April 24, 2023 - 3:45pm

An American politician appears to have been targeted by transgender activists intent on imposing their beliefs on the country. Mike Kennedy, a Utah state senator, reported that his house had been daubed with graffiti on Friday evening.

The vandal, or vandals, left messages in red spray paint across the senator’s garage: “fash” — presumably meaning fascist — and “these trannies bash back”. Kennedy shared the images on his Facebook pages, telling the perpetrators that “I will not be deterred by your cowardly actions.”

Earlier this year, Utah banned so-called “gender-affirming care” for trans youth. A better term might be “experimental treatment that can lead to permanent and irreversible changes, with unknown long-term consequences on both physical and mental health”. Less catchy, perhaps.

Senate Bill 16 prohibited giving “hormonal transgender treatment to new patients who were not diagnosed with gender dysphoria” before the bill went into effect, as well as banning “sex characteristic surgical procedures on a minor for the purpose of effectuating a sex change.”

Utah was right to exercise caution. But that’s not the way that some transgender activists see it. To them, drugs and surgery are the answer to what — until recently — was regarded by the World Health Organisation as a mental health condition: gender identity disorder of childhood. The latest version of the International Classification of Diseases might have changed the language — it’s now “gender incongruence of childhood” but the condition remains the same. And one where we need to tread carefully. 

In England, the Cass Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People has found that “there is a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.” In America it seems that the discussion has now been overtaken by more direct measures, with an act of vandalism against a politician. 

Gender identity ideology presents an open door to abusive men who want to usurp the rights of women. It also offers a shield for anarchists, trouble makers and those looking for a fight, if they can paint themselves as allies of what some consider to be the most vulnerable and oppressed group in society. They seem to think they can act with impunity.

But it is not fascism to protect children from harmful medical interventions. Ironically, one definition of fascism is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control”. Those with the red paint might not be in government but their actions suggest that they are out to control the narrative.

Meanwhile, transsexuals like me are not “bashing back”. We want nothing to do with this. We transitioned to be able to get on with our lives in peace, not to impose ourselves on other people, nor to change the way they think and regulate the language they use.


Debbie Hayton is a teacher and a transgender campaigner.

DebbieHayton