I am a 61-year-old woman.

To whom it may concern.

I am a 61-year-old woman. I have been openly bisexual for as long as I can remember. I recognise the extreme privilege of being able to occupy this fortunate position as the result of being raised in a family to whom same-sex attraction was not an issue. This liberal stance did not in any way prevent me from struggling with my developing female body as I reached adolescence; my developing female body terrified me. Men wanted it for reasons of which I was not fully cognisant. I was no longer allowed to take my top off when I was too hot, I suffered unspeakable agony when menstruating, and I suffered mood swings the like of which I had hitherto never experienced.

If anyone had asked me how I felt about my body, I would have said I hated it. If anyone had asked me how I felt about becoming a woman, I would have said I didn’t want to be one and that I wished I was a boy. Thankfully nobody did, and I was left to grow into my adult body unimpeded.

Once I had identified that my issues with womanhood were political and not physical, I was able to come to love the awesome physicality that is woman and learn to fight tooth and nail against the systemic oppression that had got into my unformed child’s mind and caused me to hate my body for the oppression visited upon it through every aspect of society.

This is not an experience that is uncommon among women regardless of sexuality, and again I recognise that my good fortune in coming to cognisance of the dimensions of my dysphoria is gifted to me by my family’s understanding of the psychosexual, sociopolitical and pathophysiological inequity which women are routinely subjected to.

For women who are exclusively same-sex attracted, pubescence gives rise to a male gaze for which they have no response. The relief from the burden of heterosexual desire does not in any way mitigate the societal expectations with which all women are encumbered; thus such women are significantly more vulnerable to experiencing dysphoria and alienation from their developing womanhood, falling prey to the misleading concept that a human can be born in the “wrong body” — indeed, that there is such a thing as a “right” body. There is not; there is the body one is born into, and the road to self-actualisation is not travelled through the application of ever more complex cosmetic interventions.

The enforcement of gendered roles and assumptions regarding choices of attire and activities are seriously problematic influences, which, when coupled with the societal disregard of lesbians’ needs and the pornification of lesbian sex, can cause considerable and significant distress for a young, gender-non-conforming, same-sex attracted woman, in the absence of the intellectual privileges of which I have been availed.

In order to develop into a well-adjusted adult, it is essential that one is furnished with a vocabulary with which one can speak of and understand oneself; without the language to accurately describe oneself, one cannot comfortably define oneself.

Recent discussions as to the meaning of the word “woman” have created a toxic environment in which to grow into womanhood, and believe me, it was bad enough before global popular culture was thrown into disarray by the actioning of the propositions of the Denton document and other costly lobbying and media tactics employed by trans rights activists (this has been well documented elsewhere, so I will not detail the machinations of the trans-industrial complex here).

“Woman” is a sex descriptor (its meaning in law has been clarified by the Supreme Court) — no more, no less. It implies nothing beyond primary and secondary sexual characteristics; it does not imply behaviours, activities, preferences, or indeed any other personality traits. It does imply needs, protections, and a recognisable, well-documented, generally recognised historical global inequity in relation to adult human males across the board.

“Womanhood” is not achieved through opinion, presentation, surgery, or medication. One cannot be converted into a woman. One can merely engage in masquerade. The suggestion that such masquerade be given serious consideration prior to any intervention is not a
suggestion of conversion; it is a suggestion of retention of one’s secondary sexual traits.

This current misuse of common language — the proliferation of misleading phrases such as “sex assigned at birth” (sex is observed at birth; it is gendered roles that are socially assigned) and “non-binary” (which is nonsensical, as it creates a binary), and the reapplication of terms such as “cis” — poses a clear and present danger to the understanding of self which is critical to any young woman facing the awesome and terrifying transition from childhood to womanhood, ever more so should she be same-sex attracted and/or gender-non-conforming.

The “repurposing of language” in queer theory is founded on creating new and opposing understandings, e.g.:

“Woman = feminine stereotype, therefore the feminine stereotype can be displayed by anyone, therefore a man declaring himself to be a woman and exhibiting stereotypical feminine presentation is a woman, therefore some lesbians have a penis, therefore lesbians should be happy to have sex with people with penises, therefore lesbians rejecting penises are being prejudicial against other women.”

This is clearly nonsense, and the adoption of such understanding creates a myriad of confusing paradigms for everyone — not least the gay teenage girl who is not attracted to penises.

What of the boy who likes his pink cape and happily perceives himself as male? What of the girl who simply doesn’t wish to shave her legs, paint her face, and spend her money on products to contort herself into prescribed femininity? Are we to deny these children their realities and problematise their normalcy into a medicable condition, profiting pharmaceutical and surgical providers through the application of experimental procedures?

The conceptual and linguistic inversions of queer theory create a hostile environment in which exploring and investigating one’s presentation — as young people are wont to do — can too easily be mistaken for a lifelong preference, another thing young people are wont to do, lacking the ability to be fully cognisant of long-term consequences until they become fully developed adults.

True to the incursion of the propositions of queer theory being inserted into common usage, the term “conversion therapy” is problematic per se in this context. Describing the idea that a person with “gender dysphoria” is in actuality perfectly physically fine as they are is now seen as “converting” them from their desire to convert themselves into an approximation of the other sex. This makes it linguistically very difficult to construct an antithesis, given the common usage by the media — and thus the common understanding — of repurposed, and indeed newly invented (cis, non-binary, transbian), language into our cultural lexicon.

The British legal system is the oldest in the world and is widely recognised as the most stable legal framework. British law is used contractually internationally because of this perceived stability. It is of the utmost importance that it continue to represent an intelligent and factual agenda, with reason and reality as critical factors in legislation.

The obvious institutional capture of UK institutions by the targeted lobbying and fiscal influence of TRA groups and individuals should be a source of profound concern, yet it appears that our politicians happily adopt new language, promote untruths, and fund elective cosmetic surgeries.

How has this happened?

Surely it is for the United Kingdom to take its place on the world stage and “call bullshit” on the ideological horror show that is transgenderism, rather than bowing to the desires of a pitifully small and controlling minority, the majority of whom, in the absence of their selfdeclared trans identity, are from privileged and dominant demographics.

The sudden and prolific uptake of this bizarre ideology is directly traceable to the rise of digital communications and social media, where much of the discussion — and indeed the expansion of the customer base — occurs.

This alone should cause the powers that be to pause and take stock, yet we are subject to hysterical knee-jerk legislation which is not based in fact, research, or reality, and which panders to a minority interest whom the vast majority of us had no interest in until they added themselves to the LGB agenda (as advised in the Denton document) and went to work attracting vulnerable people with significant comorbidities to swell their ranks.

The rights of same-sex attracted people are now enshrined in law. The social prejudices against us were slowly eroding until we were unwittingly co-opted by queer theory activists.

The detrimental effect of this can be seen in rising homophobia as the general public conflates same-sex attraction with transvestism/transsexualism.

The questionable practice of attempting to reorientate a person’s sexuality has not been routinely applied for many years. The inclusion of it in this bill, in light of same-sex marriage and the Equality Act, is suspect. Why legislate against something that is not happening?

The inclusion of this element clearly intends to muddy the conceptual waters, suggesting that same-sex attraction and wishing to present as the opposite sex are the same thing.

They are not. That our government has fallen prey to this false conflation and is basing laws upon its theoretical framework is of great consternation to anyone with the ability to perceive the worrying trend set by the GRA, which, in its legislation of falsehood, makes a mockery of the concept of certification in and of itself.

There are vast sums of money to be made from the “transitioning” of a single child. The wellbeing of such children is clearly not even on the agenda, as can be demonstrated by the decision to experiment on a whole new cohort of children rather than using the data from the now-disgraced Tavistock GIDS clinic and following up by investigating the health and wellbeing of these children, most of whom are presumably still alive and traceable, and may quite possibly be in need of assistance having had their clinic shut down.

It seems to me that this bill has little merit, other than pandering to a coercive, vociferous minority who are used to having their demands met, being largely from the dominant demographic, who have cynically aligned their amorphous agenda with the very real struggle for equity undertaken by homosexual people in defence of their human rights.

Trans people have never been legislated against, nor is anyone attempting to “convert” them from their chosen “identity.”

Self-ID is not UK law; this bill tacitly accepts the concept by requiring affirmation of a young person’s gender identity when it is in conflict with their sexed reality. Given that it is children and young people under discussion here, surely prudence, caution, facts, and outcomes should take precedence over haste, experimentation, subjective feelings, and stated desires?

This bill in no way serves the population and simply opens the door for the further growth of the trans-industrial complex which has so bedazzled western society, and undermines our foundational familial and social relationships.

A full and independent review of the actions of the UK Government and its institutions as regards its legislation of transgenderism must be conducted, in order to fully understand the processes and procedures which have rendered the capture of Great Britain’s ideological integrity by a group of people who, until recently, kept their activities to the margins of society’s nightlife, where they belong with the other kinksters and fetishists.

Such agendas have no place in legislation, save to contain damage and mitigate harm (R v Brown [1993]).

I trust that you will recognise the unique harms engendered by transgenderism to women, and the intensification of these harms when they are suffered by arguably the most marginalised women in society, lesbians (with vulvas).

I look forward to your response at your earliest convenience.
Nonika Hendrickse Vagliviello