The greatest shibboleth of all...the "trans child".

[1984Now]

More and more my mind is drawn as to how/why transgender ideology has succeeded. And not just partially, totally. Sure, there may be a re-righting of the ship, but I don't see any return to the pre-2012 (the year that Lionel Schriver identifies as when the ship hit the rocks) liberal consensus.
So many things...trans rights is men's rights, rapid onset gender dysphoria, possible march thru the professions/institutions, the feral power of autogynephilia, suicidal empathy, the birth of a new religion and caste structure, cancel culture freezing criticism, the drive to trans humanism. And many more things.
But things really clarified for me over a year ago when Helen Joyce was asked her opinion on this movement's implacable power. And she mentioned both the impossibility of anyone repenting publicly who'd invested themselves into gender ideology re their own children, or in response to children in their extended family, friends, colleagues, and critically admitting to themselves that they'd something so terrible.
At that point, whether you were typically a very brave person who'd normally speak truth to power, or even someone with a generally well rounded pride in being a truthful honest person happy to speak up...so many shut up.
So many...Schriver knew it was BS, but only started to speak up in 2016, four years after she realized how wrong this all was.
JK Rowling took a lot of time.
Linehan? Maybe he spoke up on day one, but he'd have been an absolute exception.
And if Joyce is right, then societies total capitulating is less to do with my list above, and all to do with the concept of the trans child.
For anyone, anonymous or a billionaire writer, to say "sorry, I'm sympathetic to children's plight, but there's no such thing as a trans child, just body dysmorphia", for anyone to say this to one's child, and critically any child they know, and children at large, would have required such bravery and sheer hard headedness, that I can't think of anyone other than Linehan who could have done it.
Before you know it, 5 years have gone by, we're in the Great Awokening, the midst of social media changing everything, then into COVID and the explosion in trans ideology controlling the discourse.
So, umpteen all very convincing reasons why trans ideology has flown, but what got it up in the air was (and still is) the shibboleth of the trans child.
Once society looked the other way on this concept, medicine, academia, social sciences, schools all locked down the trans child as a concept that couldn't be questioned or even discussed quizzically, let alone disbelieved/dismissed, the die was cast.
I do believe this is a big part as to why so many women have been instrumental in the bye that trans ideology has been given, women's inherent empathy has been weaponised by men in the movement for fetishistic readings (AGPs) or political reasons.
Turn the clock back, society en masse chose not to affirm the trans child as inviolable shibboleth, the world would be very different today.
Can things be righted? You can guess what my answer is as I respond to the thread on Streeting's puberty blocker trial...the trans child remains a total neo-religious icon to the modern left.

I’ve taught for 20 years. Edit: in secondary schools 😅

First decade: one trans child, had an EHCP (then ‘statement of special needs’), barely coping in mainstream, born girl but insisted on boy. I now wonder if he might have had a genetic disorder which involved an element of DSD (was from another culture, possibly born in a non-Western country). Everyone accepted that this child would live as the opposite sex, probably permanently.

Second decade: countless ‘trans’ children, all autistic, every single one. Trans was an outward manifestation of inner distress and ‘not belonging’, especially present in (but not limited to) autistic teenage girls. Some have gone on to have gender-affirming ‘surgery’.

Entering my third decade of teaching, I’m seeing the dying embers. One or two sixth formers still insisting on opposite sex names (both autistic) but almost no presentation in Y7-11. It feels like a (wrong) solution to a problem we still haven’t worked out how to solve (how to help autistic children with interoceptive distress and bodily change).

If there was going to be - as there should be - a serious concern about children at risk from self harm, self injury and life-ending behaviours due to distress, there are a number of groups at particularly high risk, Autism being one of the especially high ones. Not a dickybird however in the press or of statistics - even accurate ones - being mentioned frequently by MPs and others.

Any minute now we're going to see major changes to SEND provision, particularly affecting children and young people with Autism who have become unable to attend school, often with a significant history of self harm. Cassandra-like, I predict these changes won't come with additional resources to CAMHS and crisis teams, or with awareness that the level of distress is likely to significantly increase with associated strong risks.

It's not concern about children or about harm in general, it's exclusively about gender identity, and as usual based on highly dodgy information, which could make you think very cynically it's been nothing more than yet more corporate branding to push something political through.

Likewise 'we are terribly concerned about...'

Inclusion (but not of women)
Equality (but not of women)
VAWG (but only in selected bits that are helpful, and we're going to educate boys despite that we also insist no one knows who the boys are anyway...)

and on and on and on with the fuckery.

It's amazing, isn't it?
I'm not a left voter, but had the modet left/progressive elites told me that certain put upon groups would be lifted and helped and prioritised to get the very best out of their difficult lives, society would need to allocate resources, people would be championed. I'd have been on board with autism, spectrum disorders, physical disabilities all been given help by society above and beyond.
What did we get? A misinterpreting of one aspect of this, to both make their lives worse, and cave in women's rights.
You could not come up with a worst case scenario in a million years if you didn't know about this phenomenon to start.

I am quite left wing, but it’s weirdly teaching that has opened my eyes to what’s happening, because I can never accept anything at face value. I also dislike the left’s propensity for assuming one issue is much like another: they’ve co-opted this issue under a general progressive banner which prevents them from seeing any potential negatives.

I'm a right voter, and also won't accept anything at face value. I know I can't ever vote left until so many tears of contrition have flowed to fill an ocean, but I also refuse to be "played" by "my side".
I do know one thing, trans ideology is both left and right, both right neo liberal (Prytzker Institute and trans humanism) and also liberal left (US Democrat Party, the whole spectrum from Theresa May, thru Mordaunt Miller Starmer Rayner Davey Polanski Swinney Sturgeon Corbyn Sultana), with the confected golden trans child at it's centre.

'Left wing' and 'progressive' seem to often conceal startlingly bigoted views, particularly re: women, homophobia and anti-semitism.

I recall when all the trans ideologues told us that Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria was a lie, that trans kids coming out now had been buried in the past, that like dyslexia and left handedness, once the stigma was gone, trans would reach a natural visible level and we'd all go Some Kids Are Trans, Get Over It!
Well, if your experience is common, the ideologues are dead wrong. Trans identification amongst the young is in decline (backed up by a big recent study that shows numbers of students IDing as trans or NB in American unis are diminishing sharply).
Amazing isn't it? As the phenomenon shows signs of naturally declining in the young, Streeting is firing the starting gun for 1k kids to go on the PB trial.
Another "you couldn't make it up!" moment.

Trans is moving through children and adolescents like anorexia and self-harm did. The difference being that both of the latter conditions were recognised as genuine mental health issues resulting from emotional problems. They are not considered idiopathic (I think that’s the right word) stand-alone conditions, nor are they considered natural, healthy, or in any way something to be encouraged. The sooner transgenderism is re-recognised as a mental health condition or a paraphilia, the better.

Like with anorexia and self-harm, trans-identifying is becoming less trendy, so there is likely to be less social contagion. However, I do think that, like with those conditions, it is here to stay, and we will have to stand up against its insidious mission creep, constantly and consciously. Even if the young people don’t buy into any more, they still have their own shibboleths: their trans friends and their detrans friends and their social need to be seen to Be Kind.

Many MNers have and are living with the shibboleth. It is often only thanks to MN that many of us have been able to react with calm, protective love, rather than with panicked affirmation. But there is a third class of parent: the vicarious celebrity living out the excitement of having a Special child. I wonder whether they will ever feel the need to backtrack.

Helen Joyce on this was one of my major peaks.
Not only will they not admit. They will remain the biggest proponents until their dying day.
As a well-known personality, you can come back from almost anything. MeToo villains have sought and won public re-acceptance, tax dodging, even being racist can be forgiven.
But to admit you practiced Transhausen By Proxy by, at best aggressive social transitioning, at worst, let your daughter lop her breasts off/become so medicalised she is infertile, anorgasmic, osteoporotic etc, is not just a step too far, it's a chasm that can't be bridged.
To admit fault here is a double jeopardy. Social ostracisation from all those who mean anything to you, the carnage of admitting being complicit in child harm. Your own.
I'm sure Streeting talks to his cabinet colleagues and wonders this about some of them. They'll be putting the biggest amount of pressure on him to run the PB trial, because his cancelling of it would mean he's directly criticising them.

There's a reason children in schools, in care of the state & every single organisation that works with the young were relentlessly targeted by adult transactivists. Many for the grift but some because of the opportunities offered to them to access children - often without parental knowledge (see Mermaids, Surrey Pride, the NSPCC, drag queen story time and more).

We're not meant to point this out and are usually accused of being "right wing" as Labour peer Cashman alleged - that's how desperate some men are to silence those talking about safeguarding children.

It's that silencing that has allowed this to take hold in schools and made parenting vulnerable children much more difficult

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4954762-pushing-back-against-safeguarding

Bad actors are always gonna act badly (and I don't mean in a Hollywood film).
But it's those who allow it to happen that are the bigger enemy, all out of some misplaced suicidal empathy combined with wifull obfuscation of reality on the ground with young people.

The Q now is whether this jump the shark phase lasts as long as the whole phenomenon, even longer, never quite ends. Or burns out quickly.
At the Stella O'Malley/Lionel Schriver discussion at Genspect, Lionel thinks it'll isolate very quickly like Recovered Memory scandal did, Stella contends it's here for the long haul, too many institutions are corrupted, too few still feel brave enough to speak out.
Again, the key is the reverence for the trans child. If fewer kids choose to transition, it may be the kids that kill the phenomenon.
I do know that the Emperor has never been more naked, his New Clothes are locked in the cupboard.
Streeting "reluctantly" putting 1k kids on the PB trial as we've now had several years of a burgeoning truth that the cohort are unhappy, autistic, neurodivergent, from complex families, multi factorial social media and societal factors, more co-morbidities than you can shake an assessment form at.
If he had any principle, any bravery, he would say no, the data is out there.
But there is no rationality on the modern left.
Phillipson with the tacit approval of Starmer and Hermer, kicking the can on the SC ruling advice, looking for the long grass.
Again, the zeitgeist is switching, Labour could grab this window in politics and societal mores and go with rationality, but they won't.
I know women on here, GCs, parents etc, feel absolutely buried by this relentless societal culture.
But I genuinely feel it can't hold.
Kids themselves are questioning the atmosphere around them, the SC ruling cannot be construed as anything different than it obviously is, let alone delayed forever, or even much longer.
If Starmer or Rayner Milliband Burnham after him also won't enact it, then Badenoch or Farage will.
If the PB trial really does go ahead, the stink will so last with Streeting and Labour, they'll never shrug it off.
Maybe once the awful effects of the trial become apparent in the early 2030s, that will be the final nail in the coffin of trans societal culture, that the progressive left knowing full well the risks nevertheless put another 1k at the same risk.
All that will be left at that point is a dwindling band of washed up luvvies like Tennant, AGPs and their bottles of piss, and the sadly deluded, and frankly easily fooled, transmaidens. And (im)plausible deniability from every institution that sucked up to this movement.

Sadly, I’m with Stella on this.

As long as transgenderism is acceptable in adults, there will always be pressure to make it acceptable in children. Makes no difference that for the majority of trans-identifying adults it is a paraphilia, because most people do not understand this. The Be Kind mantras have sort-circuited many people’s capacity for rational thought, and many people cannot imagine such an expression of sexuality, either. They do not see that children and young people identify as trans as an escape from, whereas AGP men identify as Trans as an escape into.

Lionel compared trans ideology to Recovered Memory, I'm old enough to just remember that, but I don't recall it being anything more than a cult within therapy.
Other than comparos to other cults and dramatisation in intense family dramas and science fiction like the X-Files, I don't recall it having cultural cut thru across media, institutions etc.
Maybe if it appeared for the first time over the last decade, criticism would have been chilled and it would have taken hold.
But a half century ago, society still had working guard rails, was self regulating, had a much higher threshold for quackery and mind games.
Maybe things started genuinely changing with eating disorders and self-harm. I recall being a particularly unsympathetic young man, and for the first time societal pressure got me to reconsider my opinions.
But even with the most sympathetic therapy on anorexia, billumia and cutting, I don't recall the suffering being held up as something beautiful, the choices to stop eating or use a knife as good choices in any way.
And of course, these phenomena had no bearing on other groups in society.

If you're right, we're in an interconnected double-bind.
For me, it's the trans child concept that gives the ideology cover.
The child is both the imperative and the shield for the movement.
But we've also in the West en masse chosen to stop judging, to always show empathy, to value personal choice.
Meaning men IDing as women slip thru the cracks of any societal dismay or objection (as was the case just two decades ago).
If men won't be judged as wrong or even questioned for their cultural appropriation of womanhood, and children are absolutely not to be questioned or shown any doubt over their opinions they're the opposite gender, then institutions and individuals cannot break a self imposed set of chains that didn't even exist when Blair was still in power.

I heard somebody my age (45) say: "When I was a child or teenager, if somebody had told me that little boys could become little girls, and vice versa, I would totally have believed them", making the point that children or teenagers who have not yet learned critical thinking might believe anything they are told.

No accounting for stupid people.

I noticed that Mermaid's annual return appeared on the Charity Commission's website a few days ago and I think even Mermaids must be wondering where all the trans kids have gone.

During 2024/2025 about 1000 unique children and YP contacted their support lines. That is a quarter of the number they had in their heyday (2021/2022).

In any sane world they wouldn't even have one.

Not all of those 1000 will be 'new' trans kids, many will have contacted Mermaids in previous years.

Their supply is drying up so quickly that I predict we will see Mermaids fold within 6 months.

Perhaps a good analogy might be smoking, which went from being an exotic private habit to being a pestilential nuisance in every public place and shared space. You were seen as selfish, old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy if you complained. But it turned out to be addictive, bad for health and being heavily promoted by people who knew perfectly well that it was toxic but stood to profit if it continued to be popular. Eventually the truth emerged and although it continued, limits were placed on the extent to which it could be inflicted on others, and efforts were made to protect children from it.

It's not altogether surprising that they believe this when it's people like doctors and teachers who are telling them that they can change sex.

And the NHS public website saying the NHS can give you any of the following:

For trans-identified females - penis and scrotum

For trans-identified males - vagina and vulva and clitoris

All of it is a lie

Autistic girls have always been statistically far more likely to suffer eating disorders. Perhaps now as a society we are much better at preventing eating disorders it’s the same distress coming out differently