PAUL CHASE ANSWERS HIS CRITICS
Introduction
On 06 January Propel Opinion – a
hospitality industry blog - published an article written by me titled ‘Enough
is Enough’. The article was ‘gender critical’ and tackled gender ideology and
transgender issues. My article criticised a belief system. It was NOT an attack
on trans people.
The article sharply divided
opinion among Propel’s readership and within hours of publication Paul Charity,
the publisher, was threatened by commercial sponsors withdrawing their support
and felt his business was under existential threat. Later that day he made a
public apology to his subscribers and to part company with me as an author. He
made a further public apology three days later. I had provided articles for 10
years – some 259 of them – but article 260 cancelled all that and was later
taken down.
You can read my account of how I
was cancelled and the original article by putting the following link into your
Google search bar:
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/beware-the-gender-borg-a-cautionary-tale/
Since this happened, I have been
the subject of vile personal abuse on social media and by email. All three of
the industry’s main trade bodies have denounced the article, and by implication,
me. I have been thrown out of the tribe! The denunciation culminated on the 13
January in a special edition of Propel Opinion in which three well-known
industry figures characterised my article as an expression of transphobia, and
one of them even went so far as to accuse me of being motivated by hate for the
transgender community – a vicious and defamatory slur.
I would like to remind readers
that all I did here was write an opinion piece. No one died. I didn’t massacre
a village!
The rest of this piece is my reply
to the denunciation of my critics as published in Propel Opinion. My three interlocutors
are Paul Charity, publisher and editor of Propel; Kate Nicholls, Chief
Executive of industry trade body UK Hospitality; and Ann Elliott – the main
protagonist - who heads up a hospitality consultancy.
My response to Paul Charity
Initially you fended off criticism
of my article, and your decision to publish it, by defending my right to free
speech and offering critics the chance to become authors and write a rebuttal
piece. But you quickly caved-in to a baying mob of virtue signalling HR managers
and within hours published an abject apology for causing anger and upset. You took
advice that the only way to limit the damage to your business was to offer me up
as a sacrificial lamb.
That worked well, didn’t it? Three
days later you felt obliged to offer a second apology, together with promises
to contribute to a trans charity, visit a transgender clinic, and appoint a
diversity and inclusion manager. You have commented: “The past seven days have
been very humbling from a personal point of view.” I bet they have! Did you not
realise that a sacrificial lamb is an offering designed to appease an angry
deity – in this case the Gender Borg – and this necessitates grovelling on
bended knee? But apparently your second apology and further offerings were not
enough, which is why you then orchestrated the cowardly pile-on and hatchet job
you published on Friday 13 January.
A weak man in a weak position responds
by appeasing the bullies just about sums it up. As Winston Churchill once said:
“An appeaser is a man who feeds a crocodile in the hope it will eat him last.”
My response to Kate Nicholls
Kate, you are a person for whom I
feel admiration and respect. Your leadership of UK Hospitality during the
pandemic and beyond has been exceptional. We have known each other for many
years and have worked together on a number of educational projects for the good
of the industry. You know me. I am saddened that you would join this attack on
me without even a phone call to get a better understanding of my views.
Most of your article is taken up
with the history of, and support for the inclusiveness of hospitality –
something which I wholeheartedly support – despite the distortion of my views
to suggest the contrary. But I must deal with your direct criticisms of me: you
characterise my views as ignorant and as the views of a “lone voice that
shocked us all”. Kate, my views are not ignorant, they are well informed,
thoroughly researched, coherent and logical. I note the fact that you don’t
engage with anything I actually wrote or explain why you would consider my views
ignorant.
I suspect I am not alone in
holding the views I do on gender ideology. I have myself received supportive
emails for numerous senior figures, including those running pub companies – I
bet you can guess who they are!
I do recognise that your constituency
of support is similar to Paul Charity’s customer base, and you must do what is
expedient. Perhaps when this silly storm in a teacup has calmed down, we might
meet up and enjoy a different quality of conversation. I certainly hope so.
My response to Ann Elliott
Well, Ann, like all of my critics
you have chosen to attack me for writing the article Propel published on 06
January, without engaging intellectually with what I wrote. And there is a
reason for that: you haven’t got an argument. You fall into the lazy trap of
assuming that criticism of an ideology, a belief system, in this case gender
ideology, is an attack on trans people. This simple category error serves your
purpose of misrepresenting what I wrote as hate speech without the inconvenience
of having to explain why you think that. So, if you ever decide to speak to me
personally, try to think what it was I wrote that you disagreed with, and
identify anything that was factually wrong. I’ll wait…
While Kate Nicholls made only a
couple of references to me personally, and Paul Charity busied himself eating his
third sIice of humble pie, you were clearly tasked with conducting the hatchet
job. I may be mistaken here, but I don’t recall ever meeting you, so I am
puzzled as to what motivates your malice, which oozes from every sentence you
wrote. The sadism of gender ideology, and its activist supporters, is one of
the defining characteristics of this modern social pathogen. For many it is
merely a vector, a useful vehicle into which is poured the envy, bitterness,
spite and aggression of people whose status relies on being permanently
offended, and who have inchoate concerns and hang-ups they can barely
articulate.
Despite your brief being to attack
me, you spend the first two paragraphs of your article praising yourself. You
describe yourself as an “ardent feminist” and a “supporter of all women
regardless of gender, race or religion.” We will come back to your implication
that women have more than one gender in a minute, but you go on to say you have
suffered discrimination for being a feminist, a woman, a working-class northern
lass.
You declare yourself opposed to
all forms of prejudice, including transphobia. And then this: “That people
should suffer, be persecuted, rejected, assaulted or murdered for who they are
is horrendous.” Unless, like me, they hold gender critical views, in which case
they are apparently fair game. And in the very next sentence you write: “So,
the Paul Chase article in last week’s Propel felt totally abhorrent to me.”
That clearly implies that my article supported or justified prejudice and might in some way validate the persecution, rejection, assault, or murder of people subject to prejudice. That is a lie and a disgusting smear. You compound this by stating that what I wrote was not free speech but hatred. I am advised this is defamatory and invite you to publicly withdraw these inferences and promise not to repeat them. I don’t mind robust debate, but to trash my reputation by implying that I engage in hate speech that might support violence towards, and the murder of vulnerable people is utterly disgraceful.
I came out as a gay man in 1971 – 52 years ago – when attitudes to same sex relationships were very different from today’s. I experienced prejudice and bigotry. The idea that I would hate on another minority group is absurd and offensive to me. So, forgive me if I don’t take any penny lectures from you on this subject.
You go on to say that my article was misinformed, with scientific evidence to dispute all my claims. You also make a number of statements about the law that are simply wrong. So, let’s examine each of these in turn.
Your false claims about
science
You helpfully provide a link to pieces of research which you say dispute all the claims in my article, here it is:
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity
I have read all nine pieces of the research you have linked me to, and none of them dispute or even address the claims in my article. Eight of these research papers address the aetiology of gender dysphoria and point, in various ways, to the possibility that the causation of gender dysphoria has a strong organic component. The ninth piece explores transgender fetishes, such as autogynephilia. You can read a short transcript on autogynephilia here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22005209/
I suspect, Ann, that you haven’t read the research you point to, or if you have you didn’t understand it, but none of it disputes the binary and immutable nature of human sex or any of the points made in my article.
Arguments have been made that because there are rare developmental conditions associated with anomalous chromosomal combinations that can result in ambiguous sex characteristics, that the categories male and female exist on a “spectrum,” or are simply “social constructs.” Such attempts to reframe sex as a social construct are a denial of material reality and are harmful to scientific discourse and research. And you appear to deliberately endorse these myths – probably by default through ignorance rather than any deliberate attempt to mislead.
But if you want the views of a real scientist, watch the video of world-renowned fertility expert Professor Lord Robert Winston, where he addresses the issue of whether people can change their sex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFHVV_GcykI
Your mistaken statements
about the law
You claim: “However, the bottom line is the law. The Equality Act (2010) protects trans people under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ from the start of social transition. It also gives trans individuals the right to be treated the same as any cisgendered person, and the right to access cisgendered only spaces and services. Businesses in our sector must ensure that this is possible for their teams and customers in all their sites.”
The first statement is misleading, the second is just wrong. Gender reassignment is indeed a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. But ‘gender’ per se is not. It is sex that is a protected characteristic.
The
UK Equality Act 2010 does not give trans people the absolute right to access
so-called ‘cisgendered’ only spaces and services. In fact, it sets out many
everyday situations where it is lawful to provide single sex services and
spaces that exclude trans people.
These include circumstances where a
person of one sex might “reasonably object” to the presence of a person of the
opposite sex. I refer you to the Equality Act 2010 – Schedule 3, paragraph 27 (6) and (7).
This would certainly include toilets, changing rooms and shower
facilities. How are hospitality venues
meant to manage this if we abandon objective categories like sex in favour of
the nebulous and ever-changing concept of gender? The solution is that facilities
such as toilets, changing rooms and showers need to remain segregated by sex.
And why? In order to preserve decency, dignity, privacy, and respect – that’s
why!
The
easy access toilet might be the most practical way to provide people who feel
uncomfortable with that segregation with a facility where they feel safe and
don’t make others feel unsafe. These are real issues for hospitality venues.
The TRUE feminist position on trans
issues
Let us return to your earlier statements
that you support women of “all genders” and that you are an “ardent feminist”.
Both these statements cannot be true. Real feminists recognise that women’s
rights, and for that matter gay rights, are sex based. They defend the
sex-based rights of women. You, on the other hand, believe that ‘woman’ is a
status that a man can identify into.
That belief has consequences. Let me give
you two examples: When American swimmer Lia Thomas - a male-to-female
transgender woman - competed against men in his own biological sex class he was
ranked 554th among competitors in the 200 metres freestyle event. Then he
transitioned into a trans woman and competed against biological women and ended
up winning an NCAA swimming title - beating two female Olympic medallists in
the process. I call this cheating. What
do you call it?
Take a look at the video below. It
features a male-to-female transgender ‘woman’ named Alaana McLaughlin in an MMA
contest against a female fighter. Despite the fact that McLaughlin had
undergone transgender surgery and had low levels of testosterone due to hormone
treatment, he beat his female opponent Tamikka Brents by bashing her up, and
then strangling her unconscious in the second round - while a baying mob of (mostly)
men cheered ‘her’ on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhwvOdThkJU
This is the grotesque position you put
yourself into, Ann, if you define the word ‘woman’ as anything other than
‘adult human female’.
The real feminists are women like JK
Rowling, Martina Navratilova, Olympic swimming medallist Sharon Davies; women
like Maya Forstater, Kathleen Stock, Joanna Cherry KC, MSP, and Rosie Duffield
MP - brave feminists – some famous, some unknown who have put their careers on
the line and been cancelled and threatened for holding gender critical views.
Below is a brief glimpse at some of their
stories:
The war against JK Rowling: How one woman became a hate
figure in the debate on gender and sex - The New European
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/jk-rowling-trans-culture-war/
Sixth form student, 18, claims she was hounded out of school
for challenging 'trans ideology' | Daily Mail Online
The handmaid’s fail | Graham Linehan | The Critic Magazine
Feminist
professor Kathleen Stock QUITS University of Sussex | Daily Mail Online
What
went wrong at the Tavistock clinic for trans teenagers? | Times2 | The Times
Transgender
schools guidance says discussing women's rights could be offensive
(telegraph.co.uk)
So, Ann, I hope you can see from
the stories referenced above the difference between real feminists prepared to
put their careers on the line, and someone for whom feminism is a punchline at
parties.
This little publicity stunt you’ve pulled will backfire on you Ann, because people will see it for the piece of opportunism it really is. You fail on every level in your attack on me because you don’t engage with the content of what I’ve written. Instead, like all my other critics, without exception, you resort to ad hominem attacks based on emotion uninformed by intellect, while expressing faux outrage. Your article in Propel Opinion was nothing more than a nasty piece of attention seeking, narcissistic virtue-signalling.
In conclusion
I challenge Ann Elliott to a
public debate in which she will have the opportunity to debunk all the claims
made in my article and I will defend them. And perhaps Paul Charity could
facilitate this debate – once he rediscovers his moral compass and grows a
pair.
Paul Chase
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