‘Gender-confused kids need counselling not trans drugs’: columnist

Children confused about their gender need “meaningful therapy” rather than “fearful ‘affirmation’” pressurising them into life-changing puberty blocking drugs, a veteran newspaper columnist has said.

The Daily Telegraph’s Allison Pearson argues that even the “most liberal parent” would favour counselling before “drastic hormone treatment”.

It comes after a recent investigation by Swedish journalists revealed that 13 children were left with devastating injuries after being given puberty blocking drugs at a leading clinic in Stockholm.

‘Reckless’

Pearson criticised the radical pro-transgender lobby group Stonewall for insisting that ‘only affirmation of gender-confused children is acceptable’.

Loving parents who challenge the LGBT activists’ narrative should not be “branded ‘transphobic'”, she added.

And gagging them, she continued: “isn’t reasonable and nor is it kind. Kids who are in a distressed state can fixate on one solution to all their problems.

“Society owes them more than a reckless rush down the clinic for hormones which will wreck their fertility.”

Teenage angst

The columnist concluded that for some teenagers “gender dysphoria may have been a peg on which to hang all the neuroses which are so common in that difficult phase of life.

Society owes them more than a reckless rush down the clinic for hormones

“Those young people all deserve loving support and proper counselling.

“What they don’t need is fearful ‘affirmation’ as they make the biggest, potentially most irreversible, decision of their lives.”

Dangers

‘Transbarnen’ (‘Trans children’), a documentary broadcast on Swedish State Television last year, exposed the plight of Leo – a child who was born a girl, but believes she is a boy.

At the age of eleven, Leo was prescribed puberty blockers at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. As a consequence of prolonged use of the drugs over a four year period, Leo has spinal fractures caused by a bone weakening condition, and is in constant pain.

At least twelve other children, given puberty blockers at the same clinic, suffered side effects including liver damage and psychiatric problems.

The revelations provoked a review of the controversial practice by the Swedish Government, which found the risks of prescribing puberty blockers to under 18s “currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases”.

‘Duty of care’

Last month, GPs Dr Angus McKellar and Dr Antony Latham questioned whether they would be branded ‘transphobic’ for upholding the reality of biological sex and not referring a child to a gender clinic due to the risk of harm.

The doctors, both working in Scotland, said they had “serious concerns” over the rapid increase in children experiencing gender confusion.

Writing in the Scotsman, they said that most are prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, despite the fact many have significant mental health and social issues which should be addressed instead.

The GPs asked: “What is our duty of care if the biomedical treatment of children with gender dysphoria is believed to harm the children both physically and/or psychologically? Have such children the ability to make such life changing choices for what is still experimental treatment?”