France ‘has not learnt from UK’s trans mistakes’
Feminist authors backed by JK Rowling face death threats after denouncing gender ideology
Dora Moutot , left, and Marguerite Stern, right, are the authors of the gender-critical book, Transmania
FRANCE is failing to learn from Britain’s transgender mistakes, two French feminists who received support from JK Rowling after receiving death threats, have told The Telegraph.
Dora Moutot, 36, and Marguerite Stern, 33, have been thrust into the spotlight after releasing a bestselling gender-critical book called Transmania. It denounces what the pair call “the greatest conceptional heist of the century” by trans-affirmative activists whose “ideology” is “infiltrating every sphere of society” and seeks “to transform our relationship with reality”.
Making simple assertions such as “women are Homo sapiens females and men are Homo sapiens males” has become impossible without coming under attack or being censored, they wrote.
After a first run of 15,000, its publisher has printed a further 20,000 copies. But critics, including Paris’s Socialist town hall, have branded the pair “transphobic” an accusation both strenuously deny.
Ms Moutot said: “I think it’s a kind of anti-woke vote, a popular vote by certain people who saw the incredible censorship surrounding this book and bought it out of a spirit of resistance.”
This week, Rowling, the Harry Potter author, leapt to the authors’ defence after a group of protesters in the eastern city of Strasbourg called for Ms Moutot to go to “the bottom of the Rhine”.
Ms Moutot said: “It’s as if France were in a bubble, completely closing its ears to what’s going on internationally, and the mistakes made in the UK, the countries of Northern Europe. France is always behind the curve on Britain on such issues. When I’ve spoken to English people, they’ve told me: ‘In France, you’re not going to fall for that.’ Well, in fact, it’s even worse here because we should know better.”
In the book, the reader is guided through the maze of transgender theory and practice by trans militant Robert, a fictional character who begins by telling his wife Chantal after 40 years of married life: “I need to tell you. I’m a woman. I’ve always felt like a woman. I’m trapped in a body that isn’t mine.”
It notably details the recent landmark review in the UK by Dr Hilary Cass, a paediatric consultant, which warned that children who think they are transgender should not be rushed into treatment they may regret. The Cass review called for the “unhurried” care of those under 25 who think they may be transgender, an end to the prescribing of powerful hormone drugs to under-18s and early help for primary school children who want to socially transition.
Transmania also cites the Tavistock clinic controversy that prompted the report, asking: “Why hasn’t this health scandal been widely reported in France?”
Ms Stern said: “We’re branded Right or far-Right but it is the Left that rejected us. We have to thank the Right for giving this issue the exposure it deserves and for taking the measure of considering it an important issue.”
She was referring to a draft law by the conservative Republicans party that aims to ban the medical transition of minors in France being treated for “gender dysphoria”. Critics argue the Bill will bring back conversion therapy – treatment intended to change someone’s sexual orientation – outlawed in France since 2022.
Beyond the Left, the authors accuse Emmanuel Macron, the French president, of paying lip-service to the trans debate. Aurore Bergé, his women’s rights minister, for example, received them warmly but has said she will not back the Republicans Bill. It is a “double discourse that may well come back to haunt him”, said Ms Stern.
Both women had long been feted as high-profile, Left-wing feminists. Ms Stern, a former militant with the Femen protest group, became the darling of women’s rights for running a national awareness campaign over femicides, in which city walls were papered with the names of victims’ and the dates of their deaths. Ms Moutot, a French-American nationale who studied fashion communication at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, was known for her Instagram account T’as
joui (You came), which discussed “sex feminism” and boasted half a million followers.
Both authors say they were gradually “cancelled” and labelled “transphobic” for asserting that being a woman is a “biological reality”. Ms Moutot said she received messages “telling me that I couldn’t continue to use the word woman in my blog, that I had to say person with a vulva and that I had to include trans people in my discourse”.
“For me, being a woman is a biological reality. That’s where everything fell apart. Trans activists went to all the brands I was working with and they managed to get the contracts cancelled, one by one.”
Ms Stern said she was in talks over a documentary “but when I started to take these positions, the discussions stopped, and I lost a lot in my personal life too. I lost some of my dearest friends”.
“But I don’t regret it because I don’t think I could have done otherwise. I felt it was the right thing to do morally and ethically.”
Down but not out, they decided to investigate the transgender universe in depth and write a book about their findings.
While sales have surged, they say they have been censored. Emmanuel Grégoire, Paris’s deputy mayor, for whom “the dissemination and promotion of such discourse runs counter to the values espoused by the city of Paris”, said: “Sexual orientation and gender identity are not an ideology. Transphobia is a crime. Hatred of others has no place in our city. Paris must not be used as a platform for this intolerance.”
Ms Moutot denounced “an act of censorship based on suppositions rather than on an analysis of the content”, as well as an “obscurantism that seeks to muzzle all critical thought”.
“Our book is not transphobic and in no way does it advocate hatred of others or of trans people,” she added, describing it as a “well-sourced investigation” into “certain players who push gender transitions and make money from them”.
The pair have been sued for “incitement to hatred” by two LBGT+ rights groups, including SOS Homophobie, which has received €350,000 in funding from Paris and “has hijacked the struggle of women to submit to trans dogma”, they asserted. Ms Moutot has also been charged with “incitement to anti-trans hatred” after appearing on a chat show in 2022 beside Marie Cau, France’s only trans local mayor, who she refused to call a woman and instead described as a “trans-feminine male”.
She faces a four-month suspended sentence. Ms Cau has likened the authors to “Nazis”.
“If I’m found guilty, it’ll be the last straw, I’m leaving France,” said Ms Moutot, who added that the art of “contradictory debate”, once a source of Gallic pride, was in danger of dying out.
Last Sunday, a group of leading French figures released a tribune slamming their work as “hate-filled” and “promoted by the whole of the political far-Right”. Signatories included Annie Ernaux, the Nobel-prize-winning author, and publisher Vanessa Springora, who penned Consent – a landmark post #Metoo book on how she fell under the sway of Gabriel Matzneff, the French author, as a child and had underage sex with him. Ms Moutot said it was ironic that Springora, a staunch defender of child protection, failed to see parallels with minors “consenting” to sex reassignment surgery, only to regret it later.
The pair faced direct threats on Monday when they turned up to give a talk on their book at Pantheon-Assas University, in Paris, where they were branded “Terfs” (trans exclusionary radical feminists) by protesters chanting: “A Terf, a bullet, social justice.”
But the pair have no regrets over writing the book.
Ms Stern said: “There are a lot of people out there today who feel that there’s an issue with transgender ideology but who find it hard to put words to it, who are really seeking information.
“We’ll be sending this book to ministers, MPs, people who have the power to change things. They will be warned.”