What's wrong with the Gingerbread model?

David Paisley, an ex River City actor, recently abandoned his libel action against me. He was suing me for accusing him of enabling paedophiles. I wrote a defence, arguing that his rhetoric enabled paedophiles whether he intended it or not. I believe that the defence may be useful to others in demonstrating that paedophile enabling is built into the rhetoric of queer theory; it is not that a few activists have made safeguarding mistakes; safeguarding is a framework designed to uphold appropriate boundaries and thereby protect children; queer theory is designed to break them down.

Appropriate to their gender identity.

David Paisley has tweeted that he believes individuals should use the bathroom “appropriate to their gender identity.”

“I answered your question on that about 6 months ago. You’re being repetitious.  the right of trans people to access spaces that are appropriate to their gender. As does the Equality Act 2010. I’ve a simple question for you @helenstaniland. When have you ever been asked to prove your sex when using a single sex toilet or changing room? Simple yes or no will do.”

To understand the meaning of this tweets, some understanding of what trans rights activists mean by “gender” is necessary. To this end, I have included the “genderbread” person. This is used to teach gender and sexuality to children in primary schools.

Bearing in mind that this model is used to teach gender and sexuality to children in primary schools, it is worth making a few points about its accuracy (or otherwise.

a.      Biological sex is not a spectrum. Everybody is either male or female.

b.      Even everybody “intersex” (with a disorder of sexual development) is either male or female. There are only sperms and eggs, no third gametes.

c.      There are no actual hermaphrodites amongst humans, capable of reproducing using both types of gametes. Nobody can inseminate their own eggs. There are no sequential hermaphrodites amongst humans either. Humans cannot change sex.

d.      Sex is not only in the genitals but is coded into every cell of the body.

e.      Orientation is not located simply in the heart. Physical responses are based in the whole body. Attraction also has an intellectual element that can be linked to physical and emotional responses too.

f.       “Expression” is not somehow stuck on the outside of the body; true “expression,” such as artistic expression, through dance, creating art, knitting, or any of the embodied art forms, is expressed through every muscle and cell of the body.

g.      To talk about expression as if it is stuck on the outside of the body is shallow, implying it is not about who we are, but about how others see us.

h.      Each of the facets of a human mentioned in this model cannot exist separately from the other.

i.       Separating out, e.g. physical desire from emotions, leads both to the pornified version of sex (which normalises for young people that it’s possible, even desirable to have sex without emotional involvement) and also to confusing terms like “demi sexual” (where a special category is needed for people who need emotional involvement to enjoy sex), as well as a host of other confusing outcomes.

j. Gender is “in your head.” But it is also “the chemistry that composes you and what that means.” Taken together, this is incoherent. Is gender ideas in your head, or chemistry? But this stretch is made to include both “what you think about your gender” and “the hormones you’ve taken to make your body match those ideas.” The “chemistry” bit is an attempt to be trans inclusive.

k. Chemistry is not central to gender, but can help make it up. Gender, at root, is “ideas you have in your head,” and is completely separate from biological sex.

l. Bathrooms are generally segregated by (binary) biological sex, which begs the question of where all the people in the middle of the gender spectrum should get changed. Taken to its logical conclusion, everybody should just use whatever toilet or changing room they feel like – which in turn begs the question of why we have separate toilets and changing rooms for males and females at all.

m. Gender identity is separate from gender expression. An intact male, who has made no effort to transition, who has an idea of himself in his head as a woman, has a female gender identity. This is not a hypothetical. Alex Drummond,[1] a fully intact male with a full beard, has gone into schools in the UK and told children that he is both a woman, and a lesbian because of ideas about himself that he has in his head. He is not an isolated case.

If you believe, like Paisley, that somebody should use the “bathroom appropriate to their gender identity,” then by rights, Alex Drummond, and any other fully intact bearded male who thinks of himself as a woman, should change with women and girls. This view of Paisley’s goes beyond self ID laws, which would allow any male with or without a gender recognition certificate to use the women’s changing facilities.

“People should use the bathroom appropriate to their gender identity” would, in effect, remove all single sex public bathrooms and changing rooms, make everything unisex, allow adults males access to changing rooms where women and girls are in a state of undress. If these adult males are told by women in those spaces to get out, they can just say that they’re transwomen. “Use the bathroom appropriate to you gender identity” would, in short, open the doors of the women’s changing rooms to sexual predators, exposing women and girls in a state of undress to adult males. Those who rely on the good auspices of sexual predators not to exploit any loop hole they can are naïve at best.

To clarify: Paisley has not stated that he thinks that males who have gender recognition certificates, or who have been physically castrated and had a surgical vagina constructed, should use the women’s changing room. He has stated that individuals with a “gender identity” of female should use the women’s changing room. This view is, in and of itself, potentially enabling of sex offenders, because it allows predatory men access to women and girls in a state of undress, and an excuse if somebody challenges them when they are caught there.

The tweet breaks down safeguarding barriers around spaces designated for women and girls. It ignores the risk to children of being exposed to adult male genitalia, and of giving predatory men the perfect excuse to flash their penis in the women’s changing room.

During the period following the Wii Spa incident, Paisley took no steps to disassociate himself from those on his own side, such as Zinnia Jones, who argued that the nine-year-old girl who had an adult male expose his semi erect penis to her in the changing rooms should have just not “stare[d] at other people’s junk.”  Victim blaming the nine-year-old female victim of a sex offence was not an uncommon point of view in the days after the incident; Laurie Penny, a professional journalist with a substantial following, said that the girl involved in the Wii Spa incident should have “averted her eyes.”

But in the very unlikely event that a man exposed his semi erect penis to other men, and to a nine-year-old boy, he would immediately be recognised as a danger and ejected, swiftly and firmly from the changing room.

Paisley thinks I’ve called him a paedophile and accused him of being involved in child sex abuse and grooming. I deny that I have accused him of this at any time. However, I do accuse him of having beliefs and making statements which are, in and of themselves, helpful to child molesters, and which make life more difficult for those who want to hold firm safeguarding boundaries.

The statement that people should use the bathroom appropriate for their gender identity is paedophile enabling, because it holds open the door of the changing room for male predators of all stripes and gives them the perfect cover if they are caught.

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[1] This Incredible Trans Woman Is Challenging The Way We Think About Gender | HuffPost UK Queer Voices (huffingtonpost.co.uk)