Gender Critical people want to “reduce the number of people who transition” — is this eugenics?
Prominent Gender Critical activist Helen Joyce said Gender Critical people should try to ‘reduce’ or ‘keep down’ the number of people who transition.
For years, trans people have pointed out that TERFs and Gender Critical people want to eradicate them from the world; and for years people have said they’re overreacting.
In an online conversation between prominent Gender Critical activists Helen Joyce and Helen Staniland, Joyce again articulated that that is indeed what Gender Critical people want. Below is a transcript of part of Joyce and Staniland’s discussion (4:12ff), followed by some comment:
Helen Joyce: I think that for quite a while now this has not been about consciousness raising. That’s been irrelevant. That was important two or three years ago when there weren’t enough people; but there’ve been enough people to be critical mass, to be funding the, you know, the crowdfunders, to be writing letters to MPs — all that sort of thing — to have a movement, to have support for women — and men, of course: I mean, there’s people like Graham, of course, as well, who’ve got their necks stuck out on this. We can’t win this by saying, you know, there’s 60 X million people in this country and we’ve got to persuade all of them or a great majority of them; we’ve got to get through to the decision makes and
Helen Staniland: Yes.
Joyce: in the meantime, while we’re, while we’re trying to get through to the decision makers, we have to try to limit the harm, and that means reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition, and that’s for two reasons. One of them if that every one of those people is a person who’s been damaged. But the second one is every one of those people is, basically, you know, a huge problem to a sane world; like, if you’ve got people that — whether they’re transitioned; whether they’re happily transitioned; whether they’re unhappily transitioned; whether they’re de-transitioned — if you’ve got people who’ve dissociated from their sex in some way, every one of those people is someone who needs special accommodation in a sane world where we re-acknowledge the, the truth of sex. And, I mean, the people who’ve been damaged by it, the children who’ve been put through this, those people deserve every accommodation we can possibly make, but every one of them is a difficulty,
Staniland: Yes.
Joyce: you know.
Staniland: Yes.
Joyce: and, I mean, I know that sounds heartless: I’m trying to say exactly the opposite of sounding heartless. I’m saying everyone of those people for 50, 60, 70 years is going to need things that the rest of us just don’t need because the rest of us are just our sex. So the, the fewer of those people there are, the better in the sane world that I hope we will reach.
From what Joyce says, it appears Gender Critical people want to sidestep public opinion and force their ideas onto society by persuading people in power to implement them: “We can’t win this by saying, you know, there’s 60 X million people in this country and we’ve got to persuade all of them or a great majority of them; we’ve got to get through to the decision makes”. We’ve seen before what influencing decision makers looks like for Gender Critical people: they call for legislation to eliminate “transgenderism”.
While Gender Critical people are working on influencing decision makers, Joyce says they need to try “reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition”. As pointed out by others, this sounds like it’s at most a step away from eugenics.
Joyce doesn’t clearly elaborate on how she intends Gender Critical people to reduce or keep down the number of people who transition. Janice Raymond, who wrote the “TERF Bible”, The Transsexual Empire (1979), might lay the process out, however. In Raymond’s words, the goal is the “elimination of transsexualism”, which can be achieved “by morally mandating it out of existence” (p. 178), done in part by limiting trans people’s access to healthcare and, instead, putting them through some form of conversion therapy (pp. 178, 180–183). Stopping trans people from medically transitioning (i.e., accessing medical assistance to adapt their body to better match their gender identity) wouldn’t directly reduce the number of trans people, but it would result in devastating effects — suicide — for those trans people who want to medically transition, as being able to medically transition can be a lifesaver (as can other gender-affirming medical help). Over time, this would eliminate trans people, mandate them out of existence, reduce or keep down the number of people who transition.
Indeed, Gender Critical people like Joyce and Staniland seem to be in alignment with Raymond: in seems one of the ways they see of reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition is through what trans people describe as “conversion therapy”. Conversion therapy — which has been condemned by all major health bodies in the UK, including the NHS, the General Medical Council, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Psychological Society and the British Psychoanalytic Society — “is an umbrella term for a therapeutic approach, or any model or individual viewpoint that demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other, and which attempts to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity, or seeks to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity on that basis”. A little later in their discussion (6:33ff), Joyce and Staniland turn to the gay conversion therapy ban proposed by the UK government. Notoriously, conversion therapy carried out on trans people has been excluded from the ban, so people will still be able to practice it on them. Joyce says people wanting to include in the ban conversion therapy carried out on trans people want to “criminalize ordinary talking therapy”. Joyce and Staniland hold psychiatrist Dr Az Hakeem — who, while claiming not to be anti-trans and claiming to provide a neutral service to trans patients at his clinic, calls himself “gender critical”, misgenders trans people, says they are living in a “fantasy”, objected to a court ruling that a trans woman could marry a man, refers to transgender rights campaigners as “trans terrorists”, talks of the “very black and white thinking … of a Trans mind” and the “psychopathology of the trans condition”, and has been accused by a trans patient of his of carrying out conversion therapy — as an example of someone who conducts “ordinary talking therapy” with trans people. A talking therapy that is “manipulative” — a conversion therapy — used to reduce or keep down the number of people who transition would be a method of eugenics as much as are aversion therapy, forced sterilization and murder.
Prior to saying Gender Critical people should reduce the number of people who transition, Joyce and Staniland comment on a recently released comedy show by Ricky Gervais (1:10ff) in which he mocks trans people. Joyce says that it’s good that Gervais made these so-called jokes because it means people will be persuaded that it’s “not cool” to transition and that transitioning is a “joke” so they “won’t do it”. Mocking transitioning and making it a joke would indeed be another way to reduce or keep down the number of people who transition, but not in the way Joyce and Staniland indicate. An environment in which transitioning is mocked and made the butt of a joke is not one that will stop trans people from existing, of course; but it is is one that will encourage abuse towards trans people: when a group of people are classified as a joke, they can be bullied and killed and it’s not serious. This happens to other marginalised groups, too, like Jews, Chinese people, and Black people, among others. Dehumanising people isn’t a eugenics method itself, although it can lead to people being okay with those othered being euthanized.
Joyce says the number of trans people needs reducing or keeping down because (1.) trans people are “damaged” and (2.) they are “a huge problem to a sane world”, adding that “every one of them is a difficulty”. She expands on this by saying trans people “need special accommodation” in society, which makes them “a difficulty” — “for 50, 60, 70 years [every trans person] is going to need things that the rest of us just don’t need” — and, because they are this burden on society, Joyce says “the fewer of those people there are, the better”. This view of people as damaged and a burden on society — and who should, therefore, have their numbers reduced or kept down — sounds similar to that of eugenicists who saw people who were deemed ‘damaged’ (e.g., the disabled; neurodivergent people) and/or an economic burden on society (i.e., people who need special accommodation — e.g., medical) as eligible for euthanasia. Disabled people have also pointed out the grotesqueness — and horror — of Joyce’s word.
Joyce and Staniland would deny they were endorsing eugenics. Joyce said she was “trying to say exactly the opposite of sounding heartless”; and, after talking about how the number of trans people needs reducing, Staniland and Joyce say that they don’t hate trans people, they have compassion for them (6:00ff). However, those who’ve gone before and advocated reducing the numbers of other groups in society have also said what they were doing was full of “mercy”. It all sure sounds eugenics adjacent, to say the least.
