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“It feels like conversion therapy for gay children,” one male clinician said. “I frequently had cases where people started identifying as trans after months of horrendous bullying for being gay,” thetimes.co.uk/article/it-fee…
So many potentially gay children were being sent down the pathway to change gender, two of the clinicians said there was a dark joke among staff that “there would be no gay people left”.
“Young lesbians considered at the bottom of the heap suddenly found they were really popular when they said they were trans.”
“For some families, it was easier to say, this is a medical problem, ‘here’s my child, please fix them!’ than dealing with a young, gay kid,” the third female clinician said.
At the service’s “family days”, a parent was allegedly heard saying that they did not want their child to have gay friends because they “didn’t want them mixed up in that hedonistic lifestyle”.
“It is converting people into heterosexuals,” one of the clinicians said. “We had so many families who would talk about not wanting their daughters to be lesbian.” Young people “repeatedly” confided their own “disgust” that they may be gay, according to the clinician.
“Children’s bodies are being damaged in order to treat societal issues,” she warned.
“I would talk about it as an ‘atrocity’. I know that sounds quite strong, but it felt as if we were part of something that people would look back on in the future, and ask, what were we thinking?
In the future I think there will be lots and lots of de-transitioners who feel their bodies were mutilated as young people and who will ask, why did you let me do this? It is very disturbing.”
All five clinicians expressed concern over how little young people and their families were being told about the impact of hormone treatment on fertility and sexual function as adults.
One claimed young people were unable to give “informed consent” because it was regarded as taboo to discuss the impact of medical intervention on later sexual function in such a young cohort.
“In what other specialism would physical intervention that leads to permanent change to the body be the first line of treatment for a vulnerable child?”
“If they are getting it wrong, you have to ask, are they making kids infertile by mistake? Because if they are to truly acknowledge [our concerns], then they will have to ask themselves, what the f*** have we done to thousands of children?”
