Has there ever been a movement as allergic to scrutiny as the trans lobby? Analysis is to the trans activist as sunlight is to the vampire. Even the mildest questioning of their claims is likely to induce a fit of the vapours. Wonder out loud if it’s wise to pump confused kids with drugs that might render them infertile, or to allow a bloke to parade around a women’s changing room with his tumescent knob hanging out, and you’ll instantly be added to their blacklist of transphobes. These are epic levels of touchiness, irascibility turned up to 11. Why are they like this?

Their infamous sensitivity has been on full and comedic display since the publication of the Cass Review earlier this week. Yes, even this civil review of the NHS’s gender services for kids has got them scrambling for the smelling salts. Even this polite if critical analysis of the NHS’s failings in relation to gender-confused youths, overseen by top paediatrician Hilary Cass, has got them hissy fitting again. The review is ‘pure bigotry’, they wail online. Is anything not bigotry? Biology is bigotry, women not wanting to look at the shrivelled cock of a man called Sheila is bigotry, and now even a paediatrician examining paediatric services – ie, doing her job – is bigotry.

Their Cass meltdown has been cosmic. All the review says is that medicine should be evidence-based, the medical pathway is the wrong approach for many gender-confused kids, and clinicians should exercise ‘extreme caution’ before letting people under the age of 25 take puberty-blockers and other pharmaceutics that screw with your hormones. It also raises concerns that ideology, not evidence, is too often the driver of medical messing with kids. To most people this will sound eminently sensible. To the trans activist in the vice-like grip of gender dogma, however, it’s tantamount to blasphemy. Evidence-based medicine? Fetch my pitchfork!

All over social media, the Cassphobes – see, we can all play the bigotry card – are out in force. They’re calling the review ‘anti-trans’ and a ‘corrupt sham’. Some are branding it ‘anti-care’ and even claiming it gives a green light to ‘conversion therapy’. These dystopian warblings shine a light on the doublethink of trans activism. The Cass Review is entirely about the best way to care for gender-confused kids – to call it anti-care is an Orwellian distortion, a flat-out lie.