‘Damaging’ transgender curriculum is about to invade 7-year-olds’ classrooms in the UK
In a move that’s causing controversy, children
as young as seven will be exposed to gender ideology in UK elementary schools
later this month through a new book from an LGBT activist on “medical
transitioning.”
The taxpayer-funded Can I
Tell You About Gender Diversity? by
CJ Atkinson, approved by the United Kingdom’s Department for Education, advises
teachers, parents and students against using language suggesting there are only
two genders. It shows the use of hormone blockers through a fictional
12-year-old who is “transitioning” from female to male so she can stop the
onset of puberty.
Religious leaders and politicians in the UK
are among those calling the book ”damaging,” but
the book’s author is pushing back.
“We call it trans-panic,” Atkinson stated in
an interview with The
Guardian. “This mud-slinging has to stop. It causes active harm.”
Atkinson then cited the high rate of suicide attempts among transgender youth.
“The world is changing,” the author argued. “A
book like this is needed.”
What will kids read in
the book?
The 60-page book is part of the Can I
Tell You About series
that covers issues such as eating disorders, depression and autism. Can I
Tell You About Gender Diversity? begins
with the passage:
“My name is Kit and I’m 12 years old. I live in a
house with my mum and dad, and our dog, Pickle. When I was born, the doctors
told my mum and dad that they had a baby girl, and so for the first few years
of my life that’s how my parents raised me. This is called being assigned female
at birth. I wasn’t ever very happy that way.”
The Kit character then begins to use the
puberty-blocking drugs to undergo a sex change to “stop my body developing in
ways that make me unhappy.”
Kit’s “transition” entails wearing boys’
clothes, using male pronouns, and changing her birth certificate to show
Christopher instead of Kit. The character discusses the possibility of surgery
and also taking testosterone at 16 so that her body will imitate all the same
puberty changes of males.
A bewildering array of
terminology
Gender and sexuality are described in the book
with what the Daily
Mail called
“a bewildering array of alternative terms,” which include “cisgender” for
children “who think of themselves as being the gender which they were born,” as
well as “panromantic,” “intersex,” “genderqueer” and “xe.”
Terms such as “ladies” and “gents,” and “boys”
and “girls” are condemned in the book lest they discriminate against
transgender students.
Atkinson — who identifies as “queer” and
prefers the pronouns they, their and them — insists that
activists are not trying to “break everything down so that there’s nothing, so
there’s no meaning in anything.” They rather see themselves as “opening it up
so everybody can have access to everything.”
Who else is behind it?
Distributed by Educate
& Celebrate, a UK government-funded entity
that works to “transform schools and organisations into LGBT+Friendly places,” Can I
Tell You About Gender Diversity? is
billed by London-based Jessica Kingsley Publishers as “the first book to
explain medical transitioning for children aged seven and above.”
According to a spokesman for the publisher,
the book was commissioned because of insufficient resources in schools.
“The introduction of gender-neutral toilets
and non-binary pronouns are important first steps, but there is a definite lack
of resources out there for teachers, parents and children themselves,” the
spokesperson said.
“This book will spark discussion in the classroom and at home, answering
difficult questions that children may have about gender diversity.”
Copies of the book will be sent to the 120 "best
practice" schools
with which Jessica Kingsley works, and the publisher expects hundreds more head
teachers to purchase Can I
Tell You About Gender Diversity?
Outrage
Opposition to the book has come from at least
one media outlet, as well as UK government and religious officials.
The Daily
Mail’s Sarah
Vine criticized it in her column, calling for the “nonsense” to stop.
“In attempting to improve the lives of a
vanishingly small minority, we are threatening the sanity of — and yes I’m
going to say it — normal children,” Vine wrote. “It’s time to put an end to
this nonsense.”
“I think it is damaging to children to introduce
uncertainty into their minds,” former Tory Party chairman Lord Tebbit said.
The prior Master of Wellington College said
respect for all includes those who believe in traditional values.
“We have to respect the feelings of everybody,
including teachers and parents who want traditional modes followed,” Anthony
Seldon stated.
Anglican Bishop of Chester Peter Forster said
the book would not be helpful in addressing the issue of gender confusion,
adding, “This is likely to sow more confusion than clarity.”
Encouraging the
problem
Mental
health experts have also concluded that encouraging
gender confusion and
intervening medical is damaging to
children.
“Gender identity” is not separate from
biological sex, according to an August 2016 report from Dr. Paul McHugh, a
former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital and distinguished service
professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, and Lawrence Mayer, an
Arizona State University professor of statistics and biostatistics.
“The hypothesis that gender identity is an
innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that
a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a
man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence," their report said.
The
researchers also
took issue with diagnosing gender dysphoria in children, as most will outgrow
gender confusion and attempts to push acceptance of a “transgender” state only
aggravate their confusion.
“Children are a special case when addressing
transgender issues. Only a minority of children who experience cross-gender
identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood,” they
stated.
Some of the medical interventions featured in
Atkinson’s book are found in the report in particular to be harmful to children.
The researchers found “little scientific evidence” for the therapeutic value of
such interventions and called medical interventions for gender-nonconforming
youth “an area of particular concern.”
Conditioning anyone to undertake impersonation
of the opposite gender through surgery or chemical treatments is detrimental,
the authors also concluded, as adults who opt for sex-reassignment surgeries
experience “a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes.”
The support for this conclusion was found in a
referenced study that indicated individuals who had undergone “sex
reassignment” were approximately five times more likely to attempt suicide and
about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.
Atkinson’s book is also available for sale
online.