The following article is taken from
here. It is a talk from a meeting which was held in the House of Commons on October 31st, 2017. It is reposted with permission.
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Self-Declared Gender Identity: The Impact on Children and Adolescents
by Stephanie Davies-Arai, Transgender Trend
I would also like to express my thanks to David Davies MP for setting
up this event and to everyone for attending. I will be speaking on
behalf of parents of all political persuasions and I would like to
express their gratitude too.
The parents I am representing are not the ones you see celebrated in
the media. I speak for those who describe their experience as akin to
having a son or daughter lost to a cult, with a devastating impact on
siblings and on the family as a whole.
These parents are not bigoted, they are caring parents who would
describe themselves as liberal and tolerant, parents who would always
love and support their child no matter what the outcome.
I also speak to urge caution on behalf of the children of this
generation who are caught up in the teaching of a new rigid,
anti-science belief system presented to them as fact. [1]
If Gender Identity is established in law as a Protected
Characteristic, it will apply to children of any age. But a child’s
identity is not fixed: it changes over time, and it is shaped by factors
like parental approval and societal influences. If all trusted adults
are reinforcing daily a little boy’s belief that he is really a girl,
this will have an obvious self-fulfilling effect. Puberty blockers
supply the ‘answer’ to the created fear of a puberty he now believes to
be the ‘wrong’ one.
Almost all children on blockers progress to cross-sex hormones at age
16. [2] Very few come off this path of increasingly invasive medical
treatments once they are on it and so-called ‘social transition’ is the
first step. This approach clearly works to prevent normal resolution of
childhood gender dysphoria and foster persistence of opposite-sex
identity.
While trans activists call for the de-medicalisation of
‘transgender,’ in the case of children they campaign aggressively for
social transition, blockers and cross-sex hormones at ever earlier
ages.[3]
The surge in sex hormones at puberty triggers the enormous changes in
the teenage brain which don’t complete their job until the
mid-twenties. [4] The brain /personality is not fully-formed until then.
The effects of blockers on adolescent brain development are unknown [5]
although studies on adults, including men taking the drug for prostate
cancer, indicate risk of memory loss, depression and cognitive
impairment. [6] Recent reports from the US indicate long-term serious
health effects for women who were administered blockers for precocious
puberty, such as excruciating muscle and bone pain, depression, weakness
and fatigue. [7]
Preventing a child’s sexual development in early puberty, followed at
16 by cross-sex hormones, results in sterility as viable eggs or sperm
have not developed. [8] These children are prevented from ever
experiencing puberty: hormones can only superficially feminise or
masculinise secondary sex characteristics, they cannot create the
puberty of the opposite sex. Risks of cross-sex hormones include cardiac
disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, strokes, diabetes and
cancers. [9] Some significant effects are irreversible, such as
male-pattern baldness and body and facial hair, masculinised voice and
compromised fertility.
There have been no clinical research trials into the long-term
effects of this treatment on children: this is a non evidence-based
practice [10] to treat a non evidence-based diagnosis of being ‘a girl
trapped in a boy’s body’ and vice versa [11] and this generation of
children are the guinea pigs.
‘Transgender’ is an ideological label distinct from the clinical
diagnosis ‘gender dysphoria.’ To call a child ‘transgender’ is to make
both a claim that the child’s feelings represent material reality and a
prediction about that child’s future: they will not change.
An analysis of all published research studies of children with
‘gender dysphoria’ shows that 80% will naturally come to be happy as the
sex they were born [12] and this is true of even some of the most
severe cases, we can’t know which children will persist and which will
desist.
Opposite-sex identity in childhood is overwhelmingly predictive of
gay or lesbian sexual orientation in adulthood, not transsexualism. [13]
Affirming a child’s ‘gender identity’ can therefore be seen as gay
conversion therapy by another name.
There has been an almost 1000% increase in children referred to the
Tavistock clinic in London over the past 6 years. [14] These figures are
inflated by the unprecedented rise in the number of girls – nearly 70%
of the figure overall and over 70% of adolescent referrals last year.
[15] By comparison, in the late Sixties 90% of adult transsexuals were
male. [16]
We are aware that teenagers and young adults are susceptible to
indoctrination, brainwashing and social contagion which is why we block
online anorexia and self-harm sites. The internet, however, is
chock-full of Tumblr bloggers and Youtube vloggers with hundreds of
thousands of followers, who are selling vulnerable young people the myth
of transformation through cosmetic alteration of their bodies,
including amputation of healthy body parts, and a lifetime’s dependency
on powerful off label hormones.
Recent reports of girls’ mental health indicate that girls and young
women in the UK are in crisis. [17] Recently published evidence of the
rate of sexual abuse and harassment in schools across the UK is a matter
of national shame. [18]
Reports such as the recent Stonewall Schools Report [19] which
indicate high suicidal ideation in ‘trans’ youth serve to cover up the
fact that the vast majority of these youngsters will be teenage girls,
now hidden in the category ‘trans boys.’
A PSHE teacher and Head of Year at a large comprehensive told me that
in her school the kids who identify as ‘trans’ are, without exception,
either lesbian, autism spectrum, have mental health problems or have
suffered sexual abuse.
Parents are also concerned about the relentless gender identity
propaganda their children are subject to today – across the media, [20]
the internet and in schools, through organisations such as GIRES,
Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids and Educate and Celebrate. The belief
that gender is an innate identity is taught to children as truth, with
no alternative views offered, in contravention of the UN Rights of the
Child.
The ‘transition or suicide’ trope is repeated endlessly, against all
Samaritans guidelines. There is no evidence that children will commit
suicide if their parents fail to support them in taking a medical
pathway, but of course the threat terrifies parents into feeling they
have to.
There are over 260 trans youth support groups across the UK [21],
which provide the ‘tribe’ where our most vulnerable young people will be
accepted, maybe for the first time, as long as they identify as trans.
All transgender organisations advertise their support for ‘gender
non-conforming’ youth, sweeping up all children who are ‘different’ and
don’t fit in.
These organisations claim to support ‘diversity’ but of course they
do the opposite: a girl who rejects feminine stereotypes is transformed
into a ‘boy’ who conforms to masculine stereotypes. Gender
non-conformity is erased. Regressive and reactionary sex-stereotyping is
being sold to young people as a progressive social justice movement.
To teach children that their ‘authentic self’ is something in their
heads, split off from and in opposition to, the body, is to create
gender dysphoria. Mind-body disassociation is recognised as a state of
mental ill-health: in this case uniquely, it is presented as a normal
variation and something to be celebrated. Mental health is based on
being equipped to accept reality.
Since children have been taught that it is their ‘gender identity’
which makes them a boy or a girl and not their biological sex, calls to
Childline from young people confused about their gender have doubled in a
year – eight calls are now received every day from children as young as
eleven. [22] The concept of ‘gender identity’ is clearly – and
inevitably – causing mental health problems for young people.
Any child who suffers genuine gender dysphoria must of course be
sensitively supported in schools and youth organisations. But teachers,
professionals and other children cannot be asked to collude in the
reinforcement of a child’s belief which contradicts reality. Recognition
of biological facts is not bigotry.
When girls are told that a male classmate is now a girl, their sense
of their own reality is shattered. If a biological male is a girl, then
it is not female biology which makes you a girl, it is something else.
Girls must look to a male classmate to find out the invisible magic
quality they need, and the boy is given the power to define what a girl
is. We cannot predict the long-term practical or psychological effects
on girls taught to deny their own biology, without the right to even
define themselves correctly as the female sex.
If teenage girls must consent to a male classmate using their toilets
and changing-rooms they learn that their boundaries may be violated and
their consent is unimportant. Girls learn that they are not always
allowed to say ‘no.’ This is grooming; lessons on the importance of
consent become meaningless.
Girls who are coached at school into ignoring their own discomfort
and intuition may go on to put themselves in risky situations with any
man who claims to be a woman, out of fear of being seen as transphobic.
In the case of public swimming pool changing rooms a young girl
cannot name a male with a penis as a man: voyeurism and indecent
exposure cease to exist as crimes if a man claims to be a woman. Normal
child protection protocols effectively become unlawful.
I urge ministers to vote against the implementation of self-declared
gender legislation, pending full investigation into the operation of
transgender youth organisations and the impact on children and
adolescents, including the implications for child protection and
safeguarding, especially for girls. Expert testimony from professionals,
including experts in child and adolescent development and psychology,
and specific feminist analysis on the impact on girls is essential.
What I typically hear from parents is:
“I feel like I’m going through a death of my child and everyone is
just cheering her on. When I found your website I cried with relief.”
But I am also contacted by young people themselves and I will end by
quoting the most distressing message I received, from a young woman who
asked simply this:
“Would you know how to get my body back? Would you know if anyone’s yet sued their doctor?”
References:
[1] https://www.gires.org.uk/classroom-lesson-plans/
[2] Hot Topics in Child Health conference, 12 June 2017, evidence from Dr Polly Carmichael, Tavistock clinic
[3] http://www.gires.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GIRES-Young-People-Elsewhere-Observations-regarding-cross-sex-hormones.pdf
[4] https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/teenage-brain1.htm
[5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2444866417301101
[6] http://dailysignal.com/2017/07/03/im-pediatrician-transgender-ideology-infiltrated-field-produced-large-scale-child-abuse/amp/
[7] https://californiahealthline.org/news/women-fear-drug-they-used-to-halt-puberty-led-to-health-problems/
[8] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-kids-transition-medical-risks-are-both-known-and-unknown/
[9] http://dailysignal.com/2017/07/03/im-pediatrician-transgender-ideology-infiltrated-field-produced-large-scale-child-abuse/amp/
[10] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26119518
[11] http://www.ozy.com/provocateurs/the-modern-master-of-sex/67782
[12] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html
[13] https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/262671
[14] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35532491
[15] https://www.transgendertrend.com/from-adult-males-to-teenage-girls-the-movement-from-etiology-to-ideology/
[16] http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19532.html
[17] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41671060
[18] https://www.women2win.com/news/women-and-equalities-committee-chair-maria-miller-responds-girls-attitudes-survey-2017
[19] http://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/the_school_report_2017.pdf
[20] http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/46/my-life
[21] https://www.tranzwiki.net/
[22] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/13/childline-eight-calls-a-day-gender-identity-issues-children-nspcc-helpline-transgender?CMP=share_btn_tw 
