Book review by Don Franks
“Emily adopted many roles in my home – he came to parties presenting as a tall glamorous woman, but when brawn was needed, he jumped the ‘gender ship’ as it were…at a house move, he whipped off his long blonde wig, revealing male pattern baldness, put on his jeans, and despite fifteen years or more of injecting oestrogen, he lifted heavy furniture as easily and as competently as the male members of my family.”
Thus Heather Brunskell-Evans’ book Transgender Body Politics” opens, describing her relationship with a transgender friend:
“I saw his desire to identify as a woman as something which should elicit kindness, generosity and tolerance” Then, one day in 2015, Heather Brunskell-Evans’ tolerant worldview was jolted. Moved to comment by the garish cover of a Vanity Fair magazine, she wrote a short critical piece on a University of Leicester internal publication platform, about the transition of decathlon athlete Caitlyn Jenner. Within 24 hours the university bowed to demands that the article be retracted, and for the first time in her years as an academic, Heather Brunskell-Evans was reported to the Vice-Chancellor. After an unpleasantly anxious time for the writer, the matter was resolved in her favour. It was to be the first of several times she would be censored and ill-used in her ongoing journey of investigation into the transgender phenomenon.
Fortunately for people’s understanding of these issues, Heather Brunskell-Evans soldiered on, co-founding found the Women’s Human Rights Campaign and producing several books on the controversy. “Transgender Body Politics”( Spinifex Press 2020) is one of them, an excellent short exposition of transgenderism’s invasion of modern society.
“The mundane statement that people in possession of penises are not women is now so inflammatory that when it is uttered, Human rights organisations are ready to dismiss this expression of fact as bigotry, and mechanisms are set in place such that the police and legal system can silence or punish this ‘hate speech’. Institutions whose purpose it is to defend human rights now interpret truth speech as hate speech, and oppression of women as ethics.” Packed with concrete examples, well referenced and clearly written, “Transgender Body Politics” cuts through the bullshit. It systematically exposes the intolerance, misogyny, sexism and child abuse inherent in transgender politics. In particular, it presents a challenge to those leftists busy hunting down and silencing anyone daring to question their new orthodoxy, exposing transgenderism as “a capitalist enterprise driven by the pharmaceutical industry (Bilek,2018)”.
Heather Brunskell-Evans explains further: “Most people think the ’transgender’ or ‘gender identity movements’ are labour accomodating people with a debilitating condition. But they are actually an industry that creates medical identities out of sex, while simultaneously mounting active campaigns to deconstruct sexual dimorphism within the law. Transgenderism is a multibillion-dollar industry disguised as a civil rights movement”.
Redline 