WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT STONEWALL

Stonewall and the problematization of same-sex attraction. It's with a heavy heart that I explore why Stonewall is an active threat to gay, lesbian and bisexual rights in the UK today.

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In 1989- the year I entered the world - Stonewall was founded. Created in response to Section 28 it aimed to champion the human rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual people. In many ways I have an incredible amount to thank this organisation for, given that post 1997, led by figures like Ian McKellan overcame many barricades standing in the way of gay rights. The Stonewall of pre-2014 truly helped transform the lives of gay kids the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

I still recall the day I first realised my homosexuality set me apart from the rest of the crowd at school. It was a warm sunny day at Jordanhill Secondary in Glasgow, and I and a few classmates were larking about on the-then still red-gravel playing fields in front of the main building. I was secondary three, another kid in the same school year as myself trotted over with a glint in his eye. He had learned something, and was eager to play a joke and try it out. Asking us all the question ‘are you heterosexual or homosexual?’ At the time, while Section 28 had been repealed by the New Labour government, the shadow of it in the teaching culture undoubtedly remained. Thus, none of us had any idea what the terms meant at all. Taking the odds we all individually just plucked for one or other of the unknown terms.

A few of the crowd said homosexual - the kid with the glint in his eye cackled in delight. He grandly revealed ‘ah! so you like men!’ The laughter spread round the group. I had said heterosexual, and I still recall that burning fear I felt when I realised that I was different. That that ‘gay’ synonym for the negative or the aberrant was me. The shame at my own same-sex attraction washed over me alongside a bizarre relief I had opted to say heterosexual. ‘Good, I can keep this hidden’. And I did, all the way until I was 25, drinking heavily and no longer functionally coping with my secret.

My purpose in discussing my own story is to highlight and underscore two points right up front. I sincerely adore the Stonewall that once was. It pushed for my rights when I was growing up and running away from the fight rather than helping. Secondly, that the issue of homosexuality - how it is defined and the centrality of biological sex - for me is hardly an academic question. This isn’t an issue where I am much interested in adaptations in the name of inclusivity, not when it is my life.

LGBT - a brief history of an acronym

My emphasis on the Stonewall that once was is deliberate. In 2014 the appointment of then-CEO, Ruth Hunt fundamentally altered the organisation. In the name of ‘greater inclusivity’¹, Ms Hunt would institute changes that functionally served - to my perspective at least - to chuck gay and lesbians under the proverbial bus.

Ex-CEO of Stonewall and recently appointed Baroness of Bethnal Green, Ruth Hunt

At this point it is important to emphasise that while the ‘LGBT’ acronym always stood to acknowledge these were often similarly marginalised groups, it never implied a quartet of equals. Gay men’s interests and narratives often trumped lesbians, and bisexuals were very much marginal to the former two. Transgender was a complete afterthought. This LGBT acronym had always been laden with bubbling resentments and an unfair hierarchy which had never emphasised equality between the marginalised rights groups. Let’s not rewrite history to pretend deficiencies were never present.

Nevertheless, at its core however, the mission statement had never been in doubt: society should accept that discrimination on basis of sexual attraction was not acceptable. In this regard, the alignment of the ‘L’, ‘G’ and ‘B’ made complete sense.

But the inclusion of the ‘T’ has always served as something of a faultline if not tension in the movement. The historical modus operandi for operating the LGBT together focused on the reality that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people all shared a difficult relationship with societal expectations concerning conventional gender expectations.

What is ‘gender identity’

However with the new rise of ‘gender identity’ we come to a fundamental problem pulling the acronym - at least to my mind - apart. And this is where Stonewall and Ruth Hunt and her heirs step back into the foreground. Stonewall has since 2014 embraced the gender identity crowd, presumably viewing it as a providing a new sense of relevance and purpose now that the legal rights of the ‘L’, ‘G’ and ‘B’ have largely been obtained.

Modern day trans-activism and Stonewall’s new sense of purpose - is based on ‘gender identity’. Gender identity advocates argue that we all have an innate sense of our own gender, inwardly and deep down. This sense of our own gender is part of our core, and according to this concept trans people have a gender identity which does not align with their biological sex.

But this is where many critics such as myself find myself unable to accept this concept. It’s vital that we fully understand that when talking about gender we’re really discussing the conventional societal expectations of what a ‘man’ is and a ‘woman’ is. Boys wear blue, girls wear pink. In this sense its an external - not internal - thing. Gender is hardly an innate thing, it’s a much more mailable expression of the prevailing orthodoxies surrounding ‘gender’ stereotypes of the day.

Take the whole thing about boys wear blue, girls wear pink, a few hundred years ago that gender stereotype was inverted. In the court of Versailles under the Bourbon monarchs blue was symbolic - like green - of the gentle pastel colours of nature and thus was seen as ‘feminine’, whereas pink was loud, vivacious and dominating and thus viewed as ‘masculine’. This changed and flipped over time. The point here is simple, ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are merely a collection in large part of stereotypical characteristics reflective of the cultural mood du jour.

The ‘gender identity’ advocates refuse to accept that these - often quite harmful - gender stereotypes are external and buffeting us. Instead they insist on the pretence that it is inward. But the claim that it is inward means that ‘I am not a man because of my biological sex’ instead, ‘I am a man because I identify with the sex stereotypes of being a man’.

It becomes obvious why many people - including many feminists - see this as inherently regressive. The binary gender stereotypes are regressive, external and imposed by thee cultural mores of the day. I for one decline to feel bound definitionally by them or seek to base my concept of ‘male’ or ‘female’ based on something so fluid and malleable. Instead, perhaps, biological sex is a more reliable core for defining male or female?

Now Stonewall has opted to go all in on the gender identity concept these days. Personally, I can’t avoid thinking there is something of the Saint George slaying the last dragon syndrome about Stonewall today. The dragon is dead, there are no more monsters to dispatch, so St George is reduced to roaming the Welsh countryside slaying ever smaller beasts of the land in pursuit of continued relevance and purpose.

Changing definitions

Let us look at Stonewall and how it chooses to define and in some cases redefine what words mean.

Stonewall defines homophobia as:

“The fear or dislike of someone, based on prejudice or negative attitudes, beliefs or views about lesbian, gay or bi people. Homophobic bullying may be targeted at people who are, or who are perceived to be, lesbian, gay or bi.”²

It defines transphobia as:

“The fear or dislike of someone based on the fact they are trans, including denying their gender identity or refusing to accept it. Transphobia may be targeted at people who are, or who are perceived to be, trans.”³

And now look at how they have chosen to re-define homosexuality:

“This might be considered a more medical term used to describe someone who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender. The term ‘gay’ is now more generally used.”⁴

Can you see the trick the Stonewall of post 2014 has tried to pull off there? No? Let me explain. Redefining homosexual from ‘same sex attraction’ (which is what we are) instead to ‘same gender attraction’ really isn’t academic and is profoundly important to gay people such as myself.

Stonewall is insisting that gay people are sexually attracted to anyone with the same gender identity. Regardless of whether that person is biologically male or female. This idiotic nonsense has real world homophobic consequences.

If a lesbian says ‘I am a lesbian, I am sexually attracted to female bodies’, she is now a transphobe. Being gay or lesbian is suddenly problematised and I am thrown back into the abyss of the Section 28 era. All thanks to Stonewall and its pathetic search for a new reason for being.

I am gay, I am a man who is only sexually attracted to male bodies (and yes, this means I really like the male genitalia!) I refuse to be told my insistence on same-sex attraction is ‘transphobic’. I recall a fellow member of the Scottish Labour constituency branch condemning me as a transphobe for making this very point, I was told by this teenager that I should get over “genitals hang-up”. It was the first time in a long time I had faced such genuine, in your face, homophobic bigotry. And it is all thanks to the gender-identity crowd and Stonewall of post 2014 rendering same-sex attraction problematic.

It is incredibly painful to admit, but Stonewall has succeeded in re-problematising homosexuality, for it is an unalterable fact that being gay is to be sexually attracted to those of the same sex. I am not that kid in the school playground anymore, I will no longer allow others to bully me into disliking an innate part of myself. I am gay, I am sexually attracted to people of the same sex, and if Stonewall and the trans-activists of the modern era dislike this they can take a very long run off of an extremely short pier. My sexuality isn’t a problem, your nonsense theories concerning gender are.

My life isn’t some academic game of ‘inclusivity’ for these people to play around with. Let’s face facts, Stonewall has become a problem for LGB people and gender identity poses a threat to the hard won gains gay, lesbian and bisexual people have secured since I was born.

1. Stonewall: ‘2015: Stonewall extends remit to become LGBT charity and begins journey to trans inclusion’, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/2015-stonewall-extends-remit-become-lgbt-charity-and-begins-journey-trans

2. Stonewall: ‘List of LGBTQ+ terms’, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/list-lgbtq-terms

3. ibid

4. ibid