The media onslaught on the trans kids issue continued for a few days after my last post on the subject. I had intended to say more about it at the time, but other things got in the way. I’m coming back to it now because there are a couple of important points I wanted to make.

First up, when you are reading any of these “debate” articles in which a journalist presents what appears to be two sides of the argument, always look for who gets the last word, because that is almost certainly the side that the journalist wants you to think “won” the “debate”. The article will probably be structured to lead you to that conclusion.

As an example, check out this piece from the Telegraph which purports to give advice to parents whose kids exhibit gender-variant behavior. The articles talks to Mermaids and a gender specialist, but gives a lot of space, and the last word, to one Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist, who encourages parents not to “overreact” — the journalist’s word, not hers.

As I noted in my post on the Victoria Derbyshire program, around 75% of the kids who see doctors for gender variance issues do indeed “grow out of it”. However, that leaves 25% who do not. Slowly but surely, the gender specialists are learning to tell who needs more help and who doesn’t, but the kids’ own testimony is found to be a strong indicator of behavior. The more insistent a child is that they are the “wrong” gender, the more likely they are to need to transition later in life.

The article states (without quote marks so I am assuming these are the words of the journalist, Radhika Sanghani):

However, the most important thing for parents to remember is that there are no real ‘warning signs’ their child will become transgender or transsexual.

This is flat out wrong.

Furthermore, consider this scenario: suppose your child exhibited possible signs of a dangerous disease. There’s a 75% chance that it is a false alarm, but a 25% chance that there is something seriously wrong which, if it is not treated in time, could lead to death, and at best lifelong disfigurement. What would you think of someone who advised you not to overreact, and to wait and see if the child recovered on their own?

The other piece of coverage I wanted to point you at is an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. It is probably gone from iPlayer by now, but there is a transcript available here.

Before reading that, however, you might want to check out this blog post by CN Lester which explains how the Woman’s Hour staff tried to recruit CN to be the anti-trans person in a debate on the validity of treating trans kids. There’s little doubt that Woman’s Hour intended to run a “debate” show, and that they wanted the anti-trans side to win.

And if you need further evidence, go and read the transcript and pay close attention to the questions that Jenni Murray poses.

The eventual show had the anti side taken by Finn MacKay, who happens to have just written a book on radical feminism. Because there’s nothing quite like arguing against someone’s right to exist when you have a book to promote, right? Finn is a lecturer at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Doubtless our paths will cross at some point.

Actually, almost everything that Finn says on the program is stuff I agree with. Jenni Murray is much more obviously anti-trans. However, the program is presented in such a way as to suggest that parents who take their kids to a gender clinic are obsessed with a need for those kids to conform to the gender binary. Michelle Bridgman of Gendered Intelligence does her best to counter this idea, but she isn’t allowed much space to explain.

The truth of the matter is that trans people have waged a long and exhausting campaign against the medical establishment to try to prevent them from forcing gender-normative behavior upon us. Being trans isn’t about sexuality, and it isn’t about gender performance either. If all someone wants to do is wear pretty dresses, that person will be happy to go through life as a cross-dresser. They don’t need medical transition, and they should not be encouraged to seek it. Nor is someone who does transition medically required to be gender-stereotypical in their behavior afterwards. Presenting trans people as being obsessed with being gender conformant is just one of the lies that radical feminists tell about us.

As for kids, it can be hard to tell which way they will go, but gender specialists are getting better at recognizing who needs help. In the meantime treatment is carefully staged so as to give the kids every opportunity to back out. For those that don’t, there is increasing clinical evidence that the use of hormone blockers provides significant benefits.

The medical evidence is very clear. And yet journalists persist in scare-mongering and arguing that trans people should be denied treatment. What’s worse is that they do this for “entertainment”.