Mick Hartley

In that earliuer post this morning, with JK Rowling and Rhona Hotchkiis, I missed out on the third contribution, from Susan Dalgety. It's worth reading, as a clear example of the horrors unleashed on families with vulnerable children by the gender cult.

Esther is a broken-hearted parent. The mother of three girls, her family’s life has been dominated by gender identity for nearly five years. Her eldest, Lily, now 17, believes she is a man trapped in a woman’s body, having gone through a period of being non-binary. Her younger sister, Rachel, is 15. She has tried binding her breasts and taking testosterone supplements bought online, believing she can change her sex. Both have been affirmed by teachers at their secondary school, against their parents’ wishes, but in accordance with the Scottish government’s guidance issued to schools in 2021.

Esther, frustrated by years of trying to support her children as they struggle with their mental health, has a simple message for Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers who promoted gender identity in schools. “What were you thinking? Why would you impose an adult agenda on children? Don’t you realise what you have done?”

Esther and her husband, Chris, are exhausted by their family’s ordeal. In her cosy sitting room she recalls how pleased she and Chris had been when Lily first made friends. “She is on the autism spectrum and finds making friends difficult. She didn’t have any when she started secondary school. She spotted the rainbow flag at an open day at school — it was the flag that attracted her, she didn’t know what it meant. It was the Pride club and she was quickly signed up. She had found a ‘tribe’.”

Esther describes how Lily became obsessed by gender identity. “It was a non-stop discussion about gender and sexuality. At one point she talked about 96 different genders. She was looking for a reaction. We talked about it endlessly, at every family meal. And her younger sister became interested too. We tried to be as supportive as you can be as parents. They wanted flags, badges, all the paraphernalia, and we supported them. After all, what’s a badge? It is just a badge.”

Then came Covid and, like almost every teenager, Lily and her sister Rachel disappeared online. “At the start of lockdown, we did lots of things together as a family, like going for walks together. But it wasn’t a normal society and the girls started spending most of their time on their computers. We didn’t know that gender identity ideology was all over TikTok and YouTube, and of course the algorithms sucked them in deeper and deeper.”

Esther and Chris agreed to the school’s advice that the girls be known by their new names at school, having previously changed their pronouns at school without their parents’ knowledge. Esther explains: “The transgender guidance promotes the affirmation model, so we reluctantly went along with it.” Desperate, they sought help from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), only to find themselves reported to social workers for “unintentional emotional abuse” because they refused to affirm their daughter’s change of identity by using her chosen pronouns at home.

After a seven-month wait, social workers decided Esther and Chris had no case to answer, and suggested that the family be referred to CAMHS for support. “I laughed,” says Esther.

Five years after their oldest daughter started exploring her gender identity, Esther says she and her husband are now taking a “watchful waiting” approach. “We have spent time trying to reconnect with them to get our family unit back together … It is important to stay close. But they are thoroughly entrenched in the ideology they see online, which only presents a positive picture and none of the reality or risk.

“They are an idealistic generation; they don’t want to have a male–female divide. Anyone can be anything. As JK Rowling said in her tweet, ‘dress however you please …’ But this is different. By telling kids it is possible to change sex, it has confused everyone, and it is damaging. I see the whole world affirming my children — school, doctors, opticians, everywhere they go, all in the guise of ‘be kind’. It’s a dystopian nightmare. And if we speak out, as parents, we get lambasted or sent to social services. But everyone is affirming a delusion.”

Esther says her only hope now is time. “If we can keep them as far away as possible from testosterone and surgery as their brain matures, we hope by the time they reach the ‘magical’ age of 25, they will be comfortable in their bodies.”