Iceland: “Gender Medicine” Still in the Darkness of Activism and Lack of Knowledge

I stumbled across an article on the Icelandic Public Broadcaster’s (RÚV) website this week.

What caught my attention was the sensationalist headline which read: “This is a matter of life and death”. I couldn’t help wondering what that was all about, and since the public broadcaster had so successfully grabbed my attention, I read on.

When I clicked on the article, a gigantic image of the trans flag welcomed me, and in the sub-headline, I was informed that the waiting lists for hormones and surgery are getting longer, and lack of knowledge is the main cause of transphobia.

When I was in the middle of the article, I realised that it was just an extract from a radio show on the topic. I finished reading the article and listened to the show. Once again, I placed myself in the hands of our knowledgeable, balanced and measured public broadcaster. I hope you took that with a pinch of salt because I am not sure how well I’ve mastered the Anglosphere’s sarcasm in writing yet.

This radio show is called Mental Health Issues. At the beginning of this episode, which was all about trans and gender identity issues, they started with a disclaimer that gender dysphoria or gender incongruence is not a mental health issue, but the only treatment available in Iceland is from the State Hospital Mental Health Department. That’s funny.

Before the interview with the panellists, the mandatory ritual of sharing pronouns was observed.

In this production, led by Guðrún Hálfdánardóttir, a journalist at RÚV, we are taken on a journey through “The World of Trans“  because now it’s the law. “Self-ID is the law of the land, and the law removed all doubt that this is a mental health issue and we as law-abiding citizens must obey the law”, she says.

That’s us told.

The Sex Autonomy Act of 2019 was legislated by stealth and without any public debate. Nobody knew about it and then COVID hit. Lockdowns and restrictions meant that people would not notice the Act’s impact on same-sex spaces for females. During the pandemic, Reykjavik City Council even published an objection handling manual for staff in the city’s sports facilities, should they come across a woman protective of her rights in female-only spaces.

Ólöf Bjarki Antons is the Chair of Trans Iceland. Ólöf is a non-binary identifying female, 25, and has a degree in political science. She is from a rural town in the northeast of Iceland called Dalvík which has approximately 1,400 inhabitants.

In the interview, Ólöf takes us through her gender journey.  She tells us she was a typical gender non-conforming teenager in rural Iceland. She discovered subcultures, outside of Iceland, on the internet. She stumbled across the term “non-binary“ and felt she finally had a term that described her gender non-conformity.

I was eager to hear whether the public broadcaster would dive into these subcultures and where all these new terms came from, but that did not materialise.

This was going to be yet another state-sanctioned quasi-religious episode from the Gender Church.

She also described her fear of going out at night in Reykjavík, because of an increase in hate crimes.
However, according to Icelandic crime statistics, there is nothing that substantiates her claims. The public broadcaster did not contest that either – nor did it ask any questions relating to those claims. The broadcaster spoke with a couple of professionals in the Mental Health Department’s “Trans Unit.” Alexander Björn Gunnarsson is a social worker in the adult “trans team” and is a female who identifies as a man. The public broadcaster asked about what the definition of trans is, and I was hoping for a good answer, as it seems very difficult to obtain a clear and concise definition of what trans means. That did not materialise either. I am still just as unclear about what they actually mean by “trans.”
Apparently, it is an umbrella term over everything but biological sex and the binary nature of sex.

Björn Hjálmarsson is a specialist doctor in the adolescent “trans team.” I was hoping for some critical input from him because, in my activist work, I have had communications with him regarding the situation of “gender medicine.” In May 2022, an article was published by Heimildin which is a far-left-leaning publication. To my surprise, they had published a really good and balanced report on the topic. The headline read: “In the Darkness of Activism and Lack of Knowledge”.
I thought that we finally would have a medical professional willing to admit to the truth, which he did in part. However, the ink had hardly dried when trans activists do what they do best, and that is to name, shame, harass, threaten and picket. By 8 o’clock the same evening, he issued an apology and retracted his words. Even though they were written in an email thread, and used in the piece.

What we heard on the radio was a specialist medical doctor who had completely submitted himself to the activists’ demands. He said that we need to inject more money into “gender medicine” in Iceland, because the very progressive law passed in 2019 had tripled the number of referrals and because we as a progressive nation have to observe the magnificent beauty in diversity.

He told us about his dreams of opening a Gender Identity Discovery Centre. He also took us through the process of obtaining puberty blockers. Iceland is the only Nordic country left that prescribes puberty blockers. Dr Hjálmarsson claims that Iceland is the most progressive country in “gender medicine,” and this is why more money and research are needed. There was no mention of any concerns regarding puberty blockers and their effects. He is also happy to issue cross-sex hormones to 16-year-olds provided a dual-parental consent form is obtained. He refers his patients to a private fertility clinic Livio, if they want their eggs or sperm frozen for later use. This is not covered by the Icelandic government and he wants this to change. Last month I discovered that Livio is happy to perform egg harvesting for girls identifying as trans as young as 11!

As expected, this gallery of gender madness had to be endorsed by a local celebrity mother. Sigríður Eyþórsdóttir is a singer and comes from a very well-established musical family. She has three children, two boys and a girl who identifies as a boy. The trans-identified child is the middle child, between two boys, on the autistic spectrum, gender non-conforming and a typical tomboy.

At first, the teenager came out as a lesbian at age 13. After a few visits to the “Queer Youth Centre” run by the National Queer Organisation of Iceland and Reykjavík City Council,  she then adopted a trans identity which was immediately affirmed by everyone.

Ms Eyþórsdóttir told us about how important it is to immediately affirm and “that this is a life and death situation, which all research shows.” Again, there was no pushback from the state broadcaster. She told us about how frightened her child was about being refused “gender-affirming medicine” and surgeries. She told the listeners that she reassured her child by telling her that “no is not an option”, that “this will go through as planned“ and that she “gets what she wants.”

She also told us that there were times when she had to tell the health professional what to do because she knew better, thus speeding up and influencing the decision-making process of the professionals.
It really cemented Dr Hjálmason’s words about the darkness of activism and lack of knowledge.
And I bet this is where we still are. In fact, I know this is where we still are. I have my own sources too.

The hour-long programme ends with the Chair of Trans Iceland telling us that 320 trans people were murdered last year—just for being trans. Again, no pushback or requests for any substantiation of those claims. Nothing about almost all of these murders being committed against male sex workers in Latin America. As usual.

Dr Hjálmarsson’s closing input was an interesting comparison of trans people and left-handed people. Apparently, the increase in people identifying as trans is simply because of this progressive law from 2019 and more visibility. Just like what happened after left-handed pupils didn’t get the stick for being left-handed.

The icing on the cake was from the celebrity mother Ms Eyþórsdóttir. She claims that if you do not conform to this ideology and express gender-critical views, you should not be allowed to work with children in schools or the health care system. Those with gender-critical views should never be platformed. This is not a debate. The programme ends with the repetition of the law. We must obey.

This reveals the legal dilemma Iceland finds itself in. On the 1^st of January this year, a new paragraph in the criminal code came into force which bans “all non-evidence-based treatments to change same-sexual orientation.”

All “gender-affirming care” is not evidence-based and is gay conversion therapy.

The question remains whether that has dawned on them yet.