Latest news with #Trans:WhenIdeologyMeetsReality
Telegraph
02-04-2025
- Telegraph
Jail doctors who perform trans surgery on young people, says feminist activist
Doctors who have carried out gender reassignment surgery on young people should be jailed for the rest of their lives, a leading feminist campaigner has said. Helen Joyce, an author and director of advocacy at the charity Sex Matters, said she feared medical professionals who performed such procedures would never face justice. She made the comments during an event at the Oxford Literary Festival, where she was in conversation with Julie Bindel, the prominent feminist. Pro-trans activists attempted to disrupt the talk, held in the Sheldonian Theatre, by staging a noisy protest outside. One demonstrator held up a banner which read: 'Respect trans pride or expect trans wrath.' Extra security was drafted in for the event and police were stationed outside, although the protest passed off peacefully. Inside the theatre, Ms Joyce, who authored the 2021 book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, and Ms Bindel were cheered by the audience. Responding to an audience question about whether doctors who had 'violated their Hippocratic Oath by carrying out these surgical procedures' should be struck off, Ms Joyce said: 'These people are never going to face what they deserve. I'm not even hoping for that, it's so impossible, in my opinion. 'There are people I could name right now whom I would like to see in jail for the rest of their lives but it's not going to happen.' Ms Joyce cited one young woman who, by 21, had her breasts, ovaries and uterus removed, only to regret the transition a year later. At the festival, which is sponsored by The Telegraph, Ms Joyce argued that teenage girls declaring themselves to be trans was a form of 'social contagion'. 'If you are a teenage girl who doesn't want to be a girl, that's too boring and straightforward a thing to say. You want to be a special sort of person, you want out, you want to escape from whatever it is you're trying to escape from,' she said. As for women who become 'allies' to the trans community, Ms Joyce suggested that they might be doing it to escape from the mundaneness of their own lives. 'Why might a middle-aged white woman, who knows that middle-aged white women are the most boring people in the world – mums, the only people never allowed to ask for anything for themselves – why might that woman want to invent themselves as some amazing sort of ally?' she said. Meanwhile, Ms Joyce said institutions that had been 'captured' by trans ideology were run by 'people in leadership positions who are cowards.' She added: 'There are mediocre people running universities, regulators, NHS boards, and those people are all getting their high salary for, as far as I can tell, not very much.'
Telegraph
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Pro-trans activists walk out of gender-critical author's Oxford talk
A group of pro-trans activists staged a walkout of a gender-critical author's talk at the University of Oxford. Journalist Helen Joyce, who describes herself as a 'sex realist' and declared perceived transgender ideology as 'the medical scandal of the 21st century', had just entered the Balliol College building on Thursday night when there was a mass exodus of attendees. Activists were seen holding aloft signs which included messages saying 'trans kids deserve better' and 'sex-based concerns are the thin end of the fascist wedge'. Ms Joyce, 56, had been invited to speak at the college's Philosophy Society to discuss transgender issues. Before the event, the journalist and author, who was previously an editor at The Economist, said that the 'crybullies' would think her 'mainstream and factual beliefs are the most extreme hatefulness'. More than 650 people have now signed a petition to 'protest transphobia' at the university, which it said was giving a 'platform [to] transphobic speakers'. Ms Joyce wrote the 2021 bestseller, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, and is also the director of advocacy at human rights charity, Sex Matters. She has been a vocal critic of trans women in women's sport and advocated for women's only spaces, as she claims that currently 'the desires of a tiny minority of men outweigh the rights of women'. At the talk, she was questioned about remarks she made in 2022, in which she suggested 'keeping down or reducing the number of people who transition to limit the harm done' and that those who believe in 'gender identity ideology' are a 'huge problem in the sane world'. 'That's going to be my epitaph, I'm very proud of myself,' Ms Joyce responded. Speaking of the empty seats left by the protesters against her talk, she continued: 'Look at this, it's absolute insanity. It is not good for you to cut off body parts or to take hormones. If you can live with the body you were born with, that's a better outcome. 'People who believe that men can be women and women can be men and believe in it sufficiently strongly that they act on it are rights destroying people. 'They are people who advocate for men to go into women's spaces… they advocate for children to be sterilised. 'If you believe you can tell children lies about what sex is and you can put children on the path to sterilisation before they are old enough to have an orgasm, you are… what I said was it was a 'huge problem in a sane world.'' But Charlie McEvoy, 23, who attended the event, told The Times: 'She [Joyce] loves to repeat the idea of ideology and imposition, but most transgender people don't want to be noticed. 'Transgender people at Oxford just want to live peacefully. I just want to live my life and be safe.' Balliol College's master told the university's student paper the event had been organised by a student society meaning it 'saw no grounds to refuse permission for the talk to take place'. Ms Joyce told The Telegraph she had been greeted with far less hostility than a previous university talk and believes things have got a 'lot better'. 'People with views that are unpopular on campus should get a good deal braver,' she said. 'The crybullies are still crying, but they are not bullying.' She said she would prefer if those who walked out had stayed in and engaged in discussion of the topic. 'They think that I'm some massive bigot,' she added. 'The thing is, most people think like I do – hardly anyone thinks what they do.'
