Some barriers shouldn't be broken down

From neurodiversity to gender ideology - there's something queer going on.

As you might have seen from my last but one piece on Substack - I spoke at the weekend at a debate about neurodiversity and gender dysphoria, and the problem of over-diagnosis. I also, by coincidence, fell into another debate happening in another room on the topic of the ‘Queering of Society’ shortly after. A fascinating discussion that raised very similar questions, both about the topic at hand and about the nature of the discussions we were having. Both were at the wonderful annual festival of free speech that is the Battle of ideas. And we had a lot to get our heads around.

Graham Linehan, he of Father Ted and latterly women’s rights’ fame, made some interesting points about how the ‘queer spaces’ of old have changed - or at least changed their role and position in society. He talked about the old John Waters films that featured misfits - like the drag queen Divine; and Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York, where the likes of Candy Darling and others would congregate. These were, to use today’s parlance, safe spaces for strange and often quite unwell people. As a fan of Warhol, and a fan of Waters’ original Hairspray movie, this all made a lot of sense to me. Though, I suppose they weren’t that safe when you consider the tragic ends some of these troubled souls went on to meet.

They were very much on the margins. That was the point. But as those Waters films entered the mainstream - Hairspray featured talk show host Ricky Lake alongside Divine as her mother - the dynamic changed. The Warhol stars, by comparison, while immortalised in his cult films, only gained wider notice through Lou Reed songs like Walk on the Wild Side. Waters’ films, said Linehan, became less a celebration of these bizarre and wonderful outsiders than a way of attacking the straights (in both senses) for what we might today refer to as their heteronormativity. It was a way of putting the marginal centre stage and dethroning the mainstream or (dare I say it?) the normal.

While, as Linehan argued, part of the point was to portray the majority as very dull folk (the cisgender flag, he told us, is very deliberately grey); it is also the case, as a few noted, that rainbow flags seem to be everywhere these days. They are the only flag -other than our national and union flags - that are routinely flown outside official buildings, and up and down our high streets. There is something quite deliberately imposing about them - daring you to stand against what has become the new orthodoxy. Seeking to out the supposed bigots who dare to question this new ideology unfurling itself in the public square. And yet there are those like Kate Harris, co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance, who are fighting what they would regard as an ideology that is itself inherently homophobic.

Queer is also, as somebody said, inherently unstable and chaotic. In becoming the new mainstream, it is an outlook that has not only become quite boring; but also quite concerning. It is, as one insightful audience member put it, one of a ‘suite of things putting us on the wrong side of history’. Or at least that is the claim. Others spoke of the way it has captured the education of mental health professionals, and how it has created a ‘queer loophole’ in safeguarding arrangements with the appearance of ‘LGBT clubs’ in schools. On the panel, James Esses, co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists, took us through a list of Queer-endorsed oddities involving everything from children to animals, and spoke of the power it gives children over their parents.

There are, as Esses’ co-panelist sociologist and author Frank Furedi, put it: ‘no more barriers to break’. Queer theory - actually, he disputed it is a theory - has only a ‘corrosive’ impact on society and its most basic values. It is, he said, just ‘another word for dehumanisation’. It’s not prejudiced or prudish to object to certain behaviours as perverse or immoral. As if raising kids in a loving family is no different from getting your fetish gear on and parading through the streets. It’s not just a matter of drawing the lines differently to the past - as some argue. There appears to be an aversion to the drawing of any lines at all.

There is a ‘language’ element to this - picked up at the Queering debate. But also by an audience member who talked about the use of pronouns in the workplace, in the other discussion about neurodiversity and gender dysphoria. Instead of trying to convince anybody of the case for some very peculiar notions, there’s a heavy-handed attempt to simply change the words we use and their meanings. And a ‘philosophical’ one too, as Sophie Spital - writer and former editor at Triggernometry - described it. Men don’t just want to pass as women anymore, she argued. They say they are women. As I said in my introduction, the situation is reversed for those who insist they can identify as neurodiverse. As if it’s some kind of choice they make.

We are expected to think differently about differences. As long as we don’t pass judgement. This applies as much to autism as it does to autogynephilia. Add to this ‘theory’ the school visits from the likes of the discredited trans kids' charity Mermaids - that a member of the audience described as so impactful on young minds - and you can surely imagine the damage done? The increasingly therapeutic education that schools have been providing for some time now, has also encouraged a culture in which young people think of themselves as vulnerable, mentally unwell and in need of psychological support. As the retired community paediatrician on the panel, Dr Jennifer Cunningham, explained.

In both debates, the subject of there being a lack of diversity of opinion came up. An audience member, for instance, describing the views on the Queering panel as ‘homogenous’. Perhaps. But that is to take battling a little too literally. Indeed, the polarisation exists already outside of Church House in Wesminster, where the event was taking place. One side, the orthodox side, is getting all the favourable treatment despite lacking any good arguments. Perhaps its time for the rest of us to work out amongst ourselves what’s going on.

And anyway, as Harris made all too clear, some folk have been trying to have debates with those on the other side. But have met only with silence at best. Indeed the LGB Alliance was set up because Stonewall refused to engage with her concerns over the impact of trans ideology on women’s rights and same sex attracted people. Furedi went further, making the point that the whole notion of the Queer worldview requires that people’s ‘identity must be validated’. As Esses said, the LBGT motto is that there can be no debate.

While solutions might seem a long way off, there was agreement between speakers across the sessions. ‘Don’t affirm!’ said Sophie Spital on so-called trans kids. We would’t encourage their delusions if they were suffering from anorexia or if they were self-harming. ‘Affirm reality!’ agreed James Esses in the other room. Dr Az Hakeem, the psychiatrist on the panel with us, and author of Trans and Detrans, described gender dysphoria in kids as a sub-culture. While he and others went on to ask whether mobile phones, the internet, and parents have had a role to play in the creation of their kids’ distress, I rather agreed with Cunningham that parent blaming isn’t the answer.

An understandable cynicism has crept into the discussion of neurodiversity, mental health and special educational needs - particularly as they apply to children. The tendency to blame behaviour problems on neurodiversity impacts us too. All of us, whether we have kids with diagnoses or not, don’t know what to believe anymore. As I argued during the discussion, it is the very uncertainty about what causes conditions like ASD or what underlies the huge rise in referrals for, and diagnoses of, ADHD - that makes them such a sponge for people’s needs. Having said that, this is territory I think we do need to get into. We do need to ask, as I said in my introduction, what is really going on.

Maybe, as was said in that debate, what some of these supposedly neurodiverse and gender dysphoric kids actually need is real connections with people. The chronically online need to spend more time in the offline world. Autistic people (if that is what they really are) tend to struggle at relationships with other people at the best of times. But still, I think they have a point. The following day, coincidentally enough, I took part in a debate about community and belonging …

Image: Tomasz Molina