The End of the Rainbow?
Not all's well in the LGBTIQ Alliance
The LGBTIQ Rainbow flag has been the symbol of sexual diversity since 1978. Many, including me, have waved the flag in support of people who fought hard to have their difference recognized and understood.
Yet only weeks into 2023, the Rainbow Flag is under threat. The hashtag ‘LGBwithoutTheT’ is gaining worldwide momentum as the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) stripes of the Rainbow Flag question whether the one in-all in philosophy is for them. It seems the T, the Transgender Community, is at increasing risk of initialism extraction.
So why are LGB folks suddenly so moved as to question the previously untouchable LGBTIQ+ alliance and risk a splintering of the Rainbow Flag? Let’s look to history.
People have been cross-dressing and cosmetically gender switching for thousands of years. My grandfather did. As a recreational member of the Sydney Push – an alternate thinking group in post-war Sydney, Herbert Dye would attend ‘meetings’ dressed stunningly as a woman. He’d sing and play the piano - very well I’m told - often not returning home for days. He entertained the likes of Clive James, Barry Humphries and Germain Greer. I never saw him in his Trans gear, yet my sisters did. They tell me he was very beautiful. I’m also told Grandma tolerated it – just.
This was maybe because he was paid for his shows. Extra cash was important and people did all sorts of things to help pay the bills. People still do.
His transvestite outings, a very real and accepted part of who he was, were in costume only – a tool to perhaps give vent to his feminine psyche, yet more likely to supplement his income. He also no doubt enjoyed the fame. An engineer by trade, he would revert to his blokey self for the working week and spend time with ‘The Push’ every second weekend.
Yet there’s a big difference between what Grandpa did and what’s happening today. In his time, there were no puberty blockers for pre-teens, hormones for teenagers and the added possibility of surgery to help adolescents ‘affirm’ their gender desires. He also wasn’t ‘celebrated’ but an included part of an alternative group when he needed to be.
And there’s the rub. When the LGBTIQ+ alliance was formed, there were very few points of disagreement between the groups. Puberty blockers weren’t invented. The only drugs used were recreational and acceptance was the mantra. Heck, when social inclusion is at stake, we can dis the small stuff.
That small stuff has now become big stuff as gender transitioning of teenagers with puberty blockers, hormones and double mastectomies become an accepted part of transgender ideology. Indeed, the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne has become a world leader in the ‘Gender Affirming’ treatment of kids under 16 with ‘gender dysphoria’.
This of course could change once the first cases of clinical negligence are heard against the UK's Tavistock Gender Identity Centre. If the prosecution succeeds, gender affirming specialists, psychologists and other linked 'experts' will be running for the hills.
Puberty blockers or hormone suppressants do exactly what they say, yet there's been no human research into their mid-long-term effects when used for gender dysphoria. That’s right, none.
The only research has been on sheep and that didn’t go well. While the blockers stopped the sheep’s puberty, there was a clear negative impact on their brain. Sheep who could previously navigate a maze were downright confused with their spatial awareness severely impacted. Even when the hormones lost to puberty blockers were replaced, their spatial memory and ability to learn didn’t return.
Now I’m unsure about you, but if a doctor suggested I use a drug that had never been tested for its side effects on humans, but had proved disastrous to another mammal, I’d run a mile.
However, as you are reading this, gender clinics in Australia and around the world are prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to 9-16 year-olds. These kids, like all adolescents, are anxious and prone to negative emotions resulting in ridiculous decisions. That’s what an adolescent is.
A 2021 study by the Westmead Children’s Hospital Gender Clinic, a leading clinic on the east cost of Australia, found that 97% of kids presenting with gender dysphoria had experienced childhood trauma including sexual abuse, family violence or parental mental illness. No wonder the kids want out! In the current gender affirming model however, this childhood trauma and family dysfunction goes ignored and untreated – an oversight that could indeed be regarded as a form of child abuse.
Armed with this knowledge, and the stupefying fact there is no human brain research on the drugs used by gender clinics, it’s no wonder #LGBWithoutTheT is trending with members of the LGB community.
LGB groups rallied hard for the right to include children in their families and protection of youth is a strong value. Most LGB people don’t want to be celebrated, just included. Many Trans-active sites like UK's Stonewall 'Champion' gender transitioning among children with special programs. Champions usually do something outstanding, evidently this has changed.
Australia's ‘Minus18’ site runs night ‘celebration’ events for kids as young as 12 where parents aren’t allowed, and no parental permission is required. This must be an enormous slap in the face for LGB folk who find themselves disagreeably in bed with the Transgender community via the Rainbow Alliance.
To then see kids medically transitioned through the gender affirming, puberty blocker approach must be heartbreaking. A common headline on #LGBwithoutTheT posts is “You don’t get the kids”. The message couldn’t be clearer.
But hold on! Doesn’t being Bisexual - the B letter in LGBTIQ, the same B used in ‘Bicycle’, indicate that there’s only two genders - male and female? This slow forming realization doesn’t sit well with Trans-activists or Queer folk who see gender as a continuum. Oh dear!
So where does this end? I’m sorry to say that it augurs badly for the Transgender sector. Most drugs that aren’t tested for mid or long-term side effects have become headlines over the past 60 years. Some may remember the recall of Baycol in 2001 which was found to have caused more than 100,000 deaths due to kidney failure.
Many will also remember Thalidomide which was prescribed to women for nausea during pregnancy. It eventually caused the birth of tens of thousands of babies without arms or legs.
If we are to avoid another Baycol or Thalidomide in Australia and the world, members of the LGBI communities, and the rational majority of the TQ communities must make a stand against what is fast becoming a cult of activist influenced medical malpractice. While I’m sure the doctors involved believe in what they do, their Hippocratic Oath of ‘First, Do No Harm’ has seemingly been forgotten.
Phil Dye is a past educator in the School of Medical Sciences at the University of NSW. He has written three books and currently hosts the Marking the Role podcast for teachers.
The social media image courtesy of Shutterstock