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July 14, 2024 - 7:00am
It certainly feels extreme, even to those of us who know it shouldn’t. Labour Health Minister Wes Streeting reportedly plans “to make trans puberty blocker ban permanent”. It’s a decision which, according to the commentator Owen Jones, “will devastate the lives of so many trans people”. The Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maughan goes further, claiming: “these measures will kill trans children.” Vulture Capitalism author Grace Blakely agreed: “Kids are going to die because of this.” Presumably, this is not the speedy end to the culture wars for which Keir Starmer was hoping.
Around 15 years ago, this would have looked very different. Let’s try to imagine it: in response to disturbing reports from whistleblowers, a report finds that vulnerable children — predominantly those who are autistic, have been in care, have experienced sexual abuse and/or would otherwise grow up to be gay — have been given experimental drugs which set them on a path to sterilisation and lifelong health problems. It would be a scandal. Any health minister willing to stop it would be a hero, while those who had facilitated it would be justifiably shamed. And yet here we are, in 2024, with Streeting the one accused of having “blood on his hands”.
It is hard to fathom the degree of misrepresentation and institutional capture that has led us to this point. Fathom it we must, however, if we are to undo all of the harm that has been done. While in the run-up to the election Starmer sought to appeal to both sides in “the trans debate”, suggesting that the only real problem was the “toxicity”, most of us could have told him it was never going to be that easy.
The past decade has seen the medical abuse of gender non-conforming children recast as a progressive cause. The child who fears puberty, hates their sexed body, wishes they had been born the opposite sex — the child, that is, who needs love, support and acceptance as they move through one of the most volatile, difficult life stages — has been reinvented as “the trans child”, whose flight from the self must be validated. Experimental drugs and surgeries are now sold as “gender affirmation”. If we do not affirm these children they will kill themselves, at least according to those who have overseen and endorsed the building of this harmful narrative.
I am all for nuance, compromise and seeing both sides. This is why on 4 July I found myself voting for a party whose position on sex and gender I don’t share. Nonetheless, there is no “both sides” about whether you harm the bodies of vulnerable children instead of helping them through an essential life stage. It is as binary as it gets. By indicating that the ban on puberty blockers first imposed by former health secretary Victoria Atkins could be made permanent, Streeting is recognising this. No one decides to harm children a bit. Either you don’t do it at all, or you do but you lie about it, to yourself and to others.
It remains to be seen whether some of Labour’s more “trans-friendly” MPs finally take a step back. Eventually, they will have to, no matter how implicated — either personally or politically — they have become in the transing of children. The shamefulness of the situation is there for all to see. The construction of the trans child has served a broader political purpose, and once this is dismantled many other central tenets of trans activism will fall apart. It has to happen now, though, regardless of how brutal and lacking in that all-important nuance it feels.
Labour cannot “both sides” this. We either go back to recognising that all children, especially the most vulnerable, have a right to grow, or we move further towards treating drugs, surgeries and lifelong pain as “just the way things are” for some. Streeting was brave and principled enough to change his mind on this issue. Others have to follow. It may not be comfortable, but this is the only way back.
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SubscribeFirst – absolutely not the outcome on this issue that many claimed we would get from a Labour government. Is anybody now prepared to own up to scaremongering? Are those who said they couldn’t vote for Labour because of this issue going to accept that they were taken for a ride by the other side?
Second, this is an opportunity to research further not just the trans issue, but also the issues some girls seem to face making the transition to female adulthood.
Re your last sentence: the ‘issues some girls seem to face making the transition to female adulthood’ is new. Despite a difficult childhood and adolescence I had no such issues and I knew no girls who did. It was unheard of. We started our periods, grew breasts, occasionally suffered wolf whistles etc, and took it all for granted. But then, there was no internet and no social media to induce the mass hysteria which can afflict girls.
It could be argued – as Freud did – that female tendency to hysteria has a sexual origin. In his day ‘hysterical’ women manifested strange physical symptoms. Freud’s method was to connect the symptom with its psychological cause and in so doing defuse it with mental clarity.
No ‘further research’ is needed. The evidence based data is all there but has been ignored by the trans lobby. Try reading ‘Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality’ by Helen Joyce; a voice of reason if ever there was one.
This is absolutely a social contagion which has replaced self-harming and eating disorders as the means of gaining attention by troubled teenagers. Affirming their wishes is a disgusting betrayal of their needs and an abdication of responsibility by adults who should know better.
Thank you Victoria Smith for a well constructed commentary on a vexed subject. The “progressives” you mentioned such as Owen Jones have been elevated through the zeitgeist that ran for the last fifteen years to that of sages. They are not. They are just one of over 50 million adults in the UK capable of having an opinion on transitioning children via surgery and hormones. They are also in a tiny, tiny minority. Once their mouthpiece in the broadsheet press goes broke, despite craven begging for donations, they will disappear.
We all need to read and consider opinions with which we disagree, otherwise i wouldn’t have read you nor would i subscribe to Unheard. Even if you hate it, we need the Guardian. Yes, it is ridiculous in most of its coverage of trans issues and Owen Jones is particularly irritating but they have a long history of ground-breaking journalism and i am hoping they wake up soon to that heritage and find their critical thinking capacity. We all need them!
We should all read against ourselves.
Thank you Pat. I would agree with you on the Guardian’s usefulness. My point is rather the disproportionate space given to tiny voices such as Owen Jones who happen to hold outlandish, whimsical and some would say grotesque ideas with its editors.These have real detrimental effects on other constituencies. In fact those ideas will lead to the demise of the Guardian, many of whose articles I enjoy though not necessarily content with which I agree.
In it’s history the Guardian has adopted many, many repulsive viewpoints. We forget how popular the eugenics that inspired Dr Mengele once were on the British middle class left. Or their promotion of sterilisation as a solution to poverty. Or the fact that journalists who tried to report accurately on the Soviet Union under Stalin were unceremoniously sacked. Or their enthusiasm for the ‘satanic abuse’ panics of the eighties.
I suspect that eventually the trans hysteria will be memory-holed in the same way.
Yes, and as the mother of a beautiful, miraculous autistic daughter, let’s not forget that the left would love to abort all Down Syndrome people out of existence, and autistic people too when the genetics can be more specifically identified. There are no Down’s people in Iceland because it is considered socially unacceptable to have a Down’s child there – they are all aborted. So progressive and Nazi-esque of them. Denmark and the UK are not fair behind.
Babies are now engineered through surrogacy to create exactly what parents want. Humans playing God. Quite sick.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-01/iceland-prenatal-testing-down-syndrome-ethics/103781058
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/two-fathers-sue-because-surrogate-gave-birth-to-a-daughter/
Do you really think that the reason women abort Down Syndrome foetuses is because the women fear social censure? Plucking chin hairs, sure; aborting a foetus, I doubt that’s the cause.
It’s not about fearing social censure. It’s being raised with the prejudice that Down Syndrome human beings are unworthy of life. That’s what the culture tells them.
‘He who knows only his own side knows little of that’ JS Mill
The Guardian won’t go broke because, although it has a tiny readership and loses money, the secretive offshore trust that finances it has enormous wealth derived from other sources.
‘Starmer sought to appeal to both sides in “the trans debate”, suggesting that the only real problem was the “toxicity”, most of us could have told him it was never going to be that easy.’
I suspect Starmer, given his law background, is a pretty rational kind of guy and because of that fails to understand just how irrational some very vocal people can be.
If he is able to steer a steady course and calm the extremes on both sides of various debates, he’ll be doing well.
Agreed.
And I think you are accurate in your psychological observation. Rational people struggle to understand general human irrationality and emotionality. The only thing I would add is that they often fail to understand it in themselves too!
Victoria you are the one who goes through countless hoops not to use pronouns when “trans” people are concerned, are you not?
With this exercise of obfuscation are you not censoring yourself and are you not “both siding”?
Both siding
Can you explain what this means, if it is not simply trying to see the other persons point of view, and carry out debate with a reasonable level of courtesy?
I expect a writer on Unherd to take a position, but I also expect some understanding of the issue from all sides. Isn’t this what you are looking for? Are you just looking for validation of your own point of view?
No, because you are obfuscating, especially when Victoria writes about egregious examples of people “transitioning”. Besides, that is not the way the English language works. You can make work by labouring over your essays trying to find circumlocutions that avoid the use of pronouns, but in normal writing, not to mention normal speech, you can’t. Are we supposed to censor ourselves 100% of the time?
The inevitable conclusion is that you end up with she-rapists.
I can tell you that if the sex of the individual is irrelevant, than I am not fussed either way. Say, so and so works at the tax office, from my point of view his/her sex is irrelevant. However if your job was reserved (for whatever reason) for a woman, then no dancing around pronouns is necessary or indeed helpful or welcome.
Chinese speakers have it easy because in speech (but not in writing) they have the same word for he/she/it/him/her/its. Alas, English speakers are not so lucky.
Ok – but what is « both siding »?
That she is trying to play “both sides”, with the excuse of trying to understand “both sides”. Fence sitting, if you like, or lacking conviction.
By trying to appease “both sides” you will end up disliked by the same both sides, as Labour will soon discover.
It’s very clear which side Victoria is on. Indeed, on the trans issue there is too much simple side taking on Unherd – too much polemic – and not enough thought and analysis. She certainly isn’t fence sitting.
And conviction must be based on evidence, thought and analysis. Otherwise what seperates it from bigotry, dogma and prejudice.
David, read her articles here on unherd – it is easy to spot the relevant ones. They are a virtuoso performance of pronoun avoidance.
Language seeks to define accurately. That’s why pronouns were invented, to make clear whom we are speaking or writing about. Your approach does the opposite, and your vague ‘tax office’ example doesn’t hold water. Rationalisation to suit your own preferred point of view puts you in danger of delusion. Sorry, you can’t have the English language to yourself. Others have to use it, too. I’m not sure about your knowledge of Chinese either. It may not have pronouns as in English, but other means, such as spoken inflexion are used to focus meaning. Without accuracy, there is only confusion.
I am not sure why I deserve this lecture or what you are trying to say in relation to what I said, but my point was that of you lie, like in the case of the tax office worker, it doesn’t really matter because all you care about is your taxes. Whether the letter you received from Miss Charlene what’s it was actually from Mr Charlie Whatsit is irrelevant. However, if the same Charlene wishes to enter the ladies room… Well that’s another matter.
Eh?
Good article. Labour have seen how fast public favour can dissipate, with their rout in 2019, and that of their opponents ten days ago.
They will have seen that offering appeasement to a mad movement that, when given something, only asks for more, is pointless.
And more to the point, there’s no money in the UK health system to pay for it.
Those who want it can go and seek it where they can buy it. If they decide to stay there, all to the good.
Extract from Medical Law Review:-
“Thirty years ago, the transgender child would have made no sense to the general public, nor to young people”
https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article-abstract/27/4/640/5522968?login=false
If dysphoria could be likened to a disease, the trans activist would argue that it’s cruelty to withhold treatment. Isn’t it far more cruel to invent the disease in children’s minds in the first place?
Sorry all you nice, reasonable, ‘see both sides’ people but I’m gonna be seriously toxic! It just breaks my heart to think of young girls having healthy breasts amputated before they’re old enough properly to understand what breasts are for. We adults must help young people through puberty which we all agree is tough. How would we react if a distraught teenager said they’d ‘Kill themselves’ if we didn’t let them chop their right arm off? We’d help them any way we could but I don’t think we’d ‘affirm’ their ideas and buy them as axe.
Firstly, No one in the UK is having breast surgery as a child.
I work with trans teens in a mental health setting. No exclusively, there are kids here for a variety of issues.
The first thing we are told is to accept what the child tells us. We have to believe them and validate their feelings to build trust. They have tried to take their own life because they do not feel accepted or because they gave been rejected by family. I personally do not think they are delusional but in any situation where someone might have delusions it is psychologically damaging to shatter a delusion. This includes people with psychosis through to people with dementia. I do not believe any of the psychologist or doctors work with are pushing a trans agenda. I don’t push or wish for anyone to be anything they aren’t. I find it genuinely upsetting that the trans kids I work with may not be able to get the gender adfirming care they need to go on and live happy lives.
The problem probably arises as much from the growing prevalence of childlessness as anything else. No-one who has been a parent is going to unquestioningly ‘accept what the child tells us’.
Nobody said breast surgery happens to ‘a child’ – obviously, there’s nothing there to cause upset and be removed!
I disagree that ‘We have to believe them and validate their feelings to build trust’. It’s my belief that we should behave as adults. Show sympathy and understanding but offer advice and encouragement that comes from our longer experience of life. If you know something is wrong – biologically impossible – you do nobody any favours by pretending otherwise.
Not every new idea is a good idea. Hands up who remembers the Initial Teaching Alphabet and the effort involved in undoing the harm that did? At least that fad didn’t cause irreparable physical harm.
Agree. Preventing harm in children is not complicated.
Thanks for this powerful, clear statement on behalf of confused, vulnerable kids, most of whom have other mental health issues, and many of whom will eventually realize they’re gay. It’s our job as adults to support all young people through the sea change of puberty, not thwart and manipulate it in service to a harmful ideology.
Why weren’t there more suicides committed by children in the sixties, seventies, eighties or nineties? Only one kid died when I was in high school, and he died in a car accident. You would think that worried researchers would would have been shocked by the large number of suicides. But suicides were extremely rare. Why the sudden fear that a kid who doesn’t get what he wants will kill himself? The suicide scare is made up.
It’s emotional blackmail, which has always been around it just never really been effective against parliament before.
I know someone who has a daughter who is transitioning. FWIW, she is autistic. Interestingly her partner is a male who is transitioning the other way. He’s also autistic.
The medical professional who ‘diagnosed’ her actually used the line “would you prefer a son, or a dead daughter”
Grotesque.
How strange, to give the parents a binary choice in a setting where it’s an article of faith that gender is non-binary.
That’s not a “medical professional” that’s a charlatan and a quack!
“ I am all for nuance, compromise and seeing both sides. This is why on 4 July I found myself voting for a party whose position on sex and gender I don’t share.“
Huh? What I’m taking from this is that like all left leaning ‘Terfs’ of my acquaintance, you bang on about the evils of gender ideology but still toddle off back to your tribe come election time, unwilling to hold your nose in the polling booth. As such, I can only assume that this isn’t such a big deal for you.
Whatever are the lists of all the kids who have sadly suicided?
Thank you for this clear, cogent piece, Victoria. I hope some of the ‘both sides’ people read it.
What genuinely puzzles me is why the so-called left, in the US and the UK, is prepared to die on this particular hill of extreme gender conformism. It’s probably, as usual, a case of ‘follow the money’; but the trail is invisible or maybe just very well hidden.
This really can’t be a case of wily French deconstructionists’ ideas mutating like a virus in the minds of more pragmatically inclined Anglo-Saxon politicians and commentators.
Does anyone have a theory?