Are trans people living in New Zealand more likely to be murdered?

The recent murder of Zena Campbell, a 21 year old trans identified male in Wellington, has led to a series of media articles which highlight the unique vulnerability of trans people to violence and murder.

National Council of  Women (NCWNZ) Gender Equal spokesperson Dr Gill Greer says  “the murder is an example of the kind of transphobic violence directed towards trans people and particularly trans women.” [….] Speaking globally,she noted  trans women in particular appeared to be a target of violence.

"The Human Rights Commission highlighted some of these issues in a report back in 2008 but we've not made enough progress in the past 10 years," she said.

"We know trans people experience high levels of violence of all kinds; trans young people are more likely to be bullied at school, and more likely to attempt self-harm and suicide. We want to see a more inclusive New Zealand society where all genders are treated equally."”

Green MP Jan Logie echoed these ideas at a candlelight vigil for Zena Campbell, stating that “a lot more work needs to be done about violence towards New Zealand’s gender minorities.”.

A quick scan of transgender advocacy internet sites in New Zealand reveals similar types of claims. In a speech for the November 20^th New Zealand version of the ‘Trans day of Remembrance’, an annual ceremony marked all over the world to remember the trans victims of transphobic violence, Judy Virago had this to say

 last year:

Trans women around the world are slaughtered weekly, just for being who they are. It’s scary. And it’s not our fault. I refuse to accept this.

By the 30th of October this year, 24 trans women, most of them women of colour, had been killed in the US alone. Rates of violence against trans people are so offensively high that there is even a wikipedia page that records reported unlawful deaths of transgender people by year and location. There are 52 people currently listed on this page for 2017.

In a Salient (Victoria University student magazine) article from 2015, transactivist Charlie Prout claims  that “transgender people experience violence, sexual assault, murder, and verbal assaults at much higher rates than the general population.”

Are these claims of unique vulnerability to violence, murder and other forms of assault true? In what follows I will restrict my attention to murder rates for transgender people. I will not attempt to discuss or question the various forms of oppression, discrimination and prejudice faced by transgender people which do not involve murder. In looking at this issue critically, it is not my intention to minimise or dismiss the various forms of harms done to transgender people by a variety of means. I think that murder of Zena Campbell was a reprehensible act against a vulnerable person, and ought to be condemned. The question is whether this death served the interests of a broader narrative around murder rates, and if the assumptions behind this narrative are true.

So what is the rate of murder for trans identifying people in New Zealand? The most authoritative source for international statistics appears to be the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, a research project sponsored and run by the charitable organisation Transgender Europe. According to the data shown on their site  , there has been just one murder of a trans identifying person in the ten year period between 2008 and September 2017, and just five other such murders in the entire region of Oceania (Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea):

The research methodology section of the site contains the following disclaimer   about the nature of the data provided:

When using the data presented by the Trans Murder Monitoring project, please note that the data presented is not comprehensive, for the reasons outlined below, and can only provide a glimpse into a reality which is undoubtedly much worse than the numbers suggest:

1. The collected data show only those cases which have been reported. There is no data and no estimates available for unreported cases.

2. The data presented here does not include all reported cases worldwide, but only those which can be found on the Internet, along with those murders that reported to us by local activists or our partner organizations.

3. Due to the dozens of languages used in the Internet, the variety of terms used to denote trans and gender-diverse people, and the myriad numbers of web pages to search through, it is simply not possible to find all reports shown on the Internet.

4. Finding reports of murdered trans and gender-diverse persons in particular is also problematic, as not all trans and gender-diverse people who are murdered are identified as trans or gender-diverse.

As I will go on to note when I turn to look briefly at the case of Brazil, there are many solid reasons for thinking that murders of transgender people in regions of the world where there is widespread institutional corruption and lack of recognition of transgender people would be under-reported and frequently unrecognised. Given the social prominence of transgender activism in New Zealand over the past ten years, and the amount of coverage and institutional support surrounding the recent death of Zena Campbell, I strongly doubt that these concerns apply to the New Zealand context. I think it highly unlikely that a trans identified person other than the two documented instances (Richard Milton ‘Diksy’ Jones   in 2009, and Zena Campbell in 2018) has been murdered in the past ten years.

How does this compare to the national rate of murder for the country as a whole? New Zealand is a relatively safe country with a low homicide rate. Using police data  from the period between 2007 and 2014, alongside census figures from 2006 and 2013 for overall population statistics, I worked out that New Zealand has a murder rate of 1.17 murders per 100,000 people each year. (Wikipedia  quotes a rate of 0.91, apparently based on just the year 2014 – I believe my estimate for the period in question to be more accurate).

The hard part is to figure out what the trans identified population of New Zealand is. The census does not record this sort of data, and there are numerous issues and questions which surround the definition of ‘transgender’ which complicate the picture further. The best I could think to come up with is three estimates:

1. 16,000: Roughly the number of people in NZ who report living with a same sex partner

2. 28,000: Based on the US figure of 0.6% of total population

3. 56,000: Based on an NZ school survey where 1.2% of high school students identify as trans

Here are the results based on my three trans population estimates for the ten year period up to 2018:

Trans population estimate	Expected deaths per year	Ten year period
16,000	0.117 * 1.6 = 0.1872	1.872
28,000	0.117 * 2.8 = 0.3276	3.276
56,000	0.117 * 5.6 = 0.6552	6.552

Of course there are big sources of possible variation and error here because we are dealing with such small numbers, if we went to the trouble of calculating confidence intervals there would be fairly wide margins of error for all of these estimates. Having said that the empirical data of 2 trans murders over a ten year period fits in fairly well with the overall average murder rate. If the larger population estimates are true, the the trans murder rate appears significantly smaller than the overall rate.

How does this analysis compare with other western countries with similarly low overall murder rates? Is New Zealand a strange and unusual outlier, or is it quite typical in its low trans murder rate? The answer is a definitive ‘very typical’:

From the UK:

“There is no evidence within the recorded data from the last 9 years that transgender people are murdered at significantly higher rates than average.”

 From the US:

“Applying the FBI's 4.7 homicides per 100,000 means we'd expect to see ~38 trans murders a year if the rates were identical to that of the general population (4.7 * 8). That's three times as many trans deaths as were actually recorded in 2014. Keep in mind that if you use a higher trans prevalence rate, you'd expect even more murders. Doubling the prevalence rate from .3% to .6% means you'd expect there to be ~76 trans murders per year.

If you adjust those numbers for race and gender it becomes obvious how some trans women are obviously at higher risk. Blacks and Hispanics are about 29% of the general population, and women are about half the US population, which means ~15% of the trans population should be TWOC - and those black and Hispanic trans women account for more than 90% of all trans murder victims.

Notably, white trans women were killed less often per capita than cis white women. Yes, there are issues with applying one white trans death per year against the white trans population, and yes, there are other forms of violence (in addition to murder), but the point is that transphobic murder appears to be an issue almost exclusively affecting trans women of color.”

From Canada:

“Meanwhile, back in the real world, the latest stats we had from police in Canada regarding hate crimes (in a nation of 35 million) showed an annual total of 186 “hate crimes” based on sexual orientation, with 120 of those involving violence, and with 40 or so involving “serious violence.” To put this “epidemic of hatred” in perspective, environment Canada reports an average of 174 people struck by lightning each year in Canada, with almost all of those being very serious in nature. Thus, it would seem those worried about hate crimes in Langley should also regard this threat from above just as seriously, maybe even more so. By Dirks’ admittedly very, very liberal standards, we must also conclude that we are having an epidemic of lightning assaults on Canadians too, although admittedly it is not clear how many lightning strikes specifically target LGBTQ people — but we can be sure that queen of all bigots, Mother Nature, whom stubbornly refuses to recognize men as women, is no doubt specifically targeting trans people and other members of the LGBTQ community.”

What if we look at the single biggest trans – killing country in the entire world, Brazil? In the ten years up to September 2017 the TMMP records 1071 trans deaths from Brazil. The South American region as a whole is by far the most deadly for trans identifying people:

The first thing that needs to be recognised and noted is that the caveats mentioned by TGEU surely do apply to Brazil. The very reputable and solid looking Brazilian LGBT advocacy group Grupo Gay da Bahia makes similar and consistent observations:

“For the database coordinator of this research, systems analyst Eduardo Michels of Rio de Janeiro, "the underreporting of these crimes is evident, indicating that those numbers represent only the tip of an iceberg of bloody violence, since our databank is based on articles published in newspapers and over the internet. Unfortunately, this type of information is seldom provided by the more than 300 active Brazilian LGBT nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The real numbers of deaths of LGBT people in the country must certainly exceed the estimates herewith provided; this is especially true in more recent years since police officers and police inspectors have been increasingly and blatantly ruling out the possibility of homophobia being a factor in many of these killings of homosexuals."

With this caveat duly noted, the problem for the statistics on trans murders is that they still appear too small for us to be in any way certain that the trans murder rates are higher than the general rate for the whole population. Brazil is a huge country with many regional and demographic complexities I have not studied in any depth. But doing the math on the gross totals does not help the case for the idea that trans people are uniquely vulnerable to murder. Here are my calculations for what it’s worth:

The Trans Murder Monitoring Project contains this data for the 2008 – 2017 period:

The hard part is estimating the size of the trans population. Failing to find any solid estimates online, I will use the 0.6% of total population figure from a recent US survey. Census data for the population of Brazil over the 2008 – 2017 period gives a rough and ready population estimate of 200 million. This lets us guess the number of Trans Brazilians as 1,200,000.

Now for the homicide rate. Wikipedia says  :

The 26.74 means homicides per 100,000 people, taken from 2015 data.

It also says:

So the 26.74 per 100,000 is a conservative estimate.

If we use these figures, the expected number of trans murders in one year in Brazil should be 26.74 * 12 = 320. That is using the conservative homicide rate. Using the TGEU data above, we get an average of 106 trans murders per year. This means that even if there were two unreported or unrecognised murders of trans people for every reported instance, the actual murder rate for trans people would be about the same as the rate for the population as a whole.

Another way of going about this is to use the aggregate LGBT population figures and make a similar comparison. This Al Jazeera article from 2015 states: that “the number of homophobic and transphobic killings in Brazil increased from 1,023 in 1995, to 1,243 in 2003, according to Brazil’s first gay rights group Grupo Gay da Bahia.”

There are stats  on LGBT population as a whole for Brazil, which are probably a lot more reliable than my rough and ready estimate of the trans population.

20,000,000 LGBT people at a murder rate of 26.74 per 100,000 gives 200*26.74 = 5348 expected deaths. Again, this is using a conservative death rate estimate.

In this case for the LGBT murders to equal the national average rate, there would have to be around four unreported or unrecognised murders for every recorded instance. Brazil is a country riven by corruption, violence and prejudice. So it is surely conceivable, even likely, that there is a such a vast iceberg of unreported LGBT / trans murders. But the available reported data just does not support the thesis that trans or LGBT people are more susceptible to homicide. The number of murdered trans people in Brazil is high because Brazil has a large population and an extremely high homicide rate. There may be hundreds of unreported cases, and it could be that transphobia is a motive in many of these killings. But the data as reported simply does not support this speculation.

Open Letter to the Green Party regarding Feminist protest action at Pride 2018

Renee Gerlich and Charlie Montague at Pride Parade, Auckland 2018 (Photo by Arthur Francisco)

There was a similar post put up on the 'Young Greens' facebook page, which also also accused both Renee Gerlich and Charlie Montague of advocating funding cuts to LGBT youth groups 'Inside Out' and 'Rainbow Youth'. It has now been removed. Here is a screenshot:

 In response to these accusations I wrote a letter to several Green party leaders. The following is a copy of that letter, with hyperlinks to articles backing up my claims:

To Whom It May Concern:

As a Green party supporter with many friends and family members who have actively participated in the party, I am very concerned and saddened by the Green party response to the actions of Charlie Montague and Renee Gerlich at the recent Pride parade. On both the ‘Young Greens’ and ‘Rainbow Greens’ facebook pages there are posts which claim that Montague and Gerlich advocate funding cuts to Inside Out and Rainbow Youth, and that the protest banner they carried amounts to an attack on trans identifying people. Both of these claims are false, and act to prohibit democratic and critical debate about an important issue. Emotions often run high in these debates, but that is all the more reason not to condone lies and smear tactics.

The protest banner carried by Montague and Gerlich read “Stop Giving Kids Sex Hormones – Protect Lesbian Youth”. There is a real and substantive issue here about the physical side effects of synthetic hormones and puberty blocking drugs such as Lupron. Worldwide the numbers of children and youth who identify as transgender has skyrocketed only very recently. There are therefore no long term scientific studies on the potential side effects of these drugs. Yet existing studies on Hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women, and the numerous severe side effects on many people who have used puberty suppressants, are cause to take concerns about this issue very seriously.

There are also numerous studies which indicate that the vast majority of young people who experience gender dysphoria during their youth go on to identify as gay or lesbian adults. In countries such as the US and the UK, where the medicalised approach towards gender non-conformity is well entrenched, there is a growing movement of ‘de-transitioners’ who have come to the realisation that the medical approach did not work for them. The majority of these people are young women who now identify as lesbian.

Clearly there are complex and contentious political issues around these questions. The perspective held by many trans-identifying people is very different from the feminist analysis of Charlie Montague and Renee Gerlich. So by all means encourage and support members who wish to debate this important issue, clearly it deserves considered and careful attention. What it does not need is lies and smear tactics.

Yours Sincerely,

Tim Leadbeater

Open Letter to the PPTA: Why is discussion about the medicalisation of gender off-limits?

I recently read an opinion piece  in the PPTA magazine by Lizzie Marvelly about the so called ‘bathroom battle’ over transgender students and their access to toilets and facilities which match their gender identities. Because I strongly disagreed with Marvelly’s perspective on and framing of the issues involved in this discussion, I was motivated to write a reply. Unfortunately the PPTA News editor did not accept my piece, so I am reprinting it here because I doubt that any attempt to revise my argument would satisfy the stringent conditions the PPTA places on debate about transgender issues. I believe that the PPTA News editor has refused to publish my piece for ideological reasons. I will also argue that this refusal to allow debate amounts to a violation of one of the key stipulations in the PPTA's Code of Ethics.

Here is the article I submitted:

In a recent article published through the PPTA, Lizzie Marvelly called the gender “bathroom battle” a “front for intolerance”.

Marvelly is right to say that schools should support and respect their LGBTQ+ students. Bigotry, intolerance and bullying behaviour needs to be challenged and does not have any place in our schools. I’m proud to work at a school that has a thriving ‘Rainbow Youth’ club, where many students take part in events such as the ‘pink shirt’ day supporting tolerance and respect for gender non conforming people.

I also agree with Marvelly’s contention that the bathroom battle is ‘proxy war’ with much deeper issues in the background.

Marvelly’s portrayal of these issues is problematic, though, for a number of reasons.

It may well be that Family First, her target for criticism,  is a conservative organisation with values opposed to LGBTQ+ rights. Yet whatever the background motivations of Family First, I struggle to understand how the concerns of female students can be so flippantly thrown out with the bathwater as ‘bigotry’.

The recent case of a male transgender student gaining access to female facilities at Marlborough Girl’s College is a case in point. Laura, the student who spoke out last year against the granting of this access, does not speak the language of bigotry. Laura’s mother referred to the ‘vulnerability’ of teenage girls, and insisted that males and females are ‘built differently’ and therefore need private spaces. Laura said that she and her peers were not consulted, and talked about the ‘stressful and embarrassing’ time girls can go through during puberty, and their increased need for privacy from boys. She said that younger girls with a history of abuse or trauma would be particularly sensitive and ‘triggered’ by the presence of males inside their toilet facilities. In the AUT youtube video Marvelly mentions, many of the women who spoke out against the wholesale replacement of female only facilities voiced concerns based on their cultural values. None of these were motivated by bigotry.

Another important background issue is the debate surrounding the identification of transgender children. Many feminists are critical of the medicalised approach towards gender non-conforming youth. They point to the gender stereotypes implicit in much of this identification, and question the appropriateness and effectiveness of physical transition. Lupron, the puberty blocking drug sometimes prescribed to transgender identified children, has a number of very serious potential side effects. Taken in conjunction with synthetic hormones, Lupron causes permanent sterilisation. Other potential effects include higher risks for chronic pain, osteoporosis, depression and anxiety. There are unanswered questions about the magnitude and extent of these risks because few scientific studies have been carried out, and the fact that the population of medically transitioned people has only very recently begun to increase dramatically. The long term effects of drugs such as Lupron and the ongoing use of synthetic hormones are still largely unknown - and this spells medical experimentation.

This medicalised approach towards gender non-conformity goes hand-in-glove with the concept of a free-floating ‘gender identity’ which sometimes gets mixed up in the ‘wrong body’. Young boys, for example, who like to play with dolls and wear pink are encouraged by this ideology to identify as girls trapped in a boys’ body.

How does this ideology connect to the bathroom battle? I am worried that promoting access to previously sex-segregated spaces such as toilets based on ‘gender identity’ will effectively normalise and validate this contentious ideology.

Do we really need to add to all the pain and turmoil teenagers experience during puberty by suggesting the possibility that their troubles are due to them being born in the ‘wrong’ body? Is this even possible?

It seems clear that gender identity ideology, not ‘bigotry’, is the bogeyman lurking in the shadows of this debate.

*           *

The reply explaining why my piece was refused I found deeply disturbing. Clearly my views on this issue are at odds with the PPTA News editor, but I am certain that I am not the only PPTA member out there with similar questions and concerns. Shutting down debate and discussion about an issue which directly affects the wellbeing of some our most vulnerable students seems to me clearly at odds with the PPTA Code of Ethics, which demands that teachers “help all pupils to develop their potentialities for personal growth”. How can we do that if we cannot even have a debate when the views about how that growth can best be fostered are so hotly contested?

The really depressing reason behind this is that the PPTA News editor is completely convinced that my views are based on prejudice and intolerance:

A piece that questions whether such a thing as being transgender is ‘even possible’ and refers to gender diversity as ideology is not something we would run given we have members who fit into these groups and work with these students. We have democratically agreed guidelines affirming students with diverse genders and sexualities and we don’t want to negate our work supporting all of our members.  

I wonder what exactly ‘gender diversity’ is, and why it is wrong to call it an ‘ideology’? I never used the phrase in my piece, and I’m not sure of the answer to either of these questions. What I am very clear about is what I object to and why. ‘Gender identity ideology’ as I understand it involves the idea that people can be born into the “wrong” body. There is typically some kind of appeal to the notion of gendered brains or ‘essences’ which somehow get misplaced inside a body which does not match up. The medicalised model of ‘gender affirmation’ via things like synthetic hormones and surgery is the practical consequence of this idea, together with the assumption that the body is more ‘plastic’ than the mind.

I don’t believe in gendered brains, gender essences or the assumption that the body is more plastic than the mind. I reject these ideas not out of ‘bigotry’ but because I believe that they do not withstand scientific scrutiny, and also because I believe that these ideas seriously undermine and negate critical feminist perspectives on gender.

I strongly believe that gay, lesbian and gender non conforming youth should be supported and validated. I also believe that there is absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ about the bodies of any of these young people. I don’t believe that their bodies benefit from breast binders, puberty blockers or synthetic hormones. I don’t believe that they should be sterilised.

Clearly my beliefs at are at odds with the PPTA News editor, and many others who embrace the medicalised gender identity model. There is a debate to be had. Lots of people and organisations have interests and agendas here – the drug companies and medical institutions who profit from medicalising gender, parents of GNC children, feminist critics and of course the children and youth who experience the real and acute pain of gender dysphoria. I’m a parent of two young children and a teacher of teenagers. I have an interest in this debate too as a human being and as a teacher who takes seriously the stipulation in the PPTA Code of Ethics – let’s repeat it again:

Teachers should help all pupils to develop their potentialities for personal growth

This is what the PPTA News editor says about this important debate:

‘We also feel it would be irresponsible to publish comments on side effects of specific medications as we are not medical professionals.’

Well I’m not a medical professional either. All I can do is read books and internet articles on this topic. I’m sure there are many science teachers out there who read the PPTA News and also know a huge amount more than I do about endocrinology, human biology and the effects of puberty blockers. But of course we cannot even begin to discuss any of this, because the people in charge of the PPTA News are not medical professionals.

We can talk about toilets and the conservative bigotry of Family First, but we can’t talk about the physical effects of breast binding. (I bring this up because the ‘Rainbow Youth’ facebook page recently featured an advertisement which celebrated these devices - see also Renee Gerlich's piece for more on this topic). This is what a ‘top surgery’ specialist has to say about breast binders:

If you are considering long-term chest binding, then there are some important things to keep in mind. This following are the three biggest health consequences of chest binding that you need to be aware of before you do begin.

Compressed Ribs

One of the biggest health consequence of chest binding is compressed or broken ribs, which can lead to further health problems. Unfortunately, you can fracture the ribs fairy easily so you should avoid binding your chest using bandages or tapes, as these can be unsafe.

Compressing your chest too tightly or incorrectly can permanently damage small blood vessels. This can cause blood flow problems and increase the risk of developing blood clots. Over time, this can lead to inflamed ribs (costochondritis) and even a heart attack due to decreased blood flow to the heart.

The following are some symptoms you should look out for:

·         Loss of breath

·         Back pain throughout the back or shoulders

·         Increased pain or pressure with deep breaths

Collapsed Lungs

Since chest binding can lead to fractured ribs, this can increase the risk of puncturing or collapsing a lung. This happens when a broken rib punctures the lung, causing serious health issues.

Once the lung is punctured, it has a higher risk of collapsing because air can fill the spaces around the lungs and chest.

Back Problems

If you bind your chest too tightly then it can cause serious back issues by compressing the spine, which is part of your central nervous system. The spine controls many functions, and you need to be very careful when doing anything that may cause damage.

Back pain from chest binding can also be an indication that a lung has been injured. If the pain is coming from the upper back or shoulder, consult with a doctor for further examination to ensure proper lung health.

Fractured ribs, damaged blood vessels, or punctured lungs can cause difficulties down the line and may stop you from being able to move forward with surgery. Keeping these issues in mind will allow you get the most out of using chest binding.

Discuss chest binding with an expert to ensure that you get the best results, reduce the risk of complications, and create optimal health for you.

If you are a PPTA member, please don’t talk about any of this. We can’t debate this because we are not medical professionals. It’s much nicer and easier to just get Lizzie Marvelly in to talk about toilets. That way we don’t have to deal with any of the hard questions. Please don’t worry too much about the stipulation in the PPTA Code of Ethics – let’s repeat it again just for good measure:

Teachers should help all pupils to develop their potentialities for personal growth

Don’t worry about Lupron either. You’re probably not a ‘medical professional’, so you shouldn’t even be trying to read or understand the scientific literature on this topic. Please ignore and do not dare to discuss with the PPTA facts such as:

Unproven: Lupron Depot is unproven and not medically necessary for puberty suppression in patients with gender identity disorder due to the lack of long-term safety data. Statistically robust randomized controlled trials are needed to address the issue of whether the benefits outweigh the substantial inherent clinical risk in its use. 

Of course it could be true that for some gender dysphoric teens, the medical treatment model might be the only thing that works for them. This is complex and difficult territory, and I am sure that the PPTA News Editor would not encourage any debate around the issues involved. We should not consider, talk about or debate the surveys which indicate that about 80% of gender dysphoric youth desist from transgender identification by the time they become adults. You should not read this article which scrutinises the debate around this statistical claim, and concludes:

Every study that has been conducted on this has found the same thing. At the moment there is strong evidence that even many children with rather severe gender dysphoria will, in the long run, shed it and come to feel comfortable with the bodies they were born with. The critiques of the desistance literature presented by Tannehill, Serano, Olson and Durwood, and others don’t come close to debunking what is a small but rather solid, strikingly consistent body of research.

Well, I see that I have gone way over the 250 word limit for letters to the PPTA News, and for obvious reasons I know you will not even consider publishing this anyway. It’s a shame that this discussion has to be limited to blogs. If any PPTA members are actually reading this, I would encourage them to read some of the recent pieces by Renee Gerlich on this issue. I would also encourage them to contemplate the meaning and moral force of the stipulation in the PPTA Code of Ethics, which I will repeat once again in conclusion:

Teachers should help all pupils to develop their potentialities for personal growth

The Case Against Gender: a review of Sheila Jeffreys’ Gender Hurts

• Jeffreys, Sheila. (2014). Gender Hurts, London and New York: Routledge
• Hausman, Bernice L. (1995). Changing Sex: Transexuality, Technology and the Idea of Gender, Durham and London: Duke University Press

I shall postpone necessary preliminary remarks and dive head-first into the juicy outrageous bits. Jeffreys pulls no punches, and combines academic analysis with shocking and uncomfortable anecdotes and images. There are no ‘trigger warnings’, and her robust, matter-of-fact style will appear shocking to some readers. Under the section heading ‘Surgery for male-bodied transgenders’, we learn of the difficulties experienced by people with surgically constructed vaginas:

In one case […] the skin of the scrotum that had been used in the constructed vagina had not had electrolysis to remove the pubic hair and the hair grew inside the vagina: ‘One day I was making love and something didn’t feel right. There was this little ball of hair like a Brillo pad in my vagina.’ A surgeon pulled the hair out of him but warned it would continually grow back[i].

Gender Hurts devotes an entire chapter to the experiences of women married to men who transgender in middle age. Typically, these are heterosexual men with a fetish for cross-dressing. They tend to embrace stereotypical notions of femininity, and their practices place great strain on their wives. Jeffreys describes the experience of Helen Boyd, a women with critical sensibilities who ‘never knew exactly what feeling like a woman was supposed to mean and rejected femininity as socially constructed and constricting’:

…her husband told her he did know what it was to feel like a woman, and it was certainly not what she had ever felt. She explains: “The more I encouraged him to find an identity that felt comfortable and natural to him, the more unnatural he seemed to me. His manners changed, as did the way he used his hands. He flipped his hair and started using a new voice.” She hoped his behaviour was just a “phase” because “I felt as if I were living with Britney Spears. It was like sleeping with the enemy[ii].”

Another chapter is devoted to the issue of women’s spaces, and the morally aggressive politics of the transgender lobby to gain male access to these spaces. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a women’s only event which has been running since 1976, has been repeatedly targeted by transgender activists. In 2010 the tactics used became ‘particularly violent and aggressive’:

Camp Trans […] “vandalised the festival and threatened festival goers”. A flyer being distributed by the activists showed a rather extraordinary degree of woman hating: “A hot load from my monstrous tranny-cock embodies womanhood more than the pieces of menstrual [sic] art your transphobic cunts could ever hope to create[iii]”.

Taken together these three examples sum up Jeffreys’ case against the politics and ideology of transgenderism. She argues that this ideology and its associated practices harm trans people, women and the feminist movement. Gender non conforming children are encouraged to identify as ‘trans’ and risk major health consequences, and gay and lesbian people also suffer.  Her arguments are based around an historical account of transgenderism as a socially constructed phenomenon which grew out of medical practices relating to intersex people and an associated discourse which created the concept of ‘gender identity’. It is this historical account which I will focus on and elaborate, but before I do this I will say a few words about the political context of Gender Hurts and some of the critical comments made about this book.

The political battle between radical feminists and transgender advocates is heated and Jeffreys’ text is without doubt a weapon, a polemic directed straight at both the heart and mind of the reader. The uncompromising use of ‘pronouns of origin’ instead of those preferred by transgender people, the claim that male power is the driving force behind the politics of transgenderism and the insistence that women should create and protect female only spaces – these tenets are all articulated in both an academic and deeply personal register. No wonder then that Gender Hurts provoked a vitriolic response from offended liberals, who denounced it as a politically reactionary exercise in transphobic hate speech. Most of the reviews I read barely engaged with the arguments made in the text, and tended to cast aspersions upon the scholarly and moral integrity of the book instead of explaining why they thought Jeffreys’ ideas and concerns were wrong and unwarranted. Tim R. Johnston, for example, states that:

Jeffreys relies on a very small, controversial, and often outdated set of texts and evidence to support her arguments. She does not acknowledge the controversial or contested nature of this evidence, nor does she entertain significant and established evidence that is critical of her position. Second, the tone of the book is extremely disrespectful, and there are several places where Jeffreys engages in significant misrepresentations of transgender people, their allies, and research. These problems call into question not only the book's academic integrity, but also Jeffreys's scholarly objectivity and rigor.

In a review which is best described as apoplectic and somewhat unhinged, ‘Overland’ reviewer Lia Incognita simply refuses to engage with any of Jeffreys’ arguments on moral grounds. Because Gender Hurts commits the cardinal sin of not accepting the truth of the statement ‘transwomen are women’, it is simply impossible that any of the arguments have any merit whatsoever. The closest she gets to engaging with the text is through quoting Judith Butler, who very clearly has not read the book herself:

“If she makes use of social construction as a theory to support her view, she very badly misunderstands its terms.  In her view, a trans person is ‘constructed’ by a medical discourse and therefore is the victim of a social construct.  But this idea of social constructs does not acknowledge that all of us, as bodies, are in the active position of figuring out how to live with and against the constructions – or norms – that help to form us.  We form ourselves within the vocabularies that we did not choose, and sometimes we have to reject those vocabularies, or actively develop new ones. [...]

One problem with that view of social construction is that it suggests that what trans people feel about what their gender is, and should be, is itself ‘constructed’ and, therefore, not real.  And then the feminist police comes along to expose the construction and dispute a trans person’s sense of their lived reality.  I oppose this use of social construction absolutely, and consider it to be a false, misleading, and oppressive use of the theory.”

In order to clarify my thoughts on these objections to Gender Hurts, I carefully examined the social construction arguments made by Jeffreys’ and the texts she uses to develop her case. The most important book she refers to is Bernice L. Hausman’s Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender. I think Butler seriously misrepresents Jeffreys’ account of social construction, and I shall explain why as I outline the most important elements of the account.

Jeffreys argues that it is possible to articulate a social construction account of transgenderism along similar lines to that of homosexuality as famously described by Michel Foucault. Just as scientific theories and medical descriptions wove themselves into nineteenth century social relations to create an essentialised and naturalised category of persons (homosexuals), the twentieth century contains a distinct yet parallel story concerning the creation of transgenderism. The social identities created through these discursive processes are shaped by the over-arching imperatives of a patriarchal system of male dominance and heteronormativity:

The creation of the transgender role can be seen as a way of separating off       unacceptable gender behaviour which might threaten the system of male domination and female subordination, from correct gender behaviour, which is seen as suitable for persons of a particular biological sex. In the case of homosexuality, the effect is to shore up the idea of exclusive and natural heterosexuality; and, in the case of transgenderism, the naturalness of sex roles[iv].

Unlike homosexuality, transgenderism required the existence of particular types of specialised medical technology. Developments in endocrinology (the field of medicine relating to hormones and hormone therapy), anaesthetics and plastic surgery occurred in the first half of the twentieth century. These developments influenced the treatment of intersex people, who were now subject to medical procedures to ‘correct’ their ambiguous sex. Whereas it is most certainly appropriate to label intersex infants as ‘victims’ of medical technology, it is not at all true that transgender people were similarly passive recipients of medical treatment. Jeffreys is most definitely not guilty of the sin of denying ‘agency’ to transgender people. It is this very agency which forms a crucial plank in the social construction account:

Hausman explains that when there was public knowledge about medical advances and technological capabilities individuals could then name themselves as ‘the’ appropriate subjects of particular medical interventions, and thereby participate in the construction of themselves as patients[v].

Both Hausman and Jeffreys describe the ideological processes and changes which accompanied this construction of a ‘born in the wrong body’ subject. Hausman provides us with an acute and insightful view into the pre-requisite assumptions required for sex change medical procedures:

To advocate hormonal and surgical sex change as a therapeutic tool for those whose ‘gender identifications’ are at odds with their anatomical sex, it is necessary to believe that physiological interventions have predictable psychological effects. In order to do this, evidence of the unpredictable psychological effects of plastic surgery must be marginalised, understood as aberrant (neurotic or psychotic) reactions, or controllable through patient selection – and certainly not the norm. It is necessary to believe, further, that patient ‘happiness’ is a recognisable and realizable goal for surgeries that have no physiological indication. And, in addition, it is necessary to acknowledge a certain autonomy of the psychological realm such that the psyche is understood as the realm of stability and certainty, while the body is deemed mutable[vi].

It is worth pausing here to take in and consider Hausman’s perspective. To question the fact that people seek medical procedures which help ‘align’ their anatomy with their gender identity is currently viewed as tantamount to a fascist hate crime. Yet clearly there are a host of quite unique and questionable metaphysical ideas which make such facts possible. Usually people seek medical treatment for physical ailments, and psychological treatment for mental distress. There are of course drug treatments for people with severe mental illnesses, but these are informed by a lively debate about the relative merits of different treatment approaches. Medicalisation of psychiatric conditions is a political subject of debate when it comes to things like drug treatments for depression, but such debate is a moral taboo when it comes to gender issues. Gender identity advocates insist that there is absolutely nothing ‘pathological’ about seeking medical treatment for gender dysphoria. This moral position very effectively silences any debates about the nature and causes of gender related distress.

These metaphysical assumptions which underlie the medicalised treatment model were facilitated by the development of ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ as discursive entities which became progressively removed from material biological reality. This process started in the early twentieth century with the treatment of intersex infants, and reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s with the work of John Money, Joan Hampson and John Hampson. Prior to the 1950s the word ‘gender’ was an obscure grammatical term, and was not a part of everyday parlance. The phrase ‘gender identity’ entered the world in 1964, in an academic paper written by a psychologist[vii]. Jeffreys argues that this discursive development facilitated the normalisation of the transgender subject:

Hausman argues that the ‘production of the concept of gender in Western culture’ can be analysed. All of the medical ‘interventions’ […] depended upon ‘the construction of a rhetorical system that posits a prior, gendered self necessary to justify surgical interventions[viii]’

Hausman’s account also casts the dependence the other way around, so that medical practices and gender discourse mutually support each other:

… the semiotic shift from sex to gender, from body to mind, relied on the use of plastic surgical technologies as treatments for impaired psychological functioning[ix].

Again it is worth pausing and taking stock of the implications of Hausman’s view. She is not in any sense ‘discounting’ or ‘erasing’ the lived reality of people who come to think of themselves as born in the wrong body. She is instead clarifying the historical conditions of possibility for such beliefs to exist. These historical conditions involve both medical technology and a very particular type of gender discourse. Both Jeffreys and Hausman are severely critical of the view that transgender identities can be retrospectively located throughout history and across different cultures in various types of ‘third genders’. Transgender identities are a specific product of the twentieth century.

Hausman describes how the discourse on gender shifted from a social to a private and individualistic register. ‘Gender’ was conceptualised as both a set of social roles and stereotypes, and as a private essence inside people which develops over time. Because intersex people frequently experienced great suffering when their internal sense of gender did not match their assigned social role, the medical approach was to ‘fix’ the anatomy to line up gender identity with sex. Psychologists and sexologists increasingly emphasised the notion of gender identity, rather than gender roles, and came to view gender identity as something that was fairly rigidly ‘imprinted’ on the mind in early childhood. Hausman explains the problematic consequences of this ‘imprinting’ model:

To suggest that socially constructed behaviours are imprinted, that is, established irrevocably and without flexibility, is, however, to lend tacit support to culturally hegemonic rules and expectations. The concept of imprinted behaviour suggests the idea that while there is one correct pattern (heterosexuality with its concomitant masculine or feminine gender role expression), this pattern can be wrongly imprinted. Because the notion of imprinting suggests irrevocably established behaviours, the only way to affect (or ‘cure’) the anomalous imprint – so that the subject can engage in cultural activities as a ‘normal’ person – is to alter some other aspect of the subject. In the context of intersexuality, after gender role has been imprinted, the subject’s genital morphology and hormonal makeup become targets for medical intervention. The same holds true for transsexualism and it is in this connection that transsexualism appropriated one of its strongest arguments for surgical and hormonal sex change, as transsexuals are understood to be subjects who for some reason develop the ‘wrong’ gender identity for their anatomical sex[x].

Sheila Jeffreys observes that the majority of people who argued for these sex change procedures were male, and argues that the male character of the demand for access to medical treatment is a defining feature of transgenderism. She traces the history of this demand, from famous early cases in the 1950s such as Christine Jorgensen to the ‘pioneer’ efforts of cross dresser Virginia Price in the 1960s and 1970s. Following the controversial studies of Blanchard and Bailey, she distinguishes between homosexual men who transition and heterosexual men who are motivated by autogynephilia (an erotic fetish for dressing in women’s clothing). Jeffreys argues that we should not accept the separation between gender identity and sexuality as unproblematic, and that feminists should be wary of the motives of men who transition.

Considering Butler’s criticism of Jeffreys’ view, it is true that Jeffreys supports a sort of ‘feminist policing’. Women are justified, according to Jeffreys, in rejecting the presence of male transgenders inside spaces such as toilets and changing rooms, and a part of this justification has to do with the prevalence of autogynephilia. Women are also justified to be critical of the views put forward by male transgender ‘feminists’ such as Julia Serano. She recounts the experience of Serano who wrapped a lacy white curtain around his eleven year old body like a dress, satisfying a deeply felt urge to feel ‘feminine’. Noting that his experience is “unlikely to have been shared by many females”, Jeffreys ruthlessly exposes Serano’s efforts to “reinvent ‘feminism’ to fit his erotic interests[xi]”. What is at stake here is not the ‘reality’ of social constructions, but rather the male power and patriarchal structuring of sexuality which informs the undenied reality of those same constructions.

*           *           *

Sheila Jeffreys’ forthright and uncompromising feminist stance is tempered somewhat by her admission in the introduction that most of the literature on the transgender phenomenon is celebratory rather than critical, and that she had to read ‘against the grain’ in order to develop her account. Relying in part on the burgeoning scene of radical feminist bloggers critical of the current political climate surrounding transgender issues, Gender Hurts is best viewed as hybrid of academic theory and political polemic. Coming in at under 200 pages, it is a ‘monograph’ which left me dissatisfied, not because of its critical sensibility but because of its brevity. There may well be holes in Jeffreys’ arguments and shortcomings in her account, but Gender Hurts deserves considered recognition and engagement, not abuse and dismissal.

---

[i] Jeffreys, Sheila. (2014). Gender Hurts, London and New York: Routledge, p.70

[ii] Ibid. p.93

[iii] Ibid.p.168

[iv] Ibid. p.17

[v] Ibid. p.21

[vi] Hausman, Bernice L. (1995). Changing Sex: Transexuality, Technology and the Idea of Gender, Durham and London: Duke University Press, p.63

[vii] Robert Stoller, ‘A Contribution to the Study of Gender Identity’, Journal of the American Medical Association 45 (1964): 220 – 26

[viii] Ibid. p.27

[ix] Ibid. p68

[x] Ibid. p.101

[xi] Ibid. p. 50

Transplaining Spin: Fact-checking the liberal reaction to Ask Me First

The Spinoff news site has recently published two articles in response to the Family First ‘Ask Me First’ campaign.  Laura, a student, has expressed concern about Marlborough Girls College's decision to allow a male transgender student use of the female toilet facilities. Supported by her mother and the conservative lobby group Family First, she appeared recently in a Family First video speaking out against the school’s decision and the lack of consultation with students and families. Both articles strongly condemn Laura's stance, and paint her actions as a part of a bullying transphobic campaign against a powerless and vulnerable trans student. They both claim that there are no safety concerns for the female students, whereas there are major safety concerns for the trans student. 

Is it true that the safety concerns lie squarely on the side of the trans student, and that people who question this narrative are transphobic bullies? Is it true that the trans student is relatively powerless and deserves more moral consideration than students such as Laura?

The first Spinoff article, written by Television editor Alex Casey with a palpable sense of delicious moral outrage, denies the claim that there was no consultation process. She interviews transactivist Lexie Matheson, who paints a rosy picture of ‘unity’ at the school, and claims that the ‘school consulted widely, they consulted the community, they consulted the students and the student LGBT groups, I was able to talk to most kids and see the students in her classroom.’ He goes on to categorically state:

Everybody was asked first. The school was fantastic in terms of talking to the community, sending emails and newsletters out and talking to anyone with concerns. Many people did came to me with concerns about how it would affect them. The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t affect you at all.

This directly contradicts the account given by Laura and her mother. From the recent Herald article on February 22nd:

Laura's mother says the school's claims that it considered the rights of all its students before making the decision are "really incorrect".

"They have not respected the value of the girls' vulnerability. They haven't respected their thoughts on the matter. There's over 600 girls. They also have a right to have a voice.

"I think as a parent, we should've got together in the school itself before it all happened. Why didn't they ask us what we wanted to do?"

Laura adds that while she has nothing against the transgender student involved in the stoush, she takes issue with the school's lack of consideration of her views.

"[The school] never asked me my opinion. They never respected my rights. Nobody asked me first."

So which version of events is true? Were the parents and students asked about the decision to allow a male student to use the girls’ facilities? Was there a warm, loving glow of tolerance which enveloped the entire school in support of the transgender student, Stephani Rose Muollo-Gray? Were the only exceptions to this enlightened and harmonious community small pockets of close-minded fundamentalist Christian bigots, hatefully opposed to transgender bathroom rights?

If you read Muollo-Gray’s statement which accompanied his petition to allow his use of female facilities from June last year, a very different picture emerges. He states that he started off using the female toilets, but was challenged by a teacher for doing this and subsequently had a series of meetings with the principal about the issue. The principal had originally made it a condition that Muollo-Gray should use the unisex toilets provided by the school, but Muollo-Gray had no recollection of making this agreement. The statement makes it very clear that there was a lengthy process of debate and discussion, and that the school authorities were initially opposed to Muollo-Gray’s demand:

Several other meetings occurred with very little progress. They kept trying to tell me that I couldn’t use the girls’ bathrooms because it was all about everyone’s comfort and safety, as though anyone was at risk from me just trying to use the bathroom. The one idea that they kept using as an excuse as to why I could only use the few gender neutral or male bathrooms in the school was that it would make some students uncomfortable, and that they would complain and parents would become involved.

The petition gained 6,889 supporters and the story was widely reported in the local and national media. The school soon changed its policy and Muollo-Gray was allowed to use the female facilities. There is no evidence that I could find of any sort of consultation process or vote about the issue. The most plausible story is that the school changed its policy because of the media spotlight and the pressure of the lobby groups in support of Muollo-Gray.

A second claim made by both of the articles is that excluding Muollo-Gray from female facilities would compromise his safety at the school.

Lexie Matheson states: “The primary concern is safety and feeling validated and authentic in yourself. … There is new research coming out that often young transgender women often have more bladder infections than the general population because we hold on for too long. We wait until there’s nobody around and then we go to the bathroom, and that’s really unhealthy and really unsafe.” 

In the second article, Scout Barbour Evans states that: “…the Youth ’12 report – a report on the wellbeing of transgender youth in Aotearoa – has shown that 53.5% of trans youth are worried for their own safety at school. 17.6% of them are bullied at school at least weekly, and 19.8% of trans young people had attempted suicide in the last year. These are really, really alarming statistics. …everyone is focused on this theoretical, abstract debate about whether or not transgender people should be allowed to pee outside of their own homes, while our transgender rangatahi are suffering in a real, tangible way. We know from seeing the Safe Schools and marriage equality plebiscite debacle in Australia that when this sort of bullying happens by media, the overall wellbeing of our LGBTQ rangatahi goes down.”

Both Matheson and Barbour Evans speak very generally, but appear to be saying that without access to female facilities, Muollo-Gray would be at greater risk of suffering bladder infections, bullying or suicide. Again, it’s very interesting to compare these claims with Muollo-Gray’s petition statement:

That aside what I want to get across is how blatantly transphobic the school has been against me and how upsetting this whole situation has been. There is no need to worry about other students safety in this situation. It is me who has been forced to stop using certain bathrooms; interrupting my learning and my school day. This whole situation has ended in me being told I can use the gender neutral bathrooms that are available, and that the school is looking to add more. But right now there are only four, and these are at the outskirts of the school. As a girl I want to and should be able to use the girls bathrooms. Why spend money on making bathrooms for me to be segregated and out of sight of others when I can just go in the girls’ bathroom free of charge? In the end it will be taxpayers forking out for this schools transphobia.

The sentence which refers to ‘segregation’ is quite misleading, according to this article several of the previously female only facilities had been converted into unisex facilities. Yet Muollo-Gray’s explanation is still far more honest and grounded in reality than either of the hysterical Spinoff accounts. What is at stake here is hurt feelings, the inconvenience of having to walk a bit further than other students to access the toilet and the horrendous possibility that the taxpayer would have to fork out precious funds to make more unisex toilets. The most central reason is very clearly Muollo-Gray’s presumed right to feel ‘validated and authentic’. Being excluded from female only spaces is threatening to his psychological sense of ‘gender identity’.

The second Spinoff article is titled ‘Teaching love: How to support your children through questions about gender identity’. Full of love for the gender non-confriming and gender diverse children of Aoteroa, Barbour Evans’ love does not extend to embrace those unhappy with gender identity ideology:

We’ve seen “Laura” prodded into complaining by her (IMHO) overbearing, bullying mother who raised a child to believe that transgender people are subhuman in some way. We haven’t heard anything from the student herself – a teenage girl with feelings and rights who does not deserve this bullying from her peers."

I don’t know Laura or her mother, but from watching the ‘Ask Me First’ video, it certainly is not clear that either of them view transgender people as being ‘subhuman’. Laura’s mother refers to the ‘vulnerability’ of teenage girls, and insists that males and females are ‘built differently’ and therefore need private spaces. Laura talks about the ‘stressful and embarassing’ time girls go through during puberty, and their increased need for privacy. She says that younger girls with a history of abuse or trauma would be particularly sensitive and ‘triggered’ by the presence of a male inside toilet facilities. Both Laura and her mother also express concern for the precedent set by this example, as it opens up the possibility of males using ‘gender identity’ access to female spaces for exploitative or abusive purposes.

None of these concerns require adherence to religious beliefs. It may be that some fundamentalist Christian people share these concerns, but that fact in itself does not invalidate them. Transactivists such as Barbour Evans and Matheson will invariably focus upon the supposed prejudice involved with the concern about potential abuse, and will insist that there is no evidence of any trans person ever harming anyone at any time. Unfortunately they are wrong about this, and there is considerable evidence that transgender males commit violence against women at about the same frequency as the male population as a whole. Making this observation, and raising the issue of male violence and the need for female only spaces is not ‘transphobic’ any more than it is ‘man hating’.

Perhaps the most strikingly false statement is the second part of Barbour Evans quote above, the suggestion that Muollo-Gray’s voice has been completely absent from this affair. Teenage students as a rule have very little say over how their schools are run. There are token gestures such as student representatives on Boards of Trustees, but the reality for most teenage kids is that of more or less complete powerlessness. They are compelled to wear uniforms, attend classes, meet various behaviour requirements and so on. Muollo-Gray’s influence over decisions made by the Marlborough school has been massive. The petition, the media exposure and the trans lobby combined to effectively make him more powerful than the school principal.

Psychological distress is an elusive thing to measure, but in this case the apparent harms suffered by Muollo-Gray’s gender identity were counted as being far more weighty and significant by the school than any of the discomforts or fears held by students such as Laura. Questioning the liberal orthodoxies of liberal Spinoff-doctors is an unpopular activity, but there is a compelling feminist case for doing so.

[For another left/feminist take on the Ask Me First story, check out Renee Gerlich's piece]