The Mail on Sunday

It’s a scandal no one tried to stop Keira losing her womanhood

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AS THE mother of two teenagers, I know only too well how quickly their minds change. One minute they’ re solemnly informing you that another piece of meat will never pass their lips, the next they’ re tucking into chicken stir- fry. From hair dye to politics, it’s endless highs and lows as they ride that rollercoas­ter towards adulthood.

’Twas ever thus. But nowadays it’s even harder. This age group take almost every cue from the internet and social media, and we all know what a confusing place that can be. It’s hard enough for most adults to make sense of, let alone someone who lacks a fully developed frontal cortex.

That is why, now more than ever, it is vital for adults to be the voice of wisdom and reason in young people’s lives. To challenge and above all offer protection against the worst excesses of the modern world. They will probably hate you for it now. But in the long run they will thank you.

Perhaps if the adults around Keira Bell had shown more strength of character, she would not be where she is today.

KEIRA is the brave young woman who last week won her case in the High Court against t he Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust – which runs the country’ s only gender identity developmen­t service (GIDS) for children–to halt the use of puberty blockers.

Since 2011 the clinic has been prescribin­g these drugs – the same used in the chemical castration of sex offenders – to children as young as ten. Keira was one of them.

A vulnerable girl who suffered anxiety and social isolation, she was referred to the clinic at the age of 16 where, after just four assessment appointmen­ts, she was started on a year’s course of puberty blockers.

As a result, she entered the menopause. After 12 months she began injections of testostero­ne. Her voice deepened, she grew facial hair and lived as a young man. The final step was a double mastectomy. By the age of 20, without ever having truly experience­d what it means to be a woman, Keira’s identity had been altered for ever.

Except Keira, now 23, does not want to be a man. Indeed, she thinks she probably never did, but was simply struggling with mental health issues. But her fate is sealed. Which is why she decided to take on the clinic.

She doesn’t want other young people to be pressured into undergoing extreme, experiment­al therapies that bring about irreversib­le physical changes, including infertilit­y. Her argument is that she was too young, too inexperien­ced, too confused, too fragile, to know what she was doing.

That none of the adults at the clinic ever really challenged her feeling that all her problems would melt away if she could just stop being a girl is a scandal that cannot be understate­d.

Very few would question the right of transgende­r people to live happily. But this issue does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in the context of an online world that promotes sex change to vulnerable, impression­able young minds. Social media platforms are full of powerful influencer­s promoting notions such as ‘freedom of self-expression’ and ‘ empowermen­t’ in these narrow terms. Videos of young people proudly showing off their ‘top surgery’ garner thousands of views and likes. The overall impression is that altering one’s gender is as straightfo­rward as choosing a new pair of jeans. It is not.

This perhaps explains the huge spike (up 3,000 per cent, according to GIDS) in young people presenting with gender dysphoria. Pressure groups such as Mermaids and Stonewall claim that, thanks to their work, these youngsters are simply finally able to express their true selves. That may indeed be the case in some instances. But for many, such as Keira, the experiment­ation of youth will haunt them until the day they die.

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