A Threat Among the Greenery
Origins and Motivations of Green Party Transphobia
Now that the Green Party have been rising in the polls predictably the attacks on them from the expected media have been forthcoming. While these are easy to spot, there are more insidious and duplicitous lines of attack from those using women’s rights and feminism as a cover story for their authoritarian scaffolding. These attacks are coming from women using gender critical beliefs to assert that “sex realism” ought to be governmental policy, and as such want to enforce those gender critical beliefs as Green Party policy. These beliefs set up a false dichotomy that trans women are an existential threat to women’s rights in the UK, and that only through trans exclusionary policies can cisgender women retain their rights.
Green Women’s Declaration are one such group claiming to work towards women’s rights, though they are only aligned and connected to UK Gender Critical groups. These groups range from trans-sceptical to trans-hostile, with social media affiliation that works its way back to Westminster lobby groups funded by a network of political players who astroturf these exclusionary campaigns to benefits them. This is evidenced in the gender critical turn to exclusionary immigration practices favoured by Reform, the Conservatives, and latterly Labour.
Gender-critical politics has its roots in feminist movements in the 1970s. Since 2000 established UK feminists such as Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill have layered gender critical and anti-trans beliefs into their writing, including using UK media publications such as the Guardian to further those beliefs. Since 2015 one of the first trans-exclusionary writers to gain prominence was Jenifer Bilek, who was part of the Deep Green Resistance (DGR) in the USA, but is now primarily known for shaping the movement’s stance on gender through her “investigative” work into what she calls the “gender industry.” Bilek is also noted for using antisemitic tropes and dog whistles in her writing, something which would be recycled in the later writings of authors such as Helen Joyce.
After the publication of Joyce’s book Trans, Bilek complained that contemporary trans-exclusionary writers plagiarised her work with the backing of J.K Rowling. This is a sign that gender critical discourse is a shallow pool as authors look for evidence of their own bias and for justification and validation of their entrenched prejudices. The Green Women’s Declaration directly draws from the work of Joyce and Bilek, using a reductive understanding of biological science to justify their personal beliefs.
Maya Forstater’s 2020 appeal decision laid out that gender critical beliefs do not need to be grounded in actual science, they just need to be personally held beliefs for them to gain protection under the Equality Act 2010. The was reinforced in the For Women Scotland UK Supreme Court Ruling, which upheld gender critical beliefs as worth of protection in a democratic society. The Green Women’s Declaration ought to be seen through this lens because its eight protocols are rooted in gender critical beliefs.
Gender-critical beliefs refer to the view that biological sex is real, binary (male and female), and immutable meaning it cannot be changed and is distinct from “gender identity”. As per Forstater these are recognised as a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, though Forstater also made clear that those beliefs cannot be used to harass, demean, or deny trans women their rights.
A core issue with gender critical beliefs when they are applied in society is that people do not refer to others by their “biological sex”; they operate on the principle of self-determination and freedom to express it. However, after the For Women Scotland ruling the current Labour government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission are attempting to reshape this social understanding of sex and gender into a gender critical one by bringing punitive workplace rules which undermine the rights of trans people to exist as themselves free from harassment.
In 2022, Dr Shahrar Ali sued the Green Party on two separate occasions following his removal as a spokesperson and subsequent exclusion from the party. The case went to trial in August 2023. On 9 February 2024, a judge ruled that the Green Party had subjected him to “unlawful discrimination” because his dismissal was procedurally unfair and linked to his protected gender-critical beliefs. His case echoes other gender critical civil cases such as Peggie, Phoenix, and Adams v Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre where those holding gender critical beliefs have sued their employers for upholding the rights of trans women and non-binary people.
This image provides a sample of Sharar Ali’s mutual followers on X, which he himself uses to promote his gender critical beliefs. Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce are employed by Sex Matters, actively campaigning for segregationist anti-trans policies. Joyce has actively called for the eradication of trans people from society, calling them a problem in a sane world. Kavanagh is actively anti-trans, and uses his social media platform to deny trans men their rights. Kathleen Stock’s gender critical beliefs have weaponised anti-trans rhetoric against universities standing up for trans students and staff members. Finally, For Women Scotland are central to the current anti-trans policies being proposed by the UK government. If these are your most active mutual followers on social media, the question must be asked about why you feel the need to be part of a party that clearly is against those views.
Let’s be clear. Anyone claiming to be “gender critical” not only campaigns for the definition of sex or gender to be absolute, but they also campaign for the eradication and erasure of transgender identity in law and public life. Each of five accounts shown above has actively endorsed trans-exclusionary polices and practices, and none of the other four denounced Joyce’s framing of trans people as a problem in a sane world in need of a final solution.
Labelling those who do not fit into those narrow binaries as “mentally ill” is an attempt at legitimising ways of excluding them from employment or basic freedoms. Naomi Wolf’s 10 steps to Fascism starts with invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy, and much of the extreme gender critical beliefs revolve around turning trans people into an internal enemy through which conservative groups can control and define womanhood. Joyce’s framing of trans people as problems, and the tacit agreement of this by Ali, Forstater, Stock et al, echoes the fascistic framing of Jews, Africans, and Muslims as problems in need of urgent solutions. Ali’s acceptance of this is antithetical to the Green Party and the core tenets it stands for.
The weaponisation of disability and use of bio-politics is clear in Joyce’s writing and public statements. To be clear, the World Health Organisation has removed transgender identities from the list of mental illnesses, recognising that gender dysphoria is a legitimate condition with a legitimate treatment pathway in the form of transition and social acceptance. Far from following science, gender critical believers seek to subvert actual medial science and root their understanding of the human condition in their personal beliefs.Ali’s comments display his lack of understanding, as well as a complicity in the ongoing debasement of trans rights.
With the success in Manchester, we will start to see more pressure on Hannah Spencer and Zack Polanski to answer dehumanising questions such as “what is a woman” and “can women have penises”. These questions are rooted in the false dichotomy that only gender critics get to police and frame what a woman is and what bodies women ought to have. Gender critics choose to ignore the complexities of biology, chromosomes, hormones, and other factors such as the right to personal self-determination. A woman is someone who understands herself to be one, a fact which gender critics dismiss in favour of stating that a woman is someone described female at birth irrespective of how that person conceives of themself.
It is important that the representatives and politicians do not fall into those traps because those questions exist only to demonise or sexualise transgender people. The root of these questions is to reinforce the notion that transgender people are a problem requiring an exclusionary solution, while also framing the only acceptable bodies are those which fall inside the narrow confines of gender critical believers. Note that gender critics also exclude intersex women and non-binary people who they also see as problematic because those people do not fall neatly into their prescribed frameworks.
The Green Women’s Declaration (GWD) will be asking such questions because it does not come from a foundation of feminist principles; it is assembled from the top down by the same groups that peddle all “invasion” or “othering” narratives. Its eight protocols echo Joyce, Forstater, and Bilek, seeking to exclude anyone deemed not women enough. Their sex-based language arguments are rooted in personal beliefs, they do not reflect the current Oxford English Dictionary definition of womanhood. They seek the right to police, control, and define womanhood without the consent of any other women.
Like Shahrar Ali before them, the GWD is currently taking legal action against the Green Party. Lawyers for GWD claim the decision was “a deliberate and unlawful attempt to prevent women from expressing gender-critical views”.
Again, we see “gender critical views” being used to mask what that means in any social reality. Gender critical beliefs are trans-exclusionary by nature, seeking to segregate society based on those beliefs. This echoes the exclusionary practices of other extremists such as the British National Party who seek to exclude non-white British people based on their personal beliefs. GWD has made no effort to distance itself from the extremist values of Helen Joyce, and as evidenced above Emma Bateman is willing to accept Donald Trump’s rank misogyny rather than accept trans women are women.
Batemen’s transphobic rhetoric explicitly denies trans women their womanhood. Freda Wallace and India Willoughby are both denied their identities by gender critics on social media, and as evidenced above Bateman weaponises her beliefs to further her goals. The top quote directly references Magdalen Berns, a founding member of For Women Scotland, whose transphobic rhetoric has become a cornerstone of gender critical beliefs in the UK. This is the level of abuse and harassment which GWC is asking the Green Party to accept if their values are integrated into the party.
Jude English, 60, a director of the group, told The Times: “The way the Green Party has been acting is akin to a witch-hunt, purging people with gender-critical views. We were middle-aged ladies with leaflets who wanted to go inside the conference last year and talk about these issues. The cancellation of our stall was simply the party’s leadership saying, ‘We can’t allow these women’s voices inside a conference”
This misrepresents what the members of the group have been actively conducting on social media and elsewhere around the country. Emma’s social media posts demonstrate that her gender critical beliefs are more than just views, they are a belief system which she and other members of the group externalise. English and Bateman have created a gender critical ecosystem through which they promote those beliefs.
The following posts show that English promotes content from right wing platforms in defence of her beliefs, including those of James Esses who advocates for trans conversion therapy, the Family Education Trust who promote right wing conceptions of the family, and homophobic and transphobic accounts. Both her and Bateman are happy to promote right wing media sources when they advocate for gender critical beliefs.
The question is: why do they not defect to a party that supports their views? There are plenty out there with much larger bases and more resources than the Greens. To the average viewer, these actions seem petty, vexatious, and often premeditated manipulations. Yet, Bateman, English, and Ali insist that their personal beliefs align with the values of the Green Party, or at least a part of the demographic.
The party has already debated transgender issues at various conferences and committees, deciding that current party policy is trans inclusive and not gender critical. If Gender Critical campaigners genuinely did want to have reasonable discussions about women’s prisons, women’s sports or single sex spaces, the conversation must be had without relying on the notion that trans people are a problem in need of a segregationist or final solution. The mess created by the For Women Scotland ruling was instigated because gender critical beliefs are antithetical to how the world actually works, and if gender critics wish the party to become gender critical they cannot do so simply by stating trans people have no right to exist as their affirmed selves.
Bateman claims she was expelled from the Green Party three times for expressing ‘Gender Critical beliefs’ and is standing up for sense, science and ‘sex-based rights’. As outlined above, it seems clear that “gender critical” and “sex-based rights” are trans-exclusionary and dehumanising to trans people because they frame trans women especially a threat to women’s body politic. Her call to action to stand up for sense and science is fundamentally undermined by her gender critical beliefs which require neither to uphold.
Gender critics have sought to leverage the civil courts to enforce their personal beliefs onto British society. Sex Matters and For Women Scotland have been involved with and on the periphery of trans exclusionary cases, with a network of trans-exclusionary lawyers who have worked with them. Alongside these groups have been a range of funders such as J K Rowling and grassroots funding campaigns through platforms such as GoFundMe where funders can remain anonymous. Currently there is no way to scrutinise these funding campaigns, nor identify where the money is spent after it has been donated. As such, every gender critical legal campaign cannot be externally scrutinised to see who is funding and who is benefiting from them. This means that legal campaigns such as Ali’s and Bateman’s are open to leverage from external parties, while also posing a threat to the Green Party by backers who would see the party attacked from the fringes.
The debate about sex and gender only becomes a problem because gender critics and their financial backers have made it a problem. Up until 2016 the progress of trans rights was on an upwards trajectory, and since the first Trump administration trans people have been increasingly targeted as an existential threat to normative social values both in the US and the UK. Gender critics may well hold their gender critical beliefs as a core philosophical belief, but without the support of anonymous money and the right wing media the current anti-trans atmosphere would not be present. Elon Musk’s takeover of X enabled many of the current prominent gender critics to find a stale platform through which to harass and demean trans people with impunity, and in 2026 due to the For Women Scotland ruling UK trans citizens find themselves legally beleaguered on all sides.
The Green Party represents the best hope for bringing back a pluralistic society within which trans people can exist without the threat of being labelled a problem in need of a solution. Trans people have always existed, and we will continue to exist no matter how hard gender critical believers may seek to deny our existence. The party has stood up for us in the face of the storm, and despite what Bateman, Ali, and English believe the vast majority of Greens are trans inclusive and socially pluralistic.
If we ignore the human in that conversation, we are in danger of battling between ourselves. I don’t claim to know what it means to be a woman, or even trans. I simply navigate a world of language and social realities that I did not design. Whatever being transgender is, it has become a barometer issue through which you can discover who is empathetic and who is not, who feels the need to scapegoat and who does not.
When transgender people are a threat, we are everywhere. When we want to be heard, no one is listening. That is the media’s mode, and it must change.
Freda Wallace 05.03.25
Here Emma Bateman claims she was expelled from the Green Party three times for expressing ‘Gender Critical beliefs’ and is standing up for sense, science and ‘sex based rights’.
When we look closer into who she is interacting with positively online, it seems clear that “gender critical” and “sex based rights” are a kind of shy way of saying “trans-exclusionary” or outright dehumanisation, demonisation and sexualisation. Lying to raise money for legal actions should be investigated by anyone who cares about legitimate fundraising.
There needs to be more real journalistic scrutiny of what power-play is going on here and how legal actions are being used as weapons in a downward spiral in which no one achieves anything for the betterment of society, in favour of having their own personal false vexations and grievances pacified, justified and validated by a network of trans-exclusionary lawyers out to find loopholes in a race to the bottom.
There will always be debate about the meaning of sex, gender and the fundamental things that make us human, but if we ignore the human in that conversation, we are in danger of battling between ourselves. I don’t claim to know what it means to be a woman, or even trans. I simply navigate a world of language and social realities that I did not design. Whatever being transgender is, it has become a barometer issue through which you can discover who is empathetic and who is not, who feels the need to scapegoat and who does not.
When transgender people are a portrayed as a threat, we are everywhere. When we want to be heard, no one is listening. That is the media’s mode, and it must change.
Freda Wallace. March 2025
(Edited by R.Saunders)
www.thetranslobbby.com
