Resources
Conversion therapy
The term “Conversion therapy” leads to multiple misunderstandings. After all, anything that sets out to “convert” someone is not therapy at all. Therapy should be neutral. Gay conversion therapy is a vile practice, largely outlawed in the UK, but practices persist in some pockets of religious intolerance.
That is why LGB Alliance supported the UK Government’s proposals to close any remaining loopholes and ban gay conversion therapy. The initial proposals added the word “transgender” to the proposals. The Government eventually dropped “transgender” from the proposals.
Our response to the consultation, submitted before this decision, explains why “transgender conversion therapy” is a misleading term and why we believe this is the right decision.
Lesbian erasure
Roughly three-quarters of teens referred to gender clinics in recent years are girls. Most of these girls are only attracted to other girls, and almost all the rest are bisexual.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/surge-referral-rates-girls-tavistock-continues-rise/
Some people with male anatomy refer to themselves as lesbians. They present themselves as such on lesbian websites. Lesbians are being prevented from having any spaces of their own. There is a conflict between the rights of lesbians and the demands of males who are self-identified “lesbians”. This sometimes leads to unacceptable pressure, known as the “cotton ceiling”.
Gay erasure
The worst example of gay and lesbian erasure worldwide is probably in Iran, where LGB people convicted of same-sex sex acts can escape punishment by undergoing sex-reassignment surgery.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690
But in conservative milieus in the West, some religious people proclaim their horror at the thought of a gay child while finding it more acceptable to believe their child is really the opposite sex. A prime example is the mother of Kai Shappley, who has become a poster child for the “trans kids” movement.
https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/conservative-parents-and-trans-kids?s=r
Puberty blockers
One of the issues that LGB Alliance has focused on is the risks associated with the medicalisation of teenagers. This is because most so-called “gender non-conforming” youth would outgrow their gender dysphoria and grow up to be LGB adults if not given drugs and surgery – with no need for harmful lifelong medication.
https://thevelvetchronicle.com/no-child-born-in-the-wrong-body/
A UK review conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) graded the certainty of evidence for puberty blocker use as “very low” in every category:
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2021). Evidence review: Gonadotrophin releasing hormone analogues for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE); NHS England; NHS Improvement.
Thanks to Genspect and its StatsforGender.org
Video about Dutch Protocol (the guidelines that initiated the overuse of puberty blockers and became the international standard).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VHlkE40cFk
The misuse of science to promote puberty blockers:
https://twitter.com/twisterfilm/status/1222662489911058432?lang=en-GB
A chapter in an edited volume describes the way in which negative evidence for treatment pathways at the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service was “ignored or suppressed”:
Biggs, M. (2019). The Tavistock’s Experiment with Puberty Blockers. In: Moore, M. & Brunskell-Evans, H. (eds.). Inventing Transgender Children and Young People. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
https://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlockers.pdf
Cass Review
The independent Cass Review of services for children who experience gender-related distress is led by the eminent paediatrician Hilary Cass. In the course of her team’s research, individuals representing all sides of the debate on this issue have been heard at length. The Cass Review’s interim report, published in 2022, was a milestone in this field. It included several key points and recommendations:
⁃ Children with gender-related distress must receive the same standards of clinical care, assessment and treatment as every other child. At present, as soon as the word “gender” is mentioned, all other issues the child may have tend to be ignored (“diagnostic overshadowing”)
⁃ “Social transition” (changing name, pronouns etc) should be seen as an active intervention and approached with care
⁃ The youth clinic “GIDS”, which is intolerably overstretched and has unacceptably long waiting lists, has operated under pressure from activist groups urging medical intervention
⁃ Above all, the Cass Review concluded that the evidence base for puberty blockers is weak. Puberty blockers may “lock the child in” to a medical pathway, whereas the distress may well resolve without medicalisation.
Largely as a result of this report, the NHS announced that GIDS would be closed in the spring of 2023 and replaced by several regional centres operating with a more holistic approach. This change is presenting numerous challenges and its implementation has been delayed.
The Cass Review Interim report – February 2022
https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/
The Observer view on gender identity services for children – The Observer 20 Mar 2022
NHS to close Tavistock child gender identity clinic – BBC 28 July 2022
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62335665
LGB Alliance Trustee and Labour Peer Tony Young questions the government about arrangements for the new services replacing Tavistock GIDs clinic – 19 April 2023
LGB Athletes
LGB athletes performed superbly at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1425367012369477634.html
An area in which it is proving extremely difficult for gay male athletes to break through the wall of silence and discrimination is professional soccer:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ALLIANCELGB/status/1401060251697356801
Language
Everyone who reads and writes about issues of sex and gender should be aware that much of the controversy revolves around different definitions of words.
The LGBTQ+ world in the UK – and much of the media – use the definitions given in the glossary on Stonewall’s website. They differ in several essential ways from the definitions used by LGB Alliance. Here are a few examples – more will be added over the coming weeks and months.
| From Stonewall’s glossary/website | Positions of and definitions employed by LGB Alliance | |
| Homosexual | This might be considered a more medical term used to describe someone who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender. The term ‘gay’ is now more generally used. | The definition used by LGB Alliance, and in accordance with the protected characteristic of sexual orientation in the Equality Act 2010, is: Homosexual (or gay) means possessing a sexual orientation towards people of the same sex. In the case of women, the term “lesbian” is more common. Persons who are bisexual are attracted to people of both sexes. |
| Sex | Assigned to a person on the basis of primary sex characteristics (genitalia) and reproductive functions. Sometimes the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are interchanged to mean ‘male’ or ‘female’. | The sex of human beings, as in the case of all mammals, is either male or female. “Sex” is defined on the basis of reproductive anatomy. Sex is not assigned. It is observed either in utero or at birth. |
| Intersex | A term used to describe a person who may have the biological attributes of both sexes or whose biological attributes do not fit with societal assumptions about what constitutes male or female. |
The word “intersex” is occasionally used to suggest that some people are neither male nor female, or both male and female. This is false. Most persons called “intersex” prefer other terms such as VSD (Variations of Sexual Development). VSDs are medical conditions and have nothing to do with “gender”. The vast majority of people with VSDs are clearly either male or female. Sex is unclear in a minuscule minority (approx. 0.018%) of people (for purposes of comparison, approx. 0.1% of people are born with six fingers). No one produces both large gametes (eggs) and small gametes (sperm). Sex is not a spectrum. For further information consult: https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/sex-is-not-a-spectrum?s=r |
| Gender | Often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined and is assumed from the sex assigned at birth. | LGB Alliance avoids using the word “gender”, since it is used with such a wide variety of meanings in public discourse that its use sows confusion. We do of course accept that what may be called “gendered assumptions” are projected onto most boys and girls by society, propelling them to conform to certain sex-specific stereotypes. |
| Gender identity | A person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else (see non-binary below), which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth. | LGB Alliance considers “gender identity” a sexist concept based on traditional sex-based stereotypes. |
| Trans | An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth. Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois. | Since the definition of “trans” hinges on that of “gender”, and many people do not consider themselves to have a “gender” or “gender identity”, LGB Alliance defines “trans people” as “people who consider themselves, or are considered by other people, to be ‘trans’”. |
Uganda
One of the countries in which LGB people experience severe discrimination, and have suffered greatly from the pernicious influence of homophobic right-wing Evangelicals from the United States, is Uganda.
Malcolm Clark has documented this discrimination and this influence in the highly informative Twitter threads he compiled for LGB Alliance
https://twitter.com/alliancelgb/status/1414554562267172871
https://mobile.twitter.com/ALLIANCELGB/status/1410934520459714564
https://mobile.twitter.com/alliancelgb/status/1411826059213955074
Operating under the radar
Those who promote the demands of what is wrongly called the “trans lobby”, and should perhaps be referred to as the “gender identity lobby”, try to avoid public scrutiny.
In countries that introduced self-ID, such as Ireland and Canada, this approach was successful, and publicity was avoided. This approach – of operating below the radar – was recommended in what has become known as the Dentons Report, which was summarised in an article by James Kirkup.
https://www.iglyo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IGLYO_v3-1.pdf
Freedom of Speech
LGB Alliance promotes freedom of speech. We believe important issues such as sex and gender must be debated openly in the public arena and in parliament, without anyone needing to fear violent threats, dismissal, no-platforming or loss of income.
This is what happened to Robert Wintemute, one of our Trustees and a Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College London, when he tried to give his talk “The Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate in the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T” at the Faculty of Law of McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada on 10 January 2023:
This is what ‘no debate’ looks like
https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/this-is-what-no-debate-looks-like
Protesters inside McGill University (video)
Protest speech at McGill University (video)
GB News interview (15 Jan 2023): Trans protestors SHUT DOWN university talk on women’s rights | Professor Robert Wintemute
A Mob Stormed a Feminist Event at McGill Law School—in Defence of Gender Justice, of Course
https://quillette.com/2023/01/12/feminists-tried-to-meet-at-mcgill-law-school-fortunately/
Proving my point! Speaker thanks militant transgender protestors for shutting down his event at McGill University – where he was to talk about how trans zealots RUIN free speech
Suicide
Inaccurate statistics about the likelihood of suicide are used to justify the prescription of puberty blockers. LGB Alliance believes the publication of these false suicide statistics is highly irresponsible.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02287-7
Many reports claim puberty blockers have been proven to reduce the risk of suicide but the methodology is almost always highly suspect.
https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1482564869983510531
Our Survey
In August 2022 we sent a survey to our subscribers and supporters to find out more about them and how we can help.
We had an amazing response with 1,267 completed surveys returned and the data obtained will inform our future work and help us decide which projects to develop. There’s no doubt it will prove a vital resource as LGB Alliance grows.
Here are just some of the insights that the responses have provided:
