Transgender

 His book is the The Man Who Would Be Queen. It has been influenced by Mermaids, a very pushy "charity" with an agenda. They turned nasty with Transgender Trend, another pressure group that does not like transitioning, a business with some very disgruntled customers. The Anglican Mainstream is very critical. See what it says at  Schools, Police And The  NHS Have All Been Propagandized By Mermaids. It is currently, in 2022 receiving hostile publicity. See Trans charity Mermaids investigated after 'offering chest binders ... The Charity Commission has been invited to get a grip.

This recent craze is being incited by the Lunatic Fringe - see e.g. Activist Mother Explains What It Took To Rescue Daughter From Transgender Marketing

Take the point that the Tavistock And Portman NHS Foundation Trust is in a growth industry, keeping medics far away from the dole queue. More customers mean more business. They have life styles to support. It's only taxpayers' money; there's plenty more where that came from.

How many people sympathise with transgenders?

The Russians are on the right lines with 2% but then they have been subjected to a different sort of propaganda.

Transgender ex Wiki
Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth.^[1][2][3] Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual.^[4][5] Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), ), it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer.^[2][6][7] Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender.^[8][9] The term transgender may be defined very broadly to include cross-dressers.^[10] The term transgender does not have a universally accepted definition, including among researchers.^[11]

Being transgender is distinct from sexual orientation.^[12] Transgender people may identify as heterosexual (straight), homosexual (gay or lesbian), bisexual, asexual, or otherwise, or may decline to label their sexual orientation. The opposite of transgender i is cisgender, which describes persons whose gender identity matches their assigned sex.^[13] Accurate statistics on the number of transgender people vary widely,  in part due to different definitions of what constitutes being transgender. Some countries, such as Canada, collect census data on transgender people.^[15] Transgender occurrence is generally found in less than 1% of the worldwide population, with figures ranging from <0.1% to 0.6%.^[16][17][18]

The degree to which individuals feel genuine, authentic, and comfortable within their external appearance and accept their genuine identity has been called transgender congruence.^[19] Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, and some seek medical treatments such as hormone replacement therapy, sex reassignment surgery, or psychotherapy.^[20] Not all transgender people desire these treatments, and some cannot undergo them for financial or medical reasons.^[20][21]

Many transgender people face discrimination in the workplace^[22] and in accessing public accommodations^[23] and healthcare.^[24] In many places, they are not legally protected from discrimination.^[25]

 

J. Michael Bailey ex Wiki 
John Michael Bailey (born July 2, 1957) is an American psychologist, behavioural geneticist, and  professor at Northwestern University best known for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation. He maintains that sexual orientation is heavily influenced by biology and male homosexuality is most likely inborn.^[1][2][3] Bailey wrote The Man Who Would Be Queen ex Wiki, a book intended to explain the biology of male sexual orientation and gender to a general audience, focusing on gender nonconforming boys, gay men and transgender women. The book elicited reactions ranging from strong criticism for its coverage of transsexuals, to a nomination for an award^{[ citation needed]}, later retracted, from the Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization that promotes gay literature.^[4]

 

The Man Who Would Be Queen ex Wiki
The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism is a 2003 book by the American psychologist J. Michael Bailey, published by Joseph Henry Press.^[1]

In the first section of the book, Bailey discusses gender-atypical behavior and gender dysphoria in children, emphasizing the biological determination of gender. In the second section, he deals primarily with gay men, including the link between childhood gender dysphoria and male homosexuality later in life. Bailey reviews evidence that male homosexuality is congenital (a result of genetics and prenatal environment), and he argues for the accuracy of some stereotypes about gay men.^[2] In the third section, Bailey summarizes evidence for a psychological typology of trans women that says there are two forms of transsexualism that affect transgender women: one that he describes as an extreme type of male homosexuality and one that is a sexual interest in having a female body, called autogynephilia.

The book caused considerable controversy, which led to complaints and a formal investigation by Northwestern University, where Bailey was chair of the psychology department until shortly before the investigation concluded. Northwestern ultimately found no basis for the complaints,^[3][4] and a university spokesperson said that his departure from the department chairmanship had nothing to do with the investigation.^[5] According to Bailey, some of his critics were motivated by a desire to suppress discussion of the book's ideas about the autogynephilia theory of transgender women.

In her book Galileo's Middle Finger ( (2015), bioethicist Alice Dreger accused Bailey's "sworn enemies" of using "every clever trick in the book—juxtaposing events in misleading ways, ignoring contrary evidence, working the rhetoric, and using anonymity whenever convenient, to make it look as though virtually every trans woman represented in Bailey's book had felt abused by him and had filed a charge".^[7] One of Bailey's critics, transgender academic Deirdre McCloskey, argued that the critics' actions had not overstepped the boundaries of fair comment about what she saw as an "unscientific" opinion.^[8]

 

The Truth About Pervs ex TakiMag
QUOTE
In perhaps the biggest setback yet suffered by the transgenderist juggernaut, the International Swimming Federation has sunk the dreams of Olympic gold of Will “Lia” Thomas, the also-ran male swimmer who declared himself a woman and won an NCAA championship. In a shocking spasm of sanity, the ruling body declared that ex-men who had gone through male puberty (from age 12 onward) are ineligible to enter women’s events because of the permanent advantages in size and strength they have gained.

It’s hard to lose when you have as much of an ideological tailwind at your back as Thomas has had, but his compulsion to crush his enemies and see them driven before him—and to hear the lamentation of the women he beat—made him a remarkably unsympathetic standard-bearer.

And yet, Thomas’ toxic masculinity is not unusual among the better-known transgenders. An extraordinary fraction of the most prominent and influential male-to-female transgenders are, when you stop and think about them, obvious examples of male ego, aggression, and self-assertion run amok.

“Few on either the left or the right have noticed the pattern that many of the most influential men to declare themselves women have virtually no feminine traits whatsoever.”

For example, MSNBC anchorwoman Katy Turn has just published a memoir, Rough Draft, of growing up the daughter of Bob Tur, the top TV news helicopter pilot. With his wife/camerawoman Marika Gerrard, Bob captured the most notorious footage of Los Angeles’ tumultuous 1990s, such as the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny during the Rodney King riot and O.J. Simpson’s odyssey in the white Bronco from lawyer Robert Kardashian’s house (the keystone event of 21st-century American trash culture).

A relentless wife-beater—somebody in the L.A. news business put together an hour-long tape titled Bob Tur’s Greatest Hits of Katy’s dad punching her mom in their copter live on air—Bob now wears a dress and calls himself Zoey.

Similarly, a few years ago Susan Faludi, another well-known woman journalist, published a memoir, In the Darkroom, about her nasty dad who decided late in life that he was a woman.

When you point out these recurrent patterns, many respond that The Science teaches us that Zoey Tur always felt like a girl on the inside; and all the evidence to the contrary must have been just her elaborate, seamless lifelong hoax mounted from earliest girlhood to cover up her innate femininity by acting 24/7 for 40-plus years like a giant macho prick. After all, they reason, you couldn’t possibly doubt the word of a woman who claims to have deceived the whole world for decades, could you?

Yet few on either the left or the right have noticed this pattern that many of the most influential men to declare themselves women have virtually no feminine traits whatsoever.

The right tends to assume that the only possible causes for transgenderism could be leftism and a lack of masculinity, so they are unable to notice that many of the best-known M-to-Fs are excessively masculine and right of center politically.

The left assumes that Lia Thomas and Zoey Tur must be a bullied minority of natural leftists, making them unable to notice how many famous transgenders are selfish bullies.

This dual intellectual failure is a problem for American society because ever since Wheaties box Olympic hero  Bruce Jenner of the massively popular Keeping Up With the Kardashians reality TV show announced in 2015 that he was now Caitlyn Jenner, unhappy adolescent girls in horrifying numbers have been self-diagnosing that the source of their discontent must be that they were “assigned” the wrong gender at birth.

Granted, there have always been a certain number of small children who refused to play with their own sex’s toys. For instance, I knew one little boy who would explain when I’d see him on Christmas, “I only play with girls’ toys. That’s just the way I am.”

But he was like that from toddlerhood. That always was just the way he is.

In contrast, the tens of thousands of cases of rapid-onset gender dysphoria that have swept American adolescent girls since the Jenner whoop-de-do are a novel mental disease never before seen. It’s the most blatant and alarming example of cultural contagion I can recall in my lifetime.

Our institutions have responded by packing moody girls onto the express train to being poisoned with puberty blockers, mutilated by “gender-affirming” surgery, and permanently sterilized. While our society now has an appropriate horror of the sterilizations performed under old-time eugenics laws, elites are now complacently encouraging sterilization in response to a brand-new mental illness that didn’t exist even a decade ago.

The most excusable reason neither the left nor the right has made much sense of transgenderism is that it’s confusing. Until the social construction of rapid-onset gender dysphoria over the last decade, it came in two very different types, the second of which has been covered up.

The first type is early-onset gender dysphoria: extreme effeminacy in little boys or extreme tomboyism in little girls. This variety sometimes goes away with time (especially among tomboys) and often resolves itself into conventional adult homosexuality, and sometimes the sufferer can’t seem to live as his or her own sex and demands clothes, hormones, and even surgery.

The second and in some ways more socially important type is the male-only disorder of late-onset gender dysphoria. This is frequently (and perhaps always) related to a rather comic sex fetish called autogynephilia in which at puberty, a normally masculine boy begins dressing up in his mother’s lingerie and masturbating in front of the mirror, imagining himself as the beautiful girl he desires.

For reasons that I’ve never seen completely explained, those with the late-onset syndrome tend to be highly intelligent; ambitious in their stereotypically masculine careers (e.g., Tur insisted on being called “Chopper Bob”); fans of hard science fiction (with Robert Heinlein a favorite); and, often, not very nice. They tend to be highly insistent that others validate their sex fantasy about themselves and relentless trouble to those who won’t.

It’s important to note that there is no female equivalent to late-onset gender dysphoria. Instead, rapid-onset gender dysphoria in which conventionally feminine little girls hit the emotional turmoil of puberty and decide that the cause of their unhappiness must be that they have always been transgender is a new thing spread by social and legacy media in recent years. It’s a fad, a catastrophic fad. [ Caused by Mob Psychology perhaps? Editor ]

The existence of the late-onset type among some males is well-known among scientific specialists in the field, but has been almost completely covered up in the mainstream media due to furious campaigns by hyper-aggressive men in dresses to hush up the embarrassing news about their fetish.

Almost twenty years ago, I interviewed Northwestern U. psychologist J. Michael Bailey about his book The Man Who Would Be Queen, which brought down upon me the wrath of a small group of ex-men such as the brilliant libertarian economic historian Donald-Deirdre McCloskey and computer scientist Lynn Conway. Man for man, these guys were the Seal Team Six of proto–cancel culture.

They aligned with Southern Poverty Law Center cofounder Morris Dees, who is not, so far as I know, an ex-man—he was on his sixth wife last I checked. Morris is a junk mail genius and thus accurately anticipated that the madness of the times would eventually make transgenderism the Next Big Thing for him to raise funds over. But sometimes even a maestro can get too far out ahead of his era. So America wasn’t quite ready back in the 2000s for their Baileyian Jihad.

But what, you might ask, could be the harm in vituperative men covering up their fetish?

Well, now we know: Lies can help mislead children into a lifetime of regret.

Of course, the impact of high-IQ men who declare themselves to be women on teenage girls tends to be indirect (with the exception of Jenner, due to his fathering the influencer models Kylie and Kendall Jenner). No tween girl looks at, say, Colonel James-Jennifer Pritzker, the military-obsessed transgender scion of the Chicago money, philanthropy, and politics dynasty, and says, “I want to be just like her when I grow up.”

But with their aggression, intelligence, and self-centeredness, the ex-men have managed to keep completely off-limits for the media, and thus unknown by American girls, the true nature of their embarrassing predilection.

It’s not fun to have 150-IQ obsessives out to ruin you for crossing them, so only a few journalists dare take them on.

Will anybody ever succeed in communicating to impressionable adolescents that these famous ex-men weren’t really always the opposite sex on the inside, that in fact they tend to be excessive examples of stereotypically male traits like ambition, aggression, and megalomania?

When the ex-men tell you they knew there was something different about them as a child, that they could sense that they weren’t like the other boys, what they are actually recalling is that they felt the other boys were their inferiors, that they were superior males with special capacities like the heroes of Heinlein sci-fi novels.

For example, the reason Thomas wants so much to beat women in the pool is likely because his innate sense of superiority was being invalidated by his being a constant loser in male swimming. So, he undertook a course of superiority-complex-affirming therapy by beating women.

Pointing out to young people that these guys are lying, that they are pervs whose hilarious sex fetish took control of their brains, might someday make kids less vulnerable to rapid-onset gender dysphoria.

It’s time to tell the truth.
UNQUOTE
Steve goes for the testicles and scores.

 

Poison, Mutilate And Sterilize ex TakiMag
QUOTE
Nothing exemplifies the madness of our times more than the fervent push since 2013 by therapists, educators, social workers, and journalists to poison, mutilate, and sterilize girls who have self-diagnosed themselves with the novel social-media-transmitted hysteria now known as rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD).

Hence, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier, an op-ed freelancer for The Wall Street Journal, is one of the most valuable (as well as sensible and lively) books of recent years. Shrier is terribly bright but not an academic: She brings a wise Jewish mother’s perspective to her advice for parents losing their chance of grandchildren to the insanity of our age.

Before the smartphone and the Great Awokening helped make transgenderism the latest craze among adolescent girls (partly displacing older teen fads such as anorexia, cutting and recovered memories), psychological science knew of only two main types of gender dysphoria (when an individual is dissatisfied with the sex of his or her body):..........................

Only a vanishingly small number of American teenage girls thought they were boys until the media started hyping transgenderism around 2013. Unhappy pubescent girls shopped online for some explanation of their discontent and found en masse that the hot new one was transgenderism.

As Shrier empathizes, it’s natural for many adolescent girls to be leery of changing into women: “Puberty is hell,” Shrier explains—the bleeding, the cramps, the manic-depressive emotional swings, the need for attention and terror of unwanted attention, and the agonizing self-consciousness.

Few ROGDs really want to be men, they just are scared of being women. “They flee womanhood like a house afire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination.”
UNQUOTE
Read it? Believe it? I do.

 

Anguish of young man who had sex organs removed on NHS then regretted it the SAME day... as he SUES the health service over gender reassignment surgery"  [ 23 June 2022 ]
QUOTE
A young British man who had his genitals removed during gender reassignment surgery is suing the NHS over the operation in a historic legal action.

He complains that doctors did not warn him of the drastic outcome of the body-altering surgery which has left him infertile, incontinent and feeling like a ‘sexual eunuch’. He said on Twitter yesterday: ‘The minute I woke up from surgery, I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life.’ Campaigners say that it is the first medical negligence case over NHS transgender care in this country. The NHS trust involved has not been named.

Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of Transgender Trend, a group advising parents on transgender children and young adults, said: ‘It is hoped this will force a re-think by the NHS about this kind of barbaric surgery on patients who are told by medics it will help them.

‘He has a very real case for compensation against the heath service. We believe he has suffered harm.’ His case has been taken on by lawyers in Liverpool. It centres on whether the NHS and its gender clinics adequately counselled him before the operation five years ago. The patient, in his thirties, was brought up in the North of England and has de-transitioned from being a woman to live as a man again.

The man says he is gay and his sexuality should have been discussed before the radical, irreversible gender surgery. ‘I have been castrated. That is the correct term,’ he says on his Twitter feed, which has 19,000 followers.

‘‘I cannot believe they [the NHS] were allowed to do this to me.

‘I‘I was not even asked if I wanted to freeze my sperm, or have kids in the future.’ He does not want to be named because he is ashamed of how he looks. Instead, he tweets under the pseudonym TullipR.

Yesterday, he posted a picture of his huge bundle of medical notes which will be used by his lawyers to bring the case against the NHS.

TullipR says he transitioned at 25, more than a decade ago, and started taking female hormones to feminise his body. This was followed by surgery when he underwent an NHS operation called ‘penile inversion with scrotal graft’ which removes male genitalia and uses the tissue to construct a false vagina.

He says he grew up in the North East of England. ‘I knew deep down from a young age I was gay and was deeply terrified of it,’ he says in his tweets describing his past. ‘Everyone in the family joked and expressed disgust and disapproval of gay people.’

He withdrew into an online world where he felt at peace. There, at 23, he found discussions about gender dysphoria, the fear of living in the wrong sexual body. ‘That’s me, I thought.’ He found an internet forum called ‘Angels’ which was directed at trans women – men who wish to be women.

They urged him to transition ‘now’, before it was ‘too late’. He says that he latched on to the idea with zeal.

He took female hormone drugs bought privately, and later prescribed by his GP and an adult NHS gender clinic, to suppress his male characteristics and look feminine. But when a NHS psychiatrist asked him if he wanted gender reassignment surgery (GRS), he delayed for two years because he had doubts.

Worried that if he refused he would be denied NHS treatment for his gender problems, he finally agreed.

His tweets explain: ‘Eventually I found myself on the operating table. Immediately on waking up from surgery, I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

‘My sex had been lobotomised.’

After surgery, he confronted his GP about his doubts.

He claims they shrugged and said there was no guidance for those who regretted the surgery and treatment. The tweets go on: ‘I have no sensation in my crotch region at all. You could stab me with a knife. I wouldn’t know. The entire region is numb. No one ever told me that the base area of your penis is left. It can’t be removed. It means you have a stump inside which twitches.’

TullipR says his sex drive died about six months after he began taking female hormones.

‘I was glad to be rid of it, but now... I realise what I am missing and I won’t get back.

He describes the ‘living nightmare’ of waking up and forgetting that he has lost his penis and scrotum. ‘I expect something that was there for three decades, and it’s not. My heart skips a beat, every damn time.’

In the tweets, he describes how the operation has left him struggling to relieve himself. ‘It takes me about 10 minutes to empty my bladder. It is extremely slow, painful, and because it dribbles... it will then go all over the entire area, leaving me soaking.

‘I find moments later my underwear is wet. It slowly drips out for more than an hour. I never knew that I would risk smelling of p*** everywhere I go.’

According to the NHS last year, 13,500 people were waiting for an initial appointment for gender identity treatment which can lead to reassignment surgery.

The clinic with the shortest waiting time for a first appointment was the flagship Tavistock and Portman Clinic in north-west London which was, at the time, nearly three years.
UNQUOTE
There are lots of comments but very little sympathy. The peasant masses say he is a fool. Was the operation botched? Could be.

 

NHS's Only Gender Service For Children 'Believes All Girls Who Don't Like Pink Must Be Transgender' [ 22 November 2021 ]
QUOTE
The NHS's only gender service for children believes all girls who do not like 'pink ribbons and dollies' must be transgender, a whistleblower has claimed. 

Dr David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist who worked at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the UK's only gender identity development service for children, has said the department had a 'rigid, binary construction of gender'.  

And that the service's 'only acceptable explanation' for children who are 'unwilling or unable to conform to gender stereotypes' is that they are transgender.  

 He also slammed the service's work for putting youngsters on the path to lifelong medical treatment, speaking at a conference organised by Genspect, a support group for gender-questioning children and young people.   

Dr Bell's comments come after he resigned from the trust earlier this year, nearly three years after his damning 2019 internal report which claimed that the trust’s Gender Identity Development Service, was ‘not fit for purpose’.

At the time, he concluded that ‘children’s needs are being met in a woeful, inadequate manner and some will live on with the damaging consequences’. 
UNQUOTE
Avoid the Tavistock And Portman NHS Foundation Trust like the plague! That's the message from one of theirs.

 

Irreversible Damage ex Wiki
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a 2020 book by Abigail Shrier, published by Regnery Publishing. The book endorses the contentious concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria,^[1][2][3] which is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by any major professional institution^[4][5][6] and is not backed by credible scientific evidence.^[7][8]

Shrier states that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls" in the 2010s, referring to teenagers assigned female at birth.^[9] She attributes this to a social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".^[9] Shrier also criticizes gender-affirming psychiatric support, hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery (together often referred to as gender-affirming care) as treatment for gender dysphoria in young people.^[10]

Response to the book has been divided. Positive reviews largely endorsed Shrier's thesis while much of the criticism was regarding the book's heavy use of anecdotes and other problems with its evidentiary basis. There were several boycotts aimed at the book which characterized it as anti-trans and its use of "she" and "her" to refer to transmasculine and non-binary teenagers as misgendering.

 

Tavistock And Portman NHS Foundation Trust ex Wiki
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage. The founding organisation was the Tavistock institute of medical psychology founded in 1920 by Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller.^[1][2]

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust was formed in 1994, when the Tavistock Clinic merged with the neighbouring Portman Clinic in Fitzjohn's Avenue.^[3][4] The Portman specialises in areas of forensic psychiatry, including the treatment of addictive, sociopathic and criminal behaviours and tendencies.

It has developed as a centre of excellence for psychoanalysis within the NHS since being included at its founding in 1948.[6] The Trust and predecessor organisations have been influential beyond medicine, including in the British Army, management consultancy, prison and probation services.^[7][8] NB The Tavistock Clinic – Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has a statue of Freud outside their front door. You might feel that having a charlatan as a hero should make you wary.

 

NHS Gender Identity Development Service ex Wiki  
The NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) is a nationally operated health clinic specialising in working with children with gender identity issues, including gender dysphoria. Although based at a Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust site, it is commissioned by NHS England and takes referrals from across the United Kingdom. It is the only gender identity clinic for people under 18 in the UK and is the subject of much controversy.

History
Pre-establishment
GIDS is a service provided by the Tavistock Clinic. Originally located at Tavistock Square in London, the clinic specialised in psychiatric care. The Tavistock Clinic treated both adults and children, with their first patient being a child. However, it mainly focused on military psychology, including shell-shock, now termed PTSD. In 1948, with the creation of the NHS, the Tavistock Clinic launched its children’s department, which developed many works by Robertson and Bowlby on attachment theory.^[1] In 1959, it opened an adolescent department and in 1967 absorbed in the London Child Guidance Clinic.^[2] Following this, in 1989 the Tavistock Clinic established GIDS, the first and only service of its kind.

Childhood mental health services  
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) provides the NHS support for children with mental health issues. However, CAMHS is organised by local government area and thus coverage varies significantly. The development of CAMHS within a four-tiered framework started in 1995. In 2000 the NHS Plan Implementation Programme required health and local authorities to jointly produce a local CAMHS strategy.

GIDS takes referrals from all mental health care professionals, especially Tier 2 and 3 CAMHS specialists. GIDS is distinct from CAMHS as is it is nationally run, not by the local authority. However, in the CAMHS framework it sits in Tier 4, as a highly specialised service.

In 1989 when the GIDS opened, "it got two referrals over the whole year."

Recent history
In 2009–10, 97 patients were referred to GIDS. By 2015–16, this had increased fourteen-fold to 1419 and in 2017–18 to 2,519. Due to reduced funding and increased referrals, the average wait time is two years from referral to first appointment.

In 2011, the GIDS started introducing the puberty blocker drug in the "early stages of puberty" because of pressure from people who felt they needed to travel to America and to Holland to obtain the drug.^[4]

In 2012, the service was extended to a satellite site in Leeds. Endocrine support was also extended to Leeds Children’s Hospital at the Leeds General Infirmary site in 2013.^[7]

In 2016, the waiting list for the clinic had increased to nine months.^[4]

In 2016, the clinic was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary programme, told from the point of view of two satisfied trans children and their families.^[4]

In November 2018, the parents of patients complained in a letter to the Trust board about the alacrity at which diagnoses were rendered, leaving them unable to intervene in these "life-altering decisions".^[8] This led to the commissioning of an internal report by Dr David Bell, which concluded in February 2019 that the service was “not fit for purpose”, as children were being prescribed experimental drugs "after a few sessions and without proper investigation of their cases... under pressure from transgender rights groups". Bell urged the suspension of "all experimental hormone treatment for children who wished to change gender until there was better evidence of the outcomes."^[9] Dr Marcus Evans, a member of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust governance board, resigned that week after a 35-year association with the T&P. He accused its management of having an "overvalued belief in" the expertise of GIDS, "which is used to dismiss challenge and examination."^[10]

Subsequently to the Bell report it was revealed that 35 psychologists had resigned since 2016, including six psychologists who claimed there was “over-diagnosis” of gender dysphoria and a push for early medical intervention,^[11] because "psychologists fear being branded transphobic."^[12]

In February 2019, it was revealed that the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) had announced a £1.3 million grant for a study following young people referred to GIDS, to compare mental and physical health outcomes for children referred. The study was to compare the effectiveness of different interventions, including psychological, endocrinological, pharmaceutical and alternative interventions.^[10]

In July 2019, the Tavistock Centre was flooded which temporarily affected the IT servers at the clinic.^[13]

In October 2019, a lawsuit was launched against GIDS by a mother of a patient at GIDS and Sue Evans, a nurse who formerly worked there.^[14] Later, Evans passed their role as complainant to Keira Bell, a previous service user. In December 2020 following the High Court judgement, GIDS suspended all new referrals to endocrinology. The Court granted a stay on further implementation of the judgement until 22 December 2020 or until appeals are exhausted.^[15]

In December 2020 Dr Bell, a former governor of the Trust who was elected by the medical staff, and who had produced in February 2019 a damning report on the methods of the GIDS, reported that he now faced "disciplinary action" from the Trust.^[9]

Leadership
Dr Polly Carmichael has led the GIDS since at least 2016. At the time, she was treating children as young as three. Carmichael has expressed fear of "a danger where you get into a place where you're afraid to say anything for fear of being accused of being transphobic... I think it would be naïve to say that gender is not political, because it is... Gender and trans has been taken up in the political arena... Only last year [2015] we had the Women and Equalities Committee's transgender equality inquiry in Parliament."^[4]

 

Mermaids ex Wiki
Mermaids is a British charity and advocacy organisation that supports gender variant and transgender youth.^[1][3] They also provide inclusion and diversity training."

Formation
Mermaids was founded in 1995 by a group of parents of gender nonconforming children, originally acting as a small helpline.^[5] They aim to provide support for transgender youths up to 20 years of age.^[1][6] It became a Charitable incorporated organisation in 2015.^[7]

Lobbying the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service
In the years from 2000, Mermaids alongside another campaign group GIRES (Gender Identity Research and Education Society), lobbied clinicians at the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) for early interventions on children.^[8] After taking her child to Boston in 2007 to receive puberty blockers, Susie Green worked to make them available in Britain from GIDS.^[8] In response, GIDS began prescribing blockers, making them widely available in response to demand from families.^[8] Clinical psychologist Kirsty Entwistle, on the GIDS staff from 2017, said: "Those who’d connected with Mermaids were terrified, because they’d been told that their child was going to kill themselves if they didn’t get blockers."^[8] GIDS describes suicide as "extremely rare".

National Lottery funding
In December 2018, the charity was designated £500,000 in funding by the National Lottery.^[9] However, the funding was put under review after criticism of the charity, including by anti-trans activist Graham Linehan,^[10] who created a post on Mumsnet calling for members of the forum to email their concerns to the National Lottery.^[11][12] In response to this, on 18 January 2019, YouTuber Hbomberguy began a livestream attempting to 101% complete the video game Donkey Kong 64, with a goal of $500. The stream became popular and raised over $350,000 USD for Mermaids.^[13] Among other guests, the stream featured an appearance by American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.^[14] On 19 February 2019, the National Lottery concluded its review into the charity and announced that it would follow through with the promised donation, stating that "did not find any grounds to withhold the grant.".^[15]

Harassment of staff
In 2017, Mermaids reported that it and its volunteers had been the victims of online harassment, leading to concerns by parents whose children are supported by the organisation. CEO Green stated that she had been falsely accused of forcibly castrating her transgender daughter, Jackie. Her daughter maintained that "If my mum had not helped me, I would not be here today" and transgender journalist Paris Lees wrote: "Susie Green is saving lives and I wish my parents had known about Mermaids when I was growing up". Green raised concerns "that the social media backlash may put people off coming to the charity for help."^[16]

Training
This section may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please help to create a more balanced presentation. Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message. (March 2022)

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Kim Thomas said that some campaigners, including Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend, have criticised some resources used by Mermaids in trainings on the grounds that they reinforce rigid gender roles, and that they might cause non-conforming children to identify as transgender.^[17] On the other hand, Attitude quoted Kate Lister as saying that the resource is "a visual representation of gender identifying markers ... At no point does anyone suggest children who act in ways that do not conform to a gender are trans. At no point does anyone suggest gay children are trans."^[18] Likewise Mermaids released a statement that they have never encouraged teachers "to state that 'tomboys' should be transgender", and that they do not provide classroom talks or lesson materials for schools, contrary to what had been reported in some newspapers.^[4]

Media
The 2018 ITV drama series Butterfly,, about a young transgender girl, was substantially informed by Mermaids and its CEO, Susie Green, a consultant on the series who worked with creator Tony Marchant.^[19] Marchant and cast members Emmett J. Scanlan and Anna Friel also met families involved with Mermaids to inform their creative processes.

In July 2020, the charity complained that the BBC had no longer included links to themselves on BBC LGBT advice pages, alongside two other organisations.^[22][23] The BBC said that Mermaids was removed after complaints were made about the information it provided, and for impartiality reasons.^[23]

Government policy
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2021)

The charity criticised the UK Government's decision to disband the LGBT advisory board without a planned replacement in April 2021, describing the move as "very concerning".^[24]

Challenge to LGB Alliance charitable status
In June 2021, Mermaids along with other charities including Stonewall began raising funds to appeal the awarding of charitable status to LGB Alliance, describing the latter group's activities as "denigrating trans people".^[25] The appeal is expected to be heard between March and May 2022, although a final date has not been set.^[26]

Data breach
In June 2019, The Times revealed that they had discovered a data breach by Mermaids in which confidential emails had been made readily available through their website.^[27] The Times stated that these included names of transgender children and their parents, together with contact details and intimate medical information. The newspaper reported that there were internal emails from the trustees that criticised the leadership by Susie Green, as well as criticism from parents.^[27] Mermaids issued a press release on the same day, which acknowledged that a data breach had occurred, and that they had informed the Information Commissioner's Office and had corrected the breach. The press release stated that the breach was limited to internal emails and that no emails to and from families were part of the information leaked; The Times disputed this.^[27][6] After an investigation, Mermaids were required to pay a £25,000 fine.^[28]

Conference at Great Ormond Street Hospital
In March 2022, Susie Green was due to speak on a panel regarding support for transgender youth, alongside Stephanie Davies-Arai, of Transgender Trend, a "gender-critical" website. The panel would have been part of an event, eventually postponed, for an expected 100 to 150 trainee child psychiatrists organised by Great Ormond Street Hospital and Health Education England.^[29] Paediatrician Hilary Cass, journalist Helen Joyce, psychotherapist Stella O'Malley, and academic Lisa Littman would also have participated.^[30]

Following complaints to the organisers by Mermaids and a trainee doctor, Davies-Arai's appearance was cancelled. Susie Green said: Mermaids "cannot be a part of a conference that gives a platform to Transgender Trend" and advised the organisers to "stay clear of anyone involved with anti-trans pseudo-medical platforms that have been set up with the sole intention of attacking trans people (especially trans youth) and their healthcare." Davies-Arai said that it "should concern everyone that the NHS has allowed unsubstantiated claims of ‘transphobia’ to influence their decisions."^[29]

 

An Open Letter To Polly Carmichael From A Former GIDS Clinician
QUOTE
Kirsty Entwistle
Dear Polly,
I am writing to you as a former clinician from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in Leeds. I wish to outline the concerns I had at the time of working there and the concerns that have either grown or developed since I left. I hope that you will address my concerns and also see the importance of investigating the concerns of other GIDS clinicians who have also left the service. During my time at GIDS in Leeds I had very little contact with the London clinic and so everything that I outline here, unless otherwise stated, is related to my experiences of working at GIDS in Leeds.

II think it is a problem that GIDS clinicians are making decisions that will have a major impact on children and young people’s bodies and on their lives, potentially the rest of their lives, without a robust evidence base. GIDS clinicians tell children and families that puberty blockers/hormone blocks are “fully reversible” but the reality is no one knows what the impacts are on children’s brains so how is it possible to make this claim? It is also a problem that GIDS clinicians are afraid of raising their concerns for fear of being labelled transphobic by colleagues.

I worked at the Leeds GIDS clinic as a Band 7 Clinical Psychologist between October 2017 and October 2018. Shortly after starting at GIDS I was in a meeting with three other GIDS clinicians. I said that it was curious to me that there had been so little discussion on gender identity in the field of psychology. In all my years of studying and working in psychology (including the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology) there had been very little mention of gender identity.

 I also spoke about how it was interesting to me that I had been a Research Assistant on a Medical Research Council funded longitudinal research study on child development (Wirral Child Health and Development Study) that had commenced in 2007 and that gender identity had not been part of the investigation. I said that it feels as though the gender identity issue has come out of the blue. This attempt to try to explore the context resulted in my questions being described as “transphobic” by one of my colleagues, X.

Several weeks later when X and I had a joint meeting with senior staff X claimed that in the above meeting I had said that transgenderism was a trait of personality disorder. I had said nothing of the sort. I have never thought transgenderism is a kind of personality disorder and would never have said this.

 The above meeting was called in response to a disagreement that I had with X over the two cases that we had seen together. As this is an open letter I cannot go into the details of my disagreements with X over these cases but in both cases I felt that X was too quick to recommend the medical pathway and I did not believe there was a current clinical need for puberty blockers in either case.

It was also surreal at the time to be arguing with X that a child’s early interest in [a certain children’s toy] should have no bearing on whether they are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

In the same meetings with senior staff I also raised the issue of the aforementioned incident where X called me transphobic and another incident where she called me transphobic. The second incident was during a meeting of several clinicians where we were discussing a case of two young transmen who said that they were planning to [embark on something that, at the very least, would have serious health risks]. I had said that I believed that this needed to go to social care due to the risks involved and I believe that X called me transphobic for saying this.

In the meeting with senior staff X denied calling me transphobic and said that she had directed this allegation to colleague Y because she thought that that Y had said that any transpeople [embarking on xxxx] should be reported to social care. I do not remember Y saying this at all. As far as I’m aware there were no repercussions for X calling either myself or Y transphobic when neither of us was being transphobic.

 I had found the meetings to be incredibly stressful particularly as the senior managers although sympathetic and clearly trying to be neutral, did not seem to be taking seriously what I consider to be false allegations by X. I was left feeling very disoriented by the tepid responses of senior staff and both at the time and in retrospect I did not feel that my concerns about X were addressed in any substantial way.

 I believe that X calling people ‘transphobic’ when there are clearly no grounds for this allegation causes clinicians to feel anxious about raising concerns.

Since leaving Leeds GIDS

Since leaving GIDS I have continued to follow transgender issues online and one of the things that I have felt concerned about is seeing the bullying and intimidation for those people who raise valid concerns about children making a medical transition being called ‘transphobic’ and ‘TERFS’ on forums such as Twitter.

I am also concerned that the attempts of Tavistock & Portman professionals, including former GIDS clinicians, to voice concerns about GIDS practice do not appear to have sunk in. Polly, as I’m sure you know very well, Clinical Psychologists are not known for going to the press but several former GIDS clinicians have done so anonymously. I cannot think of another time when Clinical Psychologists have gone to the press about concerns for the welfare of the children in their service, you have to take them seriously.

I believe that Clinical Psychologists working elsewhere presume that because GIDS is part of Tavistock and Portman that it is working in line with the high standards and prestigious reputation that the trust has earned over the decades. I wish to make it clear to other Clinical Psychologists that most of the gender identity assessments being undertaken at GIDS are not being underpinned by the psychodynamic approach that the Tavistock is famous for.

There are children who have had very traumatic early experiences and early losses who are being put on the medical pathway without having explored or addressed their early adverse experiences. At GIDS no one directly tells you that you’re not allowed to suggest that perhaps these early experiences might be connected to a child’s wish to transition but if you make the mistake of suggesting this in a team meeting you run the risk of being called transphobic.

I think there are others, like me, who went to work at GIDS expecting to do complex assessments and differential diagnosis but the reality is that you run the risk of being called transphobic if you propose that, say, a child might have Body Dysmorphia rather than Gender Dysphoria.

Mermaids

I am also concerned to see that Mermaids continues to receive financial support and endorsements from high profile people whilst not being subjected to any proper scrutiny of its practice. I believe that it is the duty of GIDS to disclose their concerns about Mermaids as GIDS is one, if not the only place, where information about what goes on at Mermaids is known via parent reports. I also think that it is unethical that GIDS associates with Mermaids when they have associated with the Webberleys (from their website it looks as though they no longer do so).

GIDS policy on ruling out transgenderism

I also strongly believe that it is GIDS duty to make it known that it is highly unlikely that any child presenting there will be told that they are not transgender. One of my biggest ethical dilemmas whilst working at GIDS was that there were parents who brought their child to GIDS anticipating that we would confirm that the child was not transgender but we are not able to tell parents that actually there is some unspoken rule that means GIDS clinicians do not tell families, “your child is not transgender”.

Since leaving GIDS I have, over time, been learning about organisations and academics who present a more critical approach to gender identity and the medical pathway for children. I have also seen accounts of young people who no longer identify as transgender, even after medical interventions and are now distressed about having been put on the medical pathway. It is by seeing their courage that gives me the courage and the ethical duty to speak up.

II urge you to look up the stories of “detransitioners” (currently mostly American and Canadian young people) who report that they were not offered differential diagnosis of their gender dysphoria and that they were either coerced into medical transition or were not mentally well enough to give informed consent. I believe it is only a matter of time before we start to hear similar stories from British young people and that there needs to be a service available to give them support.

Many of these young people talk about feeling as though they have been in a cult and that they did not have access to any information or responses other than the affirmative approach.

Polly, one of the things that I have realised since leaving GIDS is that you used to say in the service meetings that at GIDS it was our job to hold the middle ground in this polarised field but after having read the criticisms of the ‘affirmative model’ and the medical pathway for children I don’t think GIDS holds the middle ground at all and is more closely aligned with the affirmative model, informed consent stance and is a very long way away from with the critical stance.

At GIDS I did not receive any training on WPATH or legal issues or any training on gender identity more generally that left me in a very vulnerable position. The GIDS approach is mostly about learning about gender identity from the more experienced colleagues you have joint cases with which I think is problematic given the experiences described above.

Complexity of GIDS Referrals
Whilst I was at GIDS one of the things that I frequently voiced concerns about was the referrals meeting. In previous services I’ve worked in it has either been senior staff who process referrals or it is done by the whole team. I was surprised that at GIDS junior members of staff are dealing with referrals — even trainee clinical psychologists in their early days of placement process referrals.

There is a ‘system’ for scoring the referral as low, medium or high complexity. I frequently voiced my concern that colleagues were not seeing abandonment/estrangement by a parent as an indicator of complexity. For me, this was another reason that made me feel so disoriented. In my Clinical Psychology training and in other services the loss of or abandonment by a parent would be something to be explored and the impact understood but I felt that at GIDS this factor was often minimised or dismissed.

I was also shocked by the complexity of referrals. I read many referrals of children who have been sexually abused and many children have witnessed and/or been subjected to domestic violence.

 I also felt that was an overrepresentation of the young people who were living in poverty. I had a young person whose family were living within such extreme financial constraints that he considered it a treat to buy a can of pop. I also had another young person who was living in a very complex and unstable arrangement who arrived to sessions in a poor state of hygiene and said that there wasn’t money for hygiene products. How is it ethical to undertake a gender identity assessment with the view to a medical pathway when there are children and young people do not have their most basic needs met?

In terms of complexity I also had on my caseload several young people who declined to communicate verbally or communicated verbally to a very limited extent. I think that at GIDS verbal communication difficulties are often minimised as transmales being afraid to speak because they have a ‘feminine voice’ but in all of these cases I believe that there was something more complex than that going on. Again, it’s very difficult to undertake a gender identity assessment with a young person who struggles to communicate verbally, especially within the time constraints of the service.

Failure of support from CAMHS and Social Care
One of the other major factors that meant that I could not sustain working at GIDS was the failure of social care to provide support to the young people I referred. As the children come from all over the North of England I was dealing with several different social care teams trying to get support for my patients who were either doing risky things, living in risky situations or in contact with risky people. In none of my cases was input from social care secured.

How is it possible to undertake a gender identity assessment when young people are living in these circumstances and sometimes even more extreme? I do not believe that GIDS can claim to function effectively when it is part of a broader system that is failing to provide adequate support and protection for children and young people.

I also believe that there are clinicians at GIDS who are putting vulnerable children on the medical pathway when they are not receiving proper input from CAMHS and Social Care with regards to mental health problems and complex family and housing difficulties.

II have more issues that I wish to raise but this is probably enough to say for now. I believe that a proper investigation of the concerns by current and former GIDS staff is required. I know that other GIDS staff left without challenging the issues that they were concerned about. In my experience psychologists are often anxious about conflict and are unwilling to challenge senior professionals. I think GIDS clinicians also worry that openly criticising GIDS will give more power to Mermaids. I certainly felt like this at the time but having distance from the service makes me realise that it is crazy to not speak out on this basis.

The main thing that I hope for by writing this letter is that everyone, especially former and current GIDS clinicians, will dig beneath the surface layer of information on transgenderism and take the time to read the work of the minority of clinicians, academics and organisations who are taking a critical stance (and receiving verbal abuse and losing their jobs) and the detransitioners (also receiving verbal abuse) who are telling their stories.

I also hope that GIDS clinicians will feel safer to confirm to parents when they do not think a child is transgender and better able to discuss with children and young people what else they think might be going on for that child.

It’s a shame that it has to come to such an extreme as to write an open letter like this but when I tried to deal with the above issues within the service I don’t think my concerns properly addressed by Leeds management and I have seen how you haven’t taken seriously the concerns of other GIDS clinicians. I believe that if I had sent this letter privately it just would have been batted off.

My main hopes for writing this letter is that you will at least:

·· finally truly listen to the concerns of current GIDS clinicians and give former GIDS clinicians a formal opportunity to express their concerns;

· that you will protect and support GIDS staff when they are falsely accused of transphobia and take formal action against people who make false accusations of transphobia;

· that you will better protect children and young people by ensuring that every child at least has a comprehensive psychosocial assessment before the medical pathway is considered;

 ·· and that GIDS clinicians will stop giving the message that hormone blockers/puberty blockers are “fully reversible” when there is currently no way of knowing what is the long term impact on the brain

Yours Sincerely,

Kristy

(Dr Kirsty Entwistle — Clinical Psychologist)

 

https://www.persuasion.community/p/keira-bell-my-story

Keira Bell Tells Her Story  [ 7 April 2021]
She is a disgruntled customer of the Tavistock Mob. Her puberty was distinctly unpleasant.

 

Transgender Trend ex Wiki
Transgender Trend is a British pressure group which describes itself as a group of parents, professionals and academics who are concerned about the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria (a diagnosis given to people who feel a mismatch between their personal sense of their own gender and their sex registered at birth).^[2][3] It was founded in 2015 by Stephanie Davies-Arai,^[1] who herself "struggled with her female identity as a child", according to Reuters.^[4]

The group says it is in favour of "sex-based rules where justified"^[5] and says that LGBT rights groups such as Stonewall and Mermaids promote rigid gender roles by encouraging gender non-conforming children to identify as transgender.^[6] The group is against prescribing puberty-blocking drugs or medical interventions to adolescents under 18, and has supported legal cases in pursuit of restricting such prescriptions or interventions.^[7][8] It has issued its own guidance for schools to "question the trans narrative".^[9] Its resource pack has argued that gender dysphoria in children can be the result of "simple social contagion" via the controversial concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria.^[10]

Stonewall and other LGBT groups have responded by calling Transgender Trend's guidance misleading and inaccurate.^[9][11] The group has also been described as an "anti-trans pressure group",^[12][13][14] but the group rejects that description.^[15]

 

Schools, Police And The  NHS Have All Been Propagandized By Mermaids  [ 6 November 2021 ]
QUOTE
Schools, Police and NHS have all received ‘trans training’ from controversial group Mermaids
from The Christian Institute:

The controversial trans-activist group Mermaids provided over 140 training sessions to organisations and individuals during 2020-21. This included 59 sessions for schools, ten to NHS Trusts and two to police forces.

The LGBT group’s income has jumped over recent years, from just over £127,000 in 2017 to £1.85 million in 2021............

Professor Kathleen Stock OBE, a senior academic at Sussex, recently resigned after being harassed for expressing her belief that men cannot become women.

Mermaids has been ridiculed for showing police officers in a training session a gender identity ‘spectrum’, with a Barbie doll at one end and a G.I. Joe toy at the other. Another slide told them: “Your Sexuality is who you go to bed with. Your Gender Identity is who you go to bed as.”
Read also: Why is Mermaids promoting breast binding at events for young people? by Debbie Hayton, Spectator
UNQUOTE
The Anglican Mainstream is not amused by them. Nor is The Christian Institute. Notice the money coming in, a real motivator.

 

LGBT+ Disapproves Mermaids And Breast Binding
QUOTE


Mermaids is a group which promotes gender ideology for teenagers and children. It was formed in 1995 by a group of parents.

They promote potentially harmful breast binding for children who identify as trans males ^[1]. In 2021 they commenced legal action against LGBAlliance claiming that organisation should not have been given Charity status.

References
Why is Mermaids promoting breast binding at events for young people? in The Spectator 5 Nov 2021 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-mermaids-promoting-breast-binding-at-events-for-young-people-
QUOTE
LGBT are very much part of the current Culture Wars. Here they are, on side. War makes for strange bedfellows.

 

How the young are groomed into the transgender trap ex Conservative Woman  [ 3 November 2021 ]
QUOTE
This is the first part of a two-part essay prompted by the publicity surrounding the harassment and resignation of philosophy professor Dr Kathleen Stock, who was hounded of Sussex University for saying people cannot change their biological sex.  

THE eminent biologist Lord Robert Winston recently reminded viewers of BBC’s Question Time that ‘you cannot change your sex. Your sex actually is there in every single cell in the body. You have chromosomal sex, you have genetic sex, you have hormonal sex, you have all sorts of psychological brain sex, they’re all different’.  

He said this in defence of Professor Kathleen Stock, the latest victim of death threats and significant harassment having fallen foul of the transgender lobby, who has also won the support of Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch. 

The most vulnerable victims of the trans lobby’s bullying ideological agenda however are not the feminist academics, nor even the female athletes who are now forced to compete against the opposite and far more powerful sex.  

They are not even the women in prisons who have to fend off male rapists in their midst, terrible though their situation is and their fear must be.  

The most vulnerable are the unacknowledged victims of this ever more determined lobby. They are the children who are systematically groomed to believe they can be the opposite sex.  

The trans lobby will tell you that this decision-making is driven by the child. But given the endless funding for propaganda, the persistent drip of modern sex education and zeal of certain child psychiatrists, it is hardly children who leading the way.  

Today, from the earliest ages the normal development of an understanding of sex differences is prevented.  Children are given books such as Are you a boy or are you a girl? which teach them not to assume that anyone has a particular sex.   

They are further confused with lessons on the gender unicorn which deny biological sex facts.  

Along with concepts such as ‘gender expression’, ‘gender identity’ and ‘assigned sex’, serious attempts are being made by some educationalists and trans lobbyists to stop the idea (indeed the fact) that we are born as boys or girls from ever taking root.  

It is the most vulnerable of children – those who for whatever reason do not adhere to rigid gender stereotypes – who are too often singled out for special gender treatment; they are ‘affirmed’ as not being their sex.

Being ‘affirmed’ means that this child will instead be told that they are indeed the opposite sex and will be treated as such. The child’s peer group and all his or her trusted adults will be encouraged, or even compelled, to engage in this myth.   

Affirmation is but the first step in the process of social transition which sets the child on a path which is likely to involve them in medicalisation for the rest of their lives.   

The biggest threat (from the trans ideologists’ point of view) to this process is the onset of puberty. If a child has been told by trusted adults that he (or she) is actually the opposite sex, it could be confusing if significant changes happening to his body led to the conclusion that he had been lied to, or that his trusted adults were wrong.  

To avoid this, lobbyists have campaigned for puberty-blocking drugs to be given earlier, at the first onset of puberty.  In fact, children are often encouraged to ‘transition’ in the interlude between primary and secondary school, so that no one will ever know they are ‘trans’.  

The reality check provided by puberty is averted. And those on puberty-blockers are almost invariably moved on to taking cross-sex hormones. 

A female cannot move into womanhood if she hasn’t been able to go through puberty as a girl.  This is what Keira Bell was condemned to. Keira is the brave young woman who had treatment at the NHS-run Tavistock child gender clinic and brought a successful judicial review against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation, sadly since overturned by the Appeal Court. 

She has explained how this process worked: ‘The idea was that this would give me a “pause” to think about whether I wanted to continue to a further gender transition  

‘This so-called pause put me into what felt like menopause with hot flushes, night sweats and brain fog. All this made it more difficult to think clearly about what I should do.  

‘By the end of a year of this treatment, when I was presented with the option of moving on to testosterone, I jumped at it – I wanted to feel like a young man, not an old woman.’   

This shocking process has been allowed to carry on because we’ve been told that if we didn’t allow it, these young people would kill themselves.  

But study after study shows that gender dysphoria is much more likely to be a consequence than a cause of psychological problems – problems that the process of transition may entrench or worsen. In fact, the relationship is the other way around.  

A recent study of gender dysphoric children showed that almost 90 per cent had comorbid (simultaneous) health diagnoses and other indicators of psychological distress. (The precise figure is 88.6 per cent – see top of page 80).   

Sixty-five per cent of gender dysphoric children suffered from anxiety. Sixty-two per cent suffered from depression. More than 33 per cent had behavioural disorders. The presence of autism was another cause for concern.  

The link between gender dysphoria and pre-existing mental ill-health was also confirmed by a study of de-transitioners, of whom 58 per cent felt that their gender dysphoria was caused by trauma or a mental health condition. 

This is not a new discovery, but has been found repeatedly in studies. It has just been conveniently ignored. The family stories told by these children and their parents often reveal the source of their mental health disorders. Adverse childhood experiences had been very much part of their lives.   

Sixty-six per cent had experienced family conflict, 66 per cent parental mental illness; 60 per cent had lost an important figure via separation, and bullying had been common for 54 per cent. Thirty-nine per cent experienced maltreatment (p.71). 

We may be tempted to lay the blame at the feet of these families who, despite measurably high levels of dysfunction and conflict, appear to have no awareness that their problems could be impacting on the child as well as themselves.

Instead, what appears to happen is that the child’s gender dysphoria provides a handy explanation for all the stresses and strains which the family or individual may be feeling, and even better from their point of view, a medical solution through which these problems can be resolved.  

Keira Bell explains it thus: ‘When I was seen at the Tavistock Clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body.’ 

But the blame does not really lie with these families. Often they were from disadvantaged groups in society, living under considerable financial and social stress. Their biggest crime is perhaps a lack of common sense. Far more culpable are the media, the well-funded lobby groups and the clinicians who’ve recklessly applied this fashionable theory. 

This essay will continue tomorrow. 
UNQUOTE
Belinda Brown writes at some length. The second part is linked below.  

 

How the young are groomed into the transgender trap Part II
QUOTE
YESTERDAY I discussed how lobby groups, whose programmes of ideological training are funded and disseminated by our government, are able to groom and recruit the youngest and most vulnerable children, and co-opt their families in order to support their cause. The reward for participating will be a solution to the family’s problems, social approval from those with the authority to dispense it and the hope of social support.

For children who have grown up with trauma, conflict and abuse and without the ingredients of love, stability and attention to facilitate their development, the transgender lobby will help them with questions of identity and promise attention in spades.

But to understand the growth of gender dysphoria we need to look beyond children, the families and the trans lobby. We need to ask why mental health problems have taken this particular form.

Stephanie Davies-Arai, whose concern about the trend to diagnose gender variant children led her to found the organisation Transgender Trend in 2015, goes some way to answering these questions when she talks about gender stereotypes. We live in a world where male and female have been reduced to the most appalling caricatures, marketed through toy manufacturers and painted pink and blue.

These lead some parents and children into thinking there is something wrong with them if them if they don’t conform to a narrow and stereotypical definition of gender. By focusing on superficial characteristics, stereotypes turn male and female into costumes which can be cast off or donned.

But stereotypes are only symptoms of a cultural disease which has much deeper roots – the erosion of sex difference.

Sex differences emerge out of the fact that women give birth and men don’t. This lies at the heart of everything which makes us women and men.

The foundation was laid with readily available contraception and abortion. Control over fertility obscured the depths of our different physicality. This made it possible for gender, the belief that sex differences were socially constructed, to take root.

The idea began with the notorious John Money and his heinous experiments on children then popularised by feminists.

By the 1980s ‘gender’ had become widely popularised. Male and female were socially constructed and gender was the only sex difference there was.

Getting rid of sex differences had been central to the feminist project. If sex differences were real, sex inequality could be explained. If sex inequalities could be explained then there was no male oppression. If there was no male oppression then there would be no need for feminism itself.

As feminists saw it, sex differences had been artificially and unnecessarily created by patriarchy out of some unfortunate, rather insignificant differences in the male and female relationship to reproduction. Feminists believed that every single sex difference could be overridden.

Females could be happy and have careers and as much money and status as men. Men could do housework and look after babies (if women allowed). The sexes should be symmetrical in all those areas which provided power and status. There should be no sex differences in earnings, in time spent on housework or in study and employment preferences.

To achieve this, the place of procreation had to be diminished and rendered an insignificant and incidental part of life.

As a result the past seventy years has seen the systematic assault on the cultural expression of biological sex differences. Girls were taught that careers were more important to them. Preparation for marriage, pregnancy and childrearing was no longer seen as necessary. Building a family was seen as peripheral.

In such an environment there has been no story about sex differences to fill the imagination. The market with its shallow stereotypes has burgeoned to fill this gap. Puberty is rendered worse than meaningless. A time of life which would have been culturally elaborated and celebrated as a key stage in the transition to adulthood it became something which children really didn’t want. ‘I don’t want to have my puberty,’ gender dysphoric children repeatedly say. This is not surprising.

Instead of celebrating fertility children are taught about contraception and abortion. Sexual pleasure has replaced family formation as a goal in life. From understanding that they could become potential mothers and fathers, girls learn that they are sex objects and boys potential abusers.

 The destruction of sex differences gave birth to the transgender men and women feminists are battling today.

If we wish to heal our young people of gender dysphoria it will not be sufficient to stop funding Stonewall, although this would of course do a great deal to help. Instead, we need to recognise our sex differences. Recognise that as men and women girls and boys we have different priorities, values and ways of doing things. We need to discover, value, encourage and even cultivate these differences. When girls recognise and value their ability to give birth they might start valuing their breasts and their bodies which many seem so keen to discard. And when boys understand that men play a crucial role in sustaining and supporting the family and society they might look forward to being men.

The feminists have played an admirable and often selfless role in battling transgender lobbying. But if they really want to protect children from this ideological agenda they need to value and cultivate our sex differences and after 70 years of denial allow these once again to take root.

All information in this article comes from:

Kozlowska, K., McClure, G., Chudleigh, C., Maguire, A.M., Gessler, D., Scher, S. and Ambler, G.R., 2021. Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service. Human Systems, 1(1), pp.70-95.

Haig, D., 2004. The inexorable rise of gender and the decline of sex: Social change in academic titles, 1945–2001. Archives of sexual behavior, 33(2), pp.87-96.

Kozlowska, K., McClure, G., Chudleigh, C., Maguire, A.M., Gessler, D., Scher, S. and Ambler, G.R., 2021. Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service. Human Systems, 1(1), pp.70-95.
UNQUOTE
Belinda Brown is well aware that this is a front in the Culture Wars being waged against us.