Paris Lees in the Guardian 2015
(article linked from Mermaids resources for young people: Information About Reparative / Conversion therapy )
(extract)
"Taking advantage of vulnerable and confused adults is one thing, but matters become even more sinister when doctors offer to convert children and teenagers. This week there has been much false controversy around parents who support their children to change gender following Louis Theroux’s BBC documentary Transgender Kids. This reflects a tendency among some in the media to ignore research, medical experts and, um, actual trans people. Journalist and Guardian contributor Julie Bindel rejects the hormone-blocking treatment that supportive parents want for their trans kids. She once told me in an interview: “Preventing puberty … rather than looking at the societal pressure on children to live in very very constrained gender norms is a form of child abuse.”
In a similar vein, the Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill says that trans activists are “effectively experimenting on children,” despite the wealth of research emerging that supporting trans kids to be themselves leads to better mental health outcomes. Writing in the Mirror today, Carole “I’m no expert but” Malone asks how any four- or five-year-old could possibly know if they wanted to change gender. I’d love to know just what makes Carole think she knows better than they do.
I’m sick of hearing what people who are not trans have to say about trans people’s lives, so let me, a trans woman, tell you something I know for sure: there is only one responsible thing any loving parent can do if their child confides in them that they are gay or trans – and that is to offer unconditional support. Nothing will stop a child being trans. Nothing. I spent the first 20 years of my life battling the most intense social pressure imaginable to be someone I was not. I was told I could not be a girl. I was told it was a phase. I was told that I was too young to know what I wanted, that I would grow out of it, that it just wasn’t an option. Thankfully my parents never took me to see a conversion quack, but the idea that I might grow out of it still stopped them from getting me the proper support I needed. I had to go through years of bullying and an entirely unwanted and entirely unnecessary male puberty before I could finally take control of my own life and be who I’d known I was since the age of four. What an absolute waste of time. "
(continues with reference to the tragic suicide of Leelah Alcorna 17-year-old transgender teenager who died in 2014 in the US state of Ohio )
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/10/obama-conversion-therapy-lgbt-teens-leelah-alcorn