A campaign group representing homosexuals has warned MPs that social media influencers are encouraging children to harm themselves in the mistaken belief they are transgender.
In evidence submitted to a Commons Select Committee, LGB Alliance expressed disquiet over the hold ‘social media celebrities’ appeared to have over gender-confused children.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee inquiry on Influencer Culture launched last year to examine the impact of people with large social media followings on society.
Harmful
LGB Alliance said it had “serious concerns about the role that influencers in the media” were playing in promoting transgender ideology.
Beliefs such as “everyone has a ‘gender identity’, separate from their biological sex, and that this ‘gender identity’ should take priority over biological sex” were being peddled online.
It said: “These beliefs are being promoted to children and young people as if they were facts instead of beliefs. We believe this is causing grave harm.”
These beliefs are being promoted to children and young people as if they were facts instead of beliefs.
False
Social media celebrities and bloggers, it argued, were “driving a cultural shift in which the extreme and harmful medicalisation of children” was being normalised.
It said influencers “make statements or suggestions that are demonstrably false”, including the claim that puberty blockers are ‘fully reversible and harmless’.
The group highlighted the role of influencers in campaigns for the controversial trans-activist group Mermaids, and for GenderGP – an unlicensed clinic that offers ‘sex-swap’ drugs to children online.
LGB Alliance also said: “Twitter, Facebook, Medium, YouTube and Amazon are themselves among the most powerful ‘influencers’ in promoting the gender identity ideology that is causing so much harm. They bear a heavy burden of responsibility”.
Threat
In 2020, the mother of a 16-year-old girl with autism revealed that online ‘trans radicalisation’ had led to her daughter being referred to NHS England’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, the mother – known as ‘Angela’ – explained that her daughter ‘Kate’ had seemed quite content growing up. But all that changed when Kate went online.
After watching “endless” YouTube videos containing pro-trans propaganda and immersing herself in online chat forums promoting radical trans ideology, Kate announced to her parents: “‘I don’t want to be a girl any more – I want to be a boy’.”
Abigail Shrier, in her book ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters’, argues that influencers who have achieved celebrity status by means of gender transition pose an ideological threat to the well-being of children.
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