It’s very hard to know what the future will make of us. Will they judge us as harshly as today’s young puritans are minded to judge the past? Of one thing I think we can be pretty confident: the trans cult which possessed teenagers, mainly girls, in the first quarter of the 21st century will come to be viewed as one of the great aberrations. A historic mistake, a hysteria if you will, in which certain adults, acting for ideological reasons or because they were too scared to challenge the groupthink, aided and abetted the self-harm of children.
The cost will be enormous, both in terms of the mental and physical health of individuals but also in the compensation the state will eventually have to pay to those who chose to have a mastectomy (or castration) and came to realise that they mutilated themselves with the permission of a psychiatrist.
By trans cult, I don’t mean the relatively small number of adults who, having experienced gender dysphoria – “characterised by a severe and persistent discomfort in one’s own biological sex, which typically begins in early childhood” – went on to take the painful steps to change their bodies to bring them in line with who they felt they were. That is an entirely private matter and those people deserve nothing but kindness and respect.
What I am talking about is the quasi-grooming of impressionable and anxious youngsters to believe they were born in the wrong body, which has spread like a contagion. (Historically, gender dysphoria was found almost solely among small boys, but now it increasingly presents itself in white, adolescent girls in middle-class families.) Those young people are coached by online trans influencers to deliver an approved coming-out-as-trans script to their parents. If the poor parents don’t accept it, the teenager is told to cut their family off or use “the suicide tactics”. Basically, they are advised to threaten to kill themselves if Mum and Dad don’t agree to call them by their new name, use the correct pronouns and generally submit to the laughable idea that they are now a boy (or girl). That emotional blackmail usually works; parents are scared stiff.
Like any cult, this one has a language of its own, and rules and penalties for those who get things wrong or, God forbid, try to leave. Non-trans or straight people are “Normies”. “Deadnaming” is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning. For obvious reasons, parents are often upset when their child tells them the name they chose for her/him at birth is now their “dead name”. But parents are not entitled to be upset. The only feelings that matter are the transitioner’s. Oh, and if your parents are Normies who won’t go along with you taking hormones, using chest compressors, or getting surgically altered, there are loads of trans stars and influencers online who are willing to become your new “glitter family”.
How bad is all this? One nurse tells me that, at the NHS hospital where she worked until recently, they had a weekly theatre list for transgender girls having mastectomies. “All of them had issues such as autism, ADHD, bullying. One even told me she would never get a boyfriend as a girl. All had been seen at The Tavistock’s [gender identity] clinic. I always read their notes with some horror. Awful.”
Yes, it is awful. Horrifying. As a society, we have barely begun to wake up to what should be called out as lunacy, but which people hardly dare whisper about for fear of being labelled transphobic. So parents and sensible teachers will have breathed a sigh of relief today after the Government, albeit rather belatedly, published Guidance for Schools for Gender Questioning Children, which recognised that the social contagion of “trans” is destabilising school communities and endangering vulnerable kids. Until now, some schools have taken it upon themselves to allow a pupil to socially transition without informing their parents. Teachers who have dared to question the gospel according to trans, and refused to accept a girl has become a boy overnight, have been rebuked and disciplined for “misgendering”. Madness which undermines adult authority.
Kemi Badenoch, the minister who has pushed this measure through with characteristic tenacity and mental toughness, says firmly: “Parents should be included in all decisions relating to a child’s request to socially transition. No one loves children more than their parents and it is wrong to exclude parents from what can be a pathway to irreversible medical decisions.”
Hooray, and so say all of us. Badenoch goes further, pushing back against the concept of gender identity itself. “The principle of biological sex is real. Sex is not ‘assigned’ at birth… No child is born in the wrong body,” she says. “Some children may not like their body and we should help them. But social transitioning is not a neutral act and should only happen in rare circumstances.”
She’s right. An entire class of kids should not have to deny biological sex and call Katie Karl as if they’re an extra in The Emperor’s New Clothes. By going along with any change of name and pronouns, you actually make it more likely that Katie/Karl will progress to hormones and life-altering physical changes.
Kate Barker, CEO of LGB Alliance, welcomed the guidance which asserts that a school’s legal responsibilities are framed by a child’s biological sex. “Gender identity ideology is, correctly, described as a contested belief rather than as objective fact,” says Barker. “We are especially pleased that the guidance specifically cautions that a young person’s growing awareness of their same-sex sexual orientation is sometimes assumed to be, or mistaken for, a ‘trans’ identity. LGB Alliance has long argued that children who might otherwise grow up to be happily lesbian, gay or bisexual are being told, at school, that an attraction to someone of the same sex may be an indication that they were ‘born in the wrong body’. We already know that the majority of teenage girls attending gender clinics describe themselves as same-sex attracted and that social transition, facilitated by schools, is often the first step towards irreversible drugs and surgery peddled by unscrupulous practitioners.”
For some, the Guidance for Schools does not go far enough. Liz Truss said yesterday that it would be “exploited by activists and does not sufficiently protect children”. Truss, who is urging the Government to back her Private Members’ Bill, calls for a change in the law that would define sex as biological sex to protect single-sex spaces, stop schools formally recognising social transitioning and ban under-18s from accessing puberty blockers and hormone treatment.
I agree with her. Activists from Stonewall and other gender-identity groups, who have been allowed to infiltrate our schools, are bound to fight this threat to their lucrative cult. One major obstacle to the guidance being followed is that many schools have themselves been schooled by Stonewall. Plenty are part of the Stonewall School Champions Scheme. Predictably, certain LGBTQ+ organisations are already calling on teachers to ignore the guidance – “a move that would harm LGB teens,” says Barker. “It is the clearest indication yet that the interests of LGB people and those who identify as TQ+ are in conflict.”
At the very least, this guidance puts the UK at the forefront of the fightback against the indoctrination of children with fantastical theories and pernicious, family- and health-wrecking ideologies. A girl who lowers her voice with testosterone and grows facial hair also potentially ruins her fertility, her chance of breastfeeding or experiencing normal sexual pleasure. With a Labour victory almost certain next year, and all the crazies that will usher in, this was the last chance to lay out protections for millions of impressionable kids and to give parents peace of mind that their children aren’t being inducted into some sinister cult at school. Huge thanks are due to Kemi Badenoch, Miriam Cates and all on the Tory benches who stood up for sanity against cruel nonsense. From here on in, parents and grandparents must play their part against the cult; be vigilant, insist that the guidance is applied in your son or daughter’s class.
No, we can’t be sure how history will judge us, but this feels like a hinge on the gate to the future. It is swinging in the right direction, and children are safer, at last.
It’s very hard to know what the future will make of us. Will they judge us as harshly as today’s young puritans are minded to judge the past? Of one thing I think we can be pretty confident: the trans cult which possessed teenagers, mainly girls, in the first quarter of the 21st century will come to be viewed as one of the great aberrations. A historic mistake, a hysteria if you will, in which certain adults, acting for ideological reasons or because they were too scared to challenge the groupthink, aided and abetted the self-harm of children.
The cost will be enormous, both in terms of the mental and physical health of individuals but also in the compensation the state will eventually have to pay to those who chose to have a mastectomy (or castration) and came to realise that they mutilated themselves with the permission of a psychiatrist.
By trans cult, I don’t mean the relatively small number of adults who, having experienced gender dysphoria – “characterised by a severe and persistent discomfort in one’s own biological sex, which typically begins in early childhood” – went on to take the painful steps to change their bodies to bring them in line with who they felt they were. That is an entirely private matter and those people deserve nothing but kindness and respect.
What I am talking about is the quasi-grooming of impressionable and anxious youngsters to believe they were born in the wrong body, which has spread like a contagion. (Historically, gender dysphoria was found almost solely among small boys, but now it increasingly presents itself in white, adolescent girls in middle-class families.) Those young people are coached by online trans influencers to deliver an approved coming-out-as-trans script to their parents. If the poor parents don’t accept it, the teenager is told to cut their family off or use “the suicide tactics”. Basically, they are advised to threaten to kill themselves if Mum and Dad don’t agree to call them by their new name, use the correct pronouns and generally submit to the laughable idea that they are now a boy (or girl). That emotional blackmail usually works; parents are scared stiff.
Like any cult, this one has a language of its own, and rules and penalties for those who get things wrong or, God forbid, try to leave. Non-trans or straight people are “Normies”. “Deadnaming” is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning. For obvious reasons, parents are often upset when their child tells them the name they chose for her/him at birth is now their “dead name”. But parents are not entitled to be upset. The only feelings that matter are the transitioner’s. Oh, and if your parents are Normies who won’t go along with you taking hormones, using chest compressors, or getting surgically altered, there are loads of trans stars and influencers online who are willing to become your new “glitter family”.
How bad is all this? One nurse tells me that, at the NHS hospital where she worked until recently, they had a weekly theatre list for transgender girls having mastectomies. “All of them had issues such as autism, ADHD, bullying. One even told me she would never get a boyfriend as a girl. All had been seen at The Tavistock’s [gender identity] clinic. I always read their notes with some horror. Awful.”
Yes, it is awful. Horrifying. As a society, we have barely begun to wake up to what should be called out as lunacy, but which people hardly dare whisper about for fear of being labelled transphobic. So parents and sensible teachers will have breathed a sigh of relief today after the Government, albeit rather belatedly, published Guidance for Schools for Gender Questioning Children, which recognised that the social contagion of “trans” is destabilising school communities and endangering vulnerable kids. Until now, some schools have taken it upon themselves to allow a pupil to socially transition without informing their parents. Teachers who have dared to question the gospel according to trans, and refused to accept a girl has become a boy overnight, have been rebuked and disciplined for “misgendering”. Madness which undermines adult authority.
Kemi Badenoch, the minister who has pushed this measure through with characteristic tenacity and mental toughness, says firmly: “Parents should be included in all decisions relating to a child’s request to socially transition. No one loves children more than their parents and it is wrong to exclude parents from what can be a pathway to irreversible medical decisions.”
Hooray, and so say all of us. Badenoch goes further, pushing back against the concept of gender identity itself. “The principle of biological sex is real. Sex is not ‘assigned’ at birth… No child is born in the wrong body,” she says. “Some children may not like their body and we should help them. But social transitioning is not a neutral act and should only happen in rare circumstances.”
She’s right. An entire class of kids should not have to deny biological sex and call Katie Karl as if they’re an extra in The Emperor’s New Clothes. By going along with any change of name and pronouns, you actually make it more likely that Katie/Karl will progress to hormones and life-altering physical changes.
Kate Barker, CEO of LGB Alliance, welcomed the guidance which asserts that a school’s legal responsibilities are framed by a child’s biological sex. “Gender identity ideology is, correctly, described as a contested belief rather than as objective fact,” says Barker. “We are especially pleased that the guidance specifically cautions that a young person’s growing awareness of their same-sex sexual orientation is sometimes assumed to be, or mistaken for, a ‘trans’ identity. LGB Alliance has long argued that children who might otherwise grow up to be happily lesbian, gay or bisexual are being told, at school, that an attraction to someone of the same sex may be an indication that they were ‘born in the wrong body’. We already know that the majority of teenage girls attending gender clinics describe themselves as same-sex attracted and that social transition, facilitated by schools, is often the first step towards irreversible drugs and surgery peddled by unscrupulous practitioners.”
For some, the Guidance for Schools does not go far enough. Liz Truss said yesterday that it would be “exploited by activists and does not sufficiently protect children”. Truss, who is urging the Government to back her Private Members’ Bill, calls for a change in the law that would define sex as biological sex to protect single-sex spaces, stop schools formally recognising social transitioning and ban under-18s from accessing puberty blockers and hormone treatment.
I agree with her. Activists from Stonewall and other gender-identity groups, who have been allowed to infiltrate our schools, are bound to fight this threat to their lucrative cult. One major obstacle to the guidance being followed is that many schools have themselves been schooled by Stonewall. Plenty are part of the Stonewall School Champions Scheme. Predictably, certain LGBTQ+ organisations are already calling on teachers to ignore the guidance – “a move that would harm LGB teens,” says Barker. “It is the clearest indication yet that the interests of LGB people and those who identify as TQ+ are in conflict.”
At the very least, this guidance puts the UK at the forefront of the fightback against the indoctrination of children with fantastical theories and pernicious, family- and health-wrecking ideologies. A girl who lowers her voice with testosterone and grows facial hair also potentially ruins her fertility, her chance of breastfeeding or experiencing normal sexual pleasure. With a Labour victory almost certain next year, and all the crazies that will usher in, this was the last chance to lay out protections for millions of impressionable kids and to give parents peace of mind that their children aren’t being inducted into some sinister cult at school. Huge thanks are due to Kemi Badenoch, Miriam Cates and all on the Tory benches who stood up for sanity against cruel nonsense. From here on in, parents and grandparents must play their part against the cult; be vigilant, insist that the guidance is applied in your son or daughter’s class.
No, we can’t be sure how history will judge us, but this feels like a hinge on the gate to the future. It is swinging in the right direction, and children are safer, at last.