Pro-trans bullies pushed agenda on the vulnerable
THE FIRST time I became aware of the “gender identity” phenomenon among adolescents was around 10 years ago, when a friend who worked in education told me that it had become the “in thing” for 13 and 14-year-old girls to say they were “trans”.
Knowing how quickly kids move from one fad to another, I thought nothing of it. As a genetics graduate and former science teacher I am well aware of the genetic, physical and psychological differences between the two biological sexes.
And I assumed that schools, doctors and all responsible adults would reinforce the facts.
But then I began hearing about children in families of my acquaintance who had “changed gender”.
And after I was elected in 2019, parents across the country started writing to me with tragic stories of children who had been groomed online and at school by activists, transitioned behind their backs and referred to the Gender Identity Development Service, at the now infamous Tavistock clinic.
It was already widely known that GIDS was not fit for purpose and that the Tavistock served as a focal point for a cabal of pro-trans activists to push their agenda on vulnerable children.
But last week’s Cass report makes clear how far GIDS had departed from normal standards.
It reveals unknown numbers of children were given puberty blockers – drugs that activists wrongly claim have no long-term effects.
Yet as Cass points out, we don’t know whether halting puberty has any long-term effects on children because there are no reliable and relevant studies.
But there is a strong chance these drugs weaken bones and harm brain development.
As the review reveals, 98 per cent of children prescribed puberty blockers progressed to cross-sex hormones. Again, there’s no evidence that these irreversible drugs give any benefit to adolescents struggling with gender distress.
It’s hard to see how a doctor would be allowed to prescribe permanent body-altering, infertility inducing treatments to children for another mental health condition
such as depression. Yet that’s exactly what happened at GIDS.
The report concludes there’s no reliable international evidence that medical or surgical gender treatment “works”. Not only did GIDS break with all established ethical conventions, but the majority of NHS adult gender clinics persist in the cover-up by refusing to release data that would enable Cass to study long-term outcomes.
What happened at GIDS was a scandal. But given the enormous increase in referrals since 2014, any NHS service would have struggled to cope.
Hilary Cass devotes some of her 388-page report to examining why there has been such an extraordinary increase in the number of children – especially girls – wanting to change their gender.
The rise of social media has transformed our culture and many teens are now immersed for hours every day in an online world of harmful, radical and often completely false material.
It’s interesting that the growth in referrals to GIDS – beginning in 2010 and then accelerating in 2014 – is indistinguishable from charts tracking the deterioration of adolescent wellbeing across many other measures, whether that be suicide rates, anxiety or self-harm.
The one common factor is the rise of smartphones and social media, and their devastating effect on children’s mental health. There
are now growing calls for children to be protected from social media.
I have no doubt that if kids are cut off from “trans influencers”, groomers and Tiktok videos glorifying double mastectomies, the gender trend will wane.
But the real scandal of the past 15 years is that adults – including politicians, doctors and teachers – have reinforced the dangerous and scientifically absurd idea that some are “born in the wrong body”.
Many teens are immersed for hours every day in an online world of harmful, radical and often false material
IT’S AS IF respected professionals told children that anorexia was not a mental health problem but an identity to be celebrated, and that those who disagreed are bigots who want to “erase” thin people. Brave parents and campaign groups – such as the Bayswater Support Group, Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend – have consistently raised the alarm about the harms being done to children by gender ideology.
Yet their concerns were ignored, dismissed and even ridiculed.
We must acknowledge that large sections of society have taken part in a re-enactment of the emperor’s new clothes, with those who can see the nakedness too scared to speak out or silenced when they do. How did this happen?
This is the real question that must be answered, otherwise we will be powerless to prevent the next scandal.