When I was growing up as a girl in the Seventies, I wanted to be a boy, writes Julie Bindel

When I was growing up as a girl in the Seventies, I wanted to be a boy. It wasn’t simply that I knew I was sexually attracted to women – much more importantly, I looked around and saw boys had more power, more freedom, more fun. Of course I wanted to be a boy.

If I were a teenager today, well-meaning liberal teachers and social workers would probably tell me that I was trapped in the wrong body. They might refer me to a psychiatrist who would prescribe fistfuls of hormones and other drugs. And terrifyingly, I might easily be recommended for gender re-assignment surgery… just because I didn’t like the pink straitjacket imposed on girls.

This weekend two news stories deeply disturbed me, and made me feel grateful to have grown up in an era before boys and girls who don’t fit the sexist stereotypes of behaviour were assumed to be transgender, rather than merely rejecting the ‘gender rules’.

One was the case of a 14-year-old girl who wants to be known by a boy’s name, as a step towards changing sex. The girl’s parents believe their daughter is too young to make this decision and parental responsibility should take precedence until the child is 16 or 18.

The local authority, however, disagrees and the family’s solicitor fears the teenager will be taken into care unless the parents comply with the demands of social workers, who already refer to this vulnerable child as a boy.

Social workers want the teenager to be assessed at a gender clinic, for drug therapies prior to a sex change.

I do not agree with the couple on their view of gender – they apparently cannot accept someone can have a different emotional and psychological identity from their biological sex – but I do know of other, secularist parents going through similar turmoil. Parents who feel conflicted about their young child being referred to gender clinics.

It worries me deeply to think of a council intervening in such a sensitive case, setting up sides and threatening to dismantle a family.

The second case is worrying in a different way. A boy of seven brought up as a girl by his mother, who had been convinced he was a ‘girl trapped in a male body’. Despite concerns of the school and the boy’s desperate father, social workers did nothing.

So sensitive a political issue has gender identity become that authorities were afraid to intervene to help this unfortunate boy. Last week, a court stepped in and the judge ordered that he goes to live with his father.

These two contrasting stories have a common theme – the liberal establishment apparently in thrall to transgender evangelists. The most obvious difference is the children’s ages. A boy aged seven is not sexually mature. His masculinity, according to the judge, is evident in his urge to climb trees and play soldiers. I don’t believe this makes him male, any more than wearing nail varnish and singing along to Disney musical Frozen would make him female. But it’s clear he doesn’t want to be forced into dresses and called by a girl’s name, no matter how much his mother wishes it.

The 14-year-old, on the other hand, may be beginning to experience sexual feelings, and has formed a close relationship with a 13-year-old girl. The social workers insist on calling this a heterosexual relationship, because they identify the older child as transsexual.

If I were a teenager today, well-meaning liberal teachers and social workers would probably tell me that I was trapped in the wrong body (File photo)

This appals me. What is on offer is not support for a young lesbian, but the promise of a medical conversion. Any idea this is liberal, progressive behaviour is completely wrong. It pushes us back to the dark ages, to a time when lesbianism wasn’t even recognised.

In Iran, sex-change surgery is routinely carried out on those whose behaviour does not conform to their biological sex. Girls who want to play with trucks and boys who like pushing a doll in a pram are seen as genetic aberrations who must be physically corrected.

That is using the surgeon’s knife to operate on society’s problems. It’s a dreadful situation and I am horrified to see it becoming increasingly normalised here.

Let me be plain. Those who feel gender dysphoria – experiencing distress over what they perceive as a mismatch between gender identity and sex – deserve and require support. It can be a huge, painful struggle. I accept these feelings may occur before adulthood, causing confusion and unhappiness.

But it must also be said that they can be transitory, which is why every effort must be made to ensure those who want to change their sex fully understand the implications of the enormous decision they are taking.

And the key point is that I do not believe children are capable of appreciating that enormity, which is why I feel so uncomfortable about them visiting transgender clinics.

Any adult convinced they want a sex change deserves our complete support. If they have fully understood what is involved, it is nobody’s business other than their own.

Equally, any adult who wants to live as the opposite sex without having surgery or other medical treatment should be completely respected, and protected. It’s nobody’s business but mine whether I wear a dress or trousers, and that must apply to everyone.

A good friend of mine knows this better than anybody – in the 1980s, as a deeply troubled gay man in his 20s, he was referred to a psychiatrist named Russell Reid.

They might refer me to a psychiatrist who would prescribe fistfuls of hormones and other drugs (File photo)

After a consultation lasting just 20 minutes, my friend was diagnosed as a transsexual. He had a sex change, an operation now hugely regretted, and today lives rather unhappily as a woman. Had my friend been able to live as an out gay man, rather than be punished for behaviour that didn’t conform to gender, he would not have wanted to go down this route.

‘That man would have diagnosed a German Shepherd dog as transsexual, if he was being paid,’ she now says bitterly.

Reid was accused of serious professional misconduct in 2006 and investigated by the General Medical Council. He was found guilty and is now retired. My friend believes she would have been better off staying as a man.

If adults can be talked into such terrible errors, what chance do children have of resisting liberal pressures to conform to the new gender stereotypes?

I thought we established years ago that boys don’t have to be macho and play with plastic swords. Girls are not obliged to dream of white wedding dresses with layers of satin meringue. It was one of the real, tangible victories of feminism: every child free to grow up as a human being, without pink or blue labels on everything they touched and did.

Surely we all know being a rough-and-tumble boy or a let’s-play-dollies girl is not influenced by biology. It’s nothing to do with hard-wiring in our brains. You might as well pretend males are designed by their DNA to earn more money than their women colleagues – it’s a spurious nonsense.

When I was young, lesbians were still regarded as such an aberration that young women were sent to the psychiatrist to be ‘repaired’. We saw this for exactly what it was: a punishment for being different. It was another way that society bullied us.

Now, the same cruel treatment is not called punishment. It is dressed up by middle-class liberal professionals and parents as positive support. But it amounts to the same thing: girls and boys who don’t conform to narrow gender rules are bundled off to the doctors.

We have no way of knowing what the future will be like for children persuaded to transition today. They are just starting their lives – surely they should be able to grow up before such momentous decisions are urged upon them.

The World Association for Transgender Health says the majority of children with gender identity disorder grow out of it by adolescence, with most going on to be lesbian or gay.