There are no trans kids
Children should not be sacrificed on the altar of ideology.
‘Protect Trans Kids’. It’s one of the many slogans you will see frequently displayed at protests by gender ideologues. At the recent demonstrations outside the US supreme court, where the state of Tennessee’s ban on ‘gender-affirming care’ was being challenged by the ACLU, there were even young children holding placards bearing the phrase. But if adults don’t understand what it means, how can the children who it ostensibly describes?
The concept of the ‘trans child’ has become an essential tool in gender activism. In order to justify reorganising society according to ‘gender identity’ rather than sex – and thereby admitting men who identify as women into female-only spaces – it must first be determined that the concept of a ‘gender identity’ is real. And if there is such a thing as a sexed soul that is misaligned with our body, it must surely be present from the moment of conception. As such, being ‘trans’ is not a decision one makes in adult life, but an innate quality that exists at all ages.
J. K. Rowling posted a statement on X regarding this topic earlier this week.
‘There are no trans kids. No child is “born in the wrong body”. There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined.’
The subsequent firestorm was inevitable. Even the most sensible of comments on this topic are liable to whip up a frenzy of rage and indignation. This in itself is proof of the absurdity of the proposition. If the concept of a sexed soul was legitimate, measured debate and discussion would be adequate to persuade the undecided. But given the weakness of the claim, threats, insults and tantrums are the more likely tactic.
The term ‘trans’ has been muddied in recent years by insisting that it is an abbreviation of ‘transgender’. Previously, it had denoted ‘transsexual’, a term that specifically relates to those who have undertaken surgery or other medical interventions to appear as the opposite sex. The lexical shift to ‘transgender’ implies that the existence of a ‘gender identity’ is incontestable, and that we each have ‘an essence of male or female’ (as one trans campaigner explained to me). No such essence exists, and so ‘transgender’, like ‘non-binary’, is grounded in belief rather than reality. It is a form of self-identification, a way to classify oneself with a concordant set of behaviours, tastes and dress codes, much like ‘goth’ or ‘punk’.
Given that no human being has ever changed from male to female or vice versa, the term ‘trans’ must therefore refer to a process undertaken to appear as the opposite sex. There are two methods by which this can be achieved. Firstly, there is the transvestic approach, by which attire, accessories and behaviour is adopted according to sex stereotypes. For example, a man might wear a frock, high-heeled shoes, lipstick and a long wig, tilt his head coquettishly, and generally behave in a caricatured manner of a woman. Cross-dressers rely on sex stereotypes for effect; whereas many women routinely wear jeans and a t-shirt and no make-up at all, a man who did this would be unremarkable and not identifiably ‘trans’.
The other approach is surgical intervention. For men who wish to appear as women this can include: orchiectomy (removal of the testicles), vaginoplasty (removal and reshaping of the male genitals to create a faux-vagina), breast augmentation, facial plastic surgery, tracheal shave (reduction of Adam’s apple), vocal surgery to raise pitch, hair removal and hair transplants. For women who wish to appear as men, this can include: mastectomy (removal of breasts), pectoral implants, hysterectomy, vaginectomy and phalloplasty (the removal of the vagina and creation of a faux-penis), and body contouring.
Whereas any adult surely must retain the right to dress as he or she chooses, there is a debate to be had regarding the ethics of such surgical procedures. To offer an analogy: if a man desperately desires to have his own arm removed, is the doctor who carries out such an operation not violating his professional responsibility to ‘first do no harm’? Would not psychotherapeutic treatment be more appropriate? On the other hand, many individuals who identify as trans argue that ‘gender-reassignment’ surgery is a psychological necessity. Irrespective of where one stands on that debate, it should be clear that no child can possibly give informed consent to any of these procedures. And so if ‘trans child’ approximates to ‘transsexual child’, then such a thing cannot rightfully exist.
However, if we decide that ‘trans child’ means ‘transgender child’, then we are in the realm of a philosophical or pseudo-religious belief. It is certainly possible for children to believe that they have gendered souls which do not align with their bodies. But such an esoteric view has not developed from a mature process of reflection and analysis. This is the same reason why Richard Dawkins objects to the concept of a ‘Christian child’ or a ‘Muslim child’. In such cases, invariably we are using a shorthand for ‘the child of Christian parents’ or ‘the child of Muslim parents’. Children are simply ill-equipped to have grappled with complex theological belief-systems and weighed up whether they accept them as valid or not.
Moreover, the term ‘transgender child’ points to a highly specific principle within a broader ethos. Given that it refers to the notion of a soul in the wrong body, it is closer akin to the idea of a ‘possessed child’ rather than a ‘Christian child’. Again, it is unfeasible to suppose that an infant could possibly have interrogated these beliefs with any degree of intellectual rigour. The main difference is that trans activists are lauded by the media and political class, whereas exorcists are given a wide berth.
As such, whichever way one looks at it, the very concept of the ‘trans child’ is incoherent. It makes sense to speak of ‘trans people’ because it is an effective shorthand for ‘people who call themselves trans’ or ‘people who believe they were born in the wrong body’, or ‘people who, out of psychological desire or necessity, present in accordance with the stereotypes of the opposite sex’. For the same reason, we can describe someone as a ‘Catholic’ without sharing his or her faith in transubstantiation.
But we need to recognise that this is a belief-system that no child can possibly comprehend, and so the phrase ‘trans child’ makes no sense. To use the phrase at all is to participate in the indoctrination. So while anyone has the right to refer to ‘trans children’, we have the right to tell them why such a phenomenon does not exist.
One only has to look back ten years or so to see that there was no such thing as a trans child. The whole idea has been manufactured by people with power, influence and money. For example, Martine Rothblatt, a transhumanist, amongst many others has been working with governments for decades, to embed gender ideology into law and the culture. Then there is the profit motive; big pharma is making huge amounts from transitioning children and turning them into lifelong medical patients. And underlying all of it is Queer Theory, a form of Marxism whose purpose is to destroy society by normalising fetish, pushing sexual boundaries including the sexual boundary between adult and child, indoctrinating children and creating a wedge between parent and child in order to destroy the family.
The hardest thing to understand is how so many people appear to be incapable of doing any kind of research, or even looking back a few years. Cowardice is part of it but it doesn’t really explain the easy acceptance of such insane ideas. Thanks for your continued focus on this issue Andrew. The safeguarding of children should be the focus of every adult and the fact that so few are speaking out about this is unforgivable.
Great article thank you. The concept of the trans child is the most insidious part of the whole gender movement in my opinion. It seems to me to be primarily pushed by cross dressing heterosexual men who need the trans child to exist in order to legitimise displaying their fetish in public, it’s a gift to all of those homophobic parents who are only to happy to latch onto magical thinking that their child is born in the wrong body and the collateral damage are vulnerable kids who would have simply grown up to be gay. It is so dangerous and I cringe every time I think about it.