Transactivism is currently inspiring one of the most virulent forms of "cancel culture": for example, in a matter of weeks, Caroline Éliacheff and Céline Masson were prevented from presenting their book La fabrique de l'enfant transgenre at the University of Geneva, at the Citéphilo meeting in Lille, in a municipal hall in Paris, in an association in Lyon, at the Café Laïque in Brussels, etc.
However, activists find various relays in institutions. Thus, the DILCRAH Delegation (Interministerial Delegation for the Fight against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Homophobia, reporting to the Prime Minister), filed a complaint in September 2022 against the Observatoire de la Petite Sirène, an association of therapists (led in particular by Caroline Éliacheff and Céline Masson) which advocates caution regarding the “transitions” of minors, on the grounds that this observatory advocates “conversion therapies” precisely prohibited by a recent law.[1].
In addition to interministerial associations and delegations, several ministries disseminate gender ideology and particularly transactivism, notably that of National Education. For example, the former National Institute of Pedagogical Research, which became the Canopé Network, recently invited schoolchildren to “deconstruct kinship”, while researching the meaning of the prefixes “hetero”, “homo”, “trans”, “cis”, “inter” and “bi” — proof that ancient languages have not said their last word. It offers teachers a webinar on “the fight against LGBTIphobia” where we suddenly learn that “secular heritage” is “potentially LGBTIphobic”.[2]
See in particular “When school invites us to “deconstruct kinship””:
“Education and LGBTI+ Suggestions for educational activities for middle school”:
.
At the start of the 2021 school year, on September 29, the Ministry of Education published in the Official Gazette a circular entitled For a better consideration of issues relating to gender identity in schools. It focuses almost exclusively on "transidentity", based on the premise that "transidentity is a fact that concerns the school institution"[3].
Gender identity is established by simple declaration by the student because:
"taking into consideration the gender identity claimed by a student must not be conditional on the production of a certificate or a medical diagnosis or on the obligation of an appointment with a health professional". But from this "coming out" (term of the circular) "the educational establishment must be attentive to guaranteeing the conditions of a claimed transition - that is to say the possibility of being and remaining identified and visible as a transgender person [...]" (my emphasis).
Parents may be kept away: "communication with legal representatives should only take place with the explicit consent of the student." If they oppose the transition, recalcitrant parents are subject to discreet threats: "In cases where the minor appears to be in a dangerous situation in his family or living environment, it may be decided to write up and transmit worrying information to the departmental cell for collecting worrying information (Crip) or to make a judicial report to the juvenile prosecutor's office." The wording is vague, but in countries that prosecute alleged transphobia, parents have been convicted of "misgendering," sometimes to prison (for example, a Vancouver postman was sentenced to six months in detention, following a complaint by his daughter).
Stages of a metamorphosis
The change of first name seems like an inaugural moment, like a second baptism. The child decides on his first name and the administration complies: "to support this change, the school substitutes the first name in use, in a coherent and simultaneous manner, in all documents relating to the internal organization (roll lists, canteen card, library card, etc.) as well as in digital spaces (ENT, etc.)". Teachers who use the civil status first name can, it is attested, be the subject of reminders to order. Finally, the student can summon his parents if they oppose this change of first name: "if the parents of the minor student oppose the use of a first name requested by their child in his school setting, it will then be appropriate, in the interest of the student and on his initiative, to establish a dialogue with his family".
Then comes Privacy: "the establishment may authorize the student to use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender identity", and "to occupy a room in a part of the boarding school that matches their gender identity". A boy or girl will simply have to declare that they belong to the other sex to be authorized to use the toilets, changing rooms and dormitory. A physical education teacher asked me these questions: when Salomé suddenly becomes Baptiste (one of these first names has been changed), which changing room should she be taken to, and should she be listed among the boys?
These provisions may extend outside the establishment:
“Choices regarding toilets, changing rooms and dormitories should also, as far as possible, apply during school trips, outings and trips.”
All these provisions, which would otherwise appear to be outside the law, are veiled by a preamble which states: "The School cannot create special rights for the benefit of any category of students"; which the rest of the circular openly contradicts.
Educating against “transphobia”
It is still necessary to avoid derision, which is too easy at an age known to be merciless, the circular specifies this educational mission: "it is also up to national education personnel to ensure that the gender expression of students is not questioned or mocked and that choices related to clothing and appearance are respected."
As any protest can only be "transphobic", transphobia must be prevented as the section Policy against transphobia recommends: "This policy of preventing transphobia must be part of a collective, transversal dynamic", which presupposes: "support for victims and finally accountability and punishment of the perpetrators".
The very term phobia has a double effect: as a phobia is a psychological condition that is by nature irrepressible, it escapes in principle any rational debate; on the other hand, the diagnosis of phobia sanctions a medicalization of social life, of which the diagnoses of "gender dysphoria" eloquently testify, as do the drug and surgical treatments of transidentity.
To carry out its preventive policy, the Ministry advises relying on "observatories of LGBT+phobias", as well as on LGBT+ associations "which can be called upon for training projects, educational action in establishments, to identify local associative partners".
The influence of these transactivist associations on minors is well documented, notably by Céline Masson and Caroline Eliacheff, La fabrique de l'enfant transgenre (Hermann, 2021); it is not limited to social networks, since the interventions in classes, recommended by the Ministry, mobilize trans people who come to testify to their identity happiness. The word evangelization would be discourteous, but we know the capacity of children and adolescents to identify with people presented as role models. In 2021, after the guest lecture of a transsexual in his sixties, who came to testify at the Lycée Fénelon about his happiness at finally being a "trans woman", several students declared themselves trans.
Why, however, does this official text take for granted such questionable notions as "gender identity" or the "dominant [sexual] norm"? Through its style, its length, its repetitions, its phraseology, the definitions ad usum delphini, this circular reveals the activist literature from which it draws inspiration. Contrary to custom, it refers to it the establishments that must apply it, all the more naturally as it draws its recommendations from it. This is the case of the Survey on the health of LGBT people, directed by A. Alessandrin and J. Dagorn, whose results were published in 2020 and whose recommendations it takes up, for example with regard to toilets. The first author, Arnaud Alessandrin, a member of the scientific council of the DILCRAH, became known for his co-direction of the Transcyclopédie, which he presents as an instrument for fighting against a "heteropatriarchalization of the body".
Validation by the Council of State
The supreme administrative court, the Council of State, was contacted by a parent of a student who opposed the circular of the Ministry of Education with the law which stipulates "no citizen may have a name or first name other than those expressed on their birth certificate". By decision of Wednesday, September 28, 2022, the Council refused to cancel the part of the circular allowing transgender students to use the first name of their choice at school. The Council of State considers that the use of another first name by students only concerned the "internal life of the establishment" and recalls that only the first name registered in the civil registry remains used for national diploma exams. It concluded that the circular did not contravene the law.
He was thus innovative, because the child, although legally incapable, now finds himself endowed with the power to constrain adults as soon as he speaks in the name of the supereminent law of gender. It does not matter that the law invoked by the referral is still in force, individual feeling prevails, and the child can impose a first name of his choice - provided that this first name evokes the other sex. While naming remains a major anthropological invariant, giving the child the power to erase the trace of filiation conferred by his parents and to impose a new first name makes him a self-made man, the concretization of the absolute individualism advocated by managerial ideology. The message is clear: feeling has the force of law or rather transcends the law.
The decision of the Council of State did not come as a surprise, because a few months earlier, it had called on the Egaé firm, a company founded and co-directed by Caroline de Haas, to train its own members against VSS ("sexist and sexual violence"). Initially a member of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem's ministerial cabinet, Caroline de Haas founded several (re)education companies whose turnover is based for two thirds on public orders. In 2018, she notably declared: "One in two or three men is an aggressor", which can only reassure about the future of her economic model.
The institution at the top of the administrative jurisdiction thus legitimized a power that surpasses it. Activism then seems above the law; at least the judicial arbitrators recognize a higher moral authority capable of reeducating them — as if the staid salons of the Palais-Royal had suddenly been populated with marauding rapists.
Let's get back to school and education. The "trans" student is not alone, but no one thinks about the other schoolchildren. From one day to the next, they see their classmate cross-dress or transfigure themselves under the tender gaze of adults who urge them not to "misgender" them. They are thus taught, by example, the collective denial of reality - which is very reminiscent of what Orwell called "doublethink", even though the educational mission of the school consists, on the contrary, in detailing the primacy of reality, as it is presented by the teaching disciplines. Metamorphoses certainly abound in stories: this one takes place before the eyes of the schoolchildren and they are told to act as if, to the detriment of the principle of reality that the school has the duty to instill.
With the help of political communication, a "republican wokeness" has been established and institutionalized for about ten years. It allows us to forget or make others forget social issues by promoting societal debates on sex, gender, race, etc. Scientific research is kept at a distance and the confusion that spreads can only benefit the most obscurantist political forces.
