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Wednesday 17 January 2018

Childhood gender confusion

Mercatornet has an interesting piece on children suffering from ‘gender dysphoria’ written by Dr John Whitehall, Professor of Paediatrics at Western Sydney University. He describes this trend as a "behavioural fad" and even in the absence of personal experience I'm inclined to believe him.

Childhood gender dysphoria is described as the distress associated with persistent, insistent and resistant identification by a child with the gender of the opposite sex. No one knows why this occurs: there is no proven biological or psychological cause. It is not a new phenomenon. Rare cases are on record from years past.

But now children are reported to be suffering in numbers which are increasing exponentially every year. Protagonists argue that, in the past, the phenomenon was hidden by social attitudes but that, now, access to the internet is providing confidence for children and parents to declare membership in the ranks of the ‘gender fluid’.

Its rarity, however, was confirmed for me, a paediatrician of over 50 years experience, when I polled 28 of my colleagues and found only 12 cases could be re-called from a total experience of 931 years. In 10 of these cases there was severe mental co-morbidity: the other 2 were associated with severe sexual abuse.

I believe this modern phenomenon represents a behavioural fad which is spreading through the community in a contagious manner, fanned by an uncritical and enthusiastic media, and given direction by websites and such governmental directives as the so-called ‘safe schools programme’. The problem obviously affects children but also, strange to say, parents, especially some mothers who seem prone to become so enmeshed they emerge as cheer leaders in the transition of their offspring.

6 comments:

Sam Vega said...

"The problem obviously affects children but also, strange to say, parents, especially some mothers who seem prone to become so enmeshed they emerge as cheer leaders in the transition of their offspring."

It's often the mothers, isn't it? Whenever you see accounts of these children with pictures (I've seen several in the media recently) there's always some opinionated feminist mother who is the custodian of the freak-show, and often a grinning compliant softie-dad lurking in the background.

I think it's the media that are driving this nonsense. If the main newspapers and the BBC did a series of coordinated spoof articles claiming that children were turning into fire extinguishers, there would be a ready crowd of daft women who painted their kids red and hung them on walls, and serious debates about whether it was cruel to use CO2 children on electrical fires.

Clacket said...

Sam is bang on. It’s nice to find an expert, sensible and reasoned observation arising from within Australian academia. Most of what I’ve seen recently has suggested that they were pretty much completely barking.

The telling and striking bit in your quoted extract was …’access to the internet is providing confidence for children and parents to declare membership in the ranks of the ‘gender fluid’’. Of course, it’s not really the poor, fragile, effectively thicko ‘children’ who are independently capable of ‘accessing the internet’ to their supposed advantage. It’s their dismal, delinquent and discontented guardians, also known as ‘parents’. Astoundingly, they don’t care about the damage, as long as they make their peculiar ‘point’. And it is all ‘pay per click per view’ vicariously notorious for the perma-slack-jawed audience.

I, my trusty dog and a few other bemused and bewildered souls on the internet don’t think my view should even be contentious. Remains to be seen how much this is a fad or a feature going forward. I still have the niggling feeling that, despite all I’ve seen and ought to know, I’m still not nearly cynical enough.

Sackerson said...

Munchhausen's By Proxy.

wiggiatlarge said...

The whole thing has become a farce, at least this politician has seen the light......

https://youtu.be/sR4uyMjUnDI

James Higham said...

Some of these mothers are on a one way trip to the hot place.

A K Haart said...

Sam - I like that - "a grinning compliant softie-dad lurking in the background." Part of the problem.

Clacket - I know just what you mean about not being nearly cynical enough. A rational standpoint can simply disappear as sanity recedes into the distance.

Sackers - I agree. Something oddly superstitious too - akin to ideas about possession.

Wiggia - I like it.

James - I hope so.