Mick Hartley

That fifty-fold increase over the past ten years in the number of children who believe they're the wrong sex…Joan Smith blames the schools:

This is what happens when children and their parents are bombarded with scientifically illiterate messages. Girls are particularly susceptible, confirmed by the fact that the same study, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, shows that twice as many girls are affected than boys. More than half the children in the research had anxiety, depression or had self-harmed.

Some girls have always felt uncomfortable about the rapid changes to their bodies that come with puberty, but now they have even more reason for anxiety. Very young boys are able to access porn, something that’s been linked to an increase in sexual assaults in schools. Last week, several charities wrote to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, pointing out that peer-on-peer abuse is affecting ever younger children, including in primary schools.

Yet many schools are switching to “gender neutral” toilets, forcing girls to share facilities with boys. The prospect of teenage girls having to change tampons within feet of jeering adolescent boys doesn’t appear to worry headteachers eager to demonstrate their commitment to gender ideology. The campaign group For Women Scotland has found that at least 60% of Scottish secondary schools allow “trans” children to use the toilets designated for the opposite sex, regardless of how other pupils feel.

What this represents is an increasingly hostile climate for girls. No one should be surprised if some respond by pretending that they’re not female at all, using the language they’ve been taught in sex education lessons to declare themselves trans or non-binary. This has been promoted by influential organisations and even Government ministers, who have been more concerned with being “trans allies” than safeguarding….

This is state-sanctioned child abuse. But when gender ideology has established such a hold in education, it’s easy to see how an unhappy or autistic child might think it’s the answer to their distress. The latest figures, if scaled up nationally, would mean that one in every 1,200 kids aged 18 and under had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. At least the present government has stopped the practice of prescribing puberty blockers, but it needs to go much further.

There will always be young people, disproportionately girls, who find growing up difficult. Encouraging them to think they were born in the wrong body is no more ethical than affirming weight loss in girls who have anorexia. This is an entirely artificial phenomenon, created by activists determined to impose delusional ideas on impressionable young people. The damage is already apparent, and it needs to be removed from the education system without delay.