A dispatch from TERF Island
A day at the annual LGB Alliance Conference in London uncovers a subculture fuelled by loneliness and conspiracy, and a roaring trade in transphobic handicrafts.
Text by Rosanna McLaughlin
It was a crisp autumn morning when I walked through the gates of hell. I had arrived at the QEII Conference Centre, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament, for the annual conference of the LGB Alliance. This was a particularly British kind of hell: a place where nice-looking ladies in hand-knitted jumpers hand out teacakes and trade transphobic handicrafts; a place where community, identity and claims to the moral high ground are founded upon a surprisingly voracious capacity for hate.
In the lobby, a woman wearing a Lesbians for Labour T-shirt welcomed guests by playing folk songs on the violin. Friends greeted each other and discussed the day ahead with the kind of excitement usually reserved for holidays and festivals. Were the rumours of J.K. Rowling making a surprise appearance true? The keynote speaker, James Dreyfus – was he in Four Weddings and a Funeral or Notting Hill? While waiting for the elevator, an elderly dyke complimented the person besides her on her top, which was emblazoned with the words, “TERF: I KNOW WHAT A WOMAN LOOKS LIKE”.
Much to the delight of the 600 or so Gen Xers and Boomers who had gathered for the occasion, Rowling did indeed appear. Wearing a giant floppy hat, she beamed into the auditorium from onboard a yacht, a vision of blue skies and sparkling handrails. From these luxurious environs she joked that she had been hounded out of the UK by India Willoughby, a trans television personality against whom Rowling has long waged holy war, and declared herself an ally to the LGB cause. “Lesbians don’t have penises,” she said in signing off. In reply the audience rose from its seats and roared its approval.
During this standing ovation I found myself asking the question that had brought me here in the first place. What had happened in these people’s lives, and in the lives of so many older lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, to turn them against trans and non-binary people? How had the septuagenarians next to me clapping enthusiastically – women who reminded me of former teachers, librarians, neighbours, family friends – been recruited into the gender wars?
The lady with the sad eyes wasn’t the only person who had turned to the Alliance when relations with her own family had become strained
One way of understanding the Alliance’s appeal is to view it in the broader context of contemporary identity politics. Much like the MAGA movement, or any of the many identity-based groups that have flourished on the left, the Alliance offers a sense of belonging, moral clarity and a cause to fight for – an attractive tonic for the loneliness, listlessness and uncertainty that have become the hallmarks of 21st-century living. It offers a world view in which people can be neatly sorted into the categories of hero or villain, and it treats identity like a nation state, complete with borders that must be vigorously defended from the threat of hostile interlopers.
Established in 2019 on the principle that embracing trans and non-binary identities directly erodes the rights and safety of homosexuals, the Alliance is fuelled by precisely this cocktail of community and enmity. Its core argument – “if sex isn’t real then there is no same-sex attraction”, a catchphrase Rowling repeated in her video message – conjures a worldview in which the very existence of trans people poses an existential threat to lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Follow this logic, and it will lead you to a choice: either we destroy them or they destroy us.
At its top level, the LGB Alliance is run by well-connected and intelligent operators, including political strategists, legal experts, psychiatrists, and a Labour lord and former governor of the BBC. Since forming it has proven itself a powerful lobbying force, successfully campaigning to end the prescription of puberty blockers to children, and establishing in UK law that expressions of gender-critical views are protected under the Equality Act, akin to religious beliefs. At the time of writing, the Alliance is throwing its weight behind an effort in the Supreme Court to exclude trans women from the legal definition of “woman”, arguing that doing so is paramount to the safety of lesbians. “People born as male who self-define as women, and as lesbians …] are heterosexual men,” reads a statement the Alliance published on the matter. “Men who insist on accessing lesbian spaces and services, despite the hurt and alarm they cause, are coercive, abusive and potentially dangerous.”
Perhaps naively, I had not expected the conference to be a place where transphobia was openly celebrated. The LGB Alliance, much like the wider gender-critical movement, positions itself as a defender of free speech, arguing that trans activists are attempting to silence dissenting voices. (While it is certainly true that the subject of trans rights has become so polarised that there is very little space for discussing, or even admitting the existence of, moral grey areas, the condemnation comes from those on both sides of the divide.) In order to gain press access to the conference I was subjected to a vetting procedure. First, I received an email attempting to dissuade me from coming, and when I persevered I was required to explain my reasons for attending over a Zoom call – a level of caution that struck me as paranoid, and not particularly pro-free speech after all. Yet the man I spoke to assured me that a range of opinions were encouraged at the conference, and that the LGB Alliance welcomed anyone who arrived with an open mind.
As a consequence, I had imagined that the conference would be a space for discussion of the possible dangers of medical intervention, and who gets to access which spaces. I had imagined that I may have disagreed with much of it, but that at least some of it would be in good faith, an attempt to navigate complex moral and ideological terrain. Yet what I found was a tawdry pantomime in which no fruit was considered too low-hanging to pick, and anyone who opposed the Alliance’s views was deemed worthy of dehumanisation. The very mention of Owen Jones and Sandi Toksvig – two gay public figures who have spoken in support of trans rights – triggered delighted cries of “shame” and “what a bitch”.
For the first event of the day a young woman named Alison Ellis was interviewed by journalist Jo Bartosch about the supposed plight of young lesbians. To much whooping and clapping, Bartosch introduced herself as “a professional transphobe”. Within the Alliance there is a notable difference in attitudes to trans women and trans men. While the former are considered the worst of the worst – perverted patriarchs intent on infiltrating our spaces and stealing the categories of woman and lesbian out from under our noses – the latter are seen as a cause for pity, misguided tomboys and lesbians who have fallen prey to a pernicious progressive cult bent on transitioning all the children.
Ellis had been invited as a spokesperson for young lesbians and because she makes TikTok videos ridiculing trans women. During the interview a video of a trans lesbian was projected on to the screen and the audience duly responded with boos and hisses. Protecting young people may be a major part of the Alliance’s message, but the fact that Ellis, who has under 1,500 followers on TikTok despite regularly posting content, was the only person under 30 in attendance was a sign of how little young people want to do with them. On stage she cut a depressing figure: consumed by resentment, utterly lacking in insight or charisma and dazzled by the attention. She was held aloft with a similar incredulous delight to that displayed by far-right groups parading the single person of colour who has somehow strayed into their ranks.
During a panel discussion in which a former Tory parliamentary candidate and an Anglican deacon reminisced about the good old days of gay activism before the LGB gained the T, I left the auditorium to browse the stalls. Among the items on offer were children’s picture books explaining that sex is unalterable, and hairy vaginas knitted from acrylic wool. At a stall offering advice for the parents of trans children, a lady with sad eyes handed me a leaflet. (“Remain calm” and explain to your child that sex “is immutable and cannot be changed even with hormones and surgery”.) Her own child intends to transition, she told me, something she is trying to prevent.
The lady with the sad eyes wasn’t the only person who had turned to the Alliance when relations with her own family had become strained. Across the way, I met a woman doing a roaring trade in satirical gift cards designed to look like the covers of Ladybird Books. These included Being Non-Binary: A Snowflake Guide, and The Wolf-Exclusionary Piglets Build a Safe Space. She showed me the bunting she was selling, decorated with XX chromosomes and the words “Terf Island” – “an affectionate name for Britain among friends in Australia and New Zealand”. She too had become involved with the Alliance when her child decided to transition. “I wasn’t having any of it,” she said. “She’s realised she’s not a boy now, thank goodness, but others haven’t been so lucky.”
One of the most striking features of the gender-critical movement is the extent to which it has become a way of life, dictating everything from the relationships you have (or don’t) to the clothes you wear. The LGB Alliance offers sanctuary to those struggling with their own families. It also offers the possibility of a new family to those who are lonely and isolated, whether because of their intransigent views on gender, or because – like many people – they have been unable to create or sustain an organic sense of community in their day-to-day lives. After a dire set by the Hungry Hearts – two Norwegian lesbians who performed a lacklustre robot dance to electro-pop, and whose claim to fame was being eliminated from the first round of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest – the conference broke for lunch. During this time visitors were encouraged to participate in a grassroots networking drive called “find your tribe and your vibe”.
To this end, a large room was filled with flags bearing the names of places from all over the UK. Each stand was manned by local delegates, waiting to welcome new members with offers of biscuits and friendship, and talk of conspiracies and genitalia. While tucking into some shortbread at the Edinburgh stand, a retired social worker who had flown in from Canada especially told me that an army of men disguised as women were infiltrating rape crisis centres to commit sexual assaults. Her excitement was such that crumbs sprayed from her mouth as she spoke, which gathered on her lumberjack shirt. Near the stand for the Isle of Skye, a pensioner explained that she’d lost track of how many friends she no longer spoke to because they “didn’t know which body parts belonged where”, but that she was looking forward to meeting likeminded people at the conference. As I discovered when I was approached by a woman from Plymouth, attendees were in the market for romance as well as friendships. Flashing me a hopeful look, she explained that she had joined the Alliance to improve her “dating pool”. Without pausing for breath, she launched into an explanation of the difference between “a real woman’s vagina and a trans woman’s vagina”. One was a “permanent wound that can’t get wet by itself”, while the other was “lovely and moist”.
For a little while, the bizarreness of the world in which I found myself provided a welcome distraction from how profoundly uncomfortable I felt, surrounded by other lesbians with views irreconcilable to my own, who purported to speak on behalf of lesbians everywhere. But as the day wore on, a sadness that had seeded during the morning began to blossom into a terrible flower. Among the more depressing aspects of the conference was the readiness among those long demonised as perverts and a threat to children to vilify another minority group – not least a group with whom they share many historical and contemporary affinities – using the very same language once used against them.
This was particularly apparent during James Dreyfus’s keynote speech. The actor bellowed that “equality was achieved until [charity] Stonewall came along and added letters to the LGB”, arguing that gays, lesbians and bisexuals should have stopped their political campaigning after the gay-marriage bill became law in 2013. Instead, a new frontline had been manufactured by charities such as Stonewall that were unwilling to give up the cause – a “we were here first” narrative that suggests trans people were invented just over a decade ago. As a consequence, Dreyfus said, we now live in a society where “fetishes are performed in public”, and children are indoctrinated “from primary school upwards”.
When a group of teenage protesters released a rucksack full of crickets into the auditorium, the intervention came as a relief. Finally, someone had stuck a pin in the balloon, puncturing the madness that had proliferated throughout the day. That this act of dissent was committed by the very young people who the Alliance claimed to be saving was all the more satisfying. (I tried to contact the protesters but to no avail.) Yet it soon became apparent that the protest had not been so much a pin as a source of oxygen, and that instead of bursting the balloon it had helped it take flight.
As the auditorium was cleared, news of the protest created a mood of frisky excitement, and the air was filled with wild fabulations that warped as they passed between tongues and ears. The bag of crickets transformed into thousands of cockroaches, a swarm of bees, a homophobic hate crime whose perpetrators must be prosecuted, narratives that would soon find their way to the press. “This has only brought us together and made us more determined to fight against the renewed rise of homophobia, which is all the more dangerous for coming wrapped in the rainbow flag,” tweeted the organisation’s CEO Kate Barker, a quote subsequently published by numerous news outlets. Later, the Alliance’s co-founder Bev Jackson delightedly discussed the protest on GB News.
Describing the protest as a homophobic act, given the rampant transphobia on display throughout the day, was an extraordinary feat of revisionism. (Attempting to criminalise the teenage protesters by labelling their actions as a hate crime also gave the lie to the LGB Alliance’s supposed defence of free speech.) Assuming the role of victim as you seek to injure your enemy is an ugly game to play, and cheapening the meaning of homophobia by instrumentalising it for dubious political ends will surely not serve homosexuals in the long run. So why do it? Why insist that there is a profound and irreconcilable distance between lesbians, gays and bisexuals and other queer identity groups, with whom so much cultural history is shared?
Perhaps it is in this very closeness that we can find at least some of the root of the feverish animosity: the narcissism of small differences, a tendency to engage in conflict with those who are similar to us because we feel they threaten our fragile sense of self and security, dovetailing with a deep-seated fear of being returned to the role of the outcast. After all, almost all of the members of the LGB Alliance are old enough to remember what it felt like to live without legal protections or political acceptance for being gay. Fear is a great motivator, and it would be foolish to underestimate the power of the fear of being dragged back out into the cold because of an association with today’s pariahs. In this way, the LGB Alliance’s alignment with conservative values, its willingness to speak on right-wing platforms such as GB News, its parroting of the same language once used to denigrate homosexuals, can be understood as a desperate urge to perform allegiance and sameness to a political establishment its members continue to dread – an establishment which, having bestowed upon its members the legal stamp of respectability, could just as easily take it away, depending on the way the political winds blow.
Yet among the crowd, none of these complexities and their inherent sadnesses were acknowledged. Instead, the narrative of the homophobic hate crime was embraced with glee. With the auditorium now out of bounds, an ad hoc stage was set up next to the tea and coffee stand. A sense of renewed purpose abounded, buoyed by the fantasy of the oppressed kicking back at their oppressors. As word spread that the teenagers had been escorted from the premises by police, a chant picked up: “The Alliance, united, will never be defeated.”
It was then that I fled. I rushed through the crowded room, took the elevator down, and bolted into the afternoon sunshine. Outside the white flags of the Alliance fluttered against the blue sky, the letters LGB surrounded by a black box. No doubt the logo was intended to resemble a border wall keeping out the T, but it looked to me like a prison in which to rot. .
