The Split
By Stella O'Malley
To paraphrase the Irish writer, Brendan Behan, the first item on the agenda of any meeting these days is: The Split. Many people are much more interested in the ins and outs of the infighting rather than celebrating the great strides forward that are being made these days. The split has happened and maybe it’s better that way. As a movement grows, different groups become more focused upon specific issues within the movement; this is all good news as we are all becoming bigger, our voices are louder and we are now organising ourselves within the movement. Anyone who knows their history will know that this inevitable split, unfortunately, might become very bitter. We hope it doesn’t.
These are the facts: Genspect hosted a conference in Denver that was successful beyond our wildest dreams. It wasn’t an echo chamber; many people disagreed with one another, however hundreds of people gathered together to speak about how gender ideology is a damaging belief system that needs to be taken down. It was a very mixed crowd of psychologists, lawyers, teachers, doctors, feminists, sports stars, journalists and cultural commentators who all offered presentations on a range of subjects. We had a photographer who was diligently taking photos at the event and one of the photos taken was of two attendees, Laura Becker, a detransitioned woman, and Phil Illy, a man in a dress. Phil is unusual – he is a self-confessed autogynephile who has written a book that puts forward his conceptualisation of autogynephilia (a paraphilia that refers to a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female) and redefines it as ‘autoheterosexuality’. Phil did not speak at the conference nor did he sell his book there. At Genspect, however, we are always open to anyone who offers interesting ideas about gender. Not because we agree with these ideas, but because we are intensely aware of the lack of knowledge in this field, and so we approach this issue with recognition that we don’t know what we don’t know.
A member of our team posted the photo of Laura and Phil on our X (formally Twitter) account along with a mention of his book. Our tweet said:
“Spotted: @autogynephilic and @FunkGodArtist. Check out @autogynephilic’s book, Autoheterosexual: attraction to being the other sex. #GenspectDenver.”
Although we don’t pretend to have full knowledge of gender, neither do we wish to be perceived to be recommending Phil’s book or his views and so we have removed this tweet. However, we may choose to repost the photo in future tweets showing photos from the conference. We don’t accept that Genspect is responsible if people are triggered by a photo of two people at a conference and we believe that this type of thinking is regressive and unhealthy. Nor do we believe that Genspect should have removed Phil from the conference. He was behaving respectfully at all times. Some people take issue with the fact that he was a man in a dress. We don’t.
We think this photo is important because it acknowledges the awkwardness of our position. Genspect’s mission is clear – we offer a healthy approach to sex and gender. We want to take down gender ideology as we believe it is causing great harm. We support gender diversity so long as it doesn’t harm anyone. We advocate for a non-medicalised approach to gender. We don’t claim to have the answers, but we do have many questions. We believe that WPATH is the root, stem and branch of harmful medical transition and so we are particularly focused on dismantling their power.
Now, to the awkwardness; we have a very mixed bag of supporters. They include parents whose kids have become fixated upon medical transition as a way to alleviate their emotional distress; professionals who are appalled by what is happening within their professions; feminists who can offer strong arguments about the inherent misogyny underlying the trans movement; gay, lesbian and bisexual people who have been horrified by the way the T has overtaken the LGB; detransitioners who have been harmed by medical transition; gender diverse people who wish to be free to dress as they please; and people who have medically transitioned but (for a variety of reasons) wish to warn others about the dangers of medical transition. Many of our supporters have different end goals and this makes our position challenging at the best of times.
This week should have been the best of times. But it didn’t turn out that way. In an unforgiving world where mistakes are pounced upon with zealous fervour, there came a crescendo of abuse towards Genspect because we had posted a photo of a self-confessed autogynephile.
Although the received wisdom is to insist that anyone who makes a minor mistake should fall on their sword in abject contrition, we don’t agree with that. We’re not even sure our tweet was a mistake. We believe the response to the tweet was pretty insane.
We all agree that autogynephilia is a paraphilia that can cause dreadful harm to women. How to tackle this issue is where the conflict lies. Some people believe that all AGP men should never be allowed to speak; nor should they be allowed to show their face in public; indeed, according to many, there is no space where AGP men should ever be allowed to exist. Put simply, some people believe that they should either hide themselves for ever more or they should die. We don’t agree with this.
Shannon Thrace, a trans widow who spoke at the Genspect conference about how her husband became increasingly abusive and narcissistic as a result of autogynephilia, has cautioned against such absolutism. The artist Nina Paley (who appeared on a panel at the conference) noted:
“The Man in A Dress causing the uproar knows he’s a man, looks like a man, makes no pretensions to not be a man, doesn’t claim to be a “lesbian,” and doesn’t use women’s spaces. He wears a dress as an unambiguous man. He exemplifies what GC insisted was OK 5 years ago.”
But the gender critical conversation has undergone significant transformation over these last five years. Many are battle weary and positions have become polarised. People have shifted their stance and now argue that compelled gender conformity is the only option for men – autogynephiles have basically ruined the possibility for other men to enjoy their so-called “feminine” side.
There was a lovely feeling of hope and courage at the Genspect conference. James Lindsay gave a very thought-provoking speech during the conference where he pointed out the dangers of being over-focused on gender: “The thing is not the thing. It’s not about gender. Or race. Or Covid. Or Ukraine. Or Israel… They are not what they appear to be. The thing is not the thing. It’s about revolution.” Weirdly enough, the thing has very much become the thing for many people; indeed some people have become obsessed with issues such as gender roles, gender expressions and gender conformity.
Genspect was accused this week of being ‘as bad as WPATH’ and ‘just like Mermaids’ because we posted a photo of a man in a dress. Apparently, if you think about it for long enough, allowing a man in a dress into a conference is the very same as supporting double mastectomies for distressed 13-year olds.
WPATH advocate for surgical interventions for children, no matter age, while Genspect supports a non-medicalised approach to gender diversity. A recent Reuters Investigates report in 2022 showed that “At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment… from 2017 through 2021.” Hormone treatment causes irreversible changes to the body. Typically such hormone treatment leads to infertility, sexual impairment and a vast range of other illnesses. Surgical treatment is even more damaging; between 2019 and 2021at least 56 genital surgeries and 776 mastectomies were performed in the USA on patients aged between 13 and 17; many more were performed ‘out of pocket’.
One of the consequences of WPATH’s work is over 50 thousand members on Reddit/detrans, with the numbers of detransitioners growing steadily every day. Their stories are harrowing, mostly describing how they put their trust in clinicians when they were at their most vulnerable and their medical treatment subsequently ruined their lives. It is an unfolding medical scandal of gargantuan proportions. These clinicians, who were trained to do no harm, prescribed cross-sex hormones and then helped them access mastectomies and genital operations in an unrealistic bid to help them become a different person. These interventions seldom work out the way they are supposed to. Genspect offers funding for therapy for anyone who has been harmed by medical transition through our Beyond Trans programme. Some detransitioners are very unhappy with this project as they believe therapy doesn’t work. Other detransitioners have found this therapy transformative.
Sigmund Freud coined the phrase the ‘narcissism of small differences’ to describe how the more a group shares commonalities, the more likely the people in the group are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule. Typically this arises from hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other. Each difference is perceived as a punch in the gut. Meanwhile the true enemy is often ignored.
Conflict is a comfortable place to remain for some people – it is a great distracter and it provides an excuse to avoid any chronic issues in our personal lives. Moving beyond conflict typically means that we are forced to accept compromise and live with that dissatisfied feeling that things are not perfect. Absolutism is much more satisfying – the brain is a problem-solving organ and our brains feel comforted by clear slogans that cover multitudes. We feel cognitively itchy when life is uncertain.
Ambiguity, uncertainty and bitter conflict is rampant. Yet, at the moment, this is all we have. Nobody has a direct line to absolute truth. Within gender circles we live in uncertainty by orders of magnitude. There is so little reliable research that we cannot be sure about anything. We don’t know how autogynephilia develops, nor do we know how to treat it, nor how to deal with it. Same goes for gender dysphoria.
We’re very conscious that the subsection of men who are sexually deviant cause a good deal of harm in society and Genspect raises awareness of these issues in a variety of ways. Raising awareness is not, however ‘normalising’ the issue. Public awareness campaigns are necessary to increase people’s knowledge and understanding; we believe that autogynephilia has been hidden for too long and it is very important to talk about it.
There are many types of sexual deviancy – fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, paedophilia, sadism, masochism, frotteurism, and autogynephilia and the more the public knows, the better society will be able to tackle it. Although autogynephilia is not very well-known, it appears to be increasingly prevalent. And it is dangerous. Just last week the clinical psychologist and sexologist, James Cantor, testified under oath at the Amy Hamm trial that autogynephilic men are more likely to have other “paraphilic sexual patterns, such as sadism” and this makes them more likely to commit sexual offences.
Autogynephiles tend to seek validation from the public as part of their sexual gratification and this is one of the reasons why many gender critical people are rightfully leery of autogynephiles appearing anywhere. We too are wary of autogynephiles. But we also think it’s imperative that we continue to lift this incendiary topic. It’s a tricky position and we are very conscious that we might be wrong. Being wrong, however, is part of life. Our intentions are good, and they are well thought-out. We believe this is sufficient. Many will disagree.
We have created the Gender Framework to offer a way forward that prioritises safety first and foremost and seeks fairness for everyone. This framework prioritises women and children’s safety before gender identity. We have taken the position that a non-medicalised approach is most appropriate until we have more reliable knowledge about these conditions. We recognise that there is a dearth of reliable knowledge and we nonetheless attempt to find resolution as we go along. The reason we do this is because too many people’s lives are being ruined right now and they need help today.
Genspect’s position, á la JK Rowling, is that we support the right for people to dress however they please, so long as they behave appropriately. Had anyone behaved inappropriately during our conference in Denver they would have been removed. Thankfully there was a really good vibe at the conference and nothing like that took place. We think strict dress codes and compelled gender-conformity would be regressive and harmful; instead we require a reasonable level of decency.
At Genspect we grapple with questions such as how we should handle feminine boys and masculine girls. We wonder whether there should be a change in response to boys who want to wear dresses once they reach adolescence as from then on there could be an erotic charge involved. Some argue that we should remove all opportunities to wear feminine clothing at this point. Others point out that a certain cohort of males want to wear feminine clothes for entirely innocent reasons.
Some people, for whatever reason, prefer to wear certain clothes. Some women dress in a very butch manner – Kathleen Stock has spoken evocatively about how she threw away her make up and feminine clothes when she came out as a lesbian aged forty. Why do some of us gravitate towards what are often described as “men’s clothes” and others prefer “women’s clothes”?
I knew many feminine boys when I was coming of age in the 1980s. These teenagers were products of their generation and wore black eyeliner and billowing satin shirts. They looked fabulous. I’ve no idea if any of them became autogynephilic in their later years. Sadly, there is no room for gender-nonconforming boys in society at the moment. A hundred years ago, women were frowned upon for wearing trousers – perhaps in a hundred years, men will freely wear skirts? Hopefully by then, there will have been sufficient public awareness campaigns so that we will be able to discern sexually inappropriate behaviour from gender non-conforming behaviour – and perhaps we might even have found effective ways to recognise and appropriately tackle inappropriate sexual behaviour.
For now, treading cautiously and humbly as we try to figure things out seems to be the only way forward. We try to maintain certain reliable principles for civilised discussion while we ascertain the correct approach. We look forward to the day when some quality research will eventually emerge and this will shape our future responses. We aim to continue to seek resolution and maintain civility with whoever is willing to address the issues with honesty and manners. We are also ready to be proved wrong and welcome thoughtful challenges to any of our positions. In the meantime, there is a lot of work still to be done and we welcome anyone who wishes to help us fight the real villain: gender ideology.