atch. Despite this, Mermaids marches on…
In 2018, I was invited to contribute a chapter to Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body, edited by Heather Brunskell-Evans and Michelle Moore. I interviewed five out-and-proud lesbians, all of whom felt they would have identified as transgender had the option been presented to them as children. Without exception, they felt this would have been a dreadful mistake. Had their ‘trans’ identities been affirmed, each today would be infertile and facing an uncertain future of potential health problems caused by synthetic hormones and invasive surgery.
Despite a paucity of clinical evidence, the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative has spread from lobby groups through to the general public and even clinical practice. When the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) opened at London’s Tavistock Clinic in 1989, it received two referrals over the course of the year. In 2018-19 it received 2,590 referrals. The role of trans groups, including Mermaids, in the promotion of transition as a cure-all solution for troubled young people, is alleged to have prompted a spate of resignations at GIDS, with 35 staff members leaving between 2016 and 2019. One former clinician told The Times: ‘This experimental treatment is being done not only on children, but very vulnerable children, who have experienced mental-health difficulties, abuse, family trauma, but sometimes those [other factors] just get whitewashed.’ Fear of being accused of ‘transphobia’ and the pressure to affirm the ‘gender identity’ of young patients are reported to have put clinicians in an impossible position. Allegedly, GIDS staff frequently remark that there will soon be no gay or lesbian kids left.
But this is not reflected in the mainstream media coverage of the issue. Mawkish dramas and documentaries about children who identify as transgender, from BBC Radio 4’s Just A Girl to ITV’s Butterfly, have become a staple of contemporary broadcasting, cementing the ‘wrong body’ concept in the public imagination. And on many of these shows, Mermaids has acted as an adviser, giving it unprecedented airtime to make its emotionally charged claims.
There's not a little irony in the fact that Stonewall, the ground-breaking gay rights group, has become one of the leading mouthpieces for trans activism – whose roots, as we see here, would seem to lie in efforts by their elders and betters to stop children growing up gay by insisting that what they really need is some serious medical intervention.
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