Genspect condemns yesterday’s arrest of writer and satirist Graham Linehan in connection with social media posts. This arrest marks a dangerous escalation in the UK’s mounting free speech crisis, where citizens now face criminal prosecution for satire and dissenting viewpoints.

Graham Linehan has sacrificed his career to defend women’s sex-based rights, advocate for gender-distressed children’s welfare, and amplify the voices of detransitioners. He has championed the rights of same-sex attracted young people to mature without medical intervention. His principled stance has cost him professional opportunities and subjected him to relentless harassment—yet he remains undaunted. His courage has inspired thousands: parents protecting their children, women defending their spaces, detransitioners seeking recognition, and those opposing new forms of conversion practices.

This arrest exemplifies the authoritarian overreach we oppose. Our founding principles are clear: contested ideas must be debated civilly and openly, not criminalised. We reject state interference with freedom of belief and expression. We refuse to accept that certain subjects are “beyond debate.” When authorities arrest comedians for satire and criminalise viewpoint diversity, democratic discourse collapses.

Genspect provides evidence-based resources and advocacy for non-medicalised approaches to gender distress. This vital work requires the freedom to examine contested ideas, challenge orthodoxies, and employ satire to illuminate contradictions. When dissent becomes criminal, essential conversations about safeguarding, evidence, and children’s welfare become impossible. Those seeking alternatives to medicalisation are silenced alongside their advocates.

UK authorities must reallocate resources from policing opinion to protecting citizens. A nation that arrests its satirists has abandoned the principles that enable progress.

We are honoured that Graham Linehan will address our Bigger Picture conference in Albuquerque this month, speaking on “What Just Happened?” Yesterday’s arrest provides a stark answer: the criminalisation of dissent is happening now.

Genspect stands with Graham Linehan and all defenders of free expression.

Media Contact:
Genspect welcomes all media enquiries. Director Stella O’Malley is available for immediate comment and interview.
Email: media@genspect.org

About Genspect: Genspect is an international organisation promoting evidence-based, non-medicalised approaches to gender distress. Active in 25+ countries, we defend biological reality, support families and detransitioners, and advocate for healthier outcomes for individuals and society.

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It’s not your imagination—some therapists are pushing extreme biases, as witnessed in the article below. Such unprofessional conduct and the decay of ethical standards that enable it raise serious concerns about trust in therapy. Its incorporation into practitioner education is even worse because it seems as if such bias is acceptable. If therapists can promote such divisive ideologies when it comes to politics, how can we rely on their objectivity when it comes to gender?

I recently attended a three-credit professional training called “The Impact of Donald Trump on America- A Cultic Studies Perspective”, which instructed therapists to hate their Trump-supporting patients. The course was held online on August 7, 2025. I was “taught” that if you voted for Trump, you are a part of a “cult on a national scale” that “presents an image of bringing the country back to a white majority and white power.”

The course was led by Dr. Jamie Marich, Ph.D she/they/we, licensed therapist, executive officer of “Healing Selves Therapeutic”, Heather LS Scarsboro, and author of several books on cults, Dr. Janja Lalich.

Here are a few highlights: Dr. Janja Lalich said MAGA is a cult on “a national scale” that “presents an image of bringing the country back to a white majority and white power.” And “…all they care about is that he [Trump] is getting rid of black and brown people in our country.”

Someone asked how minorities support Trump and the “racist” MAGA ideas, and the response is that minorities are illiterate, dumb, and selfish.

“Women Can Be Misogynists Too”

Also, according to this therapy class, people who voted for Trump are misogynists. According to Dr. Jamie Marich, there wasn’t even a competition between Trump and his opponent (Kamala Harris), so the only explanation is hatred of women.

The trainers of this therapy class said, “Let’s be clear, women can be misogynists too”. Also, many right-wing women are being controlled by their husbands. They voted for Trump to stay safe. “You’re the lowly woman.”

“Let’s Just Fight These F*ckers”

When asked if there is any hope that this cult can be stopped, Dr. Janja Lalich stated, “Well, they stopped Nazi Germany, didn’t they? We have to hope that there will be enough resistance. You know, we need to keep going to those protests, we need to keep resisting, we need to keep speaking out in whatever way we can, we need to do the boycotts when they happen…I don’t know if I can answer that because I go back and forth…there are days when I say I don’t think I’m going to see this change in my lifetime, and it’s a hard thought. And then another part of me is like, yes, let’s just fight these f*ckers.”

According to this training, not only do racism and misogyny influence a Trump voter, but we can’t forget about “toxic capitalism” too.

LS Scarsboro, a therapist who describes herself as a trauma specialist and self-discloses that she has Dissociative Identity Disorder (formally known as multiple personality disorder), said MAGA feels “like home” to people with trauma. “MAGA feels like what’s normal to their nervous system. Or they are still in what I call the trauma dungeon. They haven’t left the trauma dungeon.”

Also, the Heritage Foundation is the linchpin of the MAGA cult, according to this three-credit therapy class.

This course is in direct violation of the National Board of Certified Counselors policy, section E:

This was a three-hour class, and these are just the highlights. Read more about it here.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is a licensed clinical social worker. She completed her MSW in 1999 from New York University. She has a variety of experiences in schools, group homes, hospitals, and community-based organizations. Since getting fired for not getting the COVID vaccine, she has dedicated herself to educating parents and emboldening other mental health professionals to challenge the ideological capture of her profession.

Pamela is the author of A Practical Response to Gender Distress, a tool book for parents who do not want to affirm a false gender identity, and Froggy Girl, her cute rhyming children’s book about self-acceptance.

Therapists: earn three professional CEUs while learning the truth about the gender industry here.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

If you are concerned about the integrity and objectivity of the therapy and the medical profession, please consider joining Genspect at the Bigger Picture Conference in Albuquerque, September 27-28, where we will look at what’s gone wrong, why, and what we can do about it. Register at genspect.org

Tickets are selling fast – secure your seat now.

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It is hard to think of any topic more likely to incite fear, rage, suspicion, purity-testing, name-calling, highly uncharitable mindreading and all the other less-than-delightful features of intense political polarisation than issues of sex, gender, gender identity and gender distress. Genspect experienced all of these with great intensity following our last conference in Denver, Colorado in November due to the presence of a man who writes about autogynephilia and was wearing a dress. Some of the individuals who became so angry or distressed had experienced mistreatment or abuse from different autogynephilic men of whom they were reminded by the presence of Phil Illy. Their distress was surely genuine and their trauma real and we are sympathetic to it. However, for weeks after the event, we fielded hundreds of “Culture War” style queries about whether Phil had entered the women’s lavatory (he had not) and whether we would, in future, require sex-specific dress codes (we will not). This significantly disrupted our work developing ethical and effective frameworks for addressing gender distress.

Genspect has a very full plate and the primary reason that we are trying to do so much¹ and feel such a strong sense of responsibility to make what we do rigorous is because of the desperate need for it. Parents, in particular, and their vulnerable children but also gender-distressed adults and people working in healthcare and education have a pressing need for evidence-based research that they can rely on.

Our stated purpose is to engage with rigorous research, advocate for an evidence-based approach to gender distress and be a reliable, trustworthy, and well-informed source for parents and professionals in healthcare, education, and media, as well as for laypeople. The guiding principles that we believe will facilitate this are a commitment to being politically non-partisan and upholding freedom of expression, diversity of viewpoint and robust but civil, well-reasoned and well-evidenced discussion. However, some of the responses to the incident of “the man in a dress,” and to the appointment of advisors have made it apparent that some people either do not agree with this stance or do not realise how essential it is to rigorous knowledge production to have a wide range of worldviews and to take all possible steps to minimise ideological bias. This essay will attempt to explain.

Genspect is an organisation formed because of harm done by ideological bias. Children are currently being failed by the “gender healthcare” that is available to them.

The services available to children who are questioning their gender are based on an ideological belief in an innate gender identity – a nebulous concept for which there is, as yet, no evidence. Despite this, a child’s perception of their gender identity is believed to be authoritative and requires affirmation. Medicalisation may then follow, including puberty blockers, hormones and irreversible surgery. Gender identity ideology has its roots in the gender identity theories of the discredited psychologist John Money, and, more recently, in the evolution of Queer Theory which aimed to liberate sexual minorities by blurring the boundaries of categories of sex, gender and sexuality into popular activist culture. Gender identity is conceived as a kind of unquestionable essence distinct from and more definitive than biological sex and the only solution to someone feeling ‘wrong’ or uncomfortable in their sexed body is to change it to more closely resemble the other sex. Since clinics became captured by this ‘affirmation only’ model, evidence-based research into other potential causes of gender distress has been sadly lacking.

WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health) is the central headquarters for the propagation of this kind of gender ideology. In many parts of the world, policies and institutions follow the WPATH approach, presuming that they can rely upon the information they offer, even though we have shown countless problems with their output. The disproportionately high level of neurodiversity among gender-distressed children has not been addressed as a potential explanatory factor to be investigated. Neither has the high number of same-sex attracted people or the number of children who question their gender while coming to understand themselves to be lesbian or gay.  There has been very little consideration of the long-term impact of the irreversible interventions involved in the ‘gender affirmative’ pathway. In September 2022 WPATH released their eighth version of their Standards of Care and chose to dismiss the hardship facing the detransitioners; to include eunuchs as an identity that required medicalisation; and eliminated age constraints for irreversible surgeries on children. This alarmingly eccentric Standards of Care also chose to delete their already written chapter on ethics. This is what an approach rooted in ideology rather than evidence-based research looks like.

The UK has seen some significant progress. The Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock in London, one of the world’s largest paediatric gender clinics in the world, was ordered to close as a consequence of detailed reports on these uncontrolled experimental interventions. There is an increasing realisation that services based on ideology rather than reality cannot lead to ethical and effective support for gender-distressed people. However, plans to create more evidence-based services that can investigate a range of causes of gender distress are faltering and Genspect must continue in its efforts to push for these. To do so, it must resist being swayed, influenced or pressured by any other kind of political ideology.

To be clear, our position is not that ideologies are bad. Although the term is often used disparagingly, it simply refers to having a set of beliefs, usually political at the root. Having political convictions and arguing for them is a central part of a thriving democracy. The problem arises when people decide what is true based on their ideological beliefs and then impose this on others rather than subjecting their hypotheses to empirical research. The problem with John Money was not that he posited the hypothesis that children are socialised into conceiving of themselves as girls or boys, (having a gender identity) but that, in addition to other highly unethical behaviour, he did not test his hypothesis empirically in ethical ways. He simply assumed his hypothesis was true, leading to the medicalisation, mutilation and eventual suicide of a child. The problem with the current gender identity ideology is not that the hypothesis, “Everybody has an innate gender identity which is separate to biological sex and more authoritative than biological sex” exists. It is that, rather than being tested with empirical research, it has been accepted as true in healthcare, education and media and used to treat gender-distressed children while shutting down research into other potential explanations as transphobic and ignoring all disconfirming evidence.

It is extremely difficult to challenge the social power of this ideology and, as we continue to do so, we must be conscientious to avoid becoming influenced by other political or religious views on sex and gender. The two largest political groups who share our concerns about gender identity ideology are gender-critical feminists and religious or social conservatives. Both of them are genuinely concerned about gender-distressed youth and the absence of evidence-based research needed to alleviate their distress, but they also each have a set of political beliefs with which the concept of gender identity conflicts and this has an impact on how they perceive the problem.

Gender-critical feminists, radical feminists and people with a gender-critical worldview more broadly have been at the forefront of the drive to protect women’s spaces and sports, defend their own right to speak and draw attention to how ideologically captured clinics have been failing children. Their organisation and persistence have been pivotal to bringing about positive change and Genspect is glad to include many of them in its membership. They are proudly centred around “a movement created by women, for women, and about women” and understand gender as a construct integral to “the mechanisms by which sex oppression had been sustained throughout history” (which is why they are critical of it). Feminists’ overriding aim is to protect the interests of women as a sex class from patriarchal oppression by men. This can limit their concerns about gender identity ideology to how it impacts women’s sex-based rights. This is a perfectly valid and, indeed, important focus for a woman’s political movement to have. Genspect, however, must not become a political movement for women but remain a non-partisan organisation researching psychosocial solutions for gender-distressed children and vulnerable adults.

The gender-critical feminist position on gender as an oppressive construct operating in the service of patriarchy can also drive and limit what they believe to be true about the causes of gender distress and the solutions to it. It is important that Genspect not be limited to this line of inquiry which is based on a very specific ideological perception of society or accept it as true but maintain a wider scope for research and be open to a wide range of worldviews. Some feminists have put pressure on Genspect to become a feminist organisation or to narrow its scope of research and membership to align completely with feminist aims. In contrast, others have understood why we cannot do that and supported us in our non-partisan and evidence-based advocacy for gender-distressed youth.

Social and religious conservatives have also been very vocal about their concerns about women’s spaces, the right to disbelieve in gender identity and say so, and ideologically captured clinics for gender-distressed children as well as the materials children are exposed to in social and sex education in schools. Their action in bringing to the attention of the wider public age-inappropriate and ideologically driven materials being presented to children has been valuable and Genspect is grateful for the support of many ethical social or religious conservatives. However, they are, of course, hardly non-partisan or ideology-free either, particularly when their values are rooted in religion. Social conservatives’ primary aim is to protect conservative social norms around marriage, family, sex and gender roles because they believe that these serve people (particularly children) and society best. Any discussion of social change profits from the inclusion of conservatives reminding us of the benefits of longstanding norms and customs. However, this stance can cause them to be intolerant of the beliefs, dress, roles, speech and consensual sex lives of others. Genspect cannot take this stance but remains supportive of lesbian, gay and bisexual people as well as gender nonconforming people. Young people who fall into these categories are particularly vulnerable to gender identity ideology.

The social and religious conservative position is generally positive about traditional gender roles and negative about divergences from them and this can also drive and limit what they believe to be true about the causes of gender distress and the solutions to it. Genspect cannot take this value-laden ideological position or accept it as true but must support empirical research into gender distress which attempts to avoid political bias. Some social or religious conservatives have tried to persuade Genspect to take a conservative stance or to allow conservative views to guide its research, but others have respected the importance of non-partisan advocacy and research and supported our goals.

Is it ever possible to be non-partisan and avoid ideological bias, though? Must we not always end up favouring some political stance or another? As individuals this is almost impossible. As social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt writes,

[E]ach individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds… But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity.

The Righteous Mind; Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Genspect believes this approach to be the most effective way to minimise the risk of research becoming ideologically biased and undermining evidence-based research. We do not hold a naive belief that we can ever entirely remove ourselves from culture and politics and every one of us has views on them. Rather, we believe that an organisation that makes a conscientious effort to mitigate bias by encouraging intellectual and ideological diversity, with an expectation that arguments will be well-evidenced and well-reasoned, will do better at discovering what is true and developing effective and ethical frameworks than organisations that make no such effort. 

This commitment to the free exchange of ideas and openness to viewpoints from all over the political spectrum is closely associated with the philosophical liberalism of John Stuart Mill:

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.

On Liberty

Genspect can best maximise the scope and rigour of its research by protecting the ideological diversity of its members while maintaining its commitment, as an organisation, to being non-partisan. The factual, reliable information provided by our empirical research may then be used by those with any political or ideological position to make the strongest arguments they can for societal change. The more evidence-based such arguments are the better the quality of political discussions and solutions will be. Genspect cannot allow its research to be driven by a political position.

Because Genspect supports open and robust debate, our content is likely to include worldviews that some will find distressing. Trans-identified individuals may find gender-critical views, socially conservative views as well as the experiences of detransitioners upsetting. Gender-critical and radical feminists may find the views of transgender/transexual/transvestite individuals or even their presence distressing, as may social conservatives. Social conservatives and gender-critical feminists may well object strongly to each other’s views, and detransitioners hold a wide range of views on sex and gender that may contradict some people’s deeply held beliefs.

Some people, due to past experiences, may become so distressed by the expression of certain views that they feel unable to cope psychologically with them. We provide information about the topic under discussion at any conference or event and attempt to title our content so people can make their own decisions about whether to attend events or engage with content.  We reject the concept of trigger warnings, and we think society is better served when people take responsibility for their own difficulties. We must prioritise our goal to provide the wider community with as diverse a range of topics and opinions as they and their situations require so they can be informed as they seek to have a positive impact on society. 

Although Genspect is an organisation that seeks to improve therapeutic frameworks for gender-distressed people, its conferences and events themselves cannot be therapeutic spaces if we are to keep our commitment to rigorous methods of knowledge production for the benefit of gender-distressed people. 

Genspect may be unique among organisations seeking to better understand gender distress for the sheer range of ideological and political diversity among its members. We value all of you for your insights and for your willingness to enter civilly into constructive discussion and productive, collaborative disagreement with evidenced truth claims and reasoned arguments. We commit to defending your right to bring your arguments to the table and to continuing to provide well-informed evidence-based research to support you in that endeavour.

Image by Christina Buttons

1. Genspect exists to advocate for an evidence-based approach to gender distress, primarily in children and vulnerable adults. We take a cautious and compassionate approach that prioritises a non-medicalised approach and considers everyone’s rights and needs. It is shaped by existing research into outcomes for gender nonconforming children that finds that approximately 80% become comfortable in their own skin, so long as they are free from radical interventions and by the fact that a disproportionate number of children seeking medical transition have co-morbidities that require differential diagnoses. We advocate for conventional psychotherapy as a means to help cope with distress as we believe that the currently popular ‘gender-affirmative’ approach to therapy is misguided and anti-therapeutic. 
   Genspect offers training about the impact of gender distress to schools, organisations and other institutions and develops Brief Guidances for professionals working in the field, e.g. psychotherapists, paediatricians, youth workers, and mental health professionals. Our recently launched Gender Framework is a comprehensive document that is informed by the latest research to offer both a non-medicalised approach to gender dysphoria and resolution for the conflicts of rights that arise between those who advocate to prioritise gender identity over biological sex and vice versa. 
   We offer a range of perspectives about sex and gender as we are keen to demonstrate the wide range of ideas in this field. We monitor peer-reviewed research and other scholarly research as it emerges and highlight methodologically rigorous studies and other information on our sister website, Stats for Gender so that users can find the factual information they need to inform themselves about this complex topic. Our Beyond Trans programme is the only initiative in the world that offers funding for therapy to detransitioners and people who have been harmed by medical transition and we also offer free therapeutic support programmes to support this cohort.  We run a peer-to-peer support service for parents and families in our online support meetings. The Gender Dysphoria Support Network provides the opportunity for parents, siblings and loved ones of trans-identified people to seek support from like-minded people in a confidential and gentle atmosphere.
   
   One of our most important goals is to counter ideology-based services for gender-distressed youth with evidence-based ones. WPATH supporters typically advocate for #NoDebate so we counter this by holding our conferences at the same time and location as WPATH. Last year, when EPATH (the European counterpart to WPATH) had a conference in Killarney, Ireland, so did we. When USPATH held their conference in Denver, Colorado, so did we. This year WPATH will hold their conference in Lisbon, Portugal in September, and so will we. It is essential that people seeking information about gender distress do not have to rely solely on WPATH. ︎

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The independence and impartiality of Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, RTÉ, is being compromised by its participation in a government strategy that involves the roll-out of gender identity theory through all sectors of Irish society.

The current Irish Government’s Programme for Government outlines plans to implement strategies that uncritically adopt gender identity theory, and to amend Irish equality legislation to include gender identity as a protected characteristic. These plans have implications for all sectors of Irish society. (I have written more about these strategies here.)

RTÉ has a duty in law ‘to remain independent from all state, political and commercial influences’ and yet RTÉ is listed as a contributor in the development of one of these strategies and as a ‘lead partner’ in its associated action plan. A representative from RTÉ is also on the committee responsible for implementing the strategy. A Freedom of Information response from RTÉ shows that at least two gender identity lobby groups have provided training or workshops for RTÉ staff.

Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) is designed to be accountable to the society in which it operates rather than to the state or to the market or to any pressure groups. PSB is understood as a social utility, much like water or electricity or roads. It is a public resource.

One of RTÉ’s guiding principles is to serve the public interest. This would involve exploring controversial topics impartially. Facts should be presented alongside arguments for and against. This approach would enable members of the public to develop informed opinions for themselves and would also contribute to the maintenance of a healthy democratic society.

The power of broadcasting to influence public opinion has been recognised since the early years of radio. Media centres are often the first targets during military coups or in wars. Control of communication systems is linked to control of the people. Broadcasting is a potentially powerful tool of propaganda.

Edward Bernays, the ‘father of public relations’, published his work Propaganda in 1928 in which he argued that whoever can manipulate the habits and opinions of the masses is the invisible government ‘who pulls the wires that control the public mind’. He referred to this manipulation of public opinion as the ‘engineering of consent’. He understood how to make the public desire goods that they didn’t need, and he understood that opinions and ideologies, as well as objects, could be sold to the public.

Newsrooms today are inundated with press releases issued by public relations teams. Some of the world’s greatest journalists do not read press releases. The great Robert Fisk comes to mind. However, on-scene reporting is rare in the world of journalism today when many ‘stories’ originate in the PR departments of powerful organisations.

The funding model of public service broadcasters can mean that their investigative teams and reporters are uniquely placed to explore controversial topics. This potential is illustrated by the Swedish public service broadcaster, SVT, whose four-part investigative series Transbarnen (Trans Kids) was awarded the highest journalist recognition in Sweden, and  was influential in changing how the Swedish parliament dealt with healthcare for trans-identified youth.

The BBC meanwhile, became the subject of one of its own investigative programmes last year when the Stephen Nolan podcast, Nolan Investigates Stonewall, examined the influence of a gender identity lobby group, Stonewall, on public institutions in the UK. The BBC pulled out of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme one month after the podcast was aired, after concerns were raised about the impact of the scheme on BBC impartiality.

In Ireland, in June of this year, the Liveline show on RTÉ Radio One featured members of the public phoning in to discuss the word ‘woman’. Corollary issues linked to gender identity were also discussed. The show generated a huge level of public interest and so the topic rolled over into three consecutive shows. Men, women, transmen, transwomen, and people who identified as non-binary contacted the show with a range of diverse opinions and spoke live on air to presenter Joe Duffy.

Coverage of the topic on Liveline resulted in an outcry by gender identity lobby groups, by politicians, and by journalists. Dublin Pride cancelled its media partnership with the national broadcaster and RTÉ was called to appear before an Oireachtas (parliamentary) committee to explain itself. Another RTÉ Radio One programme, Morning Ireland, ran a report which featured only the voices of people criticising the shows.

One report in the Irish Examiner on the 16^th June ran with the headline ‘Uplift says 1,000 people have complained to RTÉ over Liveline trans broadcasts’. However, RTÉ have stated that they did not in fact receive one single complaint from Uplift. RTÉ also stated that they responded, in total, to just nine formal complaints about the Liveline broadcasts.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) is the regulator of public broadcasting in Ireland. The BAI confirmed that no complaints about the Liveline shows have been submitted to the BAI.

The last time RTÉ covered gender identity issues in any level of depth was over three years previously, back in January of 2019, when the TV current affairs show Prime Time ran a report about the huge increase in the number of young people identifying as trans. An online petition with over 5,000 signatures had urged RTÉ not to air the programme and around fifty activists staged a protest outside RTÉ on the night of its broadcast. Three official complaints about the programme were rejected by the BAI.

Gender identity lobby groups actively work to minimise press coverage of gender identity issues. Dentons, the largest legal firm in the world, produced a document designed as a toolkit for gender activists in which it is recommended to ‘avoid excessive press coverage and exposure’. Ireland is mentioned as an example where this practice has been used.

We now live in a world dominated by big tech and by social media empires. Online platforms operate by attracting large audiences and attempting to keep their attention. They often do this using memes, short videos, and short texts. They also use propaganda designed to elicit an emotional reaction. In return for ‘free’ content, valuable personal data is harvested for lucrative ends. This modus operandi is in direct contrast to public service broadcasting which was designed from the outset to improve the society in which it operates.

In a world dominated by multinational tech corporations, public service broadcasting is more important than ever before. Public funding is essential and needs to be secured. For PSB to continue to be relevant, it must engage impartially with issues of public concern and must remain independent of the government, of the market, of pressure groups and of big tech who operate as the new information gatekeepers. In Ireland, as long as RTÉ is involved in a national strategy that pushes gender identity theory, its public service mission is failing.

The post Propagender appeared first on Genspect.

I grew up learning about censorship. It bored me to tears at the time; however, I couldn’t help but learn about it. It was on the nine o’clock news every single night. 

My first introduction to politics was that there were IRA (Irish Republican Army) men in the North of Ireland who were slowly starving themselves to death in prison. It was 1981, and it was a shocking, harrowing time. The graffiti on the walls on my way to school said in huge capital letters “END THE H BLOCKS”. As a seven-year-old, I had no real idea what this meant, but I knew it had something to do with the pictures of the emaciated men on TV.

The images of the ‘dirty protest’ that the IRA prisoners had attempted before the hunger strikes were even more horrifying to my seven-year-old self. The prison authorities had removed all furniture in the cells except for mattresses and blankets, after a riot that was sparked by their violence against a prisoner. The political prisoners responded by refusing to leave their cells: they lived naked, and cold, and wore only blankets. This meant they couldn’t slop out, which began the dirty protest, where they smeared their faeces on the walls. 

What does this have to do with gender, you might wonder? Well, in this piece I want to highlight the insidious impact of censorship. Open dialogue is the lynchpin of civilised society, and no good comes from suppressing people’s voices. When we disagree, we need to speak about it. When a person says hateful things, we need to speak about that, too. Thoughtful discussion is the best way to deal with conflict.

Censorship – in the form of Section 31 – prevented open dialogue during the Troubles in Ireland. The IRA was censored, as was its political wing, Sinn Féin. The censorship became so extreme that the voices of Sinn Féin representatives could not be broadcast on national television, and (in a move which now seems quite bizarre to many) were dubbed instead. Not only that, but every attempt to ask questions was generally silenced with a reproving look: you might be siding with the violent madmen. So, many people, including me, found it incredibly difficult to figure out what the hell was going on. 

How the IRA had reached this point is a long, complicated story, reignited in the 1960s when peaceful protests for civil rights (inspired by civil rights movements all over the world) were violently suppressed by the Northern Irish police. By the mid-1970s, the IRA prisoners wanted to be recognised as political prisoners engaged in political struggle – and free to wear their own clothes, rather than prison uniforms. The British government refused.

When the British government didn’t yield, the IRA escalated matters further with the hunger strikes. In 1980, the first hunger strike began, with five prisoners refusing all food. On 18 December 1980, after 53 days of hunger strikes, and one man slipping in and out of coma, the British government appeared to concede: the hunger strike was called off. It soon became clear that the British government had not in fact ceded ground, and the hunger strikes began again in earnest in March 1981.

Between March and October 1981, ten men died (aged between 23 and 29 years old), one after another, and others suffered terrible long term injuries, all in a bid to be recognised as political prisoners. A glimpse into this world was offered to me as a child when I was told how there was food at all times in the prison cell with the hunger striker. Breakfast would be served into the cell in the morning, to be replaced by lunch, and then the last meal of the day, which would be left in the cell overnight. The intransigence on both sides melted my mind.

The hunger strikes were billed as a campaign of emotional blackmail and, eventually, the strike was declared a failure. Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister during the hunger strikes, famously declared  “crime is crime is crime”, denying the very notion of the political prisoner. The IRA concluded she would never yield, and the strike was called off after ten prisoners had starved themselves to death. Three days later, the British government announced a number of changes in prison policy, including that from then on all paramilitary prisoners would be allowed to wear their own clothes. 

It was a bitter conflict.

However, the strikes brought the attention of the world media to the troubles in the North of Ireland. Bobby Sands, the most famous hunger striker, was elected to the British parliament while in jail, and became a folk hero, with his funeral attended by 100,000 people.

This was all very complicated for my seven-year-old self – but the pictures weren’t complicated. Something terrible was happening. 

As a child growing up and coming to consciousness, censorship just didn’t make sense to me; and it still doesn’t. Why not speak to the IRA or Sinn Féin? I thought; surely this would bring about peace sooner? The IRA continued to escalate their campaign of violence and stories of men, women and children being blown to pieces by bomb blasts became a regular fixture on the news in the 1980s. 

During those terrible years, the British government said again and again that they would never talk to the IRA. Margaret Thatcher was famously intransigent in her determination to starve the IRA of ‘the oxygen of publicity’. When a proposed peace deal, the Anglo-Irish agreement, came about in 1985, Ian Paisley, leader of the anti-Sinn Féin Unionists, famously said ‘never, never, never, never’  should the north of Ireland be influenced in any way by the south of Ireland. It felt like nobody would ever agree on anything. 

It also felt like everybody in Ireland was an expert on censorship, no-platforming and guilt by association. Because back then it wasn’t enough to condemn the violence: you had to condemn everyone with even the most tenuous connection to it. 

I went to a Gaelscoil (an Irish-speaking school) in Dublin: madly enough, this was generally considered a ‘Republican’ type of activity, so I would often hear passing dismissive references to Gaelscoileanna and the IRA. It was an early introduction to the farcical nature of a life lived under the spectre of guilt by association: the accusations were not of complicity, but of ‘dirt’ rubbing from one person’s shoulders onto the next. It wasn’t criminality that was alleged but proximity. This is strikingly familiar to anyone who has dared to speak up about gender politics today.

Just like today, the situation was incredibly complicated, and only a tiny number of experts would dare to comment. The vast majority stayed well away, understandably afraid they would make a mistake and attract the attention of the angry mob. Also reminiscent of today, the only other people who spoke out were those personally impacted by the situation: the mothers; the families. It felt like nobody really understood. 

We are now privileged with peace: riots are generally played out online, not in real life. But there’s an eery similarity between today’s language policing over trans issues and the intense monitoring of speech during the Troubles. In both cases, people are divided immediately on the basis of the words they use. 

Just like today, terminology was all-consuming. Did you say Northern Ireland, marking you out as a Unionist, or the Six Counties, marking you out as a Nationalist? Derry or Londonderry? The Free State or Southern Ireland? An old joke tells of a man in need who flags down a passing car. ‘Are you Catholic or Protestant?’ the driver asks, warily, trying to judge whether or not to help. ‘Neither,’ says the man in need: ‘I’m Jewish.’ After a pause, the driver responds: ‘Yes, but are you a Catholic Jew, or a Protestant Jew?’ 

The divide became inescapable; behaviour and habits were similarly polarised. 

The judgement was quick and brutal, as the no-platforming culture wielded its dreadful cudgel. This led to a chilling effect: most people remained silent, feeling ill-informed about the complexities of the issues, and frightened of the violent sense of outrage whenever someone was deemed to be insufficiently sensitive. 

Try to imagine my own sense of horror when I found out, as we all did, that the British government had in fact been talking to the IRA all along. With the shocking death toll – and the toll on the mental health of everybody in the North – both British and Irish authorities had fully understood the critical need for discussion, despite their public complacency. To this day, many are unaware just how many bombings took place. 

The truth was that the authorities were lying: secret talks took place all through the 1980s and 1990s. So all the censorship and no-platforming was all for show: posturing, and playing to the crowd. It left me with a lifelong aversion to censorship, no-platforming and guilt by association. 

I’m not the only one who learnt bitter lessons from all this. This tweet by the Irish psychotherapist Beth Wallace is reflective of many people’s thoughts about all this: 

Many in Ireland have an equally in-depth understanding of the iniquitous impact of the silencing of debate. Just recently, I was engaged in a community activity where my colleagues included an ex-IRA hunger striker; a very religious, pro-life Catholic; and a knit-your-own-yoghurt, vegan hippie. None of us agree politically in certain contexts, and yet we got along just fine. In fact, we had great craic. And we got our project over the line without heated debates about our ideological differences. 

This is completely normal in Ireland. Although some younger and less informed Irish people are currently arguing for censorship and no-platforming, it is generally regarded with a wary suspicion borne from bitter experience – and it’s seen as a matter of regret that a lesson so painfully learned has not been sufficiently imparted to a younger generation.

This is why, when I first became engaged in the gender debate, I was astonished to see the hashtag #NoDebate. Surely, I thought, all right-thinking people had moved beyond suppression of debate?

In many ways, no-platforming and censorship come from a place of privilege. People who are desperate will generally let anyone help them: if you get mugged and someone comes to your rescue, you’re unlikely to stop them mid-rescue and ask them to give a detailed analysis of their politics.

I also believe that censorship suggests a certain amount of arrogance. Who are we to know where we are in the curve of history? It is laughably unlikely that we have the full facts at our disposal. None of us knows the best way for society to move forward, which is why we have to listen to people with whom we disagree. Shutting down those who are engaged in civil and mature debate, simply because of their apparent wrong-think in other contexts, deprives us of the opportunity to hear the many different views on a given subject. 

Seeking common ground is perhaps the only way forward when we disagree. Thousands of people died in the Troubles between the 1960s and the 1990s. Finally, in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed and peace slowly stuttered into the island of Ireland. It has not been perfect. In fact, there were dreadful acts of violence after the agreement was signed. 

To this day, most people are annoyed about various aspects of the agreement: but bombs aren’t on the nine o’clock news anymore. Most Irish adults over forty have learnt that censorship can lead to violence: that silenced people will demand attention one way or another, and will keep upping the ante until they’re heard. Civilised discussion and open dialogue is essential if we are to find a way forward. 

This is why we have decided that Genspect will speak with anybody. 

For example, some campaigners against paediatric transition oppose gay marriage. Immediately, the allegation is levelled: if Genspect talks to people who are against gay marriage, Genspect is itself against gay marriage. But we need as many voices as possible arguing for better healthcare for young people, and they don’t need to agree on gay marriage. Or abortion. Or climate policy, Brexit, veganism, or star signs. Placing such a condition upon the conversation weakens us. Interestingly, those in favour of paediatric transition rarely place such conditions on their allies, maybe explaining why they’ve been so successful until recently.

The most powerful examples of collaboration frequently arise precisely because people set aside their differences. One Genspecter, Angus Fox, only became aware of the gender issue because he watched a conference where a radical separatist lesbian was appearing alongside a member of the conservative Heritage Foundation. ‘It was like seeing a geisha on an oil rig,’ he remarked. The stark contrast between the two – the conservative’s starched side-parting versus the lesbian’s punky tufts – showed how certain, and how passionate, both must have been. 

So, our policy is that everybody is welcome to engage. When we disagree, we are forthright and transparent; however, we also endeavour to find common ground, hopefully moving towards a better society. And when we have improved the healthcare afforded to young people questioning their gender, we can, if necessary, part company: for now, other battles can wait. 

It is for this reason, when somebody tries to shame me for interacting with the “wrong people”, I think of the poem “Child of our Time” by the Irish poet Eavan Boland. Boland wrote this poem after she saw a picture of a fireman lifting a dead child from the remains of the Dublin bombings in 1974. She realised that we simply had to find a better way to communicate; that we needed to find a new language. 

It might have taken us many years, but in Ireland we finally did find a way to communicate; a way to agree to disagree. As Boland told us, these tragedies are pointless and horrific. All we can do is remove ourselves from idle talk and instead learn to do better. “We who should have known how to instruct …must learn from you, dead….Child of our time, our times have robbed your cradle. Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken.” 

There is no other option. 

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As representatives of parents of gender-questioning children and young people, Genspect would like to thank the Canadian Federation of Library Associations for their thoughtful and considered statement in response to demands to censor and remove the book Irreversible Damage by Genspect advisor Abigail Shrier.

Genspect represents thousands of parents worldwide who have trans-identified children and need to help their children make critical and life-changing decisions about social and medical gender transition. Shrier’s book raises many important issues about the care and guidance these young people are receiving and highlights the changing social media landscape and political environment that is influencing children to self-diagnose themselves and pursue a particular path. 

“The decision to retain Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our
Daughters in the face of requests to remove it demonstrates the commitment to a diversity of
thought in the development of library collections.“

Genspect is concerned that many children and young people are receiving inappropriate medical interventions before they have a chance to fully explore and understand their gender non-conformity and how to best deal with the distress caused by the strict gender roles that our society imposes.  We applaud the CFLA for taking a firm stance on this book by recognizing the threat that such calls for censorship pose to Canadians’ fundamental rights and freedoms that are guaranteed under the Charter. 

“CFLA-FCAB ‘affirms that all persons in Canada have a fundamental right, subject only to the
Constitution and the law, to have access to the full range of knowledge, imagination, ideas, and
opinion, and to express their thoughts publicly. Only the courts may abridge free expression
rights in Canada.’ Further, library ’employees, volunteers and employers as well as library
governing entities have a core responsibility to uphold the principles of intellectual freedom in
the performance of their respective library roles.’”

We call on all Canadian libraries – from coast to coast to coast – to ensure that several copies of Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier are made available within your library systems as it has become an important resource for those who would like to develop a broader understanding of this issue of moral conscience that is affecting gender non-conforming children and young people throughout Canada and around the world. 

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