[We are reproducing here the article published by the Observatory in the Express: https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/idees-et-debats/francois-rastier-tansphobie-et-deni-de-la-biologie-le-soutien-officiel-a-la-science-trans_2178100.html]

In democracies, science can inform public action. We saw this with scientific advice during the early years of the pandemic. Recently, another public health issue has been raised: it concerns the administration of puberty blockers to children. The Little Mermaid Observatory, an association of health professionals and academics, notably published an opinion piece in Le Point that had an international impact. 
She highlighted the dangers of puberty blockers and “gender reassignment” surgeries such as mastectomy, even when euphemized as “torsoplasty.” Not to mention surgical mutilation, the after-effects at a key moment in physical and psychological development are irreversible, even as the rate of “detransitions” increases. 

All this is amply documented, and as Freud said: "Replacing a psychological problem with an anatomical problem is as pointless as it is unjustified." Transhumanist ideology decides otherwise, since it confers on the technical means of transforming the body a salvific, even redemptive mission - as authors such as Donna Haraway or Paul Beatriz Preciado testify in the matter of "gender". The Observatory's platform can, however, recommend itself to the precautionary principle, or even simply to the somewhat forgotten Hippocratic principle that the doctor must above all do no harm: non-nocturnal primum. 

Legal threat

Following this publication, the Dilcrah (Interministerial Delegation for the Fight against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Homophobia, reporting to the Prime Minister), published, with the approval of the president of its scientific committee and various activist associations, a press release which includes accusations accompanied by threats. 

1/ The Little Mermaid Observatory is defined as a "structure that questions the very existence of transidentity among young trans people". Already on May 31, 2022, the Sud Education 93 union described the Little Mermaid Observatory as a "structure serving a 'transphobic offensive'". It recommended science for this: "Science is (...) particularly targeted by this transphobic offensive". It will therefore have been listened to, in particular by the scientific committee of the Dilcrah, represented by its president. However, the identity notion of transidentity remains obscure enough in itself to discourage questions and the incriminated platform is careful not to address it. Even if it did, would it be a crime of opinion?  

2/ A specific legal threat is made against the Observatory, in particular for having published a guide for psychotherapists: "The interministerial delegate proposed to the associations that accepted the principle, that the delegation (...) refer the matter to the public prosecutor under article 40 of the code of criminal procedure if it were proven that the approach promoted in this guide (Observatory guide, Editor's note) is similar to conversion therapy, now formally prohibited since the vote on the law of January 31, 2022." 
It is unclear how being concerned about public health and the protection of minors could be considered "conversion therapy". Transsexual conversion therapies (medical and surgical) obviously have nothing in common with the "conversion therapies" targeted by the law, and it would be transphobic to compare them.  
Should an interministerial delegation, however, lend itself to a gagging procedure, familiar to pressure groups? Created under the Hollande presidency in 2012, the Dilcrah "saw its scope of intervention broadened (sic) to the fight against hatred and anti-LGBT discrimination". Radicalized by trans activists, this latter mission now seems to be privileged: of its nine permanent staff, two are for example specifically dedicated to this cause, and none to anti-Semitism. Seemingly innocuous, this extension concretizes the intersectional ideology that inextricably mixes questions of race and sex. 

“Transphobia” deemed systemic

"Phobias" have invaded the media space, from Islamophobia to fatphobia, each becoming the standard of a minority that claims to be its victim. Phobias are naturally irrational, like agoraphobia, and those who suffer from them can only be sick people waiting for treatment. So what is transphobia? Let us refer to Dilcrah, which has published a copious "practical sheet" that "is aimed at all administrations as well as public service schools". Transphobia seems almost systemic there: "Before obtaining a new civil status, trans people find themselves in possession of identity papers on which appear a first name and a mention of sex (F or M) that do not correspond to their gender identity." The editors seem to be unaware that in French the abbreviation is H (for "homme") and not M (for "male"). Regardless, administrations and public service schools are invited to follow this innovative practice. 

They are also recommended to use educational language: "Misgendering a person means addressing them, intentionally or not, in the wrong gender. For example, saying "he" to refer to a trans woman." But the main thing remains that "transphobia is distinguished by a prevalence of rejection and physical aggression," and that people accused of transphobia are immediately designated as violent aggressors. 
The main source for this fact sheet is the oft-cited work by Arnaud Alessandrin and Karine Espineira, Sociologie de la transphobie (MSHA, 2015), both of whom are also members of the Dilcrah scientific council. The former, a lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, presented himself to the press at his wedding with a beard, moustache, skirt and stiletto heels; the latter defines herself as a "precarious academic", "assigned a boy at birth in Santiago, Chile". The total project of these two authors is illustrated in La transyclopédie (Des ailes sur un tracteur, 2012), to which Laurence Herault, also a member of the Dilcrah scientific council and known for her work on transgender parentage and "pregnant men", also collaborated. 
However, with her collaborator Maud-Yeuse Thomas, Karine Espineira published a long text under the title "Observatory or watchtower?" that sheds light on the scientific expectations of the Dilcrah press release. She begins with this conclusion, regarding the Point column: "The signatories of the text are inviting us to plunge into an acid bath." The acid bath obviously evokes the practices of various mafias and more recently the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, while the watchtower evokes a concentration camp. 

"Elizabeth" Badinter targeted

Karine Espineira then attacks the personality of Elisabeth Badinter, whose first name she Americanizes: "A spoil of war (or not), the competition of Elizabeth Badinter and her pleasant philosophical analogy XX woman, XY man, becomes a standard. You thought that your identity ("sexual", eh, no joke!) resided in sex (sorry, genitals)? Wrong! It is rooted in the chromosomes, according to the ineffable or devoted philosopher. This statement is posed as a scientific fact, duly proven. However, it is false. XX refers to the female state. XY refers to the male state." We understood that "state" allows to avoid the mention of sex, in accordance with gender ideology. Genderism, like flat-eartherism, authorizes and legitimizes the denial of scientifically objectified reality: it would only be a form of reactionary conspiracy, rightly denounced by awakened activists, in the illusion of their omnipotence. 
Karine Espineira adds: "XXY and other chromosomal combinations and formulations (among examples: examples 47, XXY; 45, X; 49, XXXY; 49, XXYY) refer to intersex states that are unambiguously denied in the text." Here she is referring to chromosomal abnormalities, such as Klinefelter syndrome, whose cytogenetic variants with more than two X chromosomes are distinguished by progressive mental deterioration and the severity of the damage to different organs. Is it not discourteous, if not transphobic, to reduce transidentity to genetic abnormalities?  

Elisabeth Badinter's moral and intellectual authority is not affected, even when Karine Espineira detects "neo-terfs [acronym for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist", designating feminists considered transphobic] in this biopolitical cosmology", and calls on decolonialism to criticize "the restoration of sexual binarity, this new symbolic law universalized by means of armed colonialisms". So here is the Little Mermaid, an accomplice of the slave traders? 
Decolonial arguments are followed by covido-skeptical themes. The Little Mermaid is said to have drawn an argument from an imaginary epidemic: "We therefore summon the Epidemic to resolve the disturbance to the moral order, dressed up as a 'precautionary principle'. L'Obs does not seem to want to be only the great restorer of one border, but that of all borders". A discreet touch of conspiracy is never unwelcome, and we move straight from the difference between the sexes to the moral order and the Schengen area. 

Of course, Karine Espineira recently resigned from the scientific committee of Dilcrah to dissociate herself from its president, who she considers too moderate, but she continues to promote "Trans Studies by trans people for trans people". In this perfectly identitarian definition, she sees a guarantee of scientificity. She thus concludes a recent interview with TV5Monde, "When will there be a MeToo for transgender women?", by outlining the project of a major scientific investigation, "funded by the public authorities, led by trans and non-trans people from the university and the association in collaboration with institutional partners". Her recent resignation protects her from any conflict of interest in leading this ambitious program. After all, public money has no gender. 
Militant Science and Post-Truth

So what science is emerging?

The scientific committee of the Dilcrah does not indicate the titles and functions of its members. This discretion honors them all the more since several remain without any specific connection to scientific research. For example, one of these members presents herself as a historian, with the status of self-employed. A consultant "in scientific and cultural programming", she is at the origin of the successful show Barbès café and author of an article on belly dancing in Parisian cabarets in the 20th century where she does not hesitate to call upon Shéhérazade. Or yet another presents herself as a project manager, on behalf of the harkis, at the National Office of Combatants and Victims of War. In short, the impression persists that representatives of diverse identities have been aligned, without worrying too much about other criteria; this is common in castings for series or reality TV, but should it extend to scientific committees?  

The scientific nature of the Dilcrah council is all the less assured since a deliberation based on the state of research requires a minimum of collegiality and principles of rationality which do not seem to concern many trans activists.  
A denial of reality is never disinterested and it must be remembered that the most radical activists, from the animators of SudÉducation93 to Karine Espineira, do not just reject scientifically established facts that displease them, while accusing transphobes of attacking science. When Espineira dismisses an article from the journal PlosOne and ventures into assertions about genetics that ignore several centuries of research, she intends to lay the foundations of a trans science. A militant science must indeed drive out the other, in order to legitimize the post-truth that it intends to impose. 

Finland, Sweden and Great Britain have just taken measures to protect so-called transgender minors. France, through the voice of Dilcrah, is taking the opposite path by threatening to sue those who advocate such measures. 
Beyond that, with the help of political communication, a "republican wokeness" has been established and institutionalized over the last ten years. It allows social issues to be forgotten or made to be forgotten by accumulating 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.  

During her 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton asked: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer] community? Would that make people more welcoming to immigrants overnight?” The election of Donald Trump unfortunately provided a definitive answer to these questions, which crudely reveal the political function of intersectional ideology.