The Trans Mania Isn’t Over Just Yet

The trans insanity owns the institutions! "A few legal wins cannot dismantle an ideology embedded across media, medicine, academia, and the civil service ..."

From The European Conservative

By Lauren Smith

It will take more than changing the law or government to win back institutions from gender ideologues.

It's tempting to declare that the trans mania has passed. In the U.S., Donald Trump’s re-election has heralded an administration that recognises reality. In the UK, the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex marked a stunning victory against the legal primacy of gender ideology. One recent poll showed that the number of young Americans identifying as transgender has dropped by almost half in two years. 

But has the worst really passed? We learnt this week that the BBC has been captured by trans activists, who, according to a leaked internal dossier by former Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee advisor Michael Prescott, refused to cover stories that did not fit a pro-trans narrative and fought to keep gender-critical perspectives off air. Their actions led to a “a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories … celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity,” the memo said. In it, Prescott also raised the issue of the BBC confusing its audience by neglecting to be clear about whether the subjects of news stories—particularly criminals—were transgender. BBC News articles about crimes committed by trans-identifying men would often describe the perpetrator as “a transgender woman” without explaining he was a biological male. Even worse, criminals would sometimes be referred to only as “a woman.” In one particularly egregious example of this, a presenter on the BBC’s One O’Clock News reported that “a woman” named Scarlet Blake had murdered a factory worker in Oxford, but failed to mention that Blake was actually transgender. This omission was repeated in online articles about the case. The BBC did later admit that this was a mistake and corrected the error, but it is astonishing that the broadcaster did not initially feel the need to include this vital piece of information. 

It doesn’t seem like much has changed, either. Also this week, the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) upheld a complaint against one of its presenters who refused to use trans-activist language on air this summer. While the teleprompter script wanted Martine Croxall to describe expectant mothers as “pregnant people,” she rolled her eyes and quickly corrected herself, saying “pregnant women” instead. Twenty members of the public wrote in to complain about Croxall, and the ECU has now decided to rule against her—not only because of her use of the word “women,” but also because of her facial expression, which the ECU said showed “disgust, ridicule, contempt or exasperation.” The unit also pointed to the fact that gender-critical people had cheered her on online, and this was apparently proof that she had expressed “a controversial view about trans people.” 

In the UK, there’s still a long way to go before the trans debate can be considered over. Last weekend, women’s rights activists gathered in London, Cardiff, and Edinburgh to demand that the Supreme Court’s ruling actually be implemented. Despite the ruling back in April, many institutions are still refusing to implement it and are insisting that male and female be defined by gender, rather than sex. Cambridge University’s oldest women-only college, Newnham College, is still accepting men who ‘identify’ as women. Doctors from the British Medical Association dismissed it as “scientifically illiterate.” More than six months on, NHS Scotland is yet to publish its updated guidance on single-sex spaces in light of the ruling, and it took months for the Scottish government to finally get round to forcing schools to provide separate bathrooms for male and female pupils. 

Practically every institution in the UK remains in thrall to trans ideology—even in the most unexpected of places. Last week, it was reported that the London Maths Society is facing legal action over its “trans-inclusion policy.” The club’s rules state that any member who repeatedly and deliberately fails to use a person’s preferred pronouns could face suspension. One member, senior King’s College London lecturer John Armstrong, is now threatening to sue the society, as he believes that these rules discriminate against members with gender-critical beliefs. It’s not entirely clear why a maths society would need a “trans-inclusion policy” in the first place. But the fact that these kinds of culture-war squabbles are continuing to play out indicates that the dominance of gender ideology is far from over. 

On the continent, the situation is perhaps even worse. When it comes to woke, Europe always tends to lag a few years behind the Anglosphere. As a result, many West European countries are only now reaching the zenith of trans insanity. The European Union announced last month that it wants children to be able to identify as transgender at any age and intends to punish any member state that disagrees. The EU also wants to crack down on so-called LGBT conversion therapy—that means, in practice, making it illegal for teachers, therapists, pastors, and even parents to refuse to affirm a child’s supposed gender identity. 

Germany’s new Self-Determination Act, in force since November 2024, already lets adults change legal sex by simple declaration. This summer, this law was at the centre of a controversy, when far-right activist Sven (now Marla-Svenja) Liebich used it to get himself placed in a women’s prison. He showed up in court for incitement to hatred, slander, and insult, dressed in leopard print, a large wide-brimmed sun hat, and comical round sunglasses—while still sporting a moustache. He demanded to be sent to a women’s prison and, incredibly, the court obliged. Liebich, however, failed to report to begin his sentence, so is yet to actually go to the women’s estate. 

Other countries remain under the thumb of trans activism. France has just rolled out a new sex-education syllabus that teaches kids about gender ideology. In Sweden, a law came into force this July that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to legally change their gender—they will need the approval of their parents, a doctor and the National Board of Health and Welfare, but not a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Even in Albania, not exactly a hotbed of progressive politics, the government has tried to pass legislation that would enable gender self-identification—despite polling that shows around 97% of Albanians believing that gender is strictly biological. 

The tide may be turning on trans, but the battle is nowhere near over. A few legal wins cannot dismantle an ideology embedded across media, medicine, academia, and the civil service. If anything, the backlash shows how deep the capture runs and that it won’t be going anywhere without a fight. On the continent especially, we need to keep pushing to rid institutions of this rot and demanding that biological reality be taken seriously. The culture won’t reset on its own.