Bev Jackson gives speech against new German self-ID law

Bev Jackson, co-founder of LGB Alliance, gave a speech today in Berlin as part of a wider protest against Germany’s new Self-ID law:

“We are all fascinated by a magic trick. Some people want to know how they are done, but most appear completely taken in. Some magic tricks are played with language. If they have malign intent they are called fraud or a scam. What we are looking at today is a clever scam.

In November 1970, 50 years ago, as spokesperson for the newly-formed UK Gay Liberation Front, I said to the London Times: “It is important to know that we are not ashamed to be homosexual”. In my worst nightmares, I could not have dreamt I would have to say the same thing 50 years later. Together with Kate Harris, I founded LGB Alliance to stand up for gay men and bisexuals and especially lesbians, in 2019.

Because all the former LGB rights organizations had abandoned us.

We had to form LGB Alliance because of a scam, which had spread like wildfire. This scam has three parts: it says:
1. You must accept a person’s identity, because of the human right of self-determination;
2. This identity matters more than a person’s biological sex;
3. These principles are progressive. If you disagree, you are a hateful, far right bigot.

“Self-determination” is a fine word. But if your “self-determination” impacts on the lives of people who are already vulnerable members of society, it is not a right but a demand. An unjust demand – which actually undermines the human rights of others.

Self-ID is not progressive. It is a scam. And no one is suffering more from this scam than young lesbians.

Everything the wonderful Reem Alsalem has said, as she battles alone for women’s rights at the United Nations, applies doubly to lesbians. Lesbians are women “squared”. We are not “people who identify as women who love other people who identify as women”. We are women, with our women’s bodies, who love other women, with their women’s bodies. And we refuse to be shamed or redefined by the perpetrators of the self-ID scam.

The cynical profiteers who promote testosterone for teenage girls – the same drugs that wrought havoc on the bodies of East German athletes in the 1980s – care nothing for the future lives of these young women – their infertility, their incontinence, or numerous other health issues.

These girls – mostly grappling with their emerging same-sex sexual orientation – have no community to help them on their way. The lesbian communities that thrived in the 1970s and 1980s have been destroyed. The saddest example being Michfest in the United States. So they are falling for the lie that they are “really men” and need drugs and surgery to be “their authentic selves”.

The truth is that no one is “born in the wrong body”.

Telling young women – as the UN does, as Amnesty International does – that “trans lesbians are lesbians” and their sexuality should be “inclusive” is abuse. Homosexuality is by definition not inclusive. It is exclusionary. And that is absolutely fine!

Society is confused because so many of those who promote the abusive distortion of “inclusivity” and the scam of self-ID are women. Yes, even lesbians. The profiteers and ideologues have exploited the sad fact that many – perhaps most – women are always willing to undermine their own sex to be “kind” to men. In the late 19th century the majority of women opposed female suffrage.

But they did not prevail.
And the cynical profiteers and ideologues of today will not prevail.
Bad laws can be repealed.
And self-ID law, however prettily wrapped up, is bad law. It is a scam.
We will be patient and persistent, we will keep to evidence and rational argument. It may take many years, but we have reality on our side, so we can be sure that – eventually – we will prevail!”

You can find the original German version here and watch the livestream from the protest here.