RECENTLY, when I spotted a little book teaching toddlers they can choose their gender, I felt that the trans movement had become unstoppable.
Much of the damage it’s going to do will hurt people who make irreversible decisions when they are young, permanently damaging their health. Their families will share their pain. I will be for ever haunted by this mother’s testimony: ‘My once beautiful daughter is now nineteen years old, homeless, bearded, in extreme poverty, sterilized, not receiving mental health services, extremely mentally ill, and planning a radial forearm phalloplasty (a surgical procedure that removes part of her arm to construct a fake penis).’ Words to break your heart but also to make you angry.
Well, I have come across some good news from Australia. The Government is taking the issue seriously. According to an article in The Australian, Greg Hunt, the Health Minister, has asked the Royal Australasian College of Physicians to ‘urgently consider and advise on the clinical best practice for the treatment of gender dysphoria (distress about biological sex) in children and adolescents‘.
When will our government follow suit? The Government Equalities Office keeps promising a review. We continue to wait.
But back to the article in The Australian. It is an excellent summary of the trans issue.
Who is affected and how? ‘There is growing international concern that troubled, often same-sex-attracted, teenage girls are being primed by social media to come out as trans boys, seeking irreversible testosterone treatment and sometimes mastectomies, with the risk of health complications such as bone-density issues, cardiac problems and infertility.’
What is driving it? ‘[Prime Minister] Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt have been alerted to online trends including YouTube videos of trans celebrities, glamorised post-mastectomy photos on Instagram, and talk on the Tumblr platform of the easiest way to get hormones.’
Can parents intervene? ‘Gender academic Damien Riggs has suggested hospitals might have to sidestep sceptical parents by taking court action to authorise treatment of trans-identifying children with puberty blocker drugs . . . Dr Riggs advised pro-affirmation clinicians to consider alerting authorities to child “neglect” if other clinicians or family members take a “less than affirming” approach to a young person identifying as trans.’
The article adds: ‘Public hospitals may face massive damages for negligence if their transgender clinics fail to fully inform young patients about the risks of treatments such as cross-sex hormones’. I wonder if this threat of ‘massive damages’ is the only thing with any chance of slowing the whole movement. Perhaps it will help to wake our Government up.
