The war against trans madness is far from over

JK Rowling is right to turn her fury against those who colluded in this nightmare, which still grips schools

Following the Cass Review, a riveting ding-dong has broken out on X (formerly Twitter) between JK Rowling and the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp. In broad terms, Allsopp belongs to the Pollyannaish “Be kind to trans people” side. While she admits there is a real issue around the impact of puberty blockers on long-term health, Allsopp insists “it is and always has been possible to debate these things and those saying there was no debate are wrong”.

This disingenuous assertion so enraged the Harry Potter author that J K spat back at Allsopp with examples of men and women who were bullied, harassed and lost their careers for daring to be critical of gender ideology. Detransitioners, Rowling pointed out bitterly, “are subject to horrendous abuse from their ‘community’ … We’ve all watched them being jeered at, even told to kill themselves.”

This is not a match between intellectual equals: it’s Kirstie’s jolly hockey stick against Joanne’s world-bestselling-author flamethrower. “People like you who now claim there’s never been any attempt to stifle debate are part of the reason this mess happened in the first place,” rages Rowling, “If you want to remain in a state of blithe unconcern, fine, but don’t tell those in the trenches they’re making a fuss about nothing.”

The choice of “trenches” is revealing. Rowling and other campaigners have been at war against an enemy so ruthless it thought the mutilated bodies of teenagers, who may simply have been gay, autistic or just anxious, was a price worth paying to impose its warped creed. (Yes, Stonewall and Mermaids, I mean you.) Now that Hilary Cass has decreed the evidence for such life-changing interventions was “weak” all the colluders – Labour MPS, Cabinet ministers, doctors, broadcasters, actors, comedians – are claiming that they knew that all along. Behold a Tour de France of backpedalling.

In her industry, Allsopp would have been a pariah had she stood up for vulnerable children against the trans mob; look how those brave luvvies shunned the Father Ted comic genius Graham Linehan. Instead, Kirstie complained about the “absolutely staggering lack of humour in this debate”. When a mother replied that her daughter was about to have her healthy breasts removed and she didn’t find it funny, Allsopp advised, “Believe me there is a great deal of dark humour in [a mastectomy] and you’d do well to recognise that.”

Hang on, that’s odd. When I interviewed Allsopp in 2021, she told me she hated the jaunty trans term “top surgery” because it belied the suffering her mother and sister had gone through. Saying that on telly would have got her cancelled, of course.

A point that is in danger of being overlooked is that Cass is not the total victory some claim; like Hamas, the fanatics have tunnelled deep into our society, hiding in hospitals and schools. On X this week, I asked parents for examples of schools teaching harmful “You may be in the wrong body” tripe to 10-year-olds. You’d be horrified by the stories that came back. The Genderbread Person worksheet (“My Gender Identity does not have to match my Expression, and neither of them have to match my body!”) used by one Yorkshire LGBTQ+ centre is typical.

Schools have bought in third-party providers to do their RSHE (relationship, sex, health education). Many are trans Trojan horses, run by activists who seize the chance to drip-feed unscientific gender confusion into impressionable young minds. The Safe Schools Alliance has written to the Prime Minister calling for a public inquiry into “regulatory capture in the education sector” and safeguarding failures in schools.

Janine, a schools service volunteer for the NSPCC, told me a refresher course she did had a section on “so-called ‘trans’ children” and that this was a real thing now in primary schools. “There was no acknowledgement that this could be a safeguarding issue, just a directive to use the correct pronouns,” Janine says. “The blind parroting of the thought-terminating clichés angered me so much I couldn’t help but point out that a trans child was as real as a vegan cat; we all know who is making the decisions.”

If that pernicious ideology has infiltrated the NSPCC, where are children safe? JK Rowling is right to turn her blazing word wizardry on Allsopp; this is no time for platitudes about “grown-up debate”, “healing divisions and correcting misunderstandings”. There is no misunderstanding. The war goes on. Expelliarmus!