Despite the recent outcry over the Science Museum’s “What Sex Is My Brain?” exhibit, the BBC continues to relentlessly promote brain sex theory by another name, the latest example being “I’m a non-binary 10-year-old” on Radio 4 last week.

This show seriously presented the idea that a ‘girl’ brain is recognisable by ownership of a Barbie doll and a ‘bright pink bedroom’ and a ‘boy’ brain by the preference for ‘pirates, Iron Man, Wolverine and Peter Pan.’ Not only that, but that it is from observation of these preferences that we can divine whether a child is actually, in reality, a boy or a girl. A child who has a range of interests, including some from the gender ‘pink’ box and some from the gender ‘blue’ box, must therefore, we are told, be ‘non-binary’ which means that they are (actually, in reality) neither a boy or a girl.

There are some people who really do believe this and the BBC here presents their confused conflation of gender and sex and their belief in regressive outdated stereotypes as truth, without question or any critical examination. Here is the mother:

“We took it very seriously. Leo wanted to be “out.” Leo is definitely not a girl, Leo is more boy than girl but he’s not like a lot of transgender people, a male mind who happened to be born in a female body, he’s a non-binary mind who happened to be born in a female body.”

The programme presents this reaction from a parent as not only normal, but the right way to respond to a 10 year-old girl who says “I want to be a boy”:

ask the girl what boy’s name she would like

ask her whether she would be a gay man or a straight man

ask the child every morning “are you a girl or a boy today?”

go and do some online research from ‘hundreds” of transgender sites

share this ‘research’ with the daughter until she believes that she is literally neither a girl or a boy

introduce the idea of puberty blockers and hormones

Since when did children’s toy choices literally change a child into the opposite sex, whose body then needs to be medically altered to reflect that? And when did it become seen as good parenting to teach a child an ideology which will lead to that medicalisation, to the extent that we celebrate those parents on national radio?

The BBC is promoting the idea that the categories ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ are actually defined by stereotypes of behaviour and interests and not by male and female biology, and that those children who don’t fit the stereotypes need to be be set on a path towards sterilisation and lifelong medication.

This particular 10 year-old girl now believes this:

“No, I’m not a boy or a girl. I’m non-binary, so I’m in the middle. There isn’t a body of the two genders. I just wish there was some way in the middle. But I don’t think there is.”

There is no such thing as a ‘body of the two genders’ because gender is a social idea of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ and, as we all have a mixture of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ traits, everyone is non-binary. What this child really means is a body of two sexes, which does exist but only if you have a rare genetic disorder which makes you biologically intersex. Nobody has taught this young girl the difference between gender and sex, that she is female and that she can have any preferences she wants; that her interests do not make her male. The BBC sees fit to celebrate the resulting confusion of an extremely bright and articulate young girl.

The most upsetting and inevitable conclusion drawn by a girl who is taught that her interests make her body, is that that body will need to be changed. She is astute in her observation that it is her breasts which will cause the biggest problem later, as they are the most visible indication that she is female. The typical path for girls, of wearing damaging breast-binders followed by a double mastectomy, is laid out for her.

Why is the BBC promoting this?

What chance is there that this young girl will ‘change her mind’ when she has been so thoroughly indoctrinated into gender identity ideology from all the trusted adults in her life, including the teachers at her school? At what point did schools in the UK become gender faith schools, unable to resist this doctrine and teach children facts? And why are we allowing schools to reinforce a rigid orthodoxy based on gender stereotypes; weren’t we supposed to be challenging those?

The answer comes from the mother:

“The school need to understand that they have an obligation and that Leo has rights as a trans plus person.”

‘Gender reassignment’ is a protected category which also applies to children, so it cannot be challenged. ‘Sex’ is also a protected category, but we are doing nothing to protect biologically female children from this orthodoxy which is not only based on the gender stereotypes which have always disproportionately harmed girls, but creates a whole new way to damage them.

The BBC is complicit in encouraging parents to pathologise the normal behaviour of any child who deviates from prescriptive gender stereotypes, and as a public service broadcaster should not be presenting this damaging set of beliefs about children as fact. To uncritically present a programme about how a young girl is convinced by adults to believe that her body is ‘wrong’ and will need medical intervention to correct it is irresponsible beyond belief.

There’s another way of responding to a 10 year-old girl who tells you she thinks she might be a boy. It’s to simply say “No. You’re female, you’re a girl. You can have any interests you like, and don’t let anyone ever tell you that liking any of those things makes you a boy.”

You can complain to the BBC here.

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