Hadley Freeman in the Sunday Times

I disagree with abuse. The majority of parents will allow their children too indulge in low-level dangerous behaviour (eg trying a drink) in order to either dissuade them or teach them to manage it.

We need someone (Councils. NHS, charities) to start setting up support groups, family, individual or both, for detransitioners so they can publicly get the help they need.

Excellent from Hadley, as usual. DH read it this morning and actually brought it up in conversation with me He was especially struck by her point (new to him, old hat to us) about those parents who have destroyed their children's health and now have to live with what they have done by becoming the most swivel-eyed true believing activists.

Then he said "All this will stop when they prosecute the ringleaders and throw them in prison" and I had to explain "Oh you sweet summer child, literally almost every institution and sector are infiltrated and captured."

Excellent article, thanks.

I guess the ‘totally reversible’ bullshit has been rolled out so often that it’s felt reassuring to believe it.

I completely agree @Nomnomnew but I struggle to understand why anyone with any level of common sense wouldn't see that stopping puberty in a healthy child is a very bad idea and that telling young children that they can change sex is an impossible idea.
My own (now adult) daughter said when she was 8 years old that she wanted to be a boy. It was a very short lived phase which I responded to with a simple "that's not possible, you're a girl with short hair and that's all" and she's always been a girl. Is now a 25 year old woman in a predominantly male profession, living her best life. She cringes when she looks back.

I know plenty of parents who have enthusiastically embraced new pronouns, names, social transitions, even medication. My charitable side says they genuinely believe in the trans stuff as a new frontier in the LGB movement, but it also does get to make them extra special sparkly cool parents.

Hadley getting it right again, of course. Thanks for sharing, we might not be out of the woods yet but there is certainly plenty of sunlight coming through.

Thanks for this OP, it always brightens my day to read what she has to say.

There are undoubtedly some parents who have supported or encouraged without advice from doctors or specialists, but I think we do have to remember many parents may have sought advice from someone they trusted as a professional, e.g. psychologists or people claiming to be specialists in gender medicine, e.g Helen Webberley and others, who may have taken an affirmative only approach and convinced them that was the right thing to do. Those parents have been badly let down.

Yes, three different conflicting vectors are opening up.

If schools and universities continue to teach and embed gender ideology then there will continue to be children and young adults who identify as trans......but they will not be able to access vital 'trans healthcare' because of the ban on blockers.

Meanwhile easier Self Id will simply accelerate and increase the level of conflict with the rights and protections of women and girls. Failure to ensure truly single sex services and spaces will result in further court cases and legal actions.

It's a mess......

helen joyce was absolutely correct that parents are culpable here. Their refusal to push back against their child's wishes to take blockers or even just to socially transition (we know how hard it is to come back from that) is a huge reason for why the ideology has been allowed to spiral out of control

shes right that the reason parents won't admit they've got it wrong is because it's the same as admitting they've assisted their autistic/traumatised child in ruining their mental and physical health. Many of them become loud transactivists too, trying to convince other parents to carry out the same awful behaviour they have, to justify their own mistreatment of their kids. It's very sad and abuse is the only word for it.

Time is the great healer. but it is going to take a lot of time to uproot that which has already been planted. There are a lot of people, including children, caught up in this now

To accept you were. "wrong" would imply that you had a solid rationale and an opennesss to reason, in the first place. True believers will cling on, seeing this as a test of and a challenge to their faith. So they will double down......even in the face of mounting evidence which disproves their foundational beliefs. They will become ever more intransigent - and this will incrementally lead to them being sidelined from mainstream organisations.

Love Hadley. She’s not pulling any punches there. Sharp, factual, to the point.

Thanks for posting. Health does seem to have a bit more of an end-of-tunnel feeling. My concern is Health and Education pulling in different directions in government. Interesting times.

‘Two plus two equals unicorns’.
I bloody love Hadley.