#111 

Sara from FiLiA in conversation with Stephanie Davies-Arai from Transgender Trend

Sara: So welcome everyone to this episode of the podcast. My name is Sara and I am one of the volunteers, and I'm here today with Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend, which is an organization that describes itself as a group of parents and professionals concerned about the current trend to diagnose gender non-conforming children as transgender.

Stephanie, we are deeply honoured and so happy that you've joined us for this FiLiA podcast. And thank you so much for speaking with us. Would you mind introducing yourself to any listeners who aren't already familiar with your very important voice in this area? 

Stephanie: Hi. Thanks for inviting me on. Yes, very briefly. I've worked with parents for over 20 years and teachers, I teach communication skills and communications is my area really so I wrote a book called Communicating with Kids. So my work is very based on what language we use, how we talk to children, what children understand from what we say to them. And it was from that position that I began to have an interest in this area because I noticed there was actually a lot of stories in the media about trans children, and they were totally uncritical. The parents were described as supportive and the children were brave. 

And as I've worked with parents for so long, I've heard everything. I've got four children of my own who are now all in their twenties. I've heard every story you could possibly imagine. And this was new. Never heard this one before.

So I began to do some research into it, and I got more and more alarmed really by what I was seeing. And I wrote my first article about it because I wrote a weekly parenting blog at the time and thought, well, I have a responsibility to write about this subject because nobody else was touching it.

And the response I got was so overwhelming, grateful parents contacting me, they daren’t speak out because they'd be seen as bigots or transphobic. So that showed me that there was a need for some support for these parents. And also the parents had been looking online for supports, and all they found was trans groups who said, you must affirm that your daughter is a boy. You must affirm that your boy is now your daughter. And I felt that what parents needed was evidence-based information. All in one place, one resource on the net. Because I do think parents have a right to see all the information. And also because I noticed that there was no voice of challenge in the media at that time. It was 2015.

I wanted to be that voice in the media and I knew they wouldn't contact me. I knew that I had to be an organisation and I had to have a website and it worked. I was very quickly consulted by the media. I was on news night with Susie Green of Mermaids in 2016, and I was quoted all over the press and appeared on the radio, et cetera.

I called the organisation Transgender Trend because parents were telling me that was the search term they were putting into Google. And in fact, I've learned since that some of the professionals that contacted me also found me that way, and parents are still finding me that way. I am still contacted by parents who put that such term into Google. So I called it that for that reason. 

But I was looking at more neutral names at the time. Things like Let Kids Be Kids or, you know, which was taken. And when I look back, I think I wouldn't have had the impact that I had so quickly if I'd chosen a neutral name, that actually the name does what it says on the tin.

I am challenging this trend, particularly the upward trend of referrals of children to the Tavistock, particularly adolescents, teenage girls, autistic kids, lesbian and gay kids. That is exactly what I'm challenging. So the name does what it says on the tin. It challenges and also the fact that we're calling children transgender. We didn't do that before. So that's a recent, very, very recent trend. 

And one of the things I resist very strongly is the obfuscation of language that this whole transgender movement uses. The corruption of the meaning of words, euphemisms, such as top surgery, that means double mastectomy.

And, you know, I'm a northerner, I call a spade a spade. And I'm quite defiant about using correct language. It's a really tricky area, particularly as I'm writing often about young people. So I have a kind of disclaimer or an explanation on the website about the way that I use language. And I'm very careful that when I'm talking about vulnerable young people, I try not to use pronouns at all actually.

There's a real line that you have to be aware of there that I don't want to hurt young people who are vulnerable. But at the same time, what I'm writing about doesn't make sense if I use the obfuscating language of the ideology. So it's a constant challenge really to use direct clear language without being banned from Twitter let's say …..

Sara: Well, absolutely, and I think that's what it seems to me, one of the challenges in terms of feminist discourse in this area generally is how do you use words that make sense, but at the same time sort of are related enough to these new concepts, let's say, or these, like for example, when you mentioned top surgery, that the people who use the euphemism top surgery understand what you're saying as well as the people who don't, if that makes any sense.

Like how do you merge these two concepts into a language that is accessible almost to everyone who needs to find out what it is that you're saying and that sort of resource.

Stephanie: It's really tricky. So things, for example, like, chest binding, that means breast binding, it's done by females, it's binding the breasts.

So chest sort of covers up the fact who is doing it and on which part of the body they're doing it to. And I tend to use both of those, depending on what I'm saying or who I'm communicating with. 

So sometimes on Twitter, I've used chest binding because, for example, during Covid, there was some bad advice about chest binding going out, and I wanted to reach the young people who were accessing that bad advice so I use the term chest binding, and in other cases, when I'm writing a blog, I might, I use breast binding.

 If I'm talking to people behind the scenes. If I'm talking to policy makers, I will stress that it's breast binding. So you can use language in different fields, but my main audience, the people that I'm speaking to is parents and policy makers. So that includes teachers, professionals, parents. It's not young people per se, although I try to be respectful of young people. 

One of the things that I hate about this is how children and young people are used as political footballs, that they are used to further political rights, and I don't want to be doing the same from my side. I want to remain as neutral as I possibly can in looking at the issues without becoming political and overriding the sort of sensitivities that I feel you have to have towards children when you are working in this area and towards parents, actually. Because another thing is that I wouldn't ever condemn a parent for the way that they choose to approach their child's gender dysphoria. I think it's incredibly difficult and complicated area. 

There's a lot of really bad information out there, and parents listen to the professionals and I cannot judge and I never have in my work actually judged another parent for the choices they make. So yes, there's a lot of things working in this particular area.

I think there are different issues to, if you are a women's rights organisation that is campaigning for something very specific, there are different sensitivities when you're working with parents and young people and children.  

Sara: Certainly when you speak and when you write on this topic, that sense of like empathy and safeguarding really shine through.

And I wondered a little bit on the subject of women's rights. How does your knowledge of a feminism inform your particular approach? 

Stephanie: I believe that if you are working in any area, you have to have a feminist perspective. If you don't, your policies or your decisions are going to be male centric because men are the default sex. You have to have a feminist perspective.

And in this area, you could say in some ways it's a feminist issue because we are seeing huge rise in referrals to the Tavistock over the last decade. It's teenage girls who have driven that massive increase in referrals. 

I have four children, I have three boys, and then my daughter is the youngest. I brought them up during an era when we had page three, lads mags, the sort of environment that they were brought up in was, it was very clear that my daughter was seeing images all around her in supermarkets, in newsagents that gave her an idea of what a woman was. And it was a very sexualised, objectified, passive idea of what she would become as a woman.

Whereas my boys, even though the objectification of men was increasing in magazines, you know, Men's Health and Six Pack and all of that, it was increasing at that time. But, my boys had a much wider range of role models or representation of man, even in pictures, even on the TV and in films, than my daughter had.

And so that sort of sharpened my ideas about the importance of images and environments. And I did a lot of research at that time, and I was a member of the No More Page Three campaign. In that work, I worked with Girl Guiding, I worked with young women. I'd go to universities and I'd speak to young women.

So I'd hear the stories of how they experienced sexism and objectification today, and some really horrendous stories of how they were groped, how they had to protect themselves. I heard young women saying they would wear two pairs of tights when going out for the night. So I had a very hands-on experience of young women and how they were affected by the very objectifying, sexist culture they were growing up in. 

And of course there's been the spread of internet online porn during this time as well. The smartphone, I think, came in in 2007. So that really informed me much more about the importance of representation and presentation and the issues that women face today.

 My daughter's 21 now, and I'm very, very aware of the messages that she gets from her culture. So this is a huge area of my work. It always has been the cultural messages that we send to children as well as parenting and the actual language and words we use towards children and young people. It's the messages that the culture sends to them. And that message has become over the last decade, more and more extreme, in terms of women are sex objects and men rule the world, even though women's rights and we've gained such a lot in my lifetime. It seems that parallel to the rights we've gained has been this sort of pushback from media and representation. It's in youth culture, music, videos, et cetera. But it's gone the opposite way. It's almost a bit like it's been a backlash against the gains that women have made legally. 

Sara: And do you sort of see what's happening in terms of gender identity teaching and this kind of, let's say Transgender Trend as being kind of part of that, given the fact that this is in some ways anchored in, in gender stereotyping? 

Stephanie: Yes, I do, we've had two things going on. I've talked about the wider culture. We've also had the same thing going on in children's toys and children's marketing that has become extremely gender stereotypes. You've got the pink world for girls and the blue world for boys. And I remember when Lego first introduced its Lego Friends series and how awful that was for my daughter who was suddenly patronised, it's, it's not Lego anymore, it's play-mobile, there's no building skills required.

So when even Lego did that and Kinder Eggs, I don’t know if you remember, in Kinder Eggs, you used to get a little car or a little doll. Now they're for girls or they're for boys. The Kinder Egg for girls is pink. The Kinder Egg for boys is blue. 

So during my work the other area that I really studied was parenting culture.

I researched all the kind of parenting advice books and to me there were a lot of things that sort of dovetailed to create a really fertile ground for gender identity ideas to come in. And one of them was the Parenting Advice culture, it's massive industry and it tells parents that your child is born fully formed. They don't say this in as many words, but basically they have a fully formed self. And it's the parent's job to facilitate the expression of that self. And that's why, you know, so parents tiptoe around their children, giving them loads of choices, asking them their opinion and everything, and children take part in decision making, et cetera.

Oh, I think as a parent, it's good that we listen to children more. these days than, when I was a child. But on the other hand, this takes it further into giving your child the power or the responsibility, which a child cannot carry. And that's why children become unhappy and distressed. They don't really want that power. They want you to have it because then they feel secure. 

But this idea that we must nurture our child's self-esteem constantly and listen to them, and that's become, we must agree with them. So that staple now of parenting advice has developed alongside this idea that girls are pretty pink princesses and boys are tough, macho heroes and world leaders.

And so you have the, the two ideas that my little boy is born loving Princess costumes, that is his authentic self because he's born with a fully intact self. And because it's the girls who like the princess costumes and he's saying he's a girl, therefore he's a girl because he knows who he is. So this idea of my child knows who they are and they're just expressing that and I have to accept that because I want my child to be happy. 

And of course a child does know who they are as a four-year-old or as a seven-year-old, or as a 15-year-old or as a 17-year-old. They don't know who they will be. And they don't know who they are at age 20, 25, 20 30, because the one certainty of childhood and adolescence is change.

It's a development, it's growing up and we're treating children as if they are adults. And this is the area that I think I'm most concerned with, that we're treating children as if they have the life experience, the cognitive development, the understanding of adults, and of course they don't.

And so to treat a child in that way is to misunderstand a child, is to treat a child in ways that are very, very inappropriate and harmful for a child. 

Sara: In paediatrics, one of the very key mantras is children are not small adults, that they are children. You can't just transpose what you know from adult medicine onto children, if that makes sense.

And I think that's probably especially true when it comes to something like this notion of gender dysphoria, let's say, 

Stephanie: Which has become, I think gender dysphoria has become gender identity. And that fits perfectly into this model that parents have already been trained to believe. So your child's true self is their gender identity, and that's fully formed and intact, and you must respect it and facilitate that.

You can transpose this idea very clearly onto the parenting of advice that already exists. It's just a part of it. It's one manifestation of parenting advice that's already been out there and been reinforced over the last decade. 

Sara: It’s interesting that these things have sort of come together in that way.

I wanted to sort of turn towards your work specifically in schools, if that's okay. And what is being communicated about kind of gender identity and sex in sort of more formal teaching by activist groups and, and how do you think that's affecting, especially girls in schools?

Stephanie: In schools the idea of gender identity is being taught and has been taught as fact and in fact the idea of gender, it comes from queer theory. It says that your biological sex is not real. It's just not really part of you. It's assigned to you at birth by some force outside yourself. It's not you. It's not really you, but your gender identity is your authentic self. And that's huge. 

A lot of children's literature focuses on being you, being yourself, being who you really are. A lot of anti-bullying material focuses on that as well. It's quite common that that is presented as something that's good and right, and nobody must question that. So it, again, it feeds into pre-existing messages, and it's been, it seems to have been accepted and taken whole by the teaching profession that this ideology, and it is an ideology, it's a set of ideas. It doesn't come down into the real world. It is a set of abstract ideas and interpretations, but it doesn't come down into the body. So it says that a woman or a man is an identity, a gender identity. In fact, you know, a woman is a living, breathing flesh and blood, menstruating human being, female, human being embodied.

So, this is an ideology that is dehumanised and disembodied from real life. It's a theory and immediately you look at it, it doesn't stand up. It depends on circular definitions. It depends on this concept of gender identity, which isn't backed up by any science, although I would say that the term gender identity has been used and was used in child development text as meaning the age when a child begins to understand which sex they are.

So it was used in just a neutral way, gender identity, and it's become, the meaning now, I think we need to be really aware the meaning of gender identity now is that every human being is born with this innate sense of being a man or a woman, and that is independent of their biological sex. It's independent of their socialisation as boys or girls. We don't know where it exists. So that's what gender identity means. 

I think it's a term we need to stop using. It's been used as if it is a concrete, real thing, as sexual orientation is. So you see in schools’ materials now, bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity and that gender identity must be questioned.

But because it's tacked onto gay and lesbian bisexual rights, I think that's part of the reason we can't question it. 

So in schools, schools are now teaching children what they've already learned on the internet, from Tumblr, from Reddit, from YouTube videos, from social media platforms that if you feel like a boy, you literally are a boy and nobody must question that because that's your gender identity and that's your authentic self. And if anybody questions it, they want you dead or they want to erase you because they're not accepting who you really are. 

It's all very emotive language and, and very emotive concepts. But when you look at the facts, it doesn't hold water.

It's not true. It's not true that believing in yourself to be a boy makes you a boy. And the problem is that as children are learning this in school as fact, they're also learning that anybody who doesn't agree with you is a bigot, is a transphobe, is full of hate. It’s hate. And so it's a huge social justice issue.

And of course the adolescents are passionate about social justice issues and it taps into that as well. And being part of the gang, being accepted by your peer group is possibly the most fundamental, important thing of adolescents that you are part, you are accepted and part of your peer group. And adolescents are particularly susceptible to indoctrination, to grooming online, to being influenced.

It's why we protect young people because no matter how mature they are or how sensible, they don't have the life experience, and therefore they're very easy to exploit, which I think is what is going on. Children's very good qualities, their passion for justice and equality are being exploited to further political aims.

And for girls in particular, I don't think it's a mystery why it's overwhelmingly girls who are being referred to the Tavistock. I think if you understand the cultural environment that girls are growing up in now, which is more extreme than ever before, in terms of porn, in terms of selfies and Instagram and the impossible ideals of beauty, female beauty that girls were expected to live up to the pressures on girls, pressures on boys have increased as well with programs like Love Island and the beautiful male body. 

But for girls it's so extreme and we do have the research for decades on how sexualisation and objectification affects the mental health of adolescent girls. We have the, the APA Task Force on the Sexualisation of Girls was 2007. Linda Papadopoulos produced a report for the government in 2010.

The effects have been documented in other research studies. Actually, Girl Guiding do a report every year, which reports the effects on girls and it's all consistent. The results show it leads to low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, self-harming, eating disorders, and those are the same mental health issues that we're seeing in teenage girls being referred to the Tavistock.

And of course, now they've got a new way of understanding themselves and a way that actually gives them a way out. We have all these ways that girls try and stop themselves becoming women by starving themselves. And now they've been presented with this way out actually you’re really a boy. You don't have to grow up to be a woman. 

So it taps into all of the insecurities and issues and self-hatred, body hatred that unfortunately is fairly common and increasing in adolescent girls. But we are not treating these girls as adolescent girls. We're not looking at their treatment within the framework of adolescent girls’ mental health, because that would be transphobic because their gender identity is as boys.

So we can't do that. So the ideology itself prevents us from looking any closer at the ideology. 

Sara: It seems to be shutting down a lot of the medical curiosity as well because it sounds to me like a lot of the clinicians involved in this are saying that there's somewhat dumbfounded or have no explanation as to why this particular pattern is happening.

Stephanie: Yes, I hear from the Tavistock, we don't know why there's been such an increase. Maybe it's because trans people are more visible now. Maybe it's because young people know where they can go, but that doesn't explain why it's so overwhelmingly adolescent girls who are choosing this. They're not older women who think, oh, now I can transition, it's adolescent girls.

 That gender identity model in schools actually prevents any girl who is, for whatever reason, gender non-conforming, and that would encompass autistic girls, very high risk. 35% to 48% who refer to the Tavistock are autistic boys and girls who tend not to conform to stereotypes. Lesbians, of course, don't tend to conform to very feminine stereotypes. And then there's the geeky girls, the science girls, the girls who are a bit different don't fit in for whatever reason. It may be girls that have suffered previous trauma or you see a lot of kids from care homes. They're really, really vulnerable cohorts here and are the kids who are bullied and left out, and so they feel they're not accepted in the same sex peer group.

And what the gender identity model teaches them is that if they don't fit those stereotypes, they are correct in their perception, that they are wrong in some way. They're wrong, they're not girls, they're not proper girls. And because the gender ideology model has set up a new binary, it hates the male female binary. That's what we've got. We must challenge it and set up a new binary, which is trans and cis. You are either transgender or you are cisgender, or you are non-binary in the middle, which means you're neither male nor female.

If you say, I'm a cisgender girl, you are saying, I conform to stereotypes of femininity. I accept those that's who I am. If you are a non-conforming girl, you cannot just say, I'm a girl. You have to say I'm non-binary. Or I'm trans-masculine, or I'm somewhere else on this gender identity spectrum. The meaning of the word girl has become a feminine, somebody who embodies feminine stereotypes. And girls, if they're non-conforming in any way, have to identify out of girlhood altogether. So it's an absolute trap and it does not allow for any difference or non-conformity. And it's brought into schools under the banner of diversity and inclusion.

Those are two words that I've become very suspicious of. There's a whole bunch of words now that I don't like anymore. It's not about diversity. It kills diversity. It does not allow the really gender non-conforming girl to just call herself a girl proudly. In fact, she mustn't use the word girl.

A lot of the teaching is stop using the words girls and boys and just use pupils or students and, and we know that what that means in effect is erasure of the words girl and women in language. And that's why we're getting menstruaters and people who menstruate, pregnant people. 

And so children are learning, and it's just from early years onwards. I've counted 38 picture books for the early years and prime years that are trans non-binary picture books.

So right from the very start, children are taught that some words might offend people. And some of those words are words like girl and no girl should be brought up to think that using the word girl is offensive in any way to anybody. 

Sara: Absolutely. But also like 38 books really? Who's publishing all of this?

Stephanie: Well, Jessica Kingsley Publishing has published a lot, Routledge, all of the major publishers, they all have their trans titles. 

When these adolescents arrive at the Tavistock, they've all been already thoroughly conditioned into believing that they are really boys and they've been conditioned by the internet, by social media, by the media, the BBC, all of their peer group, their teachers, all of the responsible adults in authority around them. The CAMHS (Child and Mental Health) therapists, everybody is affirming to her that she is really a boy because her gender identity overrides her biological sex. And she believes, and the Tavistock do not acknowledge this, that somehow this generation of children is presumed to exist in a cultural vacuum or somehow outside their culture, that this generation uniquely is immune to the messages that the culture sends to them. And everywhere they look, sends them the same message, but they're immune to that because they're special, magical trans children and normal rules don't apply. They're somehow different. 

We don't need to look at child psychology and development. We don't need to look at adolescent development and the quest for identity in adolescence. We don't need all the information, all the knowledge built up over decades that we know about children, about adolescents, all thrown out of the window for this one cohort of children. 

But there is no acknowledgement of the cultural context within which so many girls, and I will keep saying boys as well, because I think that there's also been a massive increase in boys and they get overlooked because it's so much more for girls.

But I think we are also seeing, it's been termed Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria which is unprecedented historically for girls. It's unheard of. It's something completely new. But I think we're seeing that in boys as well. And the parents who contact me about boys, their sons are 100% gay, they're autism spectrum ADHD, OCD. So I think we're seeing a similar thing happening with boys and we mustn't forget them. 

But of course, because it's so overwhelming with girls. We do focus on the girls. 

Sara: And I think probably also because perhaps it's not quite a course correction in, in a sense, but it's, it's kind of coming at this from a feminist lens, so you're trying to centre the female experience in some of these discussions. 

Stephanie: I'm aware that I talk about girls more than boys but I try to balance that with autistic kids. That's boys and girls. You know, there's lesbian and gay kids. I think it's happening more to lesbians after puberty than in the adolescent years. 

But I'm concerned about all kids. And what I do is I bring a feminist lens to all kids, not just girls. I bring a feminist lens to everything I do so that it's balanced. So, I try to work and to acknowledge all the children who are getting caught up in this because they are vulnerable kids, all of them.

Sara: Absolutely, and we are so thankful for the work that you do and, and your voice and kind of the analysis that you bring to this. 

I wondered if we could go back a little bit to the question of medical transition, and you sort of have kind of touched upon this already, but I think one of the questions was about consent and how children could possibly be able to give consent to various medical interventions for gender dysphoria or gender identity in congruence or whatever the quasi medical term for this kind of notion of feeling like something about your identity isn't quite congruent with your biological sex, if that makes any sense. 

Could you talk to us a bit about how all these different stages in transition, so something like social transition is related to different steps in kind of maybe medical transition and is it even possible? 

Stephanie: Okay, so what's happened over the last five, 10 years is this massive increase in social transitions.

And you're seeing that in schools where a boy will come back to school as a girl, and social transition is something completely new. And this is based on affirmation. And the affirmation approach tells a little boy, you are a girl, tells a girl you are a boy. 

The affirmation approach was developed by activists. It's not a clinical model. It hasn't developed out of clinical research and clinical knowledge. So it's a political approach. It's an activist approach. It's promoted as being kind. You're accepting a child's gender identity. In fact, you're not, you're giving the child misleading information that they are, in fact, the opposite sex, which is where the language comes in, it covers up what's, what's really happening, but it's promoted as kind, the only kind thing to do. And who wouldn't want to be kind to a child. In fact, it's a very extreme psychological approach towards a child. 

And the established approach was called Watchful Waiting. Watch and Wait. And that approach would look at underlying factors. It would look at the family, the background of the child, the environment the child was being brought up in whether that child had suffered any previous trauma. Sexual abuse is sort of recognized as a possible cause. And all of those underlying issues are now discounted and the child is simply affirmed. 

If a boy says, I'm a girl, he's a girl, and he'll be affirmed by parents, by teachers, by clinical professionals, that's very new. We don't know if that is a safe approach. There is no evidence to show the safety of that approach and therefore the justification for using that approach in schools.

And I think teachers do not realise that it's not a neutral act to affirm a child. It's an extreme act on one side. So Watchful Waiting was a neutral way of allowing a child to essentially grow up. And we do know that around 80% of pre-pubescent children who develop sort of cross sex identity will come to terms with their natal sex during puberty. And there's a very high possibility there would be gay or lesbian. 

The evidence and the research that we do have is about children who develop gender dysphoria in early childhood, age three or four or five. It's not much evidence, it's based mostly on boys because at that time it was mostly boys being referred to gender identity clinics, and that's the evidence that shows us that most children do grow out of those feelings of discomfort with their own, sex.

What we are seeing now is children developing gender dysphoria after adolescence. So the other thing about the treatment is that the puberty blocker treatment was developed for that very small percentage of children who persisted in their gender dysphoria, right throughout their childhoods, reached the age of 16 as it was then, and it was a kind of last resort treatment because they had been given help and support and some sort of investigation. But if they were still really, really insistent at age 16, they’d be given puberty blockers. 

That was the model. That has turned into children who developed gender dysphoria in adolescence, particularly girls, and that is historically unprecedented.  There were always a few boys, a very small minority of boys who developed gender dysphoria later, but mostly it was before puberty.

So we've got this whole new cohort, we know nothing about them. We've got Lisa Littman's study of parental reports that suggested social contagion as one possible cause or reason but we are giving a treatment that was designed for a completely different cohort. We're just transplanting that same treatment onto this cohort who cannot be said to have persisted long term in gender dysphoria. It's something that's emerged at adolescents.

 So that adds another layer of our lack of thought and care for this adolescent age group. So transgender using that word, and transgender is not an explanation. Transgender means a boy who thinks he's a girl. Then we call him a transgender girl, only in language is he a girl.

So the only evidence we have, there have been a few studies, and there was one from the Dutch team, Thomas Steensma in 2013, which showed that social transition was the strongest predictor of persistence of gender dysphoria, which means the children who were socially transitioned were more likely to continue to have a transgender identity and to become transsexual as adults.

And transsexual is an outcome. It's not something we, we don't call pre-pubescent children gay or lesbian, but we do call them transgender. But these are all outcomes. They're adult outcomes. They're not fixed conditions of childhood. But once, of course, you socially transition, if you're telling a boy he's a girl every day, and all his peer group and everybody, all the trusted adults are saying the same, then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I think we hear a lot about suicidal ideation of children and they must get their puberty blockers, otherwise they're more likely to commit suicide. This is something that I think, of course, really, really, really scares parents. Any parent would be scared by that and there's no evidence to support that, that if children are not affirmed and allowed to have puberty blockers that they're more likely to commit suicide. By the way, there is no evidence to support that contention. 

But it does make me wonder whether, if you are a little boy and you've started to say you're a girl, say from age four or age six, and then you've had the experience for years of being treated as a girl, as if you are really a girl in school within your peer group, you make your whole life based on this fallacy that you are completely disassociated from your body and you are really a girl. 

So if you imagine this little boy and he approaches puberty. All the other girls are suddenly developing breasts and hips and they're starting menstruation. And all of those issues that are particular to girls during their puberty and development, he's not experiencing. And his body is beginning to get facial hair, his voice might drop. And so how much does that create the depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation at the stage of puberty for a small child who doesn't yet understand what puberty is and what being a man is or what being a woman is.

And so of course the socially transitioned child is of course desperate to get those puberty blockers and stop his body developing in a way that's completely different to how the girls are developing. And then once you are on puberty blockers, the research shows, and this is from all over the world, from the Dutch, the US and the Tavistock, that almost a hundred percent of children, once they go onto puberty blockers don't come off the medical pathway. They progress at age 16 to the to cross sex hormone. 

So you can see every stage of this process begins with affirmation. It creates the next stage and the need for the next stage. So yes, I think it's iatrogenic (induced in a patient by the treatment or comments of a physician) We're starting from a fallacy. We're starting from the point where we're giving small children false information about who they are.

And then this leads to this cascade of created needs for medical treatment. And of course, we haven't done this to children before. We don't know the effects of puberty blockers. There's some really worrying research on puberty blockers used for precocious puberty, which is when puberty begins at age five or six, and that's mostly girls. 

We've got research on the kind of medication that's used it is used for, for late stage prostate cancer in men, and we've got our research on that, on the memory loss and the depression that it causes and cognitive effects in grown men. The same drug is used to castrate sex offenders. 

These are not smarties we're giving to children. These are really powerful drugs and studies on sheep at the moment, which are ongoing, are showing really worrying irreversible effects on cognitive development and the idea that you can halt puberty and then just pick it up a few years later. It's an indication of how this ideology is completely divorced from reality and from embodied reality. I think what the ideology does is that it places ideas in your head or feelings above the body. And when you do that, and I think particularly for children and adolescents who are very vulnerable to adults' actions, then you are saying that the body is irrelevant. And therefore once you say the body is irrelevant and the feelings in the head are the real thing, then you can abuse the body. The body becomes something that yes, you can change your body just as you can change your clothes. And when I look at school's guidance, that's how it's presented. You know, you might want to express your gender identity by changing your clothes or changing your hairstyle or taking hormone blockers or Cross sex hormones. 

It's like you can have a designer body and the dangerous thing again for any gender non-conforming child, is that non-binary is not a safe space for you. I think it might be useful, I think, for some children, because having a gender identity has become the only way to show that you are a rebel or that you're non-conforming or you're different, you're not a conventional person. And teenagers have always had their tribes that they go into in adolescence when identity development starts by identifying with a tribe where you all have the same rules. You all like the same music, you all wear the same clothes, you all have the same haircuts. So you follow the rules of the tribe. And that's a really important step to developing your individual identity as an adult. 

So now the only tribe that's sort of rebellious and non-conforming, cool, edgy is the gender identity tribe. So you must be trans or non-binary. You must have a gender identity, but non-binary is not safe because the ideology says that you can change your body to match your personality. I mean, that's a, a ridiculous concept anyway. 

And of course they don't say that directly, they don’t say you must do that, but of course every self-respecting teenager knows what it is to be true trans. And that kids who are really transgender are suicidal. Teenagers have learned that, and they're the ones who are on the hormones taking the drugs.

So if you know anything about teenage culture, you will know what a dangerous message this is to teenagers and how it will exacerbate, and teenagers will push themselves because of peer pressure, into these extreme treatments. And nobody is saying, stop. Nobody is saying, actually, it's impossible to change sex actually. Do you really believe that? Nobody is stopping and doing a reality check for these teenagers because that would be transphobic. 

Sara: Absolutely, and I think I have a bit of a bug bear. I have a few bug bears actually. So one of them is the fact that a lot of times people seem to almost dismiss this non-binary thing as being, oh, it's just a bit of nothing and some people find it so difficult to grasp, perhaps even that they're just kind of dismiss it as just being like, okay, what this is like, they don't really see it as that serious of an issue. But actually there are, particularly women who identify as non-binary who would go on ‘a touch of testosterone’ to have some sort of effect, I suppose, or have a double mastectomy or undergo various other kind of medical procedures or interventions.

There was recently a case in the Journal of Medical Ethics where there was the supposedly hypothetical case, but it was apparently informed from actual clinical experience of some gender identity doctors in Australia, where there was an 18-year-old female who identified as non-binary from I think it was from the age of six or something, who wanted to continue taking puberty blockers, essentially indefinitely.

So to me, the question of non-binary needs to be viewed, I think in the same lens as girls who identify as boys or boys who identify as girls. Because I think it's all part and parcel of the same thing, and that one of them shouldn't necessarily be seen as more neutral or harmless compared to the others.

Stephanie: I think that kids who are non-conforming and want to be part of the tribe, I think non-binary can be a safe way actually. And I think particularly for girls, it can be a safe way to say, oh, I'm not a girl, for a while, because it's hard growing up and going through adolescence as a girl, I think it's hard for all teenagers. For some, it's more difficult than others, but I think girls have very specific issues that are difficult. 

So it may be a useful sort of bridging identity to get her through. But for me it's the fact that she has to identify out of girlhood to be non-conforming. I mean, I think that's just wrong that we're teaching this.

 But the real danger is, as you say, girls will, in order to show that they're really non-binary, they'll start breast binding and the health issues of that is there are huge risks in breast binding. And also it means that the girl can't breathe, so she can't do sports. She's really disabling herself. I think the fact that she can't breathe is really symbolic and schools accept this. Schools accept breast binders. To me, it's a method of self-harm.

The trans lobby will say it results in psychological benefits. You feel better. Well, all self-harm is for that reason. All self-harm makes you feel better in that sense, that's the whole purpose of self-harm, that it replaces your psychological pain with physical pain. So you can say that about it, about cutting.

But once she starts wearing breast binders, they're so uncomfortable, she can't breathe. She's getting back problems and that leads on to double mastectomy and the number of times I've heard this story that, you know, I can't wait to get my double mastectomy, so I'll stop going through this pain of wearing breast binders.

So the need for a double mastectomy has been created by the solution to the problem before, but it's the fact that we're saying if you are non-binary, you must have a non-binary body to match. You are literally neither male nor female, and therefore you need a neither male nor female body. 

I can't understand why schools are allowing this idea to get anywhere near schools. I think we should be doing a lot of education on teaching children to be critical thinkers, to understand the messages that they're getting from strangers on the internet, because we don't know who it is, who are telling these girls on forums, Oh yes. If you feel uncomfortable about being a girl, you're probably trans. 

This message is coming everywhere, and yet, in this one area, we're not aware, we're not protecting children from this celebration and promotion of medical treatment. So again, girls in particular are susceptible to social media messages and they're the biggest users of social media.

So they are looking at YouTube videos that is mostly F to M. So females documenting their medical transition, so the effects of T, the magical drug testosterone and how that's changing them. They're developing facial hair, they're developing deeper voices and the videos where they're first displaying their double mastectomy scars have the biggest number of hits, and these YouTube videos have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers, teenage girls thinking, wow, they're cool, you know, they look really cool. They know what they're doing. They're really happy and this is working for them, and this will work for me. 

And nobody, no adult is coming in and saying, wait a minute, have a look at the messages you're getting here. Are these the experts? They are treated by teenage girls as the experts, but they're kids, and there needs to be much more awareness of the influence on adolescents from these online sources.

The other thing, of course, is what teenage girls are not told. And again, it's partly because the medical professionals themselves don't have all the answers, don't know all the effects. But taking testosterone is going to produce irreversible effects. A few months on testosterone and you will always have a beard. You will always have a deeper voice; you'll always have to shave. You'll have male pattern baldness. You are denying yourself the choice of when you grow up, and actually the teenage brain finishes its development around the mid-twenties, and that's the age that we're seeing de-transitioners. And again, mostly young women or some young men de-transitioning regretting their medical transition, but left with permanent effects on their body. 

So especially I think the voice, I think the voice really needs to be understood. It's an intrinsic part. It needs to be seen as the same as a limb. If you stop, if you change the voice, it's a massive part of your personality and it's the voice mostly I think that means if you've got a man's voice, you'll never be fully perceived as female again. And if you think I made a mistake and you want to change back, that's it. Sorry, you've done it. 

The other thing about testosterone is that after a few years on testosterone, the effects of vaginal atrophy and uterine atrophy leads to hysterectomy, possibly the removal of the ovaries. And then you need synthetic oestrogen just to keep you alive because your body's not producing it. 

So I think in those terms, the effects are more serious and more irreversible for girls than they are for boys who take oestrogen. I think the dangerous time for boys is if they take puberty blockers at a young age then they will be left with a, a toddler sized penis and then there won't be enough material to invert it to make a neo vagina, and therefore part of their bowel will have to be used. It's much more complicated. 

But all of this, this is the real world, this is biological reality. Having gone through all that, you will still not be an adult member of the, you know, a little boy will not grow up to be an adult woman, and a girl will not grow up to be an adult man. And that's simple fact. 

So the issue of kindness, I think, I mean, we know it's not actually kind to promote what's an illusion, and more than that, it's an illusion that children and I think adolescents cannot possibly understand, cannot possibly understand the full implications of the medical interventions that are presented to them as, oh, just, you know, it's just like changing your clothes.

Sara: Something that I sometimes bang on about. I'm like, look, most adults don't even really seem to be able to grasp the differences in these concepts or unpick this critically, if that makes sense, because of the strength of how it's being sold to us through cultural messaging. And so I don't understand how we're expecting young people and children to then approach this in any sort of fact based neutral thing. Like someone needs to be the adult in the room here. And I think that's something that you and your organization in particular really bring to the table, I have to say. 

If you don't mind us changing gears a little bit and talking about the Keira Bell case against GIDS. (Gender Identity Development Service)

Because Transgender Trend intervened in that case. Isn't that right?

Stephanie:  Yes, it was a case brought by Sue Evans, who's an ex Tavistock clinician. She was a whistle-blower back in 2005, so she's been working on this for longer than any of us in this area.

And then Bell came up as the claimant and Mrs. A who is the parent of an autistic 15-year-old who is on the waiting list for the Tavistock. And Mrs. A doesn't want her daughter to be given the same treatment as Keira had. So this case has absolute global significance. It's the first case that's been brought of this nature, and it will have an impact around the world.

It was a very specific case, and the issue was: are children under the age of 18, able to give fully informed consent to puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. And I intervened, or I applied to intervene because the case was built on the evidence and the medical evidence and it, and fantastic evidence from our side. But what I wanted to bring to it was the cultural context, which is my area. And so everything that we've been talking about today, really about what we know about adolescent girls, about the culture that adolescents are growing up in and the vulnerable children at that stage of identity development.

So all of those issues I brought to the case and we had to present our full witness statement, full submission and our evidence bundle. So that included studies from going back years, and evidence. And I was really happy that the judge granted us permission on the basis of my submission and evidence and granted permission to intervene on the basis that it was potentially relevant to the case.

And that's hugely significant because it is the area that nobody talks about. Nobody, including the Tavistock, are taking into account this cultural environment that we as adults daren’t speak about. We as adults are silenced on this issue. We know how much this idea of gender identity is being pushed on the whole of society, and yet we're expecting children to not be influenced by this at all.

So I was really, really happy that the judges, and there were three judges in the case, accepted this, that this was potentially relevant to the issue of whether a child under the age of 18 can give fully informed consent. And that was huge cause it showed to me that the judges had an understanding, it showed that there was some recognition there that that's potentially affects that ability to give informed consent. 

Now, I don't think children can give fully informed consent to treatment that even the medical professionals don't know the results of for a start. That the evidence is not there to support patient safety, essentially patient safety. So, that's one reason which was well covered by our team. 

The other issue is that once they arrive at the Tavistock, children are not given information that there are other ways of understanding sex and gender. But this is only one idea and there are other ideas and theories.

So one is the feminist theory, and the feminist theory is not given to teenage girls. So even the theories of their own sex are withheld from them. Unless you are giving children all of the information about around their understanding of themselves, the way they are conceptualizing their difference, which the Tavistock are fully aware that children have been conditioned everywhere they look to believe this model of gender. Unless they're given information that shows there are different ideas of gender and sex, then they're not being fully informed and they're not making the decision based on fully informed information and access to information. Other information is being withheld.

I think we talked at the beginning about the aims of Transgender Trend and I think this was a really, really key aim. We look at the areas of education, health, and then law as it applies to both those areas. So the aim was to have a full, open, transparent debate about the ethics of this treatment.

And one of our original aims was also full investigation into the materials being taught in schools. 

We had five aims. I'm ticking them off at the moment just over the last few weeks. But the two areas are so intertwined. And, and one of the reasons, so I produced the School's Guide in 2018, and one of the reasons I focused on producing resources for schools is because I know that this is tackling the problem at source, that there needs to be education. There needs to be education about ideas of gender and sex. There needs to be encouragement of critical thinking of ideas. 

These transgender books should not be going into primary schools because it's creating confusion. It's the teaching of confusion. It's the destabilising of knowledge and confusing children about sex, who'd want to do that? I can't understand why that sort of material has been passed as appropriate for little children, but the two areas are inextricably linked. 

You teach children in school that every human being has a gender identity. That gender identity is what makes you a boy or a girl, not your biological sex. That's irrelevant. You indoctrinate children into that belief, and then the results of this, as well as all the influence online. I'm not sort of blaming schools, but the fact that all of the influence from society, from the culture, from online, from the media is now being re reinforced in schools as true and factual, and then we're surprised that there's such a rise of children particularly girls who believe that they literally are boys. Well, that's what we've taught them from early years onwards. 

So both of those areas work together. But really my concern is, well lots of concerns, but the actual medical treatment of children, I find it absolutely heart-breaking that we are actually stopping children going through puberty.

That to me is such a critical stage of development. Well, it is. It's not just my view. It's a critical stage of development in life. You are changing from a child to an adult. I mean, how big is that? Well, there's, there's no other stage of life where you're going through such an enormous and profound change. And to stop that from happening and suspend children in childhood and expect them still to make decisions, to me is inconceivable that we would consider that to be a good idea. 

But what we're doing to children physically and psychologically is we're producing children who enter adulthood without ever having gone through puberty. Because a girl who takes testosterone is not going to go through boy puberty as they think they are. The testosterone is going to change cosmetically, the appearance of her body to be more male. But it's not puberty, it's not the sex hormones of her own sex that are producing all those significant changes all over the body, not just secondary sex characteristics.

So you are entering adulthood and our society has robbed you of the experience of going through puberty. And now that can be a really, really difficult time for lots of children. I'm not denying how hard it is. And we need to develop help and support for those children that actually supports and empowers them and helps them, really takes this seriously and helps them get through that stage.

But the fact is that nobody said it would be easy. Unfortunately, it's, it's like when you are going to achieve something which is adulthood, full independent adulthood, it's not necessarily going to be an easy road to get there. It can be a very rocky road. It can be a really rocky road for some kids.

But what you achieve at the end of it, it's part of actually what gives you the right to say, right. You know, I'm an adult, I've learned stuff, I've made huge mistakes, but I've learned and I've got to the other side and I can take my place in the world. And to deny that for children, I find very upsetting that we would even consider doing that.

Sara: Part of me is like, I mean, I don't think it's ever been easy, has it? I mean, isn't that why culturally in some places you have the whole notion of rites of passage. It's acknowledged that this is supposed to be a period of time of change and development and pain sometimes and difficulty.

So to me, it's a strange kind of pathologisation of something that's just always been seen as just a natural stage of life. 

Stephanie: Yes. I don't think it's meant to be easy because it's always the death of the child and the rebirth of the adult, you know, to recognise the significance of that and to accept that this might be really painful. There are going to be times when this is a really rocky road you're on. Some children sail through it more easily than others. Others really go and have massive problems during adolescents and then emerge from them. And it's a really, really difficult time for parents to watch and to manage.

But it's a hugely important time and if we can help children to navigate it and accept that it's not going to be all plain sailing, but to navigate all of their whirlpools and the rocks they come up against. I think that would be helpful work from adults rather than saying, well, we can just stop your puberty then if it's going to be too hard.

Keira Bell has been the most amazing, brave young woman because it is very hard for people to speak out when they regret decisions they made in their teenage years. It's very exposing. But also de transitioners get so much abuse from the trans lobby because de-transition is not part of the narrative. They're not the part of the story that they want broadcast. So Keira Bell has done a really amazing thing and whatever the results of the hearing, and that could be anything. It will depend on legal aspects. It's a legal case. It'll depend on logistical aspects actually, I think, about the family court, how it operates, all sorts of things.

So it could be that we win, could be that we lose, could be that we get halfway and they say, well, under sixteens can't fully consent. We don't know. Then there's no way of speculating what the result will be. It will be out in a few weeks. It could be a few months. We don't know that either.

But I think the important thing about the hearing, no matter what the result is, will be the summing up by the judges. And it, it is the fact that this is the first case brought in the world on this issue of being able to give fully informed consent in a judicial review. And Keira Bell was the first to do that. It will have repercussions around the world no matter what the result is. It's hugely significant.

For me, when I started Transgender Trend, and that was in 2015, I thought it would be 10 years before we'll see a case like that brought, and Keira has done it a lot earlier than I thought it would be done.

So I want to acknowledge her role in changing things because it will change things no matter what the result is. 

Sara: She is one very brave woman. And it takes a huge amount of integrity, I think, as well to do that. So I hope whatever the outcome is, like you say, there's been a demarcation, I think, and a very important message sent, and as you say, it's something that will have ripple effects, I think, internationally on this issue.

I'd quite like to ask you about the fact that now there's been this Government announcement that basically that the relationships in sex education material in school needs to not do things like reinforce harmful gender stereotypes, has to be evidence based. And they've come out against this born in the wrong body narrative. But it seems to me that even though your school's pack originally, I think you said it was 2018, I seem to recall that when that came out, it was described as almost like extremist horrible propaganda material, even though it's evidence based and it's based on principles of safeguarding.

And I think it was checked by lawyers and it's informed from teachers and obviously your experiences. And now following this kind of change in, I think it was September, it seems as though your packs, your material is, is the only material that actually meets government guidelines. So what's your response to that and how do you feel about it actually?

Stephanie: I'm very relieved, very glad the guidance from the DfE was coming. It was promised quite a few months back when they first released the guidance for the relationships and sex education that they would produce a more detailed document. So that came out and it contains this passage. Very, very glad to see that.

And yes, it does mean that I feel that my work is vindicated. My schools pack and all my school’s resources are fully compliant with Department for Education guidance. So we're hoping this will become statutory guidance. It is guidance for the Relationships and Sex Education curriculum, including PSHE and health education.

But it does mean that you cannot have a policy in other areas in the school that go against what the government is saying here, the danger of promoting gender stereotypes or suggesting that if a child doesn't live up to the gender stereotypes for their sex, that it's associated with a change of gender identity.

I think that is key because if you look at all of the materials from the organisations going into schools, that's exactly what they're saying. And they do it in quite subtle ways, actually. 

If you remember the Denton’s report on how to get sort of transgender ideology into society, you go secretive ways and you hide it and you tack it onto something that's more popular. This has been tacked onto anti-bullying work, for LGB children. That's how it started. Absolutely fair enough so the T has just been tacked on as if it's the same thing. And the transgender ideology, the whole ideology has been introduced into schools through these anti-bullying materials, so tack it onto anti-bullying. Who can complain about that? Who can raise an objection there? 

The other area that it's tacked onto is challenging gender stereotypes, and that's a huge issue in schools. And the NEU produced a report back, oh, I can't remember what year it was. But really good, really, really good materials on challenging gender stereotypes.

And all good schools will have been working on that for a long time and be really aware of not reinforcing very limiting gender stereotypes. I think most schools are really have been on that. And so gender identity is introduced through that subject. So what you see in the school's guides is it's really important.

So introduce gender stereotypes, what they are, how it's fine for a girl to dress how she pleases, be whoever she wants to be, and same with boys. And then talk about gender identity. So immediately after, so you are suggesting, you're not saying it directly, but you are suggesting that the only way to challenge gender stereotypes or it automatically means you change your gender identity.

So you have to look quite carefully at how they present this work. But that is exactly what they're doing. And in fact, if you look at all the materials, certainly the trans support organisations, they tend to say, we support gender variant children, gender non-conforming children. And they use the terms gender variant, gender diverse, gender non-conforming with trans. So they use all of those terms interchangeably. And I think it's so important that we make it clear that rejecting gender stereotypes, defying those stereotypes and being proud of yourself as a non-conforming girl or boy does not involve, does not mean you're transgender, does not mean you need to change your sex.

So yes, our school's guide received so much defamation. Stonewall produced a statement saying it was deeply damaging right at the start. And in fact, when it came out, stonewall did an awful lot to promote it. It was covered it a lot, we sort quite grateful really, because I brought it out in a bit of a rush. I wanted to get it out before the EHRC national guidance, which was due in March. So I got it out in February that year. I wanted to beat them to it. Just to sort of throw a spanner in the works a bit on, on the EHRC guidance and I think Stonewall really, really helped to delay the EHRC guidance because there was such a lot of publicity about our school’s pack.

And at the time I just thought, you know, you've got Stonewall, you've got all sorts of different groups producing school's guidance. I can do the same. There's no law against it, but I think I committed the worst sin ever by doing that. And quite naively, I thought I was releasing it during half term and I thought, oh, you know, this is not going to even get onto Mumsnet. All the parents will be away and it'll just die a death. But never mind it's important I get it out. And in fact, it did over that half term week is very quiet and then it exploded. 

But one of the things that I think sort of keeps me going in a way when I think things are too difficult, when I see what's happening, and I think well around the country, and I know this, there's certain authorities that recommend our schools pack. There's schools that are using it. And I really enjoy this, that I can be sitting here feeling overwhelmed at how much work I've got to do. But at the same time, some school is using our school pack and very sensibly managing children, which is what teachers are trained to do, are experienced to do and should trust themselves in doing, which is what the school pack is all about really.

And that my work is having an impact all over the country. And nobody can do anything about that. Nobody can stop it happening. I remind myself of that and that gives me the motivation to carry on. 

Sara: I have to say thank you so much for carrying on with all of this work.

I wondered if there was anything you would like to cover that I might have missed in terms of maybe the NHS review or anything like that? 

Stephanie: Yeah, just briefly. Another really positive thing, I mean, it's been so many positive things recently. The BBC took Mermaids off the help page. For example, the NHS changed their guidance. They no longer say that puberty blockers are completely reversible and quite a few other significant changes on the NHS gender dysphoria pages. 

The other thing was the Cass Review, and the Cass Review that has been going on this year was looking at hormone blockers and cross sex hormones. 

So I'm on the stakeholder list for the NHS Gender Identity Services and I have been, and I actually responded and encouraged other people to respond to the service specification back in, I think it was 2016. So I've been involved in that process, having an input into that.

And the initial review, the results are coming out, we've heard by the end of this year, and that's really looking at the evidence, the basic medical evidence for puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. And it's now been announced there is a wider range of the review, of the procedures and the Tavistock and the GIDS gender identity development service. And that's going to be open and transparent. 

I've been in contact with Hillary Cass on that. And what my hope is that this review will look at the cultural context. It will listen to the voices of de-transitioners of parents and parents who report that their children suddenly begin speaking from a script as if they've been indoctrinated into a cult.

This is what I hear from parents a lot, that they listen to autistic people, to lesbian and gay adults, to women, to women who like me, thought they were boys when they were children and grew out of it. And that sounds very easy. It was a very rocky road for me, and I know I hear this from women all the time.

I had those same problems when I was a child or when I was an adolescent. And what has always sort of amazed me is that the Gender Identity Services seem to be led and influenced by adult trans people and often males who transitioned later in life who will say, I wish I could have had puberty blockers and then I would pass as a woman now. So it's all a very cosmetic sort of thing. 

But I think that has had the influence on medical services as on society as a whole. And in fact, I think that the people influencing the treatment services for gender dysphoria should include the around 80% of adults who outgrew it. Because we have, I think, a very important voice in this, that yes, we felt, we felt those feelings when we were children. We felt those feelings as women when we were adolescents or as lesbians or as autistic children or whatever the situation was, we felt exactly the same. Nothing happened. There was no treatment. Nobody took it seriously. We managed it. So how did we manage it? What challenges did we face and how did we get through those challenges? That's the kind of information that needs to inform Gender Identity Services, not just the minority whose outcome was transsexual. 

So I'm very optimistic that there is this open, transparent review, and again, that's something that we've called for right from the start. Needs to be open, needs to be transparent and I really look forward to working with Hillary Cass and contributing to that review.

Sara: Thank you Stephanie, and thank you so much for sharing all of this with us today. And I wanted to ask you just where to next for Transgender Trend and also how can listeners support you and your work? 

Stephanie: We're working now on resources for young people and we're particularly focusing on autistic young people and the tween and teen years.

We've got a fantastic artist who's working with us and a fantastic writer. We've got our autism team. I think that's the next area we really need to look at. So we'll have some pages up on the website, but we're also looking at the school guide and resources for young people themselves. 

The plan is that we are going to create a publishing platform to publish these resources.

My idea was that once the Transgender Trend is over, then we continue in producing really good resources for schools, for parents. My feeling is it's still an awful lot to do. There's a lot of damage to undo and it's having alternative resources for parents and for teachers I think is critical.

Don't think that that is happening just yet. I think I've got a while to go, but resources will not be focused on transgender, they will be focused on other things. 

We’re creating a sort of resource or publication arm in order to produce those resources and hopefully get them into schools and give good guidance and good resources for children themselves because I think they're lacking and in particular resources that challenge gender stereotypes, but at the same time are body positive like Rachel Rooney and Jessica Ahlberg's book, My Body Is Me. That message should be in more resources in schools and the Women and Equality Select Committee has just done a project on body positivity and low body self-esteem.

I think it's a critical area, again, because of the culture our kids are growing up in, that really is sort of body fascist culture that where the ideals of the perfect body are pushed at girls in particular, but boys also, that needs to start in primary years. It's about what your body can do rather than what your body looks like so those kind of resources I think are really important. 

So that's the kind of work we're working towards. Plus, we will carry on our behind the scenes work to influence policy makers in the areas of health and education. 

Sara: And how can listeners help support that sort of work? 

Stephanie: They can take our resources into schools, if that's difficult, we will send them direct to the school.

Have a look at the website, Transgendertrend.com. Donations are hugely gratefully received always, because that's how we keep going. We don't have any funding, we don't have any, no official bodies, funders, the government doesn't fund us. We don't get any funding. So we really do rely on donations. 

And there is a PayPal button on the right side of the web, of the homepage of the website, and there is a funding page under who we are. There's a funding page if you'd like to donate and make a regular donation to our bank account. We will love you forever. 

I always think this is a joint enterprise, that everything we achieve has been achieved with the support, the financial support of the donations from people who support us. And I really am genuinely so grateful for any amount that people can give us that's really, really keeps us going. 

And otherwise, I think talk to people I think it's very difficult and I really acknowledge how hard it is to approach this subject. If you're a parent at the, at the gates of the school, you've got your community and a bit like teenagers, to be ostracized from your peer group when you depend on other parents to look after your child it's really, really hard. 

I hear that, and I know from my own experience, if you start talking about it, and maybe very carefully you'll find that other people feel exactly the same and also daren’t speak out. So I throw that out as a challenge because I think parents can change the world.

You look at Mumsnet you know, parents really, really do have the power in their child's school or their child's local authority area. 

I worked in a primary school for eight years. I know the power that parents have and as a parent myself, of course. So yes, just talk, talk to these schools, talk to other parents, and every little helps doing a huge thing.

Sara: Absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that's quite lovely. I think almost the one positive thing that I can see about this particular thing is the way you can see so many different people doing their own small contribution or larger contribution or, you know, everyone's just sort of trying to pull whatever little bit of thread that they can to help this mess unravel.

Stephanie: I think there is so many people working behind the scenes doing what they can, and we never hear of them, but they're doing whatever it is that they can, within their world, within their community, within their job. And I feel grateful to all of them. I don't expect people to be able to speak out publicly. I know the risks of that, but I think people are being very brave in their own ways, in their own lives in lots of ways and we never hear about it. Shout out to them. 

Sara: Yes. Absolutely, well, thank you so much for sharing your time and your insights and your feminist wisdom with us. Thank you so much for this conversation and for all of your kind of explanations of these really important points and for all of your work in this, in this particular issue.

Thank you very much. 

Stephanie: Thank you very much for inviting me on and for all your work at FiLiA.