I remember as a teenager reading about a strange disorder called anorexia. I had never heard of it – and then I noticed one of my best friends cleaning her teeth several times a day and exercising manically. And it wasn’t just her that was acting weirdly. Several girls I knew were clearly suffering. Then came bulimia, which turned the school loos into sad places in which certain girls spent worrying amounts of time.
Then, as a mother of daughters, I remember reading about an epidemic of cutting among teenagers. Surely this highly unusual behaviour was not rampant? Well, the internet told me it was and an NHS psychiatrist informed me about self-harm circles in certain schools.
These thoughts occur because I am trying to understand how we started talking of “trans children” and thought this was somehow some kind of “progress”. This, after all, is a new phenomenon. In 2010, for instance, with the Equality Act, which made gender reassignment a protected characteristic, the intention was surely to avoid discrimination against adult transsexuals. This is a laudable aim but no one was talking about children then. The phrase “gender dysphoria” was not bandied about. It was rare to come across a child who had such severe gender issues they needed specialist services. Indeed in that year, only 75 children were referred to Gids (the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service, based at the Tavistock centre in north-west London). By 2021 it was 5,000.
Now we are in a situation where celebrities wear T-shirts saying Protect Trans Kids and where schools, even primary schools, are colluding with the idea that children are whatever they say they are, that their bodies are somehow wrong and that they can change their names without parental consent. MORE AT Trans children have been lied to by adults – the Cass report may now see the legal dam break (msn.com)
Very well written.
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