It is time to decommission the BBC and in particular its main weapon of mass destruction the Today programme. Every morning taxpayer’s money is used to promote an ultra leftist agenda, from Europe and immigration to the latest fad ‘transgenderism’.
On Friday, on the prime 8.10 am slot transgenderism was given pride of place and at least 15 minutes of air time. With gay marriage in the bag, abolishing gender is now front and centre of the Left’s assault on reality and objective truth.
No matter that it is a niche subject affecting 0.01 per cent of the population. We know how this is all going to turn out. With liberal media carpet-bombing and the backing of the courts, the majority of us, too busy getting on with our own lives to notice, will have to capitulate eventually. And if you point out that, in fact, the emperor has no clothes expect to be slapped down as phobic and discriminatory.
The worst part of Today is the use of children to push this dangerous narrative. One child said she found being a boy ‘a bit stressful’ so, of course, this means that adults should pump his body full of hormones so he can ‘transition’ to being a girl.
We heard nothing from Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, who has said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.
We were not told that studies show 70-80 per cent of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time.
We were not told that the American College of Pediatricians believes that gender ideology harms children.
Instead, it was all hand-holding and a very emotional narrative, and that transitioning is ‘something people can do for themselves.’ So a bit like knitting then.
In fact, this was the third time in two weeks that a child, a child, has been used by the Today programme. The first interview was with a child suffering from depression, the second was with a child who had nightmares from SATs exams (imposed by the wicked Tories), and now children who are uncomfortable with their bodies are asked if they are happier as the opposite gender.
This is nothing less than child abuse by the BBC and surely unethical for children to be co-opted into this shoddy agenda.
People who suffer from gender dysphoria deserve our compassion – it must be terrible to feel you are trapped in the wrong body. But the evidence that transitioning helps this is far from clear. In fact, the rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden, which is among the most LGBQT–affirming of countries.
What is never challenged is the inherent contradictions within the ideology. On one hand gender is fluid – but on the other hand a biological male hates his body and really wants to be female – there is nothing fluid about this.
The other issue is how it panders to gender stereotypes – ‘girlie’ boys, it seems, must be really little girls on the inside, and ‘tomboy’ girls now suddenly need to be drugged to identify with the ‘correct’ gender. Perhaps we should let the children be children and stop projecting our adult agenda on to them.
The truth is this is the epoch of indulgent Western parenting that never says No. For decades now, children have been encouraged to be independent and find their own way in the world with little parental guidance. To question their desires at all, from what they want to eat to choosing their gender, is seen as oppressive and dictatorial akin to locking kids up in the brutal Yorkshire schools of Dickensian times.
But rarely before has this philosophy had such devastating consequences for our children. It was a disgraceful piece of journalism made worse by the fact we are paying for it.
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