THE USE OF APPROPRIATION

We have been grateful for the many respectful replies we have received on here and on social media.


It is heartening to know that our call for moderation and curbing the excessive use of language is something that others also support.

However, there has been an increasing tendancy to see appropriation of intersex people brought into this debate.

We wish to make clear that intersex conditions are not the same thing as being transsexual or transgender. We have been told this by more than one such person with an intersex condition and we urge that you listen to them and not seek a way to imply you are like them. It is unfair.

These unfortunate people face a partially understood medical condition that carries many problems but is not known to be related to whatever is behind being transsexual.

We fully support research by scientists wanting to look for causes of transsexualism - be they physical, psychological or sociological. Knowledge is power to help future generations deal with what we know is a traumatic experience.

Yet we are very concerned to see some activists calling out academics who are endeavouring to fund meaningful investigation. Some even seek to get them into trouble with their colleges or employers just for doing this.

That is utterly wrong.

The search for a cause to transsexualism is a valid enterprise and we should not pre-determine any conclusion it might reach.

Science is evidence led - not conducted only if it agrees to prove what someone wants to be true.

In both of these actions we urge that those applying them for what they consider to be valid reasons please think again.

Similarly, we have noticed analogies used on social media to make those with a gender critical perspective look as if they have reasons for their opinions that seem unpalatable. Not merely genuine viewpoints, which we accept that such views very often are .

We cannot and should not impose our beliefs onto anyone.

Comparing treatment of transgender people with how the Nazi regime handled those of which they disapproved 75 years ago has become commonplace.

And transsexuals who support the rights of women to self determine their boundaries - as we 14 creating this blog do - get called truscum or quislings and even collaborators with agents of terror.

Many brave and honourable women challenged totalitarianism in occupied France and their sacrifice should not be demeaned.

As we approach Remembrance Sunday and the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War the use of such analogies to blacken the reputation of any woman, or trans woman, who does not follow ideology is disrespectful.

It unfairly appropriates and also diminishes those women who stood against oppression in past generations.