Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

In 1979, Eileen Fairweather, a tyro journalist, was writing for Spare Rib, a feminist magazine. She was assigned to read the book Paedophilia: The Radical Case, which argued for lowering the age of consent to four. The author, Tom O’Carroll, was an early member of PIE who was later imprisoned for child-abuse. Fairweather recalls ‘anguished, earnest’ discussions about what to write. ‘I did draft something, arguing that the existing age of consent was not “patriarchal”, but protected children,’ she says. ‘But I never even dared show it to anyone.’ Paedophiles had so thoroughly infiltrated the gay movement by that time that if you dared criticise those calling for ‘child sexual liberation’ you were branded anti-gay. Fairweather says she sees ‘the same intimidation and paralysis of intelligence’ today, caused by the fear of being called transphobic. In the 1990s, Fairweather won press awards for her work uncovering paedophile rings in British children’s homes and schools. She became an acknowledged expert on how paedophiles exploit ‘institutional