At last medical professionals are raising questions about the treatment of transgender children. For too long doctors, teachers and social workers have quietly conspired in a view that children who question their gender are trans and that they need to have this identity affirmed along with a new name and pronouns, different clothes, counselling, perhaps a medical referral, hormone therapy and, later, surgery. Now, finally, five clinicians from the NHS’s gender clinic for children, the Tavistock Centre, have gone public with concerns about the centre’s practice in interviews with Lucy Bannerman of The Times.
They question the impact of counselling that simply confirms a child’s gender confusion. They warn that vulnerable children and teenagers have ‘been sent down the path towards transition’ without sufficient time to assess whether this is the right course of action. Most damningly of all, they challenge the practice of prescribing children with hormone blockers to halt their sexual development. The long-term impact of this medication on a child’s brain is still unknown. Meanwhile, irreversible cross-sex hormones that lead to infertility can be prescribed to children from the age of 16. There would be outrage if any other group in society was being experimented on in this way. Yet for children, often very vulnerable children, the label ‘transgender’ means all ethical standards are abandoned.
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One problem for the Tavistock clinicians is that well-funded advocacy groups like Mermaids provide resources and forums for parents and children to share information about the most effective way of securing particular outcomes in advance of any counselling. All those who spoke to The Times said they believed that transgender charities were having a ‘harmful’ effect by ‘allegedly promoting transition as a cure-all solution for confused adolescents’. In this way, adult campaigners exploit children to further their own agenda. The frequently quoted retort that it is better to have ‘a living girl than a dead boy’ is the most despicable and manipulative example of the kind of emotional blackmail that is sadly effective when it comes to securing medical interventions.
The clinicians now speaking out expressed concern that the label ‘transgender’ is often erroneously applied to children who may be struggling with their sexuality and would otherwise grow up to be gay or lesbian. They report that many children decided they wanted to change gender after suffering homophobic bullying, ‘yet these young people were still referred down the route of hormone treatment’. This seems to be a particular issue for young girls who find it far more socially acceptable to come out as a boy than to come out as a lesbian. Although gay conversion therapy is illegal, it is acceptable to ‘normalise’ children by turning them into heterosexual members of the opposite gender.
Sadly, charities such as Stonewall who have traditionally advocated for gay and lesbian rights are not calling out this new incarnation of discrimination. They are far too busy aligning themselves with the trans activists and calling out The Times coverage as ‘damaging and misleading’. Taking up the trans cause might justify Stonewall’s continued existence (and funding) now that there are few legal or cultural battles left to be won for gay rights, but once more we see children exploited for adult gains.
