Danger changes

I thoroughly agree with Les Reid’s comments on the Gender Recognition Bill (Letters, 19 November).

Men have lived as women and women as men throughout history, within the existing legal framework, but to change the law to allow them to legally change their gender and, particularly, to allow schoolchildren to undergo life-altering surgery before reaching adulthood is to step through the looking glass without a return ticket.

This bill will allow people to make permanent changes to their lives at an age when they do not have the necessary experience of life to make an informed decision, not to mention the rats’ nest of other peoples’ lives that such decisions will impact, such as in prisons, hospitals, sports and changing rooms, to name but a few. We will step through that looking glass at our peril.

And before some earnest, troubled, outraged soul stridently demands to know my gender, I self-identify as an Old Curmudgeon!

IAN MCNICHOLAS

Ebbw Vale, Wales