that charitable foundations controlled by billionaires (all Jewish, it would appear), along with activist groups, academics in gender studies, and big businesses, have collectively propelled this ideology into mainstream political discourse. This, according to Joyce, has led to the silencing of dissenting voices, a rather strange allegation given in 2012; there were just 60 or so articles in the mainstream press about trans people, rocketing to over 7500 a decade later. Needless to say, the vast majority had negative connotations, resulting in hate crimes against trans people going through the roof.

Joyce makes the case for third spaces (I agree), but she also makes the case against gender-affirming care and puberty blockers concerning young people, to which I disagree. She also devotes many words to detransitioners, albeit Hillary Cass, a paediatrician who reported to the NHS in regards to trans youth healthcare, could muster “less than ten,” (all assigned female at birth) from some 9000 patients seen at the Tavistock Gender Identity Service.

She also claims that many trans people don’t “pass”. Indeed, I get reminded by online gender-critical activists that I am a bloke every day, together with a scattering of death threats and messages to “kill myself.”

In her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Joyce critiques the deconstruction of sex as a biological reality, exemplified by Andrea Long Chu’s definition of “female”, which she claims is an existential category, not strictly a biological one. Chu’s definition of “female” is a complex, theoretical concept that departs significantly from conventional understandings of the term. My view is sex is real and sometimes significant, especially in medical settings, and by choosing to highlight Chu, Joyce is tapping into low-hanging fruit.

Joyce challenges the figures presented by gender theorists on intersex conditions, arguing that they are exaggerated to support the idea of sex as a “vast, infinitely malleable continuum.” Here, Joyce and I differ, given there is significant evidence and the definition of sex is highly complicated, highlighted by the fact that people with XY chromosomes have given birth.

Joyce highlights what she sees as the negative impacts of gender identity ideology on various demographics:

Children: Joyce expresses concern over the increasing number of children and teenagers identifying as transgender, attributing this to online influences, social contagion, and the promotion of gender-identity ideology in schools. The reality is very different. While one in ten young people identify as lesbian or gay and bi using NHS statistics, the number of children questioning their gender is one in one thousand six hundred and sixty-four.

Women: Joyce argues that the acceptance of “transwomen are women” undermines the category of “woman” and erodes women’s rights. She points to instances where women have been penalised for asserting the importance of biological sex or for raising concerns about single-sex spaces. The “trans women are women” mantra says Joyce is at the core of gender-identity ideology.

If it is, it’s news to me.

What made me become an activist was a speech from gay activist Harvey Milk. Harvey said:

Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realise that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all.

Reading that six years ago, I replaced the word “gay” with “trans“, and Harvey’s words inspired me to stand up. Clearly, I was not born with female genitalia, but it’s pretty amazing what surgeons can do; I am a trans woman – proud to be “trans”, having taken one of the most challenging journeys in humanity. I stand as “trans” mainly for kids, trans kids – I want them to know, even in this awful world filled with hate, persecution and appalling trans healthcare, that they are valid, accepted and loved and that being “trans” is OK.  

Joyce’s book has a heavy bias against trans women, mentioning us over one hundred and ten times – trans men circa twenty times, though the last England and Wales census revealed trans men and trans women exist in equal numbers (48,000). While currently, most trans people identify with the binary (men and women), an increasing number of young people identify as non-binary. Many governments (the UK excluded) recognise the need for “X” passports and the need for gender-neutral spaces.    

Helen Joyce’s book makes allegations about gender-affirming surgery, saying:

Less is known about the impact on transwomen, but low testosterone is known to cause fatigue, brittle bones and high cholesterol levels in biological males, and taking oestrogen is likely to raise their risk of some cancers, including breast cancer.

Now, as a trans woman who had “lower surgery” in July 2019, I want to reply to this text directly. Yes, bones can become brittle – this is resolved by taking a Vitamin D supplement.

High cholesterol? Mine falls within the normal range.

Likely to raise the risk of cancer? Actually, it significantly reduces the risk of prostate cancer, which has become the most common cancer in England, with a massive 25% increase in cases between 2019 and 2023.

Cause fatigue? Yes, trans women get significantly weaker, our physical performance level drops to below cisgender women, which is why it’s damn unfair to ban us from competing with women in some sports. I work out regularly to keep fit and can walk 12,000 steps daily despite being in my early seventies.

But unquestionably, the question Helen Joyce should have asked is how happy trans people are by having gender-affirming healthcare because, for the vast majority of us, it’s the best thing we ever do.

Helen does a big moan about trans women competing in female sports, the reality being that no British trans woman has ever won a medal at elite level, in any sport in the last hundred years. Sure, a tiny number of trans women partake at the grassroots level, as do trans men in men’s sports – we swap places. Perhaps surprisingly, likely, the most successful trans athlete in the world is a trans man – the professional boxer Patricio Manuel.

Helen also discusses the controversies surrounding trans women in women’s prisons – the reality being that just six trans women are housed in the female estate in English jails, with some 96% housed in the male estate, where 29% report men sexually abusing them.

Joyce’s book also highlights the influence of (now defunct) campaign groups like Press for Change on the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) in the UK, suggesting that they aimed to detach legal sex from material reality – the genuine reason being the UK had no option but to adopt the GRA because of a court case at the European Court of Human Rights.

While Joyce focuses on the potential harms of trans-inclusive policies, organisations like TransLucent advocate for the importance of protecting transgender rights and combating discrimination. The Equality Act 2010, for example, aims to harmonise discrimination law and strengthen equality across various protected characteristics, including gender reassignment. The gender-criticals, on the other hand, campaign for trans exclusion, removing the protections the Equality Act affords us.

Moreover, the review of Sophie Lewis’s new book “Enemy Feminisms” suggests that some of the concerns raised by Joyce are echoed within feminist discourse itself. Lewis critiques trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERFism) and its connections to the far right, arguing that right-wing transphobia has appropriated language and support from radical feminism. I have to say I agree, and sometimes I wonder if the real reason some girls want to identify as male is because, over the decades, feminism has failed.

Failed to close the pay gap, failed to close the health inequality, failed to break the patriarchy. Replace Litman’s ROGD theory with the “can’t beat them, join them” theory, and we will likely be closer to the truth. 

The British feminist writer Grace Lavery sums up Helen Joyce’s book by saying:

Reality – the reality shared by women, actual women, in the world – really does matter for feminism. Metaphysical definitions of the category ‘woman’ really, really don’t.

Did I enjoy reading Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality?

The answer is yes and no.

I read a book that, in my opinion, set out to take the reader to become an ally with the gender-critical cause. I read a book that was neither balanced nor tried to be balanced. Yes, there were fluffy words about trans people on occasion, but in the main, Helen took the worst of examples of a tiny demographic to make trans people look like, well…. “shits”.

Did Helen Joyce mention any amazing trans women like Sophie Wilson, who likely designed the processor in your mobile phone?

No.

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality is controversial and provocative – its polemical tone and selective use of evidence will likely alienate some readers who know about the culture war against trans people. For others who are less knowledgeable, it could easily make soldiers go to the gender-critical cause. I hope they keep an open mind and read Shon Faye’s book, “The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice“, an instant Sunday Times “Best Seller.”

Helen Joyce’s book is easily readable and makes some valid points, particularly about Stonewall. This LGBT charity took on the role of advocating for trans people, which consequently has made my job more difficult. Occasionally, Helen’s words made me think again; for that, I am grateful. Her argument for third spaces for non-binary folk, detrainsitioners and folk who don’t pass was compelling and ironically matched the policies that TransLucent adopted years ago. So, too, was her suggestion that possibly some sex offenders hijack a trans identity for their devious ends – a point I agree with.  

While Helen Joyce’s concerns about the impact on women’s rights and child safeguarding are part of the narrative, it is essential to engage with a broader range of perspectives and to avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes and misinformation against a much-maligned demographic who suffer crime at twice the rate of cisgender people, often find employment impossible to find, and suffer massive barriers to healthcare.

In the introduction of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Helen says a powerful line: “This is not a book about trans people” – except given all the references to trans individuals, it most certainly is.

Oh, and did I mention suicide?

In August 2024, a YouTube video was posted interviewing NHS gender-affirming surgeon Mr James Bellringer, in which he states around one in five trans people commit suicide if they can’t access the gender-affirming surgery they need.

Helen Joyce’s book quotes a Blanchard and Bailey paper saying:

“Although suicide is somewhat more common among gender-dysphoric people than the general population, they write, it is still very rare.”

And this vast discrepancy, perhaps, highlights the massive gulf between the two sides in the gender war – not to mention the problem of misinformation.