by Josephine Bartosch, UnHerd (Photo: Unsplash)
Simon Blake, the man tasked with rebuilding Stonewall, displayed a brass neck, cloth ears and all the self-awareness of a teenage gamer in the Guardian this week. In an interview with Gaby Hinsliff, he bemoaned the plight of trans-identified people in Britain, recounting how friends and colleagues feel increasingly pessimistic about the future. Nowhere did Blake acknowledge that the charity he now leads helped create the confusion and distress he laments, or explain why so many lesbian, gay and bisexual people oppose the policies he backs.
Instead, Blake claimed that government guidance had curtailed trans-identified people’s access to public life, healthcare and workplace toilets, and produced the usual shroud-waving statistics about suicide. He recalled an evening out with friends: “They were frightened about going to the toilet — each time that someone went to the toilet, it was a question mark. That’s not the way anybody should be expected to live.”
The uncertainty his friends describe is, in large part, the consequence of Stonewall’s own campaigning. Under chief executives Ruth Hunt and then Nancy Kelley, the charity promoted gender self-identification as best practice for employers. It broadened “trans” to include cross-dressers, championed male “lesbians” such as the bearded psychotherapist Alex Drummond, and redefined “lesbian” and “gay” as same-gender rather than same-sex attraction. Kelley even likened lesbians’ sexual boundaries to “sexual racism”. All the while, Stonewall drew millions in public funding, enjoyed support across government and collected fees from roughly 850 employers.