Any issue where debate is stifled is frightening. This one in particular feels so cultural and of its time and yet it has real long term consequences for the lives of women and men. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with the medicalisation and (invasive) treatment of something that feels like it is more about social factors -trauma, inequality, mental distress.
Such a lot of campaigning effort and big money is being put into protecting the gender identities of a sub group of vulnerable people – but I suspect that the reason many of these people adopt these identities is because they suffer wider deprivations/exclusions.
When my trans friends ask me to call them by their preferred pronouns I do it to protect them from a reality which is hurting them, not because I believe that this is their actual gender.
It feels like a society-wide avoidant strategy which obscures the real issues of poverty, inequality, social disconnection and mental distress by landing on one coping strategy of many and fetishising it. Which hides the pain, and devalues the suffering of countless others.
I am a social worker and I know that people have lost their registration from saying what I think. Fortunately for me, when I worked in children’s social care I did not have any cases where there was a safeguarding concern related to gender identity, otherwise I would have been forced to be more vocal, but at that point I would have sought professional support before doing so.
M, Social worker
The Gender Dissidents Survey 