Keira Bell has led. The rest of us must follow, or collude in harm

This week Keira Bell stood on the steps of the High Court, victorious. Keira is the young woman who took the NHS’s “Gender Identity Development Service” (GIDS) to court. She argued that when she entered their care as a gender-dysphoric young woman who had become convinced that she should have been born a boy, the service should have challenged her more. Instead, she stepped onto a conveyor belt of “affirmation” that led to puberty suppressants, cross-sex hormones, and ultimately a double mastectomy. All this she regrets.

The High Court has now ruled that children under 16 are unlikely to be able to give informed consent for taking puberty-blocking drugs. No-one yet fully understands the long-term impacts of puberty suppressants. How possibly can a child? The treatment is experimental, a step into the unknown. Yet Keira was prescribed puberty suppressants after just three appointments. The ruling of the High Court has been published and the GIDs service specification has already been updated in light of the Court ruling.

The lobby group, Trangender Trend, supported Bell’s case in Court. Their reflections upon the case, published yesterday, make for staggering reading, when you consider they are talking about part of our NHS. They write: “We submitted evidence that the GIDS operates within a core illogicality: a belief that biological sex is irrelevant to being a boy or being a girl, while providing a service that is predicated on the existence of, and ability to define, a ‘boy body’ and a ‘girl body’ that children might move between through medication and subsequent surgery. This is of course an impossibility, but it is an outcome that children are led to believe is possible.”

Transgender Trend submitted that “the Service colludes in beliefs that depend on the rejection of biological facts, giving greater weight to a subjective, self-declared identity over the material fact of biological sex”. The GIDS “operates from within the same culture of unreality that has influenced the young people being referred”. 

In other words, the service is ideologically captured. And it’s an ideology that does great harm. Biological sex is binary and immutable. Until about five years ago no-one had heard of “inner gender identity”. Now it’s everywhere and all over social media and teen-focused media outlets, convincing children that they can be born in the wrong body and have a mythical gender identity which is their “true self”. The result is that a small number embark on a journey that leads to lifelong medication, stunted sex organs, sterilisation, lack of sexual function, lack of sexual pleasure, and unknown other health consequences. The anecdotal evidence of the tragedy unfolding is everywhere on social media for those who wish to see. Read the testimony of a parent whose child has experienced this. Heartbreak and horror that is unimaginable and lifelong.

Was GIDS concerned? Transgender Trend report on the lack of curiosity, the abandonment of rigour. “The GIDS lacked even basic data on children who had been given puberty blockers…

• In respect of the ages of children treated with puberty blockers between 2011 and 2020, the data has not been collated for each year.

• In respect of the number or proportion of young people referred by GIDS for puberty blockers who had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or any other mental health diagnosis, the data has not been collated and there has been a lack of investigation or analysis.

• In respect of the proportion of those on puberty blockers who progress to cross-sex hormones there is no data available, even for those who commence cross-sex hormones within the GIDS itself. Children were not tracked into adult services.”

There are elements of the judgement which will impact globally. Here is Transgender Trend on the court findings: “Puberty blockers are not ‘fully reversible’. Puberty blockers do not ‘buy time’, they are the first stage of a medical pathway very few children come off. There is no evidence that puberty blockers alleviate distress. The pathway of blockers and cross-sex hormones has serious physical consequences, including the loss of fertility and full sexual function, with profound long-term risks and consequences. The treatment is experimental.”

Above I referred to an American mother whose child, now adult, has been sterilised and is contemplating having a vagina “made” out of parts of his colon. Australian parents have had their child forcibly taken in to care because they will not affirm the child’s self-declared transgender identity. 

Other times, it’s the child who leaves the family when their parents fail to go along with this devastating cult. When Psychology Today published an article exploring this fact, it lasted three hours before it was taken down – although you can still read it here. The editors said: “This post is more problematic than needed.” (You mustn’t challenge ideology.) 

The High Court ruling in the Keira Bell case is a high-profile marker in the sand that institutions and individuals in the UK cannot now ignore. There is no basis in science for the concept of inner gender identity and it is an ideology with profound and tragic consequences. Yet it is everywhere, not just on social media, but right across our institutions – corporate, charitable, government. Resulting in young people leaving their families, medicating themselves for life, sterilising themselves, inflicting profound bodily harm upon themselves, aided by adults. Testimony again to humanity’s ability to succumb to ideology, blinkered to the harm it may do, because of the promise of a bright and liberating future. Let us hope that we can now protect other young people; that we can quickly turn the tide.

The UK Government now needs to act. As we speak, it plans to roll out the 2021 Census which will allow people to self-ID their sex, which will contain a voluntary question on gender identity. Thereby rolling this insidious ideology to every household in the land, with a Government stamp of approval. College of Policing guidance punishes people who challenge the ideology.  If you state the simple fact that people cannot change sex, and are accused of transphobia, the police will retain a record against your name accusing you of “Hate”. Ministry of Justice policy documents describe sex as “assigned at birth”. The MoJ allows men who self-ID as women into women’s prisons. Likewise, the NHS with hospital wards. Practically every government entity in the land pays Stonewall to be part of its “diversity champions” programme. They prop up Stonewall, so that it can proclaim that “transwomen are women”. Stonewall creates materials for schools to teach children about their inner gender identities. 

The Conservative Government is complicit. Conservative politicians need to take inspiration from the courage of Keira Bell — and act. She has led. The rest of us must follow. Not to do so colludes in harm.

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