Why are we celebrating a four-year-old transitioning?

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“We are so proud of him and so proud of the choice that he has made”.

Yesterday Matthew and Klara told This Morning about Stormy, their transgender-identified child who decided that she was a boy at two-years-old.

'We love him so much. We're so proud of him and the choice that he's made.'

At the age of two, Stormy told his family, 'I'm not a girl, I think I'm a boy'. We speak to his parents, Matthew and Klara, who hope that their story helps raise awareness for other families. pic.twitter.com/AiVR2HhNlX

— This Morning (@thismorning) May 10, 2021

Viewers were told that what the child has decided should be celebrated. As a transgender adult, I beg to differ.

Stormy is still only four years old. Children of that age believe in all sorts of fantasies. Sometimes we correct them, sometimes we humour them — Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy come to mind. But by the same token, we should not be cheering them on as their parents bring them up in a fantasy world where children can be whatever the sex they decide to be. Or, more frighteningly perhaps, the sex that their parents decide for them.

While nobody will be proposing physical treatment on a child so young, letting your daughter believe that she is actually a boy from such a young age will only complicate things down the road. By affirming the child as the other sex, they are set inexorably on a course that will lead to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and possibly surgery. That is the real danger.

Presenter Holly Willoughby appeared to be spellbound, but missed the point spectacularly: “as a society we tend to want to put people into a girl or a boy box … it makes us feel comfortable.”

Sadly this child is being forced into a trans box, and it should make us all feel very uncomfortable.

The real culprits, though, are not these parents or Holly Willoughby, but the snake-oil salesmen who have sold this lie to society. We have been told so many times that gender identity distinguishes men from women and now too many people now believe it. But human beings are sexually dimorphic, not ‘genderally’ dimorphic. That is biology, and while people can be led astray, the science does not change.

Too many politicians and policymakers have bought into this lie. Whether they genuinely think that sex is complicated (it isn’t) or doesn’t matter (it does) is not the issue. What matters is the impact on children like Stormy.

Stormy was apparently born with female genitals and that alone makes Stormy a girl. Stormy might develop into a girl that climbs trees, plays with trucks, wears trousers and cuts her hair short, but she will still be a girl. For Stormy, like everyone else, transition as an adult remains an option. At least then it would genuinely be her decision.

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