Hello I’m writing this from seat 45E of a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. I would rather be asleep, but it is too hot, the bloke next to me has a nervous twitch whereby his legs wobble so violently my seat is shaking and someone keeps farting. It’s dark and it’s horrible and I’m trapped in the middle of a row of three. Only two hours 25 minutes to go. I managed to get a blog post published just before we took off. Normally in the minutes after publication I spot a couple of typos or badly-worded sentences and correct them pretty sharpish. I haven’t had the chance to do that on this occasion. Hopefully it’s not too bad.
I think there’s at least a couple more blog posts left in the content I managed to gather at the Genspect Life Beyond Transition conference on Thursday, but the two I have already published are the most newsworthy. Genspect somehow managed to get two serving members of the US Government to speak at the event. Whilst there were no major new announcements, Admiral Brian Christine and Andrew Ferguson made unequivocal commitments to stamping out what Christine called “castrating chemicals and mutilating surgeries”. Admiral Christine’s speech (in his role as Assistant Secretary for Health) focused on U18s. Andrew Ferguson - the Chairman of Federal Trade Commission - mentioned children, but they weren’t his sole concern. He is going after anyone who has sold anyone a false bill of goods. Given the world of gender “medicine” is so obviously full of quacks and ideological frauds, he’s going to have field day.
Do have a read of both pieces and let me know if you have any feedback. And please do share them if feel able. Mamma Mia Admiral Christine was due to deliver the closing plenary of the conference, but he was upstaged by the incredible Mia Hughes who had been due to speak in the morning, but was delayed by an ice storm in Ottawa. Christine ended up being her warm up act. I first saw Mia speak in Lisbon in 2024 when she hadn’t long exposed the WPATH files. Her humour, confidence and clear-sighted thinking stood out. I went up to her after her talk in 2024 and gushed a little bit. We’ve only recently got in touch digitally but it was a joy to see her again after her talk on Thursday.
Mia had only had two hours sleep and, having delivered her speech, was in the middle of an adrenaline crash, but she dealt very well with the people around her. She also very kindly posed for a photo. When I saw her a couple of hours later in the bar she was in much better shape, having had dinner with the Admiral and taken him to task for his speech’s focus on children. Christine listened to Mia’s speech, in which she argued cogently for getting rid of hormones and gender surgery completely. I don’t doubt he agrees with her, but I guess its a question of One Battle After Another (a truly dreadful film, btw).
And what of the detransitioners present? It was great to meet so many and hear the multiple ways they got sucked into the gender mill. Some of the stories told on stage were bleak, but the vibe on the conference room floor was upbeat. One thing that struck me was that most of the detransitioners who spoke were fiercely intelligent and articulate. Many had thought their way out of their own personal disaster. Hearing their rationalisations was fascinating.
I spent most of the conference recording and live-tweeting (read 'em here, not on twitter) what was going on on stage whilst getting to know some of the independent media, namely Mike from from the Free Press, Wesley Yang and Steve from Edge of the Matrix. All three men had far better kit than me, which allowed them to film and post clips online. The whole conference was being live-streamed by Genspect (who will presumably edit everything and put it on their website), and Glinner was working with a professional crew doing post and pre match interviews with various detransitioners.
I didn’t interview any delegates directly, but i did network like mad, and I will stay in contact with a number of detransitioners and campaigners from the US as well as the UK going forward. Without detransitioners talking about their experiences in the media (in numbers) this story will not cut through. The few brave souls who have already gone public will eventually inspire more detransitioners and their families to come forward. Keira Bell’s recent appearance on the GMB sofa will undoubtedly have an effect. The media is slowly waking up to a story which has been sitting under its nose for years.
I owe a massive debt of gratitude to Genspect’s Stella O’Malley who kindly invited me along to Life Beyond Transition as well as her team of volunteers who looked after everyone so well.
By far the best fun of this very short trip was going on a food hunt with Glinner on Wednesday. We were staying at the same hotel, so shared an Uber back from our, er, recce to the conference venue. Everything near our hotel had closed so we ended up walking through some interesting environments before finding ourselves some way past midnight eating pizza out of a box on some bike racks next to a noisy dual carriageway. The takeaway we got the pizza from was easily the darkest I’ve ever been in, which rather put me off eating anything, but Graham was far more gung-ho. I forgot to record this on camera for posterity, and I failed to get a shot of Glinner at the conference, either. Oh well The Tourist
I deliberately chose a late flight home on Friday so I could spend at least some time soaking up a bit of DC. This meant I avoided a security incident which temporarily shut both of DC’s airports and unfortunately snagged a lot of conference attendees (poor Mia included). I spent most of my free time in the Capitol Building, doing the formal tour before collecting my passes to sit quietly in both the Senate and the House of Representatives (neither of which were sitting) before walking the long connecting tunnel to look round the Jefferson Library, a building which would not be out of place in the Vatican.
All of it is free, exceptionally well-organised and very informative, though I would avoid taking any bags or having anything non-essential in your pockets as you are required to go through several security procedures to get anywhere near anything. The huge canteen-style restaurant in the Capitol’s visitor centre is a great place to people-watch. People from all over America come to visit, including hundreds of schoolchildren. After leaving the Capitol area, I walked to Navy Yard, which was my ‘hood for nine weeks whilst I was covering the Johnny Depp trial in Virginia in 2022. Covering that trial was such a fraught experience I felt like I was going to break out in hives just by walking past the condo I stayed in, but once I’d got to my favourite sports bar (there are a lot round there as it’s v close to the Washington Nationals Ballpark) and had a nerve-settling beer, everything was okay.
I’m not going to get much more up over the weekend as family responsibilities take precedence, and I’ll struggle to get any writing done on Monday or Tuesday as I’m heading to Manchester to discuss journalism, the Post Office and gender with a group of final year undergraduates on the journalism course at Salford University. If you happen to run a university journalism course or know anyone who does, I’d love to do more talks about reporting gender with the next generation of journalists. Preferred pronouns and trans-positive coverage seems to be a given with the students I talk to. I’m trying to put some novel ideas and discussion points in front of them before they start getting jobs in the industry. Do please keep sharing the stuff I’m posting online if you can. My rather dim business model requires new subscribers rather than returning ones so I am reliant on good people spreading the word. There will certainly be plenty more content to come. Have a great weekend. Nick This is the GenderBlog newsletter. If you have been forwarded it and would like to join the mailing list so each newsletter (and GenderBlog blog post) drops, freshly-baked, directly into your email inbox, please consider making a small one-off donation via the donate page on my GenderBlog website. Thanks. |
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