Mick Hartley

A new collection of essays – Inventing Transgender Children and Young People – looks at the way trans ideology is being allowed to damage young people:

Contributors demonstrate how 'transgender children and young people' are invented in different medical, social and political contexts: from specialist gender identity development services to lobby groups and their school resources, gender guides and workbooks; from the world of the YouTube vlogger to the consulting rooms of psychiatrists; from the pharmaceutical industry to television documentaries; and from the developmental models of psychologists to the complexities of intersex medicine. Far from just investigating how they are invented the authors demonstrate the considerable psychological and physical harms perpetrated on children and young people by transgender ideology, and offer tangible examples of where and how adults should intervene to protect them.

Joanna Williams at Spiked:

Inventing Transgender Children includes contributions from academics, psychiatrists and parents, as well as young adults who transitioned as children but are now questioning the process they underwent. Together, they show that far from being an ever-present biological reality, transgenderism is an entirely invented concept with no basis in neuroscience, psychology or psychiatry. They argue that there is little evidence to support claims that brains are sexed, and no evidence whatsoever to suggest that some fetuses develop with mismatched brains and bodies. In fact, they note, ‘The idea that transgenderism is an internal, pre-social phenomenon that has existed throughout history is not an evidenced fact, but a proposition’. And far from being a long-standing proposition, it was only around five years ago that the existence of the transgender child became widely accepted.

The accepted practice nowadays is "positive affirmation" – an unquestioning acceptance that children are the gender they say they are. 

Social transition may then lead to medical transition including, potentially, the prescription of hormones to block puberty. Inventing Transgender Children provides a detailed account of the risks associated with puberty blockers and the lack of long-term data surrounding their efficacy. Yet, somehow, trans children are assumed to have the capacity to consent to such interventions long before they are able to purchase cigarettes or alcohol. Positive affirmation makes it more difficult for children to change their minds about their gender identity, and begin to accept the body they were born into. Climbing off the pedestal adults have put them on means denying being a brave revolutionary and admitting to being just like everyone else.  […]

Inventing Transgender Children highlights statistics showing that ‘increasing numbers of young people who identify as transgender have pre-existing mental-health problems, past trauma or troubled backgrounds’. It points out that ‘in one recent study, 10 per cent had suffered past sexual abuse… [And] 35 per cent of children referred to the Tavistock [the UK’s national gender-identity clinic for children] exhibit moderate to severe autistic traits.’ Many also believe that a proportion of transgender children would, without positive affirmation, simply grow up to be gay. One parent asks, ‘I would like someone to explain to me how a therapist who simply affirms Alex’s trans identification without trying to understand its origins is not practising gay-conversion therapy’.

Lisa Marchiano spells out many of the complex personal problems that may lead children to think they are transgender. As well as the issues detailed above, some children may have experienced bullying, or feel that they do not fit in with other children or with members of their family. Some may struggle with the stereotypical behaviour expected of their sex. But positive affirmation means these issues are neither raised nor dealt with. The child learns only that their body is the source of all their problems and changing their body will make everything better….