KEMI BADENOCH says we have almost an “epidemic” of children being convinced by teachers that they can change sex at the drop of a hat.
She’s right. I have spoken to countless parents who can confirm this, as well as to young women who began transitioning to become “trans men” while still at school, then lived to regret it.
Badenoch, the Minister for Women and Equalities, made these comments last week, warning MPs of a “new form of conversion therapy”.
She was referring to the ever-increasing numbers of children, mainly those who are same-sex attracted, being encouraged to believe they are transgender and put on an irreversible medical pathway that often leads to sterilisation.
I have met a number of families who can attest to this. Brighton is now a “gender ideology haven”.
The situation has become so urgent that, in July, concerned parents set up PSHE Brighton to focus on how personal, social, health and economics is taught in schools in the area.
Co-founder Bev Barstow tells me that while more than 20 local families have contacted them, many others from across the UK have been in touch with worries about their children being transitioned “from the classroom to the clinic”.
One of those families includes 16-year-old Catherine (name changed), who is autistic.
Apparently a victim of online radicalisation, she identifies as a boy and is fixated on medical and surgical transition.
Catherine appears to have experienced rapid onset gender dysphoria after accessing trans-affirming charities such as Mermaids online.
Her parents tell me that “an unholy alliance of well-meaning teachers and social workers, misguided by potentially unlawful policies, practices, procedures and training, have led to Catherine transitioning, first socially and then medically”.
How did we get here? It was a previous Minister for Women and Equalities who kicked off this toxic culture war.
In 2016, when Maria Miller MP was in the role, she led an inquiry into transgender equality.
It strongly recommended the UK should legally adopt self-definition of “gender identity”, which would render legal sex irrelevant in comparison.
The committee stated that individual identity should be the decider of who was male and who was female.
Miller signed off a report advising a change to the Equality Act (replacing the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” with “gender identity”).
At a stroke, she suggested that the inner feeling of “gender” should take precedence over legal sex.
Feminists complained — this was a matter of clinging on to our hard-won sex-based rights.
But in 2017, Miller dismissed women’s fury about the erosion of single-sex provision in domestic violence refuges and prisons as “extraordinary” bigotry.
Badenoch’s views on trans issues could not be further from Miller’s.
She is, rightly in my view, prioritising the protection and safety of children, but has also expressed deep concern about male sexual predators gaining access to vulnerable victims (in women’s refuges, Rape Crisis centres, hospital wards and prison wings) by self-identifying as trans women.
When Isla Bryson (formerly Adam Graham) was moved to a women’s prison in Scotland, despite having been found guilty of raping two women before transitioning, there was a public outcry and he was eventually transferred to a men’s prison.
This scandal shone a light on the dangers inherent to the Scottish Government’s gender reforms, which would allow transgender people in Scotland to self-identify without any psychiatric diagnosis or medical intervention.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Bill was passed in Holyrood, but blocked from becoming law by the UK Government.
When Badenoch told MPs this week, “We (Conservatives) are the ones who are thinking about women’s rights, we are the ones who are thinking about safeguarding, we are the ones who are thinking about vulnerability”, she was clearly referring to the Bryson case.
But Scotland is at it again, trying to push through a prison policy that would put women at risk.
Published this week, it appears no different from the disastrous policy that allowed Bryson to be held in the female estate.
Although it says trans women “will not be eligible to be considered for admission or transfer to a women’s prison” if they have been convicted of crimes including murder, assault, abduction, rape, and sexual harassment, it also states that exceptions can be made – so long as the panel “are satisfied there is compelling evidence they do not present an unacceptable risk of harm to those in the prison”.
This year I interviewed Carrie (name changed), who ended up in prison for non payment of fines and was horrified to realise that a biological male who had been convicted of a child sex offences was housed on her wing.
“He didn’t ever directly assault me,” Carrie told me, “but the threat was always there, and I saw prison officers terrified of pulling him up on certain things in case they were called transphobic.”
To see the sheer madness that results from doing everything for the trans lobby, we need look no further than the Labour Party.
When first asked in an interview if women could have a penis, Keir Starmer was unable to say yes or no. He later conceded some women could have a penis, and now says that “99.9 per cent of women don’t”.
This issue is not about Left or Right, but decency and common sense.
Thankfully, not everybody is captured by Stonewall or indoctrinated by Mermaids.
There is no such thing as a trans child, but there are plenty of young lesbians and gays who need and deserve the protection that I and others fought so long and hard for.
Badenoch has said the unsayable: That encouraging children to alter their bodies and claim to be the opposite sex, rather than helping them live happily as they are, is indeed a new form of homophobic conversion therapy.
Only this time around, it’s dressed up in a rainbow flag.
