Why are NHS doctors helping my 16-year-old become a boy against my wishes? A mother tells of her distress and utter helplessness at her beloved daughter's decision to change sex



'Megan has never even had a sexual relationship. She is not mature enough to grasp the implications of such a decision. Even so, the NHS is excluding us, her parents, from it'

My younger child starts back at school in her A-level year this autumn. Such rites of passage are customarily marked by fresh responsibilities, excitement and burgeoning independence.

But the changes to my child’s life will be at once both more profound and infinitely more concerning.

For the 16-year-old daughter I once knew as Megan has decreed she now wishes to be known as my son Morgan.

In place of the crisp blouses and skirts I had anticipated choosing with her for this transition to the sixth form, along with the girlie paraphernalia of make-up, handbags and shoes, there will be a new wardrobe of suits, brogues and ties.

It is hard to encompass or even imagine the scope of the emotions I’ll feel as I watch my little girl — my beloved only daughter — transformed into a teenage boy.

There will be shock, I know, at the physical alteration. Megan’s beautiful hair will be usurped by a short, sharp crop.

I shall have to learn to abandon the name I gave her in favour of the new one she has chosen. And there is grief.



The feminine pleasures we shared — the historical dramas we enjoyed watching together — will, I assume, be relegated to memories.



But more disquieting and fundamental are my fears that Megan, acting on no more than a transient teenage whim, is being helped to change her sexual identity during the most formative and vulnerable years of her adolescent life.

At a time when she needed stability, support and constancy, she is facing a wholesale, radical — possibly irrevocable — change in her identity.

This escalating nightmare began when Megan was referred to an NHS counsellor last summer for nothing more than help in dealing with her teenage mood swings and her desire to ‘fit in’.

Against my will and with alarming rapidity, my daughter was referred to the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust clinic in North London, the UK’s only specialist centre for youngsters diagnosed with gender dysphoria.



There, after meeting psychiatrists, they — and Megan — announced with certainty that my daughter, who had until then evinced no concerns about her sexual identity to me, has gender dysphoria.

From this point, it seems, the die was cast.

A plan was set for Megan — a child who had loved playing with dolls and cheerfully adopted every girlie fad and trend — would henceforth be living as a boy.

I protested vehemently. So, too, did Megan’s father, my former husband, Mark.

But even though, aside from being a mum, I am a professional woman and not prone to rashness or irrationality, it felt as if my view counted for nothing.



Megan was deemed old enough to make this radical decision without our input.

Over the coming months she will be given blocker medication to stop the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone.



Her menstrual cycle will cease, she will bind her breasts to flatten her chest and will change her title from Miss to Mr.

We see this as utterly absurd: though Megan is deemed too young to have a tattoo or vote, she is apparently old enough to make this momentous and life-changing decision.

'The NHS has announced it will give drugs that prepare children for sex-swap surgery at the age of nine, if this is when they hit puberty'

She has been told to dress and live as a boy for two years — called RLE, or Real-Life Experience — after which she will be given the male hormone testosterone, which will mean she will grow a beard, her incipient curves will be eradicated and she will acquire the body and voice of a man.

This process is, at that stage, irreversible. So during Megan’s teens — at a time when views and opinions change on a daily basis; when emotions are in a constant state of flux; when bodies are barely developed — she will be given the licence to make an irrevocable decision.

Yet Megan has never even had a sexual relationship. She is not mature enough to grasp the implications of such a decision. Even so, the NHS is excluding us, her parents, from it.

Megan’s case, moreover, is not isolated. The NHS has announced it will give drugs that prepare children for sex-swap surgery at the age of nine, if this is when they hit puberty.

When I think about the impact it will have on Megan, I feel power-less, angry and terribly sad.

The other day I leafed through a family photo album. There was my daughter, her hair in neat pigtails, her big brown eyes smiling at the camera, posing in a pretty dress.

There she was, too, as a laughing teenager, showing off a new blouse and silver necklace, her hair lustrous and long. This is the Megan I know and love.

I looked at the images and cried. For the fact is, in my eyes, Megan has never once expressed the slightest desire to be a boy. Indeed, she seemed to relish being a girl.

She grew up in our affluent middle-class family. My former husband works in finance and we raised our 20-year-old son and Megan in a three-storey, five-bedroom townhouse.

Mark and I split up when Megan was very young, but we shared our parenting amicably and she enjoyed an idyllic upbringing filled with expensive holidays, pony rides and private schooling.

Growing up, Megan and I enjoyed a wonderful mother-daughter bond. When she started at the local girls’ secondary school, she adored the new uniform with its smart skirt and stylish blazer.

Like most girls, she wanted to look like everyone else. She liked pretty blouses and boot-cut trousers; she always wanted to look feminine. Megan also excelled on the hockey pitch and loved playing for the school.

When she was 13, we moved to the Continent with my job. A year later we returned to Britain and she joined the local co-ed comprehensive.

Megan was bullied. She coped by trying to be ‘different’. She cut her hair short and announced that she was a lesbian — though she’d never had a relationship with another girl.

'Though Megan is deemed too young to have a tattoo or vote, she is apparently old enough to make this momentous and life-changing decision'



I think she craved admiration. But instead she alienated herself. She gained weight and became unhappy, angry and prone to violent mood swings. Yet I believe this was nothing more than painful teenage angst.

Aged 14, her father banned her from going to a party and she erupted in a furious rage.

I thought her response an out-of-character explosion from a hormone-charged child and it prompted me to ask for Megan to be referred to our local teenage counselling service.

I wanted her to be given coping mechanisms to help her deal with her anger and mood swings.

After Megan had been to around four counselling sessions, my former husband and I were called in for an update with a psychiatrist.



I was expecting nothing more than a progress report, but the psychiatrist said calmly: ‘Megan may have gender dysphoria and so we’re referring her to the Tavistock Clinic.’

There was a short, tense silence, then I burst into tears of shock. Mark was stunned. Megan looked slightly triumphant.

My shock turned to anger. I’d had no prior warning of this revelation and I questioned why Megan, who had shown me no signs of gender confusion and who I thought merely needed help maintaining friendships and controlling her moods, was suddenly a candidate for a potential sex change.

None of my questions were answered. There were no checks into Megan’s background. I urged her to wait until her hormones had settled before she made such a momentous decision.

But Megan retorted coolly that she’d wanted to be a boy at the age of four, but had not told me because she wanted to spare my feelings. It sounded as if she was reading from a script. Nothing rang true.

Megan’s first meeting at the Tavistock Clinic in St John’s Wood, London, came soon after. My former husband and I attended with her.

Two female psychologists listened, earnestly, to my concerns that the proposed treatment would make her isolation and loneliness worse.

I gave my view that Megan’s mood swings were affected by hormones; I urged them to delay more fundamental decisions. If I believed she really wanted to become a man, I would find it hard, but I would support her and love her. However, I feel she should make that decision as an adult, not as a 16-year-old.

The psychologists seemed to listen and I felt reassured. But a month later Megan talked in private to the doctors.

Afterwards, she seemed even more determined to embark on a sex change.

I tried desperately to voice my concerns, but every time I did, the medical staff seemed to assume I had a prejudice against people who were transgender.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. I have no doubt that gender dysphoria causes a great deal of anguish to many people and know that it is vital that they receive the treatment they need.

However, I simply don’t feel my daughter can yet know if she suffers from this condition. Nevertheless, we were advised Megan should live as a male for two years, while the hormone-blocking medication will start her transformation.

And she will go into her A-level year at school as Morgan.

I know it will be hard for my daughter to back down now. She will not want to lose face and I’m fearful she will continue down this route for that reason alone.



So, her life will change in so many ways. Megan felt marginalised at 14 because she was overweight and thought she wasn’t pretty or trendy enough.

If she failed to cope with that pressure, how is she going to cope with having a new identity?

And my biggest fear is that Megan, an unhappy adolescent, will become a marginalised adult, who’ll ask: ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’

I am aghast, but utterly powerless to help. Megan, my lovely daughter, who longed to have children of her own, who even feared climbing trees for fear of scraping her knees, is determined to make this fundamental change.

Her periods will stop as a result of the blockers and her future fertility may be affected if she changes her mind.

Our whole family has been torn apart by this. I am receiving counselling for stress and my elderly parents, who are in their 80s, cannot believe a teenager has been ‘indulged’ in such a dangerous manner. They are devastated to be losing the granddaughter they adore.

The other day, Megan announced to her grandmother: ‘You’ll have to call me your grandson in September.’ She answered back: ‘You’ll always be my granddaughter.’

I want my daughter to find the happiness and popularity I believe she craves — not to take a decision that may wreck her life before she’s old enough to know what she’s doing.

Some details have been changed to protect Megan’s identity.

It's hard, but this child needs support

By JANE FAE, transgender writer and campaigner

'Puberty blockers are just that: drugs that block puberty. They don't "change your sex". That can come later, if it¿s what you really want'

Sadly, I can’t speak as a teen. All that is long in my past.



But I am a parent and I have suffered the pain of gender transition, albeit a lot later in life.



I was in my 50s, with a partner and teenage children, when I began hormone therapy in 2010.



That was trauma enough. I grew up in an age when such subjects weren’t talked about, except in hushed tones or as a music hall joke.



I spent most of my years not quite fitting anywhere — but not understanding why.



When I finally understood, far too late, that discovery brought chaos to all around: to my partner, children and family.



And that’s why I have every sympathy with Morgan and support his decision.



Because I know, as do many transgender people, that every moment in a body you despise can be an agony — times a hundred if you are a teen and going through puberty.



Because each and every day brings change upon change, pushing you ever closer to a life and a shape that is not yours.



For some, that agony is too much. They respond with anger, either directed out at society or directed in at themselves. They self-harm. They commit suicide.



The alternative? A drug that gives them a moment to pause, to reflect.



If they are transgender, then it saves them an intolerable puberty and years of major surgery. Not to mention significant savings for the NHS. And if they are not transgender, they can change their mind.



That’s the thing. Puberty blockers are just that: drugs that block puberty. They don’t ‘change your sex’. That can come later, if it’s what you really want.



The drugs do give you time to think, to reconsider.



As for side-effects? If I have to weigh up the risk of suicide against a possible marginal side-effect, I know what I’d choose every time. As one mum to a trans-child once said: ‘Better a live daughter than a dead son.’



But is Morgan too young to choose?



The law says a person of 16 may consent to major medical decisions, including abortion, with or without parental consent. And someone of 14, of 16, is no longer just a child.



That’s a hard one for any parent, of course. You may disagree with their choices, may wish desperately that they would make better ones — or, at least, ones that feel better to you.



But, once made, you need to support them to the hilt.



You won’t always get it right. Your children certainly won’t.



But if they are old enough to understand the consequences of their actions — and I have heard nothing to suggest that Morgan is not — then you mustn’t stand in their way.



The task, as parents, is to advise, to support and, with your heart in your mouth, to step back and let them fly.

