Sarah Phillimore and Robin Moira White interviewed by Andrew Doyle

I also find it extremely distasteful when the response to women saying that they need certain rights and protections is basically this weird gloating, saying well too bad, you don't have those rights and we can do whatever we like. In which case the whole idea of legal sex as distinct from actual sex is a bad one and we need to throw out the whole GRA, don't we?

Which is actually what I probably would have thought back in 2004 if I had been a) aware of it at all and b) older than my early teens at the time. Anyone who was a politically aware adult in 2004, do you remember the GRA being passed? Was there any public debate? I know concerns were raised by some politicians when it was being introduced but had the impression that they were hand waved away because the number of people getting a GRC would be so tiny. But was this a topic of conversation in the media or in feminist groups or online?

Re puberty blockers:

There is limited evidence that medical transition leads to positive outcomes.

There is little evidence that medical transition decreases suicidality.

Puberty blockers are more than a ‘pause button’: roughly 98% of children who take them go on to take cross-sex hormones.

Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones negatively impact bone health in a significant number of cases.

Source: statsforgender.org/puberty-blockers/

There is nothing that could convince me that putting children on puberty blockers for reasons relating to so called 'gender identity' is an appropriate treatment.

My view is that people who think there is such thing as a 'wrong puberty', which can and should be treated with puberty blockers are deluded and a danger to children.

Whittle.

Just for the removal of any doubt, I'm not keen, or happy or even ambivalent about the general public "dealing" with self ID'd bad apples and involving innocents at the same time.

I'm fearful for the innocents. All the innocents.

Nope. Everyone has a rotten time, it's not reserved for the special peeps.

I can see that there will be bad apples who will use any loopholes available to them to gain access to that which they wouldn't normally be able to. Self ID creates loopholes. Glaringly obvious loopholes. In Scotland's case, they chose not to close those loopholes.

These bad apples will, if Self ID comes in, be trans people.

Robin - these bad apples WILL BE TRANS PEOPLE. Mostly tw.

When the general public starts to "deal" with them, and believe me, they WILL deal with them, they'll deal with all trans people, not just the bad apples. All trans people. There won't be any distinction because people like you are saying, in public, that there isn't any distinction. You're all trans. Whooopee.

If you think it'll just be the bad apples that attract attention, dream on.

It strikes me that you're somehow not connecting the dots and seeing that. How can I see that, yet you can't? Tolerance is wearing pretty thin, especially with the risks to children from the bad apples becoming clearer and clearer as more and more is known by the general public.

I'm quite appalled at the blindness of seemingly intelligent and thoughtful people.

And for all Robin’s complaints about how woeful life was half a century ago, Robin is proof that you can get through all that, go to university, study law, have a sex life, have a family, become a successful barrister, and appear on TV.

Robin, you could be empowering children to realise that even though life sucks, it can get better. Why not do that?

This 'wrong/right puberty' nonsense winds me up almost as much as calling surgically created holes vaginas.

What is puberty? At its core, surely puberty is the process by which a child's infertile and non-sexual body turns into an adult body, usually becoming fertile (barring any medical issues that may or may not be immediately apparent) and gradually developing a sexuality and sexual function.

Children who've had puberty blockers and then advance to cross-sex hormones are not going through anything like puberty as it is experienced by the opposite sex. What this path actually does is prevent a child ever becoming fertile or developing normal sexual function. How could that ever be 'right'? It's abuse.

I have no idea if there are "genuine" trans kids out there

I don't believe there are. I don't think any child is 'genuinely trans'.

How would we define what a 'trans child' is? No child is literally 'born in the wrong body'.

A genuinely transsexual child would have to be a child who suffers from gender dysphoria so severe that even after years of intensive psychotherapy the only possible treatment is preventing puberty, giving them opposite sex hormones and reconfiguring their genitals as soon as they are deemed to be old enough for such an operation.

I don't think any such children exist. How much psychotherapy have children referred to GIDS received to try to help them to accept their bodies as they are?

Wasn't there a trans poster on a thread about Girl Guiding, who when asked the very simple question "should 14 year old females be sharing tents with 14 year old males?" responded with a 2000 word rambling essay. Their ideology means they can't say No, but they know this goes against the instinct and common sense of every parent out there. Hence the obfuscation and inability to answer straightforward safeguarding questions.

It's a valid position to expect the self invested / those with particular experiences to share their views and have them listened to. Where this has gone so terribly wrong is that these opinions have been catapulted to the top and been allowed to dominate. While professional knowledge & equally valid experiences of others has been downgraded and labelled as bigotry & hate speech.
This has been a catastrophe for vulnerable children and is one of the most unforgivable aspects of all this.

When Robin is next on discussing Robin's 2 rape crisis centres, could Robin say whether it is acceptable that there are now no rape support groups in the entire county of Sussex that are for female only participants?

I watched this yesterday.

RMW's responses to SVP's points about women and girls' awareness of the dangers that men can pose to them, show no understanding, concept or experience of what it is like to be a woman, and no ability to imagine it either.

It was the most grown up discussion on TV so far. Both sides given equal time and respect. Sarah got the essential points across magnificently. How she remained so calm impressed me greatly. The presenter appeared impartial too. More of this please to win heart and minds 🤪

With the hindsight of half a century

I genuinely mean no disrespect for Robin, or for any other TW who says this sort of thing, when I point out that “the hindsight of half a century” wouldn’t normally be considered good evidence for anything, let alone for imposing on children experimental medical interventions that have never even been subjected to a controlled trial.

People confabulate their memories and edit their stories about themselves to reflect their self-image. It’s part of the human condition.

(And everyone’s self-image is distorted and self-serving to some extent, although in most cases it’s recognised that this is a character flaw that can cause problems for self and others.)

@GrumpyPanda - RMW said in the Prospect article that RMW looks like a woman. That was in print. The discussion yesterday was obviously on television. I do wonder if RMW would have said that yesterday on a visual medium.

No it was from an article

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/gender-wars-two-opposing-perspectives-on-the-trans-and-womens-rights-debate

. At the other end of the spectrum, while I look female, I sound male as I have done little to alter my speaking voice, as it is something I rely on in my job as a barrister.

Does anyone enjoy puberty? I know I found it massively traumatic.

Boiledbeetle has already posted the link to the Prospect piece when RMW discussed these issues with Kathleen Stock.

On 10th December 2021 at 10.50 RMW posted this in response to Campervan69:

'I spent some time working with a voice coach and exploring vocal surgery. Given the state of my vocal equipment, I couldn't raise the pitch of my voice without losing power and the surgery is too risky given how important my speaking voice is as a professional tool.

It would have been so much easier had I been able to avoid male puberty.'

This then led to some discussion about RMW's use of the word 'power' which, to be fair to RMW, I had interpreted as power in the sense of volume, projection etc, but some interpreted more in the abstract sense of power.

I will say nothing about RMW's statement in Prospect that RMW looks like a woman but does not sound like one of us.

It was inevitable, really.😶

Im not medically qualified but those that are tell me that some young people know themselves well enough to make that choice. I believe I would have been one of those.

This is the sort of magical thinking that you persist with Robin that I’ve challenged you about before. You have no idea what you would have thought back then because you’re applying your modern day understanding to your childhood self. Your entire world view and your entire view of trans has been shaped by not having medical treatments when you were younger. Your entire life exists because you didn’t have treatments as a child. Your family, your sex life, your career. None of that could have happened with childhood transition. You have no idea that you would have been happier, your just assuming that because it was horrible, a different Sliding Doors moment would have made it less horrible. Do you honestly look at Jazz Jennings and say “I wish that was me”?

I am medically qualified. I say children - not “young people” - cannot consent to medical treatments. I am not alone. There are many medical professionals who agree with me. The only ones who say they can understand this are gender clinic specialists who are ideologically committed to this pathway of treatment. Why do you ignore the medical professionals who are concerned about consent?

Why is it “cruel” to prevent children from iatrogenic harm?

You live in a rose-tinted dream land where all your early dysphoria and middle-aged passing woes disappear if the time travelling Gender Fairy could just change your life decades ago. But you cannot possibly project forward from that pivotal moment and be sure of a happier life. And worst of all, despite these limitations that you don’t see, you persist in facilitating and advocating for childhood transition on the basis of this false ideal.

The fact that doctors transitioning children listen to people like you is one thing I am determined to hold them to account for. It’s possibly the worst reason for transitioning children, and that’s saying something.

I know right. I watched last night and I watched three people and listened to three people. Only one of them looked, and sounded like a female. And only one could truly see this mess from the perspective of women.

She was brilliant, shame her co debater Robin wasnt. Robin was to busy putting Robin's version of womanhood front and centre whilst ignoring the plight of actual women.

As both men and women are female according to White, that doesn't mean anything.

Men and women both look female to White.

Robin what you have to remember kids NOW live in a completely different environment. As anyone with kids at school knows it is not uncommon for there to be multiple "trans" "neogender" kids in the same class. As soon as one kid does it others follow. It is a tired cliche but we are talking about the same sort of trend we saw with subculture kids - goths, punks etc back in the day .

It comes with its own language, clothes etc. Obviously some of these kids are gay/bi but the actual gay kids might not even get involved in the subculture or find it shallow. It is attractive to a certain set of personalities/insecurities. Rife because social media is designed to make kids insecure and needy.

Hence the huge increase in mental health problems.

I have no idea if there are "genuine" trans kids out there, but what is certain now is a huge proportion of those declaring themselves that way are there because of peer online trends - the same reason there is a surge in self harm, viral mental illness via tiktok. This is all things which are happening and we are supposed to pretend the kids live in a bubble where they can know their true selves and are not being influenced by culture all around them. Unlike any other teens in the last 60 years, but in reality the sixties, punk, disco were the result of young people interacting with and pushing cultural shifts reacting to market forces and consumerism. Because there is money to be made.

Trans stuff, neogenders, Andrew Tate, tiktok, fast fashion it is all part of a cultural shift in teen identities which are more based on rapid online consumer trends than EVER before.

While I applaud Robin for attending and not speaking over Sarah in what was a calm and polite section overall, I would have liked to have heard Robin's answer to 'Do women have the right to single sex female spaces' rather than the 'not under the law'