There is no such thing as a ‘trans’ child!

An examination of the false concept of the ‘transgender’ child

This blog focuses on the fact that safeguarding children and young people must always take precedence, and that part of that process is to shine a light on the importance of helping those professionals captured by the ideology of the 'trans' child, to change direction. It is unthinkable that the present degree of neglect and lack of thinking in institutions can go on unchecked.

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When Donald Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst, famously stated, ‘There is no such thing as a baby’, he did not mean literally that babies don’t exist, but rather that, because of their helplessness and stage of development, a baby, as a category of human, could not be considered autonomous.

"There is no such thing as a baby"

To think of a baby, he stated, would of necessity include someone who fulfils the maternal role of caring for the baby’s needs, including protection from harm. In other words, it is the relationship between the vulnerable baby and whoever takes on the moral duty to act on its behalf, that gives full meaning to the category ‘baby’ – an infant human for whom care and protection is essential to ensure healthy development.

Today, with Winnicott's logic in mind, we might pose another question,

‘Can we justifiably state that there is no such a thing as a ‘trans’ child?’

The answer, clearly, is ‘Yes, we can’.

Just as the baby is entirely dependent on others until certain bodily and psychological functions develop, so the child or young person purporting to ‘be’ ‘trans’ is wholly dependent on adults to make sense of the relationship between their disturbed internal state of mind, and an external world of seductive marketing of the false belief that humans can change sex.

Unfortunately, and to the detriment of children, the insidious spread of gender ideology within society’s key institutions has meant that many professionals with a duty of care, and who should have known better, have ignored the external world of reality and its impact on children and young people. They have promoted, (knowingly or unknowingly) the false notion of the autonomous child. They have also failed to take into consideration crucial aspects of child development such as age, stage, vulnerability, family conditions, and adverse histories, and have convinced themselves, in some cases, that children as young as two or three have adult sensibilities when it comes to sex.

This grave error of judgement has even led governments to legislate for the proliferation of damaging and over-sexualised teaching materials in schools and in other institutions. It has forced parents and professionals to accept and affirm a medically suspect diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’ and it has engaged many teachers and social workers in a duplicitous practice known as ‘social transition’, in a drive to gain compliance from all parties, including peers of the affected child.

These actions are nothing short of a proclamation of their denial of reality, and of a cynical belief in the autonomous ‘trans’ child, who is believed to have undergone a personal experience of revelation concerning its own sex, and whose naïve proclamations are accepted at face value. This is an extraordinary attack by gender ideologues on the truth of dependency in childhood, and of the need for safeguarding of minors. Not only that, but by leading the push for affirmation, surgery, and medicalisation, they ultimately strike at the heart of the notion of childhood development, and of innocence itself.

As professionals bound by ethics and truth, we must be critical about the motivations of politicians and high-ranking officials who defend a way of thinking that is perverse in the clinical sense of the word, that is to say, it distorts facts and truth. And by defending gender ideology within institutions, the caring professions demean themselves by disregarding the truth of difference between the sexes, (in the construction of the concept ‘trans’) and the truth of generational difference (in the pursuit of the sexualisation of children). Ultimately, all acts of perversion are attacks on truth and reality, but these particular acts of omission are especially egregious because they involve minors.

Conclusion

Safeguarding children and young people must always take precedence, and part of that process is to shine a light on the importance of helping those professionals captured by ideology, to change direction, because it is unthinkable that the present degree of neglect and lack of thinking in institutions can go on unchecked.

There is significant urgency in the task of creating circumstances in which education, health, and social work professionals can receive the support necessary to return them to their ethical and fiduciary role of safeguarding. It is time to address the disastrous professional neglect that has operated when nonsensical theories have been favoured over reality, and to create new support networks that are strong enough to sustain our weakened systems of care.

In these moments of crisis, we must be able to trust paid professionals to be ethical, responsible adults, not regressed teenagers in thrall to 'gender'. We must challenge those who have taken oaths to do no harm and promised to safeguard children. We know that many of these professionals have failed in this regard and may well suffer the legal consequences in due course, but if we cannot provide them with the kind of supervision that clings to truth and ethics, and cannot give them support to change, the caring professions are in big trouble.

June Campbell

Retired NHS Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

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