The media needs to stop weaponising children in their crusade against trans people You have probably seen, at some point this year, a story involving, or about, trans people in the UK press. […]

You have probably seen, at some point this year, a story involving, or about, trans people in the UK press. Perhaps it was Munroe Bergdorf, or Sophie Cook, or Fox and Owl. Maybe it was the announcement that the government plans to revolutionise the Gender Recognition Act, making it easier to officially be recognised as your correct gender.

Maybe it was one of the half dozen stories about gender in schools: they have been so pervasive it is often hard to untangle which case of which unnamed trans child is being discussed. Perhaps it was about the teacher who was disciplined for misgendering a child in his class, or the parents who removed their child from a school because a child in their son’s class wore a dress.

Maybe you stumbled upon one of the op-eds from people like Peter Hitchens, who in his Daily Mail column last month said “the idea that people are whatever sex they think they are is a terrifying weapon in the hands of modern Thought Police”. This is far from the only article that says a variation on this same line.

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Trans people as a phantom threat

In 2017 there has been an unusual focus on the issue of young children and gender. Often it’s the same line: “I’m supportive of trans rights, just not when it comes to children.” Often it’s the same argument: children cannot know, indecision has lasting mental damage, and we’re offering irreversible medical support too early. All of these, trans activists will point out, are factually incorrect.

Sometimes these articles miss the point entirely – conflating drag queens with trans people on the cover of The Sun, for example – and sometimes it has just been outright hysteria, often as a kind of veiled discrediting of the Gender Reform Act, and the trans community, when they are still vulnerable and in need of help.

It’s the people with the loudest voices shouting about the trans community,” said Susie Green, the CEO of trans youth charity Mermaids. “They have the platforms that we don’t have.”

Discussion of gender, these papers and writers propose, is going to make your child trans (it is always a sort of coersion, and it is always a negative thing): The Daily Telegraph’s splash on Monday, in the eyes of the trans community and its allies, is continuing this recent tradition by choosing to focus on a single question in a single NHS survey for year sixes by the Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, and by giving the first voice of the story to Conservative MP Tim Loughton, who calls the survey “unsettling.”

Survey questions

“Forcing children to question whether they are the right gender so early on can be deeply destabilising,” he adds.

“Funny how British papers never put suicide stats for trans kids on their covers,” trans campaigner Paris Lees said on Twitter afterwards. “At least they correctly report that surgery isn’t offered to under 18s. Just so glad that people outside the trans community can see this constant fearmongering for what it is.”

The survey question, as listed by The Telegraph in it’s second paragraph, reads as thus:

“Do you feel the same inside as the gender you were born with? (feeling male or female).” They can tick a box then of what their ‘true gender’ is: boy, girl, or other.

One has to wonder where anyone is being ‘forced’ to do anything. “In reality you are either Trans or not. It’s a largely self-defined diversity and only the person concerned knows who they

truly are,” said trans activist Jenny-Anne Bishop OBE.

“No one is trying to make anyone else trans. We are simply raising awareness of our existence.” Activist and graphic designer Lee-Anne Lawrance

“No one is trying to make anyone else trans,” said activist and graphic designer Lee-Anne Lawrance. “We are simply raising awareness of our existence.”

Often the stories papers pick up as examples of children being covertly brainwashed into becoming trans – which is not a thing, by the way – are really not stories at all. Things like the Church of England recommending that gender not come into children’s play time are so fundamentally trivial that it is hard to even begin to think of the facts to counter the hysteria that develops on the other end.

The deluge of misinformation and myths means it is hard to debunk the language of outlets trying to suggest trans people are the insidious threats of childhood today: an argument that was used against homosexual men in the 20th century long after the Sexual Offences Act.

Section 28.5

From the start of this year, said trans issues campaigner Ashleigh Talbot, coverage of trans issues has been “universally horrific.” She, and other experts in the field spoken to on background, compared the current controversy to that surrounding Section 28, which prevented local councils from ‘promoting homosexuality’ in schools.

“It’s interesting to note that much of the language and nudge-wink implication used in recent coverage is very very similar to the language used to express homophobia by these same publications, many years ago,” added Talbot.

“The refrain ‘think of the children!’ to imply that trans people are in some way dangerous or threatening to young people entirely ignores the ongoing struggles of trans youngsters.”

Talbot said if she had read a question on a form at her GP when she was younger, she would have been “overjoyed”. Others have said that the question may have been better with a different wording, but that the intention was entirely noble.

Earlier this year, Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis pleased approximately nobody by asking the question “should primary school age children be allowed to decide if they’re ready for gender reassignment surgery?” There is not a trans medical expert in the world that would advise gender reassignment for anyone that young: surgery is not available until the patient is 18, and even then the waiting list will mean it takes longer.

“I’ve been waiting for my own surgery for over five years now, they don’t just hand these things out like Smarties.” Trans issues campaigner Ashleigh Talbot

“I’ve been waiting for my own surgery for over five years now, they don’t just hand these things out like Smarties,” adds Talbot. Even hormone blockers would not be available for primary school children.

Worse still? The tweet was a prologue to a BBC Newsnight documentary Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? in which a controversial doctor, according to Trans Media Watch’s condemnatory statement, made the case that some trans people may just be confused people with autism.

Gender, not transgender, discussion

Maitlis’ tweet, and the articles that have filled this year, are united by a common thread: a lack of information, that turns one conversation into another one entirely, and fills it with incorrect information. Many of the articles appearing in the press are not even stories about being trans at all.

“The campaign has often conflated Gender Identity and Sexual orientation and is largely based on insecure evidence, research or just plain ignorance of the subject,” said Jenny-Anne Bishop.

“In 2017 there seems in the main to have been a concerted campaign to denigrate all trans and gender diverse people in order to defeat the government’s moves to reform the gender recognition act.”

And due to the deluge of manufactured scandals, what could be a reasoned debate between the trans community and those who fail to understand them is made devoid of logic because children are the pawns. Basic knowledge- such as not using a trans person’s ‘dead name’ from their former identity, what pronouns to use, or basic medical information- can’t be passed on because the community has to be defensive rather than informative.

The slew of opinion pieces from cisgender writers also does not help, adds Talbot. “This is not journalism, this is Having An Uninformed Opinion,” she said. “I have plenty of opinions about things but I don’t have free reign to write about them in national newspapers (and then claim I’m being silenced when people point out how offensive it is).” Someone like Lily Madigan- a 19-year-old who has become a women’s officer in her constituency- should not really be a story. But she makes excellent carrion for The Times, who published five different pieces targeting her but declined to publish a letter defending her from the Jo Cox Women in Leadership scheme.

Moving forward

The myths in these pieces are legion. Some of it, such as the Newsnight documentary or the idea 90 per cent of children expressing gender diversity revert to the gender assigned at birth, is drawn from dubious, often debunked, research. Besides, as Mrs Bishop added, children are not too young to understand their own gender identity. “Many like me know from 3 or 4 years old that their gender identity does not match the sex assigned to them at birth.”

Others, like the easy access to surgery for children, are just incorrect, born from misinformation and ignorance. But if the articles have no plans to change, it may be time for us to be more critical of the people choosing to write about the issue. If an article about trans rights is not being written by a trans person, said Lee-Anne Lawrance, you should be asking why that is.

“Search the person who has written the piece,” they advised. “What angle have they previously been coming from? What articles are there about them?”

Mermaids CEO Susie Green hopes people will come to understand that asking a child about gender identity is not going to turn them trans, and that nobody would do this for attention. “I just think of the unbearable pain I see on our youth forum on a day to day basis and I think, ‘these people have no idea at all what these young people are going through’.”

New data, Green says, proves that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness but has a biological underpinning. Studies are also showing that a supportive, inclusive environment is incredibly important for young people who were misassigned a gender at birth: Stonewall data found that 45 per cent of trans youths have attempted suicide, and 84 per cent have self-harmed. The parents of trans kids Mermaids works with are seeing the press hysteria and think they are bad parents; trans kids are seeing it and thinking they don’t have a right to exist.

“Our young people are dying. Mermaids have had four different funeral collections for young people who have killed themselves in the last six months,” Green said.

“This is not just something you read in the paper. This is affecting people’s lives.”