A 23-year-old British woman, Keira Bell, is suing the medical clinic that oversaw her gender transitioning to a male when she was a teenager. She claims that the strong hormone blockers and opposite sex hormones that were administered to her during her early and mid-teens caused her medical harm. She is one of a growing tide of people who are being referred to as “detransitioners” – people who once lived as transgender and underwent medical procedures to alter their bodies, but who now regret it.
Ms Bell describes the transitioning experience that she underwent during her teenage years as very traumatic and says she now deeply regrets her transitioning. She also expresses grave concerns at the way many GPs, specialists and clinics are too quick to recommend gender transitioning to children and teenagers who are confused. She believes that the consequences and risks are not being adequately explained to minors, and that minors are incapable of making such life-altering decisions.
Ms Bell now deeply regrets her transitioning to a male, which involved hormone therapy and the removal of her breasts, paid for by the National Health Service. She now has a deep voice and a full male beard which she has to shave every day. Speaking of her regret, she says, “I am living in a world where I do not fit in as a male or as a female. I am stuck between the two sexes.”
Ms Bell’s lawyer, Jeremy Hyam, during last week’s court hearing of her case, stated, “She now very seriously regrets the process and feels that the way it was handled and her involvement in it was not appropriate.” Speaking after the court proceedings, Ms Bell stated “I don’t believe children and young people can consent to the use of powerful and experimental hormone drugs like I did… The treatment needs to change so that it does not put young people, like me, on a torturous and unnecessary path that is permanent and life-changing.”
Her case was precipitated by a former employee of the clinic that treated her, psychiatric nurse Sue Evans, who blew the whistle on the clinic’s internal practices. She spoke of the pressure to transition that is often placed upon young children by parents and medical practitioners, many of whom have a strong LGBT agenda. Ms Evans is not the only former worker in the transgender industry to raise such concerns. Kirsty Entwhistle, a psychologist who used to work for the Gender Identity Development Service, has also publicly expressed alarm about the speed with which young people are being referred for transgender medical treatment. She states that families are being told that hormone transgender therapy is “completely reversible”, whereas there are many long-term side effects which can never be reversed.
In the United States, bills are now being considered in several states to make medicalised gender transitioning of minors a criminal offense. South Dakota is likely to be the first state to pass such legislature.
Meanwhile, a growing number of teenage “detransitioners” are using social media to express how “trans-affirmative” therapies and drugs have harmed their bodies and caused serious emotional and psychological problems. For example, Elle Palmer, a destransitioner who was interviewed by YouTube personality Blaire White last week stated, “My puberty was medicalised. From a young age, I dealt with mental health problems” and says that gender transitioning only exacerbated those problems. She now deeply regrets her transitioning which has left her with a permanently deep voice and facial hair as a result of taking testosterone to turn her into a boy. Ms Palmer is not the only detransitioner who is voicing concerns. A common theme among them is deep disappointment at the speed with which gender transitioning was recommended to them as a means of treating what they now understand was a mental problem.
In October, Sky News reported on the growing tide of detransitioners who are seeking to return to their biological sex, many of whom believe they were pressured into gender transitioning as the only viable treatment for their teenage psychological confusion. Sadly, for many of them, some aspects of their physiology have now been permanently altered. Charlie Evans, who is a female detransitioner herself and the founder of the Detransition Advocacy Network, told Sky News that she has heard from “hundreds” of people who regret their transition, mostly females in their twenties who are same-sex attracted and who thought that transitioning to a male would solve all their problems. Unfortunately, in many cases, it just created new problems, including further mental health issues.
Meanwhile, the epidemic of gender transitioning continues at an alarming rate. The only approved transitioning clinic in the UK, Tavistock GIDS, has published figures showing an exponential increase over the last decade. In 2010, just 40 boys and 32 girls were transitioned in the UK. In 2019, 624 boys and 1,740 girls were transitioned. This represents a staggering 1,460% increase for boys and a mind-blowing 5,337% increase for girls!
Gender transitioning appears to be the latest politically correct craze. Having worked for several decades in the education sector myself, I have been alarmed at the increasing number of parents who are causing gender confusion among their own children by asking them what gender they would like to be. These parents are creating gender confusion, not merely responding to it. They are sowing seeds of doubt and uncertainty into the minds of their children where none previously existed. They may think they are being fashionably open minded but they are screwing up their children’s minds.
In the case of Keira Bell, in a recent interview with UK journalist, Sue Reid, she describes how it was her mother who initially influenced her towards transgenderism. “At 14, I was pitched a question by my mother, about me being such a tomboy. She asked me if I was a lesbian, so I said no. She asked me if I wanted to be a boy and I said no, too. The idea was disgusting to me. Yet the idea stuck in my mind and it didn’t go away.” She was bullied at school because of her tomboy behaviour and began to react with anti-social behaviour. She was sent to a therapist and then to a GP and, finally, to a transgender clinic, all of whom were instrumental in affirming her belief that she had been born in the wrong body. She comments, “It was all very quick. No one at the clinic sat me down and said, ‘Are you certain you want this?’”
Of course, not every case of childhood gender transitioning can be blamed upon parents or medical professionals. Many parents testify that it was the child himself or herself who was pushing for transitioning. But even in these cases, one has to question whether the child, if raised in a society free from gender-transitioning propaganda, would have ever contemplated such an extreme and, quite frankly, unnatural course of action. The powerful and ubiquitous influence of LGBT propaganda cannot be underestimated.
Our children need to be protected from medical professionals with an LGBT agenda and from the naïvely misguided ministrations of their own parents. Children are not gender-neutral dolls that can be reprogrammed or recalibrated to suit individual preference. They are boys and girls who deserve the chance to be who they were created to be without interference from agenda-driven adults. Hopefully, the laws currently being debated in the United States will soon have an echo in legislation around the globe in seeking to make medicalised gender transitioning of minors a criminal offense.
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Kevin Simington (B.Th. Dip. Min.) is a theologian, apologist and social commentator. He spent 31 years in Christian ministry as a church pastor and a Christian educator. He is the author of Finding God When He Seems to be Hiding; No More Monkey Business: Evolution in Crisis; and Making Sense of the Bible. He has also written a best-selling series of science fiction books.
Matthias Browning
Matthias Browning | Reporter
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