BREAKING: Canadian Prime Minister @MarkJCarney’s daughter went to the UK’s infamous gender clinic, the Tavistock, when she was a child.
In this essay discovered by True North News, Sasha Carney (formerly Sophia) writes of her visits to the Tavistock.
She also rails against ‘transphobes,’ and tells of her childhood inspiration for identifying as transmasculine — a ‘boygirl’ identity encouraged by Enid Blyton books that her mother starting buying her.
“My teenage years existed in close proximity to this TERF-driven scrutiny, which was fixated on identifying how ‘authentically trans’ people like me really were.
“In 2013, shortly after I chopped off all my hair into a deeply regrettable floppy Justin Bieber cut, I moved to London, the land of Enid Blyton murder mysteries. A block from my new house was the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, an imposing grey building which contained the country's only child and adolescent ‘gender identity clinic.’
“I watched as my friend, after a year of weekly appointments trying desperately to get an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, was denied the diagnosis, and with it any hope of top surgery because they sometimes wore skirts.
“I watched organisations with names like
@Transgendertrd refer to trans Tavistock patients as ‘experimental subjects’who didn't know what was best for them.
“I watched as my school's former principal told a national news outlet that trans students like me and many of my close friends were c*s women who were only coming out to ‘cause turbulence’ and ‘adhere to anything a bit radical.’
“I watched all this happen, and I quietly stopped wearing underwire bras, and wore baggier clothes, and I felt a fierce surge of jealousy every time I walked into the Tavistock for therapy and saw patients turn left, towards the medical spaces I didn't feel ‘trans enough’ to enter.”
Did Liberal leader Mark Carney approve of these visits to the Tavistock, the home of the UK’s childhood sex changes?
Full essay text in thread, below. 👇🏼
In this essay discovered by True North News, Sasha Carney (formerly Sophia) writes of her visits to the Tavistock.
She also rails against ‘transphobes,’ and tells of her childhood inspiration for identifying as transmasculine — a ‘boygirl’ identity encouraged by Enid Blyton books that her mother starting buying her.
“My teenage years existed in close proximity to this TERF-driven scrutiny, which was fixated on identifying how ‘authentically trans’ people like me really were.
“In 2013, shortly after I chopped off all my hair into a deeply regrettable floppy Justin Bieber cut, I moved to London, the land of Enid Blyton murder mysteries. A block from my new house was the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, an imposing grey building which contained the country's only child and adolescent ‘gender identity clinic.’
“I watched as my friend, after a year of weekly appointments trying desperately to get an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, was denied the diagnosis, and with it any hope of top surgery because they sometimes wore skirts.
“I watched organisations with names like
@Transgendertrd refer to trans Tavistock patients as ‘experimental subjects’who didn't know what was best for them.
“I watched as my school's former principal told a national news outlet that trans students like me and many of my close friends were c*s women who were only coming out to ‘cause turbulence’ and ‘adhere to anything a bit radical.’
“I watched all this happen, and I quietly stopped wearing underwire bras, and wore baggier clothes, and I felt a fierce surge of jealousy every time I walked into the Tavistock for therapy and saw patients turn left, towards the medical spaces I didn't feel ‘trans enough’ to enter.”
Did Liberal leader Mark Carney approve of these visits to the Tavistock, the home of the UK’s childhood sex changes?
Full essay text in thread, below. 👇🏼
“When I was in elementary school, my mother started buying me Enid Blyton books. The British series weren't so much novels as they were morality tales, with the same stock characters recycled over and over to deter impressionable little British lasses from the seven deadly sins (gluttony, sloth, envy, wrath, believing in yourself, stealing sweets from the penny shop, and lying to your mum about when you'd be home for tea). One stock character in particular always fascinated me - the rambunctious, uncontainable boygirl.
“The boygirl is as complex as she is simple. She is White and wealthy, with a tangle of dark hair cut short or tied back - her pet peeve is having any of it fall into her eyes. She has several brothers who taught her how to ride horses or climb trees.
“She has little-to-no interest in boys, except when she expresses her desire to be one. And crucially, she has an extravagantly feminine name (Georgina, Josephine, or Wilhelmina), which she adamantly shortens to George, Jo, or Bill.
“In hindsight, her queerness is undeniable, almost textual. I'm tempted to believe that it's the very thing that drew me to her as I sat, not quite a tomboy, yet certainly not a "real girl," long hair pulled back in a snarled ponytail but still giving into my family's insistence that I wear dresses to church. The boygirl was both everything I was a little bit in love with and everything I didn't have the guts to be.
“Of course, at the time I had no way of knowing that Bills, Jos, and Georges existed outside Enid Blyton's imagination, that the world was full near to the brim with boygirls and girlboys, every possible gender I could imagine, and some I couldn't.
“I also didn't know that transgender children were becoming an increasingly visible demographic at the very moment I was becoming one, or that visibility can come at a hefty price.”
“The boygirl is as complex as she is simple. She is White and wealthy, with a tangle of dark hair cut short or tied back - her pet peeve is having any of it fall into her eyes. She has several brothers who taught her how to ride horses or climb trees.
“She has little-to-no interest in boys, except when she expresses her desire to be one. And crucially, she has an extravagantly feminine name (Georgina, Josephine, or Wilhelmina), which she adamantly shortens to George, Jo, or Bill.
“In hindsight, her queerness is undeniable, almost textual. I'm tempted to believe that it's the very thing that drew me to her as I sat, not quite a tomboy, yet certainly not a "real girl," long hair pulled back in a snarled ponytail but still giving into my family's insistence that I wear dresses to church. The boygirl was both everything I was a little bit in love with and everything I didn't have the guts to be.
“Of course, at the time I had no way of knowing that Bills, Jos, and Georges existed outside Enid Blyton's imagination, that the world was full near to the brim with boygirls and girlboys, every possible gender I could imagine, and some I couldn't.
“I also didn't know that transgender children were becoming an increasingly visible demographic at the very moment I was becoming one, or that visibility can come at a hefty price.”
“In Histories of the Transgender Child, trans of color critic Julian Gill-Peterson writes at length about our tendency to see trans children as "a means to some abstract end," rather than simply young people leading young trans lives. Children who display visible gender nonconformity are all too often made to carry hefty, and profoundly contradictory arguments, serving both as evidence that transness has "always been there," and that it's only a youthful phase.
"They're just kids!" one side shrieks, shuddering at the thought of their children being "exploited" by some worldwide political trans agenda. "We all have phases.
They're too young to possibly know!" "On the contrary!" protests the other side.
"It is precisely because they're so young that they must know! This is proof that trans adults are born this way, and know they're trans from the start!"
“You'll notice that both of these voices are speaking in the third person. There is no time, here, to consult trans children themselves, who only become a tool, a ruler by which to measure "authentic" transness.
“For the former perspective, trans childhood is treated as nothing more than a plea for attention. As increasing numbers of minors medically and socially transition, transphobes, particularly trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) have reacted violently. Endless threads on British-based mommy blogger site Mumsnet or "gender-critical feminist" forum @4th_WaveNow tell supposed "horror stories" of transitioning children, almost entirely assigned female at birth (AFAB).
“A familiar story emerges -- the transmasculine child becomes nothing more than a confused girl, led astray by a combination of "misogynistic" trans activism and a desperate need for attention. Their friends pressure them into "identifying as" a boy or a nonbinary person, and they supposedly move further and further away from their "true" self, sinking further into depression as they go.”
"They're just kids!" one side shrieks, shuddering at the thought of their children being "exploited" by some worldwide political trans agenda. "We all have phases.
They're too young to possibly know!" "On the contrary!" protests the other side.
"It is precisely because they're so young that they must know! This is proof that trans adults are born this way, and know they're trans from the start!"
“You'll notice that both of these voices are speaking in the third person. There is no time, here, to consult trans children themselves, who only become a tool, a ruler by which to measure "authentic" transness.
“For the former perspective, trans childhood is treated as nothing more than a plea for attention. As increasing numbers of minors medically and socially transition, transphobes, particularly trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) have reacted violently. Endless threads on British-based mommy blogger site Mumsnet or "gender-critical feminist" forum @4th_WaveNow tell supposed "horror stories" of transitioning children, almost entirely assigned female at birth (AFAB).
“A familiar story emerges -- the transmasculine child becomes nothing more than a confused girl, led astray by a combination of "misogynistic" trans activism and a desperate need for attention. Their friends pressure them into "identifying as" a boy or a nonbinary person, and they supposedly move further and further away from their "true" self, sinking further into depression as they go.”
“My teenage years existed in close proximity to this TERF-driven scrutiny, which was fixated on identifying how ‘authentically trans’ people like me really were.
“In 2013, shortly after I chopped off all my hair into a deeply regrettable floppy Justin Bieber cut, I moved to London, the land of Enid Blyton murder mysteries. A block from my new house was the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, an imposing grey building which contained the country's only child and adolescent ‘gender identity clinic.’
“I watched as my friend, after a year of weekly appointments trying desperately to get an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, was denied the diagnosis, and with it any hope of top surgery because they sometimes wore skirts.
“I watched organisations with names like
@Transgendertrd refer to trans Tavistock patients as ‘experimental subjects’who didn't know what was best for them.
“I watched as my school's former principal told a national news outlet that trans students like me and many of my close friends were c*s women who were only coming out to ‘cause turbulence’ and ‘adhere to anything a bit radical.’
“I watched all this happen, and I quietly stopped wearing underwire bras, and wore baggier clothes, and I felt a fierce surge of jealousy every time I walked into the Tavistock for therapy and saw patients turn left, towards the medical spaces I didn't feel ‘trans enough’ to enter.”
“In 2013, shortly after I chopped off all my hair into a deeply regrettable floppy Justin Bieber cut, I moved to London, the land of Enid Blyton murder mysteries. A block from my new house was the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, an imposing grey building which contained the country's only child and adolescent ‘gender identity clinic.’
“I watched as my friend, after a year of weekly appointments trying desperately to get an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, was denied the diagnosis, and with it any hope of top surgery because they sometimes wore skirts.
“I watched organisations with names like
@Transgendertrd refer to trans Tavistock patients as ‘experimental subjects’who didn't know what was best for them.
“I watched as my school's former principal told a national news outlet that trans students like me and many of my close friends were c*s women who were only coming out to ‘cause turbulence’ and ‘adhere to anything a bit radical.’
“I watched all this happen, and I quietly stopped wearing underwire bras, and wore baggier clothes, and I felt a fierce surge of jealousy every time I walked into the Tavistock for therapy and saw patients turn left, towards the medical spaces I didn't feel ‘trans enough’ to enter.”
“As someone who felt barred from it for years, I believe firmly trans children deserve access to compre-hensive, free, and accessible gender-related medical care. But I have my own hesitations about trans activism that focuses too heavily on dysphoria diagnosis and surgery dates.
“It's tempting to counter TERF logic by pointing to examples of trans children who have "always known," exhibit textbook symptoms of gender dysphoria, and can be easily placed within a transition timeline. But in its most extreme form, this argument morphs into transmedicalism. Transmedi-calists, or "transmeds," are those who fixate on acute gender dysphoria as a litmus test for "true" transness.
“Transmed Youtubers mock nonbinary people and gender nonconforming trans people as "transtrenders." The message becomes clear: the only "authentic" form of transness is one that can be diagnosed by rules set out by cisgender medical professionals. The "legitimacy" of my gender again disappears.”
“It's tempting to counter TERF logic by pointing to examples of trans children who have "always known," exhibit textbook symptoms of gender dysphoria, and can be easily placed within a transition timeline. But in its most extreme form, this argument morphs into transmedicalism. Transmedi-calists, or "transmeds," are those who fixate on acute gender dysphoria as a litmus test for "true" transness.
“Transmed Youtubers mock nonbinary people and gender nonconforming trans people as "transtrenders." The message becomes clear: the only "authentic" form of transness is one that can be diagnosed by rules set out by cisgender medical professionals. The "legitimacy" of my gender again disappears.”
“Whether TERF or transmed, the same implications about trans children arise over and over again. If we can only get to the bottom of the true meaning of trans childhood, the "debate" asserts, we will understand the meaning of transness itself.
“If we can only objectively prove, with clinical diagnoses and data science, that childhood gender dysphoria does or does not persist into adulthood, is or is not alleviated by medical intervention, then we can prove the "truth" of trans identity. They neglect to realise that identity has never been that easily digestible. I didn't have, in many ways, an “authentically" trans or not-trans childhood. I related uneasily to femininity, but not with revulsion. I wore eyeliner and lipstick throughout much of high school. I had few girl friends in elementary school, but never expressed a desire to "run around with the boys."
“So where does that leave me? Am I a c*s woman pretending? A trans man running from my own identity? A nonbinary person finally expressing my "true" authentic self?”
“If we can only objectively prove, with clinical diagnoses and data science, that childhood gender dysphoria does or does not persist into adulthood, is or is not alleviated by medical intervention, then we can prove the "truth" of trans identity. They neglect to realise that identity has never been that easily digestible. I didn't have, in many ways, an “authentically" trans or not-trans childhood. I related uneasily to femininity, but not with revulsion. I wore eyeliner and lipstick throughout much of high school. I had few girl friends in elementary school, but never expressed a desire to "run around with the boys."
“So where does that leave me? Am I a c*s woman pretending? A trans man running from my own identity? A nonbinary person finally expressing my "true" authentic self?”
“The truth is, honestly, that most trans children and young adults have experiences not dissimilar to my own. Most lie somewhere in between what trans and cis childhood is "supposed" to look like.Who's to say, for instance, who the boygirl of my childhood stories “really was"?
“A 2019 production of an Enid Blyton series interpreted her tomboy character Bill as a trans-masculine nonbinary person. Following the release of Greta Gerwig's Little Women, a flurry of fan interpretations wrote Jo March alternately as a c*s lesbian and a trans man. I'm thrilled by all of these perspectives. These narratives coexist in real life, and though they differ greatly, they also sometimes overlap. That doesn't mean, by any means, that transness doesn't have a place in them.”
“A 2019 production of an Enid Blyton series interpreted her tomboy character Bill as a trans-masculine nonbinary person. Following the release of Greta Gerwig's Little Women, a flurry of fan interpretations wrote Jo March alternately as a c*s lesbian and a trans man. I'm thrilled by all of these perspectives. These narratives coexist in real life, and though they differ greatly, they also sometimes overlap. That doesn't mean, by any means, that transness doesn't have a place in them.”
“Trans children deserve support, love, affirmation of their identity, and access to resources like puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming clothing.
“They also deserve to have all of this on their own terms, without the legitimacy of their transness being interrogated, over and over, by transmeds and TERFs.
“So let's make space for the trans kids who exist in ways not legible to gender identity clinics, or whose narratives are too frequently co-opted by supposed ‘concerned parents.’ Let's hear it for the ‘inauthentic’ trans kids, believing in themselves just hard enough, running home late for afternoon tea.” - Sasha Carney, daughter of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“They also deserve to have all of this on their own terms, without the legitimacy of their transness being interrogated, over and over, by transmeds and TERFs.
“So let's make space for the trans kids who exist in ways not legible to gender identity clinics, or whose narratives are too frequently co-opted by supposed ‘concerned parents.’ Let's hear it for the ‘inauthentic’ trans kids, believing in themselves just hard enough, running home late for afternoon tea.” - Sasha Carney, daughter of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The original publication of Sasha Carney’s essay can be found here: static1.squarespace.com/static/598d52a…
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