FFS Friday: Beverley Talbott
July 4, 2025
FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. FFS Friday posts are free and shareable.
A paid subscription gets you regular access to much more content and the ability to comment and engage with other thoughtful people.
Today’s FFS Friday celebrates Beverley Talbott. Bev has been working hard behind the scenes for years to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls. On June 30, she testified before the California Senate Committee on Business and Professions, using her own name. You can watch her testimony here.
Same-sex feelings can lead to confusion about one’s identity during the tumult of adolescence.
I remember it well.
But instead of being allowed to grow up gay, as I was, today’s masculine girls and feminine boys are told that they can be, and should be, the other sex. This lie is the true conversion therapy, and SB 418 requires insurers to pay for it.
Bev’s testimony concerned California Senate Bill 418. That bill would amend existing law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of various characteristics, including sex, in the provision of healthcare in California. It would define the word sex to include so-called “gender identity” and require healthcare insurers to pay for “treatments” to allow people to masquerade as the opposite sex. It would create a nightmare for California healthcare providers who simply want to provide quality healthcare to their patients.
This is what she said to the senate committee:
Good afternoon. I’m Beverley Talbott. I speak today as a member of Our Duty and as a football-playing tomboy who grew up to be a lesbian.
Most gender dysphoric adolescents are same-sex attracted. Seventy percent of girls, 60 percent of boys, and a whopping 69 out of 70 kids in the Dutch study that pioneered pediatric gender care.
Same-sex feelings can lead to confusion about one’s identity during the tumult of adolescence. I remember it well.
But instead of being allowed to grow up gay, as I was, today’s masculine girls and feminine boys are told that they can be, and should be, the other sex. This lie is the true conversion therapy, and SB 418 requires insurers to pay for it.
By defining discrimination on the basis of sex to include gender identity, this bill conflates medically necessary treatment with irreversible interventions on children, who have no physical pathology. An insurance plan that covers testosterone for a boy with hypogonadism must cover it for a girl who says she’s a boy. A plan that covers mastectomy for a woman with breast cancer must cover it for a woman who identifies as a man.
This bill aids and abets treatments that the Department of Health and Human Services has found to cause or contribute to sterility, sexual dysfunction, bone loss, cognitive damage, incontinence, stroke, vaginal atrophy, and profound regret.
No evidence shows these treatments reduce suicide risk among gender dysphoric youth, as was once claimed. Yet, even as public opposition grows, SB 418 doubles down, forcing insurers to pay for care that causes harm.
But California doesn’t need to do this. Now is the time for your committee to lead your colleagues out of the partisan muck.
Vote NO on harmful, homophobic, SB 418. You’ll be surprised at how many people on both sides of the aisle will support you.
Thank you.
Bev, seriously, well done. I am proud to stand with you and the global terven in speaking truth to power on behalf of all women and girls. Well done for standing up for lesbians and gay men before your state legislature. Well done for standing up for confused young people and against a harmful and vicious industry. I’m with you all the way. Today’s FFS Friday is for you.
Ironically, some of the fiercest defenders of the medical transitioning of children and adolescents are gays and lesbians who were introduced to the transition option decades ago. I’m a lesbian and I knew/know these people. Back then, in the 1970s, 80s, and on, transitioners were not children indoctrinated in school or groomed by predators on social media. They were adults: masculine lesbians and feminine gay men who were already taking their lives in their hands by their dress and mannerisms and saw transitioning as a refuge from homophobia. Katie Herzog has documented a houseful of lesbian roommates who all transitioned at the same time.
In order to support our friends, many of us who didn’t transition accepted the “wrong body” narrative, and it thrives to this day, despite the statistics that most gender dysphoric kids will grow up to be gay if not meddled with.
This is why today’s FFS heroine, Beverly Talbott, is so important. As a lifelong lesbian, she courageously speaks to everyone, but especially the well-meaning lesbians and gays who haven’t updated their operating systems in many years.
We now know the irreversible damage of medically and surgically poisoning and maiming children — some future gays, some not — in order to mimic the opposite sex.
Thank you so much, Kara. ❤️🔥