Recently, the Batthyány Circle of Professors organized a symposium, the topic of which was the issue of gender ideology.

The event was introduced by Tamás Tényi , a psychiatrist from Pécs and former editor-in-chief of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association's journal, Psychiatria Hungarica, outlining why he resigned from the management of the journal and left the Association. The reason was the censorship exercised by the management of the Psychiatric Society at the time, prohibiting the publication of Gergely Szilvay's study, "Critique of gender theory" (You can read more about this in our conversation with the author.)

Zoltán Rihmer spoke about the role of socialization in psychosexual development, proving that the two statements of the presidencies of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association and the Hungarian Psychological Association criticizing the child protection law without any scientific reference, issued in early 2022, are that gender identity is exclusively biologically determined, and that there are no more gay children raised by gay couples is not true. He stated that in recent years the proportion of "transgender" and gay people in America has increased to a degree that is impossible to explain biologically.

After that, political scientist Gergely Szilvay, an employee of Mandiner, summarized the findings of the banned but eventually published study. We talked to the author after the symposium.

Few people can say that their writing or study stirs up a storm even before it is published, but Gergely Szilvay's case is just like that. More precisely, it was not the study itself that caused a storm - it was only later, when it was actually published - but the fact that the Hungarian Psychiatric Association banned its publication.

– Did you receive any official explanation as to why they do not allow the study to be published in their paper?

"I didn't get it." The essence of the story is that there is a liberal circle within the Hungarian Psychiatric Association, and those belonging to it wanted to prevent the publication of material on the criticism of gender theory. Because of two things. One is that they have a radically opposite position. On the other hand, I was the one who wrote in the Mandiner that the position against the child protection law at the beginning of 2022, which the Company also took note of, did not cover the position of the Company's membership or even its entire management. That statement reflected the views of the president at the time, Judit Balázs, and her close circle, and the president published it just a few days before the end of her mandate, leaving her successor with a huge set of problems. Because the Mandiner wrote this, they got really mad at me.

– My mathematical knowledge is quite patchy, so maybe it's just me who doesn't understand how 9+7 becomes 28? The editorial board, which consists of 28 members, decided to ban the article by a ratio of 9:7.

- At that time, the editor-in-chief of the Company's paper was Tamás Tényi, he was informed that they had decided in favor of the ban by a ratio of 9:7. However, it was not a real vote, but various statements made in e-mail were "converted" into votes, on the other hand, the opponents actually decided instead of a 28-member panel, thirdly, there was no example of such a vote being held on a study that had already passed on scientific proofreading. It also includes the fact that the president informed Tamás Tényi that if he ignored the "decision", disciplinary proceedings would be initiated against him.

Couldn't the fact that the author was not a psychiatrist but a journalist play a role in the attack? Such a basic position is not uncommon within certain academic circles, it is enough to think only of the history of József Béres and his drops...

– They referred to this, but I did not write the study in my capacity as a journalist, but as a researcher. It is true that I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, but I have a doctorate in political theory and the topic of my doctoral dissertation was a critique of gay marriage, so I have dealt with these issues a lot before. Of course, there were those who attacked me by saying that I was not a psychiatrist, but that only served as an excuse against me. Anyway, I did a lot of research, moreover, the gender question has not only psychological, but also ideological, political, and ideological aspects, it is completely legitimate to write about this question not only from a psychological or psychiatric point of view.

- Supporters of the gender lobby refer to scientific findings, which is absurd even for a layman. You don't need a doctorate to see that there aren't five or six thousand genders, only two, namely women and men. Is mental illness spreading among psychiatrists?  

– We ordinary people believe that only one thing is important in science, whether something is true or not, but scientists argue a lot about whether something is true or not. You refer to natural science, to biology, but there are also many other disciplines, for example social sciences, humanities, which work differently, not like natural science. Within these, there are several points of view on many issues, and their representatives can also represent opposing points of view on a scientific level. Scientists who support the LGBTQ and gender movement are mostly social scientists, so they mainly have non-scientific arguments. Of course, they also try biological arguments, for example they mention the existence of intersex people. So the bottom line is that in this case, science often rides on formal issues, and not the truth content is important.

"So they are arguing for the existence of hermaphrodites?"

– Today, the category of intersex includes not only hermaphrodites, but roughly 15 different disorders, diseases or syndromes. The more such things are included in the intersex category, the more they increase the number of people who belong here, the more political weight they can give to their own position. There are several problems with this. Intersexism is used by the trans movement for its political purposes, but transgender people are typically not intersex, and in their case it is usually clear whether they are male or female. On the other hand, for the majority of intersex people, it is possible to determine what their birth gender is, but only in a small number of cases it is not possible to decide.

– As a layman, allow me to put it very simply: some scientists have raised the level of stupidity, because I emphasize once again, someone is either a man or a woman. I won't be able to menstruate and give birth even if according to the "scientists" I can do it and they even make an EU decision about it. The problem is that normality is quiet, while abnormality screams, and thus many people may have the impression that the latter are the majority.

- There are no more people and we have to choose separately how many are members of the LGBTQ movement, and how many agree with them and support them. There are no exact figures on this, usually 1.6-5.6 percent of the population can be classified as LGBTQ. According to some surveys, this number among young people in the USA is around 15 percent, but not in the entire population, there it is 5.6 percent. Half of it is bisexual, and the other half includes all other orientations. Another question is how many people support them. There are fewer people in Hungary than to the west of us. There, for example, gay marriage is already accepted by almost two-thirds of the society, and this situation has developed in the last 20 years.

- In Central Europe and the non-Western world, there is much less support for this and much more rejection, but certain circles are working on it so that it does not remain so.

– Of course, yes, they are conducting long-term, thought-out campaigns for this purpose. There is also a book called After the Ball. It was published in the 80s and contains the tactics LGBTQ movements should pursue. If someone reads this today, they can compare what is written with reality. For example, they say that their opponents should be classified as Ku Klux Klanos, extreme rightists, and fascists.

– We see that they are really doing this, while using the technique of hidden hypnosis. Today, there is hardly any film or series in which deviance does not appear, and in a positive setting. In this way, they would slowly accept as natural what is ultimately unnatural. Moreover, they no longer secretly want to acquire and re-educate our children and grandchildren.

- The activity for acceptance is legitimate to a certain extent, the problem is that it is not only aimed at acceptance, but practically I want to introduce a rather aggressive form of education. They argue that all orientations, orientations and identities are biologically rooted or biologically determined. However, in the case of homosexuality, for example, science cannot say for sure, at most that there may be some biological factor, but the environment also plays a very important role in its development. In the case of transgenderism, no biological cause has yet been discovered. Some studies suggest that there may be brain reasons, that a boy feels like a girl because he has a more feminine brain, but these studies are easy to debunk and other studies show otherwise. In addition, other trends in the movement, such as feminism, like to prove that men and women have the same brain, which is not true, because scientists can tell with 75 percent accuracy whether a brain is female or male. The gay movement's favorite claim is that there is an innate biological reason for their orientation, while also asserting that gender, gender roles, and sexuality are social constructs. The two are mutually exclusive in this form.

– What response did your already cited study cause? In the end, it was published in the Hungarian Bioethical Review.

– The effect of the minor scandal surrounding the study was that many people became curious about it. So the action of the liberal circles of the Psychiatric Association backfired.

- Fortunately, we still have forums where such opinions can be published, in certain countries, for example Canada, you could even go to jail for it. It can be said about them and many other Western countries that they have lost their minds.

"There is no doubt that the mentioned Canada, the United States and the others are heading in the wrong direction." In some Western countries, they have gone so far as to ban psychological therapies that try to help those who want to come to terms with their own biological bodies, and those who offer such therapies to children and adults are imprisoned. The same is true if the result of someone's therapy is that, say, a gay person becomes heterosexual, even if this change occurs only as a side effect of that therapy. In many cases, what happens is that a trauma is treated and, by the way, someone's sexuality changes. Research shows that many gays spontaneously become straight between the ages of 17 and 25, and as they age, many gays "shift" into heterosexuality without any therapy. In the case of gender "changers", many people regret this, especially among teenage girls, except that hormone therapy cannot be reversed, which is why surgical gender reassignment is dangerous, and it is actually impossible to change gender, since our cells are either female or male cells. In the Scandinavian countries and Great Britain, it is already felt that legislators and professionals have started to push back, so maybe if we wait a few more years and endure without importing these ideas, maybe we will get away with it, and maybe they will also push back from this within the LGBTQ movement can also be considered extreme.

Gergely Szilvay's complete study here ( http://bioetikai-tarsasag.hu/docs/szemle/MBSZ_2023_1.pdf ).

Author: György Tóth Jr

Cover photo: Gergely Szilvay, Photo: Máté Bach/Hungarian Nation