Lord Tebbit thinks air pollution is making people transgender – is that as opposed to narrow-minded?

It’s well past time we all told Norman Tebbit to get on his bike.

The former Conservative Party chairman – and bigot, it seems – has claimed that air pollution may be making people transgender. What nonsense.

The reason transgender people are a new phenomenon is simple: Society has changed.

This Writer would be entirely unsurprised if there were people in his school, his National Service intake, and his children’s generation, who were unhappy with their gender.

Those were primitive times. Society frowned on anybody who suggested alternative lifestyles from the norm – and ostracised those who attempted them.

The current situation is far from enlightened, but progress has been made – as a result of decades of campaigning against oppressive prejudice such as that displayed by Lord Tebbit.

And it is oppressive. It is an attempt to tell other people how to live. How would you like it?

Former Chairman of the Conservative Party Lord Tebbit had claimed air pollution is making people transgender – a week after the Prime Minister told the PinkNews Awards that “being trans is not an illness”.

Lord Tebbit, a former Thatcher minister and Chairman of the Conservative Party, is a long-running opponent of LGBT rights.

The 86-year-old peer spoke out this week in an article in the Telegraph.

He claimed transgender people were a new phenomenon, writing: “I cannot recollect any such individuals among my fellow pupils at school, nor in my intake for National Service in 1949, nor so far as I know among my children’s generation at school.”

He added: “I think it is time we had some research into the extent of the phenomenon both in time and geographical reach.

“I do not know if the populations of third world or of urban or of rural societies are more or less affected.

“Nor is it known if it is only our species or others living alongside us which have been affected, but that knowledge might point to a trigger such as pollution, which is the belief of some scientists.”

It is unclear what scientists he is referring to.

Source: Former Conservative Party chair Lord Tebbit claims air pollution is making people transgender – PinkNews


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19 thoughts on “Lord Tebbit thinks air pollution is making people transgender – is that as opposed to narrow-minded?

  1. Christine Cullen

    He was always a nasty person (I’m old enough to remember him in government!) and now he’s not only nasty, he’s off his trolley.

  2. marcusdemowbray

    OK Tebbitt, it’s all new is it? Never happened before, well perhaps not at your school. Mind you, you clearly don’t know much about history. Tutankhamun : almost certainly trans-gender. King Edward II : almost certainly gay. Or perhaps they are still a bit “new” for an old dinosaur like you.

  3. J Edington

    This cretin is more ignorant than I thought previously, and that takes some doing. Your reasons are the obvious ones why gender trans issues are more prevalent today. His notion that humans are the only species who behave in same or trans-sex manners is nonsense. It has been well-documented in hundreds of species.

  4. wildswimmerpete

    Air pollution was much worse in Tebbit’s day, look at the London smogs that occurred every winter until the enactment of the Clean Air Act 1956. A very dangerous result of pervasive car exhaust pollution was lead which turned out to be a neurotoxin that retarded the development of childrens’ brains. It was the vendors of tetra-ethyl lead who effectively convinced governments that leaded petrol presented little or no risk. I can’t think of any air-borne pollutant that could result in what was basically a sex-change.

  5. Wirral In It Together

    Air pollution in Northern towns at the turn of the century before last was horrendous. If Tebbit’s quack scientists are correct that air pollution is the cause, what happened to all the millions of transgender workers who populated these towns and downed tools to go off and fight and win two world wars?

  6. Ann Abott

    Sorry you are very wrong to think this is because Society has changed. It is known that there are things affecting hormone inbalance that were not around when people of Mr Tebbit’s era were your age. A lifetime involved with children and young people in education with all manner of problems mental and physical that presented problems to learning and development I can assure you one of them was not knowing whether you were male or female. Yes there were children occasionally who were gay or lesbian, even had both sets of sex organs, but this is very different. Men are developing breasts even getting breast cancer. Then again when I was a young teacher, children didn’t die from cancer. Holes in heart, respiratory problems were things that took our young then. You really should be looking into who suppresses information. He like me will remember arrival of microwaves being linked to increases in cancer etc from radiation leaks. Nobody lives more in past than the Tories.

      1. Gill

        Well in my experience you are wrong. I am not transgender but do know quite a few who are, mostly m to f. Many are older, my age of 60 something and older. They always knew something “was different” but couldn’t have vocalised it.

    1. wildswimmerpete

      @Ann Abbott
      The subject of this discussion is AIR POLLUTION. There is no way that gender-bending chemicals can be found in air pollution. Atmospheric lead from leaded petrol led to a reduction of IQ in growing children because of neurotoxicity, but had no known effect on their sex organs.

      What is resulting in the changes you discuss is down to the hormones used to lace meat, hormones intended to speed maturity so a given animal went to slaughter earlier. You wait and see what will happen should the US be allowed to flog us their toilet bleach washed chickens and their hormone and antibiotic laden meats.

  7. Zippi

    For what reason are you calling him a bigot? It is a legitimate question. Aye, society may have changed but it must be asked why there appear, at least, to be so many persons, in recent years, who identify themselves as “trans.” It has been long known that environmental pollutants affect the physical sexual traits of other animals; why not humans? We know that certain plastics mimic oestrogens. We know that hormone production and response is adversely affected by pollutants and we know that sperm production and motility is being affected by something environmental. It is not fair to ask whether, or not we, ourselves, are creating gender dysphoria, or intensifying, or magnifying what may have previously been a rare biological event, in the same way that we question, for example, Climate Change?

    1. Mike Sivier Post author

      I’m calling him a bigot, pretty much because he doesn’t want LGBT people to have any recognition or rights.

      1. Zippi

        I somehow missed that. I’m not sure about air pollution but I still think that questions need to be asked. We are definitely messing ourselves up.

    2. wildswimmerpete

      @Zippi
      “We know that certain plastics mimic oestrogens.” By that you probably mean bisphenol A, a well-known endocrine disruptor which is used as a plasticiser in e.g. the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles used to contain most of our drinks. However BPA isn’t known as a component of air pollution, the subject of this discussion. The danger comes from the very small amounts of PET and BPA that leach into drinks and foodstuffs. There are of course quite a few more known endocrine disruptors but BPA is the most well-known one.

  8. laurence293

    This is the man, you will remember, who once said on the radio that buggery makes you fat (and subsequently denied it).

Comments are closed.