Manchester, United Kingdom. I write this as a Quaker who is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, and supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.

In Great Britain this is described as gender reassignment or sex change.


The total misalignment of the sex of the brain with the sex of the body is a rare medical condition and frequently confused with the transgender political movement to advance the acceptance in society of transvestites, cross dressers, drag artists and any other expression of perceived variance to society defined female or male presentation. As a Quaker I have no issue with those who chose to be transgender and express it how they wish.



Maggie Fiona Fox is a Member of the Manchester and Warrington Area Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

In this article, Ms. Fox provides a Quaker's explanation of the transexual medical condition and the negative impact of transgender politics.But unfortunately, their politics — including their alignment with the gay and lesbian movement — continues to cause major harm to children born transsexual and their integration as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens into society.

• Gender Expression is a creation of our culture and evolution.
  
  
• Gender Identity is a perception, a feeling, an emotion and the subject of much academic debate which is not the purpose of this tract.

Neither should be confused with sexuality or the politics of sexuality.

The term transgender (and trans-etc.) is not a legitimate umbrella term to include those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment because the definition cannot include those within the protected gender reassignment category who identify solely with their reassigned sex.

The meanings of transgender and gender reassignment are also mutually exclusive:

• Transgender (adjective) denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender;
  
  
• Gender Reassignment (noun) the process whereby a person's physical sexual characteristics are changed by means of medical procedures.

Here are the facts about the transsexual medical condition:

• A child born with it knows (not feels) they have body parts they cannot accept.
  
  
• They realise this at the start of conscious thought.

The scientific explanation for this is not yet definitive but there is compelling evidence that the formation of the fetus from the zygote deviates from the standard model through sex hormone interaction.

As a scientist I can reasonably say “we don't know” but that does not mean that children born transsexual become the product of socio-political medicine that favors nurture over nature.

One thing is for certain — the condition is not a mental illness.

Gillick competence is a term originating in England and is used in medical law to decide whether a child (16 years or younger) is able to consent to his or her own medical treatment, without the need for parental permission or knowledge. Any child until it is considered Gillick competent is subjected to the control of their parents that are influenced by Government and religion.

In Great Britain the Department Of Health decrees that the child is considered mentally ill and psychiatrists will diagnose gender identity disorder, a diagnosis a psychiatrist can only confirm post puberty and which is considered incurable. The scandal is that despite General Practitioners having the legal right to prescribe puberty delaying drugs to a Gillick competent child they are encouraged to send the child to a Gender Identity Clinic where such a prescription will be refused.

Psychiatry, backed by the transgender politicians, fails to acknowledge that transsexual is a temporary state to describe the period between declaration of a intention of permanent change and completed hormonal reconstitution and surgical correction and that surgery cures the mismatch between the sex of the brain and the body.

With the same degree of scientific validity as “Eight out of ten cat owners who expressed a preference said their cats preferred it”, psychiatrists hide behind the statement that “The Endocrine Society found that 75-80% of children who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria before they reached puberty did not have the condition after puberty.”

This illustrates the danger of confusion of gender expression, sexuality and the transexual medical condition resulting in an unwarranted increased demand for psychiatric involvement. There is no reason why a General Practitioner cannot manage the transsexual medical condition once the politics of transgender are taken out of the equation.

If you suspected your child was gay or lesbian you would be accused of child abuse if you were to send them to a psychiatric institution to be cured of their sexuality yet both parents of transgender and transsexual children are encouraged to take them to one. The 20th century notion of adult transsexual being a bad outcome for a gay or lesbian children still dominates psychiatry.

The earliest possible hormonal and physical intervention produces the best result in terms of the ability to integrate into society something the transgender politicians do not want to see as they gain by the creation of sociological divisions. Better an obvious transgender than an integrated and indistinguishable male or female. It is the Gay Ghetto approach to a life of victimhood. Something that same-sex marriage defeats in the the world of Gay politics.

Somehow the Department of Health must be dragged into the 21st Century where mental illness are not defined by sexuality obsessed psychiatrists. It is 40 years plus since lesbian and gay people were freed from the stigma of mental illness not by science but by direct and disruptive political action.

It is but 10 years since the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights that confirmed that people who have irrevocably brought the sex of their body into alignment with their brain have the same human rights as someone classified as that sex from birth as the rights to privacy and family life were being infringed.

This resulted in the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which — incredibly — enshrined the mental illness position into statute requiring a report from a Government approved Gender Specialist. Fortunately not all of them are psychiatrists and no one would want to be seen to block a post surgical applicant so there is a work around. It is worth noting that of all these specialists only one has actually transitioned.

There is no requirement for surgery to have taken place. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 essentially states:

Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person's gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person's sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person's sex becomes that of a woman.

The birth certificate recognised sex has two main exceptions that are a right of conscience for church clergy (who are normally obliged to marry any two eligible people by law), and the descent of peerages.

In terms of numbers there are less than 3,500 people in Great Britain who have acquired a new birth certificate. A majority of these were granted based on genital surgery in the immediate period after the Act passed into statute.

This is the only reliable statistic available compared to the exaggerated numbers of transgender claimed by trans-activists who demand that anyone who has successfully completed legal transition and surgery must be forced to give up their Human Rights so they can be officially classified as trans-man” or trans-woman”. That is blatant discrimination by trans-activists.

The GB Equalities and Human Rights Commission adult gender monitoring guidelines also currently breach the GB Gender Recognition Act and the European Court ruling.

There is no basis in law for monitoring that someone has a sex now different to that at birth. Legality of course has never been a concern for the Department of Health or psychiatrists or transgender politicians.

The protected characteristic in the Single Equality Act 2010 is gender reassignment and the Act states that a person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

Also, there is a reference to discrimination because the discriminator perceived the person to have a protected characteristic or is associated with it. This may be the basis of political lobby groups trying to extend the meaning of transgender to apply this law to all trans-anything. However, the law will require evidence of perception.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 states that a person must be assumed to have the capacity to make decisions even if those decisions may be considered irrational unless there is medical evidence that the person lacks capacity to make decisions. It covers gender reassignment in that a person cannot be forced to accept psychiatric treatment to provide work for psychiatrists.

That a decision may appear to be foolish or unwise to someone, such as the Department of Health, is not evidence of this.

The successful treatment of gender identity disorder requires a surgical intervention (Gender Reassignment Surgery), so legally it must relate to a physical disability. Psychiatric interventions have never been successful on their own in addressing gender identity disorder.

Any Department of Health policy that contradicts the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is unlawful and invalid. Someone who has acquired their legal sex through the Gender Recognition Act 2004 has the same rights as someone allocated that sex at birth. However, provision is made to legally discriminate against those that retain their male genitalia. For example, the exception applies in terms of recruiting personal care workers and such women may be charged with rape.

The legal right to state funded gender reassignment genital surgery was acquired in 1999. A person who has their sex confirmed by the Gender Registration Act has the same right to genital reconstructive surgery at the hospital of their choice — with the surgeon of their choice — and in the same way as that of any other human being that seeks correction of a disability. For the Department of Health to require an approval process or time period in excess of that required legally to obtain a gender recognition certificate and new birth certificate is sex discrimination.

All of this occurs because of a fundamental deceit that transsexual and transgender people are mentally ill and opportunist transgender politicians who claim to speak for a medical condition they don't have and don't understand.

Quakers affirm same-sex marriage, which is believed to be a fundamental human right, so it logical to affirm the right of those who want to identify as transgender to actually be transgender. However, transgender is a chosen political statement and cannot legally be forced on someone against their will by Government or any other Agency or person.

Additionally:

• A Gillick competent child must allowed to obtain puberty delaying drugs without parental or psychiatric approval in the same way as a child may obtain contraception.
  
  
• Quakers therefore should also affirm that the transsexual medical condition is not a mental illness and is cured by surgery.
  
  
• Quakers should also affirm and that children must be given the best possible chance to integrate onto society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected male or female citizens.

We are now in the 21st century.

Peace, Love and Light
Maggie Fox