A Peaking Protocol

steps to sex realism

Photo by Karl Hedin on Unsplash

There is a shorthand term for the moment when someone who once believed gender mattered more than sex changes their mind. “Peaking” describes the point at which a person stops accepting the prevailing narrative because they have seen that sex matters.

It’s often described as a single moment of revelation, which interests me because I haven’t experienced it.

About a million years ago, I worked with a person who declared at work that, from Monday, they would be presenting as the opposite sex. I have to say that the workplace seemed to handle it very well. A new changing room was established so this person was not intruding on the space of the actual opposite sex staff, those outwith our department were accommodating and polite, welcoming, even. This person was shy and quiet and, if they had come out as homosexual, nobody would even have blinked. But, as it was, some eyebrows were raised because gender was quite a novel concept in the mid ‘90s, we had all just assumed this person was gay. That would have been of as much interest to the department as my heterosexuality, as in, of none whatsoever.

Unfortunately, someone told the press that a “transsexual” was working on the wards and there were a few unpleasant mornings having to walk through a press pack with journalists aggressively trying to suss out who it was.

However, I never really understood what the purpose of this attempt at transition was. A department of physios were all fairly up to speed with anatomy and physiology - we all knew that humans could not change sex, but we accepted our colleague regardless of what was going on in their personal life. That was easy to do in the Olden Days, the ones before you were obliged to bring your whole self to work.

This person changed their personal style, displayed new mannerisms and, eventually, developed new secondary sex characteristics. I was comfortable with who this person said they were but I never perceived them as being what they said were.

It seemed to me that “transition” was an awful lot of effort for very little return. It seemed to rely on colleagues being polite enough to indulge this person’s insistence that a new name and hairstyle was their metamorphosis into an entirely new sex class. I couldn’t see that, but the whole thing was none of my business, so I got on with my work.

I heard recently that this person is doing well, thirty years on, and is happy. Which is good news, and I find it reassuring to hear that transition can have positive outcomes - because what I usually read is pretty bleak.

There are different triggers for “peaking”, but there is a common pattern of “once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it”.

Sarah Phillimore (crowdfunder link) and Al Peters collected a heap of them in their book, Transpositions. Essays in the book describe a feeling of unease as an anti-science and anti-women’s rights agenda swiftly influenced government, academia, the media, arts, justice and health, and demanded that those who don’t agree be punished and silenced. Many came to realise that “Be Kind” was a misnomer, because disagreement - even if polite and evidence-based - is exaggerated and portrayed as hatred. If you notice that then the principles of gender ideology and its consequent harms for safeguarding and women’s hard-won rights become hard to ignore.

Of course, there are many stories where the ramifications of peaking were huge - loss of family, romantic and friendship relationships or paid work. No wonder people avoid considering evidence and speaking up. Peaking is, to borrow Cass’s 2022 description of social transition, “not a neutral act”. In the very next paragraph of her Interim Report, Cass added: “It should also be recognised that ‘doing nothing’ cannot be considered a neutral act.” Yip, not peaking is also not neutral, you have to master cognitive dissonance, which doesn’t seem to my skill at all.

I enjoy the clear conscience and clarity of thinking that come from not having to jump through hoops before the words I want to say tumble out of my pretty little head. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. Recommend, 5 stars.

The stories in Transpositions often seem like Jenga: one little brick is removed and the whole edifice collapses; sometimes immediately and sometimes it takes a few more wobbles. Recognising one truth - for example, that males are bigger, faster and stronger than females - clarifies that allowing even one male into women’s sport destroys the competitive, social and private spaces that women built for ourselves. Once the impact of males in women’s sport is understood, it becomes hard to not see that placing males in prisons has a negative impact on incarcerated women, and that adding fear, the threat of violence, or bodily harm to a woman’s custodial sentence is not how a civilised society operates.

So when a young family member recently shared with me that they know that sex is real, immutable and sometimes matters, I felt huge relief that our relationship is not going to be a casualty of the gender wars and then wondered why it seemed like a big deal to this person to share with me that they are a sex realist. Once upon a time, “coming out” meant telling people something unexpected about yourself that might carry risk. Does it really now include confessing that you know sex is real and sometimes matters?

This young person and I have chatted many times about the conflict between sex and gender. Their views were entirely at odds with mine, but we didn’t squabble over it, it was more an enthusiastic, co-operative debate.

Eventually, we both chose three resources and agreed to genuinely engage with each other’s suggestions.

My three resources were video-based:

Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood Like a House on Fire (2021), by Indian filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar.

It is a compassionate exploration of why increasing numbers of young people, particularly girls, experience gender dysphoria, and questions whether medical transition should be the default intervention.

Adult Human Female, by Deirdre O’Neill and Michael Wayne.

A documentary whose screenings at Edinburgh University were cancelled twice because it was perceived to be beyond the pale to reflect on single-sex spaces, safeguarding, free speech, the law and the impact of gender identity policies on women. The filmmakers are taking their trade union, the UCU, to court over its role in the cancellation of their film, their crowdfunder is here.

Lastly, Magdalen Berns’ YouTube, which is peak peak material. Magdalen was like a sweary Miss Jean Brodie in a hoodie, I could imagine her saying in Maggie Smith’s clipped tones “Give me a terf at an impressionable stage and she is mine for life.” She was the first person I came across who was shamelessly uncompromising in her language and analysis of gender theory, particularly its impact on lesbian women. Magdalen made a lasting impression on many.

My homework was Philosophy Tube, a person who uses philosophy and personal autobiography to discuss gender to nearly 2 million youtube subscribers; Contrapoints, who has nearly 2 million subscribers on youtube to his views on identity, culture and gender; and Jammidodger, who tells her nearly 1 million youtube subscribers about transition, psychology and life from a personal perspective.

They certainly helped me understand how gender dysphoria and transition are experienced by these individuals, and why the pushback against gender ideology resonates so strongly with them. Indeed, their focus is largely introspective, about their own experiences and frustrations, which contrasts with my choice of resources which examine the impact of gender ideology on women as a class and vulnerable people as groups. The apparent preoccupation of people with gender issues with their own situation is striking and, indeed, I wonder whether it is symptomatic.

The videos I watched didn’t persuade me that humans can change sex, nor did they answer the questions that concern me most: the quality of the clinical evidence, the long-term outcomes of medical intervention, or the consequences for women’s rights, safeguarding and healthcare. They deepened my understanding of people’s experiences, but they didn’t change my view that gender interventions come with medical harm to the individual and to safeguarding and women’s rights to privacy, safety and dignity.

If I was to try and create a Peaking Protocol I’d widen the material beyond video:

• A personal narrative or documentary.

• A commentary or philosophical piece.

• A peer-reviewed scientific paper or systematic review.

and then discuss:

• What did you learn?

• Did anything change your mind?

• Which arguments are unconvincing, and why?

I’ve become a bit pre-occupied with thinking what resources might be useful for people who are just on their first Jenga wobble. I did think that I have an open mind, I have said for years that I want to be wrong about gender, that the best outcome is to discover that I have misunderstood something fundamental and am, in fact, a bigoted idot who needed education. Such an outcome would do harm to me, but would mean that those who transition are not at risk, and that would be a good thing.

I have become rather evangelical when I find someone who agrees that sex matters. I have an emotional response to finding someone who “gets it”, and I should probably spend some time reflecting on why that might be. Regardless, I’m looking forward to speaking to my young relative more, things seem much more difficult for people in their 20s because in many circles it is heretical to say that sex matters more than gender.

My youngster has taken a risk in sharing their new perspective with me, and may well change their mind, but I hope not. Few do - is there even an antonym for peaking? Perhaps “troughing” has geographical symmetry, though maybe that is a flawed concept because we really don’t need another word describing something that doesn’t exist.

I’m trying to get the hang of substack, I’ve been very lazy with working out notes and comments - and ohmaigawsh you can do video on here too? I’ve got to get my book proposal finished and submitted - and then I’ll get onto trying to figure this app out. Is it an app? Is it a site? Who knows, it’s a good place for sharing ideas and practical things for people with pelvic health issues, whether that is due to gender or not.