Mermaids has long promoted the idea that if children feel they are in the wrong body then there are medical solutions at hand. The charity has claimed that powerful puberty-blocking drugs are necessary to stop trans-identifying children from self-harming. It has also claimed these drugs are fully reversible. For years, these assertions went unchallenged. And Mermaids enjoyed high-profile support – from Prince Harry to US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But increasingly clinicians across the world have been warning that youngsters who say they want to change sex have been caught up in a social contagion. In the UK, the only specialist gender-identity clinic for children – the Tavistock clinic – is to be closed, following the publication of a damning interim report by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass.
Despite these developments, according to Mermaids a child’s gender identity should still be ‘affirmed’ if he or she claims to be non-binary or the opposite sex. Mermaids also continues to lobby for trans-identified people to be able to change their legal gender through self-declaration alone.
These ideas about gender have not fared well under questioning in the courtroom. Mermaids’ chair of trustees, Dr Belinda Bell, surpised onlookers when she claimed that ‘I’m not sure that people come out of the womb with a sex’. On Tuesday, Bell was asked to comment on the evidence showing that a disproportionate number of children who present at the Tavistock clinic identifying as trans turn out to be gay or lesbian. She said this was ‘too niche and specialist for the rest of us to weigh in on’.
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