Xandra goes full bitch!
Whenever anyone claims to want to have a ‘debate’ about the position of transgender people in society, no matter how ‘reasonable’ they may at first appear, no matter how much they claim not to be prejudiced, one need only scratch the surface to find the full-blown transphobe underneath. But nothing prepared me for the vertigo-inducing bigotry and stupidity of former Team GB Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies MBE.
In a Tweet on 1 July Davies stated,
”If you put 2 biological females on an island humanity dies out (but they’d talk loads) if you put a biological male & a trans female on an island humanity dies out. But if u put a male and a female there we might have a chance! Providing they can fish of course. Binary Sex matters.”
Yes, Sharron, dear. Thank you for stating the bleeding obvious. Nobody is denying that sexually reproducing species are dependent upon a sexual binary. At least not for now ~ I’ll get to that later. As to the rest of this Tweet, it is not only obviously transphobic ~ as Davies fully intended it to be so ~ but it is also homophobic, ableist, and it defies science in so many ways it’s simply not funny.
Sharron Davies used this analogy, she claims, to highlight the differences between biological females and transgender females. Yet, as just about every lesbian and gay person will recognise, it is an age old analogy which has often been used by homophobes, usually but not always of a religious bent (no pun intended, dears). It is straight out of the “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” stable, in an attempt to discriminate against homosexuals, with people with as much of an understanding of human behaviour, biology, gender, and sexuality as Sharron Davies evidently has. Indeed, one person replying on Twitter posted an old Spanish homophobic comic strip using the same sort of argument.
But the analogy is also ableist. Let us assume Sharron’s island, with a cisgender man and woman the only inhabitants. What if one or both of them is infertile? What if the woman has been born without a womb (it happens)? What if the man is born without or has lost his testes (it also happens)? What if the woman is post-menopausal, and thereby no longer producing eggs? What hope humanity then? There is obviously none.
And of course, what if one or more of their offspring turn out to be gay, or “Gulp! Horror!” transgender? What hope humanity then? Although to be fair, if it were a transgender girl and a cisgender girl, or a transgender boy and cisgender boy, there is still the possibility of reproducing. Newsflash, Sharron; some transgender people do raise families of their own, whereby a transgender man (biological female) is willing to be impregnated and give birth, or a transgender woman (biological male) is willing to impregnate a cisgender woman. That does not in any way diminish their identity as transgender. Know why? Because biological sex has nothing to do with gender, and even genitalia itself does not have a gender. There is no such thing as a male penis or a female vagina.
Thomas Beatie and family
In 2008, Thomas Trace Beatie, an American transgender man who still had a womb, gave birth to his first child, a daughter. This was followed by two more children, both boys, in 2009 and 2010. In 2018, English transgender man Hayden Cross put off fully transitioning to have a child, a beautiful little girl. I am well aware that Sharon Davies and those who think like her would scream that these people were both biologically ‘female’.
Hayden Cross and daughter
However, as much as they may still have their ‘lady bits’, Thomas Beatie and Hayden Cross are indeed mentally men. Or is Sharron suggesting that men can’t have babies, like they have no right to do so? Thomas Beatie, in an interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show stated, “I have a very stable male gender identity. I see pregnancy as a process, and it doesn’t define who I am. It’s not a male or female desire to want to have a child—it’s a human desire… I’m a person, and I have the right to have my own biological child.” There it is – it’s a human desire. And if Sharron Davies wishes to argue against that, and try to argue that only women have the right to bear children, can we add misandry (hatred of men) to her ever-growing list of prejudices?
And of course uterine transplants for transgender women are just around the corner. While uterine transplants are still in their infancy, they have been carried out in some countries for women who have a ‘dead’ or damaged uterus, or those born without one. While there have been complications with some pregnancies, which sadly have not gone full term, in September 2012 the first baby was born from a uterine transplant in Sweden. In 2017 a baby boy was born to a woman with a uterine transplant in Dallas, Texas, USA.
The next logical step is of course uterine transplants for transgender women, to enable them to become fully ‘women’ – “biological females” Sharron Davies might call them. And of course this terrifies some transphobes. “No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight.” wrote Germaine Greer in 1999. Really? Because obviously Greer, who is very strong in asserting that no man can know the workings of the female mind, suddenly has some magical insight into the workings of the transgender mind? Right? In fact, personally I have few regrets in life, but one of my biggest ones is that I was never a parent. As Thomas Beatie said, that is a human drive, not a female one. And there are transgender women aplenty who would dearly love to experience motherhood. It may also interest the likes Greer to learn that the world’s first transgender woman to undergo a ‘sex change’, Lili Elbe, died due to complications from a failed uterine transplant. But Lili Elbe died 92 years ago, when medical science in the field of sex assignment surgery was in its infancy. The very fact that cisgender women can now have successful uterine transplants means that they are now not far off for transgender women. Indeed, large obstacles to this happening appear to be on “ethical” and religious grounds. These pillars must also soon crumble, and when they do, Sharron Davies and those who think like her will have their minds blown. Oh, and if you didn’t notice it, that blows your claims in your Tweet out of the water, Sharrony-poos.
But then, Sharron may completely discount all this sciencey stuff, as she patently doesn’t believe that it does any good. In another Tweet, Sharron stated, “I’m not really religious but I’m not really sure messing with biology is very healthy in the long term. Evolution is pretty good at getting it right.” There you have it folks; Sharron Davies does not believe in mucking about with biology (and it that’s not anti-trans, you tell me what is) long term. Oh, except of course when she had her boob job, and the Botox she took for 20 years, which she claimed was the only way for her to look good.
And don’t get me wrong; Ms Davies does look good. She looks nowhere near her 56 years and is a stunningly beautiful and sexy woman. So how does she do it? Well, in an interview in Hello magazine in April 2016, Sharron stated;
“I’d been having Botox and fillers since my late thirties – not because I want to appear to be a different age but to look the best I can at any age – and this new procedure has worked wonders for me in a soft, subtle way. I was recommended it by my cosmetic doctor, Dr Tracy Mountford of The Cosmetic Skin Clinic who has been looking after all my cosmetic needs for many years, which is why I decided to have the Silhouette Soft treatment to my brow as it has niggled me for years. I’ve always trusted her advice because she is known for soft, subtle enhancement procedures, and it’s important for me to look natural and refreshed.”
Sharron Davies had a boob job after having her third and final child, and stated in the same interview of cosmetic surgery;
”It frustrates me when I know people are going off to have similar treatments are claiming the way they look is all down to eating organic food and sleeping well. When it comes to gravity and age, there is no magic formula.”
So, it is somehow wrong for transgender women (and men) to “mess with biology”, but when it comes to a cisgender women like herself, suddenly that’s okay for Ms Sharron Davies, and indeed, is the only way she thinks she can look healthy and youthful? Has it ever crossed that small grey thing between Sharron’s ears that her forty plus years of swimming, and her energetic lifestyle, which includes walking and cycling may just have a wee bit to do with that as well?
And she has the utter gall to decry transgender women while at the same time admitting to having Botox treatment. Sharron, dearie, while many transgender people may go to great lengths to make themselves look more natural, I’ll think you’ll find that few of them, like most human beings, tend to veer away from having a deadly poison injected into their system. And should you wish to argue that, let me point out that “Botox” is an abbreviation for botulinum toxin. It is wholly alien to the human body, and while there are various medical uses, they come with their own dangers, including ranging from allergic reaction to muscle weakness, paralysis, seizures, respiratory arrest, and death.
In researching this, I also discovered that Sharron Davies is quite the dog lover – good on her – and has been photographed with various breeds of dogs, from pugs to lurchers. She obviously cares very much about them. So much so that obviously she’s willing to ignore the fact that each and every single one of these breeds is down to “messing with biology” and ignoring evolution. This just in, Sharron; had mankind not messed with biology and evolution, then all those dogs would still be wolves, and would have eaten you, luv.
Human evolution, in the way it has left our species, is terrible. And Ms Davies while claiming not to be religious is nonetheless coming across like an intelligent design proponent. What’s so great about our bodies? Our heads that are too large for our spindly necks and our skulls too thin to protect the brain. The oesophagus being dangerously close to the trachea can cause us to choke. The appendix is more likely to kill us than be of any use. In men the testicles have to hang outside the body to keep sperm cool, thereby making one of the most sensitive parts of the body extremely vulnerable. Also in men, we have the penis serving as a delivery system for both urine and sperm. In both men and women, the genitalia are way too close to the anus, which can easily cause infections. Our ankles are too spindly to support the entire fame. Our bodies rot with age, causing various problems in the bones and organs. Our hearing goes, and most people over 40 need some sort of corrective lenses for their eyesight. This is why we rely upon “messing with biology” to keep us healthy and give us much longer lives than our ancestors. You know, Sharron? In exactly the same way that medical science has allowed you to live into your 50s.
Of course, Sharron Davies may argue that on her imaginary island, there wouldn’t be all this science. No, there wouldn’t be ~ and most people would die in their 30s, if they survived at all, due to another little fact which she didn’t consider.
No matter what the Bible may tell you, you cannot propagate an entire population from two adults. Well, you can try, and the results may be good for swimmers like Sharron in a few generations – due to their webbed feet. I believe the minimum of healthy adults you would need would be 160 (or have I been watching too much of Salvation on Netflix?), and they would have to unrelated. If not, then within just a few generations you would have a population of incestuous, inbred idiots, with a host of congenital defects, eyes so crossed that each eye would be in the wrong socket, and who would need a week’s notice to stop grinning. Oh, and with each passing generation, life expectancy would decrease dramatically, and infant mortality would become commonplace. In fact, such a population may not make it to a few generations before dying out completely.
Sharron Davies came in for a lot of stick from her original Tweet, and she attempted to climb down from it. At 2:14am (been on the wine, Sharron?) on 2 July, she Tweeted, “My goodness peeps are overthinking the island analogy.. it’s just a way of saying – humans to reproduce need the binary sexes. Sex & gender are different, sex is non changeable. Nothing to do with being gay. This relates to sport & male biology in females races being unfair.”
The only factual statement in that Tweet is “Sex & gender are different”. The rest is rubbish. We already know that sex is indeed changeable. We already know that the original Tweet is an ages-old homophobic trope. And as to sport, what exactly is fair about the fact that the vast majority of transgender athletes do not win, and its only when they do win that people like Sharron Davies throw a hissy fit? Where are all the transgender women Olympic gold medallist swimmers, Sharron? What is exactly fair about runner Caster Semenya, a cisgender woman, being banned from running due to having large amounts of testosterone in her body? And if it all about women in sport, perhaps Ms Davies would like to explain why she never once mentioned such in her original Tweet?
No. Davies can try to claim she was not being bigoted all she wants. But the fact remains that her original analogy was deliberately transphobic, it used an old homophobic argument, which also, not matter how inadvertently, castigated every woman unable to bear children, and every man unable to father such, for medical reasons, as well as demonstrating her complete ignorance of science.
And if we are to take Ms Davies claims of not being bigoted seriously, then why did she post that second Tweet, in which she ignorantly condemned “messing with biology”? How else are we to take that other than an attack upon transgender people ~ particularly coming from a hypocrite who has had a boob job and Botox treatment? Indeed, how are we to take her comment “Sex is non changeable” other than a complete denial of the very existence of transgender people? The fact is that Sharron Davies is yet another transphobe who is trying to have gender defined by biological sex, despite her saying that they’re not the same thing. Bad news for her and her ilk; that is not how science defines gender. Without going into the sciencey bits (to spare Shazza’s limited intellect), but to use the old adage, sex occurs between the legs, gender occurs between the ears.
There were quite a few people who attacked Sharron Davies on Twitter, and some of their comments were rude and abusive. I would never do that. It only gives Davies and the rest of the TERF army ammunition, while they try to claim they are only exercising their freedom of speech and expression. No, I’d sooner use her own words to completely condemn her, which I hope to have done in this article. Yes she does have freedom of speech and expression, but with that right comes responsibilities, including not abusing it to attempt to malign entire sections of society. Well, I too have freedom of speech and expression, and so long as I have that right, I shall use it to fully expose and call to account unintelligent bigots like Sharron Davies.
My favourite transgender cartoonist Sophie Labelle, creator of Assigned Male Comics and colouring books which challenge gender stereotypes and teach children that it is normal to be whoever they are, has made it to the Trans Advocate.
Xandra 
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