Lesbian Rights Alliance
Response to the draft bill Conversion Practices (Prohibition} Bill proposed by
The Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle
What is the Lesbian Rights Alliance
The Lesbian Rights Alliance has been campaigning for at least 14 years to defend our legal rights to exist as lesbians. Lesbians are women and girls who are same sex attracted and therefore deny male access to our bodies. But this is not respected by certain groups of men. Our main focus is on young lesbians who are specifically targeted by lesbo-phobic transgender Lobbyists who state that being lesbian is ‘old-fashioned.’ Further information on the work of the Lesbian Rights Alliance can be found here .
Our view on the bill
Sexual Orientation and Transgenderism
Sex and sexual orientation are protected characteristics in the Equality Act (2010) and in the Human Rights Act which allows for freedom of expression.
The first line in your bill aims to prohibit practices whose pre-determined purpose is to change a person’s sexual orientation, or to change a person to or from being transgender and for connected purposes.
We do not agree with the inclusion of the latter part of this sentence, because being transgender is the key form of conversion practice and it is used by political lobbyists such as Stonewall to erase young lesbians. For example, teenage lesbians in schools are told, through the promotion of gender identity ideology, that they are really boys/men born in the wrong body. It also allows cross-dressing heterosexual males to self-identify themselves as lesbians and demand that lesbians allow them sexual access to their bodies. We have pointed this out in a letter to Kemi Badenoch the minister of state for Women and Equalities and our letter and the response to it can be viewed here
‘Corrective Rape’ as a form of conversion practice
As seen above lesbians deny male sexual access to our bodies, but this is not accepted by men. Ordinary heterosexual men including those who are Incels, regard all women as sexually available to them and can enforce this on lesbians through what is known as ‘corrective rape.’ However, there are also cross-dressing heterosexual males who self-define themselves as lesbians and demand that lesbians should allow them sexual access to their bodies. This strategy has been promoted by these males in what has been described as overcoming the ‘cotton ceiling’. This statement comes from a workshop on this topic which took place in Canada. These men have also demanded that lesbians should accept their penises as ‘lady sticks. This absurd rationale is applied through seeking access to lesbians on lesbian dating sites. A number of young lesbians in our own organization, arranging to meet up with a date, have discovered that the date is not another woman, but a man and have turned these men down, only to be threatened with sexual violence, because they refuse to continue with the date. Some young lesbians do feel forced to accept sex with these males, because they fear being seen as ‘bigoted.’ Needless to say the Lesbian CEO of Stonewall described lesbians who refuse to date a so called ‘transwoman,’ is being racist!
- Conversion Practices; prohibition.
- Offers, undertakes or takes payment for conversion practices
- Offers, provides or takes payment for materials or guides to conduct conversion practices.
These prohibitions are particularly relevant to agencies that are being employed by schools, to provide materials and teach lessons to children and staff in relation to sex, relationships and health education. Most of these external agencies are promoting gender identity ideology. It needs to be recognized that it is a key form of conversion practices that are being imposed. on children including young lesbians as well to a lesser extent young gay men. Teenage young lesbians, are for example, being told that they are ‘gender confused’ rather than being supported to be lesbian. Further, they are often bullied by other students for being lesbian and schools rather than providing support have referred these girls for medical and surgical interventions.
Asleep at the wheel an examination of Gender and Safeguarding in Schools. A Policy Exchange Research Report on what is being taught in secondary schools.
As Rosie Duffield Labour MP for Canterbury has stated in her foreward to this research report, children as young as five are being encouraged to question their gender identity and have been taught they have been born in the wrong body if they do not conform to ‘regressive gender stereotypes’.
The report highlights the failure of many schools to conform to their legal duties as laid down in the Education Act, l996, in employing outside agencies.
For example, schools have to be impartial and are not allowed to promote partisan political views such as stating that every person has an innate ‘gender identity’ which is not supported by any scientific evidence.
The report found that 72% were telling children that they have a gender identity different from their biological sex, and that 69% required other children to affirm a new ‘gender identity.’ Thus, the use of outside agencies meant that they were embedding gender identity doctrine as fact in schools. Children were not being taught that they cannot actually change sex due to their chromosomal DNA. Many schools did not even recognize their responsibility for safeguarding children or recognize the need to report what was happening to children to the school safeguarding lead.
It was also made clear that any outside agency must make available its teaching materials to parents. In addition, based on the Cass interim report, it stated that children should not be allowed to socially transition in schools as this embeds the idea that they should seek very harmful and irreversible medical treatment such as being given puberty blockers.
The use of puberty blockers has now been found to cause considerable harm. Not only does it cause bone thinning, in girls it causes sterility and lack of sexual feeling. It also causes a lack of cognitive development with evidence of considerable lowering of their own IQs.
A large number of schools were also ignoring school requirements laid out in the Equality Act 2010, such as not providing separate single sex toilets for children above the age of eight, a policy which ignores the safety of girls in particular. 19% were not maintaining single sex changing rooms and 60% were allowing mixed sex sports, again ignoring the impacts of this on girls.
Schools were also ignoring the non-statutory guidance given by the Department for Education on planning their RSHE curriculum. This guidance stated that they ‘should not be reinforcing harmful stereotypes by suggesting that a child might be a different gender based on their personality, interests or clothes they prefer to wear. Materials which suggest this should not be used and schools should not be working with agencies that do this.’ We have also written to Gillian Keegan The Secretary of State for Education about this and this letter can be found here.
We agree with sections 2 and 3 in the draft bill.
Section 2 We have already stated that transgender identity is a form of conversion practice, particularly on lesbians as well as young gay men we therefore regard this section as unnecessary.
Section 3 Health treatment
We support the recommendations of the CASS review that young people should be offered a wholistic approach by appropriate doctors and therapists in looking at their personal problems before being offered any form of medical and surgical interventions. It is well known that 35% of those young people seeking these interventions are on the autistic spectrum and need supportive help from doctors in the wholistic approach that should be offered, before seeking any medical interventions. Further, some young people, particularly young lesbians may be seeking medical interventions, to escape sexual abuse and harassment. Teenage young lesbians may experience rapid ‘gender dysphoria’ However, as we have said earlier if left alone lesbians as they mature will come to accept their same sex attraction and will decide to be lesbians. There are a number of lesbian therapists who can support them in this. There is also the lesbian advocacy group.
Any medical or surgical interventions such as taking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will mutilate their bodies permanently and they are likely to detransition in their early 20s, and recognize they will never be accepted as men. At large number of those who seek medical interventions know they are same sex attracted and these girls and young women should not be offered any harmful treatments[i][1]
[i] Sally Baxendale.’ Puberty Blockers harm children’. IQs in girls have been found to drop 7 points
Unheard 12/2/2024
Ii Hannah Barnes Time to think 2023 Swift publications
