Unseen

Invisibility: The Greatest Superpower

When we have finally exposed and defeated the gender identity scam and set structures in place to help heal all its many thousands of victims and their families, I’d like to get back to my fiction projects. In particular, a series featuring two indomitable detectives: a slovenly, taciturn teenage girl with a penchant for stealing motorcycles and a retired, widowed art historian whose sense of adventure, suppressed for decades, has revived with a vengeance. Their greatest asset is their invisibility. Those around them pay no attention to them. When they walk down the street, together or alone, when they speak or act, no one notices.

The first requirement for achieving the superpower of invisibility, of course, is to be born female. The second is to be old. And it definitely helps to be a lesbian.

These thoughts flitted through my mind when I received an email from the UK news and opinion website Unherd advertising a playful map of the key actors in the “Culture Wars.”

The map misses the point so spectacularly that it could serve as Exhibit A in an explanation of why “Culture Wars” is a really bad term for what is going on. Still, after my initial shock, I realized it was very helpful. It explains why so many people think the “Culture Wars” are a sideshow they can afford to ignore. Casual onlookers evidently think what is going on is a largely intellectual tussle between individuals and groups emphasizing different cultural concepts and principles – a cluster of acrimonious but largely theoretical debates. No. That is not what is happening, dear spectators.

It's about bodies being maimed, lives being destroyed, reality being traded in for lies, and the values of the Enlightenment being booted out of our societies.

As I looked at this map and pondered all the major figures who had been omitted, it became clear to me that the misunderstanding is probably held by much of the population. The truth is that those who have been fighting in the trenches for years are engaged in an exhausting, 24/7, existential struggle to preserve the rights of women and LGB people as well as child safeguarding, and to preserve clear and truthful language and freedom of speech, in the face of a dangerous cult that has engulfed our societies.

For many years now, these fighters have been getting daily abuse, death and rape threats, getting fired and/or arrested, having their careers and reputations destroyed, lying awake from fear and stress because they fear the repercussions of expressing their views, and in some cases trying desperately to maintain contact with their children. They are risking their health and livelihoods to rescue society from a nihilistic movement that is making some people very wealthy. Let us call these fighters in the trenches – mixing military metaphors – the Resistance. At the heart of the global Resistance is TERF Island – the UK. And TERFs, as you may know, are generally “women of a certain age” – or god help us, even older, who tend to be more financially secure and are therefore able to speak out.

Two main points:

*** First: The central, most contentious part of the “Culture Wars” is a battle between those who champion the rights of women and LGB people as well as child safeguarding on the one hand, and those who are intent on demolishing them on the other. It is also a battle between those who uphold free speech on these and other issues and those who are trying to suppress it.

*** Second: for the past five years, this battle has been fought largely through the courts.

We could start with the recent Supreme Court cases, one in the UK, the other in the US, which were in both cases the culmination of many years of activism. I have described these two cases in previous posts. To summarize: First, on September 27th, the UK Supreme Court heard arguments on the meaning of the words “sex” and “woman” in the Equality Act. The five learned justices heard much wonderful gibberish: for instance, the hapless barrister for the Scottish government explained to the court that a heterosexual man with a Gender Recognition Certificate becomes a lesbian, while a heterosexual man without a GRC remains a heterosexual man. The ruling in that landmark case will decide whether the rights and protections of lesbians and women in general are to be upheld in the UK or not.

A week later, on December 4th, the US Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Tennessee (and by implication other states) could lawfully ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. Here too, the justices heard a series of inventive, absurd arguments against the ban. You can find many excellent accounts of this case under its name, the US vs Skrmetti.

But those are just the Supreme Court cases. The map of actors in the “Culture Wars” managed to omit all of those who have been involved in over thirty grueling court cases, some dragging on interminably, over the past few years, almost all of which cases they have won.

The map that is marketed as a “beautifully intricate – and hilarious – map of the different factions and cliques” did include the wonderful JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock, Stella O’Malley, and Andrew Doyle, but omitted, for instance (with a clear bias towards the UK):

Maya Forstater, whose case solidified the employment rights of people with “gender critical” beliefs; Julie Bindel, who has been writing on these issues, from her key vantage point of male violence against women, for decades; Helen Joyce, perhaps the most articulate and influential writer and speaker on the issues at stake; Stephanie Davies-Arai and Shelley Charlesworth, who have toiled tirelessly for decades to expose the harmful disinformation being spread at schools; the Tavistock whistleblowers: Sue Evans, Dr David Bell, Sonia Appleby; detransitioners such as Keira Bell, whose landmark legal case first drew public attention to the plight of young people subjected to harmful and inappropriate medical interventions; Allison Bailey, who won her long legal case against her chambers; her appeal against the ruling on Stonewall is still pending; Mia Hughes, who wrote the groundbreaking “WPATH files”; Graham Linehan, who has sacrificed almost everything to publicize the abuses being perpetrated against women and children; James Dreyfus, one of the very few gay actors to openly oppose the TQ+ tyranny that has swamped and squashed what was once the gay rights movement; Joanna Cherry KC, who fearlessly and eloquently defends the rights of women and LGB people and was vilified by her own party for doing so; Neal Hanvey, another brave gay politician who refused to follow the TQ+ banner and spoke movingly in Parliament; Jamie Reed, the gender clinic whistleblower who has done so much to shift awareness on the left in the US of the harm being done to kids; Kara Dansky, who has tried passionately to get the US Democratic Party to come its senses; the founders of Woman’s Place UK: Judith Green, Ruth Serwotka and Kiri Tunks; Jo Phoenix, who fought a key case against the Open University; Marion Calder and Susan Smith of For Women Scotland, who took their case on the definition of “woman” to the UK Supreme Court; Rosie Kaye and Denise Fahmy, who suffered appalling abuse and are fighting for freedom in the arts; Sall Grover, who lost her legal case in Australia (at the lower court) to exclude men who “identify” as women from her women-only app; Amy Hamm, the Canadian nurse whose life and career have been turned upside-down by what was essentially a free expression trial; Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, the only woman at the UN who consistently fights for the rights of women and girls – and also specifically for lesbians, whose rights are misrepresented and/or trashed by other UN agencies and representatives; Martina Navratilova, Sharron Davies, Linda Blade, and others fighting for women’s and girls’ sport; Hilary Cass, not a fighter but the eminent pediatrician who produced the most comprehensive review worldwide of approaches to gender dysphoria in children, for which she has been subjected to vile abuse and advised to avoid public transport for her safety; superb journalists such as Janice Turner, Hannah Barnes, and Bernard Lane, who have been writing scrupulously-researched articles on these issues for years. And Simon Edge, who fights in fiction.

I have undoubtedly missed out dozens of other tireless fighters, for which I apologize. I will not mention the wonderful solicitors and barristers who have been involved in the 30-odd legal cases in the UK, nearly all of which have been successful, since their professional duty is to represent clients, not causes. But I will put in a word for Michael Foran, whose meticulous legal opinions have been used at the highest level.

One omission in particular baffled me.

It is the omission of Kate Harris and me – of LGB Alliance.

Since most of those who tell us that we are unusually courageous and have led the way for the United States and the rest of the world go on to explain that they don’t — yet — dare to say so publicly, it seems it’s up to me to blow our own trumpet.

The sex versus gender battle is the heart of the “Culture Wars”. The mapmaker and perhaps most spectators on the sidelines are seemingly unaware that all the damaging impacts of the sex versus gender battle, from the abuses of pediatric medicine to the spectacle of men smashing women’s sporting records (and sometimes the women themselves) are down to a single cause: the takeover of the once relatively benign gay rights movement by the aggressive, misogynistic TQ+ movement.

I met Kate Harris in 2019. We saw the growing harm to young LGB people – and to society – and we saw the cause. The two of us then set out to remedy it – without any money and until our first meeting without any support – by setting up LGB Alliance and reviving the gay rights movement that the TQ+ mob had trashed. When people asked us what our goal was, Kate always replied “Global revolution.” And that is what we helped to set in motion. We were inundated with messages of thanks and support from around the world. But our opponents understood the implications of what we were doing and pelted us with abuse and defamatory lies from the outset. LGB Alliance is the epicenter of the main struggle in the “Culture Wars.”

Why is LGB Alliance the epicenter? Because the TQ+ gender identity movement was only able to flourish by profiling itself as the next step after gay rights – the latest civil rights struggle. Instead of what it really is -- a sexist, regressive cult – a profound betrayal of the gay rights movement.

Before Kate and I founded LGB Alliance, the legacy gay rights organizations had persuaded the public that to criticize “gender identity” was homophobic. We disrupted that narrative, tore up the script and said “No!” And gradually we broke the spell and others started to speak out. We revived the gay rights movement that Stonewall, the HRC, GLAAD and the rest had abandoned and betrayed. We started to recreate the sense of community that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals had lost. We started to take back our history, which was being misrepresented. Above all, we made it possible for others to express their objections to “gender identity” dogma. And the “woke” crowd loathed us for it.

I am enormously proud of what Kate and I have done, and the organization we have built up. We played what I believe to have been a pivotal role in starting the long process of restoring sanity to UK institutions. Many American, Canadian, and Australian gay rights campaigners tell us that we paved the way for others to follow. We’re not there yet – not by a long shot. But anyone who does not recognize our role has really not been paying attention. Is it because we have all the key attributes to achieve invisibility? Sometimes I think so. In any case – when people are explaining how TERF Island fought back, I would rather they didn’t overlook the pioneering role of LGB Alliance, and the leadership of Kate Harris and myself in founding it. Two old dykes tend to have the superpower of invisibility, even if they have started a global revolution. I’d be grateful if those who appreciate what we have done would occasionally say our names.