Introduction

We rightly celebrated last week, when the UK’s Supreme Court came to the only conclusion that it could reasonably have reached (despite even that outcome being in doubt in these fevered times).  We can just about come to terms with it being necessary for five of the country’s most senior judges to define “the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words” – man and woman – along with what human beings have always known, that human sex is binary and that it is not possible to ‘change sex’, however much wishful thinking is involved.

Many people are now sighing with relief, convinced that the ‘gender wars’ have been decisively won, sanity has prevailed, and we can all now spend our time and energy on much more wholesome and interesting matters.  This is especially true as the judgement follows close on the heels of reasonably sensible draft government guidance for schools on gender questioning-children which schools are expected to follow[1], the final version of the Cass Review and the government’s extension of the ban on prescribing puberty blockers to children.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.  As schools go back after the Easter break, I am sure the ‘genderbread person’ will be returning to the classroom.  Somewhere, a menu of ‘genders’ and sexualities will be waved in front of young teens, in the guise of Relationship and Sex Education (RSE).  Take your pick – are you non-binary or a femboy?  What about being pansexual, monosexual or even ‘allosexual’, the definition for the uninitiated being, “someone who experiences sexual attraction, desire or sexual interest directed at other people” according to Brook, an organisation offering sexual health and wellbeing advice to young people and, of perhaps greater concern, training for educators.[2] 

The highest court in the land may have reminded us that we are immutably male or female, and our sexual orientation is therefore either heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, but the torturous tentacles of the gender cult run deep.  Nothing as simple – or real – will suffice for those fully signed up, and especially for those making a lot of money from the invention of ever more absurd ‘genders’ and pseudo-sexualities

The Myth of the ‘Trans’ Child

Let me be clear – there is no such being as a ‘trans’ child.  No child is ‘born in the wrong body’. It is an impossibility in terms of both science and faith.  There are, instead, many thousands of deeply distressed children in our society, who have been sold a lie – that the answer to their pain is to ‘identify’ out of being who they are, adopt one of an array of newly-invented identities, and instead be celebrated, as they feel the joy and spread the rainbow dust.

The lie is peddled primarily through social media, aided and abetted by LGBTQ+ ‘educators’ who have convinced supposedly responsible adults that their ‘lived experience’ amounts to expertise.  It is a rare ‘trans’ advocate who is not also one of the ‘community’.

The belief in the existence of ‘trans’ children displays a thoughtless neglect of the complex needs of the most vulnerable in our society.  When any young person turns against, or disowns, their own body – whether through self-injury, disordered eating or a denial of their sexed reality – further exploration of their environment, experiences and relationships is vital.  Anything less is an abdication of adult responsibility.

The Truth About ‘Trans’

I have spent many hundreds of hours, working one-to-one, with children who fervently believe that they are ‘trans’.  Without exception, they have either experienced or witnessed violence in the home, or are suffering from exposure to extreme pornography, either or both of which can warp what it means to be a man or a woman in a young mind.  Many also feel they are unable to conform with ever-narrower and outdated gender norms or are struggling with same-sex attraction.  Being able to opt out of being a boy or a girl therefore becomes highly desirable.

* There was the girl who had always felt a bit ‘different’, who had struggled in   several schools, but still couldn’t seem to make friends.  She found communication difficult and idolised girls who didn’t even notice her. With the arrival of puberty, realisation dawned that she was same sex attracted.  Looking at her developing body, she was filled with a mixture of revulsion and desire for the female form, but she didn’t want to be gay.  The escape route was to ‘identify out’ of being female – that way she could ‘legitimately’ be attracted to girls and could avoid female friendship groups.

*   There was the lonely, sensitive boy, who had sucked too hard at the toxic teat of Andrew Tate, and watched a lot of pornography, to be ‘one of the lads’.  He was, however, deeply affected by what he had seen, and finally – when urged by those lads to have sex with a real woman – had decided that if that is what it means to be a man, it was not for him.  After all, no woman could possibly consent to the violence he was supposed to inflict on her.  He didn’t want to be a woman either, for the same reasons, so he would be ‘non binary’ – the safest option.

*   There was the girl who had been raped by various boys in her friendship group – at least that is what she felt had happened.  She had consented, but only to make sure she wasn’t ostracised.  She was, however, very angry about this.  She believed it was a very ‘masculine’ anger – and maybe if she became a man, developed a deep voice and had a beard, she would finally be heard, and people would be afraid in the way that she herself was.  Identifying as a gay man, she might even be able to inflict on other men what had been done to her.

*   Then there was the boy who had been repeatedly beaten by his father, while his sister was spared.  His mother had vanished overnight, in a moonlit flit, some years before.  When he felt his father’s temper rising, he would go and hide in a wardrobe, still full of his mother’s clothes.  He found the smell and the textures comforting.  One day, huddled in the dark, he put on one of her dresses.  It felt so good.  Suddenly, he had an answer to his problems – he was obviously meant to be a girl.  Social transition followed, which resulted in him being thrown out by his father – for him, it was a win all round.

I could go on – there are others too numerous to mention.

On first meeting, all of these young people were utterly convinced that by some random act of fate, they were ‘born in the wrong body’.  Their stories took some unpicking.  We must have the courage and the curiosity to ask questions, to listen respectfully and with an open mind to their stories, if we are to formulate a path forwards which takes full account of their needs, in the light of their experiences, environment and relationships.

Cass and the Consequences

It is now over a year since Dr Hilary Cass published her landmark review of gender identity services for children and young people, and three years since the interim report came out.  It has since set a standard worldwide, for the care of children and young people, despite ruffling a few colourful feathers in the process.  The Review clearly states, “some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations.  They deserve very much better”.[3] 

According to the Review, a study published in Finland in 2015 found that over 75% of adolescents referred to gender services “needed specialist child and adolescent psychiatric support due to problems other than gender dysphoria”.  As I have discovered, high rates of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are also frequently a factor, leading Dr Cass to conclude that “ACEs and broader adversity within the family unit are important issues to be aware of when assessing young people’s needs”.  The Review recommends an initial comprehensive mental health assessment for all gender-confused children, and states that “most clinical teams would still see psychosocial interventions as the starting point in the care pathway”.

Increasingly, however, there are those who feel this very human approach is ‘problematic’ because it fails to respect a child’s ‘identity’, or to take their story at face value, even though we know that what a child may want might not be in their best interests.  To suggest that gender confusion, may in fact, be the manifestation of deeper and wider emotional distress is somehow sacrilege.

The Thwarting of Therapy

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) is the UK’s largest membership body for counsellors and psychotherapists.  It is reasonable to expect that members would be in the forefront of delivering the wide-ranging exploratory therapy advocated by Dr Cass. It is astonishing, therefore, that a year on, no new guidance or commentary has been issued to counsellors working with gender issues.  In fact, regarding the Cass Review, the BACP asserted that its members “have no role in these medical interventions”.

In contrast, the BACP has wasted no time in issuing a ‘response’ to the Supreme Court ruling, expressing concern for ‘trans, non-binary and gender questioning (TNBGQ) individuals’, confirming “we stand alongside you always”.  No such statement of support has ever been issued to skilful therapists working professionally with young people in line with evidence-based practice, or the women and children whose lives have been upturned by this ideology.

Increasingly therapists are, in fact, being warned against what amounts to standard professional curiosity.  This is perhaps another example of what Dr Cass calls ‘exceptionalism’. Traditional exploratory therapy is slowly but surely being equated with ‘conversion therapy’, despite the Review finding that this attitude is harmful, as it “may prevent young people getting the emotional support they deserve”.  Rather than providing a neutral space, it is also now common for therapists publicly to declare their sexuality or gender, and celebrate ‘allyship’.

The BACP – along with thirty or so other health, therapy and activist bodies, including the NHS – remains a signatory to the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy. This effectively only permits an exploratory approach to gender issues when a person is uncertain of their feelings.  Most unusually, the document makes no distinction between working with children and adults, and most gender-confused teenagers are convinced they are ‘trans’ – until suddenly they are not any more. 

The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) made a principled withdrawal from the Memorandum last year, because of concerns over child safeguarding. As a result, activists called for a vote of no confidence in the Board.  This failed, but nonetheless the Chair resigned under huge pressure amid the turmoil.

A blog has been published on the BACP’s website for over a year now, in which an anonymous school counsellor, who is “proud to be a LGBTQ-affirmative therapist for children and young people” says,  “I believe affirming young people to be themselves is not only ethical, but also potentially life-saving” and asks, without a hint of irony, “what if school leaders felt proud of their school community each time a young person felt able to introduce themselves with authenticity and autonomy?”. 

Rather alarmingly, this person feels that “the fact that schools have already asked staff to read the [government] guidance has the potential to cause a lot of damage”.[4] In other words, they don’t want to be confused with facts, their minds are already made up.  Needless to say, the BACP declined to publish a blog advocating a more cautious and compassionate approach.

The distortion of words, language and sentiment is significant. To the true believer, being ‘your authentic self’ is actually synonymous with trying to be something you can never be, as the Supreme Court has confirmed. Far removed from reality, we are in fact dealing with a variation of Shakespeare’s “false creation, proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain”.  Gender ideology is indeed a “fatal vision”, but unlike Macbeth’s dagger, is sensible only to feeling not to sight.[5]

 Government (In)action

The need to adopt a cautious and careful approach was also emphasised in draft government guidance for schools on gender-questioning children, issued in December 2023, after inexplicably lengthy delays.  Over a year later, however, it remains in draft form and the provisions are not statutory.

The first of five general principles stresses that the primary duty of all schools and colleges is to “promote and safeguard the welfare of all children”.[6]  This presumably can never include telling children untruths about their sexed bodies, confusing fantasy with fact or compelling other pupils to lie in the face of the evidence of their own eyes. There have, however, been several cases of children being sanctioned for ‘misgendering’ another pupil or questioning the story they are being told about another child’s over-the-holidays ‘social transition’.

There are still teachers who – rather than address the alarm bells rung loudly and clearly by the young people in their care – use the opportunity to push this highly contested and widely discredited ideology. Others prefer to go along with the zeitgeist for a quiet life – for which few can blame them, given the aggressive cancelling power of trans activists.  In doing so, however, they are knowingly suspending their disbelief and eschewing any remaining vestige of common sense or humanity.

Yes – humanity.  Much of the embrace of gender ideology has happened under the ‘be kind’ banner.  But how kind is it to deceive children about the reality of their own bodies, reinforce outdated sexual stereotypes in doing so, and perhaps encourage a young person down a path to life-long medical dependence, extensive health issues, sexual dysfunction and infertility?  Why can we not speak the truth, as J K Rowling did in one of her earliest forays into this debate in 2019, when she said (and I paraphrase) that people should be free to dress as they like, call themselves what they like, and live their “best life in peace and security”, but sex remains an unchangeable reality?

Nothing to See in School

A quick glance through the policies of a number of school trusts makes clear the continued belief among educators in the existence of the ‘trans child’, whose needs must be addressed or even affirmed as a matter of ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ – not treated as indicative of a safeguarding issue.

The website of Bath & Wells Multi Academy Trust, based in Somerset, states “the Trust Transgender Children Policy is under review, in line with new guidelines”, exactly as it did a year ago.  My guess is that the powers-that-be don’t like the new guidelines, hence the delay in producing a policy. However, their ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy’, declares that “children who have confirmed that they have commenced the process of transitioning, and therefore fall under the protected characteristic of gender-reassignment will be provided with the appropriate pastoral care and support”.[7]

Let us think about that.  First, government guidelines explain that they “have not used the term transgender to describe children”, and there are good reasons for not labelling a child in that way during their formative years. Secondly, children cannot legally or medically ‘transition’, or undergo ‘gender-reassignment’, in the UK. We know that social transition is “not a neutral act”, and government guidance states that “schools should not proactively initiate action towards a child’s social transition”.  After all, “children’s legal sex is always the same as their biological sex”.[8]  As the Cass Review also found, “safeguarding issues can be overshadowed or confused when there is a focus on gender or in situations where there are high levels of gender-related distress”.[9] 

According to the Scottish Union for Education (SUE), since their founding conference in November 2022 (which had to be relocated because of transactivist objections), they “have received many reports about teachers and activists telling pupils that it is possible to change sex”.[10]  The SUE states that “the failure to question transgender ideology in our schools has already had serious consequences for Scottish society; for our children and our public life”.  SUE suggests that “all schools take the [Supreme] Court’s ruling as an opportunity to carry out a spring clean and remove from the curriculum all the material that promotes transgender ideology or is produced by state-funded quangos”.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham last year produced a deeply compassionate and thoughtful document, entitled Precious in My Sight [11], to equip pastoral staff to support gender-questioning children.  The paper notes that “careful discernment and delicate, compassionate pastoral accompaniment in the area of gender must always go hand in hand with a holistic view of the human person”. Here, walking “towards the fullness of life” entails ensuring that young people are “helped to accept their own body as it was created”.  Through listening and understanding, the document sets out how to help young people “embrace a wider horizon”.  That must be a great deal healthier, than celebrating and affirming a fantasy which has serious, life-long health implications.

The Power of Puberty

Adolescence sees the second great growth spurt – mentally, physically and emotionally – after infancy.  It is a vital period for the maturation of our adult selves.  The Cass Review found that “no changes in gender dysphoria or body satisfaction were found” in those prescribed puberty blockers. Conversely, taking puberty blockers is known to carry several serious and long-term health risks, including to cognitive function and bone density.

There has, however, been huge and irrational pushback by activists, against the government’s decision to ban the prescribing of puberty blockers to children.  Such is the pressure that a clinical trial of the use of puberty blockers to address gender dysphoria in children is due to start shortly, funded by the NHS, in spite of the known negatives.  It is hard to think of any other circumstances in which this kind experimentation on the healthy bodies of children would be permitted for any reason.

LGB without the T

Many parallels have been drawn between ‘trans rights’ activism and earlier movements to emancipate women or grant equal rights in law to homosexuals.  This is a false comparison.  Women and gay people are material subsets of the population, whose sexed bodies and sexual preferences are agreed and easily identifiable. Belief in a ‘gendered soul’ is neither, and the vast majority of human beings do not have a ‘gender identity’, for which there is still no legal definition.  As the Supreme Court ruling also stated, regardless of ‘identification’, “the individual’s biological sex may continue to be readily perceivable”. Women and gay people, without discrimination can thrive, being authentically themselves, without the perpetuation of falsehoods, linguistic gymnastics or medical intervention.

Of course, many gender ideologues know this, which is why it was necessary  to hitch their cart to the gay rights movement, even as many lesbians and gay people have sought to distance themselves from it.  LGB will still flourish without the T+, but without the LGB, the T+ (especially the ‘+’, which quickly strays from fantasy to fetish) know that they would have no traction.  After all, if sex isn’t real, there can be no homosexuality – as lesbians especially have discovered, to their detriment – or indeed heterosexuality.  As the Supreme Court judgement noted drily, “people are not sexually oriented towards those in possession of a certificate”.[12]

Conclusion

Nobody wishes to deny the right of ‘trans’ adults to live in dignity, quietly and peacefully as they choose. ‘Gender reassignment’ is already a protected characteristic.  However, ‘trans' ideologues appear to have no more interest in the rule of law, than they do in the realm of reality. Violent events last weekend, following the Supreme Court judgement, clearly demonstrated this.  Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins summed up the situation perfectly, explaining on X that “aggressively dominant male mammals typically urinate to scent-mark their territory”.[13]

This extreme ideology, which moved beyond the realm of human rights sometime ago, gives no consideration at all to the needs of the confused, hurting and indoctrinated young people, or the women whose hard-won rights have been trampled underfoot. It has no place in any of our public institutions or in the lives of our children.  Well-intentioned people have been taken hostage by a dangerous and entitled group (murderous, if some of the placards at the recent demonstration are taken at face value), who will not surrender their right to satisfy themselves, irrespective of the cost. Our children are the collateral damage.

We all need to stand up and be counted in our opposition to this.  The fight for the protection of children and young people from life-long damage, arising from this pernicious ideology is far from over, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling.  To be continued…

* Case studies cited are composites, drawn from real encounters.

[1] Department for Education, Gender Questioning Children: Non-statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England (draft for consultation), December 2023.

[2] Brook, https://www.brook.org.uk/your-life/sexuality-a-few-definitions/ (accessed 23 April 2025).

[3] Cass, H, The Cass Review: Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, April 2024.

[4] BACP, https://www.bacp.co.uk/news/news-from-bacp/blogs/2024/blogs-and-vlogs-2024/07-march-schools-guidance-on-gender-questioning-children/ (accessed 23 April 2025).

[5] Shakespeare, W, Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 1.

[6] Department for Education, Gender Questioning Children: Non-statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England (draft for consultation), December 2023.

[7] Bath & Wells Multi Academy Trust, Equality Diversity and Inclusion Policy, https://www.bwmat.org/Policies/(accessed 24 April 2025).

[8] Department for Education, Gender Questioning Children: Non-statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England (draft for consultation), December 2023.

[9] Cass, H, The Cass Review: Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, April 2024.

[10] Scottish Union for Education, Newsletter No 114, 24 April 2025.

[11] Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham, Precious in My Sight – Accompanying Students Who Question Their Gender, May 2024.

[12] The Supreme Court, Judgement - For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf, 16 April 2025.

[13] Dawkins, R, X, 21 April 2025.