Things get increasingly stranger as gender identity politics spread across the world, but one of the craziest things to happen this year has to be the passing of the German self-ID law or SELBSTBESTIMMUNGSGESETZ’ (pronounced a bit like Selbst-bish-timmonz-g-zets) as it is rather spectacularly known in Germany.

Selbstbestimmungsgesetz basically abolishes sex in law and replaces it with ‘gender identity’. Or at least, it merges and confuses the two in a manner which makes it difficult for the layperson to see where one is supposed to end and the other begin.

When we are expected to hold the ideas that sex and gender are exactly the same thing and yet two totally different things at the same time, rational analysis of the subject becomes almost impossible.

Humans can’t change sex

To be clear, however much we want to, however much we may re-arrange or chop and change our body parts, human beings can’t change sex. We may mimic the external attributes of the opposite sex; we may perform the stereotypes more often associated with the opposite sex, but we cannot actually change our sex. It’s in our DNA. We are not clownfish, nor are we unicorns. Or characters in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Our birth certificates and passports record our sex, which is observed- not assigned- at birth. There is no more reason why our legal documents should record how our inner soul feels about gender stereotypes than how it feels about our favourite flavour of ice cream.

The idea that men can ‘become’ women, or that they ‘always were’ women, is a legal fiction, but a bloody whopping great fiction nonetheless.

On the 1^st November 2024, Self-ID passed into German law, although citizens have been able to apply for a change of ‘gender entry’ since August. The application takes three months to process. By the end of September 2024, over 15,000 people had applied to lie about their sex on their legal documents.

Before 2024

Prior to this, German had the Transsexuellengesetz (Transsexual Law) of 1981.

“When it was enacted in 1980, the Transsexuals Act… was described as “the most progressive law in the world”.

If a citizen wanted to legally change their sex they would need to undergo psychiatric evaluations and obtain a court order. They would be expected to show they were serious about the change through ‘living as’ the desired sex for several years. They would be expected to take cross-sex hormones and undergo surgeries. Clinicians would also be expected to advise a court that it was highly unlikely that the patient would change their mind and that they were fully committed to the ‘gender change’. Only when these criteria were met would a legal ‘gender change’ be authorised.

No more, nicht mehr, such controls in Germany. Friday’s new law sweeps all these requirements under the carpet. There is no longer any requirement whatsoever in order to ‘change your gender’ in Germany, other than the ability to fill in a form and deliver it to the registry office.

I know very little of the legal history of transgender law reform in Germany. I did come across the Report on Reform of the Transsexuals Act 2016 which callied for the process to be simplified. Among its recommendations were that children of transgender parents should be given falsified documents (ie birth certificates) which lied about their parent’s sex in order ‘to correspond with the reality in which the child lives”. 

The ‘reality’ referred to is, of course, not reality at all.

It is therefore no surprise that the same report calling for an end to the pathologisation of trans identities and the removal of restrictions on ‘gender change’ sees no issue in also demanding “stigma-free access to surgery, hormone treatment and psychological support that are reimbursed by the health care system.”

If you want to know more about Self-ID law in Germany I would direct you to Lasst Frauen Sprechen, which has an excellent assessment of the law change, here.

You can read the Berlin District Office’s Information on the Act of Self-Determination, in English, here.

How do you ‘change gender’ in Germany now?

For some reason, German legislators decided to go along with the demands of various lobby groups and agree that the hurdles standing before men who wished to access women’s spaces were too high.

Too harsh? I think not. This law has not come into place out of concern for the welfare of women and children.

The new process is astonishingly simple. Any adult German citizen can fill in a form, stating their new gender identity, present it at the Standesamt (register office) in person or by post, and three months later receive an official ‘gender change’ document.

They can then request that old documents (passport, driving licence etc) are reissued with the new first name and ‘gender entry’, and thus Dieter Schmidt (M) becomes Dana Schmidt (F) with a simple flourish of the gender fairy’s wand.

No checks take place, no questions are asked.

How many genders?

There are four choices: You can leave the gender marker blank, choose male or female, or you can call yourself ‘divers’, which embraces both intersex and non-binary options. German people thus have four options to choose from and when I say choose I really do mean choose. Here is a form for adult declarations, linked to from the website of the German Mission in the United States (GMUS)

What about babies?

Ah yes, babies. In Germany now, parents get to choose for their babies. No more of that pesky ‘gender assigned at birth’ nonsense. No more of that horrible bigoted sex realism.

Parents can register their baby– whatever its sex– as male, female, ‘divers’, or even as having no sex at all.

The GMUS website also links to a form for declaring your German baby’s birth abroad. This form is bilingual (see below). It asks for the sex of the mother, father and newborn, on each occassion offering the four options. Therefore it is now possible to state, on a legal document, that a male gave birth to a sexless baby, fathered by a female.

A child of five can now consent to their own ‘gender change’ but parents must also give permission. This is especially disconcerting, as generally speaking we don’t expect 5 year olds to be able to consent to anything much beyond eating the carrot sticks before the biscuit. And possibly not even that.

The result is that children may be raised with genuine ignorance as to which sex they are.

Of course it should go without saying- but still, I will say it again. However much they might want to believe it is possible, nobody can change sex. All the hormones and surgeries in the world cannot turn a girl into a boy or vice versa. Everybody has a sex, including those with DSDs, and it is important not to lose track of this when swimming in the waters of woowoo.

What this nonsense will do to the children of ‘progressive’ parents, little ‘theybies’ raised to believe their sex is immaterial, or children downright lied to about their sex altogether, is hard to fathom. If the idea of parents behaving like this seems ridiculously unlikely to you, bear in mind that actress Megan Fox believes she could sense her child’s attitudes to gender when he was just a foetus.

“When I became pregnant with Noah, I could feel, through my mother’s intuition I suppose, that he was not subscribing to gender stereotypes.”

If it still seems ridiculous to you, remember that Jazz Jennings’ mother transitioned him age two, declared him ‘trans’ on TV age seven, and made him a ‘farewell penis’ cake after arranging for him to have his penis removed at the age of seventeen.

Don’t be fooled into thinking for one moment that there aren’t parents out there who will happily exploit this nonsense in order to ‘prove’ they have a special or different child.

There are also concerns beyond the psychological wellbeing of small children. In Germany, circumcision of baby boys is permissable only for medical reasons. If a baby girl is registered as a boy, does she still have legal protection against FGM, which is illegal in Germany?

If a child’s name and sex marker are so easily changed, how simple will it become for vulnerable or trafficked children to disappear?

And of course a child raised to believe they have been born in the wrong body because of the toys they play with or the clothes they wear is more likely to go to become a medical patient as they grow older, with blockers, hormones, surgeries and in some cases, detransition, playing a huge part in their lives, as they continue to fight an un-winable battle with reality.

Teens

Under the new law, young people aged 14-18 will need parental consent to make a ‘gender change’ on their own behalf. They must declare that the child has received counselling but do not have to prove it. If the child’s parents do not support the ‘gender change’, a court order can be issued over-ruling their decision. More later on the ‘misgendering’ laws which will further provide a wedge with which to divide families.

Concerns about the rise in trans-identification in troubled young people are swept under the carpet. Trans-identified girls now vastly outnumber trans-identified boys in many countries. Young lesbians and autistic girls are over-represented in this cohort. Young people are being told their sex is a choice, a burden that they can escape, when this is clearly a lie.

I find it hard to understand why, if I, with my limited knowledge of the law, can see these huge inconsistancies and potential for harm, the German government was blind to them.

“The Magnitude of the Consequences”

The gender change form (above) refers to the importance of acknowledging the ‘magnitude of the consequences’ of legal gender change but what of the consequences for those who refuse to play along with the madness?

Rumours are circulating that those who trangress, who deadname or misgender a trans-identified person may be sent to prison. This is untrue, but rumours are so rife that AI has picked up on them, showing how easily it can be misled:AI aslo told me “Intentionally refusing to use someone’s correct(?) pronouns is considered harassment and a violation of civil rights”.  Tread very carefully with AI. The world has a tenuous enough grip on reality as it is.

German feminist Rone Duwe explains how the ‘prohibition on disclosure’ ruling works, here:

“A prohibition on disclosure prohibits the naming of a person’s sex and former name. This prohibition now also applies to family members in the adopted law. The intention is decisive here. Anyone who does not name the sex and former name with the intention of causing offence and in a friendly manner is to remain unpunished. Anyone who violates the ban on disclosure will face a fine of up to EUR 10,000.”

The US Law Library of Congress has this to say about the Prohibition of Disclosure clause:

“According to section 13 of the SBGG, the previous gender entry and name may not be disclosed or investigated. This rule is designed to protect the individual from having their previous name and registered gender revealed to others or from being traced…

Exceptions are possible in certain cases, such as when special reasons of public interest require disclosure.”

So the clause is there to prevent the individual ‘from being traced’. What could possibly go wrong?

As for the fines, it seems that intent is everything. The lawyers will be rubbing their hands.

Ten thousand euros is a huge amount of money. We can presume (for now) that fines of that magnitude would not be imposed on an exasperated parent trying to talk some sense into their child. But the idea of a fine as penalty for correctly sexing another human certainly lends gravitas to the claims of a hyperbolic teen wailing that misgendering is literal violence.

Most importantly it raises the question: how are women and girls supposed to exercise the single-sex exemptions that they’ve been assured will still be availabe to them, when they can be fined and ostracised for daring to call a man a man? How can women identify dangerous men when the law offers a simple and specific provision for those men to prevent themselves from being traced?

12.05 in Germany

“Dear sisters, we are in need. We, the women. Not only in Germany – worldwide, whether west or east, whether north or south… When it is too late we in Germany say, „It is five past twelve.“ And for all of us it really is five past twelve or the eleventh hour. We are in need and we need solidarity.”

Lasst Frauen Sprechen

Initiative “Lasst Frauen Sprechen!“ is the organisation behind the global protests which took place on November 1st 2024. While ‘lasst frauen sprechen‘ translates as ‘let women speak’, they are not affliliated with the English organisation of that name.

You can view their website in English here and their Twitter account here.

“On the occasion of the so-called “Self-Determination Act” (SBGG) taking effect, there will be protests against the SBGG in Berlin and worldwide on November 1, 2024…  the goal of the protest is to draw the attention of politicians and the public to the destructive effect of the SBGG on women’s and children’s rights, science, freedom of expression and democracy…” declared Lasst Frauen Sprechen in a press release.

The press release went on to say that protests would take place at 12:05pm local time in front of the German Embassy or German Consulate of each participating country, and that each group of women hoped to present protest letters to the German ambassador in their own country.

“A particularly large gathering is expected to take place in front of the German Embassy in London.”

They weren’t wrong about that.

Initially, the London turnout was not expected to be huge. But we aren’t called TERF Island for nothing! Almost immediately the idea began to grow. It was to be a grassroots protest, with no one group or organisation dominating, women coming together as individuals under one banner to show support for their German sisters. Quickly more and more women became involved, as everyone worked out who could bring what to the endeavor.

 Groups were set up, leaflets and stickers designed and printed out, banners and placards made. Women sourced stepstools and megaphones, hiviz and recording equipment. Speeches were planned and an itinery reckoned.

A Twitter account was set up, @twelve0five, which provided a 31-day countdown until the law change and the global protest. Women sent in videos explaining why they supported the action and these were shared from the account.

Twelve0Five released a press statement announcing the protest:

 On the morning of November 1st, a Friday, we began to gather outside the embassy at 11.45am for a 12 noon start. The Embassy is only a short walk from Victoria and I’m told the crisp autumn morning and the perfectly polished streets of Belgravia all felt very ‘Bridget Jones’ to those coming from further afield. Women, and men, had come from all over the country to show support for German women. By 11.45 there were about 150 peope gathered, waving banners at passing cars, chanting and occasionally shouting.

A police officer stationed outside the Embassy introduced himself and said he was here to keep an eye on things. He told us to ask him if we needed anything and asked us to keep off a stretch of white pavement running directly alongside the embassy, as that was German territory. This was easier said than done: as our numbers grew larger, we spilled over the invisible line again and again, and he patiently herded us back, again and again.

It was amazing to see the banners and placards gathering. As the time approached noon we were preparing to start- and still more people were arriving!

Someone had a megaphone and she was shouting something – I couldn’t quite catch what- to the passing traffic. A lorry passing by honked and waved and a group of women cheered. On the other side of the road, people had begun handing out leaflets to passers by (see below). Some were engaged in conversation. Several people were filming on their phones; a few had cameras on tripods. Happy greetings rang out as people who hadn’t seen each other for ages arranged themselves into smaller groups. One group was singing, others looked more serious.

It was quickly decided that the speeches should take place in front of a lanky abstract statue, on a wide piece of pavement fairly close to the steps. The organisers set down their step stool and got out a megaphone. A smartly-dressed young man came out of the building and talked to some of the organisers, who told him they would like the ambassador to come out and join them. The women tried to hand this co-worker a letter, but he wouldn’t take it. We were told again to move off the white bit of pavement. We have still heard nothing from the German Ambassador.

Shortly after twelve o’clock it was time to lay the wreath, followed by a minute’s silence. By this point, between two and three hundred people had gathered and numbers were still increasing.

A beautiful wreath of willow and ribbons had been created for the occassion by Sun Dyke, in sufragette colours, and this was laid on a cushion, on the Embassy steps, with a card. A bunch of black roses was placed next to it. A golden wreath of dead autumn leaves was also laid, accompanied by a bunch of pink and white roses.

The willow wreath was laid by Andi at 12.04.

A minute’s silence followed, which ended at exactly 12.05.

Speeches

 I’ve made a synopsis of each speech, and included a few short quotes, except for Anne’s speech which I’ve added in full. This means quite a lot is lost- If you’d like to hear the speeches in full you can see the recording of the livestream here (it does skip in a couple of places) or listen to Mother Superior’s Twitterspace here (the recording starts at 50 seconds).

Joolz’s speech

Joolz started her speech immediately after the minute’s silence.

“Self-ID is now law in Germany…” she began, which was met with a chorus of ‘boo’s from the crowd.

She spoke of the absence of gatekeeping around the new ‘gender change’ laws and how they could be used to exploit vulnerable or confused children. 

“Gender change applications from men made less than two months ‘prior to a national defence emergency’ will be put on hold. Which basically means no getting out of national service by saying you’re a girl, lads- and shows the government know the law is open to abuse.”

She spoke of the fines put in place as deterrents for those who dared to call a man a man, and how disclosure laws will not only make it easy for sex offenders to cover their tracks, but ensure that it is almost impossible to confront men in women’s spaces.

“Disclosure rules create a Catch22 which threatens all women’s single-sex spaces from lesbian club nights to public toilets.”

Joolz pointed out that Germany is not alone in authenticating self-ID and warned that many countries including Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal & Spain have similar laws.

“Just last week, up the road in Scotland, the SNP announced 24 genders that public bodies are now supposed to record in official documents.”

She warned that we have many politicians who would support such changes, and that we have already seen the result of England’s ‘flirtation with self-ID’ in the sex offenders being admitted to women’s prisons and refuges.

“Now is the time for women to speak up against self-ID and show our support for our German sisters who have had this terrible injustice thrust upon them without care or consultation.”

Alison’s Speech – Biology

Alison, who was a biology teacher for fifty years, began by explaining that Biology is an innate and universal thing.

Sexual reproduction, which almost all organisms use, involves male and female gametes.

“Homo Sapiens is a vertebrate and a mammal, whose sex is determined by chromosomes at fertilisation.”

Every schoolchild learns this in Year 9 Science- sex is determined by whether the X sperm or the Y sperm fuses with the egg.

“It’s only mammals and birds that have chromosomal sex and chromosomes sex is therefore seen in the nucleus of every nucleated cell… and male and female cells behave differently even in cell culture.  It’s so fundamental, and unchangeable.”

Social constructs- such as religion, class and social roles- are different. They vary, because they’re based on ideas. Trans ideology attempts to claim that sex is an ‘idea’, when that is not the case, and this attempts to separate humans from the natural world. Such is the basis of the ‘transhumanism’ advocated for by Martine Rothblatt and others.

“I’m not submitting to this. I hated the bloody GRA in 2004,” concluded Alison. “I remember thinking, ‘you are lying on a historical document and I’m not having it! Thank you.”

“Repeal the GRA!” called someone in the crowd. Alison agreed, and a chant of “repeal the GRA!” was taken up as she stepped down.

Jan’s Speech

“Gender ideology undermines the Rule of Law, enriches Big Pharma and professional groups who should know better, and masks women’s oppression…” began Jan.

We all live in sexed bodies, and no laws can change that. ‘Identity’ just means ‘sameness’ in Latin, it’s a false concept like ‘royalty’ (in charge) or sanctity (specialness).

“Ask questions about these abstract nouns. Freedom for whom? Freedom from what? Don’t just accept that freedom is a great goal, look a little deeper.”

Janice remembers taking part in the lesbian Pride demo. in 2018. She was a humanist funeral celebrant at the time, and a board member of the British Humanist Association made a complaint about her, calling her participation ‘transphobic’.

At the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association, another ‘captured’ organisation, Jan ‘spent a year on the inside’. After being very active in KLPA, Jan tried to raise the issue of Self-ID at the pond, in a letter. Nobody was willing to discuss it with her and complaints were made about her.

Jan has noticed a strong link between countries where the sex trade is legalised, such as Germany, and those who are supporting Self-ID and surrogacy.

“It’s important to link what I call the ‘five pillars of patriarchy’ – porn, prostitution, sex clubs, trans… and surrogacy”.

She says the legalisation of the sex trade in England was fought off in 2008, mostly by people who worked in Job Centres saying, “That’s not a real job! We’re not recruiting women into that!” We should congratulate ourselves on that achievement.

Emphasising again that these issues are linked, she observed, “lf you can use a woman for one purpose and not treat her like a human being, you will use a woman for another purpose and not treat her like a human being.”

“German sisters,” she concluded, “We feel for you, we are with you and ‘wir stehen mit euch’.

Alison J’s speech – The Rights of the Child

Alison began by thanking ‘Lesst Frauen Sprechen’, in German, for the invitation to join the protest. Luckily for most of us, she switched to English after the first paragraph!

Susie’s Speech – A lie & a betrayal

“A geographical accident of birth, decisions taken by long dead men, the kindness of strangers, these are all reasons why I am a British woman and not a German woman today,” began Susie.

She described Selbstbestimmungsgesetz as “a catastrophic decision for German women and girls’. Referencing the acknowledged high percentage of sex offenders among trans-identified male convicts, she questioned, “how long will we be able to trust the statistics we are being given? With male criminals being recorded as females, these uniquely male crimes are being associated with female criminality.”

Men claiming to be women are not only being placed in women’s prisons, and receiving cross-sex hormones while inside, but women are being penalised for speaking out against the system. Susie gave the example of Cathleen Quinn, a female prisoner in California, whose parole was cancelled after she spoke out about the predatory behaviour of a trans-identified man within her prison.

“There is a supreme cruelty at play here, which is unbelievably rebranded as diversity and equality.”

Susie praised the work of Lasst Frauen Sprechen in establishing that in Berlin alone, there are already 15 trans-identified men in the female estate. Police and justice systems around the world are prioritising men who say they are women over actual women. One of these men, who often disguised himself as a female police officer, is now in a women’s prison after being sentenced to 7 years for rape, aggravated robbery and extortion.

“For a lot of survivors, it starts with a lie.”

Women know men lie to them, they live lives ‘characterised by the knowledge that men aren’t trustworthy’.

Women need single sex spaces to recover from sexual trauma, and should not be locked up with predatory men.

“…for all the people colluding in this mass delusion, I beg you to just stop and listen to the voices of women. There is no longer any chance to say you didn’t know about the harms… we can only defeat this if enough of us push back. We need everyone who until now has stayed silent, to start using your voice, to shout that Self ID Harms and its about time that all Women Rise.”

Jean’s Speech – The importance of single-sex recovery space to women who have experienced domestic abuse

Jean spoke of the first refuges set up by women in the 70s to protect themselves and their children from violent men.

“When the violent men turned up to find those women, and they did, other women fought them on the doorstep.”

This, she said is “a different fight but with the same kind of man. This time he wears a dress. It is harder to keep him from the doorstep.”

Men use both physical and psychological violence to threaten women and impose themselves into women’s safe spaces and many women using single-sex services will be genuinely scared for their lives if they encounter a man.

“When women are in domestic abuse services, refuges or counselling, they are hypervigilant to the presence of men. A dress will not hide him. His presence will be felt in every fibre of her body, because she needs to stay alive, and she knows it is a man who could kill her.”

It is the ultimate cruelty to allow men lying about themselves, into the one space she might be able to protect herself, feel safe, grow strong, recover and carry on with her life and become a survivor not a victim.”

Jean said the German Self-ID laws will allow predatory men to ‘cross the doorstep like invited vampires‘ and warned that Self-ID must not be allowed to happen here.

” I’ve heard women saying this is not a war. Of course it’s a fucking war. Those women just aren’t soldiers. The rest of us …. will win the fucking war!”

Tara’s Summing up

Organiser Tara took the mic to wrap up procedings and thank everybody for coming. She thanked our German sisters for putting trust in us when we said we would support them, and said that we were proud to stand in solidarity alongside them. She thanked the other organisers, pointing out their hard work and planning. Everyone had played their part, from all the people who came along to the embassy today, to those watching at home or tweeting about the event.

“Thank you to every one of you from the bottom of my heart.”

There were three main reasons Tara felt it was important we met today. Firstly, to show solidarity with our German sisters. The second is that while it is 12.05 in Germany, the law has been passed, it is not too late for England. Tara emphasised the importance of making it known to governments, both nationally and locally, that we will not stand for Self-ID. She advised women to get involved in politics “it’s fun by the way, ask me more,” or at very least to communicate with their MP.

The third reason is that we fought back.

“We saw that terrible thing coming our way, hurtling towards us, threatening our very existence, threatening our women’s rights… and we fought for all the women around us… and we will continue to fight.”

The saying is, ‘well-behaved women seldom make history’. But we know who does make history- it is the mad women, the bad women and the dangerous women!”

Much applause met Tara’s summing up speech. We took hold of our songsheets and we sang at the top of our voices, before heading off to the pub with the feeling of a job well done.

I spoke to Tara after the event and she told me:

“The planning and delivery of the day of action was complex and shared among women from every political position (and none) and from every women’s group (and none). Everyone was welcome, no-one was excluded and the group was authentically, purely, a grassroots apolitical collection of women, standing side-by-side.”

Quite an achievement!

“We have a duty to women around the world,” she added, “from Afghanistan and Iran, to Germany, Ireland and the US, to stand up against this dreadful, dangerous removal of women’s single-sex spaces along with the safety, privacy and dignity that is lost.”

A Global Protest

Women who could not make the action in their own country but wanted to show their support posted photos of themselves holding signs with the hashtag #SelfIDHarms and #WomenRise. Those in countries where Self-ID is not established added, ‘it’s not too late for us’. Even JKR joined in, posting a selfie taken in the back of a taxi.

The protests outside consulates and Embassies moved like a wave around the world, each country protesting at 12.05 their own time, starting with New Zealand. Women gathered in the streets, delivered letters to ambassadors, laid wreaths, chanted and sang. Some groups consisted of just three or four women, others consisted of several hundred.

The protest in Berlin

I wasn’t at the protest in Berlin (sadly, I don’t have a time turner) but you can read more about the work of Lasst Frauen Sprechen here. You can read Helen Joyce’s speech in Berlin here and see the video of her speaking here.

You can view the Lasst Frauen Sprechen Global Feminist Protest map, showing the location of all the protests around the world, and zoom in and out to get a closer view, here.

I asked Lasst Frauen Sprechen for a quote about the protests and this is what they said:

“At our rally in Berlin, together with many women from academia, including Helen Joyce and Bev Jackson, we have proclaimed our opposition to the so-called “Self-Determination Act” loud and clear, because it harms women and girls and deprives them of their rights.
Around 250 people took part in the demonstration in Berlin, among them women from other countries who joined us there. For the first time, we were also widely reported in the media…
At our demonstration we remembered all our supporters several times and read out the names of the cities involved in solidarity actions. We hope that we can continue to use this concentrated power of women’s solidarity to maintain women’s rights or to fight for them anew. The spark of solidarity has flown from New Zealand across the globe, igniting the fire of sisterhood in numerous countries. We will never let it go out again! Thank you, dear sisters, for this unforgettable and unique experience! This project is not over – this project has only just begun!”

Want to know more?

You can view ‘Sisters are Watching You’, Laast Frauen Sprechen’s record of the global protest, here.

You can hear organiser Rone Duwe’s speech on the history of Self-ID law, at Women’s Declaration International question time, here.

You can view WDI’s video report on the day here.

The Twelve0Five recording of the livestream from the German Embassy in London can be viewed on youTube, here.  It skips in a couple of places during the speeches, but it’s a great video record of the protest.

The Twitter space audio recording of the speeches at the London protest is here. (it takes a few minutes to get going properly but doesn’t skip)

You can read the US Library of Congress report on the Self-ID Act,  here.

All photos in this article are either shown within their featured tweets, or created from images in the YouTube livestream

 

The UEFA Women’s Championship final back in April 2022 was epic. Even for those of us mostly unmoved by the beautiful game, it was uplifting; it felt as if that match really turned things around. It started to seem like women’s football might finally be taken seriously. So many excited little girls and young women, seeing those players out there, many realising for the first time that it really was possible to shine in the arena of what had for over a century been seen as a man’s sport.

Women’s football in Britain has a long and illustrious history, despite numerous and persistent attempts by men to thwart it.

“But surely not!” I hear you scoff, to which I reply “Hear me out.”

Captain of the British Ladies Football Club at the end of the 19th century was one ‘Nettie Honeyball‘ an intriguing and elusive character who should quite definitely have a film made about her. There were two major women’s teams at the time and not everyone was happy about it- the Archdeacon of Manchester professed it  “a disgrace to the town (of Rochdale) that such an exhibition should be allowed to take place”.

In the early 20th century, people turned out in droves to watch women play football. Many factory workers had teams: the photo above shows the night shift of a munitions factory preparing to play the day shift.

In 1921 the Football Association banned women’s football from professional football grounds, and the grounds of any club affiliated with them. Their given reason was that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” 

The reality is that they were miffed because it had become so popular.

In his highly readable ‘Girls with Balls – The Secret History‘, Tim Tate writes:

“With the men away fighting from 1914 to 1918 most of the workers in the factories of northern England were women and many factories had a ladies’ football team…

By 1920, ladies’ football was a major spectator sport. But away from the cheering terraces the bastions of professional men’s football viewed the mass popularity of women’s soccer with increasing alarm. On the 5th of December 1921 the Football Association met in London. After a brief debate behind closed doors it unanimously passed an urgent resolution: women’s football was banned from all professional football grounds.”

The Football Association could, of course, have lifted the ban at any time but did not do so until 1971, fifty years later.

“My stepsister Marianne,” Lesley told me, “used to think she was a boy growing up, but she says, looking back, it was because she really, really wanted to play football.”  Growing up in the late 50s (when gender dysphoria was a little known condition) Lesley’s step-sister moved to America where she eventually fulfilled her dream of playing high level women’s soccer. She is, incidentally, a lesbian, and under current conditions somebody somewhere- if not everybody everywhere- would have been applauding the idea that this rugged little girl might really be a boy, and egging her on because ‘trans children know who they are’.

So women could play on the great menz hallowed ground again in England at last, hurrah, but there was still much to contend with.

1970s

Let’s hop across the pond for a moment. In 1971 The New York Times reported “Soccer goes Sexy South of Border”. Denmark was the defending champion of the World Women’s Soccer Championship at the time, and teams from Italy, England and France (among others) had also made it through to the finals, which were held in Mexico.

The Championship “promises to be something of a mixture between a sports event and a beauty contest,” reported the NYT. “There will be beauty salons in the dressing rooms so the girls can present themselves for interviews and public ceremonies, complete with false eyelashes, lipstick and attractive hairdos.”  It went on to add that uniforms would a multi-coloured  “and the shorts will be as close as possible to hot pants.”

In 1974, when German football player Bärbel Wohlleben became the first woman to win the award “goal of the month”, a sports journalist asked her, “but when you header the ball, doesn’t it mess up your hair?”

 

1980s

“I desperately wanted to be a boy just so I could be a footballer.” 1980s centre-forward Karen ‘Curly’ Rogers told Sue Austin of the Shropshire Star. Unable to play at her secondary school (girls played netball) aged 25 she joined Oswestry Ladies. The women’s team weren’t allowed to use the Oswestry Town pitch, they had to play on a pitch outside the Highwayman pub.

“The men from the pub used to come out with their pints to watch us, and take the mickey out of us,” reported Curly. “All we got were sexist remarks and jeers. And most of them couldn’t kick a ball if they tried.”

Later, Curly played for Welsh team, Pennant Ladies, and also managed her son’s team.

“The men involved and other managers would talk to me as if I didn’t have a clue. It still happens today if I dare to voice an opinion about a match ” she said in 2022.

1990s

Of playing football at Cambridge University in the 90s, Anna reflects that the women’s team had no contact with the men’s team, nor did they receive any football funding. Like Curly Rogers, ten years before her, Anna’s team was not allowed to play on the men’s ground, instead playing at St John ‘s Sportsground, with no stands or toilet facilities.

“There were no female role models, Anna told Abbie Hastie of Varsity. “There was just not an option. It just wasn’t a thing, like completely zero experience or knowledge of any woman’s football”.

In 2011, Rachel Dixon wrote in the Guardian about watching the Women’s World Cup Quarter final, between England and France, in her local pub. One drinker walked out in disgust when he saw it was women’s football, others expressed surprise. Comments from male drinkers included, “Ooo handbags” and the inevitable “that one’s fit!”

Well, what do we expect? This, unfortunately. We expect this.

Now

One might think things had improved in football for women after the Lionesses spectacular victory in 2022. Yet a Kick It Out report in 2023 revealed that “record number of discrimination complaints have been made for the most recent season, with the biggest rise in sexism and misogyny”.

Their survey of 115 female coaches “found that 80% of women had experienced some form of sexism or misogyny while in a coaching environment. 70% had been subject to the same issues whilst on a coaching course.” Sexist comments from male colleagues and the parents of the students they coached led over half of them to have considered quitting.

If you’re thinking, as I did, that the record number of complaints might have been because women were feeling more able to speak up, the report also noted that “71% of those who had experienced sexism or misogyny on a coaching course didn’t feel as though they could report it comfortably to the course leader.”

Popping over to Australia for a moment, in 2023 a Perth amateur football team noted they were being subject to online abuse on Facebook after a bad game.

“There are over 1,000 comments on there now … a large majority of them are comments that are very derogatory, and sexist and generally just very poor form.”

Ebony Thompson, who plays for Curtin Uni Wesley, noted that the most abusive comments followed a pattern.

“That would be men,” she said. “The people who were making these really disgusting comments… they’re all older men.”

We can stay in Australia & just hop forward a few months, over to Victoria.

 

“A Victorian football club has been forced to issue a public apology after male players used a shocking rating system on opposition female players and tried to trip them over as they ran out for a match.

During a match between Knox and Donvale FC, ‘as the women ran out at half time, male players from Knox lined up on either side of the race, and yelled at ratings for each player.”

 

Jenni Hermoso

During the 2023 World Cup, Luis Rubiales was accused of sexual assault by Spanish player Jenni Hermoso after he grasped her face and kissed her on the lips after the Women’s World Cup Final. Rubiales insisted the kiss was consensual and later claimed he had been victim of a witch hunt by ‘false feminists’. CBS reported that Hermoso denied this kiss was consensual and “also said she and her family were pressured by the federation to show her support for Rubiales in the immediate aftermath of the scandal….”

Hermoso stood her ground.

 

Money

Just for starters, England Lionesses captain Leah Williamson is reported to have earned £200,000 in 2021. The men’s England Captain earns that much in a week. Leah Williamson, writing for the BBC, suggests men are “earning 100 times what the women do”.

“There’s one consolation: England players male or female are paid the same £2,000 match fee per game and have been since 2020.”

 

Women in men’s football

The women mentioned below consider themselves to be nonbinary, or men, and have taken hormones to make themselves appear more like men. They acknowledge that these hormones will have increased their physical strength, but that they are still not strong enough to play comfortably with men.

Jays, who played briefly on a men’s team after transitioning, told Lisa Lotons at Vice magazine ”I don’t really like men’s football, there’s a lot of aggression on the field, like people kicking each other’s ankles. And I didn’t feel physically strong enough to play with them – I was knocked over easily. After this experience, I didn’t play for a long time.”

Jays returned to women’s football but her application to play was rejected, not because non-binary is nonsense but presumably because of the hormones, as “my physical differences could supposedly affect the safety and performance of other female players”. Her coach and fellow team mates decided to ignore the edict and she plays on the women’s team anyway.

Another woman who took hormones reported, “I really wanted to play with men, because I feel 100 percent like a man. So I gave it a shot, but I quickly realised it was impossible. The physical difference is just too big. I’m stronger and I can handle more than I used to, but I still can’t compete with someone who was born as a man.”

So keeping all of this history of sexism and these testaments from women very much in mind, let’s change lane and have a look at a football match herd on a chilly evening in 2022.

Dulwich Hamlet is a South London football club with a committed fan base and a navy blue and pink kit.  Dulwich Hamlet has a men’s team and a women’s team and a 3,000 capacity stadium, with over 500 seats, on Champion Hill in the not-quite-so-posh bit of Dulwich. So they’re not Crystal Palace, but it’s fair to say that anyone who plays for DH is a pretty damn good at football. The club is know for the loyalty of its followers and in 2016 it received the Football Foundation Community Club Of The Year award. It often arranges friendly fundraisers.

On Trans Day of Visibility 2022, Dulwich Hamlet Ladies took on a team from Trans Radio. It was a friendly match, a fundraiser for TransRadio, an historic moment no less, reported My London: the first time  ‘a team made up entirely of transgender women play(ed) against a team of cisgender women’.

It was an historic moment for another, more disconcerting reason. Was this perhaps the first time that a women’s football team had been referred to as ‘a team of cisgender women’? Should Dulwich Hamlet Ladies now consider changing their name to Dulwich Hamlet Cisgender Ladies?

This is not a problem that will face Sutton Women, who now no longer even have the dubious luxury of calling themselves ‘a team of cisgender women’. But more on them in a moment.

My London claimed that the Trans Radio match ‘broke down the boundaries in place which often leaves (sic) transgender people on the sidelines of mainstream sport’. But did it? We decided to go and see for ourselves.

Size does matter

Looking through the photos of the game that appeared in the press, they seem to have been carefully selected to infer that the players on both teams were of similar sizes. This picture, taken by a friend at the start of the game, shows the size difference between the male and female players. Although the female players are standing in the foreground we can still see that their opponents are, without exception, taller and broader-shouldered.

It’s just a bit of fun, what is it to you?

The men’s goalie at this match was six-footer Blair Hamilton, who had been recently selected to play for England Universities’ women’s side. He used to play blokes’ football but is clearly a woman now because his Twitter bio says “Get excited over little things like a new dishwasher!” followed by a cute little 😛 blob doing a head tilt. 

He also writes academic papers explaining how it’s perfectly fair to put massive great blokes on women’s football teams, so that’s nice. As long as they get excited over dishwashers, I assume. I mean, obviously we have to draw a line somewhere.

This is the same Blair Hamilton, of course,now aged 34, who has this week been selected to play for Sutton ladies.

Hamilton, reports Oliver Brown in the Telegraph, “claims players who have gone through male puberty but identify as female are at a disadvantage compared to biological women”.

Blair replaces an actual woman, of course, goalkeeper Marni Humphry, who was featured on the team’s squad list until replaced by Hamilton. While it seems that Humphry was on loan from Fulham, one imagines that there might just have been another woman, somewhere, to take her place.

“So who put him there?” I hear you ask.

Well, none other than his old team mate from that same Trans Radio Dulwich football game (we’ll get back to it eventually)  the lovely Lucy Clark, who was appointed to manage Sutton Women back in January 2024, causing JK Rowling to quip “When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed”.

No other goalies available? Indeed not, according to Clark, who has deactivated his twitter account, but not before claiming he had been looking all summer but had been unable to find another goalkeeper.

“Blair is a biological male and as such shouldn’t be in the women’s league at all. It doesn’t matter that there wasn’t a female keeper available – you can’t just slot men into women’s sporting teams because it suits you.” tweeted @scattyfem

But he was gone.

“Blair Hamilton, 34, has been recruited by Clark despite having previously drawn criticism from women’s rights groups for taking the place of a female goalkeeper.” reported Oliver Brown in the Telegraph. “Sharron Davies, the former Olympic silver medallist and long-standing advocate for fairness for women in sport, described Sutton’s move as “shameful”.

“Remember there is a human at the end of your abuse, on another day, they may not be able to take it,” Hamilton warns critics, elsewhere, who might be inclined to object to his LARPing.

In 2023, as part of LGBT History month, the BBC posted a video featuring Clark. It opens with the words:

“I’m Lucy Clark and I’m the world’s first transgender referee. Football saved my life.”

Clark then gives the camera a Paddington Hard Stare, as if to dare anyone to suggest otherwise. 

After suffering multiple heart attacks Clark decided “I love football. Why should I give it up?” Later, in a glaring contradiction, he told London Scene in April 2024, “I never wanted it to be about me”.

But you did, mate. You wanted it to be ALL about you. And nobody suggested you should give up football. But as an ageing, overweight geezer, who’s suffered several heart attacks, maybe you should just face the fact that we can’t always get what we want. And taking things away from other people is mean spirited and nasty. And making it clear that you have a propensity for suicide ideation is both manipulative and controlling.

I get that he really, really loves football and really, really wants to play with the women- that doesn’t mean it’s fair. It’s called women’s football for a reason.

And I get that he really wants to be a woman but he can call himself Lucy all he likes-  that doesn’t mean it’s true.

And how does that affect me? Well, certainly I have no desire to play football. But I know little girls and young women who do.

In Brown’s piece in the Telegraph, he observes that, in 2022, Clark wrote on social media: “At some point we will field a team solely of trans women for the first time in history. How good is that?”

Which brings us back to the 2022 friendly footie match, which the women won 7-0. Some might use the result to suggest that it is harmless to include males on women’s teams. Remember, the males playing for TRUK were generally older and certainly far less fit than the women’s side, although several team members had played football at a decent level before transitioning, and some were already playing on women’s teams. My first assumption, that the match was played between a group of young, extremely fit young women and a group of mostly middle-aged, out-of-shape blokes sporting boobs, make-up and the odd wig and flower crown, was not quite as on point as I’d thought. Not quite.

I said it. Is that unkind? Well, it isn’t untrue. I watched these guys run around the pitch for however long it is a football game takes. I am also middle-aged and out of shape. Life throws us these curve balls. I would have lasted about five minutes running up and down that pitch, and would likely have collapsed into a lardy, sweaty and unpalatable heap long before half time. The boys did well. And here are some of my photos from the match.

Like Winston, blinking at the fingers, I tried to see a pitch full of women, but I just couldn’t. Because that isn’t what I was looking at.

Either a man can become a woman or he can’t. We can probably all agree that a man doesn’t become a woman by putting on a wig and a bra, so how does he do it?  The problematic nature of this question has led to the more fashionable idea that such a man was always a woman, although that raises the questions ‘then what is he transitioning to?’ and ‘how?’ Which brings us back to the wig and a bra, and possibly even the dishwasher, and the question ‘what is a woman?’.

If it’s an inner feeling, of course, any bloke can become a woman. Just ask the Germans. They’ve recently announced that from next season, “transgender, intersex, and non-binary players” can choose which teams they want to play on. Some will say once a man says he’s a woman, it means he was always a woman.

Some people even claim Bruce Jenner was always a woman, although Jenner himself says otherwise, and has become an unlikely ally in the battle against men in women’s sports, stating in 2015 that he believed “trans women are “taking valuable opportunities” from women and “causing physical harm.”

The whole thing is clearly so absurd that there is only one way to make it seem less so. The key word, the key concept, that of ‘sex’, must be removed altogether.  Once we start talking about gender, ethereal, ectoplasmic and ever elusive gender, we leap into the realms of philosophy and we can pretend that maybe we meant gender when we said sex all along. In the realms of philosophy everything and nothing makes sense.

The Stunning & the Brave

“Football is for everyone!” trills Pippa Henry, who used to play on the bloke’s side, transitioned in his late forties, and now plays with the Cheshire ladies team.

Look, everyone thinks this is super. Of course they do, they would be shamed and cancelled if they objected to this old-enough-to-be-their-dad geezer joining in. Look at all those happy, smiling faces!

“I love my football and obviously I can’t play male football anymore, because I’m a woman.” says Henry, whose new job is to ‘help support and educate people’ as a trans community champion for Cheshire FA.

Don’t confuse him with Pippa York, though. He’s busy invading women’s cycling.

Because of course, this goes way, way beyond football. As I write, another man, partially-sighted Valentina Petrillo, is taking part in women’s Paralympics running events. There is an excellent thread about Petrillo here from @brandubh4  Before declaring himself a woman, he won nearly a dozen national men’s titles. He has fathered two children. He transitioned aged 45, and this week claims it has been his dream to win a medal at the Olympics ‘since I was a little girl’. In what universe is this not taking the piss? In 2020, he won three gold Paralympic medals by running ‘as a woman’.  Who knows what the women ousted by these men might have achieved?

We all remember Laurel Hubbard, from the last Olympics, and his ‘whoops I dropped it’ performance. Or did he? Who cares, he shouldn’t have been there anyway. Veronica Ivy (cycling), Lia Thomas (swimming)  Fallon Fox (boxing) Cece Telfer, Andreya Yearwood (running) Lana Lawless (golf)… I could go on and produce a more lengthy impressive list, but all of these men have brazenly taken medals and prizes from women: we already know it’s happening. Not to mention the boys and men taking places from girls and women in local sports teams, and even affecting ‘fun’ local events like Parkrun. In 2023 a research paper by Policy Exchange found that at least three Parkrun female records were held by men as a result of its policy of allowing entrants to ‘self-identify their gender’.

Olympian Mara Yamauchi claimed that after one women’s record was ‘smashed to smithereens’ it meant that the record was “probably now out of female hands forever”.

It isn’t just about the Olympics. It isn’t just about football. It’s everywhere.

“Today, even when backing one’s feelings with scientific data on how male bodies have physical advantages over female bodies, it’s forbidden to say anything out loud about how they should not be allowed to compete in divisions carved out for women in girls. If you say anything the response is almost always a straw man argument “if you don’t want male bodies in sports you want to erase trans existence” is the most common rebuttal.” sportswoman Tiffany told WOLF in 2023

Returning to football, because that’s where we started, another bloke who deserves a quick mention is Giulia Valentino. He played in the Ladies Gaelic Football Junior J Shield tournament in 2022 on behalf of Na Gaeil Aeracha. This struck people as particularly weird as he is clearly neither a junior nor a lady.

Nonetheless, following the great and growing tradition of men determined to shamelessly nuzzle their way into women’s football, there he was. And here he is. And if you’re wondering why the young woman in blue is holding the ball – that’s Gaelic Football for you, a game more like rugby than football.

When he’s not playing football with ‘junior’ women, the fragrant Giulia is DJing at a fetish club in Dublin or posting pictures of himself pole dancing, or tied up on a bed in what looks like his mum’s spare room in a pair of rather grotty looking underpants. (I spared you that one).

What is going to happen to women’s sports? How long before all the women’s sporting records are broken and held by men? Will those records ever be ‘cancelled’ and replaced by the achievements of actual women, or is it already too late? 

As I finish this piece up, I hear that yesterday’s football match in Sutton, featuring Blair Hamilton, was postponed with just a few hours notice.The Daily Mail reported “The game, which had been scheduled to kick-off at 2pm, was called off after Sutton sent an email to their opponents at 11.12am informing them of their inability to field a team.”

In unconfirmed speculation, the Mail added “it is thought that Sunday’s game may have been postponed after some of Hamilton’s team-mates refused to play in protest at her signing.”

The Sun (also not known for its reliability) made the same claim. I know a lot of women are hoping that’s the case. But I find it unlikely. Women are being held to ransom over this. If you call a man a man, you’re a bigot. Remember those happy smiling faces? Be kind.

Or else the man will be very, very sad and angry and you will probably never play your favourite sport again.

I have friends in Sutton, lovely, caring, hippy friends. If I asked them what they thought about all this they would look shocked and say it was terribly transphobic and tell me to ‘be kind’ and that these men are just being their ‘authentic selves’. Because the reality of men in women’s sports is so insanely unreasonable and unfair, and almost impossible to conceive, that most people find it easier just not to think about it.

Try making sense of this, for example.

The German football federation explains its policy (starting season 23) of allowing selfID on football teams.

“…transgender players who can now switch at a self-determined time or remain initially in the team in which they’d been playing previously,” the DFB said. “As long as the sporting activity does not affect the health of the person while they are taking medication, the person can take part in the game, which is why the new regulation excludes doping relevance.”

So that all makes sense then.

A smug man and a concerted woman express their feelings about it here.

“I used to play for a male team,” says Charlie.”The Berlin officials announced a new rule that trans people are allowed to play in whatever team they want. They can choose. That new rule was just totally necessary… now we know that we can decide”

Ana says “It is the beginning of the end of the female athlete. There is a clear difference between a female body and a male body. Of course we are not going to say ‘you cannot feel this way’ but in reality we all play with our bodies and not how we feel”

Nicholas ‘Laura’ Holstein

 One lovely lady to have benefited from the new policy is the fragrant Nicholas ‘Laura’ Holstein who claims to be non-binary but has been allowed to play on women’s football  teams since 2023.

Genvieve Gluck writes in Reduxx of how Nicholas has shown his gratitude to women everywhere by taking legal action against a woman’s gym for not allowing him access to their showers.  He’s already received $1,000 but now wants more.

“I’m just a woman who looks different,” he says.

Yeah, right, and I’m a bloody aubergine.

 

POST SCRIPT 5/9/24

Doing Sweet FA to stand up for women’s football

And finally back to England, where one father has told of howe his daughter felt ‘massively intimidated’ facing Blair Hamilton in a game.

“It’s just not right. I wish more people would speak up,” he said.

“Sutton insisted that they had followed the protocols laid down by the Football Association, which controversially allows those born male to self-identify into the women’s  game.” reports Oliver Brown in the Telegraph.

And this raises a really important question.

Are there any clubs that have tried to say ‘no’ to this crazy ruling, or will they be excluded from membership of the FA, or playing on FA grounds, if they do?

Are all FA Women’s clubs now obliged to accept any bloke who fancies playing with them?

It seems that may indeed be the case.