Hello dykes of all genders 🙂
I am very happy being in the Amsterdam Dyke March again. And even having been asked to address you about last Thursdays anti-trans youth health care conference at Amsterdam Free University and its context. My affiliation for today is with TransZorgNu coalition.
A couple of very wealthy old white cisgender heterophiliac [cishet in short] men including the Vatican are behind this wave of cishet normativity. Spending all their money on destroying our world by fighting climate deals, supporting Israel to destroy Palestine, the destruction of Congo for cheap minerals. And the destruction of our our protections, our rights and our livelihoods just because it doesn´t serve their fucking reactionary WASP beliefs and interests..
When you read the media you may think things aren’t that bad, it is good science to have everybody in scientific research about the effects of medical transitional support. The thing is: not when it is a form of blackmail: either you join the research or you won´t be able to get your health care. That is not granting someone their right to health care. Again that is blackmail. But it is the proposal for the UK and it is standing practice at Amsterdam University Medical Centre here in Amsterdam.
Then there is – not strongly here in the Netherlands yet, but they are trying – the very problematic concept the pseudoscientists are plugging. At that conference and elsewhere. Hilary Cass of the UK? infamous Cass Review that ditched some 90% of valid research in favour of a few that would be high quality. But everything she called substandard was positive for trans people. And the minister of public Health of the UK issued an order – an hour before the closing of the last health care committee debate before election closure of Parliament — that practically all trans kids are to be bereft of their hormone blockers prescriptions. Officially only in the private sector, but the NHS is practically dead in this respect. So a so-called scientific evaluation report that was called out of issues with the only trans youth clinic in London, led to a more or less total closure of health care for trans youth. No new patients allowed. Unless for ¨evaluation¨, which equals conversion therapy. England is a hellhole for trans youth these days.
Then this conference by the centre for family law also had the Wicked Witch of the North. Sorry for the true witches here 🙂 Riitakerttu Kaltiala is a doctor from Tampere Finland who does everything in her capabilities to take care that your child will not get trans health care. She is said to even call child protection service if you go to another team instead of her hostile team.
And then we have Chris Verhaak from the Nijmegen gender team, her in the country. A child psychologist who believes in the crap that goes with the ludicrous and scientifically torpedoed conspiracy theory of Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria. This absurd idea entails that trans people, and mostly “girls” are the victim of a social contagion. They tell each other through memes and videos how cool it is to be transgender.
Adhering parents hide under the flag of “4th wave now” 4th wave of white feminism they mean. And these parents are the ones dr Litmann who came with the idea of this Rapid Onset of gender dysphoria, got her affirming answers from.
The shitstorm we are in started eight to ten years ago in the USA where now hundreds of anti-trans bills are being proposed to the State Houses. And from 2020 the UK Tories started to create their own shitstorm. And now we will have an extreme rightwing government with real fascists here in the Netherlands. With an anti-trans agenda. An anti-queer agenda. And a racist agenda, and ableist of course.
That is why TransZorgNu called for a protest at the conference.We were some hundred people who joined the last minute protest. We made it very clear that we want self determination, not control. Our bodies, our choices. As trans people form different generations and as parents of trans kids and as allies and accomplices, we made noise, held speeches and promised to look after each other.
That conference is a great justification for the upcoming government to curtail budgets for trans health care. As good fascists they first aim for the most vulnerable ones. The undocumented people, the young queer and trans people, people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, the sex workers. All our siblings. For us, because we are not only standing in solidarity. We are those black and people of colour, sex workers, queers, young trans people, people with disabilities. That is why dykes need to be revolutionary, We have had years of relative calm and progressive policies for some. But others – our black and brown siblings and children have always faced racism and sexism and other evil. We stand for trans rights, for dyke rights. In my opinion we need to fight for equity and justice, for all of us. So we can all fuck and frolick around. Down with the default of the monogamous nuclear family. Down with compulsory hetrosexuality and compulsory cisness. And down with Israel and the USA. Up with Palestine. Up with queerness. Up with free consensual love and sex.
We stand for love and passion in any consensual form and do not accept when society tries to force us back in a closet. We will not have it. Not on our watch.
Aluta continua! No pasarán!
