Mick Hartley

Madeline Grant in the Telegraph – Sturgeon’s gender ideology is imploding in real time – cites the parallels with anorexia, and notes a crucial difference:

The issue is often – wrongly – portrayed as a confected culture war. Yet it feels highly personal to me. As a teenager I suffered with anorexia for several years, and see many parallels between the explosion of gender-self ID among teenagers and the surge in eating disorders when I was at school; it is perhaps no coincidence that the decline of anorexia has coincided with the rise of transgenderism. Both involve body dysmorphia and elements of social contagion, with pop culture and social media playing influential roles. Yet with one crucial difference.

The Noughties offered its share of “thinspiration” for confused teenage girls; noxious “Ana” and “Mia” websites and shows such as America’s Next Top Model, where eating disorders were paraded in plain sight. Kate Moss may have quipped that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” but at no point did any adult in a position of responsibility – any teacher, doctor or parent – ever say to me: “Starving yourself is good, you should do more of it.” Yet when it comes to gender dysphoria, a whole infrastructure has emerged, designed to affirm such feelings. Sometimes it culminates in irreversible medical procedures. This systematic abdication of adult responsibility is exemplified by the SNP’s Bill, which would have lowered the age at which legal gender could be changed from 18 to 16.

Sturgeon’s equivocations probably won’t produce any broader reflection on her policy, let alone an apology to those who repeatedly raised the alarm. But this week it feels like a Rubicon has been crossed. Gender ideologues may continue to self-identify as correct; but, like adults who wear crocs in public, they forget that we can see them.