Gender survey for 10-year-olds is a dangerous folly
EVERY so often a madness takes hold of society and something which most ordinary people would regard as ridiculous becomes the norm. The latest such outbreak concerns so-called gender fluidity.
We appear to have suddenly gone from the idea of male and female being an entirely unremarkable biological definition of the two sexes to the widespread acceptance of the notion that anyone is free to decide for themselves which gender they wish to be.
Indeed the very concept of gender itself has gone from being male or female to something of a free-for-all. It’s no longer just he or she but also it or they.
Ridiculously the idea of a divide between genders has started to be treated as somehow wrong. One example of this is the rise of the gender neutral toilet.
In October one leading school – Highgate in north London – peremptorily turned all its toilets gender neutral.
Some people could not care less whether they use a male or female loo. Fine. But for the vast majority of us it is inappropriate and wrong to have to share a loo with the opposite sex. Such was the outrage among those who use Highgate’s toilets – from pupils as well as parents – that the head master had to beat a swift retreat and revert to normal male and female toilets.
SIMILARLY this year clothes shop Topshop turned its changing cubicles gender neutral. No matter that for many women it is deeply unsettling to undress in an area with men doing the same thing.
A mania seems to have taken hold which treats gender as a form of oppression to be overcome. So if you wish to be treated as female that is your right whatever biology might say. And if you reject that idea you are a bigot.
Take Lily Madigan, the women’s officer of Rochester and Strood Labour Party in Kent. According to Labour’s rule book, “the women’s officer must be a woman”. But Lily Madigan is not a woman. She was born a man and the only thing that is in any way female about her is that she asserts she is a woman and dresses like a woman.
Merely stating this means to some that I am “transphobic”. Such is the madness of where we now are.
There are, one should state at the outset, a number of people who believe that they are in the wrong body. They were born into a male or female body but feel the opposite. For those for whom this is the case a caring society should be tolerant and helpful.
If someone born in a male body, for example, feels the need to dress like a woman, they have every right to do so.
For others gender reassignment surgery is the answer and we should do all that we can to help these people. But while it is a good thing that modern society respects people’s wishes and needs, you do not change biology simply by assertion.
And there has been a parallel and linked development that is far from a good thing. Indeed it is truly worrying. It is one thing for adults to take life-altering decisions. But children are now being treated as if they were adults and having these hugely important issues thrust upon them.
Take Highgate School again. Because not only did the head master introduce gender neutral toilets he also planned to introduce a gender neutral uniform, with boys wearing skirts if they wished. And Highgate is not alone.
But this week has seen an altogether more worrying extension of this madness. In a survey of schoolchildren the NHS is asking 10-year-olds if they are “comfortable in their gender”. In the survey, Year Six pupils are asked: “Do you feel the same inside as the gender you were born with? (Feeling male or female).”
They are instructed to tick a box for their gender with the options “girl”, “boy” or “other”. Not surprisingly the survey sent out by Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust has caused consternation.
One mother said her daughter was in “a state” when she read it. As the mother rightly went on: “I don’t want someone putting into my daughter’s head that she might not be happy with her own gender.”
This is grotesque. There are recognisable stages in childhood that are difficult enough at the best of times, when youngsters have to learn to deal with the real world, with others and with their own emotions.
NOW the NHS – the NHS, for goodness sake! – is going out of its way to create more difficulties by putting in the mainstream among 10-year-old children an issue that is only even a concern among a tiny number of adults, let alone children.
Doubtless the people responsible for the questionnaire have the best of intentions and think they are being supportive. But by falling in behind the mania of gender fluidity and asking such a question they are betraying childhood itself.
It is deeply misguided and deeply damaging to treat children as if they are able to take life-altering decisions on issues such as their own gender.
For children it is entirely natural to feel confused and puzzled about their sexuality and identity. That is part of the process of growing up. To interfere with it and turn it into an issue of gender correction or fluidity is appalling.
It is, one might even say, a form of child abuse.
‘They are betraying childhood itself’